Elegy For April

by Benjamin Black

  He had not switched on the light in the hall. When she came forward he caught her by the wrist and put a finger urgently to his lips. “Ssh!” he hissed. “She’ll wake up!” He drew her into the dark hall, and she smelled again the dank smell that she remembered from the last time. They crept up the stairs. He was leading her by the wrist. He eased open the door of the flat and motioned her inside and then closed the door silently behind them. “Poh!” he said, letting go his breath in an exaggerated gasp of relief, and smiled at her. “Well, Miss Phoebe Griffin! To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  All the way down here from the hotel, and then standing outside in the dark, trying to attract his attention, she had not stopped to consider what she would say to him, what reason she would offer for appearing under his window at dead of night like this.

  “I…,” she said, “I- I wanted to talk to you.”

  He wrinkled his brow, still smiling. “Oh, yes? It must be very urgent.”

  “No, not urgent. I just-” She stopped, and stood helplessly, looking at him.

  “Well, now that you are here, will you join me in some tea?”

  He took her coat and again put it on the bed, the bed that she again tried not to see. When they came in he had switched off the overhead light, but she remembered everything in detail from the last time, the armchair draped with the red blanket, the green typewriter on the card table by the window, the photograph of the smiling couple in native costume, the jumbled stacks of books. Her eye fell on the little wooden milking stool, and she smiled.

  He poured her a cup of tea. “Chamomile,” he said, “I hope you like it.”

  The tea was pale and had the fragrance of warm straw. “It’s lovely,” she said. “It’s perfect.”

  He led her to the armchair, bringing the milking stool for himself. “You’re cold,” he said.

  “Yes, it’s icy outside.”

  “Would you like to put the blanket over your knees?”

  “No no, thank you. The tea will warm me.”

  He nodded. She looked about the room again. There was a green paraffin heater by the window; the air felt rubbery with its fumes. She must not let the silence draw out, or she would lose her nerve altogether, would put down the cup and jump up and run from the place, back out into the night. “Were you working?” she asked.

  He gestured towards the table and the stacked books. “Studying a little, yes.”

  “And now I’m interrupting.”

  “No, not at all, I was about to stop and go to- I was about to stop.”

  He was dressed in an old pair of corduroy trousers and a hand-knitted woolen jumper. He wore no shirt, and his neck was bare, and she could see the top part of his broad, smooth, gleaming chest. His feet were bare, too. “Aren’t you cold?” she said. “Without socks, even!”

  “I like to be cool, a little.” He smiled, showing her his shining teeth. “For me it’s a luxury, you know.”

  “Is it very hot, where you come from, in Nigeria?”

  “Yes, very hot, very humid.” He was watching her, nodding faintly as if to a slow, steady rhythm in his head. That awful silence began to stretch again between them, and it was as if the air were expanding. “Is the tea all right?” he asked. “I think you do not like it. I could make some coffee.”

  Kiss me- please, kiss me. The words had leapt into her mind with such sudden force that for a moment she was not sure she had not spoken them out loud. She looked at his hands where he held them clasped between his knees. He is so beautiful, she thought, so beautiful.

  “I had dinner with my father,” she said, sitting upright in the chair and squaring her shoulders. “At the Russell. Do you know it- the Russell Hotel?”

  “I have been there, yes.” He laughed softly. “It’s a little expensive, for me.”

  “I’m afraid he got a bit… a bit tipsy, my father. He has a problem with drink.”

  “Yes, you told me he was in St. John’s.”

  “Did I? I forgot. I put him in a taxi and sent him home. I hope he’ll be all right.” He took the cup and saucer from her and set them on the floor. “I feel guilty. I shouldn’t have let him drink so much. I-”

  He took her hands in his, and when he spoke her name it was somehow as if she had never heard it before, or had never taken notice of it, at least, this strange, soft sound. She began to say something about this, she did not know what, but he drew her to her feet and released her hands and held her by the shoulders instead, and kissed her. After a moment she turned her face aside; she fancied she could hear her heart, it was pounding so. “Is Patrick really your name?” she said, still looking away. “Haven’t you a- a tribal name?”

  He was smiling and moved his head so that he could see into her eyes. “I was educated by the Holy Ghost Fathers,” he said. “My mother called me Patrick in honor of them.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  They were whispering. He laid his hands now on her shoulder blades. The silk of her dress crackled a little under his fingers. He put his face to her hair at the side. “Is this why you came here?” he murmured.

  “I don’t know.” It was true. “I wanted to talk to you about-”

  He touched the tips of his fingers to her lips. “Ssh,” he said again, softly. “Ssh.”

  The only light in the room was from the little reading lamp on the desk, and now he reached past her and switched it off. At first all was blackness, then a faint, ghostly, ice-blue radiance began to spread slowly from the window. Her coat slid from the bed onto the floor, and neither bent to pick it up. She caught a fingernail on her stocking. As she leaned down to take it off he cupped the side of her face in one of his great, square hands, and again spoke her name. She stood up, and he embraced her again. She felt the ribbed pattern of his jumper and wondered who had knitted it for him; when he crossed his arms and grasped it at both sides and drew it quickly over his head she smelled his sweat, a sharp, oniony odor. The sheets were cold against her back, and she shivered, and he pressed her more closely to him, giving her his warmth. His skin had a curiously stippled texture, like soft sandpaper; it felt exactly as she had known it would. The bedsprings set up a faint tinkling, like the sounds of a distant orchestra beginning to tune up. She put her face into the hollow of his shoulder and laughed a stifled laugh. “Oh, Lord,” she whispered, “Mrs. Gilligan will hear us!”

  SHE WOKE WITH A CRY. SOMETHING ABOUT- ABOUT WHAT?- about an animal, some kind of animal, was it? She kept her eyes shut tight, grasping at the dream as it poured out of her mind like water. An animal, and…? No, it was gone. She turned onto her side. The lamp was burning again, and Patrick was sitting at the card table, bent over a book, his back a broad, strong curve. She put a hand flat under her cheek on the pillow and watched him, smiling to herself. The paraffin heater was still on- she could taste the fumes, an oily film on her lips- and the warmth in the room made her think of an underground lair, a place of safety and calm.

  “I was dreaming about a lion,” she said. Yes, a lion, that was what it was.

  Patrick looked at her over his shoulder. “What kind of a lion?”

  “What kinds are there?”

  He stood up from the table and came to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. He was wearing his jumper again and the baggy corduroys; it was, she thought, as if some wonderfully fashioned thing, a piece in ebony or gleaming bronze by one of the masters of Benin, had been put into an old sack to protect it. She brought out her hand from under her cheek and gave it to him to hold between both of his brick-pink palms.

  “I’ve never seen a lion,” he said.

  “Aren’t there any in Nigeria?”

  “There may be some left, in the bush. It’s not the jungle, you know.” He smiled. “We live in towns and cities, just like you.”

  She sat up. “My hair must be a haystack, is it?”

  “It is very beautiful,” he said.

  She lowered her eyes quickly. “Were you studying?” she asked.

  “Yes, but only to pa
ss the time. Since you were sleeping.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep. What time is it? It must be late.”

  “Yes, it’s late.”

  This made them feel suddenly shy of each other. She withdrew her hand from his and was startled to feel tears welling up hotly in her eyes.

  “What is the matter?” he asked, alarmed.

  “Nothing, nothing.” She laughed at herself, brushing at her eyes. “I’m just- happy, I suppose.”

  He held her head between his hands and drew her to him and kissed her solemnly on the forehead. “My Irish girl,” he whispered. “My wild Irish girl.”

  “Come,” she said, “lie down again, just for a little while.”

  He stretched himself beside her on top of the blankets. “You remember,” she said, “when I was here that day, that first day, I asked you about… about April and… and you?” He had closed his eyes and was lying very still, his hands folded on his chest. He said nothing. “It wasn’t any business of mine, of course, but I had to ask. Jimmy had said something, and then I asked Bella. They seemed to think-”

  He waited, still with his eyes closed. “Yes? What did they seem to think?” She had an urge to touch his eyelids, to feel with her fingertips their delicate, silken texture.

  “Oh, nothing, really.” She could hear him breathing through those broad, carven nostrils. His skin fascinated her; she could not stop looking at it. Yes, ebony, she was thinking, only not smooth, not polished, but with that wonderful, soft roughness. “It’s just that someone went round to April’s and talked to the old lady who lives on the top floor. She’s half cracked, of course, and terribly sad.” She hesitated. She was not worried, not really, not as she had been when Quirke told her what Miss Leetch had said. So much had happened to her life in the past hour- how could she be worried? “She said that she had seen someone with April, in the house.” She looked at him more closely. His breathing had become regular and deep- was he asleep? “She said this person was-w as black.”

  Slowly he opened his eyes and gazed straight upwards, at the shadows under the ceiling. “Who was it?” he asked.

  “She didn’t know, I think. She just said he was-”

  “I meant, who was it that went to question her?”

  “Oh. A policeman. A detective.”

  For a long time he lay very still and did not speak, then abruptly he rose and swung his legs off the bed and sat there a moment, with his hands to his face. She had a trickling sensation between her shoulder blades, as if a drop of ice-cold liquid were sliding down inside her spine, through the very marrow.

  “You must go home now,” he said. “Please- get dressed.”

  “But-”

  “Please.”

  He put on his shoes and an overcoat and walked with her across to the cathedral, where the streetlights were brightest. The pavements sparkled with hoarfrost. There was hardly any traffic, and they had to wait a long time before they saw a taxi coming, with its light on. For all that time he did not speak to her, only stood hunched in his coat, his broad face grayed from the cold. She tried to think of something to say, some question to ask, but could not. He was angry, she could feel it. She was furious at herself for telling him what the old woman had said. How could she have been so stupid, to say it just like that, as if it were the weather she was talking about? What did it matter if he was at April’s, if it was he the woman had seen- and who else, after all, could it have been?- what did any of that matter now? They all came and went at the house, Jimmy, Isabel, she, too, all of them had been there at one time or other- why not Patrick? April had probably told him about the key under the stone, why would she not?

  She got into the taxi. Patrick stood over her, holding the door open for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice distant. He shut the door. She was still looking up into his eyes through the window as the taxi pulled away and set off over the crest of the cathedral hill.

  IT WAS COLD IN HER FLAT. SHE SWITCHED ON THE LIGHT IN THE living room and lit the gas fire, then went into the kitchen and put on a saucepan of milk to heat, and opened the biscuit tin. She had not turned on the kitchen light, since the glow coming in from the streetlamp was enough for her to see by. She was still wearing her overcoat. She waited, listening to the low hiss and occasional splutter of the gas jets. She tried not to think about Patrick, about all that had happened to night. Fool! she told herself. Fool!

  When the milk was heated she poured it into a glass and went to the table for the biscuit tin, and as she did so she glanced down through the window to the street. Something moved down there. It was that shadow again at the edge of the lamplight. How was it she was not surprised? She stepped back as far as she could from the window while still able to see down to the pavement. The glass was too hot to hold, but she held it anyway. Someone was there, she was sure of it this time, someone she could not so much see as sense, a motionless figure standing outside the circle of light, looking up at the window. Her fingers of their own accord relaxed, and the glass dropped and shattered at her feet, and she felt the hot milk splashing on her ankles. Before she went into the living room she reached around the door and switched off the light, then crossed to the window. She tried to tell herself the secret watcher was not real, that she was imagining it, as she had imagined it, surely, on that other night, too. But she knew it was not so, that the watcher was real. She tried to think, to reason, to decide what she should do, but her mind had gone sluggish.

  She hurried down the stairs, carrying her shoes, trying not to make a sound. The forty-watt bulb in the hall seemed to shed not light but a sort of sullen dimness. Her hands shook, and she was hardly able to get the pennies into the slot. She dialed Quirke’s number and stood with the receiver pressed under her cheek, breathing into the hollow of the mouthpiece and staring at the front door. How strong was the lock there? If someone pushed hard against it, would it hold? The ringing tones went on and on-brring! brring!- a dull, measured rhythm, making her think of someone pacing a floor, back and forth, back and forth, with short, rapid steps. She could not take her eyes off the door. It was locked with only a Yale lock. She would ask the landlord to put in a deadbolt. She considered the matter with a kind of crazy calmness. Yale, lock, deadbolt lock- and what about the hinges, would they hold, if the person pushing against the door were strong enough? At last the ringing tone stopped and was replaced by rapid pips. Either Quirke was so deeply asleep he had not heard the phone, or he was not there. But where would he have gone? Had he got the taximan to take him to a shebeen where he could go on drinking? She put down the heavy black receiver- it had the heft and chill smoothness of a weapon- and went to the foot of the stairs. Instead of going back up to the flat, however, she sat down on the lowest step and put her arms around her knees and hugged them against her breast. She watched the door, unblinking.

  ***

  HE HAD TO THINK. IT WAS IMPORTANT NOW, TO THINK CLEARLY and calmly. It was only a matter of time, surely, before they would come and question him. He did not know what he would say, what he could say. Somehow he had managed to make himself believe that this moment would never arrive. There were periods, long periods, when it was as if what had happened was a dream, one of those dreams that feels so real it lodges in the mind for months, for years, even, a dark patch of terror and vague, unassuageable guilt. There had been a place like that on Odoni Street down behind the Holy Rosary secondary school in Port Harcourt, when he was little. A track there ran along by the creek, and at a certain place, where a big clump of weeds leaned out over the muddy, purplish water, his heart would clench up like a fist every time that he passed by. Something must have happened there, he must have seen something, something he had forgotten but the aura of which had remained in his mind for all these years. This, now, was worse, of course; this was something he would never be allowed to forget, though he had pushed it so far back into his mind he managed at times to think it was not real at all.

  When Phoebe’s taxi drove away
he stood on the hill by the cathedral in the light of the streetlamp for a long time, turning this way and that, not knowing what to do. It was bitterly cold, and the frosty air when he breathed it in sliced at his throat like a cold flame. Should he hide? Should he run away? Yet where could he go? It was not as if he could melt into the crowd, not in this city. London, perhaps? But he knew no one there, and besides, he had no money, or not money enough to keep himself in a place like London. And would they be watching the mail boats, the airport?

  He knew so little about this country, about the people in it. They were strange. They took such a grave view of some things, while other, apparently serious matters they ignored or laughed about. You could get so much done here for nothing, just by asking, not like at home where every smallest Service had to be bought with dash, that nice term for a bribe. Here they would not take your money, but neither would they take you seriously. That was what puzzled him most of all, the way they mocked and jeered at everything and everyone, themselves included. Yet the laughter could stop without warning, when you least expected. Then suddenly you would find yourself alone in the midst of a circle of them, all of them looking at you, blank-eyed and silently accusing, even though you did not know what it was you were being accused of.