35
QUIRKE KNEW IT WAS TIME TO GO. THERE WAS NOTHING HERE FOR him any longer, if there ever had been anything, except confusion, mistakes, damage. In the bedroom he turned Delia’s and Phoebe’s photographs once more to face the room; he did not fear his dead wife anymore; she had been exorcised, somehow. He began to pack his bag. The daylight was at an end, and beyond the windows the vague snow-shapes were merging into shadow. He felt unwell. The central heating made the air in the house dense and oppressive, and it seemed to him he had been suffering from a headache, more or less, since the night he had arrived. He did not know what to think, about Phoebe, Mal, Sarah, about Andy Stafford-about any of them. He was tired of trying to know what he should think. His anger at everything had subsided to a background hum. He was conscious too of a faint, simmering sense of desperation; it was like that feeling that would threaten to overwhelm him at the start of certain days in childhood when there was nothing in prospect, nothing of interest, nothing to do. Is that how his life would be from now on-a sort of living afterlife, a wandering in a limbo among other souls who, like him, were neither saved nor lost?
When Rose Crawford came into the room he knew at once what would happen. She was wearing a black blouse and black slacks. “I think mourning becomes me,” she said, “don’t you?” He went back to his packing. She stood in the middle of the floor with her hands in the pockets of her slacks, watching him. He had a shirt in his hands; she took it from him and laid it out on the bed and began expertly to fold it. “I used to work in a dry cleaners,” she said, and glanced at him over her shoulder. “That surprises you, I bet.”
Now it was he who stood watching her. He lit a cigarette.
“Two things I want from you,” he said.
She laid the folded shirt in his suitcase and took up another and began to fold it too.
“Oh, yes?” she said. “And what things would they be?”
“I want you to promise me to stop the funds for this business with the babies. And I want you to let Phoebe come home with me.”
She shook her head briefly, concentrating on the shirt.
“Phoebe is going to stay here,” she said.
“No.” He was quite calm; he spoke softly. “Let her go.”
She put the second shirt on top of the first in the suitcase and came and took the cigarette from his fingers and drew on it and gave it back to him.
“Oops,” she said, “sorry-lipstick again.” She measured him with a smiling look, her head tilted to one side. “It’s too late, Quirke. You’ve lost her.”
“You know she’s my daughter.”
She nodded, still smiling.
“Of course. Josh, after all, was in on your little exchange, and Josh and I had no secrets from each other. It was one of the nicer things about us.”
It was as if something had swooped down on him suddenly from above-he saw its darkness against his eyes and seemed to feel the beating of its wings about his head. He had taken her by the shoulders and was shaking her furiously. The cigarette flew from his fingers.
She stepped back, deftly disengaging herself from his grasp, and went and picked up the burning cigarette from the carpet and carried it across the room and dropped it into the empty fireplace.
“You should be careful, Quirke,” she said, “you could set the house on fire.” She kneaded her shoulder. “What a grip you have-really, you don’t know your own strength.”
He saw that she was trying not to laugh. He launched himself forward on his resistant leg, crossing the space between them as if it were not a walk he was doing but a sort of upright falling. He did not know what he might do when he reached her, whether he would slap her, or knock her to the floor. What he did was take her in his arms. She was of a surprising lightness, and he could plainly feel the bones beneath her flesh. When he kissed her he crushed his mouth on hers and tasted blood, whose, hers or his, he was not sure.
THE NIGHT, GLOSSY AND DENSELY DARK, PRESSED ITSELF AGAINST THE windows on opposite sides of the room. Rose said, “You could both stay, you know, you and Phoebe. Let the rest of them go back to Mother Ireland. We might make it work, the three of us. You’re like me, Quirke, admit it. You’re more like me than you’re like your precious Sarah. A cold heart and a hot soul, that’s you and me.” He began to speak but she touched a fingertip quickly to his lips. “No, no, don’t say anything. Silly of me to ask.” She twisted away from him and sat on the side of the bed with her back turned. She smiled wryly at him over her shoulder. “Don’t you love me even a little? You could lie, you know. I wouldn’t mind. You’re good at lying.”
He said nothing, only rolled onto his back, the pain in his knee flaring, and gazed up at the ceiling. Rose nodded, and searched in the pockets of his jacket for his cigarettes, and lit one, and leaned over him and put it into his lips.
“Poor Quirke,” she said softly. “You’re in such trouble, aren’t you. I wish I could help.” She went and stood in front of the mirror, frowning, and combing her fingers through her hair. Behind her he sat up on the bed; she saw him in the glass, a great, pale bear. He reached for the ashtray on the bedside table. “It’s probably not a help,” she said, “but there’s one thing I can tell you. You’re wrong about Mal and that girl, the girl with the baby-I can’t remember her name.” He looked up and met her eyes in the mirror. She shook her head at him almost pityingly. “Believe me, Quirke, you got it all wrong.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I know I did.”
HE WAS AT ST. MARY’S EARLY. HE ASKED TO SPEAK TO SISTER STEPHANUS. The nun with the buckteeth, wringing her hands, insisted there was no one who could see him at that hour or, her look implied, at any other hour, for that matter. He asked for Sister Anselm. Sister Anselm, the nun said, was gone away-she was in another convent now, in Canada. Quirke did not believe her. He sat down on a chair in the lobby and put his hat on his lap and said he would wait until there was someone who would talk to him. The young nun went away, and presently Father Harkins appeared, his jawline rawly aflame from the morning razor and his right eye twitching. He came forward with his smile. Quirke pushed himself to his feet on his stick. He ignored the hand the priest was offering him. He said he wanted to see the child’s grave. Harkins goggled at him.
“The grave?”
“Yes. I know she’s buried here. I want to see whose name is on the gravestone.”
The priest began to bluster but Quirke would have none of it. He hefted the heavy black stick menacingly in his hand.
“I could call the police, you know,” Harkins said.
“Oh, sure,” Quirke said with a dry laugh, “sure you could.”
The priest was growing increasingly agitated.
“Listen,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper, “Mr. Griffin is there-he’s there now, visiting, before he leaves.”
“I don’t care,” Quirke said, “if the Pope is there. I want to see that gravestone.”
The priest insisted on his coat and his galoshes. The young nun brought them. She glanced at Quirke and could not suppress a glint of renewed interest and even admiration-evidently she was unused to seeing Father Harkins made to do what he was told.
The morning was raw, with low, rolling clouds and a wet wind driving flecks of sleet before it. Quirke and the priest went around by the side of the building, through a kitchen garden patched with snow and down a graveled pathway to a low wooden gate, where the priest stopped, and turned.
“Mr. Quirke,” he said, “please, take my advice. Go from here. Go home to Ireland. Forget all this. If you walk through this gate, you’ll regret it.”
Quirke said nothing, only lifted his stick and pointed it at the gate, and the priest with a sigh undid the latch and stood back.
THE CEMETERY WAS SMALLER THAN HE EXPECTED, JUST A BIT OF FIELD, really, sloped at one corner, with a view of the city’s towers to the east, huddled in a winter mist. There were no headstones, only small wooden crosses, leaning at all angles. The size of the graves was a shock, each one no more than a couple of feet long.
