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He knew she understood, in spite of all her protestations; as he had when she arranged her divorce. It had become an agitation for her, being married to someone else, but he had never minded that she was. A marriage that had died, and being haunted by how people considered the person you loved, were far from the heart of love itself; yet these had nagged. They would grow old together while never being together, lines ravaging her features, eyes dulled by expectation’s teasing. They would look back from their rare meetings as the years closed over this winning time and take solace from it. Was that there, too, in the bagwoman’s eyes, and idly passing through strangers’ half-interested reflections? ‘I haven’t explained this well,’ he said, and heard her say there was tomorrow. He shook his head. No, not tomorrow, he said. For longer than just today she had been ready for that because of course you had to be. Since the beginning she had been ready for it, and since the beginning she had been resolute that she would not claw back fragments from the debris. He was wrong; he had explained it well. She listened while again he said he loved her, and watched while he reached out for the briefcase she had so often wanted to replace yet could not. She smiled a little, standing up to go. Outside, drinkers had congregated on the pavement, catching the last of the sun. They walked through them, her coat over his arm, picked up from where she’d draped it on the back of her chair. He held it for her, and waited while she buttoned it and casually tied the belt. In the plate-glass of a department-store window their reflection was arrested while they embraced. They did not see that image recording for an instant a stylishness they would not have claimed as theirs, or guessed that in their love affair, they had possessed. Unspoken, understood, their rules of love had not been broken in the distress of ending what was not ended and never would be. Nothing of love had been destroyed today: they took that with them as they drew apart and walked away from one another, unaware that the future was less bleak than now it seemed, that in it there still would be the delicacy of their reticence, and they themselves as love had IA made them for a while. Reprinted by arrangement with Viking Penguin, a member of PenguinGroup (USA) Inc., from SELECTED STORIES by William Trevor. Copyright © 2009 by William Trevor
48 IRISH AMERICA FEBRUARY / MARCH 20011
1942 SEPTEMBER
When autumn days turned golden cool And the beckoning river still ran with the heat of summer. When the unsmiling nuns called us back to our desks. Back to the catechism – kneeling – praying – hymn singing. Back to all the disciplines designed to snare our boyish spirits, And so bring us to humble conformity.
SEPTEMBER
When they couldn’t keep us from the river Not after school Not on weekends Not ever They couldn’t keep us from that tidal flow, That seaward bound river that eddied And surged to the Hudson. The gray-green river that meant more to us Than all the sermons that Father Brennan could ever spin From Sunday’s pulpit.
SEPTEMBER
When autumn days turned golden cool And God was in His heaven, When all of everlasting certitude belonged to them We turned our freckled backs on it all. For the river belonged to us To the boys. – James O’Gara