Read Online Love and Summer by William Trevor - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: William Trevor
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bedroom door. The details of dreaming blurred, then were gone.
Only Isabella had ever played the piano, which a week ago had been taken from the house. She had been sent from Genoa every summer to perfect her English, although at Shelhanagh her English was considered to be as good as anyone’s. She always came in July, a child at first, younger than Florian but not by much. He was suspicious, resentful of an invasion of his solitude; but growing closer as they grew up, he and Isabella discovered in each other a companionship neither had known before. His cousin was assured, and knowledgeable in ways he wasn’t, and teased a little. ‘ Nella sua mente c’é una gran confusione ,’ she would say as if to herself, and he would shrug when, in translation, he heard himself called muddled. He knew he was, and Isabella only did because by then he told her everything. She lifted loneliness from him, making of the secrets he once had guarded from her curiosity secrets that be l onged to both of them. ‘ Meraviglioso! ’ she cried when he confided that on darkening winter evenings he had stolen out of his one-time boarding-school to follow people on the streets, making of each shadowy presence what he wished it to be. Hunched within themselves, his quarries hurried from their crimes, the pickpocket with his wallets and his purses, the bank clerk with embezzlement’s gain kept safe beneath his clothes, the simple thief, the silent burglar. Sinister at dark hall doors, they took out latchkeys and, curtains drawn, a light went on. The blackmailer wrote his letters, the shoplifter cooked his purloined supper. Saviour of desperate girls, a nurse wiped clean her instruments. A dealer packaged dreams, a killer washed his hands. ‘ Magnifico! ’ Isabella cried.
She brought a real world herself: Cesare and Enrico, Bartolomeo, Giovanni, a different snapshot pinned up each time she came. And Pietro Pallotta in evening dress, worshipped from afar, and Signor Canepaci of Credito Italiano. They broke her heart or she broke theirs; and Florian was her friend and always would be. ‘You let me be myself,’ she complimented him. Two halves of one they were, she used to say, her more precise Italian losing elegance in translation. He knew it was true: they complemented one another.
The dusk of early morning lightened. Florian slept again, and dreamed again but afterwards did not know he had. He didn’t know when it was he had first loved Isabella and often thought he probably always had. ‘We could be here,’ she used to say, speaking of Shelhanagh and of the future. But love, for Isabella, did not come into it, and there’d been other girls because of that: pretty Rose Mary Darty, who lived not far away, and the girl in the chemist’s in Castledrummond, Noeleen Fahy the station master’s daughter, Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls . There’d never been much, but what there was had always to do with Isabella - another hopeless effort to tidy her away. He had written to tell her when he was persuaded to sell the house but her spidery handwriting had never, in response, been waiting among the day’s brown envelopes on the floor of the hall.
It wasn’t again this morning. The estate agents wrote to say appointments had been made for would-be purchasers: today at half past two, at four o’clock, at five. We are delighted with this brisk response , the communication ended, and are confident of an offer soon .
After breakfast he brought to life the embers of his bonfire, throwing on to them more photographs he had found, his plaintive school reports, his father’s diaries, and magazines and packs of cards. He watched the photographs becoming wisps of black that floated off to decorate eleagnus and mahonia. He scattered over a blaze of chairs with broken backs or missing legs the postcards of Italian art his mother had collected - five shoeboxes of masterworks in black and white, each with a greeting in a different hand, all
Only Isabella had ever played the piano, which a week ago had been taken from the house. She had been sent from Genoa every summer to perfect her English, although at Shelhanagh her English was considered to be as good as anyone’s. She always came in July, a child at first, younger than Florian but not by much. He was suspicious, resentful of an invasion of his solitude; but growing closer as they grew up, he and Isabella discovered in each other a companionship neither had known before. His cousin was assured, and knowledgeable in ways he wasn’t, and teased a little. ‘ Nella sua mente c’é una gran confusione ,’ she would say as if to herself, and he would shrug when, in translation, he heard himself called muddled. He knew he was, and Isabella only did because by then he told her everything. She lifted loneliness from him, making of the secrets he once had guarded from her curiosity secrets that be l onged to both of them. ‘ Meraviglioso! ’ she cried when he confided that on darkening winter evenings he had stolen out of his one-time boarding-school to follow people on the streets, making of each shadowy presence what he wished it to be. Hunched within themselves, his quarries hurried from their crimes, the pickpocket with his wallets and his purses, the bank clerk with embezzlement’s gain kept safe beneath his clothes, the simple thief, the silent burglar. Sinister at dark hall doors, they took out latchkeys and, curtains drawn, a light went on. The blackmailer wrote his letters, the shoplifter cooked his purloined supper. Saviour of desperate girls, a nurse wiped clean her instruments. A dealer packaged dreams, a killer washed his hands. ‘ Magnifico! ’ Isabella cried.
She brought a real world herself: Cesare and Enrico, Bartolomeo, Giovanni, a different snapshot pinned up each time she came. And Pietro Pallotta in evening dress, worshipped from afar, and Signor Canepaci of Credito Italiano. They broke her heart or she broke theirs; and Florian was her friend and always would be. ‘You let me be myself,’ she complimented him. Two halves of one they were, she used to say, her more precise Italian losing elegance in translation. He knew it was true: they complemented one another.
The dusk of early morning lightened. Florian slept again, and dreamed again but afterwards did not know he had. He didn’t know when it was he had first loved Isabella and often thought he probably always had. ‘We could be here,’ she used to say, speaking of Shelhanagh and of the future. But love, for Isabella, did not come into it, and there’d been other girls because of that: pretty Rose Mary Darty, who lived not far away, and the girl in the chemist’s in Castledrummond, Noeleen Fahy the station master’s daughter, Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls . There’d never been much, but what there was had always to do with Isabella - another hopeless effort to tidy her away. He had written to tell her when he was persuaded to sell the house but her spidery handwriting had never, in response, been waiting among the day’s brown envelopes on the floor of the hall.
It wasn’t again this morning. The estate agents wrote to say appointments had been made for would-be purchasers: today at half past two, at four o’clock, at five. We are delighted with this brisk response , the communication ended, and are confident of an offer soon .
After breakfast he brought to life the embers of his bonfire, throwing on to them more photographs he had found, his plaintive school reports, his father’s diaries, and magazines and packs of cards. He watched the photographs becoming wisps of black that floated off to decorate eleagnus and mahonia. He scattered over a blaze of chairs with broken backs or missing legs the postcards of Italian art his mother had collected - five shoeboxes of masterworks in black and white, each with a greeting in a different hand, all
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