books, of history, of ancient politics- safe subjects on which they exchanged opinions as chilly and contentless as the wintry air through which they moved. Quirke had checked into St. John’s on Christmas Eve, persuaded by his brother-in-law to seek the cure after a six-month drinking binge few details of which Quirke could recall with any clearness. “Do it for Phoebe if no one else,” Malachy Griffin had said.
Stopping drinking had been easy; what was difficult was the daily unblurred confrontation with a self he heartily wished to avoid. Dr. Whitty, the house psychiatrist, explained it to him. “With some, such as yourself, it’s not so much the drink that’s addictive but the escape it offers. Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Escape from yourself, that is.” Dr. Whitty was a big bluff fellow with baby-blue eyes and fists the size of turnips. He and Quirke had already known each other a little, professionally, in the outside world, but in here the convention was they should behave as cordial strangers. Quirke felt awkward, though; he had assumed that somehow St. John’s would afford anonymity, that it would be the least anyone consigning himself to the care of the place could expect, and he was grateful for Whitty’s studiedly remote cheerfulness and the scrupulous discretion of his pale gaze. He submitted meekly to the daily sessions on the couch- in fact, not a couch but a straight chair half turned towards the window, with the psychiatrist a largely unspeaking and heavily breathing presence behind it- and tried to say the things he thought would be expected of him. He knew what his troubles were, knew more or less the identity of the demons tormenting him, but at St. John’s everyone was called upon to clear the decks, wipe the slate clean, make a fresh start- clichй was another staple of the institutional life- and he was no exception. “It’s a long road, the road back,” Brother Anselm said. “The less baggage you take with you, the better.” As if, Quirke thought but did not say, I could unpack myself and walk away empty.
The inmates were urged to pair off, like shy dancers at a grotesque ball. The theory was that sustained daily contact with a designated fellow sufferer, entailing shared confidences and candid self-exposure, would restore a sense of what was called in here
Harkness-it seemed not so much a name as a condition- was as reluctant as Quirke in the matter of personal confidences and at first would say little about himself or his past. Quirke, however, had spent his orphaned childhood in institutions run by the religious, and guessed at once that he was-what did they say?- a man of the cloth. “That’s right,” Harkness said, “Christian Brother. You must have heard the swish of the surplice.” Or of the leather strap, more like, Quirke thought. Side by side in dogged silence, heads down and fists clasped at their backs, they tramped the same paths that Quirke and Brother Anselm walked, under the freezing trees, as if performing a penance, which in a way they were. As the weeks went on, Harkness began to release resistant little hard nuggets of information, as if he were spitting out the seeds of a sour fruit. A thirst for drink, it seemed, had been a defense against other urges. “Let me put it this way,” he said, “if I hadn’t gone into the Order it’s unlikely I’d ever have married.” He chuckled darkly. Quirke was shocked; he had never before heard anyone, least of all a Christian Brother, come right out like this and admit to being queer. Harkness had lost his vocation, too-”if I ever had one”- and was coming to the conclusion that on balance there is no God.
After such stark revelations Quirke felt called upon to reciprocate in kind, but found it acutely difficult, not out of embarrassment or shame- though he must be embarrassed, he must be ashamed, considering the many misdeeds he had on his conscience- but because of the sudden weight of tedium that pressed down on him. The trouble with sins and sorrows, he had discovered, is that in time they become boring, even to the sorrowing sinner. Had he the heart to recount it all again, the shambles that was his life- the calamitous losses of nerve, the moral laziness, the failures, the betrayals? He tried. He told how when his wife died in childbirth he gave away his infant daughter to his sister-in-law and kept it secret from the child, Phoebe, now a young woman, for nearly twenty years. He listened to himself as if it were someone else’s tale he was telling.
“But she comes to visit you,” Harkness said, in frowning perplexity, interrupting him. “Your daughter- she comes to visit.”
“Yes, she does.” Quirke had ceased to find this fact surprising, but now found it so anew.
Harkness said nothing more, only nodded once, with an expression of bitter wonderment, and turned his face away. Harkness had no visitors.
That Thursday when Phoebe came, Quirke, thinking of the lonely Christian Brother, made an extra effort to be alert to her and appreciative of the solace she thought she was bringing him. They sat in the visitors’ room, a bleak, glassed-in corner of the vast entrance hall- in Victorian times the building had been the forbiddingly grand headquarters of some branch of the British administration in the city- where there were plastic- topped tables and metal chairs and, at one end, a counter on which stood a mighty tea urn that rumbled and hissed all day long. Quirke thought his daughter was paler than usual, and there were smudged shadows like bruises under her eyes. She seemed distracted, too. She had in general a somber, etiolated quality that grew steadily more marked as she progressed into her twenties; yet she was becoming a beautiful woman, he realized, with some surprise and an inexplicable but sharp twinge of unease. Her pallor was accentuated by the black outfit she wore, black skirt and jumper, slightly shabby black coat. These were her work clothes- she had a job in a hat shop- but he thought they gave her too much the look of a nun.
They sat opposite each other, their hands extended before them across the table, their fingertips almost but not quite touching.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“You look- I don’t know- strained?”
He saw her deciding to decline his sympathy. She glanced up at the high window beside them where the fog was crowding against the panes like compressed gas. Their gray mugs of tea stood stolid on the tabletop before them, untouched. Phoebe’s hat was on the table too, a minuscule confection of lace and black velvet stuck with an incongruously dramatic scarlet feather. Quirke nodded in the direction of the hat. “How is Mrs. What’s- hername?”
“Who?”
“The one who owns the hat shop.”
“Mrs. Cuffe-Wilkes.”
“Surely that’s a made-up name.”
“There was a Mr. Wilkes. He died, and she began to call herself Cuffe-Wilkes.”
“Is there a Mr. Cuffe?”
“No. That was her maiden name.”
“Ah.”
He brought out his cigarette case, clicked it open, and offered it to her flat on his palm. She shook her head. “I’ve stopped.”
He selected a cigarette for himself and lit it. “You used to smoke… what were they called, those oval-shaped ones?”
“Passing Clouds.”
“That’s it. Why did you give up?”
She smiled, wryly. “Why did you?”
“Why did I give up drink, you mean? Oh, well.”
They both looked away, Phoebe to the window again and Quirke sideways, at the floor. There were half a dozen couples in the place, all sitting at tables as far separated from the others as possible. The floor was covered with large, black-and-white rubber tiles, and with the people in it placed just so, the room seemed set up for a silent, life-size game of chess. The air reeked of cigarette smoke and stewed tea, and there was a faint trace too of something medicinal and vaguely punitive. “This awful place,” Phoebe said, then glanced at her father guiltily. “Sorry.”
“For what? You’re right, it is awful.” He paused. “I’m going to check myself out.”
He was as startled as she was. He had not been aware of having taken the decision until he announced it. But now, the announcement delivered, he realized that he had made up his mind that moment when,
