Felicia's Journey by William Trevor Page A

sniggers. If Shay Mulroone hadn’t entered the Coffee Dock when he did none of this would be occurring now. They would have kept in touch; letters or postcards – anything at all – would have been exchanged; there might even have been a telephone number. ‘Will you write down the address for me?’ she said as soon as they were alone again, but everything was a muddle then because the bus was going in less than twenty minutes. ‘Oh God, look at the time!’ He was on his feet as he spoke and she thought he would write it out there and then, that he’d root in his pockets for a piece of paper and maybe borrow a ballpoint from the woman behind the counter, but instead he became agitated about catching the bus. He’d send her the address, he said, the first thing he did when he arrived. A moment later hewas gone and she was left with nothing of him except an empty, sick feeling, as if part of her stomach had been scooped out. She carried her glass coffee mug to a table in the window, thinking that any minute she would disgrace herself by giving way to tears. The address she didn’t have – which she had so tentatively asked for in the first place, not wanting to be pushy – had been snatched from her as a lifeline might be. She hadn’t realized that even his handwriting on some scrap of paper would have been something to treasure, apart from anything else. From the window she could see Doheny’s grocery, where the buses drew in on the other side of the Square. Ten minutes passed and then he was there, with a suitcase, his mother at his side, her arm in his. They passed beneath the statue of the gaitered soldier that stood on the Main Street side of the Square, pausing then for a moment to allow a car to go by before they completed their journey. On the pavement outside Doheny’s they were the only two waiting, and within a minute the bus arrived, slowing to a halt while a fresh nagging began: how could he send her his address since he didn’t know her own? She had never told him, not even the name of the street: on his journey he would realize that but then it would be too late. ‘Bye,’ the woman called from behind the counter when she hurried from the Coffee Dock but she was unable to answer, not even to respond by gesturing. Across the Square the bus began to move and then an elongated red setter – the ensign on its side – passed close to where she stood. For a single instant his face was there also, the dark hair, a hand raised in a farewell salute to the small, greyly dressed woman on the pavement. The back of the bus was so dusty that its red-and-white paintwork was obscured, misted into shades of brown.
‘No,’ a postman says in the town she has come to, pausing in the emptying of a post-box, shaking his head. ‘Not known to me at all.’
She asks in shops. She asks two security guards and a woman at a bus stop. ‘No, you got that wrong, dear,’ a man who is waiting there confidently assures her. ‘No way Thompson’s was took over. Thompson’s went bust two years ago.’
‘Is there anywhere here that makes lawn-mowers?’
The man says definitely not and an hour later, in a police station, her question is repeated. ‘Anywhere on lawn-mowers these days?’ a desk sergeant calls through a hatch. Someone she can’t see makes a suggestion, but someone else says that’s history, packed it in in ’89 they did. ‘I doubt we can help you,’ the desk sergeant informs her, closing the hatch again.
Already he has confirmed that Thompson Castings went bankrupt two years ago, but in spite of this and the response of his colleagues he consults a directory.
‘Nothing here,’ he reports.
A second directory is leafed through, two telephone calls made, before she is assured, with even greater confidence than before, that what she seeks does not locally exist: lawn-mowers are not manufactured in this neighbourhood. Lawn-mowers are sold; there are showrooms, which might also possibly supply spare parts;