would point out to each other the more pathetic efforts the householders had made to add a bit of class to their properties, the fancy nameplates screwed to wrought-iron gates, with names like Dunroamin, or Lisieux, or St. Jude’s; the venetian blinds proudly displayed in every single window, no matter how tiny or narrow; the preposterous built-on porches, with leaded panes of stained glass and miniature plaster statues of the Sacred Heart or the Blessed Virgin or the Little Flower presiding in niches over the front door. And then there were the garden ornaments, the fake fountains, the plastic Bambis, the jolly, red-cheeked gnomes peeping out among the beds of hydrangeas and snapdragons and phlox. Oh, how they laughed at all this, a hand pressed over their mouths and their eyes bulging. And how soiled this made Dannie feel, how gloriously soiled.
They played amusing games. They would stop outside a house where a pensioner was mowing the lawn, and simply sit and stare at him until he took fright and fled indoors, where they would see him, a reddened old nose and one wild eye, lurking behind the lace curtains like some burrowing creature scared into its hole. Or they would fix on a housewife coming home from the shops loaded down with bags of groceries, and drive along in first gear at a walking pace a couple of yards behind her. Children they tended to leave in peace-it was not so long since they had been children themselves, and they remembered what it was like-but now and then they would pull up at a curb and Dannie would ask the way of a fat boy in bulging short pants, or a washed-out girl in pigtails, speaking to them not in English but in French, and pretending to be puzzled and offended that they did not understand her. When they tired of these games they would drive back into the city and stop for afternoon tea at the Shelbourne or the Hibernian, and Teddy would amuse himself by submerging halfpennies in the sugar bowls and the little pots of jam, or squashing out cigarette butts under the little vases of flowers that adorned the tables.
Today Teddy was agog to hear every detail of the afternoon in Howth. He knew David Sinclair slightly, and professed to think him altogether too slippery and sly, “like all the Jews,” as he said darkly; Phoebe he had not met, but he clapped his hands and crowed in delight at Dannie’s malicious description of her, the little pale pinched face and the mouse claws, the bobbed black hair, the sort of dirndl thing she had worn with the elasticated bodice and convent girl’s lace collar.
“But weren’t they on a date?” Teddy asked. “Why did Sinclair bring you along?”
Dannie paused. She did not like the dismissive way he said it. Why would David not ask her to come with him and Phoebe, even if it was a date? “It wasn’t like that,” she said sulkily. “It wasn’t a date date.”
They were driving slowly down a long road of featureless houses somewhere in Finglas, she thought it was, or Cabra, maybe, on the lookout for likely victims to follow and stare at.
“Do you think they’re-you know-doing it?” Teddy asked.
“She doesn’t seem the type. Besides, I think something happened to her, in America.”
“What sort of something?” Teddy asked. He was wearing a blue yachting blazer with brass buttons and a crest on the pocket, and fawn slacks. She had noticed that he had begun to use perfume, though she supposed he would say it was shaving lotion.
“I think she might have been…” She hesitated. This was too much, too much; she should stop now and say not another word on the subject.
“Might have been what?” Teddy demanded.
“Well”-she could not stop-“ravished, I think.”
Teddy’s brown eyes widened to the size of pennies. “Ravished?” he said, in a hoarse whisper. “Do tell.”
“Can’t,” she said. “Don’t know. It was just a remark she made, about being caught in a car with somebody when she was over there. It was years ago. As soon as she saw I was interested she changed the subject.”
Teddy pouted disappointedly. “Did you ask the Rabbi Sinclair?”
“Did I ask him what?”
“If they’re doing it or not!”
“Of course I didn’t. I suppose you would have.”
“I certainly would.”
There was nothing Teddy would not ask about, nothing he would not ferret into, no matter how private or painful. He had got her to describe to him that Sunday morning at Brooklands, the blood, and the horror. He had envied her; she had seen it in his eyes, the almost yearning expression in them.
“Oh, look,” he said now, urgently, “look at the fat lady hanging up her bloomers on the clothesline-let’s pull over and have a good gander at her.” He drew the car to the curb and stopped. The woman had not noticed them yet. She had a clutch of clothes-pegs in her mouth. “A laundry line on the front lawn,” Teddy murmured. “That’s a new one.”
Dannie was glad that he was diverted. She was feeling more and more guilty for talking as she had. She liked Phoebe; Phoebe was funny, in a clever, understated way, a way that Dannie could never be. And Phoebe was fond of David Sinclair, that was obvious, and perhaps he was fond of her, though it was always hard to tell, with David. She wanted him to be happy. She wondered if she might be a little in love with him herself. But in that case would she not be jealous of Phoebe? She knew she did not understand these things, love, and passion, and wanting someone. That had all been stopped in her, long ago, tied off, the way a doctor would tie off her tubes so as to keep her from having babies. In fact, that was a thing she was going to have done as soon as she could find somewhere to go; it would have to be in London, she supposed. She would ask Francoise; it was the kind of thing Francoise would know about.
The fat woman was a disappointment; when she had finished hanging up the laundry she merely threw them a look and chuckled and waddled off into the house.
“Cow,” Teddy said in disgust, and drove them away.
They did not go for tea that day, but went to the Phoenix Park instead. Teddy parked the car by the Wellington Monument and they strolled over the grass, under the trees. The sunlight seemed vague somehow and diffused, as if it were weary after so many hours of shining without stint. A herd of deer grazing in a cloud of pale dust stopped at their approach and lifted their heads, their nostrils twitching and stumpy ears waggling. Stupid animals, Dannie thought, and only pretty from a distance; up close they were shabby, and their coats looked like lichen.
“You know,” she said, “they’re saying now that Richard was murdered.”
Teddy did not seem surprised, or even much interested, and she was sorry she had spoken. It was when she was bored that she blurted things out. She remembered how when she was a child, at Brooklands, she would squat by the pond at the bottom of the Long Field and poke a stick into the muddy shallows and watch the water bugs swimming and scurrying frantically away. How nice it was the way the mud would swirl up in chocolaty spirals, and then spread itself out until all the water was the color of tea, or turf, or dead leaves, and nothing more was to be seen of all that life down there, all that squirming, desperate life.
“Who did it?” Teddy inquired casually. “Do they know?”
He seemed so calm, indifferent, almost. Had he known about Richard, what he was like, the things he did? Perhaps everyone knew. She felt a little thrill of terror. She remembered at school those curious periods of suspended waiting, after she had done something bad and before it was found out. They gave her the same kind of thrill, those breathless intervals, and she would feel as if she were floating weightlessly in some medium lighter even than air and yet wonderfully sustaining. But what, now, had she done, that she was waiting to be discovered? And how would they punish her, since she was not guilty, not really?
“No,” she said, “they don’t know who killed him. At least no one has said, if they do.” She giggled; it was a real giggle; it startled her. “Francoise is trying to make them think it was your father.”
Teddy stopped and bent to detach a twig from the leg of his slacks. “Trying to make who think?”
“The police. And that doctor fellow, Quirke, that David works with.”
“Quirke.”
“Yes. He’s Phoebe’s father, as a matter of fact.”
He straightened. “Didn’t you say her name was Griffin?”
“She was adopted or something, I don’t know.”
“He’s a doctor?”
“A pathologist. He came down with the Guards, that day.”
“But why would your sister-in-law be trying to convince him of anything?”
