William Trevor - Selected Stories

Table of Contents

By the same author

NOVELS

The Old Boys
The Boarding House
The Love Department
Mrs Eckdorf in ONeills Hotel
Miss Gomez and the Brethren
Elizabeth Alone
The Children of Dynmouth
Other Peoples Worlds
Fools of Fortune
The Silence in the Garden
Felicias Journey
Death in Summer
The Story of Lucy Gault
Love and Summer

NOVELLAS
Nights at the Alexandra
Two Lives

SHORT STORIES
The Day We Got Drunk on Cake
The Ballroom of Romance
Angels at the Ritz
Lovers of Their time
Beyond the Pale
The News from Ireland
Family Sins
The Collected Stories
After Rain
The Hill Bachelors
A Bit on the Side
Cheating at Canasta

PLAY
Scenes from an Album

NON-FICTION
A Writers Ireland
Excursions in the Real World

FOR CHILDREN
Juliets Story

VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
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Copyright William Trevor, 2009 All rights reserved

The stories in this collection appeared in the following books by William Trevor, all published by Viking Penguin:
After Rain, copyright William Trevor, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996
The Hill Bachelors, copyright William Trevor, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000
A Bit on the Side, copyright William Trevor, 1991, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004
Cheating at Canasta, copyright William Trevor, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007

They were first published in the following publications: Antaeus; Glimmer Train; Harpers; The Hudson Review; London Magazine; New Statesman; The New Yorker; The Oldie; The Sewanee Review; The Spectator; The Sunday Times (London); and The Tatler . Le Visiteur (as The Summer Visitor), Death of a Professor, and The Telephone Game were published in Great Britain in individual volumes by Travelman Publishing, Colophon Press, and Waterstone, respectively.

Publishers Note

These selections are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Trevor, William
[Selected stories. Selections]
Collected stories / William Trevor.
v. cm.

A new definitive collection of Trevors short stories in two volumes, including earlier stories from his Collected Stories (Viking, 1992).

eISBN : 978-1-101-47652-9

I. Title.
PR6070.R4A6 2010
823.914dc22
2010019583

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

The Piano Tuners Wives

Violet married the piano tuner when he was a young man. Belle married him when he was old.

There was a little more to it than that, because in choosing Violet to be his wife the piano tuner had rejected Belle, which was something everyone remembered when the second wedding was announced. Well, she got the ruins of him anyway, a farmer of the neighbourhood remarked, speaking without vindictiveness, stating a fact as he saw it. Others saw it similarly, though most of them would have put the matter differently.

The piano tuners hair was white and one of his knees became more arthritic with each damp winter that passed. He had once been svelte but was no longer so, and he was blinder than on the day he married Violet - a Thursday in 1951, June 7th. The shadows he lived among now had less shape and less density than those of 1951.

I will, he responded in the small Protestant church of St Colman, standing almost exactly as he had stood on that other afternoon. And Belle, in her fifty-ninth year, repeated the words her one-time rival had spoken before this altar also. A decent interval had elapsed; no one in the church considered that the memory of Violet had not been honoured, that her passing had not been distressfully mourned.... and with all my worldly goods I thee endow, the piano tuner stated, while his new wife thought she would like to be standing beside him in white instead of suitable wine-red. She had not attended the first wedding, although she had been invited. Shed kept herself occupied that day, whitewashing the chicken shed, but even so shed wept. And tears or not, she was more beautiful and younger by almost five years than the bride who so vividly occupied her thoughts as she battled with her jealousy. Yet he had preferred Violet or the prospect of the house that would one day become hers, Belle told herself bitterly in the chicken shed, and the little bit of money there was, an easement in a blind mans existence. How understandable, she was reminded later on, whenever she saw Violet guiding him as they walked, whenever she thought of Violet making everything work for him, giving him a life. Well, so could she have.

As they left the church the music was by Bach, the organ played by someone else today, for usually it was his task. Groups formed in the small graveyard that was scattered around the small grey building, where the piano tuners father and mother were buried, with ancestors on his fathers side from previous generations. There would be tea and a few drinks for any of the wedding guests who cared to make the journey to the house, two miles away, but some said goodbye now, wishing the pair happiness. The piano tuner shook hands that were familiar to him, seeing in his mental eye faces that his first wife had described for him. It was the depth of summer, as in 1951, the sun warm on his forehead and his cheeks, and on his body through the heavy wedding clothes. All his life he had known this graveyard, had first felt the letters on the stones as a child, spelling out to his mother the names of his fathers family. He and Violet had not had children themselves, though theyd have liked them. He was her child, it had been said, a statement that was an irritation for Belle whenever she heard it. She would have given him children, of that she felt certain.