Christine Falls: A Novele

by Benjamin Black

  “So many orphans.”

  The Judge was swift.

  “Phoebe wasn’t an orphan, was she?” His face darkened, the blue blotches turning to purple. “Some people are not meant to have children. Some people haven’t the right.”

  “And who decides?”

  “We do!” the old man cried harshly. “We decide! Women in the tenements of Dublin and Cork bearing seventeen, eighteen children in as many years. What sort of a life would those youngsters face? Aren’t they better off out here, with families that can take care of them, cherish them? Answer me that.”

  “So you’re the judge and jury,” Quirke said wearily. “You’re God Himself.”

  “How dare you, you of all people! What right have you to question me? Look to the mote in your own eye, boyo.”

  “And Mal? Is he another judge, or just the court clerk?”

  “Pah. Mal is a fixer, that’s all—he couldn’t even be trusted to keep the unfortunate girl alive when she had her baby. No, Quirke, you were the son I wanted.”

  A gust of wind swooped down on them, throwing a handful of sleet like slivers of glass in their faces.

  “I’m taking Phoebe home with me,” Quirke said. “I want her away from here. Away from you, too.”

  “You think you can start being a father to her now?”

  “I can try.”

  “Aye,” the old man said with high sarcasm, “you can try.”

  “I want you to tell me about Dolly Moran.”

  “And just what is it you want me to tell you?”

  “Did you know,” Quirke said, looking off again toward that line of lead-blue water that was the river, “that she used to go up to the orphanage every day, for years, and stand outside the playground, looking to see if she could spot her child, her boy, among all the others.”

  The Judge’s look turned vague.

  “What sort of a thing was that for her to be doing?” he muttered.

  “Tell me,” Quirke said, “you were on the board of visitors—did you ever really know what Carricklea was like, the things that went on there?”

  “You got out, didn’t you?” the old man snarled. “I got you out.”

  “You did—but who was it put me in?” The Judge glowered and said something under his breath, and set off determinedly in the direction of the gate, where Harkins in his coat and his galoshes was still waiting “Look around you, Garret,” Quirke called after him. “Look at your achievement.”

  The Judge paused and turned back.

  “These are only the dead,” he said “You don’t see the living. It’s God’s work we’re doing, Quirke. In twenty years’, thirty years’ time, how many young people will be willing to give their lives to the ministry? We’ll be sending back missionaries from here to Ireland—to Europe. God’s work. You won’t stop it. And by Christ, Quirke, you better not try.”

  TO THE END QUIRKE WAS SURE THAT PHOEBE WOULD COME TO SAY good-bye to him. He waited on the gravel outside Moss Manor, scanning the windows of the house for a sign of her, while the taxi driver was stowing his bags. It was a day of bleak sunshine, and a cutting wind was blowing in from the sea. In the end it was not Phoebe who came, but Sarah. Wearing no coat, she appeared in the doorway and after a moment’s hesitation walked across the gravel with her arms folded and a cardigan pulled tight around her. She asked him what time his flight was. She said she hoped the journey would not be too dreadful, in this winter weather that seemed set never to end. He drew close to her, canted on his stick, and made to speak, but she stopped him.

  “Don’t, Quirke, please,” she said, “don’t say you’re sorry. I couldn’t bear it.”

  “I begged her to come home with me. She refused.”

  She shook her head wearily.

  “It’s too late,” she said. “You know that.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Oh, I’ll stay, for a little while, at least.” She laughed unsteadily. “Mal wants me to go into the Mayo Clinic—to have my head examined!” She tried to laugh again but failed. She looked off, frowning, in the direction of the sea. “Perhaps Phoebe and I can become”—she smiled miserably—“perhaps we can become friends. Besides, someone has to keep her out of Rose’s clutches. Rose wants to take her to Europe and make her into a Henry James heroine.” She paused, and looked down; she was never as dear to him as when she looked at her feet like that, scanning the ground frowningly for something that was never there. “Did you sleep with her,” she asked mildly, “with Rose?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said, without rancor.

  She took a deep breath of the icy air and then, glancing over her shoulder toward the house, she brought from under her cardigan a rolled-up paper scroll and pressed it into his hand.

  “Here,” she said. “You’ll know what to do with this.” It was a school jotter, with a dog-eared orange cover. He made to pull off the rubber band that was holding it rolled but she put her hand over his and said, “No—read it on the plane.”

  “How did you get it?”

  “She sent it to me, the Moran woman, that poor creature. God knows why—I hadn’t seen her since Phoebe was a baby.”

  He nodded.

  “She remembered you,” he said. “She asked after you. Said you had been good to her.” He put the jotter, still rolled, into the pocket of his overcoat. “What do you want me to do with it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Whatever is necessary.”

  “You’ve read it?”

  “Enough of it—as much as I could bear.”

  “I see. Then you know.”

  She nodded.

  “Yes, I know.”

  He took a breath, feeling the cold clutch of air on his lungs.

  “If I do with this what I think I should do with it,” he said, measuring his words, “you know what the effect will be?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “I know it will be bad. What about Mal?”

  “Oh,” she said, “Mal will survive. He was the least of it, after all.”

  “I thought—”

  He stopped.

  “You thought Mal was the father of that unfortunate young woman’s child. Yes, I knew you did. It’s why I wanted you to talk to him—I thought he would tell you how things really were. But he wouldn’t have, of course. He’s very loyal—to a father who never loved him. Isn’t it ironic?”

  They were silent then. He thought that he should kiss her, but knew it was impossible.

  “Good-bye, Sarah,” he said.

  “Good-bye, Quirke.” She was looking into his face with a faint, quizzical smile. “You were loved, you know,” she said. “Or that’s the point, I suppose—you didn’t.”

  EPILOGUE

  A FRESH WIND WAS BLOWING IN LIVELY GUSTS, BRINGING TO THE CITY streets the news of far fields and trees and water. It was spring. As Quirke walked along he lifted his blackthorn stick now and then and took an experimental step without its aid. Pain, but not much; a sharp, hot twinge, the metal pin’s reminder.

  He was shown into Inspector Hackett’s office, where the sunlight made its way but feebly through the grimed window. Most of the space in the narrow room was taken up by a large ugly wooden desk. Yellowed files sat in stacks on the floor roundabout, and there was a rack of dusty newspapers, and books with torn, illegible spines—what kind of books, Quirke wondered, would Hackett be likely to read?—and the top of the desk was a raft with a jumble of things swimming on it, documents that obviously had not been moved in months, two mugs, one containing pencils and the other the dregs of the Inspector’s morning tea, a shapeless piece of metal which the Inspector said was a souvenir of the wartime German bombing of North Strand, and, lying curled where he had dropped it, Dolly Moran’s diary. The Inspector, in shirtsleeves and wearing his hat, sat leaning far back in his chair with his feet on a corner of the desk and his hands folded across his belly, which was fastened tightly into a bulging blue waistcoat.

 
Hackett gestured at the jotter on the desk.

  “She wasn’t exactly James Joyce, was she, poor Dolly,” he said, and sucked his teeth.

  “But will you be able to use it?” Quirke said.

  “Oh, sure, I’ll do what I can,” the Inspector said. “But these are powerful people we’re dealing with here, Mr. Quirke—you realize that, I presume. This fellow Costigan alone, he has a lot of clout in this town, the same fellow.”

  “But we have clout too,” Quirke said, nodding toward the jotter.

  Hackett gave his belly a happy little squeeze.

  “God, Mr. Quirke, but you’re a fierce vindictive man!” he said. “Your own family, as good as. Tell me”—he lowered his voice to a confidential tone—“why are you doing it?”

  Quirke considered.

  “I don’t know, Inspector,” he said at length. “Maybe because I’ve never really done anything before in my life.”

  Hackett nodded, then sniffed.

  “There’ll be a lot of dust,” he said, “if these particular pillars of society are brought down. A lot of dust, and bricks, and rubble. A body would want to be standing well out of the way.”

  “But you’ll do it, all the same.”

  Hackett took his feet from the desk and leaned forward and scrabbled among the litter of papers and found a packet of cigarettes and offered it to Quirke and they lit up.

  “I’ll try, Mr. Quirke,” the Inspector said. “I’ll try.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to: Jennifer Barth, Peter Beilby, Mary Callery, Joan Egan, Alan Gilsenan, Louise Gough, Roy Heayberd, Robyn Kershaw, Andrew Kidd, Linda Klejus, Sandra Levy, Laura Magahy, Ian Meldon, Jo Pitkin, Maria Rejt, Beatrice von Rezzori, Barry Ruane, John Sterling.

  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.