Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
The Piano Tuner’s Wives
A Friendship
Timothy’s Birthday
Child’s Play
A Bit of Business
After Rain
Widows
Gilbert’s Mother
The Potato Dealer
Lost Ground
A Day
Marrying Damian
Three People
Of the Cloth
Good News
The Mourning
A Friend in the Trade
Low Sunday, 1950
Le Visiteur
The Virgin’s Gift
Death of a Professor
Against the Odds
The Telephone Game
The Hill Bachelors
Sitting with the Dead
Traditions
Justina’s Priest
An Evening Out
Graillis’s Legacy
Solitude
Sacred Statues
Rose Wept
Big Bucks
On the Streets
The Dancing-Master’s Music
A Bit on the Side
The Dressmaker’s Child
The Room
Men of Ireland
Cheating at Canasta
Bravado
An Afternoon
At Olivehill
A Perfect Relationship
The Children
Old Flame
Faith
Folie à Deux
By the same author
NOVELS
The Old Boys
The Boarding House
The Love Department
Mrs Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel
Miss Gomez and the Brethren
Elizabeth Alone
The Children of Dynmouth
Other People’s Worlds
Fools of Fortune
The Silence in the Garden
Felicia’s 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 Writer’s Ireland
Excursions in the Real World
FOR CHILDREN
Juliet’s Story
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
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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; Harper’s; 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.
Publisher’s Note
These selections are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s 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 Trevor’s 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’.914—dc22
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.
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The Piano Tuner’s 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 tuner’s 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.