Must be a William Trevor sort of a day! – perhaps it’s the effect of the rain and the mood of remembrance day but this is a story which creeps up on the reader, suggestive of complex, unresolved sadness,which Trevor presents but does not dissect. Such reticence remains the responsibility of the characters rather than any intrusive narrator, burdening their creations with the contamination of their voice.
In this story Trevor presents a couple’s anticipation of their only child’s birthday through quiet details which both suggestive of ritual and yet unnexpressed avoidance too. The story then briefly switches narrative focus to the son and we gather up enough details to know that he is gay, has inherited his flat from a dead older lover and now seems enmeshed with a younger man who is neither kind nor in love with him at all. Ironically it is the younger man, the ‘rough trade’ who has to call upon the couple and stand in for the birthday boy. The mother suddenly realises their son’s excuses made by their visitor are hollow and the story ends with the couple carrying on, depleted by this recognition but still capable and expectant of a tomorrow.
‘They didn’t mention their son as they made their rounds of the garden that was now too much for them and was derelict in places.They didn’t mention the jealousy their love of each other had bred in him, that had flourished into deviousness and cruelty. The pain the day had brought would not easily pass, both were aware of that. And yet it had to be, since it was part of what there was.’
William Trevor knows his characters here through and then through again. A lesser writer would have missed their survival, would have relegated them to dismal sorrow. Here Trevor simply brings into our vision their ‘derelict’ garden and then turns the relationships in his hand and reveals the impact that a loving marriage might have in terms of perhaps excluding or seeming to exclude a disaffected son with a grudge about his sexuality and its reception at home. The couple cannot painlessly integrate what they now must know, yet neither will it kill them. Acceptance is both brave yet also their only choice. Humans can survive most things says Trevor. Quite simply because they have to and therefore because they have to, they do.