The Silver Swan

by Benjamin Black

  Kreutz seemed to ponder the question seriously, then asked: "What do you want?"

  Leslie sighed, shaking his head in a show of regretful sorrow. "I ask you, Doc, is that any way to greet an old pal? Where's your warmth? Where's your hospitality? Why don't you invite me in to share a pot of your special tea? Why don't you do that, eh?"

  The Doctor seemed to be pondering again. Leslie wondered if he was thinking of putting up a fight. That would be a laugh, if he tried it. But he would not, of course, being a Buddhist or whatever he was. Leslie was aware of a faint regret. He had that tickle in the palms of his hands that he knew of old, the tickle of wanting to hit something or someone, provided the someone or something, a woman, preferably, could be counted on not to hit back, or not seriously, anyway. And Kreutz was as good as a woman, in that regard. Without a word now he turned on his bare, horny-rimmed heel and walked into the living room. Leslie followed, and stopped in the doorway and leaned against the jamb in a negligent pose with his hands in his pockets and his ankles crossed. He looked down at his shoes, admiring them absently: brown loafers with tassels, old but good. Kate always made fun of the way he dressed, saying he looked like a successful spiv. "Instead of," he would say, with one of his laughs, "an unsuccessful one, which is what you think I really am." And then the fight would start. She was a good fighter, was Kate. In the early days their rows had always ended in bed; not anymore. He waggled the toes of his right foot inside the shoe. Good old Kate.

  "What do you want?" Kreutz asked again, bringing him out of his reverie.

  "I told you-nice cup of tea." The room was brightly, almost garishly, lit by a great panel of sunlight slanting down through the window from above the roof of the hospital opposite. Leslie could see how worried Kreutz was by the way he was standing, his arms rigid at his sides and his fingers jiggling and the whites of his eyes flashing. Well, good; he should be worried. "Go and put the kettle on," Leslie said. "There's a good lad."

  Kreutz did not stir, just stood there beside the low table with his arms held in that stiff way, like, Leslie thought, a squaddie standing to attention; he would be saluting in a minute. Not that Leslie knew much about army life, having been clever enough to avoid the war and, afterwards, National Service, too. Kreutz took a deep breath, almost a gulp, and said: "I expected you would come."

  "Oh? Why was that?"

  Kreutz blinked a number of times rapidly. "I sent you something."

  Leslie put on an act of remembering, smacking a palm softly to his forehead. "Why, so you did," he said. "How could I have forgotten?"

  "I make the tea," Kreutz said shortly, and turned and loped off to the kitchen on his skinny stork's legs. Even on level ground, Leslie thought, Kreutz always looked as if he was scaling an awkward incline. There were kettle noises and tap noises, clatter of tea caddy and spoon and crockery-the Doc was nervous, all right. Leslie went and stood in the kitchen doorway, again with his hands in the pockets of his slacks and one ankle crossed on the other. Kreutz was spooning dried leaves of something or other into a pot that had a long, curved spout.

  "Yes, that photo," Leslie said. "Very nice. You made old Deirdre look as pretty as a picture. You have a flair. I said it to Deirdre, I said to her, 'The Doc has a real flair for taking snaps.' " He brought out cigarettes and a lighter. "I posted it on, by the way," he said, blowing smoke upwards.

  A sort of ripple passed over the Doctor's smooth brown polished face; it took Leslie a second to recognize it as a frown.

  "What?" he asked.

  "The photo. I sent it on. Forwarded it. It'll probably come back to you-I put your name on it, and the address here. Thought we might get a round-robin kind of thing going. You to me, me to someone else, someone else to you. You know."

  Kreutz did not look at him. "Who did you send it to-why?"

  "That's no matter." He picked a fragment of tobacco from his lower lip. "Tell me why you sent it to me in the first place. Did you think I'd be worried because you had a snap of Deirdre with her twat on show, like the ones you took of all those tarts you pretend to treat?" He chuckled. "Thought I'd be concerned for my girl's honor, did you?"

  Kreutz did not look at him. "I can't pay you anymore," he said sulkily. "It's too much for me; I cannot support that place you and she are running. When will it start making money? You are supposed to repay me what I have already given you."

  The kettle boiled and set up a whistle through its spout, first quavering and then increasingly strong and shrill. "Here, let me," Leslie said, and stepped forward and turned off the gas flame. He lifted the kettle and pulled the whistle thing gingerly off the wide neck of the spout. Then, so fast that it was done before he knew he was going to do it, he seized Kreutz by his left wrist high up and jerked him to the sink and poured a gout of the boiling water straight onto the back of his hand. Kreutz hardly had time to realize what was happening before the water was rolling and seething over his skin. He gave a peculiar, stifled shriek and leapt back, brandishing his scalded hand aloft and waggling it, like a voodoo dancer, or some sort of dervish, Leslie thought. He dropped the kettle into the sink. Some of the water had splashed on his own hand, and he turned on the tap and held it under the cold stream. "Now look what you've done," he said crossly. "You've gone and made me scald myself."

  Kreutz came crowding forward and tried to thrust his hand above Leslie's under the gushing water, making a high-pitched, nasal, whining noise.

  "Oh, stop the racket, will you?" Leslie snapped. "You'll have the rozzers in on us. Aren't you supposed to be some sort of Buddhist who can put up with pain?"

  "You have destroyed my hand!" the Doctor cried. "My hands are my living!"

  "Serves you right-teach you to keep them to yourself." Leslie was examining his own hand; it was mottled with angry red patches but not blistering. By now he really was very cross indeed. He grabbed Kreutz by the shoulder and spun him around to face him and got him by the throat with his good hand and pressed him backwards until his back was arched against the draining board. He was all skin and bone, like a long, brown bird. "Listen, you nigger or kraut or whatever it is you're supposed to be-did you think you could blackmail me? Did you?"

  Kreutz, in his pain and fright, was making gargling sounds, his eyeballs popping whitely in a swollen face growing ever darker with congested blood. Leslie released him and stepped back, wiping the palm of his hand on the side of his jacket and grimacing in disgust.

  "I want the negative of that picture," he said, "and any prints you've made. If I see it anywhere, in anybody's hands but mine, I'll come back here and break your fucking neck for you, you black bastard. Understand?" The Doctor had his hand under the tap again. Leslie moved forward quickly and stamped hard with the heel of one of his tasseled shoes on the instep of the fellow's bare left foot. "Do you understand?" Kreutz did his stifled scream again, and despite his annoyance Leslie had to laugh, so comical did the old boy look, hopping on one leg and flapping his blistered hand in the air, more than ever like a stringy old bird with a damaged wing.

  "Come on," Leslie said, "get those pictures."

  THERE WERE HALF A DOZEN PRINTS, AND THE NEGATIVE. HE HANDED the lot to Deirdre when she came to Percy Place that evening, and she burned them in the mean little fireplace, filling the room with a scorched, chemical stink. He did not tell her what he had done with the first print, the one Kreutz had sent him, or that he had kept another one for himself, for old times' sake, he thought, and then caught himself up, startled-old times? But when he considered the matter he realized it was true: their time together was up, his and Deirdre's. It had been fun, and she was a good girl in many ways, but it was over. He lolled on the bed with a cigarette and contemplated her where she squatted in front of the grate, poking with the blade of a table knife at the still smoldering remains of the photographs. He admired absently the taut, full curve of her behind, the pert, freckled nose, the plump bosom. She was saying something to him but he was not hearing her; it was as if she was too far away, as if she was
out of earshot. Suddenly he hardly knew her-she might have been a stranger, a servant tending the room, or a waif who had wandered in from the street; she might have been anyone. Strange, the way things had of resolving themselves while a body was blissfully unaware of what was going on. He had used her up without knowing it, and now it was done. There would be the usual fuss, tears and pleas, screams, recriminations, but all that would not last long. He was an old hand at ending things.

  8

  MAISIE HADDON TELEPHONED QUIRKE AND SAID SHE WANTED TO SEE him. She suggested they go to the Gresham Hotel, for a change. He tried to get her to say what it was she had to tell him but she would not. "Just meet me there," she said, in her truculent way. "In the bar." It was midafternoon when he got to the hotel and when he came in out of the sunlight he was half blinded at first, but there was no missing Maisie Haddon. Today she wore a white suit with padded shoulders and broad lapels, large white high-heeled shoes, a crimson blouse, and a scarf of gauzy, lime-green silk. She had a hat, too, a boat-shaped concoction of green felt sailing at a jaunty angle above the waves of her bright-yellow perm. She was sitting on a stool at the bar with her legs crossed. Today, in deference to the venue, she was drinking a brandy and port. "For the innards," she said. "They're very delicate, the innards." He complimented her on her hat and she gave an angry laugh. "It should be nice," she said. "It cost a bloody fortune. How she gets away with it, that old hake Cuffe-Wilkes, as she calls herself, I don't know. Maison des Chapeaux, how are you. Maison de Clappo, more like." Despite the accustomed raucous tone she seemed subdued; Quirke suspected she was intimidated by the hotel's grand appurtenances, the chandeliers and high, gleaming mirrors, the polished marble floors, the soft-footed waiters in morning coats and the waitresses in white bibs and black stockings and little silk mobcaps.

  "Mickey Rooney stayed here, you know," Maisie said, looking about herself appraisingly. "And Grace Kelly."

  Quirke lifted an eyebrow. "Together?"

  She gave him a shove with her elbow.

  "No, you clown," she said, laughing. "But I saw the Aga Khan and Rita Hayworth here one time, when they were married."

  "Aly," Quirke said. She glowered at him. "It was Aly Khan that was married to Rita Hayworth," he said, "not Aga."

  She bridled. "Aly, Aga, what does it matter? If you know so much, Mr. Smarty-Pants, tell me this-what other film star was Rita Hayworth a cousin of?"

  "I've no idea."

  She grinned triumphantly, showing most of her large, slightly yellowed teeth. "Ginger Rogers!"

  "Maisie, you're a walking encyclopedia."

  At that she scowled. Maisie was touchy, and never more so than when she thought she was being mocked. He ordered another drink for her, and for himself a glass of plain water.

  "Are you still off the gargle?" she demanded. "Would you not have something, to keep a girl company?"

  He shook his head. "If I have one I'll have another, and then another, and another after that, and then where will I be?"

  "Christ, Quirke, you're no fun anymore, do you know that?"

  When, Quirke wondered idly, had he and Maisie had fun together?

  "That one you were asking me about," Maisie said. "The one that topped herself."

  "Yes?"

  He had paused before responding. Maisie liked everyone to keep a leisurely pace. She was gazing into the ruby depths of her second and already half-drunk drink.

  "I inquired around," she said. "No one knew anything, or not anything that would be likely to interest you, anyway. Then I spoke by chance to a former client of mine, that lives out in Clontarf. A former nun, she is, living with a former priest-would you believe it? Came over from England, the two of them, on the run from the bishops, I suppose, or the peelers, I don't know which. She bought a ring, or got one out of a Halloween cake, and they set up house together, as respectable as you like."

  "How did you come to know her?"

  She gave him a look. "How do you think? A ring is one thing, but a bouncing babby is another. Anyway, here's the thing, here's the coincidence. When I asked her about this one, Deirdre Hunt, had she known her or heard of her, she gave a laugh and said, 'Deirdre Hunt, is it? Sure, doesn't she live across the road from me.' "

  "In Clontarf," Quirke said.

  "St. Martin's something-Avenue, Gardens, Drive, I can't remember. Isn't that a queer thing, though, me ringing her up and asking her about someone who turns out to be her neighbor opposite?"

  Quirke waited again, and took a lingering sip of water. "Did she know her?" he asked. "I mean, to talk to."

  "They kept themselves to themselves."

  "Which, the nun and her priest or the Hunts?"

  She turned and studied him for a long moment, shaking her head slowly from side to side. "I sometimes wonder, Quirke, if you're as slow as you seem, or are you only pretending?"

  "Oh, I'm very slow, Maisie, very slow."

  "Sure you are," she said with a scathing chuckle. "Sure you are."

  Her glass was empty, and now she waggled it meaningly. He said: "But your nun-what's her name, by the way?"

  "Philomena."

  "-She must have had some contact with the Hunts?"

  "Only to say good morning and hello to, that kind of thing. 'A nice quiet couple,' Philomena said they seemed. She couldn't believe it when she heard that the wife had drowned herself. 'Must have been an accident,' she said, 'must have.' " Maisie turned again and this time gave Quirke a searching look. "Was it?"

  He returned a blank gaze of his own. "Was it what?"

  Maisie nodded knowingly. "You wouldn't be interested in it if it was an accident," she said. "I know you, Quirke. And by the way"-she tapped a finger on his wrist-"you may have given up the sauce, but some of us around here are dying of the thirst."

  So he ordered her another brandy and port and waited while the barman poured it, both of them watching him as he worked. He was young, with a short-back-and-sides haircut and a pustular neck. He wore a white shirt and a black waistcoat. Quirke noted a frayed cuff, a greasy shine at the pockets of the trousers. This country. Someone had recently offered Quirke a job in Los Angeles. Los Angeles! But would he go? A man could lose himself in Los Angeles as easily as a cuff link.

  Maisie took up her drink and resettled herself contentedly, hen-like, on the stool's high perch.

  "The night Deirdre Hunt died," Quirke said, "did Philomena notice anything out of the ordinary?"

  Maisie Haddon fairly tittered. "You talk like a detective in the pictures. Humphrey Bogart. Alan Ladd. 'Notice anything suspicious, lady?' " Laughing, she took up her drink, a little finger cocked, and delicately sipped. "Do you know where Philomena insisted on meeting me?" she asked. "In the church in Westland Row. What do you think of that? You'd imagine she'd be too ashamed to show her face in God's house. 'Why not Bewley's?' I said. 'Or the Kylemore.' But no, St. Andrew's it had to be. There was a Mass ending, we had to sit in the far back, whispering. Philomena kept blessing herself and looking pious. The rip! She goes in for stylish outfits, you know-the sky pilot she's living with must have money-nylons, makeup, perfume, the lot. But do you know what it is?" She paused for effect. "She still smells like a nun. That musty whiff, there's no getting rid of that."

  Quirke was bored, and his damaged knee ached, and, as always in Maisie's company, he was beginning to want a drink badly. Maisie had nothing to tell him. Why had she asked him to come here? Perhaps she had been bored, too. He thought of slipping away, as he usually did, and had even begun to ease himself off the stool in preparation for flight when Maisie, looking into her glass, a little bleary now, told him, with blithe offhandedness, what it was she had summoned him to hear.

  9

  THEN ONE DAY, WITHOUT WARNING, HER WORLD JUST FELL ASUNDER. that was the way she thought of it, that was the phrase she kept saying over and over in her mind: The world has fallen asunder. At the start it seemed a day like any other. True, Billy had hardly spoken a word to her, and ate his breakfast on his own in the ki
tchen and then departed without even a good-bye, lugging his bag of samples. Either he had used too much aftershave lotion or his face was flushed, as it tended to be when he was angry. But he did not seem angry, only in a mood of some sort. The kitchen when he was gone from it was left smoldering, the lingering smoke of his cigarette rolling in slow, gray-blue billows in the big shaft of sunlight through the window beside the back door. She had poured herself a cup of lukewarm tea from the brown china pot and sat with it at the littered table half listening to the wireless. Billy had left a smear of marmalade on the white tablecloth; it glittered like a shard of glass. In the garden a bird was whistling its heart out. She reminded herself that before she set off for work she must start the laundry, in the brand-new washing machine that was another little luxury the bountiful Silver Swan had brought to her.

  Yes, a day like any other, so it seemed.

  When the telephone rang it made her jump. Who would be calling at this early hour? She hurried into the hall. At first she could not make out who it was on the line. Hardiman, he said his name was. Did she know anyone called Hardiman? Then he said he was with the bank. Her mouth went dry, and she felt her heartbeat suddenly slow to a dull, effortful thumping, as if something was climbing up laboriously inside her. Dealing with the bank had been the part of the business that she secretly hated. Banks terrified her; she had never been in one before she was in her twenties. They were so big, with such high ceilings, and so many counters with so many people behind them, all wearing ties, or twinsets, while the men in the back, the managers or whatever they were, all wore pin-striped suits. She was frightened even by the smell, dry and papery, like the smell in the head nun's room at school. Hardiman was saying something about "some matters," and "these figures," and "these checks signed by Mr. White." He asked her to come in and see him. Somehow she managed to get her voice to work, and said she was very busy today, and would Monday do. There was a silence on the line then, a silence that was more alarming even than the man's voice, and then she heard him give a little cough-though she had never even met him she could see him, gray and precise, with dandruff on his collar, sitting at his desk with the phone in one hand and the knuckle of an index finger pressed to his pursed lips-and he said no, no, it would not keep till Monday, that it would be better if she came in right away. She tried to protest but he cut her off, and with a new sharpness. "Really, Mrs. Hunt, I think it will be in all our interests for you to come in, now, and see if we can sort this out."