Last Stories by William Trevor

William Trevor wrote novels and short stories for over 60 years.  He was born in Ireland, moved to England in the 1960’s and settled eventually in Devon, where he died peacefully in his sleep a few years ago.  This collection was published in 2018.  And though he wrote about a dozen books of each, and wonderful novels that won many awards, he’s perhaps best known for his short stories, maybe because few of our great fiction writers publish as many books of short stories as they do novels.
 
But I think there’s another reason:  He’s better than anybody at creating within the span of a very few pages both fully realized characters and an image of their whole lives.
 
The opening story, “The Piano Teacher’s Pupil,” spans just eight pages.  One marvels at how simply and directly he sets up our protagonist’s life with all its relevant backstory, and the challenge she is presented when a schoolboy arrives for his first lesson with her, and she learns within a few notes that he’s the best pupil she will ever have.  All this without a wasted word, but a deep, clear picture in four pages.  Then, the rub.  A very short story, so full and yet so spare.  Trevor at the height of his powers, writing short stories that feel like whole novels because of what’s between the lines.
 
“At the Caffé Daria” tells the story of Anita, a woman who lost her handsome and clever husband to another—a longtime friend, no less—long ago.  She returns daily to the caffé in what had been their neighborhood, which is still his neighborhood along with the house, but the caffé is still hers.  A well-wrought caffé is like a painting—some even a masterpiece.  They have a spirit to them, that draws out of their long-time denizens all manner of memories down all the years; a place that’s warm and human you can return to again and again, like chapels on the roadside of a life once lived.
 
One morning, Anita feels someone hailing her in the caffé.  It’s Claire, the second wife, who dropped by several months back to tell Anita her husband is dead, and the house is to be sold to pay the debts.  She says then what she has come to say now:
 
    “I’m sorry,” Claire says, the useless words whispered as if they deserve no more than that.
    “Why have you come?” Anita repeats her question of months ago, precise and cold, as it was then.
    “Perhaps I’ve come to beg you to forgive me.  You bear Gervaise’s name and I do not.  Gervaise has died and we [] are left.”
    “But we are as we are, not as we were.  Death exorcizes nothing.  I was a passing fancy in a spoilt man’s life and you were everything.  It’s that that’s left.”
    Anita stands up, and Claire does too.  In silence she begs again, a pleading in her eyes.
    “Gervaise did not know about being faithful,” she says before she goes.  “He never was.  Nor was I everything.”
    But Anita’s unforgiving resolve does not weaken, and the conversation ends in silence.
 
The seasons pass.  Several times Anita thinks she sees Claire in the caffé, but it is not to be.
 
     Claire is somewhere.  If Anita prayed she would pray to know where.  If she knew the secrets of telepathy she would employ them.
   The sales board has been taken down.  Other people live in the house.  Claire cherishes in her lonely solitude what Anita, in hers, too late embraces now: all that there was before love came, when friendship was the better thing.
 
“The Women” closes this collection of ten stories.  Mr. Normanton and his daughter, Cecilia, live in London City.  She takes weekend trips with him to Suffolk, and they walk the City streets with all its sights and sounds.  “Your mother isn’t here anymore,” is all her father has told her since she was very young.  She is home-schooled by a retired schoolmaster, and a married couple come to cook and clean.  Eventually, “sensitive to the pressure of duty where his child was concerned, her father did not demur when he was advised that the time had come to send her away to boarding school, to be a girl among other girls.”
 
There she keeps a garden and is made to watch field hockey games when other schools come to play.  At one game, Cecilia spots two women watching, too.  At a second game, “They stood about as if they had a reason to, and Cecilia avoided looking in their direction.”
 
The point of view then shifts to these women.  But I’ll leave it there.
 
Judging from his writing—fairly knowing from his writing—William Trevor was a kind soul with a knack for painting them with words.  A man as he himself put it, with “Irish in every vein.”