Mrs Sinnott had wakened at midnight and lain for a while, thinking her familiar thoughts. She had sensed the splattering of rain in Thaddeus Street, which made her feel cosy in her bed, and she remembered a night when she had been awakened by lightening, when the children were small. Eugene had been frightened and Enid had consoled him. She herself had gone to the kitchen to heat some milk. Remembering that, she dropped off to sleep again.

Hours later she woke with the face of Mrs Eckdorf in her mind. There was a wretchedness in that painted face she thought; there was something the matter with the woman.

She had seen her in Thaddeus Street, a white figure walking towards the hotel. O’Shea had written a message to say that a person from Germany had come to stay. O’Shea had brought her into her room. And later she had sat with her. And then she had taken all those photographs at the birthday tea.

Why had the woman come like that? What was the matter with her? The two questions chased one another in Mrs Sinnott’s mind. For a time it seemed that the face of Mrs Eckdorf was weeping, and then that she was screaming out in anguish. These soundless visions frightened Mrs Sinnott. She fell asleep and dreamed that Mrs Eckdorf was pleading with her desperately, unable to understand that she could not hear her. In her dream she made the necessary allowance, knowing that a stranger could not be expected to understand that she was deaf. She saw Mrs Eckdorf in Thaddeus Street and tried to reach her by climbing from the window. She hurt herself. She felt a pain throbbing in her body. Her father shook his head at her. In the yard he gestured at the hornbeam tree, mouthing out words at her, ordering her not to climb it. She ran into the kitchen and sat on a chair, watching her mother and looking up when Leo Sinnott came into the kitchen. She tried to go to him, but the pain in her body held her back. It increased when she moved her legs. She had broken all her ribs, she thought, when she fell from the hornbeam tree; everyone would be cross with her. Mrs Eckdorf came into the kitchen and danced with Leo Sinnott. They waltzed round and round, while her mother and father clapped their hands together and O’Shea stood by the door taking photographs. She had fallen down, trying to cross the kitchen: she pushed her body along the flagstones but found the effort painful. Nobody noticed her as she lay there. Eugene came into the kitchen, and Philomena, and Enid and Timothy John and Desmond Gregan. Agnes Quin looked down at her but did not notice that she was lying in pain. Morrissey sat beside her and wrote prophecies in an exercise-book. She went on making the effort, but the effort tired her and the pain increased. She was dying on the floor, she thought; she was dying while all of them were around her and none of them noticed. And then Mrs Eckdorf’s face came to her again, with red marks all over it as if it had been struck, with tears streaming on the cheeks. The lips were drawn back, the mouth was rigidly open, as though a furious grief poured out from it. She tried to speak to Mrs Eckdorf. She tried to explain that she was too tired to move her body, that the pain was numbing her as she died on the floor. The face was full of misery and confusion. She tried to make a gesture but she was too exhausted to raise her arm. She tried to apologize with her eyes but she failed in that too. The face was the face of an orphan who had come to her. The face went on suffering before her, until someone came and gently closed her eyes.

William Trevor, Mrs Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel