“You still have time.”
Now he looked at her.
“Time?”
“To redeem yourself.”
He made a strange, soft sound in his throat which it took her a moment to identify-he was laughing.
“Ah, my dear Sarah,” he said-how seldom he spoke her name!-“it’s too late for that, I think.”
A clock struck in the house, and then another, and yet another-so many! As if time here were a multiple thing, different at all levels, in every room.
“I told Quirke about Phoebe,” she said. “I told him the whole thing.”
“Oh, yes?” He did his faint laugh again. “That must have been an interesting conversation.”
“I should have told him years ago. I should have told him about Phoebe, and you should have told me about Christine Falls.”
He crossed his legs and fussily hitched up the knee of his trousers.
“You wouldn’t have needed to tell him about Phoebe,” he said mildly. “He knew already.”
What was it she was hearing-could it be the tiny echoes of the clock chimes, still beating faintly in the air? She held her breath, afraid of what might come out of her mouth. At last she said:
“What do you mean?”
He was looking at the ceiling high above, studying it, as if there might be something up there, some sign, some hieroglyph.
“Who do you think got my father to phone me here in Boston the night Delia died?” he asked, as if he were not addressing her but interrogating that something which only he could see in the shadows under the ceiling. “Who was in such torment that he couldn’t bear the thought of having the child around, to remind him of his tragic loss, and was prepared to give her to us instead?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, “no, it’s not true.”
But she knew it was, of course. Oh, Quirke. She had known it all along, she realized now, had known it and denied it to herself. She felt no anger, no resentment, only sadness.
She would not tell Phoebe; Phoebe must not know that her father had willingly given her away.
A minute passed. She said:
“I think I’m sick.”
He went still; she could feel it, like something in him stopping, some animal version of him, stopping with all its senses on alert.
“Why do you think that?”
“There’s something wrong with my head. This dizziness, it’s getting worse.”
He reached sideways and took her hand, cold and limp, in his.
“I need you,” he said calmly, without emphasis. “I can’t do it, any of it, without you.”
“Then put an end to this thing,” she said with sudden fierceness, “this thing of Christine Falls and her child.” She turned the hand he was holding and gripped his fingers. “Will you?” Now it was his hand that went limp. He shook his head once, the barest movement. She heard the foghorns, their forlorn calling. She released his hand and stood up. His duty, he had said-his duty to lie, to pretend, to protect. His duty, that had blighted their lives. “You knew about Quirke and Phoebe,” she said. “And you knew about Christine Falls. You knew-you all knew-and you didn’t tell me. All these years, all these lies. How could you, Mal?”
He gazed up at her from where he sat; all he looked was tired. He said:
“Perhaps for the same reason you didn’t tell Quirke, from the start, that Phoebe was his daughter, when you thought he didn’t know.” He smiled wanly. “We all have our own kinds of sin.”
35
QUIRKE KNEW IT WAS TIME TO GO. THERE WAS NOTHING HERE FOR him any longer, if there ever had been anything, except confusion, mistakes, damage. In the bedroom he turned Delia’s and Phoebe’s photographs once more to face the room; he did not fear his dead wife anymore; she had been exorcised, somehow. He began to pack his bag. The daylight was at an end, and beyond the windows the vague snow-shapes were merging into shadow. He felt unwell. The central heating made the air in the house dense and oppressive, and it seemed to him he had been suffering from a headache, more or less, since the night he had arrived. He did not know what to think, about Phoebe, Mal, Sarah, about Andy Stafford-about any of them. He was tired of trying to know what he should think. His anger at everything had subsided to a background hum. He was conscious too of a faint, simmering sense of desperation; it was like that feeling that would threaten to overwhelm him at the start of certain days in childhood when there was nothing in prospect, nothing of interest, nothing to do. Is that how his life would be from now on-a sort of living afterlife, a wandering in a limbo among other souls who, like him, were neither saved nor lost?
When Rose Crawford came into the room he knew at once what would happen. She was wearing a black blouse and black slacks. “I think mourning becomes me,” she said, “don’t you?” He went back to his packing. She stood in the middle of the floor with her hands in the pockets of her slacks, watching him. He had a shirt in his hands; she took it from him and laid it out on the bed and began expertly to fold it. “I used to work in a dry cleaners,” she said, and glanced at him over her shoulder. “That surprises you, I bet.”
Now it was he who stood watching her. He lit a cigarette.
“Two things I want from you,” he said.
She laid the folded shirt in his suitcase and took up another and began to fold it too.
“Oh, yes?” she said. “And what things would they be?”
“I want you to promise me to stop the funds for this business with the babies. And I want you to let Phoebe come home with me.”
She shook her head briefly, concentrating on the shirt.
“Phoebe is going to stay here,” she said.
“No.” He was quite calm; he spoke softly. “Let her go.”
She put the second shirt on top of the first in the suitcase and came and took the cigarette from his fingers and drew on it and gave it back to him.
“Oops,” she said, “sorry-lipstick again.” She measured him with a smiling look, her head tilted to one side. “It’s too late, Quirke. You’ve lost her.”
“You know she’s my daughter.”
She nodded, still smiling.
“Of course. Josh, after all, was in on your little exchange, and Josh and I had no secrets from each other. It was one of the nicer things about us.”
It was as if something had swooped down on him suddenly from above-he saw its darkness against his eyes and seemed to feel the beating of its wings about his head. He had taken her by the shoulders and was shaking her furiously. The cigarette flew from his fingers.
“You selfish, evil bitch!” he said between clenched teeth, that winged thing still flapping and screeching around him.
She stepped back, deftly disengaging herself from his grasp, and went and picked up the burning cigarette from the carpet and carried it across the room and dropped it into the empty fireplace.
“You should be careful, Quirke,” she said, “you could set the house on fire.” She kneaded her shoulder. “What a grip you have-really, you don’t know your own strength.”
He saw that she was trying not to laugh. He launched himself forward on his resistant leg, crossing the space between them as if it were not a walk he was doing but a sort of upright falling. He did not know what he might do when he reached her, whether he would slap her, or knock her to the floor. What he did was take her in his arms. She was of a surprising lightness, and he could plainly feel the bones beneath her flesh. When he kissed her he crushed his mouth on hers and tasted blood, whose, hers or his, he was not sure.
THE NIGHT, GLOSSY AND DENSELY DARK, PRESSED ITSELF AGAINST THE windows on opposite sides of the room. Rose said, “You could both stay, you know, you and Phoebe. Let the rest of them go back to Mother Ireland. We might make it work, the three of us. You’re like me, Quirke, admit it. You’re more like me than you’re like your precious Sarah. A cold heart and a hot soul, that’s you and me.” He began to speak but she touched a fingertip quickly to his lips. “No, no, don’t say anything. Silly of me to ask.” She twisted away from him and sat on the side of the bed with her back turned. She smiled wryly at him over her shoulder. “Don’t you love me even a little? You could lie, you know. I wouldn’t mind. You’re good at lying.”