forced to keep moving in her wake. “She wouldn’t have,” she said.
“What?”
“This is a laundry, Mr. Quirke, not a lying-in hospital.”
Spirited for a moment, she allowed herself to look him defiantly in the face, then lowered her eyes again.
“So where
“I’m sure I don’t know. The girls who come to us have…they have already…given birth.”
“And what would have become of the babies they would have left behind them when they were sent here?”
“They would have gone to an orphanage, of course. Or often they-” She stopped herself. They had arrived at the glass door of the vestibule and with undisguised relief she pushed it open and stood back to let him go through. He paused in the doorway, however, and stood facing her. He tried by staring hard at her to make her yield, to make her give him something, however little it might be, but she would not. “These girls, Mr. Quirke,” she said coldly, “they find themselves in trouble, with no one to help. Often the families reject them. Then they are sent to us.”
“Yes,” he said drily, “and I’m sure you are a great comfort to them.”
The transparent azure irises of her eyes seemed to whiten for a moment, as if a gas had formed briefly behind them. Was it anger that was flaring there? The stained-glass panels of the door at her back had the look of a lurid, storm-riven sky, and he was startled and not a little appalled to find himself picturing her naked, a stark white impassioned figure by El Greco.
“We do our best,” she said, “in the circumstances. It’s all any of us can do.”
“Yes, Sister,” he said, in a forced contrite voice, embarrassed as that conjured image of her nakedness hovered still, refusing to fade. “I understand.”
ONCE OUTSIDE HE TURNED AND MADE HIS WAY DOWN THE HILL IN THE direction of the river. The sky was heavy with a seamless weight of putty-colored cloud that looked to be hardly higher than the rooftops of the houses on either side of the road, and flurries of heavy wet snow scudded before the wind. He turned up his coat collar and pulled low the brim of his hat. Why was he persisting like this? he asked himself. What were they to him, Christine Falls, or Christine Falls’s bastard, or Dolly Moran, who was murdered? What was Mal to him, for that matter? And yet he knew he could not leave it behind him, this dark and tangled business. He had some kind of duty, he owed some kind of debt, to whom, he was not sure.
20
MOSS MANOR’S FAMOUS CRYSTAL GALLERY COULD ACCOMMODATE three hundred people and still not seem overcrowded. The Irish millionaire who had built the house, back in the 1860s, had handed his architect a picture of the Crystal Palace in London torn from an illustrated magazine and ordered him to copy it. The result was a huge, ungainly construction of iron and glass, resembling the eye of a giant insect, fixed to the southeastern flank of the house and glaring out across Massachusetts Bay toward Provincetown. Within, the great room was steam-heated by a latticework of underfloor piping, and palms grew in profusion, and dozens of species of orchids, and nameless dark-green creepers that wound their tendrils around the iron pillars that were themselves molded in the shape of slender tree trunks shooting up dizzyingly to spread in sprays of metal fronds under the gleaming canopy of glass a hundred feet above. Today, long trestle tables were set up under the palms, bearing heaping platters of festive food, sliced turkey and ham and goose, and silver tubs of potato salad, and thick slices of fruitcake, and glistening plum puddings shaped like anarchists’ bombs. Bowls of fruit punch were ranged at intervals along the tables, and there were ranks of bottled beer for the men. From a stage at one side a band of musicians in white tuxedos was blaring out show tunes, and couples were dancing restrainedly between the tables. Sprigs of plastic holly were tucked incongruously among the palm leaves, and streamers of colored crepe paper were strung from trunk to trunk and from pillar to metal pillar, and above the stage a white satin banner pinned with red block letters wished all the staff of Crawford Transport a Merry Xmas. Outside, the already darkening afternoon was dense with frost smoke, and the ornamental gardens were hidden under snow and the ocean was a leaden line in front of a bank of lavender-tinted fog. Now and then a pane-sized square of snow would slide from the roof and burst into powder and cascade in eerie silence down the glass wall and disappear into the drifts that had already built up at the edges of the lawn, white into white.
The party had hardly been going an hour and already Andy Stafford had drunk too many bottles of beer. Claire as usual had wanted to be at a table at the front, to see everything that was going on, but he had insisted on getting as far away as he could get from that band-Glenn Miller types, average age a hundred or so-and now he was sitting on his own, glowering at his wife where she was dancing with that son-of-a-bitch Joe Lanigan. The baby was in her bassinet at his feet, though he did not understand how she could sleep with all the noise going on. Claire had said he would get used to the kid in time, but the months had passed and he still felt that his life had been invaded. It was like when he was a kid himself and his cousin Billy came to live with them after his old man blew his brains out with a hunting rifle. The baby was always there, just like cousin Billy had been, with his farm boy’s big hands and straw-colored eyelashes, watching and listening and breathing on everything.
Joe Lanigan was a trucker like Andy, a big, freckle-faced Irishman with a boxy head and arms as long as an ape’s. He danced like a hillbilly, lifting his knees high and lunging down sideways until his fist with Claire’s hand folded in it almost banged on the floor. Andy eyed them sourly. Claire was talking nonstop-what about?-and grinning in that way she did when she was excited, showing her upper gums. The number came to an end with a brassy shout from the trumpet, and Lanigan stepped back and made an exaggerated, sweeping bow, and Claire pressed her clasped hands to her breast and put her head to one side and batted her eyelashes, like she was some heroine out of the silent movies, and she and Lanigan both laughed. Lanigan went back to his table, where that sidekick of his whose name Andy could not remember, a little fat guy with slicked-back hair who looked like Lou Costello, was sitting with a couple of pizza-waitress types. As Lanigan sat down he glanced back over his shoulder at Claire making her way between the tables toward Andy, smiling to herself, and he said something, and the fat guy and the two broads laughed, and the fat guy looked across at Andy with what seemed a pitying sort of grin.
“Oh, I’m dizzy!” Claire said, arriving at the table.
She sat down opposite him and swung her knees in under the table and lifted a hand to touch her hair, still being the movie star. She did not seem dizzy to him. Her blouse had damp patches under the arms. He stood up, saying he was going to get another beer, and she asked in her sweetest little voice if he did not think that maybe he should take it easy, and even though she made herself smile as she said it he scowled at her. Then she said that since he was up he could get her a glass of punch. As he was walking away she leaned forward eagerly and peered into the bassinet with another one of those loony smiles of hers.
He knew he should not do it, but when he had got the drinks he made a detour that would bring him past Lanigan’s table. He stopped and said hello. Lanigan, whose back was to him, made a show of being surprised, and swiveled his big square head and looked up at him, and asked him how he was doing, and called him
“Hey, Cuddy,” Andy said, still keeping it light, keeping it calm. “See something funny, do you?” The fat man raised his eyebrows, which were heavy and black and looked painted on. “I said,” Andy repeated, making his voice go hard, “do you see something funny?”
Cuddy, too near to laughter to risk answering, looked at Lanigan, who answered for him. “Hey, hey,” he said, lightly laughing himself, “take it easy, Stafford. Where’s your Christmas spirit?”
One of the women giggled and leaned sideways to the other one until their shoulders met. The one who had laughed was large and blowsy, her big front teeth flecked with lipstick; the other was thin and Spanish-looking, showing a bony expanse of broiled chicken breast in the loose V-shaped neck of her blouse.
“I’m just asking the question,” Andy said, ignoring the women as if they were not there. “Do either of you guys see anything funny around here?”
People at nearby tables had turned and were staring at him, all of them smiling, thinking he was making some
