HE WAS IN THE HALL, WAITING FOR MAGGIE TO BRING HIS COAT AND hat. If he was quick he would make it to McGonagle’s before closing time; Barney Boyle would still be there, drunker than ever, but he could handle Barney when there were just the two of them and no Phoebe to get Barney’s dander up. He might find a woman there, too, and persuade her to come back with him to the flat, if he could sneak her past the unsleeping Mr. Poole and his alertly deaf wife. My life, he thought. My mess of a life.
Maggie came with his things, mumbling to herself. She held his coat, and he inquired of her yet again, although he thought it was for the first time, how she was getting on, and she clicked her tongue in irritation and said he should go home now and sleep it off, so he should.
Something struck him, a hazed recollection. “That girl you mentioned earlier,” he said. “Who was that?”
She frowned at the collar of his coat as she handed it to him. “What?”
He was struggling to remember.
“The one that died, you said. Who was she?”
She shrugged.
“Something Falls.”
He looked into the crown of his hat, the greasy darkness there. Falls, Christine. That name again. He was about to ask another question when a peremptory voice spoke behind him. “And where do you think you’re going?”
It was Phoebe.
“Home,” he lied.
“And leave me with this crowd? Not on your nelly.”
Maggie made a sound that might have been a snigger. Phoebe, shaking her head in mock disbelief at Quirke’s willingness to abandon her, took a shawl that was draped over the stair post and wrapped it around her shoulders. Firmly she grabbed his hand. “Lead on, big boy.”
Maggie grew suddenly agitated. “What’ll I say if they ask me?” she demanded, a rising whine.
“Tell them I’ve run away with a sailor,” Phoebe told her.
Outside, the night had turned chilly and Phoebe clung close to him as they walked along. Above the light of the streetlamps the massy beeches that lined the street had a spectral aspect, their leaves drily rustling. All the drink that Quirke had drunk had begun to go stale in him in the night’s chill, and he felt a clammy melancholy creeping along his veins. Phoebe too seemed despondent, suddenly. She was silent for a long while, and then asked: “What were you and Mummy fighting about?”
“We weren’t fighting,” Quirke said. “We were having a conversation. It’s what grown-ups do.”
She snickered. “Oh, yes? Some conversation.” Eagerly she clutched his arm. “Were you telling her you still love her, and that you’re sorry you didn’t marry her instead of her sister?”
“You read too many trashy magazines, my girl.”
She lowered her head and laughed. The night air breathed on him, and he realized how tired he was. It had been a long day. From the eager manner in which Phoebe was clinging to him he feared it was not over yet. He would have to cut down on his drinking, he told himself sternly, while another part of his mind laughed at him in mockery.
“Granddad really is fonder of you than he is of Daddy, isn’t he?” Phoebe said, and then, when he did not answer, “What was it like, being an orphan?”
“Smashing,” he said.
“Did they beat you in that place you were in, in Connemara-what was the name of it?”
“Carricklea Industrial School, so-called. Yes, they beat us. Why wouldn’t they?”
Dull smack of leather on flesh in the gray light of morning, the huge, bare windows above him like indifferent witnesses looking down upon one more scene of hurt and humiliation. He had been big enough to defend himself against the other boys in the place, but the Brothers were another matter: there was no defending against them.
“Until Granddad rescued you?” Quirke said nothing. She joggled his arm. “Come on. Tell me.”
He shrugged.
“The Judge was on the board of visitors,” he said. “He took an interest in me, God knows why, and got me away from Carricklea and sent me to a proper school. Adopted me, as good as, him and Nana Griffin.”
Phoebe kept a thoughtful silence for the space of a dozen steps. Then she said: “You and Daddy must have been like brothers.”
Quirke fairly cackled. “He wouldn’t care to hear you say it now.”
They stopped on a corner, under the grainy light of a lamp standard. The night was hushed, the big houses behind their hedges shut fast, the windows dark in all but a few of them.
“Have you any idea who your parents were, the real ones?” Phoebe asked.
He shrugged again, and after a moment said: “There are worse things than being an orphan.”
A light was flickering through the leaves above them. It was the moon. He shivered; he was cold. Such distances, such deeps! Then there was a blur of movement and suddenly Phoebe had thrown her arms around him and was kissing him full on the mouth, avidly, clumsily. Her breath tasted of gin, and something that he thought might be caramel. He could feel her breasts against his chest, and the springy struts of her underwear. He pushed her away. “What are you doing!” he cried, and wiped a hand violently across his mouth. She stood before him staring in shock, her body seeming to vibrate, as if she had been struck. She tried to say something but her mouth slid askew, and with tears welling in her eyes she turned and ran back towards the house. He turned, too, and strode off drunkenly in the opposite direction, stiff-legged and snorting, his hurrying footsteps those of a man in flight.
3
QUIRKE LIKED McGONAGLE’S BEST IN THE EARLY EVENING, WHEN there was no one in but a few of the regulars, that skinny type at the end of the bar poring over the racing pages and ruminatively scratching his crotch, or that slightly famous dipso poet, in cloth cap and hobnailed boots, glaring at a spark of tawny light in the bottom of his whiskey glass. There was the memorials page in the Evening Mail to read-O Mammy dear we miss you still, We did not know you were so ill-and Davy the barman’s awful, raspily murmured jokes to listen to. It was peaceful, sitting there on the stained, red-velvet banquette that smelled like a railway carriage, browsing and drowsing, soothed by whiskey and cigarette smoke and the prospect of the long, lazy hours until closing time. And so, when that particular evening he heard someone approach his table and stop, and looked up and saw that it was Mal, he did not know which he felt more strongly, surprise or irritation.
“Christ! Mal! What are you doing here?”
Mal sat down on a low stool without being invited and gestured at Quirke’s glass. “What’s that?”
“Whiskey,” Quirke said. “It’s called whiskey, Mal. Distilled from grain. Makes you drunk.”
Mal lifted a hand and Davy approached, stooping mournfully and snuffling a silver droplet back up his nose. “I’ll have one of those,” Mal said, pointing again at Quirke’s drink. “A whiskey.” It might have been a bowl of sacrificial blood he was asking for.
“Right, boss,” Davy said, and padded away.
Quirke watched Mal looking about the place and pretending to be interested in what he saw. He was ill at ease. It was true, he usually was ill at ease, more or less, but these days he seemed like that all the time. When Davy brought the drink Mal delved in a pocket for his wallet, but by the time he found it Quirke had paid. Mal took a sip gingerly and tried not to grimace. His wandering gaze came to rest on the copy of the Mail on the table. “Anything in the paper?” he asked.
Quirke laughed and said: “What is it, Mal? What do you want?”
Mal set his hands on his knees and frowned, pushing out his lower lip like a superannuated schoolboy being called to account. Quirke wondered, not for the first time, how this man had succeeded in becoming the country’s most successful consultant obstetrician. It could not have been all due to his father’s admittedly considerable influence-or could it?