Christine Falls: A Novele

by Benjamin Black

She asked him where he was from. “Originally, I mean. Where were you born?”

  “Oh, out West,” he lied, in a voice he made purposely vague and dry, wanting to suggest sagebrush and shimmering deserts and a silent man solitary on his horse, gazing off from the rim of a mesa toward distant, rocky peaks.

  They turned inland. She wondered, a little uneasily, where he was taking her. Well, it was what she had told him, to take her anywhere. And despite that eye of his in the mirror it was not unpleasant, rolling leisurely along these country roads that did not look all that much different from the roads at home.

  The engine was running so smoothly he could hear the quick little hiss of nylon against nylon when she crossed her legs.

  “Do you have to drive at such a slow speed?” she said. “I mean, is it the rule, here?”

  “It’s standard with Mr. Crawford. But”—carefully—“I don’t always stick to it.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m sure.”

  She brought out her oval cigarettes and lit one. The smoke snaked over Andy Stafford’s shoulder and he sniffed the unfamiliar flat dry papery odor of the tobacco and asked if they were Irish cigarettes. “No,” she said, “English.” She considered offering him one but thought she had better not. She held the slim silver case lightly in her palm and with her thumb clicked the catch open and shut, open and shut. She had suddenly begun to feel the effects of the air journey, and everything seemed to her to have a beat of its own, precise, regular, yet to be part too of a general ensemble, a sort of drawn-out, untidy, complexly rhythmic chord which she could almost see in her mind, undulant, flowing, like a bundle of wires pulsing and twitching inside a pouring column of thick oil. The urge to sleep was like oil too, spreading over her mind and slowing it. She closed her eyes and felt the gathering momentum of the car as Andy Stafford increased the acceleration, gradually, or stealthily, it even seemed—was he afraid she would tell on him for breaking the Crawford limit?—but the cushioned churning of the wheels underneath her feet seemed more like something that was happening inside her, and gave her a horrible, lurching sensation and she hastily opened her eyes and made herself focus on the road again. They were going very fast now, the car bounding along effortlessly with a muted roar, seeming to exult in its own tigerish power. Andy Stafford was tensed forward at the wheel. She noted his leather driving gloves with holes punched in the backs of them; he was just the type that would wear that sort of thing, she told herself, and then felt a little ashamed for thinking it. They were on a long straight stretch of narrow road. Tall marsh grasses on either side leaned forward languorously even before the car was abreast of them, its momentum somehow reaching a yard or two ahead and folding the air inward. Phoebe stubbed out her cigarette and braced her hands flat on either side of her on the seat. The leather was stippled and warmly pliant under her palms. There was some kind of barrier in the road away in front of them, with an upright wooden pole and a white signboard with a black X painted on it. She felt rather than heard a drawn-out wail that seemed to come from far off, but a moment later there was the railroad train, bullet-nosed and enormous, hurtling forward at a diagonal to the road. Clearly, calmly, as if from high above the scene, she saw the X of the sign resolve itself into a diagram of the twin trajectories of car and train, speeding toward the level crossing. Now the upright wooden pole ahead quivered along its length and began jerkily to descend. “Stop!” she cried, and was startled—it had sounded more like a shout of glee than a cry of panic. Andy Stafford ignored her and on the car sped, seeming to sweep together all the countryside behind and whirl it with it into the funnel of its headlong rushing. She was sure they would hit the descending barrier, she could hear already the crash of metal and shattering glass and timber. In the corner of her eye she saw a snapshot, impossibly detailed and exact, of the crossing keeper standing in the doorway of his wooden hut, his long-jawed face and his mouth open to call out something, a shapeless felt hat pushed to the back of his head and one buckle missing from the bib of his dungarees. A little black car, squat and rounded like a beetle, was approaching from the other side of the crossing, and at the sight of them surging forward it veered in fright and seemed for a moment as if it would scurry off the road altogether to hide among the marsh grass. Then with a rumble they went bounding over the tracks and Phoebe turned about quickly to see the barrier fall the last few feet and stop with a bounce, and a moment later the train thundered through, sending after them a long, accusatory bellow that dwindled quickly into the distance and died. They flashed past the little black car, which sounded at them its own little bleat of protest and reproof. She realized that she was laughing, laughing and hiccuping, and her hands were clutching each other in her lap.

  They went on until the road took them around a bend, and then stopped. There was a sensation of gliding, and settling, as if they had landed gently out of the air. Phoebe put three fingers over her mouth. Had she really laughed? “What did you think you were doing?” she cried. “We could have been killed.” He did not turn to her, only slid himself forward at the hips with a luxuriating sigh and rested his head on the back of the seat. He put on his chauffeur’s cap, too, and tipped it over his eyes. She sat up very straight and glared at him, at the little that she could see of him, in the almost horizontal angle he was sprawled at. “And why have you stopped?”

  “Catch our breath,” he said, his voice coming up relaxed and amused from under the peak of his cap. She could think of nothing else to say. He reached up and adjusted the mirror and his eyes sprang at her again, seeming set more closely together than ever and cut across halfway by the shiny cap brim. He said in a low, insinuating sort of drawl, “Think I could try one of them English cigarettes?”

  She hesitated. She could hardly refuse, but honestly—! She felt distinctly giddy still. She snapped open the silver case and offered it over the padded back of the bench seat. He reached his left hand lazily across and took a cigarette, making sure his fingertips brushed against her hand. She could have done with another cigarette herself—she was beginning to understand why people smoked—but she knew obscurely that she must not seem to be joining him in anything that smacked of intimacy. She shut the case and returned it to her handbag—or purse, she must remember to say purse, in this country—and took out her lipstick instead, and peered into the little mirror of her compact. She could see clearly the two spots of bright pink on her cheekbones and the unsuppressible, almost wild light in her eyes. Well, at least she was not sleepy anymore.

  But when she had fixed her lips and put the lipstick and the compact away there seemed nothing else to do except sit with her hands in her lap and try not to look prim. The invisible thing that had sprouted earlier out of the silence between the two of them was turning rank now. Abruptly Andy Stafford stirred himself and rolled his window down a little way and threw out the unsmoked three-quarters of the cigarette.

  “Tastes like rawhide,” he said.

  He settled down as before, with his arms folded and his cap tipped over his eyes.

  “Are you intending to stay here all day?” Phoebe demanded.

  He waited a moment, and then said, putting on now the lazy, good-old-boy version of his drawl:

  “Why don’t you come and sit up here in front, with me?”

  She gave a little gasp.

  “I think,” she said, with all the weight and command she could muster, “that you should take me home.”

  It was peculiar, talking to him like this, ridiculous, really, since all she could see of him was the crown of his cap. He snickered and said:

  “Home? That’s a long way, even for a car as fancy as this one.”

  “You know very well what I mean,” she snapped. “Come on, drive—and not as if we’re in a race.”

  He straightened, taking his time, and started up the engine. At the next crossroads he steered them back in the direction of the coast. They did not speak now, but she could sense how pleased he was with himself. Had he really said that, about her com
ing into the front seat with him? Yet for all the indignation she was forcing herself to feel she was aware of another, altogether involuntary feeling, a sort of buzzing, burning sensation at the front of her mind that was uncomfortable and yet not entirely unpleasant, and her cheeks stung as if she had been slapped in a hard yet playful, provocative way. And when they arrived at the house and he made a little prancing leap out of the car in order to open the door for her before she had even begun to reach for the handle he gave her a look that was at once mocking, intimate, and inquiring, and she knew he was asking her wordlessly if she intended to tell the others—Quirke, Rose, his employer—of all that had taken place in this past, fraught hour—but what was it, exactly, that had taken place?—and try not to as she might she responded to his silent query with a silent reply of her own. No, she would not tell, and they both knew it. Blushing, her forehead and cheeks fairly on fire by now, she brushed past him, not daring to look into his eyes again, saying only, and trying to make it sound brusque and offhand, that he had better go back to the village and collect Mr. Quirke.

  THE MAN WAS WAITING FOR HIM ON A CORNER OF THE VILLAGE’S MAIN street. He looked like a big old storm-tossed crow, leaning there on his stick with his black coat blowing out sideways in the wind and his black hat tilted down over his face. Andy got out and made to open the passenger door, hoping Quirke would sit beside him, but Quirke had already opened a rear door and was climbing into the back seat. There was something about Quirke that Andy liked, or that at least he respected—he guessed that was the word. Maybe it was just Quirke’s size—Andy’s father had been a big man—and they had hardly got under way again when he started to tell him about his plan for Stafford Limos. As he talked, the plan came to seem more and more possible, more and more real, so that after a while it was almost as if Stafford Limos was already in operation. Quirke did not say much, but that was all right since Andy, as Andy realized, was really talking to himself.

  He was about to turn off the road and head for Moss Manor when Quirke interrupted him—he had got up to the Porsche that he was going to buy with his first six months’ profits from the limo scheme—and said that he wanted to go to Brookline.

  “A place called St. Mary’s,” Quirke said. “It’s an orphanage.”

  Andy said nothing, only turned the car. He felt a trickling sensation down his spine. He did not have to be told; he knew where and what St. Mary’s was. He had thought he would never again find himself anywhere near the place and now here was this guy wanting to be taken there. Why? Was he one of the Knights of Whatever-it-was, over from Ireland to do some checking up on the facilities, see how the kids were being cared for, if the nuns were behaving themselves? And was he going to go there without telling Mr. Crawford? Andy began to relax. That must be it: Quirke was a snoop. That was fine. He even liked the idea of Quirke getting the goods on old man Crawford and that bitch Stephanus—what kind of a name was that anyway?—and the harp priest Harkins. There was a thing or two Andy himself could have told Quirke, if it was not for the business with the kid. Again he felt that trickle along his backbone. What if Quirke found out about the kid dying? What if—but no. How would he find out, and who would tell him? Not Stephanus or the priest, and old Crawford probably knew nothing about the accident, and had probably even forgotten about the kid itself, since there were so many at St. Mary’s and at the other places all over the state. For everyone, little Christine was history, and her name was likely never going to be mentioned again. Still, it was a pity he could not let Quirke know just what sort of a joint St. Mary’s was—unless, of course, he knew already.

  28

  QUIRKE HAD NOT EXPECTED A RECEPTION PARTY. HE HAD TELEPHONED St. Mary’s from a bar in the village. He had been kept waiting on the line for a long time, feeding dimes into the phone and listening to his own breathing making sounds like the sea in the mouthpiece, before he was put through to the Mother Superior. In a crisply cold voice she had tried to establish who exactly he was and what his business with her might be. He told her his name, and said that he was staying at Josh Crawford’s house, and asked for ten minutes of her time, adding that the matter was a delicate one and that he would prefer not to speak of it over the phone. When she heard who he was he fancied he heard a quick indrawing of her breath. The more evasive he became the more suspicious she sounded, but in the end, and with lingering reluctance, she agreed that he might come to Brookline. He put down the phone and ordered another scotch: it was a little early in the day, but he needed to fortify himself.

  WHEN HE STEPPED INSIDE THE HIGH, ARCHED DOORWAY OF ST. Mary’s he caught at once the unmistakable smell of the past and the years fell away like the leaves of a calendar and he was an orphan again. He stood in the silent hallway and looked at the statues in their niches of Mary and Jesus and Joseph—gentle Joe held what seemed to be a wood plane in his improbably pale hands and looked both resentful and resigned—until a young nun with front teeth so prominent they seemed almost prehensile led him along soundless corridors and stopped at a door and knocked softly and a voice spoke from within.

  The Mother Superior, when she stood up behind her desk, was tall and gaunt and grimly handsome. It was the priest with her, however, who spoke first. He was potato-pale with pale-red hair and green eyes that were sharp yet muddy; Quirke knew the type, remembered it, from Carricklea days, and nights. The cleric came forward, smiling unctuously with his mouth only, a hand outstretched.

  “Mr. Quirke,” he said. “I’m Father Harkins, chaplain here at St. Mary’s.” His eyelashes, Quirke saw with almost a shiver, were almost white. He took Quirke’s hand but instead of shaking it he drew him by it gently forward to the desk. “And this is Sister Stephanus. And Sister Anselm.”

  Quirke had not noticed the other nun, standing off to his right, beside a vast, empty fireplace of marble and polished brick. She was short and broad, with a skeptical yet not, he thought, unsympathetic look. The two nuns nodded to him. Father Harkins, who seemed to have taken it on himself to be the spokesman, said:

  “You’re Mr. Crawford’s son-in-law? Mr. Crawford is a great friend of ours—a great friend of St. Mary’s.”

  Quirke was conscious of Sister Stephanus’s keen eye scanning him, like that of a fencing opponent, searching out his weak spots. The priest was about to speak again but the nun said:

  “What can we do for you, Mr. Quirke?”

  Hers was the voice of authority, and its tone told him who was really in charge here. Still she gazed at him, cool, candid, and even, it might be, a little amused. He fumbled his cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. Sister Stephanus, who had taken her seat again, pushed a large crystal ashtray to the front edge of the desk where he might more easily reach it. He asked about the child, saying her name would probably be Christine and that if she had a surname it was likely to be Falls. “I think she was brought here from Ireland,” he said. “I have reason to believe she came to St. Mary’s.”

  The silence that fell in the room was more eloquent than any words. Sister Stephanus touched lightly in succession a number of objects set out before her on the desk—a fountain pen, a paper knife, one of two telephones—taking care not to move any of them from their places. This time when she spoke she did not look at him.

  “What was it you wanted to know about this child, Mr. Quirke?”

  This child.

  “It is,” he said, “a personal matter.”

  “Ah.”

  There was another silence. The priest looked from the nun to Quirke and back again but had no word to offer. Suddenly, from where she stood by the fireplace, the other nun, Sister Anselm, coughed and said:

  “She died.”

  Father Harkins whirled on her with a look of panic, drawing a hand up sharply as if he might run forward and strike her, but Sister Stephanus did not flinch, and continued to regard Quirke with that cool, measuring gaze, as if she had heard nothing. The priest looked at her and licked his lips, and with an effort resumed his bland smile.

&n
bsp; “Ah, yes,” the priest said. “Little Christine. Yes, now I…” His tongue snaked over his lips again, his colorless eyelashes beating rapidly. “There was an accident, I’m afraid. She was with a family. Very unfortunate. Very sad.”

  This left yet another, trailing silence, into which Quirke said:

  “What family?” Father Harkins lifted his eyebrows. “The family that the child was with—who were they?”

  The priest gave a breathy laugh and this time lifted both his hands as if to catch an invisible, tricky ball that Quirke had lobbed at him.

  “Oh now, Mr. Quirke,” he said in a rush, “we couldn’t be giving out information of that nature. These situations call for great discretion, as I’m sure you’ll—”

  “I’d like to find out who she was,” Quirke said. “I mean, where she came from. Her history.”

  The priest was about to speak again but Sister Stephanus drew in a slow breath through her nostrils and he glanced at her uncertainly and was silent. The nun’s smile deepened. She said softly:

  “Don’t you know, Mr. Quirke?”

  He saw at once that he had blundered. If he knew nothing, they need not tell him anything. What did he have, other than a name? Abruptly Sister Stephanus rose from her chair with the brisk finality of a judge delivering a verdict.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Quirke, that we cannot help you,” she said. “As Father Harkins says, these matters are delicate. Information of the kind you ask for must be kept in the strictest confidence. It is our covenant, here at St. Mary’s. I know you’ll understand.” She must have pressed a bell under the desk for Quirke heard the door behind him open, and she looked past him and said, “Sister Anne, please show Mr. Quirke out.” She held out a hand to him and he had no choice but to rise too and take it. “Good-bye, Mr. Quirke. So nice to have met you. Please give our kind regards to Mr. Crawford. We hear he’s not in the best of health.”