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A moving story of a secret romance, 'Trespasses' is beautiful, devastating and bittersweet

An excerpt from the original short story by the award-winning novelist.

Harper's Bazaar India

"Slim pickings, Joey," said Nuala, closing the fridge door. The dog cocked his head in reply. She picked him up and he softened with pleasure at being held. In the hall, she caught a glimpse of her elbow. It was mildly horrifying to her, the sharpness of its angle against her slack skin. She pulled down her sleeves and took her coat from the rack. "We’re not getting any younger, Joey," she said.

The dank aromas of winter, rotting leaves and wet smoke, had gone. This is what they mean by fresh air, she thought. She opened the passenger door and Joey flopped into the footwell. There were signs of spring on the road to the village. A man dabbing paint on the railings in front of the cricket club. Drifts of snowdrops in the grass verges. As she reached Main Street, a car pulled out of a space right in front of the fish shop, and she flicked down the left indicator. Then she remembered the plastic containers in the fridge, the foil parcels and ramekins wrapped in cling film, and flicked it back up again. She drove through the church gates and past the sacristy to reach the small building at the rear. As she turned off the ignition, Joey sat up, but appeared to think better of it, and lay down again.

The kitchen was cold and steamy. May Gannon was gripping the handles of a large aluminium pot and smiled at the sight of her. It reminded Nuala of a photograph she had seen on the internet of ‘la Mère Brazier’, a legendary French cook who also had sausagey forearms and wore her hair in a jolly bun on the top of her head. May, too, was a legendary cook, albeit for different reasons. 

There were meals in small trays cooling on the stainless-steel table. May’s food came in Kelly Hoppen shades. Today there was celery boiled to grey-green, mash made from pre-peeled potatoes that foamed like soap through several rinses, strings of chicken suspended in condensed mushroom soup.

"Fricassée," May said proudly. It sounded like a swear word.

Nuala began sealing the trays, anxious to retain any remaining heat, the absence of which made the food inedible. Dessert was, as usual, glorious: apple sponge and custard that looked so good Nuala accepted May’s offer of a portion to take home. It was hard not to admire a cook who ruined everything but pudding.

Normally the run changed weekly to account for holidays, hospitalization and death—mostly the latter—but it was the same as last week’s. "Watch yourself with the big fella," called May as Nuala carried the food to her car. 

She began at the top of the hill. Mrs Kenny refused the meal and asked her in for tea because, Nuala suspected, she had signed up for the service in the hope of company. Nuala explained that she had better stay on the road but promised to come back for a natter one afternoon. Mr Bourke-Murphy pretended he had lost his wallet, an impressive performance he put on every week even though, or perhaps because, he lived in the biggest house in the village. Maureen Leahy was waiting on the path when Nuala pulled up, and snatched the tray from her hand without a word. Mattie Flynn gave her a bunch of daffodils that looked like spring onions and laid the food carefully in the pouch on his walking frame, in which he kept the television remote control and his medication. When she reached the road by the estuary, it was closed due to an oil spill and she had to take a different route, delaying the remaining deliveries by almost fifteen minutes. She handed them over with apologies.

The last house was a large, slightly brutalist box made of concrete and glass. The area in front of it was a mixture of hard surfaces and ornamental grasses. There was room for several cars, but there were none. Nuala rang the doorbell and took a step back. 

Elvis was forty-three. He was a rangy, squash-playing architect called Niall until six years ago, when a Dutch-registered lorry carrying cut flowers sent his Audi hurtling across the airport roundabout. He answered the door in a white satin shirt and vast pull-up incontinence shorts. Nuala had been warned to leave the food and run because Elvis had tried to hug her predecessor, but as she handed it over he began to weep, great gulping sobs that made his quiff bounce. I’m sad, he said.

Ah no, said Nuala. She went back to her car and instead of leaving, got Mrs Kenny’s rejected fricassée and the extra portion of pudding. 

His kitchen could have been in a showroom, with its sleek lines and industrial materials. The only personal touch was a triptych of professional photographs of a slim, smiling Elvis with his arms around a young woman.

"Sit down and I’ll heat it up," said Nuala. She began opening cupboards containing white porcelain dinnerware and Riedel glasses, Japanese knives and French cast iron sauté pans. The only food she came across was Cookie Crunch cereal and sharing bags of Cheetos. She found the microwave in the utility room and, while the food was rotating, placed a tea towel over Elvis’s vast, pale thighs. Joey tried to clamber into his lap, but his legs were too short to reach so Nuala helped him up.

Elvis asked for Pepsi, and she took two cans from the fridge. He drank them one after another, ate both of May’s fricassées. When she caught him eyeing her apple sponge, she let him have that, too. "I’m a greedy article," he said.

When she had cleaned up, Elvis put on ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’, the recording where Presley starts to giggle and can’t stop. He knew it by heart, laughed along in all the right places. She sat with him until the light was falling.

At the door, he said, "Thank you very much, ma’am." The King doesn’t like to eat alone.

Nuala managed not to cry until she was back in her car.

Joey heard him first, cocked a woolly ear at the shuffle of the draft excluder, the clack of his briefcase on the old tiles. He wiggled towards the kitchen door and waited. Nuala rose and stood behind him, hands clasped in front of her, waiting too.

I’m home, called Austin.

When he didn’t enter, Nuala opened the door. He was holding his phone. It buzzed, a sound that made his whole body visibly thrill. Nuala watched his thumbs slide around the small screen, pictured the little words it was making. As if trying to distract Austin from his treachery, Joey flipped over for a belly rub. He got one, offering a gruff chortle in gratitude.

Nuala’s turn next, his lips brushed her cheek. "You look nice," he said without looking at her.

In the kitchen he lifted his chin and sniffed theatrically.

"I didn’t think you were coming home," said Nuala.

"Well, I’m here now," he said. He poured himself a drink. She knew without looking it was two fingers of Black Bush, a splash of water. His phone buzzed again. "Head office," he said, and went through the back door to the garden. The security light came on. Austin was by the coal bunker, rolling the dog’s red ball back and forth with his left foot. Nuala knocked back his whiskey, quickly pouring him another. She opened the fridge and took out all the cooked food. She threw out half a salmon fillet caked in curdled hollandaise, a leathery shard of pork crackling, rancid houmous and a wedge of celeriac gratin that was curled up at the edges. There were still the makings of a meal. She put a flitch of cold roast beef and a bunch of watercress on a china platter, her mother’s bone-handled carving set crossed beside it. She tossed baby potatoes in a bowl with bacon and shallot dressing. A little pot of mustard and it looked like she cared. Nuala had a way with leftovers. She’d had a lot of practice.

Austin came back inside, and she handed him his drink. He gave his phone a half-smile and slipped it into his pocket. "Sláinte," he said, and gave Nuala the other half of the smile. 

She took her usual place, to Austin’s right, not that he had yet sat down. He was pulling bottles from the wine rack, examining each one. He came back with a Portuguese red he bought in bulk because it ‘offered exceptional value’. She wondered why he had taken so long, then saw that he was holding his mobile again. The corkscrew was one of those Alessi dollies. She seemed to spread her legs as the cork came out, though she was legless.

The first sip did not quite make it to Nuala’s mouth, and she drew her hand across her chin to catch the drip. 

"How was your day?" said Austin, spearing the meat and hacking a wedge from it.

"I did my Meals on Wheels run."

"Did you see the Elvis fella?"

"He’s not on my route anymore. A neighbour brings him his lunch."

"Just as well. Dirtbird," said Austin. He had taken a spoonful of mustard and was applying it to the meat in a circular motion, until it resembled a sore.

The oak table looked hokey after Elvis’s pale beech one. And his cupboards. Nuala’s were bunged with flours and nuts, oils and sauces. Oh, to be free of all the detritus of her life! She had a sudden impulse to wreck the place, but drained her glass instead. A fizzy feeling was creeping over her skin, her scalp at first very hot and then very wet. She refilled her glass. She was ravenous but could not bear to put even a morsel in her mouth. Platters of humiliation, dishes cobbled from the food he had not come home for all week.

"You’re not eating," said Austin.

"I had lunch out."

"Who with?"

"No one you know."

He gave a gentle shake of the head, clearly amused at the idea that Nuala could have a secret friend. "That beef," he said, leaning against the back of his chair. Still hungry though.

He went upstairs to change out of his suit, taking the phone with him. She found some pieces of cheese in the compartment in the door of the fridge and trimmed it to make it look appealing. Some time later, he reappeared in one of the silly outfits he started wearing at Christmas. A t-shirt under a waistcoat, a stripy cotton scarf tied at his neck. He looked no less ridiculous than Elvis, who at least had an excuse.

He poured wine in her glass, glancing at her and doing a double take.

"Maybe you should take it easy," he said, bending to his phone again. His face in the digital light was as blue as hers was red. She took a sip and imagined herself legless, like the Alessi dolly.

Earlier, as she said goodbye to Elvis, he had opened his hands and said, Hug?

She let him wrap his massive arms around her and hold her to his big warm heart. That’s what had made her cry, not the thought of him eating alone.

Austin looked up slyly. "Don’t cook anything for me tomorrow evening," he said. A client is coming from Finland.

There were no more leftovers. Tomorrow evening, she would pick up a bag of cheeseburgers in the takeaway and call in on Elvis.

‘Trespasses’ by Louise Kennedy (Bloomsbury Publishing) is out now. 
 

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