He had never given anyone an injection before. He had seen it done, he knew how to do it, more or less, but this was his first time. He had not expected her skin to be so rubbery, so resistant. He had to pinch the vein between his fingers and force the needle in at a slant. And then the strangest thing, the great, slow surge of calmness that had flowed back from his hand, the hand with the needle in it, and up along his arm and into his chest, slowing his heartbeat, a balm for his blood, as if what he was injecting, this clear, cool elixir, was going not into her but back into him. When he withdrew the needle Deirdre gave a long, shivery sort of sigh, and that was all. He watched her for a while in the light of the bedside lamp. He searched in himself for some feeling of guilt, sorrow, even only regret, but there was nothing: he was at peace. It had been necessary for her to go; he would not have been able to live otherwise. She had become a poison suddenly in his life, not the Deirdre he knew, or thought he had known, but the creature in the photograph, that monster. Yes, there had been no choice for him. Poison for poison.
He put the needle and the empty vials into his samples case and snapped it shut; he would have to remember to get rid of them. What should he do next? She had a bath towel under her on the bed, still damp, and he wrapped her in that. There was an unpleasant smell. He would have to change the bedclothes and get rid of the towel. That would be easy. Everything would be easy. If there was one thing he had learned on the football field, it was never to hesitate but keep going, whoever was in your way or however hard the ref was blowing on his whistle. Put the head down and bull on.
He went and stood by the window with his hands in his pockets, looking out at the big moon hanging there. Behind him, on the bed, there was no sound, no movement, nothing, only a broad, swelling absence. Low down in the sky a bank of cloud lay humped, blue as a whale with a fringe along its upper edge as bright as molten metal. The thing to do was to bring the car, her car, round to the lane at the back and carry her down the garden and out through the door beside the disused privy. It was late enough; no one would see. It was very bright, though, in the moonlight. The back shed was throwing a sharp black shadow diagonally across the gray grass. He would take her to Sandycove, where they used to go for walks sometimes in the weeks before they were married. It would be lovely out there, on a fine night like this, the moon on the water and the lights of Howth twinkling across the bay. Their last journey together, his and hers. All these last things. He had a strong sense that all that had happened had been fated, and inevitable. Maybe if you looked at anything, any event, closely enough you would see the future packed into it, folded tight, like the tight-folded elastic filling of a golf ball. That moment when he first saw her in Plunkett's pharmacy had contained this moment, too, with him standing at the window, looking at the moon, and Deirdre on the bed, or what remained of Deirdre. Fate. That was it.
He was a long time finding her car key. It was not in her handbag. He searched through her clothes, with no luck. He felt a flicker of anxiety, like the first lick of a flame that would soon be raging through the house, but then he walked into the kitchen and there was the bunch of keys in the ashtray on the table, where she always left them-why had he not looked there first? Maybe he was more upset than he realized. He would have to go carefully; this was not the time to make a mistake. He turned off the light in the hall before opening the front door and stood in the shadow of the doorway, watching the street. A few upstairs windows were lit, but all was quiet. Clontarf folk went to bed early. He scrutinized in particular the house directly opposite, where the ex-nun and the renegade priest lived. The Reverend Mother, as he called her, was a nosy bitch. He watched the upstairs curtains to see if one of them might twitch, but nothing stirred. He stepped out into the dark-the moon was throwing a shadow here, too-and used the key in the lock of the door behind him so he could turn the latch and keep it from clicking when he shut the door. Not a sound. The garden gate, too, he managed to open and shut silently. He did not care about the noise the Austin would make when he started it up-no one, not even the Reverend Mother, would be able to make out, in the dark, that it was him behind the wheel.
In the car the lingering smell of her perfume hit him like a soft blow to the heart.
Head down, keep going. Keep going!
What a weight she was. The last time he had carried her like this, draped over his arms, was the day they had come back from their honeymoon and he had insisted on carrying her over the threshold. She had tried to resist, laughing and telling him not be such an eejit, but he had leaned down sideways and swept her up, and she had seemed no heavier than a stook of wheat. But that was a long time ago, in another life. In the laneway he opened the back door of the car and put her lying on the back seat, and just as he was shutting the door on her the big dark-blue cloud, which had been rising steadily without his noticing, deftly pocketed the moon's tarnished silver coin. He got in behind the wheel and took a slow, deep breath. Her clothes, the clothes she had left on the bathroom floor, were folded in a neat stack on the passenger seat. He thought of the coast road again, dark now, with the moon gone, and the sea dark, too, and that bank of cloud climbing higher and higher in the sky, spreading its shadow steadily over the world.
Then he started up the engine, and drove away.
EPILOGUE
QUIRKE WOKE INTO A GRAY DAWN. HE WAS IN THE OPEN, UNDER TREES. He was cold, and his face was damp with dew. He felt vague pain, vague distress. He wondered if he had been involved in an accident, if he had fallen or been knocked down. A large, dark figure was looming over him, speaking. He could not make out the words. His brain was fogged. He was slumped on some kind of seat, an iron bench, it seemed to be. Yes, it was a bench, and he was by the canal, he recognized the place, for there was Huband Bridge, humped in the grayness. The dark figure put out a great pale hand and grasped him by the shoulder and shook him, and immediately his head began to pound, as if something heavy had been shaken loose in it and was rolling uncontrollably from side to side. "Are you all right?" the figure was saying. It was a Guard, huge and hulking, with a round, bloodless face, standard issue, not unlike Inspector Hackett's. Quirke hauled himself upright on the bench, and the Guard took his hand from his shoulder and stepped back. "Are you all right?" he demanded again. Quirke's mouth was dry, dry and burning, and he had to work his jaws for a moment to get some saliva under his tongue before he could reply. He said yes, he was fine, and that he must have fallen asleep. "You had a few too many," the Guard said gruffly, "by the cut of you." How was it, Quirke found himself wondering, that Guards always seemed aggrieved? Even if you asked one the way to somewhere the fellow would look at you in that grimly startled way, furrowing his brow, as if the simple fact of being addressed constituted a personal affront. To be rid of him, Quirke closed his eyes, and sure enough, when he opened them again, a moment later, so he thought, there was no one there. The light was changed, too; it was stronger now. He was still sprawled on the bench. He must have fallen asleep again briefly, or passed out. He sat up and searched in his pockets for his cigarettes, but could find none. It was coming back to him, gradually, all that had happened. Yesterday had been Tuesday and last night he should have had his weekly dinner with Phoebe, but Phoebe was at Mal's, and he had not dared to call her. Instead he had gone, alone, to the Russell, and eaten dinner alone, and drunk a bottle of wine, and then had gone on to McGonagle's, and downed glasses of whiskey, he could not remember how many. What had followed after that, how he had come to be here on this canal bench, all that was a blank. He rose to his feet, swayingly, that weight still rolling about in his head like an iron ball. There was something urgent he had to do. What was it? Phoebe, yes-he had to do something about Phoebe. He did not know what it was but he knew he must do it. Save her. She was his daughter. He must find a way to bring her back to life. That was how he thought of it, those were the words that formed themselves in his head: I must bring her back, bring her back, to life. He looked both ways along the canal. There was not a soul to b
e seen. He thought of the long, ashen day ahead of him. He tried to make himself move, to walk, to get away, but in vain; his body would not obey him. He stood there, paralyzed. He did not know where to go. He did not know what to do.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BENJAMIN BLACK is the pen name of acclaimed author John Banville, who was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. His novels have won numerous awards, most recently the Man Booker Prize in 2005 for The Sea. He lives in Dublin.
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The Silver Swan Page 28
