Within hours of his death at 88 in 2016, tributes from Irish writers poured in to the Irish Times describing how much William Trevor’s work meant to them.
Described by many as the “greatest living English language writer,” Trevor’s books are considered very English, yet he considered himself an “Irish writer” belonging to the “Irish tradition.” His stated goal was to take Irish provincialism and make it universal.
The picture that emerges is that of a writer whose work encompassed an entire literary tradition residing at the center of Irish literary consciousness, yet a writer still on the periphery—an outsider.
Perhaps this is because the Irish-born Trevor, who referred to himself as a “lace curtain Protestant,” moved to England in the 1950s because he could not get work in Ireland and then wrote about English society, which he admitted both fascinated and perplexed him.
After a variety of jobs as a teacher, a church sculptor and a copywriter in an advertising agency, he wrote his first two novels and short stories which were set in England; it was not until the mid-1970s that his focus shifted to Ireland.
In this superb posthumous collection of 10 short stories—nine of which have never been published before—the theme of loneliness prevails.
In “The Piano’s Teacher’s Pupil,” the middle-aged spinster Miss Elizabeth Nightingale considers herself fortunate since she inherited a house on the death of her father and was able to live comfortably on her earnings as a piano teacher.
The story opens with a piano lesson: “The Brahms? She said, ‘Shall we struggle through the Brahms?’ The boy, whose first lesson with Miss Nightingale this was, said nothing. But gazing at the silent metronome, he smiled a little, as if the silence pleased him. Then his fingers touched the piano keys and when the first notes sounded, Miss Nightingale knew that she was in the presence of a genius.”
Gradually, after each piano lesson, Miss Nightingale notices something missing: “the little snuff-box with someone else’s coat of arms on it was missing from the window table” and the “rose-petal paperweight was there when he began to play his Chopin prelude but gone when she returned from seeing him out.”
She tried to rationalize that perhaps he helped himself because he thought he deserved a fee for his performance. But she did not mention this to the boy because she feared he would not come again, “The mystery there was in the music was in his smile when he finished, while he waited for her approval.”
In “The Unknown Girl,” the story opens with the death of a young girl whose history unravels through the reminiscence of her employer, Harriet Balfour, a widowed wealthy woman whose young son lives with her:
“For hardly longer than a second the people on the pavement’s edge were frozen in perfect stillness. Then a man stepped into the oncoming traffic, both arms raised to peremptorily halt it … The driver’s door of the green and yellow van that had so dramatically braked while lurching to one side now opened. A voice called for an ambulance … The body was covered with a blanket on the stretcher; the ambulance doors were softly closed. This life was over.”
As the tale unfolds, we learn little about the secret solitary life of Emily Vance, the young housekeeper who appears to have no living kin. Only four unrelated people show up at her funeral—including her last employer, Harriet Balfour. Not mentioning her housecleaner’s death to her son, Harriet reviews the past when Emily worked for her. She tries to piece things together—words, expressions, any nuance or thread that might offer a clue as to why Emily left her employ never to return and with no explanation.
Finally, she senses a connection to her son—and the probable reason for Emily’s sudden departure. “Harriet wished she didn’t know. She wished that what she had dreaded had happened instead, ordinary and understandable.” As her regret and remorse about Emily’s life becomes more intense, she ceases to get pleasure from what had given her pleasure before.
“Her garden that always delighted her ceased to comfort her: “The scarlet tinge of early peonies came suddenly, broom’s yellow brightness, pink clematis, rosemary thriving” … Harriet wept and through the blur of her tears the beauty that had spread in her garden, and was spreading still, was lost in distortion. She watched it returning. Becoming even more resplendent … but in a world that was all wrong it seemed to be a mockery.”
In “An Idyll in Winter,” we are introduced to 12-year-old-Mary Bella, an only child living on a farm with her parents who hire a 22-year-old university student named Anthony to tutor her. A mutual fondness between pupil and teacher develops and Mary Bella never forgets the magical summer of their excursions on the moors or their conversations.
One year later, Anthony leaves and she is reconciled to never seeing him again. After her parents die, she inherits the farm and one day Anthony, married now with two children, returns to the farm alone—and stays for hours. “In the morning Anthony knew he shouldn’t have gone back.” He leaves his wife and children—but duty eventually pulls him back home. Despite his protestations that he belonged with her, Mary Bella had a “wisp of doubt that flourished now as a premonition”. “Why did she know? Why did he not? He’s been the teacher once.” One morning Anthony silently leaves the farm before she wakes up—waving goodbye to the workmen.
Mary Bella knows he will not come back: “… no searching in the falsity for something that might be better than nothing.” She does not want the workmen’s pity. She wishes she could explain that love will not wither or die slowly or be made ordinary. She wishes that they could know that love was there for her in the rooms and places they shared—unchanged and “familiar to him as they are to her.”
William Trevor saw himself as primarily a short story writer and called it the “art of the glimpse.” His genius is reflected as much in as what is unsaid as in what is said. He is invisible on the page both subtle and oblique and must be read more than once.
