Christine Falls

Before, she had been certain of who she was; now she was no one. “You’re still my Phoebe,” Sarah had said, trying not to cry, but Phoebe had answered nothing to that, having nothing to say. Mal was his usual totem pole. Yet of the two of them, these two who until a few hours ago had been her father and her mother, it was Mal whom she most loved, if love, any longer, was the word.

The worst of it now was the bite mark on her neck, where Andy Stafford had sunk his teeth in her. That was the real violation. She could not explain, she did not understand it, but it was so.

She would not speak of Andy Stafford. He was the unspeakable, not because of the knife, or what he had done to her, or not solely for these reasons, but because there were no words that would, for her, accommodate him. When the police telephoned Rose to tell her Andy and his wife were dead, killed when the Buick stalled on a level crossing, Phoebe was the only one who was not shocked, or even surprised. There was a neatness to their dying, a tidiness, as at the end of a fairy tale she might have been told as a child, first to frighten her and then, with all resolved and the wicked trolls slain, so that she might be satisfied and go to sleep. Toward Andy himself she felt nothing, neither anger nor revulsion. He had been a steel edge at her throat and a hard body pounding down on hers, that was all.

Quirke, arrived at last, came and stood at the foot of the bed, leaning awkwardly on his stick. He asked her to come back with him, to Ireland. She refused.

“I’m staying here for a while,” she said. “And then I’ll see.” He looked as if he would plead with her, but she made her face hard, lying there against the pillows, and he lowered his head like a wounded ox. “Tell me,” she said, “there’s one thing I want to know-who named me?”

He raised his eyes, frowning.

“What do you mean?”

“Who gave me the name Phoebe?”

He looked down again.

“They called you after Sarah’s grandmother, Josh’s mother.”

She was silent for a long moment, turning it over in her head, then “I see,” she said, and without looking at her again Quirke turned and limped out of the room.

SARAH AND MAL SAT TOGETHER ON A LITTLE GILT SOFA ON THE WIDE landing at the top of the great oak staircase. The last of the day’s stealthy light was drifting down from the big curved windows above them. Like Quirke, Sarah too felt that she had been struggling all day through mire and ice, over frozen wastes, along treacherous roads, and now had come to some kind of a stopping place at last. The skin on her hands and on her arms was gray and grainy and seemed to be cringing, somehow, like her mind. The look of the broad expanse of carpet on the landing, like a nubbled, pale-pink ice floe, made her feel slightly ill; the carpet, like so much else in the house, had been installed at Rose’s command, Rose, who no doubt knew everything, too, that there was to know.

She said:

“Well-what do we do now?”

“We live,” Mal answered, “as best we can. Phoebe will need our help.”

He seemed so calm, so resigned. What goes on in his mind? she wondered. It struck her, not for the first time, how little, really, she knew of this man with whom she had already spent a large part of her life.

“You should have told me,” she said.

He stirred, but did not turn to look at her.

“Told you what?” he murmured.

“About Christine Falls. About the child. Everything.”

He expelled a long, weary breath; it was like listening to a part of his self leaking out of him.

“About Christine Falls,” he said, echoing her. “How did you find out-did Quirke tell you?”

“No. What does it matter how I found out? You should have told me. You owed it to me. I would have listened. I would have tried to understand.”

“I had my duty.”

“My God,” she said, with a violent, shaking laugh, “what a hypocrite you are.”

“I had my duty,” he said again stubbornly, “to all of us. I had to keep it together, under control. There was no one else. Everything would have been destroyed.”

She looked at the carpet and again her insides quailed. She closed her eyes, and out of that darkness said:

“You still have time.”

Now he looked at her.

“Time?”

“To redeem yourself.”

He made a strange, soft sound in his throat which it took her a moment to identify-he was laughing.

“Ah, my dear Sarah,” he said-how seldom he spoke her name!-“it’s too late for that, I think.”

A clock struck in the house, and then another, and yet another-so many! As if time here were a multiple thing, different at all levels, in every room.

“I told Quirke about Phoebe,” she said. “I told him the whole thing.”

“Oh, yes?” He did his faint laugh again. “That must have been an interesting conversation.”

“I should have told him years ago. I should have told him about Phoebe, and you should have told me about Christine Falls.”

He crossed his legs and fussily hitched up the knee of his trousers.

“You wouldn’t have needed to tell him about Phoebe,” he said mildly. “He knew already.”

What was it she was hearing-could it be the tiny echoes of the clock chimes, still beating faintly in the air? She held her breath, afraid of what might come out of her mouth. At last she said:

“What do you mean?”

He was looking at the ceiling high above, studying it, as if there might be something up there, some sign, some hieroglyph.

“Who do you think got my father to phone me here in Boston the night Delia died?” he asked, as if he were not addressing her but interrogating that something which only he could see in the shadows under the ceiling. “Who was in such torment that he couldn’t bear the thought of having the child around, to remind him of his tragic loss, and was prepared to give her to us instead?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “no, it’s not true.”

But she knew it was, of course. Oh, Quirke. She had known it all along, she realized now, had known it and denied it to herself. She felt no anger, no resentment, only sadness.

She would not tell Phoebe; Phoebe must not know that her father had willingly given her away.

A minute passed. She said:

“I think I’m sick.”

He went still; she could feel it, like something in him stopping, some animal version of him, stopping with all its senses on alert.

“Why do you think that?”

“There’s something wrong with my head. This dizziness, it’s getting worse.”

He reached sideways and took her hand, cold and limp, in his.

“I need you,” he said calmly, without emphasis. “I can’t do it, any of it, without you.”

“Then put an end to this thing,” she said with sudden fierceness, “this thing of Christine Falls and her child.” She turned the hand he was holding and gripped his fingers. “Will you?” Now it was his hand that went limp. He shook his head once, the barest movement. She heard the foghorns, their forlorn calling. She released his hand and stood up. His duty, he had said-his duty to lie, to pretend, to protect. His duty, that had blighted their lives. “You knew about Quirke and Phoebe,” she said. “And you knew about Christine Falls. You knew-you all knew-and you didn’t tell me. All these years, all these lies. How could you, Mal?”

He gazed up at her from where he sat; all he looked was tired. He said:

“Perhaps for the same reason you didn’t tell Quirke, from the start, that Phoebe was his daughter, when you thought he didn’t know.” He smiled wanly. “We all have our own kinds of sin.”