Free Felicia's Journey by William Trevor Page B

sprouts, is how perfection in a friendship has to be, unenduring lest it lose its quality.
Grilling the steak he bought in Tesco’s on the way back to his house, draining potatoes and the Brussels sprouts, he effortlessly keeps the girl’s features in his consciousness. He lays the table in the dining-room, carrying in salt and pepper and a few slices of Mother’s Pride on a side plate. He always eats in the dining-room in the evenings.
While waiting for the steak to grill, he scoops two individual trifles on to a plate, pours cream over them and sprinkles a spoonful of caster sugar. He carries the trifles to his long mahogany table, carrying, as well, his biscuit tin – raspberry creams and coffee creams, chocolate digestives, fig rolls, a couple of KitKats. Music plays softly: ‘Bugle Call Rag’.
She walks about, still scanning the faces on the pavements. If the man hadn’t told her what he had, if he hadn’t sounded so certain, she might by now have convinced herself that she should go home in spite of what awaits her there. Again she wonders what they’re thinking now, what conclusions have been reached. Do they dread her return as much as she dreads it herself? That thought strikes her suddenly, not having occurred to her before. Are they hopingshe has gone for ever? Is there a plea in Mrs Lysaght’s prayers that she should be lost, or even dead?
‘Did you go out with young Lysaght?’ her father asked, only a few hours after she handed to Mrs Lysaght the letter in a stamped envelope. ‘A while back?’ her father went on, his tone suggesting that some further turn of the screw was in store for her. ‘October?’
A man on the street asks her something, smiling at her. She doesn’t understand; she doesn’t answer. She didn’t answer, either, when her father asked those questions. She was polishing brass at the draining-board, ornaments and ashtrays which her father liked to see gleaming, as he did the brass on people’s hall doors. ‘Around about the time of the wedding?’ he pressed.
‘I know Johnny Lysaght,’ she said. She bent her head over a piece that represented three monkeys, their paws obscuring mouth, ears or eyes. The television, which was on earlier, had been turned off.
‘Did you go out with him, though?’
‘I did.’
‘I would avoid that fellow,’ her father said. ‘I would go out with some other young fellow.’
‘What d’ you mean?’
‘You hear certain remarks made about Lysaght.’ Her father’s grey head was poked out in Felicia’s direction, a habit he had when he was serious or intent upon being understood. ‘I’m not saying it’s gospel. All I’m saying is there are certain statements made.’
‘What statements?’
‘That he joined the British army.’
‘Johnny works in a factory stores. Lawn-mower parts.’
He nodded thoughtfully and slowly, as if agreeing. He was frowning a little, which he tended to when endeavouring to establish an accuracy. He liked to get things right.
‘It’d be a natural enough thing for him to keep it quiet about the army.’
‘He has work in a stores.’
Her father continued to nod in the same slow fashion, and when he spoke the pace of his speech was unhurried also. He wondered,he remarked, where something without foundation would have come from, and added:
‘There’s better boys round here than that, girl. Irish boys belong in Ireland.’
‘Johnny went to England because he couldn’t get work here.’
‘A member of the British forces could be sent into the North. He could be set to killing our own.’
‘Johnny’s not in any army. It’s someone else you heard about.’
‘There’s plenty of decent Irish boys you could go to Sheehy’s public house with, girl. That’s all I’m saying to you.’
There was a silence in the kitchen then. Her father sat straight and upright in his chair, not doing anything with his hands, gazing in front of him at nothing. Felicia picked up another piece of brass.
‘Johnny and myself love one