Elegy For April

under his fingers. He put his face to her hair at the side. “Is this why you came here?” he murmured.

“I don’t know.” It was true. “I wanted to talk to you about-”

He touched the tips of his fingers to her lips. “Ssh,” he said again, softly. “Ssh.”

The only light in the room was from the little reading lamp on the desk, and now he reached past her and switched it off. At first all was blackness, then a faint, ghostly, ice-blue radiance began to spread slowly from the window. Her coat slid from the bed onto the floor, and neither bent to pick it up. She caught a fingernail on her stocking. As she leaned down to take it off he cupped the side of her face in one of his great, square hands, and again spoke her name. She stood up, and he embraced her again. She felt the ribbed pattern of his jumper and wondered who had knitted it for him; when he crossed his arms and grasped it at both sides and drew it quickly over his head she smelled his sweat, a sharp, oniony odor. The sheets were cold against her back, and she shivered, and he pressed her more closely to him, giving her his warmth. His skin had a curiously stippled texture, like soft sandpaper; it felt exactly as she had known it would. The bedsprings set up a faint tinkling, like the sounds of a distant orchestra beginning to tune up. She put her face into the hollow of his shoulder and laughed a stifled laugh. “Oh, Lord,” she whispered, “Mrs. Gilligan will hear us!”

SHE WOKE WITH A CRY. SOMETHING ABOUT- ABOUT WHAT?- about an animal, some kind of animal, was it? She kept her eyes shut tight, grasping at the dream as it poured out of her mind like water. An animal, and…? No, it was gone. She turned onto her side. The lamp was burning again, and Patrick was sitting at the card table, bent over a book, his back a broad, strong curve. She put a hand flat under her cheek on the pillow and watched him, smiling to herself. The paraffin heater was still on- she could taste the fumes, an oily film on her lips- and the warmth in the room made her think of an underground lair, a place of safety and calm.

“I was dreaming about a lion,” she said. Yes, a lion, that was what it was.

Patrick looked at her over his shoulder. “What kind of a lion?”

“What kinds are there?”

He stood up from the table and came to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. He was wearing his jumper again and the baggy corduroys; it was, she thought, as if some wonderfully fashioned thing, a piece in ebony or gleaming bronze by one of the masters of Benin, had been put into an old sack to protect it. She brought out her hand from under her cheek and gave it to him to hold between both of his brick-pink palms.

“I’ve never seen a lion,” he said.

“Aren’t there any in Nigeria?”

“There may be some left, in the bush. It’s not the jungle, you know.” He smiled. “We live in towns and cities, just like you.”

She sat up. “My hair must be a haystack, is it?”

“It is very beautiful,” he said.

She lowered her eyes quickly. “Were you studying?” she asked.

“Yes, but only to pass the time. Since you were sleeping.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep. What time is it? It must be late.”

“Yes, it’s late.”

This made them feel suddenly shy of each other. She withdrew her hand from his and was startled to feel tears welling up hotly in her eyes.

“What is the matter?” he asked, alarmed.

“Nothing, nothing.” She laughed at herself, brushing at her eyes. “I’m just- happy, I suppose.”

He held her head between his hands and drew her to him and kissed her solemnly on the forehead. “My Irish girl,” he whispered. “My wild Irish girl.”

“Come,” she said, “lie down again, just for a little while.”

He stretched himself beside her on top of the blankets. “You remember,” she said, “when I was here that day, that first day, I asked you about… about April and… and you?” He had closed his eyes and was lying very still, his hands folded on his chest. He said nothing. “It wasn’t any business of mine, of course, but I had to ask. Jimmy had said something, and then I asked Bella. They seemed to think-”

He waited, still with his eyes closed. “Yes? What did they seem to think?” She had an urge to touch his eyelids, to feel with her fingertips their delicate, silken texture.

“Oh, nothing, really.” She could hear him breathing through those broad, carven nostrils. His skin fascinated her; she could not stop looking at it. Yes, ebony, she was thinking, only not smooth, not polished, but with that wonderful, soft roughness. “It’s just that someone went round to April’s and talked to the old lady who lives on the top floor. She’s half cracked, of course, and terribly sad.” She hesitated. She was not worried, not really, not as she had been when Quirke told her what Miss Leetch had said. So much had happened to her life in the past hour- how could she be worried? “She said that she had seen someone with April, in the house.” She looked at him more closely. His breathing had become regular and deep- was he asleep? “She said this person was-w as black.”

Slowly he opened his eyes and gazed straight upwards, at the shadows under the ceiling. “Who was it?” he asked.

“She didn’t know, I think. She just said he was-”

“I meant, who was it that went to question her?”

“Oh. A policeman. A detective.”

For a long time he lay very still and did not speak, then abruptly he rose and swung his legs off the bed and sat there a moment, with his hands to his face. She had a trickling sensation between her shoulder blades, as if a drop of ice-cold liquid were sliding down inside her spine, through the very marrow.

“You must go home now,” he said. “Please- get dressed.”

“But-”

“Please.”

He put on his shoes and an overcoat and walked with her across to the cathedral, where the streetlights were brightest. The pavements sparkled with hoarfrost. There was hardly any traffic, and they had to wait a long time before they saw a taxi coming, with its light on. For all that time he did not speak to her, only stood hunched in his coat, his broad face grayed from the cold. She tried to think of something to say, some question to ask, but could not. He was angry, she could feel it. She was furious at herself for telling him what the old woman had said. How could she have been so stupid, to say it just like that, as if it were the weather she was talking about? What did it matter if he was at April’s, if it was he the woman had seen- and who else, after all, could it have been?- what did any of that matter now? They all came and went at the house, Jimmy, Isabel, she, too, all of them had been there at one time or other- why not Patrick? April had probably told him about the key under the stone, why would she not?

She got into the taxi. Patrick stood over her, holding the door open for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice distant. He shut the door. She was still looking up into his eyes through the window as the taxi pulled away and set off over the crest of the cathedral hill.

IT WAS COLD IN HER FLAT. SHE SWITCHED ON THE LIGHT IN THE living room and lit the gas fire, then went into the kitchen and put on a saucepan of milk to heat, and opened the biscuit tin. She had not turned on the kitchen light, since the glow coming in from the streetlamp was enough for her to see by. She was still wearing her overcoat. She waited, listening to the low hiss and occasional splutter of the gas jets. She tried not to think about Patrick, about all that had happened to night. Fool! she told herself. Fool!

When the milk was heated she poured it into a glass and went to the table for the biscuit tin, and as she did so she glanced down through the window to the street. Something moved down there. It was that shadow again at the edge of the lamplight. How was it she was not surprised? She stepped back as far as she could from the window while still able to see down to the pavement. The glass was too hot to hold, but she held it anyway. Someone was there, she was sure of it this time, someone she could not so much see as sense, a motionless figure standing outside the circle of light, looking up at the window. Her fingers of their own accord relaxed, and the glass dropped and shattered at her feet, and she felt the hot milk splashing on her ankles. Before she went into the living room she reached around the door and switched off the light, then crossed to the window. She tried to tell herself the secret watcher was not real, that she was imagining it, as she had imagined it, surely, on that other night, too. But she knew it was not so, that the watcher was real. She tried to think, to reason, to decide what she should do, but her mind had gone sluggish.

She hurried down the stairs, carrying her shoes, trying not to make a sound. The forty-watt