An unusually exotic work from Ireland’s laureate of small-town disappointment, this story concerns the almost-romance of two tourists in the Iranian city of Isfahan. The tourist to whom Trevor’s camera predominantly cleaves is Mr Normanton. Middle-aged and greying, Normanton takes an immediate liking to the thick-lipped, “sensuous”, thirty-something Iris Smith when he first sees her in the office of a guided bus tours company. He likes her rather less when they begin to talk, for Iris is suppressing a “Cockney twang” and he is a snob.
Nevertheless, as two people alone in a foreign city (and alone in life, it is revealed), they continue to meet, and the rest of the narrative sees Normanton trying and failing to overcome his prejudices to make the connection he so desperately needs. He was never going to succeed, being a William Trevor character, but that futility is what makes the story so moving.
First published in the New Review, June 1975. Collected in Angels at the Ritz and Other Stories, The Bodley Head, 1976, and The New Review Anthology, Heinemann, 1985
A Personal Anthology 