Selected Stories

‘Cold?’ Charlotte asked him as he passed through the kitchen, and he said yes, a little chilly outside. The kitchen was never cold because of the range. A long time ago they had been going to replace it with a second-hand Aga Charlotte had heard about, but when it came to the point Odo hadn’t wanted to and anyway there hadn’t been the funds.

In the drawing-room Odo set the fire, crumpling up the pages of old account books because no newspaper was delivered to the house and one was rarely bought: they had the wireless and the television, which kept them up with things. The account books were of no use to anyone, belonging entirely to the past, to the time of Odo’s grandfather and generations earlier. Kept for the purpose in a wall-cupboard by the fireplace, their dry pages never failed to burn well. Slating: £2. 15s., Odo read as he arranged the kindling over the slanted calligraphy. He struck a match and stacked on logs and turf. Rain spattered against the long-paned windows; a sudden gust of wind tumbled something over in the garden.

Charlotte pressed rosemary into the slits she’d incised in the lamb. She worked swiftly, from long experience knowing just what she was doing. She washed the grease from her fingertips under a running tap and set aside what remained of the rosemary, even though it was unlikely that she would have a use for it: she hated throwing things away.

The oven was slow; although it was still early, the meat would have to go in within half an hour, and potatoes to roast – another Timothy favourite – at eleven. The trifle, gooey with custard and raspberry jam and jelly – a nursery pudding – Charlotte had made the night before. When Timothy came he chopped the mint for the mint sauce, one of the first of his childhood tasks. He’d been a plump little boy then.

‘I can’t go,’ Timothy said in the flat that had recently been left to him by Mr Kinnally.

Eddie didn’t respond. He turned the pages of the Irish Times, wishing it were something livelier, the Star or the Express. With little interest he noticed that schools’ entrance tests were to be abolished and that there was to be a canine clean-up, whatever that was, in Limerick.

‘I’ll drive you down,’ he offered then. His own plans were being shattered by this change of heart on the part of Timothy, but he kept the annoyance out of his voice. He had intended to gather his belongings together and leave as soon as he had the house to himself: a bus out to the N4, the long hitch-hike, then start all over again. ‘No problem to drive you down,’ he said. ‘No problem.’

The suggestion wasn’t worth a reply, Timothy considered. It wasn’t even worth acknowledgement. No longer plump at thirty-three, Timothy wore his smooth fair hair in a ponytail. When he smiled, a dimple appeared in his left cheek, a characteristic he cultivated. He was dressed, this morning, as he often was, in flannel trousers and a navy-blue blazer, with a plain blue tie in the buttoned-down collar of his plain blue shirt.

‘I’d get out before we got there,’ Eddie offered. ‘I’d go for a walk while you was inside.’

‘What I’m saying is I can’t face it.’