The Silver Swan

by Benjamin Black

  While Rose was unpacking they waited uneasily together, man and daughter, in the tea lounge on the ground floor. Phoebe sat on a sofa, curled into herself, smoking her Passing Clouds and watching the rain that whispered against the panes of the three big windows giving onto the street. The massed trees opposite lent a faint greenish luminence to the room. Quirke sat fingering his mechanical pencil, trying to think of something to say and failing. Presently Rose came down. She had changed into a red skirt and a red bolero jacket-"I thought I'd add a little color to this grim occasion"-and Quirke noted how these bright things, despite her perfect makeup and gleaming black hair, only showed more starkly how she had aged in the couple of years since he had seen her last. Yet she was still a handsome woman, in her burnished, metallic fashion. She had asked him to stay with her in Boston after her husband died, him and Phoebe both. He smiled to himself, thinking how that would have been, the three of them there in Moss Manor, Josh's big old mausoleum, lapped about by dollars, Mrs. Rose Crawford and her new husband, the pampered Mr. Rose Crawford, and his at last acknowledged and ever unforgiving daughter. Now Rose said to him:

  "I thought you'd be in the bar."

  "Quirke has given up bars," Phoebe said, in a tone at once haughty and spiteful.

  Rose lifted an eyebrow at him. "What-you don't drink anymore?"

  Quirke shrugged and Phoebe answered for him again. "He takes a glass of wine with me once a week. I'm his alibi."

  "So you're not an alcoholic, then."

  "Did you think I was?"

  "Well, I did wonder. You could certainly put away the whiskey."

  "We say here 'he was a great man for the bottle,'" Phoebe said. Throughout this exchange she had not once looked at Quirke directly.

  "Yes," Rose murmured. She held Quirke's gaze and her black eyes gleamed with mirthful mischief. "Just like a baby."

  The waitress came and they ordered tea. Quirke asked Rose if her room was satisfactory and to her liking and Rose said it was fine, "very quaint and shabby and old-world, as you would expect." Quirke brought out his cigarette case. Rose took a cigarette, and he held the lighter for her and she leaned forward, touching her fingertips to the back of his hand. When she lifted the cigarette from her lips it was stained with lipstick. He thought how often this little scene had been repeated: the leaning forward, the quick, wry, upwards glance, the touch of her fingers on his skin, the white paper suddenly, vividly stained. She had asked him to love her, to stay with her. Sarah was still alive then, Sarah who-

  "For God's sake stop fiddling with that!" Phoebe said sharply, startling him. He looked dumbly at the mechanical pencil in his hand; he had forgotten he was holding it. "Here," she said, for a moment all matronly impatience, "give it to me," and snatched it from him and dropped it into her handbag.

  A brief, tight silence followed. Rose broke it with a sigh. "So many deaths," she said. "First Josh, then Sarah, now poor Garret." She was watching Quirke. "You sort of feel the Reaper out there with his scythe, don't you"-she made a circling motion with a crimson-nailed finger-"getting closer all the time." Phoebe was looking to the windows again. Rose turned to her. "But, my dear, this is far too gloomy for you, I can see." She laid a hand on the young woman's wrist. "Tell me what you've been doing. I hear you're working-in a store, is it?"

  "A hat shop," Quirke said, and shifted heavily on his chair.

  Rose laughed. "What's wrong with that? I worked in stores-or shops, if you like-when I was young. My daddy kept a grocery store, until it went bust, just like so many others. That was in the hard times."

  "And look at you now," Quirke said.

  She waited a moment, and then: "Yes," she answered softly, "look at me now."

  He shifted his gaze. Rose was always most unsettling when she was at her softest.

  Phoebe murmured something and stood up and walked away from them across the room and out. Rose looked after her thoughtfully and then turned to Quirke again. "Does she have to be so deeply in mourning? It seems a little much."

  "You mean the black? That's how she always dresses."

  "Why do you let her?"

  "No one lets Phoebe do anything. She's a woman now."

  "No she's not." She crushed her cigarette in the glass ashtray on the table. "You still don't know a thing about people, do you, Quirke, women especially." She took a sip of her tea and grimaced: it had gone cold. She put the cup back in its saucer. "There's something about her, though," she said, "something different. Has she got a beau?"

  "As you say, I don't know anything."

  "You should make it your business to know," she said sharply. "You owe it to her, God knows."

  "What do I owe?"

  "Interest. Care." She smiled almost pityingly. "Love."

  Phoebe came back. Quirke watched her as she approached from across the room. Yes, Rose was right, he had to acknowledge it; there was something different about his daughter. She was paler than ever, ice pale, and yet seemed somehow on fire, inwardly. She sat down and reached for her cigarettes. Perhaps it was not him she was angry at. Perhaps she was not angry at all. Perhaps it was only that Rose's arrival had stirred memories in her of things she would rather have forgotten.

  Mal appeared. He hesitated in the archway that led in from the lobby and scanned the room with the tentativeness that was his way now, his spectacles owlishly flashing. He saw them and came forward, picking his way among the tables as if he could not see properly. He wore one of his gray suits with a gray pullover underneath, and a dark-blue bow tie. His hair, brushed stiffly back, stuck out in sharp points at the back of his high, narrow head, and on each cheekbone there was a livid patch of broken veins. Every time Quirke saw Mal nowadays his brother-in-law seemed a little more dry and dusty, as if an essential fluid was leaking out of him, steadily, invisibly. He leaned down and awkwardly shook Rose's hand. One could weep, Quirke thought, for that pullover.

  They left the lounge and crossed, the four of them, into the dining room, and took their places at the table Quirke had reserved. When the flurry of napkins and menus had subsided a heavy silence settled. Only Rose seemed at ease, glancing between the other three and smiling, like a person in a gallery admiring the likenesses between a set of family portraits. Quirke saw how Mal's face, when he looked at Phoebe, who for so long the world had thought his daughter, took on a blurred, pained expression. Phoebe, for her part, kept her eyes downcast. Quirke looked at her thin, white clawlike hands clutching the menu. How unhappy she seemed, unhappy and yet-what was it? Avid? Excited?

  "Well," Rose said mock-brightly, narrowing her eyes, "isn't this lovely."

  ON A COOL GRAY SUMMER MORNING JUDGE GARRET GRIFFIN WAS LAID TO rest beside his wife in the family plot in Glasnevin. There was an army guard of honor, and the many relatives were joined by scores of the public for Judge Griffin, as he was known to all, had been a popular figure in the city. Eulogies were delivered by politicians and prelates. As the first handfuls of clay fell on the coffin a fine rain began to fall. No one, however, wept. The Judge's life had been, the Archbishop said in his homily at the funeral Mass in the overflowing cemetery chapel, a life to be celebrated, a full and fulfilled life, a life of service to the nation, devotion to the family, commitment to the Faith. Afterwards the mourners mingled among the graves, the women talking together in low voices while the men smoked, shielding their cigarettes surreptitiously in cupped fists. Then the black cars began to roll away, their wheels crunching on the gravel.

  Inspector Hackett was among the attendants, standing well back at the edge of the crowd in his blue suit and black coat. He had caught Quirke's eye and tipped a finger to his hat brim in a covert salute. Later they walked together along a pathway among the headstones. The rain had stopped but the trees were dripping still. On a child's grave there were plaster roses under a glass dome mottled with lichen on its inner sides.

  "End of an era," the detective said, and glanced sideways at Quirke. "We won't see his likes again."

  "No," Quirke said
flatly. "We won't."

  The Archbishop's Bentley glided through the gate, the Archbishop sitting erect in the back seat like a religious effigy being borne on display in its glass case. The inspector brought out a packet of Players and offered it open to Quirke. They stopped to light up. Then they walked on again.

  "I had a word with that fellow," the inspector said.

  "Which fellow is that?"

  "Your friend Mr. Hunt. The one whose wife died-remember?"

  Now the hearse followed where the Archbishop's car had gone; the long, bare space in the back, where the coffin had been, was lugubrious in its emptiness.

  "Yes," Quirke said. "I remember. And?"

  "Ah, God help the poor fellow, he's in an awful state."

  "I imagine he is."

  The policeman glanced at him again. "I sometimes suspect, Mr. Quirke," he said, "that you have a hard heart."

  To this Quirke made no response. Instead he asked: "What did Billy Hunt say?"

  "About what?"

  They came in sight of Rose Crawford and Phoebe, walking ahead of them along the cinder path, Rose linking the younger woman's arm in her own.

  "About his wife's death," Quirke said patiently.

  "Oh, not much. Doesn't know why she did it, if she did it."

  "If?"

  "Ah, now, Mr. Quirke, don't play the innocent. You have your doubts as much as I have in this case."

  They had gone half a dozen paces before Quirke spoke again. "Do you think Billy Hunt is not innocent either?"

  The inspector chuckled. "In my experience, no one is completely innocent. But then, you'd expect me to say that, wouldn't you?"

  They caught up now with Rose and Phoebe. When Phoebe saw it was Quirke behind her she murmured something and disengaged her arm from Rose's and walked off briskly along the path. Rose looked after her and shook her head. "So abrupt, the young," she said. Quirke introduced her to the policeman. "How do you do, Officer?" she said, offering a slender, black-gloved hand to Hackett, who smiled shyly, the corners of his fish mouth stretching up almost to his earlobes. "So glad to meet a friend of Mr. Quirke's. You're one of a select and tiny band, so far as we can see."

  Quirke was gazing after Phoebe, who had met up with Mal and stood with him now under the arched gateway that led to Glasnevin Road. They looked more like father and daughter, Quirke knew, than Quirke and she would ever look.

  "And you must have known the Judge, too, of course," Rose was saying to the policeman. His grin grew wider still. "Oh, I did, ma'am," he said, putting on his Midlands drawl to match her southern twang. "A grand person he was, too, and a great upholder of justice and the law. Isn't that so, Mr. Quirke?"

  Quirke looked at him. Did he imagine it, or did the policeman's left eyelid momentarily flicker?

  2

  SHE MET THE SILVER-HAIRED MAN ONE WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON WHEN she arrived at the house in Adelaide Road and he was there, sitting on the sofa in Dr. Kreutz's room and looking as if he owned the place. She had thought the Doctor was alone because the copper bowl, his signal to her, was not on the windowsill, but it was only that he had forgotten to put it there, which just showed how agitated he must have been. When he opened the door to her he gave her such a strange, wild look, the meaning of which she could not understand until she went in ahead of him and there was the man sitting sprawled on the sofa in his camel-hair coat. He had one arm draped on the back of the sofa, and his feet with his ankles crossed were on the low table. He was smoking a cigarette, holding it in an affected way, between the second and third fingers of his left hand. He gave her a lazy smile and looked her up and down and said, "Well well, who have we here?" It was the camel-hair coat again, the wings of it flung wide open on either side of him, that made him seem to be displaying himself to her in a way that was almost, she thought, indecent. Dr. Kreutz stood to one side, glancing from one of them to the other with a bemused, helpless expression. She felt awkward, and did not know where to look. The man took his feet from the table and stood up languidly and offered her a slender, almost colorless hand.

  "The name is White," he said. "Leslie White."

  She took his hand, which was soft as a girl's and coolly damp, but forgot to say her name, so mesmerized was she by that crooked smile, that lock of hair flopping on his forehead-it was platinum, really, more than silver-and those eyes in which were mixed amusement, curiosity, brazenness, but which also had a rueful, mock-apologetic gleam, as if he were saying to her, Yes, I know, I'm a rogue, but I'm such fun, too, you'll see. Dr. Kreutz roused himself then and introduced her, as "Mrs. Hunt," but she, lifting her chin, looked straight into Leslie White's face and said: "Deirdre." She was surprised how steady her voice sounded.

  Dr. Kreutz mentioned tea, but it was plain to see his heart was not in the offer. She had never seen him so unsure of himself. He still had that wild, mute look with which he had greeted her at the door, like that of a character in the pictures trying to let the heroine know there is a man with a gun hiding behind the curtains, and he kept lifting his two hands, palm upwards in a peculiar gesture, almost as if he was praying, and letting them fall back again, defeatedly, to his sides. Leslie White ignored him, did not even glance in his direction. "I must be going," he said now, in that soft, sleepy voice that he had, still smiling down at her. As if he knew how uneasily she felt about that coat of his he drew it now slowly, caressingly, around himself, watching her all the time, and knotted the belt loosely, disdaining the buckle. "Good-bye, Deirdre," he said. He pronounced it Deardree. He went to the door, followed hurriedly by Dr. Kreutz, and turned once more before going out and gave her a last, faint, mischievous smile.

  She heard them in the hall, Dr. Kreutz speaking in an urgent undertone and Leslie White saying dismissively, "Yes, yes, yes, keep your hair on, for heaven's sake." She heard the front door open and shut again, and a moment later she glimpsed that shining head of his, like a silver helmet, ducking past the window.

  What seemed a long time went by before Dr. Kreutz came back into the room. She had not realized that a person that color could turn pale, but his brown skin had taken on a definite grayish tinge. He would not look at her. She said she was sorry to have interrupted but when she saw that the copper pot was not in the window… He nodded distractedly. She felt sorry for him, but she was burning with curiosity, too.

  She did not stay long, that day. She could see Dr. Kreutz was relieved when she lied and said that she had arranged to meet Billy, and that she would have to go. At the door he made that ineffectual, pleading gesture again, lifting only one hand this time, and letting it fall back, helplessly.

  It was Christmastime and the weather was raw, with flurries of wet snow and showers of sleet as sharp as needles. Although it was the middle of the afternoon it was almost dark, and what light remained was the color of dishwater. Outside the gate she paused and glanced in both directions along the road, then turned right and walked towards Leeson Street, pulling up the collar of her coat against the cold.

  He was standing in the shelter of the newspaper kiosk at the bridge. She was not surprised; something in her had told her he would wait for her. He crossed the road, rubbing his hands together and smiling reproachfully. "Crumbs," he said, "I thought you were never going to get away."

  She considered telling him what she thought of him for his presumption, but before she could say anything he took her arm and turned and drew her with him across the road to the corner of Fitzwilliam Street.

  "And where," she said, with a disbelieving laugh, "do you think we're going?"

  "We're going, my dear, to a pub, where I shall order a hot whiskey for each of us, to warm us up."

  She stopped and unhooked her arm from his and faced him squarely. "Oh, is that so, now?"

  He laughed, looking down at his feet and shaking his head, then reached out and grasped her firmly by the upper arms. "Listen," he said, "we could stand here exchanging pleasantries if you like, telling each other about our past lives and what we had for breakfast
this morning, but since we've already been introduced, and since it's bloody cold, can we just go to the pub, where you can stand on your dignity, if you must, but I, at least, can have a drink?"

  She had been hoping he would have his car, she would have liked a go in it, but he said Old Mother Riley, as he called it, was sick and in the car hospital. So they walked down the long avenue, under the tall windows of the houses where already the electric lights were coming on, past the square with its leafless, dripping trees, and into Baggot Street. Grainy drifts of sleet had gathered in the corners of the tiled porch of the pub, but inside there was a coke fire burning and the lamps on the bar shed a warm yellow glow. They were the only customers. There were tables with low chairs, but they chose to sit on two stools at the bar. "It's friendlier, don't you think?" Leslie White said, moving his stool nearer to hers. "Besides, if I sit in one of those chairs my knees will be jammed under my chin."

  As she was climbing onto the stool she had seen him trying to look up her skirt, but he had seen her seeing and only grinned into her face; he had done it, glancing down and up, not in the dirty way that fellows often did in pubs, leering and licking their lips, but openly, unashamedly, and with a kind of invisible twirl, somehow, like one of those singers in an opera gaily twirling a straw hat or the waxed ends of a mustache. He called the barman and gave his order, telling him exactly how the drinks should be made-"Hot water, mind, not boiling, and no more than three cloves in each glass"-and then offered her a cigarette, which she was going to take but then thought better of it, afraid she would cough and splutter and make a show of herself, for she did not smoke and had only ever in her life taken a couple of puffs. The stool was high and when she crossed her legs she felt herself teetering for a second, and it almost seemed she might fall forward, swooningly, so that he would have to hold her up in his arms. When the steaming whiskeys came her head was already spinning.