Holy Orders A Quirke Novel

by Benjamin Black

  “I knew I’d like you,” Sally said now, in a slightly tentative way, as if she had guessed what Phoebe had been thinking. “James and I always liked the same people.”

  “Did you miss him, when you went to England?” Phoebe asked.

  Sally pondered the question. “At the start I was so miserable I couldn’t sort out who or what I missed the most. But yes, I could have done with him being around, to talk to. He always listened to me, to things I was enthusiastic about or that were worrying me, and he never preached, even though he was the older one.” She frowned, and Phoebe wondered if there were tears in her eyes or if it was just the effect of the gaslight. “Have you got any brothers or sisters?” Sally asked. Her voice did not seem teary.

  “No,” Phoebe said. “I’m an only child.” It sounded strange, put like that. Why did she speak of herself as a child? But how else was she to put it? She could not have said she was an “only person” or an “only woman.” There could only be only children, it seemed. For a long time after she had found out who her real parents were—Quirke and his dead wife—she had thought of herself as an orphan; she had felt like an orphan. That had been the loneliest time of her life, but that time had passed. And now? Was she less lonely now, or more so, in a different way?

  Sally gave a little laugh. “It’s funny,” she said. “I always wanted to be an only child. I used to think it would be romantic, that I’d be like—oh, I don’t know—Jane Eyre or someone.” She paused. “You always think everyone else is having a wonderful life, don’t you. That’s one of the reasons, maybe the reason, I found out where you worked and followed you for days around the city. From the way James talked about you, you seemed the most amazing person, leading the most amazing life.”

  Phoebe laughed. “And now you’ve discovered the sad and disappointing truth, is that it?”

  But Sally’s attention had strayed, and she did not reply. Instead she asked, “Have you got a boyfriend?”

  “Yes,” Phoebe said. “His name is David, David Sinclair. He works with my father.” She heard how her voice had become solemn, as if the subject of David Sinclair warranted a certain gravity. Why was that? So many things about David puzzled her, the first one being her feelings for him.

  “Is he a doctor too?” Sally asked.

  “A pathologist, yes. You must”—now she sounded to herself like a debutante or something, all breathy and bright—“you must meet him.”

  Once again Sally’s thoughts had wandered. “I keep seeing it in my mind,” she said. “Somebody hitting him and kicking him.” She turned to Phoebe with eyes that were suddenly fevered. “Why would they do such a thing? Who would want to harm poor James?” She looked at the fire again, the hissing flames. “He never hurt anyone in his life.”

  They were silent for a time. The rain had stopped, and outside too all was silent, as if the entire city were deserted. Phoebe thought of Jimmy, his little pinched, pale face, his nicotine-stained fingers, his way of pushing his hat to the back of his head like the newsmen did in the films that they had often gone to together. “You didn’t come back in time for the funeral,” she said.

  Sally gave a sad shrug. “I couldn’t face—I couldn’t face them. Mam and Dad are all right, but my brother … He’s so full of anger and outrage. I think he thinks the world was set up specially to annoy him.”

  Phoebe hesitated. “What is it that—I mean, how did you come to be so distant from them, from your family?”

  Sally put her mug on the floor beside herself and drew up her legs and put her arms around them and rested her chin on her knees. The gaslight gave her face a bluish cast. “Oh, they never forgave me for going to England. I think they thought I must be pregnant. They couldn’t understand anyone wanting to leave, to get away. I don’t really blame them—they can’t see beyond the little world they grew up in.”

  “Wouldn’t you—wouldn’t you think of contacting them, now, of telling them you’re here, that you’ve come home?”

  “But I haven’t ‘come home’!” Sally said. “If they knew I was here they’d assume I was staying. But I’ll be going back. My life is there now.”

  “But if you could make peace with them? Your parents must be brokenhearted, having lost Jimmy. Surely they’d be glad to hear from you?”

  “I considered trying to get in touch with Daddy—he was always the one I got on best with—but I knew he’d tell my brother.”

  “You sound almost as if you’re afraid of him, of your brother.”

  “Do I? I don’t know—maybe I am. I never understood him. James was so different from him. James liked to talk tough, but underneath he was soft—I’m sure you saw that.” She turned to look at Phoebe. “Was there ever—was there ever anything between you and him? Do you mind me asking?”

  “No, no, I don’t mind. And no—Jimmy and I were friends, never more than that.” It made her uneasy, speaking about Jimmy like this. Although she had nothing to hide, still she seemed to detect in her own voice a strident note, as if there were something for her to feel guilty about and deny. But there was nothing, except, she supposed, that she had not given enough attention to Jimmy, that she had taken him for granted. But surely that was how everyone felt when someone died unexpectedly and in tragic circumstances, that there were things they should have done, words that should have been spoken, gestures that should have been made. It struck her that by dying Jimmy had turned himself into a larger presence in her life than he had been when he was alive.

  Sally thrust her fingers into her hair and yawned.

  “You’re tired, I can see,” Phoebe said. “We can talk again tomorrow—I’ll phone the shop and go in late.”

  “Will you contact your father? I’d like to see him, to talk to him.”

  “Yes, I will. He lives nearby, you know. We can try to catch him before he leaves for the hospital.”

  They took turns in the bathroom, then said good night, and Phoebe went into her bedroom. As she was shutting the door she glanced back into the living room and saw Sally standing in the light from the fire, pulling her sweater over her head. Her hair shone like coils of dark copper.

  * * *

  Phoebe knew she would not be able to sleep. She changed into her dressing gown and sat on the bed with a pillow behind her back and tried to read—a novel, Black Narcissus—but she could not concentrate. Her mind was in a spin. The thought nagged at her that she had somehow let Jimmy down, although she could not think what things there might have been that she had not done for him. Anyway, that was not the point. The fault was not in actions taken or not taken, but in—what? If he had loved her, should she not have recognized it? Perhaps that was what her failure had been, a failure of attention, of—what was the word?—of empathy. The notion troubled her, but she had to acknowledge that she resented it, too. She had never done anything to make Jimmy love her—she had not encouraged him, had not “led him on,” as Sister Aloysius used to say, screwing up her mouth in fierce disapproval so that the little brown hairs on her upper lip bristled like tiny antennae.

  She put her book aside and switched off the lamp and lay on her back gazing up into the inky shadows. It seemed to her that through Jimmy and his terrible end she had incurred a debt without knowing it, a debt for which she could not feel she was responsible, and did not know how to discharge. Would it be with her all her life, would her dead friend accompany her always, an insistent ghost, dogging her steps in a soulful, accusing silence?

  A sound came to her, sharp and piercing as a needle. What was it? She lifted herself on an elbow, straining to hear. A cat, down in the garden? Or was there a wireless on, somewhere in the house? No. Someone was crying. She got up quickly and without turning on the light tiptoed to the bedroom door and opened it a little way, not making a sound, and put her ear to the crack and listened.

  It was Sally who was crying.

  Phoebe closed the door and stood in the dimness, listening to her heart beating. What was she to do? The girl out there was a stranger,
met for the first time today. She was crying for the death of her brother. That was her right, and it was not for anyone to interfere with her sorrow. She started back towards the bed, but stopped, and again stood listening. Sally must have her face pressed into the pillow, Phoebe thought, but the sounds she made were high-pitched and thin, and would not be stifled. What was it about the sound of someone weeping, Phoebe wondered, that caused that urgent, pulsing sensation in the chest? Did men feel it, too, or was it a reflex confined to women, something left over from the fire-lit caves of prehistoric times? It was not to be resisted. She turned back, and went through, into the living room.

  The darkness was heavier here than in the bedroom—she had closed the heavy curtains earlier, and only the glow from the streetlight outside penetrated them. She moved to the sofa. Sally had gone silent, like an animal surprised in its lair. When Phoebe put out her hand she misjudged the distance, and her fingers touched the girl’s hair, and it was as if she had touched a gathered bundle of fine electric wires. “Sally,” she whispered, “are you all right?”

  Sally’s dim form on the sofa stirred, and she lifted her face from the pillow and turned onto her side. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice blurry. “Did I wake you?”

  “No, no. I was awake. I wasn’t sure if I— Maybe I should have—”

  “It’s all right,” Sally said, and sat up. “You’re kind, to worry about me.”

  “Can I get you something—?”

  Sally had lifted her knees under the sheet and now she pressed her forehead to them. “We were twins, you know,” she said.

  For a second Phoebe, leaning in the darkness, did not understand. “What? You mean—?”

  “Twins. James and I.”

  “But you said he was older.”

  Sally gave a mournful little laugh. “So he was—by two minutes.”

  Now Phoebe knelt beside the sofa. “Why didn’t you say, before?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It was something I always felt strange about—so did James. We thought we were—freaks, in a way. Silly, I know.” She laughed and then snuffled. “I wonder if you have a hankie? I don’t know where my handbag is.”

  “Shall I put on the light—?”

  “No!” Sally cried. “I’m sure I look a mess. My nose turns into a Belisha beacon when I cry. That’s the trouble with being a redhead—one of the troubles.”

  “There’s no need to be embarrassed. You’ve been through an awful experience.”

  Phoebe hurried into the bedroom and found a clean and folded linen handkerchief in one of the drawers in the tallboy and brought it back and gave it to Sally.

  “I promised myself I wouldn’t blubber,” Sally said ruefully. “And now look at me, waking up the house!”

  “Let me switch on a lamp—we can’t keep whispering in the dark like this.”

  “No, don’t please. I’m tired, I want to sleep. Can I keep the hankie?”

  “Of course.”

  With a last, loud snuffle Sally lay back and sank her head onto the pillow, sighing. Phoebe hovered over her, feeling there was something more she should do, something more she should say. But what? She never knew the right thing to do at moments of crisis and emotional turmoil, and words seemed always to fail her. It was, she suspected, another of the ways in which she resembled her father. They were both cripples of a kind. Or no, that was not true, not of her, anyway. In her heart she could sympathize, and when something affected her she could put herself in another’s place. It was just that she could not find the means to express this fellow feeling, and that failure made her mute.

  Sally’s breathing was calm now, and she was either asleep or pretending to be. Phoebe turned away and crossed the room to the bedroom door and went through. She could still feel in the pads of her fingers the tingling afterglow of that shock she had experienced when she had touched Sally’s hair in the dark. It was going to be a long and sleepless night.

  14

  Quirke woke in a panic. His blood was pounding in his ears and he felt he was suffocating. He lay on his back, panting and drenched with sweat, pressing his fists down hard on his heaving chest, like those new defibrillator paddles that were being used nowadays to deliver electric shocks to people suffering a heart attack. This was not the usual morning onslaught of dread and dismay; this was something altogether different. It was as if a huge, malign creature had got hold of him and wrapped its immense arms around his ribs, squeezing the breath of life itself out of him.

  He told himself to be calm, but the voice in his head that was telling him so seemed to belong not to him but to some disinterested other, someone who had been passing by and, seeing him in distress, had stopped to tend him, more out of curiosity than concern. He struggled to sit up. The sheet was a constricting tangle and he churned his legs, a fallen cyclist. He was in his undershirt and shorts. He felt at once ridiculous and horribly frightened. Rain was fingering the window and yet the sun was shining. Absurd season, he thought, and was immediately consoled a little: if he could complain to himself about so banal a thing as the weather then surely he was not dying.

  At last he freed himself from the bedclothes and stood up, then quickly sat down again, his head spinning. He shut his eyes but that made the dizziness worse. His hands were clutching the edge of the mattress. Everything seemed about to tip over, as if he were sitting on the deck of a foundering ship. Then, gradually, his brain righted itself and he stood up again, more cautiously this time. He went to the wardrobe and searched in the pockets of his jacket hanging there and found his cigarette case. He had always liked the smell of mothballs. What was it they were made of? Camphor. Was that the word? He mumbled it aloud: “Camphor.” It did not sound right; it sounded like a nonsense word.

  He went back and sat on the side of the bed again and lit a cigarette. The smoke smelled like singed hair.

  Isabel—where was Isabel? She had been here in the night and now she was gone. Then he remembered that she had left in the early hours, had called a taxi and gone home. It was tacitly understood between them that on these occasions she would not stay the night; Quirke liked his mornings to himself.

  He went out to the living room. A parallelogram of insipid sunlight lay on the floor under the window like the parts of a broken kite. He stood and looked about himself, feeling dazed. The morning’s watercolor tints lent a novel sheen to familiar surfaces. Everything was as it always was, yet somehow he could recognize nothing. It was as if all that was formerly here had been swept away in the night and replaced with a shiny new version of itself, identical in every aspect, yet one-dimensional and hollow, like props in a fantastically detailed stage setting.

  He walked into the kitchen and saw Isabel sitting at the table in a haze of cigarette smoke, wearing a dark blue dress and high heels, drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette. The silky stuff of her dress had a metallic glitter that hurt his eyes; he shut them for a second, and when he opened them again no one was there. I’m seeing things, he thought. The commonplace phrase, trite and harmless, had never before struck such fear into his heart.

  He took extra care shaving that morning. His hand was steady enough, but that was more than could be said for his thoughts. A small fuzzy something lay at the center of his consciousness, an unfocused point that seemed to be throbbing in time with his pulse. Everything around him had a discolored look, the bathroom shelves, the shaving mirror, the porcelain sink—the very air in the room, as if a heavy gas had seeped out of the walls and spread itself everywhere. He knew from experience how certain dreams, weighty and disordered, could infect the waking world for hours, sometimes for days. But had he been dreaming? On the way from the bathroom he stopped in the kitchen doorway again and looked at the table where half an hour ago he could have sworn he had seen Isabel sitting, smiling at him. Everything about the scene had seemed solid, and real, even the incongruously formal outfit the phantom woman had been wearing.

  What could they mean, these convincingly vivid hallucinations,
first the old man at Trinity Manor and now Isabel—what did they signify?

  He left the house and walked to the corner of Merrion Square. Sunlight glared on the wet pavements, though in the great trees the shadows of dawn still lingered. He hailed a taxi, and sat in the back seat, eyes fixed unseeing on the streets passing by. He felt as if he were made of an impossibly fine and breakable form of crystal.

  Inspector Hackett, it seemed, had not been as careful as Quirke with the morning razor, and had cut himself. A piece of lavatory paper with a stain of dark blood at its center was stuck to the side of his chin. He took his boots off his cluttered desk and stood up as Quirke was shown in. “There you are, Doctor!” he said brightly. “Isn’t it a grand morning? Do you like the spring, the birdies singing, all that?”

  Quirke did not bother to reply. The Inspector pointed him to the only chair in the room other than his own, a spindly hoop-backed affair that had seen better days. He sat down. Hackett had his jacket off and was in his shirtsleeves, his braces on display. Quirke eyed that tie of his. It was broad and greasy, and had once been red but was now so old and ingrained with dirt that in patches it had settled into a shade somewhere between dark blue and shiny black. The knot had a soldered look to it, and obviously had not been untied in months—in years, perhaps—only yanked loose at the end of each day so that the tie could be lifted over Hackett’s head and hung on the knob of the wardrobe door or on a post at the end of the bed. Hackett’s domestic arrangements were the subject of occasional idle speculation on Quirke’s part. There was, for instance, the question of Mrs. Hackett. She was rarely on public display; in fact Quirke had never yet managed to get even a glimpse of her, so that she had taken on for him the trappings of a mythological figure, hazy and remote. All he knew about her for certain was that her name was May.