Christine Falls

Quirke said to Rose:

“Thank you for putting me into Delia’s room.”

She looked back from the table where the drinks were, glass and bottle in hand.

“Oh, dear,” she murmured vaguely, “was that hers?” She gave a shrug of regret that was patently fake, and then frowned. “There’s no ice, again.” She went to the fireplace and pressed the button of a bell that was set into the wall.

“It’s fine,” Quirke said, “I don’t need ice.”

She handed him the whiskey and lingered a moment, standing close in front of him. “My goodness, Mr. Quirke,” she murmured so that only he could hear, “when they told me you were big they did not exaggerate.” He smiled back at her smile, and she turned away with an ironic little twitch of her hips and went to the drinks table again and poured a gin for Phoebe, and another bourbon for herself. Josh Crawford from his wheelchair greedily watched her every movement, fiercely smiling. The maid came and Rose requested her brusquely to fetch more ice. It was plain the girl was terrified of her mistress. When she had gone Rose said to Crawford:

“Honestly, Josh, these waifs and strays you make me take in.”

Crawford only laughed. “Good Catholic girls,” he said. He winced at something happening inside him, then scowled. “This damned fire’s too hot-let’s go into the glasshouse.”

Rose’s mouth tightened and she seemed about to protest, but meeting her husband’s look-the scowling jaw, those cold, fish eyes-she put her bourbon aside. “Whatever you say, darling,” she said, making her voice go soft and silky.

They progressed, the four of them, along corridors cluttered with expensive, ugly furniture-oak chairs, brass- studded trunks, rough-hewn tables that might have come over on the Mayflower and, Quirke thought, most likely had-Quirke pushing Crawford in his chair and the two women following behind.

“Well, Quirke,” Crawford asked, without turning his head, “come to see me die, have you?”

“I came with Phoebe,” Quirke said.

Crawford nodded. “Sure you did.”

They arrived at the Crystal Gallery and Rose pressed a switch and banks of fluorescent lights high above them came on with a series of faint, muffled thumps. Quirke looked up past the lamps at the weight of all that darkness pressing on the huge glass dome that was stippled now with rain. The air in here was heavy and sultry and smelled of sap and loam. He thought it strange that he did not remember this extraordinary place, yet he must have seen it, must have been in it, when he was first here with Delia. All around, polished leaves of palms and ferns and unblossoming orchids hung motionless, like so many large, intricately shaped ears attending to these intruders. Rose drew Phoebe aside and together they drifted away among the crowding greenery. Quirke pushed the wheelchair into a clearing where there was a wrought-iron bench and sat down, glad to rest his knee. The metal was clammy to the touch and almost warm. Keeping this space heated over a winter, he reflected idly, probably cost the equivalent of what he earned in a year.

“I hear you’ve been interfering with our work,” Josh Crawford said.

Quirke looked at him. The old man was watching the spot among the palms where the two women had gone from sight. “What work is that?”

Josh Crawford sniffed, making a sound that might have been a laugh. “You afraid of death, Quirke?” he asked.

Quirke reflected for a moment. “I don’t know. Yes, I suppose. Isn’t everyone?”

“Not me. The nearer I get to it, the less afraid I am.” He sighed, and Quirke heard the rattle in his chest. “The only good thing about old age is that it gives you the opportunity to even up the balance. Between the bad and the good, I mean.” He swiveled his head and looked at Quirke. “I’ve done some wicked things in my time”-a chuckle, another rattle-“even made people take falls, but I’ve done a lot of good, as well.” He paused a moment. “What they say is right, Quirke. This is the New World. Europe is finished, the war and all that followed saw to that.” He pointed the yellowed nail of a long, knobbed finger at the concrete floor. “This is the place. God’s country.” He sat nodding, his jaw working as though he were gnawing on something soft and unswallowable. “I ever tell you the history of this house? Scituate, here, this is where the Famine Irish came to, back in the black eighteen forties. The Prods, the English, the Brahmins, they’d settled the North Shore, no Irish need apply up there, so our people came south. I often imagine them, picture them in my mind”-tapping his forehead with a fingertip-“skin-and-bone wildmen and their scrawny redheaded women, trailing the coast with their litters of unkillable kids. Shit-poor the lot of them, starved at home and then starved here. This was rough country then, cliffs, rocks, salt-burned fields. Yes, I see them, clinging by their fingernails along this shore, scratching in the shallows for crabs and clams, afraid of the sea like most of us Irish, afraid of the deeps. A few fisher-families, though, had settled Second and Third Cliffs down there”-he jerked a thumb over his shoulder-“Connemara people, slick as otters, used to hard water and running the channels. At low tide they spotted it on the rocks: the red moss. They knew it from home, you see. Chondus crispus, and another kind, Gigartina mamillosa-how’s your Latin, Quirke? Carrageen moss. Red gold, it was, in those days. A thousand uses for the stuff, everything from blancmange to wallpaper size to printer’s ink. They started gathering it, out in dories at low tide with their rakes, dry it on the beach, ship it off to Boston by the cartload. Within ten years there were moss millionaires down here- oh, yes, millionaires. One of them built this house, William Martin McConnell, otherwise known as Billy the Boss, a County Mayo man. The Boss and his moss. Moss Manor-see? Then the railroad arrived, eighteen seventy-one the first trains came through. Hotels went up all along North Scituate, fancy holiday cottages at Egypt Beach, Cedar Point. Fire chiefs, police captains, the lace-curtain Irish, businessmen from over at Quincy, from as far away as Worcester, even, they all came here. Cardinal Curley had a house in…I forget where. All kinds of people, taking their bite of the country, sinking their teeth into this rich coast. The Irish Riviera, it was called, and still is. They built golf courses, country clubs-the Hatherly Beach Playground Association!” He cackled phlegmily, his frail head wobbling on its stringy stalk of a neck. He was tickled at the thought of the shit-poor Irish and their pretensions, their outrageous successes. This was his sustenance, Quirke realized, this was what was keeping him alive, a thin bitter gruel of memories and imaginings, of malice and vindictive amusement. “You can’t beat the Irish, Quirke. We’re like the rats, you’re never more than six feet away from one.” He began to cough again, and thumped a fist repeatedly, hard, into his chest, and slumped back exhausted in the chair. “I asked you, Quirke,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “why did you make this trip? And don’t say you came for the girl’s sake.”

Quirke shrugged, and moved his aching leg to ease it; the iron of the seat was growing cold under him. “I ran away,” he said.

“From what?”

“From people who do wicked things.” Josh smiled and, smiling, looked away. Quirke watched him. “What’s this business of yours I’ve been interfering in, Josh?”

Crawford lifted his eyes and scanned vaguely the tall panes of gleaming black glass all around them. In this vast place with its artificial atmosphere they might have been a hundred leagues under the ocean or a million miles out in empty space.

“Know what I am, Quirke?” Crawford said. “I’m a planter. Some people plant grain, others plant trees-me, I plant souls.”

THE WOMEN HAD PAUSED BY A TERRA-COTTA POT CONTAINING A LEAF-LESS rose bush with long, many- thorned, thin branches that reminded Phoebe of the clawing hands of a fairy-tale witch. “It’s called after me,” Rose said. “Isn’t it crazy? Josh paid a fortune to some fancy grower in England, and there it is, Rose Crawford. The flowers when they come out are a nasty shade of crimson, and have no scent.” She smiled at the girl trying dutifully to seem interested. “You don’t care for horticulture, I can see. It doesn’t matter. To be honest, neither do I, but I have to pretend, for Josh’s sake.” She touched a hand to Phoebe’s arm and they turned back the way they had come. “Will you stay here for a while?” she said.

Phoebe stared at her in surprise and faint alarm. “In Boston?” she said.

“Yes. Stay with us-with me. Josh thinks you should.”

“What would I do?”

“Whatever you like. Go to college-we can get you into Harvard, or Boston U. Or just do nothing. See things. Live-you know how to do that, don’t you?”

In fact, she suspected that was one of the things-the main thing-the girl had not yet learned how to do. Behind the lipstick-thin veneer of worldliness she was, Rose could see, a sweet little thing, untried, uncertain, hungry for experience but not sure that she was ready for it yet, and worried as to what frightening form it might take. There