The Silver Swan

more. He let his thoughts wander. He was prey to a strange lethargy; he felt as if he had traveled a long way to come to this place, this room, this table. He ate with scant relish. Food that someone else had prepared, had prepared like this, in a kitchen and not a restaurant, always tasted strange to him, not really like food at all, although he knew it must be tastier than anything he ate elsewhere, tastier certainly than the stuff he prepared for himself. Moly-was that the word? Food of the gods. No, ambrosia. Kate sat opposite him and watched him with a matronly intentness as he ate, doggedly consuming the meat, the red pulp of the tomatoes, the limp green spears. When he had finished she took his plate and put it in the sink, and with her back turned to him said: 'Come to bed.'

'OH,' SHE CRIED, AND ROLLED HER HEAD ON THE PILLOW TO ONE SIDE and then to the other, biting her nether lip. Quirke loomed above her in starlight, hugely moving. 'Oh, God.'

IN THE EARLY HOURS THEY CAME DOWN AND SAT AGAIN AT THE KITCHEN table. Kate had offered to make more coffee but Quirke had declined. He was barefoot now, as she was, and had on only his shirt and trousers; in the bedroom she had brought out Leslie White's dressing gown but he had given her a look and she had said, 'Sorry' and put it back on its hook. Now in the kitchen the blue-black night was pressed against the window panes, an avid darkness. There was not a sound to be heard anywhere; they might have been alone in the world. She watched him smoke a cigarette. He was just like every other man she had ever been to bed with, she saw, uneasy now that the main event was done with, trying not to twitch, his eyes flicking here and there as if in search of a means of escape. She knew what was the matter with him. It was not that sadness men were supposed to feel afterwards-that was just an excuse, thought up by a man-but resentment at having been so needy and, worse, of having shown that neediness. But why was she not resentful of his resentment? She could not be angry with him. An upside-down comma of blond hair stood upright on the crown of his great solid head, and she saw for a second how he would have been as a child, big already and baffled by the world and terrified of showing it. When he came to the end of his cigarette he lit another one from the stub.

'You could enter the Olympics,' she said. He looked at her. 'As a smoker. I'm sure you'd win a gold medal.' He smiled warily. Jokes, she had often noticed, did not go down well at moments such as this. He fixed his eyes on the table again. 'It's all right,' she said, and tapped him lightly on the back of the hand with a fingertip, 'you don't have to say you love me.'

He nodded in hangdog fashion, not looking at her. Presently he cleared his throat and asked: 'Why did your husband go into business with Deirdre Hunt?'

She laughed. 'Is that all you can think to talk about?'

'I'm sorry.'

Again a quick, hare-eyed glance. Was he really so frightened of her?

'You are an old bulldog, aren't you,' she said. 'You've got hold of this bone and just won't let go.'

He shrugged, dipping his enormous shoulders to the side and sticking out his lower lip. She had a strong urge to reach out and press down that rebellious blond curl. Instead she rose and went to the sink and filled a glass of water.

'I don't know why he got involved with her,' she said, sipping the water- it tasted, as it always did, faintly, mysteriously, of gas-and looking through the window at the garden, with its sharp-edged patches of stone-colored moonlight and purple-gray shadows. On the night after she had thrown Leslie out she had stood here like this, willing herself not to weep, and had seen a fox crossing the lawn, its tail sweeping over the grass, and she had laughed and said aloud, 'Oh, no, Leslie White, you're not going to trick me so easily and slink back in here.' Now she turned from the sink and contemplated Quirke again, hunched at the table with the cigarette clamped in his huge fist. 'Leslie was always up to something,' she said, 'doing deals and offering to cut people in on them. A dreadful spiv, really. I can't think why I didn't see through him at the very beginning. But then'-a wry grin-'love is blind, as they say it is.'

She came back to the table and sat down opposite him again and took the cigarette from his fingers and drew on it once and gave it back. He hastened to offer her the packet but she shook her head. 'I've given them up.'

They were silent for a time. A clock somewhere in the house chimed three.

'I'd better go,' he said.

She pretended not to hear. She was looking again to the window.

'Maybe they were having an affair already,' she said. 'Maybe that's why they went into business together-' She broke off with a bitter laugh. 'Business! I don't know why I use the word when talking of Leslie. He really was hopeless. Is.' Quirke rolled the tip of his cigarette along the edge of the ashtray, making a point of the ash, and she experienced a faint twinge in her breast, not a pain but the memory of a pain. Leslie too used to do that with his cigarette, perhaps was doing it now, at this very moment, somewhere else. 'I wouldn't be surprised if he got money out of her,' she said. 'The hairdressing salon had failed-it was called the Clip Joint, appropriately enough-and he'd already got a couple of hundred quid out of me, which of course he threw into the money pit to be swallowed up. I told him there would be no more where that came from. Which didn't improve domestic harmony. I'd sue him, if I thought I had any chance of getting the money back.'

'Would she have had money, Deirdre Hunt?'

'You mean Laura Swan-I don't know why it irritates me so when you call her by that other name.' She put a hand briefly over her eyes. 'Money?' she said. 'I don't know-you tell me. But Leslie tended not to get interested in anyone who hadn't money, even a little sexpot like her.' She smiled a thin and bitter version of her anguished smile.

He asked: 'How did they meet?'

'Oh, God knows-or wait, no. It was through some sort of doctor they both knew. An Indian, I think. Very odd name, though, what was it. Krantz? Kreutz? That was it. Kreutz.'

'What kind of doctor?'

'I don't know. A quack, I imagine. I don't think Leslie knew anyone that wasn't a fraud of some sort.'

When one or the other of them was not speaking the silence of the night came down upon the room like a dark, soft cloak. Quirke drummed his fingers on the table. 'Kreutz,' he said.

'Yes. With a K.'

He sat thinking, then said: 'You mentioned photographs, letters.'

'Did I?'

'Yes, you did.'

She made a disgusted grimace. 'They were in an attache case under our bed. Just lying there, just like that. I think he must have wanted me to find them.'

'Why? I mean, why would he want you to find them?'

'For amusement. Or to give himself a thrill. There's a side to Leslie that's a little boy with a dirty mind, showing his thing to the girls to make them squeal.' She looked to the side, seeming baffled. 'Why did I ever marry him?'

He waited a moment, cautiously.

'Who were the photographs of?' he asked.

'Oh, women, of course.'

'Women you knew?'

She laughed. 'God, no.'

'Prostitutes?'

'No, I don't think so. Just… women. Middle-aged, most of them, showing themselves off while they still had something to show, just about.' She gave him a brittle glance. 'I didn't look at them very closely.'

'Were there any of Deirdre-Laura Swan?'

'No.' She seemed almost amused by the possibility. 'I would have