Felicia's Journey by William Trevor Page A

endlessly asking and endlessly being told that people can’t help her, in tramping about, looking at the faces on the streets?
She hears, again, the outraged protest of her great-grandmother when she burrowed beneath the old woman’s rubber sheet, extracting the clothes-peg bag and then returning it. ‘Get off out of that!’ came the cry from the depths of sleep, muzzy and confused. By now, they’d have been told at Doheny’s that she took the Dublin bus; by now Mrs Lysaght would have passed it around that while she was out at early Mass a week ago someone climbed in through her kitchen window, leaving mud on the sill and the spotless surface ofher sink. Went to an airshow Sunday , a postcard with barges on it had said, his handwriting tidily sloping, loops and dots and crossed t’s. On the lined exercise paper of his brief letters there was never an address at the top. Father Kilgallen will summon her if she goes back now, the Reverend Mother too, both of them intent on preserving the life of the child that is her shame. ‘God damn you to hell!’ her father’s greeting awaits her.
The car lurches on its springs as the fat man re-enters it. His breath is noisy in the small space.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers, hoarse from his exertions.
When Felicia turns to look at him his pinprick eyes are staring vacantly. He makes no attempt to start the car. She watches him trying to steady the quivering in the hand that is closer to her, pressing it against the steering wheel.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asks, her attention wrenched away from her distress. ‘What’s happened?’
‘A cup of something,’ he mutters, reaching into a pocket for his car keys. ‘We’re both in need of a hot beverage.’

9
    Buddy’s the cafe is called.
An electrician is on a step-ladder, working at a fuse-box just below the ceiling. The ceiling is brown, stained with pools of a deeper brown. Behind the bar where the tea and coffee and food come from there is a row of Pirelli calendars, half-dressed models in provocative poses. An old man is smoking and reading the sports news in the Sun at a table in a corner.
‘I think a coffee,’ Mr Hilditch requests. ‘Would you mind fetching me over a coffee, dear?’
He closes his eyes and keeps them closed until she returns.
‘Is something wrong?’ he hears her ask again.
‘Ada’s not so hot,’ he whispers, with his eyes still closed. ‘They did an emergency on her, five this morning. She’s not so good.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘I’ll be all right in a minute.’ The first time he took Beth to the A361 Happy Eater he observed the woman at the till deciding that Beth was his daughter, and he laid his hand for a moment on Beth’s knee the way a father never would. He glanced in the direction of the till and the excitement began because the woman was still staring, deciding now that the relationship was different.
‘I’m sorry,’ this present girl is repeating, and Mr Hilditch opens his eyes.
‘You get a shock like this you don’t want to be alone. Both of us with a shock, Felicia.’
Her red coat, unbuttoned in the cafe, has fallen back, and for the first time he sees the other clothes she is wearing: a navy-blue skirt and a red knitted jumper. Her hair has gone lank, the rims of her eyes have recovered a bit. She still wears the little cross on achain around her neck: a Catholic girl, Mr Hilditch speculates, which stands to reason, coming from where she does.
‘You’re pregnant,’ he says softly.
‘Yes.’
They sit in silence. In many ways, he considers, there is nothing as tasty as a toasted bacon sandwich. Sometimes you find a café like this won’t do you one, but this morning they’ve struck lucky. Bacon sandwich’s , a handwritten sign advertises.
‘I think you should have something to eat, Felicia.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
A mouthful or two is a comfort in distress, he quietly explains, better for you than a coffee on its own. They sit in silence again. He finishes