Elegy For April

by Benjamin Black

  “And your daughter,” Sinclair said, “what does she think has become of her friend?”

  “She’s worried about her. Which is more, it seems, than her family are.”

  “The Minister, that is?”

  “And her mother. Her brother, too… Oscar Latimer.”

  “The Holy Father?” Sinclair laughed coldly. “He’ll be offering Masses for her safe return.”

  “Is that what they call him, the Holy Father?” Quirke was thinking again of that bottle of whiskey in his desk. His hangover began to drum again in his head. He thought of Isabel Galloway. “Do you know him?” he asked.

  “His Holiness?” Sinclair said. He produced a packet of Gold-Flake and put a cigarette between his lips but did not light it. “I went to one or two of his lectures,” he said.

  “And? What would you say he’s like?”

  The young man considered. He took the unlighted cigarette from his mouth. “Obsessed,” he said.

  19

  QUIRKE PICKED UP ISABEL AT THE CORNER OF PARNELL STREET, and they drove down to the quays and turned right for the park. The short-lived day had begun to wane already, and the sky above the river was clear and of a deep violet shade, and, lower down, the frost-laden air was tinged a delicate pink. She said again how much she hated this time of year, these awful winter days that seemed to be over before they had properly begun. He said he liked the winter, when it was frosty and the nights were long. She asked if it reminded him of his childhood, and after waiting in vain for an answer she turned away and looked out at the quayside passing by. He glanced at her sidelong; her expression in profile was somber; he supposed she was angry. But he did not want to talk to her about his childhood, not her. The past had poison in it. He asked if she was all right, and after a second or two she said yes, that the morning’s rehearsal had been long and she was tired, and besides she thought she might be starting a cold. “What a beautiful car this is,” she said, but it was plain she was thinking of something else.

  He asked if she would like to stop at Ryan’s of Parkgate Street for a drink, but she said no, that it was too early, and that she would prefer they should go for their walk while the daylight lasted. He drove in at the gate onto Chesterfield Avenue.

  “This is where I learned to drive,” he said.

  “Oh? When was that?”

  “Last week.”

  She looked at him. “My God- you only learned to drive a week ago?”

  “There’s nothing to it, just pressing pedals and turning the wheel.” He drew the car to the side of the road and stopped. “Which reminds me,” he said, “I must get a driving license.”

  He sat for a moment looking blankly through the windscreen.

  “How’s the hangover?” she asked.

  “Oh,” he said, “weakening.”

  “You mean it’s getting weak, or it’s weakening you?”

  “It’s getting weaker, and I’m getting better. That’s the thing about a hangover; no matter how bad it is, it ends.”

  “I suppose you must be dying for a drink now- did you want to stop at Ryan’s?”

  “Not really.”

  “Phoebe worries about your drinking, you know.”

  He was still looking out at the winter afternoon. “Yes,” he said, “so do I.”

  “What’ll we do, to keep you out of the pub?” She laid a hand lightly on his thigh. “We shall just have to think of something, shan’t we?”

  They got out and set off walking through the misty air. Deer in a herd were grazing among the trees off to their left; an antlered stag watched them, chewing with that busy, sideways motion of its lower jaw. The animals’ pelts were the same color as the bark of the trees among which they stood.

  “April’s mother called me,” Quirke said.

  Isabel’s arm was linked in his, and as they walked she pressed up close against him for warmth. “What did she say?”

  “She asked me to come out and see her.”

  “Has she had word of April?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I said I’d come out at five.”

  “It’s nearly four now.”

  “I know. Will you come with me?”

  “Oh crikey,” she said in a quailing voice, “I don’t know. The widow Latimer is rather a daunting prospect, you know.”

  A cyclist went past, crouched low over the dropped handlebars of his sports bike and shedding behind him comical puffs of breath, like the smoke of a train. An elderly couple sat on a bench, swathed in mufflers and wearing identical woolen hats with bobbles on them. Their dog, a snappish King Charles spaniel, ran over the grass in a complicated pattern of straight lines and angles, taking no notice of the deer.

  “Do you know her, Mrs. Latimer?” Quirke asked.

  “Only by reputation. Which is formidable.”

  “Yes. She’s a bit of an ogress, all right. Though I feel sorry for her.”

  “Because of April?”

  “That, and the fact that it can’t be easy, being the widow of Conor Latimer.”

  “What was he?”

  “Heart surgeon and a national hero- fought in the War of Independence.”

  She laughed. “All the more reason for me to steer clear of her.” She squeezed his arm and smiled up at him. “I am half-English, after all.”

  “How could I forget it?”

  “Why? Because you got me into bed so easily?” She grimaced. “Sorry, that just popped out.”

  They walked on.

  “Didn’t April ever mention her father?” Quirke asked.

  “She tended not to talk about her family. A delicate subject.” She laughed, not quite steadily. “A bit like the subject we’re not talking about now, I suppose.”

  After a dozen paces Quirke cleared his throat and said, “I’m sorry about this morning, walking in like that when you were in the bath.”

  “I didn’t mind. Quite the opposite, in fact. I felt like- oh, I don’t know, Helen, or Leda, or somebody, being swooped down upon by a god disguised as a bull. You do look quite bullish, you know, in a confined space.”

  “Yes,” he said, “and the world is my china shop.”

  She squeezed his arm again, pressing it to her side, and through her coat he felt her warmth and the delicate curve of her ribs. They were silent again, and he could feel something gathering in her. Then in a tight, small voice she said, “Quirke, where are we going?”

  “Where are we going? Well, we’ve passed the Wellington Monument, and the zoo is over there.”

  “Do you think this is funny?”

  “I think we’re both grown-up people, and we should behave accordingly.” He had not meant it to sound so harsh. She let go of his arm and strode on quickly, her hands thrust in the pockets of her coat and her head down. He quickened his pace and caught up with her and took her by the elbow, making her stop. She tried to pull her arm away from him, but his grip was too strong. “I told you before,” he said, “I’m no good at this kind of thing.”

  She looked up into his face; tears stood on the lowers rims of her eyelids, quivering and shiny, like beads of quicksilver. “What kind of thing?”

  “This kind. You, me, swans in the moonlight-”

  “Swans in the-?”

  “I mean I don’t know how to behave, that’s all. I never learned; there was no one to teach me. People, women”- he made a chopping motion with the side of his hand-”it’s impossible.”

  She stood there, close in front of him, gazing up, and he had to force himself not to look away.

  “Listen to me,” she said, in a new voice, rapid and sharp-edged. “I haven’t asked anything of you, no promises, no vows, no commitments. I thought you understood that; I thought you accepted that. Don’t start taking fright already, when there’s nothing to be frightened of. Do me that courtesy, will you?”

  “I’m sor-”

  “And please, no apologies. I told you, few things are as dispiriting as a man mumbling about how sorry he is.” Suddenly she lift
ed herself up on her toes and seized his face between her hands and kissed him hard on the mouth. “You idiot,” she said, drawing back. “You hopeless idiot- don’t you realize you could be happy?”

  IT WAS DARK BY THE TIME THEY GOT TO DUN LAOGHAIRE, AND A three-quarters moon white as lightning had hoisted itself over the harbor. It was not so cold out here by the sea, and the road was blackly agleam with thawed frost. When they stopped at Albion Terrace they did not get out of the car at once but sat side by side listening to the engine ticking as it cooled. Quirke lit a cigarette and rolled down the window beside him an inch and flicked the spent match through the opening. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come,” he said. “I could bring you to the hotel back there, and you could wait for me, if you like.”

  Isabel was looking at the moon. “I’m glad you did ask me,” she said, without turning. “You should ask for things more often. People like it. It makes them feel needed.” She reached out blindly and took his hand. “Oh Lor’,” she said, with a quivery little laugh, “I think I feel another tear coming on.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t know… isn’t it awful, the way we cry for no reason?” Now she did turn, and he saw her eyes, how large they were and shining. “I can’t imagine you weep much, do you, Quirke?” He said nothing, and she gripped his hand more tightly, giving it a rueful shake. “Big strong man, no cry, eh?” A shaft of moonlight shone on her hand holding his. Out in the darkness unseen sea-birds were calling and crying. “I’m as lost as you are, you know,” she said. “Couldn’t we just- help each other a little along this hard way we’ve been set on?”

  He took her awkwardly in his arms- the steering wheel was in the way- and kissed her. He kept his eyes open and saw, beyond the pale concavity of her temple, one of those birds come swooping suddenly out of the darkness, swift and startlingly white.

  They walked up the pathway between glimmering lawns, the damp gravel squeaking under their tread. She had taken his hand again. “You’ve met before, haven’t you, April’s mother?” she said. “You know we’re all afraid of her, of course?”

  “Who is ‘all’?”

  “April’s friends.”

  “Right,” he said. “April’s friends. I met one of them this afternoon. A reporter.”

  “Jimmy Minor?” She was surprised. “Where did you meet him?”

  “He came to see me at the hospital, asking about April.”

  “Did he? What did he say?”

  “He was poking about, looking for information, the way they do.”

  “I hope he’s not thinking of writing something about her in the paper.” They came to the front door. A light was burning in the porch. “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing. What is there to tell?”

  He rang the doorbell; they heard its distant chime. Isabel was looking out over the blackness of the garden, thinking. “I wonder what he’s up to,” she murmured. “He can be mischievous, can our Jimmy.”

  Marie the red-haired maid opened the door to them. Quirke she remembered, and said yes, that he was expected. She gave Isabel a look; he did not introduce her.

  They were led along the hall to a small, square room at the rear of the house. There was an antique desk with many drawers, and two armchairs and a small sofa upholstered in worn red velvet. Dim, sepia photographs of bearded gentlemen and ladies in lace crowded the walls, and in pride of place above the desk there was hung a framed copy of the 1916 Proclamation. “As you can probably guess, this was my husband’s room,” Celia Latimer said, indicating another photograph in a silver frame standing on the desk, a studio portrait of the late Conor Latimer, looking impossibly smooth, with his head inclined and holding a cigarette beside his face; he had the smile of a film star, arch and knowing. “His den, he called it,” his widow said. Her hair was drawn back from her forehead, and she was wearing a tartan skirt and a gray wool jumper and a gray cardigan and pearls; she looked at once frumpish and vaguely regal, more the Queen Mother than the Queen. She had risen from her chair to greet them. Quirke introduced Isabel Galloway, and she smiled frostily and said: “Yes, I saw you in that French play at the Gate. You were the- the young woman. I must say I was surprised by some of the lines they gave you to say.”

  “Oh, well,” Isabel said, “you know what the French are like.” The smile grew frostier still. “No, I’m afraid I don’t.” Isabel glanced at Quirke. He said, “Isabel is a friend of April’s.” “Yes? I don’t think I heard her mention you. But then, there are many things that April doesn’t mention.”

  She gestured for them to sit down, Quirke in an armchair and Isabel on the sofa. There was a fire burning, and the air in the room was close and hot. As they were settling themselves the maid came in bearing a tray with tea things on it and set it on a corner of the desk. Mrs. Latimer poured the tea and sat down again, balancing a cup and saucer on her knee.

  “I’ll come straight to the point, Dr. Quirke,” she said. “My son tells me you’re still asking questions about April’s whereabouts. I want you to stop. I want you to leave us alone, to leave us in peace. When she’s ready, April will come back from wherever she is, I have no doubt of that. In the meantime it does no one any good to keep on harassing my son and me in the way that you’ve been doing.” She glanced at Isabel, sitting very straight on the sofa with the teacup and saucer in her lap, then turned her attention on Quirke again. “I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I always think it’s best to come straight out and say a thing rather than hemming and hawing.” Before Quirke could answer her she turned again to Isabel. “I take it, Miss Galloway, you haven’t heard from April?”

  “No,” Isabel said, “I haven’t. But I’m not as worried as- as other people seem to be. It’s not the first time April has gone off.”

  “Gone off?” Mrs. Latimer said with a look of large distaste. “I’m not sure what you mean by that.”

  Isabel’s smile tightened, and two pink spots appeared on her cheekbones, a deeper color than the dabs of rouge there.

  Quirke put his cup and saucer on the floor beside his chair; he could not drink china tea. “Mrs. Latimer,” he said, “I know that what your daughter does or doesn’t do is no business of mine. As I told you already, my only interest in all this- this business, is that my daughter came to me because she was worried, and I-”

  “But you brought the Guards in,” Mrs. Latimer said. “You spoke to that detective, what’s his name- you even took him into April’s flat. You certainly had no business doing that.”

  He looked at the photograph of Conor Latimer on the desk. The man’s smile seemed more a smirk now.

  “I’m sorry you feel this way, Mrs. Latimer. It’s just-” He paused and glanced at Isabel. She was fixed on him, the teacup forgotten in her lap. “It’s just that it’s possible that something has happened to your daughter.”

  “Something,” Celia Latimer repeated, tonelessly. She too was looking off to one side of him, as if there were someone standing there. Quirke turned his head; it was the photograph of her husband that had drawn her, of course.

  “I know,” he said, “how important your family is to you.”

  With a visible effort she transferred her gaze to him. “Do you?” she said, in an odd, almost playful tone, and for a second he had the notion that she was going to laugh. She stood up and crossed to the desk and set her cup and saucer down on the tray. She turned to Isabel. “Would you like some more tea, Miss Galloway?” she asked. She seemed weary suddenly, her shoulders indrawn and her mouth set tight in a crooked line.

  “No, thank you,” Isabel said.

  She too rose, and brought her cup, also with the tea untouched in it, and put it on the tray. Quirke watched the two women standing there, not saying anything to each other and yet, it seemed to him, communicating in some fashion. Women; he could not fathom them.

  Mrs. Latimer turned and walked to the fireplace and lifted from the mantelpiece yet another photograph, this one framed in gilt, and held it out for Quirke to see
. It was of a smiling girl of eight or nine, in a garden, kneeling on one knee on the grass, with her arm around the neck of a large, grinning dog sitting on its haunches beside her. The girl was pale, with a small, pointed face surrounded by a tumble of fair curls and a saddle of dark freckles on the bridge of her nose. “I took that myself,” Mrs. Latimer said, turning the photo to look at it. “A summer day, it was, here in the garden; I remember it as if it were yesterday- you see the summerhouse there, in the background? And that’s April’s dog, Toby. How she loved her Toby, and how he loved her; they were inseparable. She was a real tomboy, you know, never happier than out rambling the roads looking for frogs, or lizards, or conkers- the things she brought home!” She handed the photograph to Quirke and went back to her chair and sat down again, folding her hands in her lap. She looked old suddenly, careworn and old. “She wasn’t born in April, you know,” she said, to no one in particular. “Her birthday is the second of May, but she was due a week earlier, and I had already chosen the name April, and so I kept it, even when she was late, because it seemed to suit her. Her father had wanted a girl, so had I, and we were delighted.” She gazed into the burning coals in the fireplace. “Such a quiet baby, just lying there, taking everything in, with those big eyes of hers. It proved what I always believed, that we’re born with our personalities already in place. When I think of her in her crib it’s the same April as the one I sent off to school on her first day at St. Mary’s, the same one who came and told me she wanted to be a doctor, the same one who- who said such awful things to me that day when she left the house and never came back. Oh, God.” She closed her eyes and passed a hand slowly over her face. “Oh, God,” she said again, this time in a whisper, “what have we done?”

  Quirke and Isabel looked at each other, and Isabel made a restraining gesture and went to the woman sitting slumped in the chair and put a hand on her shoulder. “Mrs. Latimer,” she said, “can I get you anything?”

  Mrs. Latimer shook her head.