Elegy For April

He scrabbled at the door, trying to get out again, then rolled down the window and began to protest. “Go home, Quirke,” she said, reaching in and patting his hand. “Go home now, and sleep.” She told the driver the address and the taxi pulled away from the curb, and she saw Quirke in the rear seat topple backwards in his overcoat like a huge, jointless manikin, and then she could see him no more. She gave the doorman a shilling, and he thanked her and pocketed the coin and tipped a finger to the brim of his cap, and turned back into the yellow-lighted lobby, rubbing his hands. The night’s icy silence settled about her.

She set off to walk. She could have gone in the taxi and delivered Quirke to Mount Street and then taken it on to her own place in Haddington Road, but it had not occurred to her. It seemed she was not going home. She thought of her room, the cheerless cold of it, the emptiness, waiting for her.

At York Street she turned left. It was very dark in this steep, narrow defile, and the sound of her own footsteps on the pavement seemed unnaturally loud. The tenement houses were all unlighted, and there was no one abroad. A cat on a windowsill watched her with narrow-eyed surmise. Before her, low in the velvet darkness of the sky, a star was suspended, a sparkling, silver sword of icy light. In Golden Lane a tramp slouching in a doorway croaked something at her, and she hurried on. She supposed she should be frightened, all alone in the empty city in the hour before midnight, but she was not.

At the corner of Werburgh Street, opposite the cathedral, clandestine, late drinkers were being let out through the side door of a pub. They loitered on the pavement, befuddled and muttering. One of them went and stood in a doorway to urinate; another began to sing in a hoarse, quavering voice.

I dreamt that I dwe-elt in ma-arble halls…

She hung back in the darkness, waiting for them to disperse. She thought of Quirke again, lolling helplessly in the taxi, looking back at her wild-eyed. He always seemed frightened when he was drunk. Soon he would be drinking again in earnest; she knew the signs. But Rose would put a stop to that.

She walked forward quickly and passed by the drunks, telling herself not look at them. They took no notice of her. She turned into Castle Street.

– That you loved me, lo-oved me still the same!

There was a light on in the window of the upstairs flat, printing on the glass the pattern of the lace curtain inside. The cathedral bell began to toll, unnervingly loud, making the air shake around her. She stood and gazed up at the glowing window. Her toes and the tips of her fingers were going numb from the cold. Her breath flared before her in the frosted air. What would she say to him, how would she form the questions that were crowding in her mind? How was she even to let him know she was here? If she knocked on the door, she would alert his landlady. The bell finished tolling, and the last beats of sound faded on the air. Go! a voice inside her head urged her, go now! Instead she dug into her purse and found a ha’penny and, taking careful aim, flung it up at the window. She missed the first time, and the second- what a ringing noise the coins made when they fell back on the road!- then she had no more ha’pennies left and had to use a penny. This time she hit the target. There was such a sharp pang! of copper on glass that she thought everyone in the houses roundabout must hear it. She waited. Perhaps he was not there; perhaps he had gone out and forgotten to turn off the light. A courting couple, their arms linked, went past. The fellow gave her a speculative look from under the peak of his cap, but his girl only said good night. She looked up at the window again. The curtain had been pulled back, and Patrick was there, peering down into the street. She moved quickly into a circle of lamplight so that she would be more clearly visible. She could not make out his expression. Would he recognize her- could he even see her? He let the curtain fall back into place, and a minute later the front door opened a little way and a hand beckoned her in.

He had not switched on the light in the hall. When she came forward he caught her by the wrist and put a finger urgently to his lips. “Ssh!” he hissed. “She’ll wake up!” He drew her into the dark hall, and she smelled again the dank smell that she remembered from the last time. They crept up the stairs. He was leading her by the wrist. He eased open the door of the flat and motioned her inside and then closed the door silently behind them. “Poh!” he said, letting go his breath in an exaggerated gasp of relief, and smiled at her. “Well, Miss Phoebe Griffin! To what do I owe this pleasure?”

All the way down here from the hotel, and then standing outside in the dark, trying to attract his attention, she had not stopped to consider what she would say to him, what reason she would offer for appearing under his window at dead of night like this.

“I…,” she said, “I- I wanted to talk to you.”

He wrinkled his brow, still smiling. “Oh, yes? It must be very urgent.”

“No, not urgent. I just-” She stopped, and stood helplessly, looking at him.

“Well, now that you are here, will you join me in some tea?”

He took her coat and again put it on the bed, the bed that she again tried not to see. When they came in he had switched off the overhead light, but she remembered everything in detail from the last time, the armchair draped with the red blanket, the green typewriter on the card table by the window, the photograph of the smiling couple in native costume, the jumbled stacks of books. Her eye fell on the little wooden milking stool, and she smiled.

He poured her a cup of tea. “Chamomile,” he said, “I hope you like it.”

The tea was pale and had the fragrance of warm straw. “It’s lovely,” she said. “It’s perfect.”

He led her to the armchair, bringing the milking stool for himself. “You’re cold,” he said.

“Yes, it’s icy outside.”

“Would you like to put the blanket over your knees?”

“No no, thank you. The tea will warm me.”

He nodded. She looked about the room again. There was a green paraffin heater by the window; the air felt rubbery with its fumes. She must not let the silence draw out, or she would lose her nerve altogether, would put down the cup and jump up and run from the place, back out into the night. “Were you working?” she asked.

He gestured towards the table and the stacked books. “Studying a little, yes.”

“And now I’m interrupting.”

“No, not at all, I was about to stop and go to- I was about to stop.”

He was dressed in an old pair of corduroy trousers and a hand-knitted woolen jumper. He wore no shirt, and his neck was bare, and she could see the top part of his broad, smooth, gleaming chest. His feet were bare, too. “Aren’t you cold?” she said. “Without socks, even!”

“I like to be cool, a little.” He smiled, showing her his shining teeth. “For me it’s a luxury, you know.”

“Is it very hot, where you come from, in Nigeria?”

“Yes, very hot, very humid.” He was watching her, nodding faintly as if to a slow, steady rhythm in his head. That awful silence began to stretch again between them, and it was as if the air were expanding. “Is the tea all right?” he asked. “I think you do not like it. I could make some coffee.”

Kiss me- please, kiss me. The words had leapt into her mind with such sudden force that for a moment she was not sure she had not spoken them out loud. She looked at his hands where he held them clasped between his knees. He is so beautiful, she thought, so beautiful.

“I had dinner with my father,” she said, sitting upright in the chair and squaring her shoulders. “At the Russell. Do you know it- the Russell Hotel?”

“I have been there, yes.” He laughed softly. “It’s a little expensive, for me.”

“I’m afraid he got a bit… a bit tipsy, my father. He has a problem with drink.”

“Yes, you told me he was in St. John’s.”

“Did I? I forgot. I put him in a taxi and sent him home. I hope he’ll be all right.” He took the cup and saucer from her and set them on the floor. “I feel guilty. I shouldn’t have let him drink so much. I-”

He took her hands in his, and when he spoke her name it was somehow as if she had never heard it before, or had never taken notice of it, at least, this strange, soft sound. She began to say something about this, she did not know what, but he drew her to her feet and released her hands and held her by the shoulders instead, and kissed her. After a moment she turned her face aside; she fancied she could hear her heart, it was pounding so. “Is Patrick really your name?” she said, still looking away. “Haven’t you a- a tribal name?”

He was smiling and moved his head so that he could see into her eyes. “I was educated by the Holy Ghost Fathers,” he said. “My mother called me Patrick in honor of them.”

“Oh. I see.”

They were whispering. He laid his hands now on her shoulder blades. The silk of her dress crackled a little