The Silver Swan

Mal came back, in his cracked brogues and his crumpled gray linen jacket. He no longer dressed as he used to: the old sartorial care was gone. He had let himself go, like the garden. Physically, too, he had faded, his features become indistinct, as if a fine sifting of dust had settled uniformly over him. His hair was dry-it looked almost brittle-and was going noticeably gray at the temples. Only the lenses of his wire-framed spectacles were as glossy and intent as ever, though the eyes behind them seemed vague, as if worn and wearied by the strain of constant peering through those unrelentingly shiny rounds of glass.

'Well,' he said, 'shall we go?'

They strolled by the canal in the hush of evening. Few people were about, and fewer cars. They went as far as Leeson Street and then all the way down to Huband Bridge. Here, once, long ago, Quirke had walked with Sarah Griffin on a Sunday morning in misty autumn. He thought of telling Mal now about that walk, and what was said, how Sarah had begged him to help Mal- 'He's a good man, Quirke'-and how Quirke had misunderstood what it was she was asking of him, what it was she could not bring herself to tell him outright.

Mal was humming tunelessly under his breath; it was another of the habits he had developed since Sarah's death.

'How are you managing?' Quirke asked.

'What?'

'In the house, on your own-how are you getting on?'

'Oh, all right, you know. Maggie looks after me.'

'I meant, how are you, in yourself?'

Mal considered. 'Well, it gets better in some ways and worse in others. The nights are hard, but the days pass. And I have Brandy.' Quirke stared, and Mal smiled wanly and pointed to the dog. 'Him, I mean.'

'Oh. That's its name, is it?'

Quirke looked at the beast as it pattered hurriedly here and there in the soft grayness of dusk with its curious, busy, stiff-legged gait, like a mechanical toy, bad-temperedly sniffing at the grass. It was a stunted, wire-haired thing the color of wet sacking. Phoebe had got it for him, this man whom until two years ago she had thought was her father, to be company for him. It was plain that dog and master disliked each other, the dog barely tolerating the man and the man seeming helpless before the dog's unbiddably doggy insistences. It was odd, but ownership of the dog made Mal seem even more aged, more careworn, more irritably despondent. As if reading Quirke's thoughts, he said defensively: 'He is company. Of a sort.'

Quirke longed suddenly for a drink, just the one: short, quick, burning, disastrous. For, of course, it would not be just the one. When had it ever been just the one, in the old days? He felt the rage starting up, the dry drinker's whining, impotent, self-lacerating rage.

The streetlamps shone among the barely stirring leaves of the trees that lined the towpath, throwing out a seething, harsh white radiance that deepened the surrounding darkness. The two men stopped and sat down on a black-painted iron bench. Leaf shadows stirred on the path at their feet. The dog, displeased, ran back and forth fretfully. Quirke lit a cigarette, the flame of the lighter making a red globe that was cupped for a second in the protective hollow of his hands.

'A fellow called me this morning,' he said. 'Fellow that was at college when we were there. Billy Hunt-do you remember him? Big, red-haired. Played football, or hurling, I can't remember which. Left after First Meds.' Mal, watching the dog, said nothing; was he even listening? 'His wife was drowned. Threw herself off the jetty out in Sandycove. They found her yesterday washed up on the rocks on Dalkey Island. Young, in her twenties.' He paused, smoking, and then went on: 'Billy asked me to make sure there'd be no postmortem. Couldn't bear to think of her being cut up, he said.'

He stopped and glanced sideways at Mal's long, angled profile beside him in the lamp-lit gloom. The canal smelled of dead water and rotting vegetation. The dog came and put its front paws on the bench and caught hold of the lead with its teeth and tried to tug it out of Mal's hands. Mal pushed the creature away with weary distaste.

'What did you say his name was?' he asked.

'Hunt. Billy Hunt.'

Mal shook his head. 'No, don't remember him. What happened to the wife-I mean, why did she do it?'

'Well, that's the question.'

'Oh?' Quirke said nothing, and now it was Mal's turn to glance at him. 'Is it a case of-what do the Guards say?-'suspicious circumstances'?'

Quirke still did not answer, but after a moment said: 'Her name was Deirdre, Deirdre Hunt. She called herself Laura Swan. Very fancy.'

'Was she an actress?'

'No-a beautician, I think is what she would have said.' He dropped the end of his cigarette on the path and trod it under his heel. The dog was worrying the lead again and whimpering. 'Better get on,' Mal said, and stood up. He attached the lead to the dog's collar and they went up through the gap in the railings onto Herbert Place and turned back in the direction from which they had come. The tall terrace of houses on the other side of the road loomed in the glistening darkness. Humans build square, Quirke thought, nature in the round.

'Laura Swan,' Mal said. 'Sounds vaguely familiar, I don't know why.'

'She had a place in Anne Street, over a shop. It was a success, it seems. Rich ladies from Foxrock came to her to have their legs shaved, their mustaches dyed, that kind of thing. Fake tans, creams to smooth away the wrinkles. Billy, the husband, travels for a pharmaceuticals firm, probably supplied her with materials at cost price or for nothing. Harmless people, you would think.'

'But?'

Quirke, his hands in his pockets, rolled his great, bowling-ball shoulders. He was developing, Mal noticed, a definite paunch; they were both aging. Under the brim of his black slouch hat Quirke's expression was unreadable.

'Something wrong,' he said. 'Something fishy.'

'You suspect he might have pushed her?'

'No. No one pushed her, I think. But she didn't drown, either.'

They did not speak again until they came to the house on Rathgar Road. They paused at the gate. All the windows were dark. The garden's mingled fragrances seemed for a second a breath out of the past, a past that was not theirs, exactly, but rather one where their younger selves still lived somehow in a long-gone and yet unaging present. Mal released the dog and it scampered up the path and onto the stone steps and began scratching frantically at the front door, its paws going in a circular blur that made Quirke think of a squirrel on a wheel. The two men followed slowly, their heels crunching on the dusty gravel. The walk was over, yet they were not sure how to make an end.

'How was my father?' Mal asked. 'Did you see him today?'

'Same as usual. He doesn't know how to die. Pure will. You have to admire it.'

'And do you?'

'What?'

'Admire it.'

They came to the foot of the granite steps and paused again. A bat flittered above the garden in the lamplight; Quirke fancied he could hear the tiny, rapid, clockwork beating of its wings.

'He hates me,' he said. 'It's there in his eyes, that glare.'

'You tried to destroy him,' Mal said mildly.

'He destroyed himself.'

To that Mal answered nothing. The dog was still scratching at the door. 'Oh, that animal,' Mal said. 'When he's inside he howls to be let out, and when he's out he can't wait to get back in.'