pink she had picked for the baby’s room, but it looked fine, now that it had dried. The store had promised to deliver the crib this morning, and Andy had arranged for their things to be brought over from the old place on a flatbed by one of his buddies in the afternoon. For now she was enjoying the look of the rooms before they were filled up. She liked the emptiness, the space, the way the sun fell slanting on the wall here in the living room, the way the polished maple floor rang clean and solid under her heels.
“Oh, Andy,” she said, “isn’t it just the prettiest place? And to think, it’s all ours!”
He was on one knee in a corner, jiggling a loose power socket in the wall there. “Yeah,” he said without turning, “old Crawford has a real big heart.”
She went and stood behind him, leaning her hips against his back and draping her arms around his shoulders, savoring his strong, metallic smell that she always thought of as blue, the jukebox blue of spilled machine oil or a sheet of pliant milled steel.
“Come on,” she said, reaching down past his shoulders and patting his chest with her two hands, “don’t be such a sourpuss.”
She was about to speak again, to tell him how handsome he looked in the dark pants and the sport jacket, but just then the baby in the bassinet behind her woke up. Claire was secretly thrilled at the way the baby’s-Christine, she must get used to thinking of her by her name-at the way Christine’s thin, rising wail, like the sound of a flute or some high instrument like that, already affected her, causing something to move in her stomach and making her heart beat faster and more heavily, as though it was a fist thumping softly inside her chest. “What’s wrong with baby then, hmm?” she whispered. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like our nice new housey?”
She wished her mother could be alive to see her now. Daddy would only laugh, of course, and wipe the back of his hand across his mouth, as if to wipe away a bad taste.
She smiled at Andy and snuffed up a deep breath through her nostrils. “Smell that,” she said. “Fresh paint!”
Andy was balancing on one leg, pulling on a boot. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Let’s go get a hamburger.”
She said all right, although she did not want to leave yet, wanted to stay and get used to the place, to let it soak into her. There was a short hall beside the kitchenette with a sort of French door at the end of it that opened onto a set of rickety wooden stairs leading steeply down into the yard at the side; this would be their front door. Andy went first, descending the stairs sideways and holding her by the elbow to steady her as she followed with the baby in her arms. This was one of the things she loved most about him, the easy, graceful way he had of being helpful, not just to her but others, too-women in stores, children, the one-armed old man at the gas station out on the turnpike who looked after the pumps; sometimes Negroes, even.
The backyard was brown after the dry summer and the grass crackled under their feet and gave off dust that smelled like wood ash, and crickets the same color as the grass clicked their hinged back legs and sailed away from them on all sides. There was nothing in this part of the yard, only a gnarled peach tree, its leaves gone already, and an old overgrown dug patch where someone must have raised vegetables, long ago.
“Well,” Claire said, with a rueful laugh, “this is going to take some rethinking.”
“What gives you the idea it’s going to be ours to rethink?” Andy said.
He was looking past her toward the house, and she turned and saw a tall, thin-faced woman standing on the porch, watching them. Her no-color hair was pulled back and tied in a tight ball at the back of her neck. She wore a brown apron.
“Why, hello there,” Claire said, going forward with the baby in one arm and a hand outstretched. It was a strategy she had devised for meeting new people, always to make a move right away, before her shyness had time to stop her. The woman on the porch ignored the hand she was offering and she quickly took it back. “I’m Claire Stafford,” she said.
The woman looked her up and down and was obviously unimpressed with what she saw. “Bennett,” she said. When she shut her mouth her lips made a straight, colorless line.
She must be thirty-five, Claire guessed, but she gave an even older impression. Claire wondered if Mr. Bennett was about, or if there was a Mr. Bennett. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. “We’re moving in today. We were just up there, getting the feel of the place.”
The woman nodded. “I heard the baby.”
Claire held out the bundle in her arms. “This is Christine,” she said. The woman ignored the baby; she was squinting at Andy standing back in the dry grass with his hands in the seat pockets of his jeans and his head on one side, and the look in her eye warmed a half a degree or so, Claire noted. “That’s my husband, Andy,” Claire said. She lowered her voice to a woman-to-woman level. “He’s a mite put out,” she said. “I think he thinks the place is on the small side.”
She knew at once it had been the wrong thing to say.
“That right?” the woman said coldly. “Guess he’s used to grander quarters, is he?”
Andy must have seen from the angle of Claire’s back that she needed rescuing. He came forward with his widest grin.
“Howdy there,” he said, “Miss…?”
“Bennett,” the woman said. “Mrs.”
“No!” He lifted a hand in mock amazement and opened wide his velvety brown eyes. Claire watched him with an amusement in which there was only the faintest touch of jealousy. His charm knew no shame, and always worked, however obvious the lies he told. “Well,” he said to the woman, “I’m mighty glad to make your acquaintance.”
He stepped up on the porch and she let him take her hand, having wiped it first on her apron.
“Likewise, I’m sure,” she said.
Claire saw how he held her fingers in his a moment before releasing them, and how her tight lips twitched into a smile.
There was silence then between the three of them. Faintly, like the rumbling of far-off thunder, Claire felt the first beats of a headache starting up. The baby flexed its arm, pressing out the blanket as if it-she-Christine-also wanted to reach out to this hard-faced, long-boned woman. Claire drew the warm bundle more tightly to her breast.
Andy slapped his hands against his hips. “Well,” he said, “I guess it’s about lunchtime.” He waited a second, but if he expected the Bennett woman to invite them in then he was disappointed. “Let’s go get something to eat, honey,” he said. “I’ll fetch my billfold.”
He went off up the wooden stairway two at a time. Claire smiled at Mrs. Bennett and turned to follow him. The woman said:
“I hope that baby ain’t a bawler. Noise carries easily, in these tiny little houses.”
11
QUIRKE COULD NOT REMEMBER THE LAST TIME HE HAD BEEN IN THE hospital chapel, and he was not sure what he was doing here now. The doors, giving off the corridor that led to radiology, struck an incongruous note, with their fancy handles and the two narrow panels of stained glass that some rich old lady had paid to have installed a couple of years previously in memory of her married daughter who had died. The air in here was always cold, with a special sort of cold not to be felt elsewhere, but which Quirke associated, unaccountably, with the vase of lilies that had stood every summer on the altar of the chapel in Carricklea-he used to believe it was always the same bunch, miraculously undying-into the bell of one of which he had one day dared to put his hand, and the chill, clammy, flesh-like feel of which he had never forgotten. The Holy Family chapel was small, without pillars or side alcoves, so that there was no avoiding the beady eye of the little oil lamp with the ruby-red globe that burned perpetually before the tabernacle. It was there at noon that Quirke found Mal, kneeling with hands joined and head bowed before a statue of St. Joseph. He went forward quietly and sat down in the seat beside where Mal knelt. Mal did not turn, and gave no sign to acknowledge his presence, but after a minute or two he crossed himself and sat back on the seat with a sigh. They were both silent for a time; then Quirke lifted a hand and made a gesture indicating the statue, the sanctuary lamp, the altar with its gold-embroidered white cloth, and said: “Tell me, Mal, do you really believe in all this?”
