The Silver Swan

and ever unforgiving daughter. Now Rose said to him:

'I thought you'd be in the bar.'

'Quirke has given up bars,' Phoebe said, in a tone at once haughty and spiteful.

Rose lifted an eyebrow at him. 'What-you don't drink anymore?'

Quirke shrugged and Phoebe answered for him again. 'He takes a glass of wine with me once a week. I'm his alibi.'

'So you're not an alcoholic, then.'

'Did you think I was?'

'Well, I did wonder. You could certainly put away the whiskey.'

'We say here 'he was a great man for the bottle,'' Phoebe said. Throughout this exchange she had not once looked at Quirke directly.

'Yes,' Rose murmured. She held Quirke's gaze and her black eyes gleamed with mirthful mischief. 'Just like a baby.'

The waitress came and they ordered tea. Quirke asked Rose if her room was satisfactory and to her liking and Rose said it was fine, 'very quaint and shabby and old-world, as you would expect.' Quirke brought out his cigarette case. Rose took a cigarette, and he held the lighter for her and she leaned forward, touching her fingertips to the back of his hand. When she lifted the cigarette from her lips it was stained with lipstick. He thought how often this little scene had been repeated: the leaning forward, the quick, wry, upwards glance, the touch of her fingers on his skin, the white paper suddenly, vividly stained. She had asked him to love her, to stay with her. Sarah was still alive then, Sarah who-

'For God's sake stop fiddling with that!' Phoebe said sharply, startling him. He looked dumbly at the mechanical pencil in his hand; he had forgotten he was holding it. 'Here,' she said, for a moment all matronly impatience, 'give it to me,' and snatched it from him and dropped it into her handbag.

A brief, tight silence followed. Rose broke it with a sigh. 'So many deaths,' she said. 'First Josh, then Sarah, now poor Garret.' She was watching Quirke. 'You sort of feel the Reaper out there with his scythe, don't you'-she made a circling motion with a crimson-nailed finger-'getting closer all the time.' Phoebe was looking to the windows again. Rose turned to her. 'But, my dear, this is far too gloomy for you, I can see.' She laid a hand on the young woman's wrist. 'Tell me what you've been doing. I hear you're working-in a store, is it?'

'A hat shop,' Quirke said, and shifted heavily on his chair.

Rose laughed. 'What's wrong with that? I worked in stores-or shops, if you like-when I was young. My daddy kept a grocery store, until it went bust, just like so many others. That was in the hard times.'

'And look at you now,' Quirke said.

She waited a moment, and then: 'Yes,' she answered softly, 'look at me now.'

He shifted his gaze. Rose was always most unsettling when she was at her softest.

Phoebe murmured something and stood up and walked away from them across the room and out. Rose looked after her thoughtfully and then turned to Quirke again. 'Does she have to be so deeply in mourning? It seems a little much.'

'You mean the black? That's how she always dresses.'

'Why do you let her?'

'No one lets Phoebe do anything. She's a woman now.'

'No she's not.' She crushed her cigarette in the glass ashtray on the table. 'You still don't know a thing about people, do you, Quirke, women especially.' She took a sip of her tea and grimaced: it had gone cold. She put the cup back in its saucer. 'There's something about her, though,' she said, 'something different. Has she got a beau?'

'As you say, I don't know anything.'

'You should make it your business to know,' she said sharply. 'You owe it to her, God knows.'

'What do I owe?'

'Interest. Care.' She smiled almost pityingly. 'Love.'

Phoebe came back. Quirke watched her as she approached from across the room. Yes, Rose was right, he had to acknowledge it; there was something different about his daughter. She was paler than ever, ice pale, and yet seemed somehow on fire, inwardly. She sat down and reached for her cigarettes. Perhaps it was not him she was angry at. Perhaps she was not angry at all. Perhaps it was only that Rose's arrival had stirred memories in her of things she would rather have forgotten.

Mal appeared. He hesitated in the archway that led in from the lobby and scanned the room with the tentativeness that was his way now, his spectacles owlishly flashing. He saw them and came forward, picking his way among the tables as if he could not see properly. He wore one of his gray suits with a gray pullover underneath, and a dark-blue bow tie. His hair, brushed stiffly back, stuck out in sharp points at the back of his high, narrow head, and on each cheekbone there was a livid patch of broken veins. Every time Quirke saw Mal nowadays his brother-in-law seemed a little more dry and dusty, as if an essential fluid was leaking out of him, steadily, invisibly. He leaned down and awkwardly shook Rose's hand. One could weep, Quirke thought, for that pullover.

They left the lounge and crossed, the four of them, into the dining room, and took their places at the table Quirke had reserved. When the flurry of napkins and menus had subsided a heavy silence settled. Only Rose seemed at ease, glancing between the other three and smiling, like a person in a gallery admiring the likenesses between a set of family portraits. Quirke saw how Mal's face, when he looked at Phoebe, who for so long the world had thought his daughter, took on a blurred, pained expression. Phoebe, for her part, kept her eyes downcast. Quirke looked at her thin, white clawlike hands clutching the menu. How unhappy she seemed, unhappy and yet-what was it? Avid? Excited?

'Well,' Rose said mock-brightly, narrowing her eyes, 'isn't this lovely.'

ON A COOL GRAY SUMMER MORNING JUDGE GARRET GRIFFIN WAS LAID TO rest beside his wife in the family plot in Glasnevin. There was an army guard of honor, and the many relatives were joined by scores of the public for Judge Griffin, as he was known to all, had been a popular figure in the city. Eulogies were delivered by politicians and prelates. As the first handfuls of clay fell on the coffin a fine rain began to fall. No one, however, wept. The Judge's life had been, the Archbishop said in his homily at the funeral Mass in the overflowing cemetery chapel, a life to be celebrated, a full and fulfilled life, a life of service to the nation, devotion to the family, commitment to the Faith. Afterwards the mourners mingled among the graves, the women talking together in low voices while the men smoked, shielding their cigarettes surreptitiously in cupped fists. Then the black cars began to roll away, their wheels crunching on the gravel.

Inspector Hackett was among the attendants, standing well back at the edge of the crowd in his blue suit and black coat. He had caught Quirke's eye and tipped a finger to his hat brim in a covert salute. Later they walked together along a pathway among the headstones. The rain had stopped but the trees were dripping still. On a child's grave there were plaster roses under a glass dome mottled with lichen on its inner sides.

'End of an era,' the detective said, and glanced sideways at Quirke. 'We won't see his likes again.'

'No,' Quirke said flatly. 'We won't.'

The Archbishop's Bentley glided through the gate, the Archbishop sitting erect in the back seat like a religious effigy being borne on display in its glass case. The inspector brought out a packet of Players and offered it open to Quirke. They stopped to light up. Then they walked on again.

'I had a word with that fellow,' the inspector said.

'Which fellow is that?'