Free Death in Summer by William Trevor

chins and reach an artificially deepened cleavage, exposed between mammoth breasts. There is no sign in this spectacle of the ill-health so regularly touched upon in Mrs Ferry’s letters. Only her weight would seem to be a subject for a consulting room.
    ‘Hullo,’ Thaddeus greets his afternoon woman of long ago, recalling her underclothes on the back of a chair, the curtains pulled over. ‘Hullo, Dot.’
    ‘Well, dear, you haven’t changed. He’ll have put on a year or two, I said, but truth to tell you hardly have.’
    He smiles, wiping away with his fingers the lipstick she has left on his cheek, which would have been his mouth if she’d had her way. She pours his tea, remarking that, after all, it wasn’t yesterday. She speaks in a hurried gabble, doing her best to be lighthearted. She offers Thaddeus the plate of cakes.
    ‘I have to explain,’ he interrupts when there’s a chance.
    But she hurries on, as if fearful of what might be said. ‘We’ve had good times, dear. Don’t think I didn’t appreciate that. I lie alone in my little place, watching the light come at the curtains, and I think how good the times were. I haven’t been well, you know.’
    ‘You said. I’m sorry.’
    ‘I wouldn’t have asked another living soul. I lie there remembering our times and I think there’s no one I can ask except my old Bad Hat.’
    He wishes she wouldn’t call him that, but of course it is her right and once he didn’t mind.
Thad dear
, her letters have begun: that, also, he didn’t mind.
    ‘I’ve come over because of something that has happened. I didn’t send anything before–’
    ‘Shh now, dear.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’ He lowers his voice. ‘I didn’t send anything before because strictly speaking the money’s my wife’s. I didn’t feel I could.’ He pauses until her cup is raised, and hurries on while she sips her tea, spreading another redsmudge on the china surface. ‘But then my wife came across one of your letters.’
    ‘Oh, my God!’ Careless herself now, Mrs Ferry causes people to look their way. ‘Oh, my dear God!’
    Thaddeus doesn’t give the details of how the letter came to light. ‘It upset her that you were in need. When she read about it she wanted you to have something.’
    ‘I don’t believe I follow this, dear.’
    Thaddeus does not intend to disclose the fact of his widowhood, feeling that in the circumstances it would not be sensible to do so. He has respected Letitia’s wishes, he’ll send whatever is demanded in the future, but the consequences of divulging that he is again on his own are very much to be avoided.
    ‘My wife simply wanted to help you. She read your letter and was upset.’
    ‘I’m to blame for a commotion!’ is Mrs Ferry’s response, declared in the same noisy manner.
    ‘No, no, of course you’re not.’
    She shakes her head. A shock, she says; she nearly fainted. Her eyes seem smaller than they were a moment ago. Her mouth remains slightly open when she has finished speaking, the tip of her pink tongue revealed.
    ‘I wanted to explain, Dot. I’m very sorry you got a shock.’
    ‘I never meant harm, dear.’ Though stated more quietly, a degree of Mrs Ferry’s natural perkiness has returned. ‘No one wants that. You believe me, dear, no harm was meant?’
    ‘Of course I do.’
    ‘Another fact is, there was nothing any time I wrote to you that was an indiscretion. We have had our indiscretions, not that I regret them, not a single one. But nothing waswritten by me that could have offended a wife, for I said to myself I must not do that. I wrote when I was at my lowest. The first time I was at my lowest, the next time not so bad but still not able for things. I’m ailing through and through, to tell you the honest truth. Now that you’ve been kind enough to come over I can say that.’
    She lives like this, Thaddeus finds himself reflecting. She writes men begging letters without threats, needling their guilt, sniffing out money. God