“I’ve been away too,” he said.
“Oh, yes?”
“I was in St. John of the Cross.”
“My-what’s that?”
“A drying -out clinic.”
“Yes, now that I think of it, Phoebe mentioned in one of her letters that you were in the bin. I thought she was exaggerating. What was it like?”
“All right.”
She smiled. “I’m sure.” The barman poured the champagne and set the sizzling glasses before them. Quirke looked at his, chewing on his lip. “Do you dare?” Rose asked, smiling with sweet malice. “I don’t want to be responsible for putting you back on the cross.”
He picked up his glass and tipped the rim of it against hers. They drank. “Here’s to sobriety,” he said.
She had reserved her favorite table, in the corner with a banquette, from where they had a view of the rest of the dining room. They ordered poached salmon. Mнcheбl and Hilton from the Gate were at a nearby table, lunching in what seemed an angry silence; Mнcheбl’s wig looked blacker and glossier than ever.
“Tell me the news,” Rose said. “If there is any.”
He sipped his champagne. It was a drink he did not care for, usually, finding even the best vintages too dry and acid; today, however, it tasted fine. He would drink one glass, he told himself, one glass only, and after that perhaps a glass of Chablis, and then would stop.
“I wondered if you would come back,” he said. “I thought Boston might take you into its bosom and keep you there.”
“Oh, Boston,” she said dismissively. “In fact, I was in New York, mostly. Now, there’s a town.”
“But you returned nevertheless to dear, dirty Dublin.”
“And you, Quirke, and you.”
The waiter brought their fish, and Quirke ordered his glass of Chablis. Rose made no comment, only told the waiter she would keep to the champagne.
“Have you spoken to Phoebe yet?” Quirke asked. “Since you got back, that is.”
“No, Quirke dear, you were my first port of call, as always. How is the darling girl?”
He told her about April Latimer, how she was missing and that no one knew where she was; he did not mention the blood that had been found beside her bed. Rose listened, watching him in her shrewd way. She was the second wife, now widow, of his father-in-law, Josh Crawford, Irish-American haulage giant, as the newspapers used to call him, and sometime crook. He had been much older than she, and had left her a rich woman. After he died she had moved to Ireland on a whim and bought a great house in Wicklow which she rarely visited, preferring what she called the coziness of her suite at the Shelbourne, where she had her bedroom, two reception rooms, two bathrooms, and a private dining room. Quirke and she had gone to bed together once, and once only, in turbulent times, a thing they never spoke of but which remained between them, something to be aware of, like a light shining uncertainly afar in a dark wood.
“And what do you think has become of her,” she asked, “this young woman?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you have your suspicions.”
He paused, setting down his knife and fork and gazing before him for some moments. “I have- fears,” he said at length. “It doesn’t look good. She’s wild, her family tell me, though Phoebe insists they’re exaggerating. I can’t say. She worked at the hospital, but I never came across her.”
“Does Malachy know her?”
“He must have had some dealings with her in the course of his days, but he says he can’t remember. You know Mal- she would need to sprout feathers and a tail before he noticed her.”
“Oh, yes, Malachy,” she said. “How is he?”
Quirke’s glass of Chablis seemed somehow to have become empty all by itself, without his noticing. He would not have another, no matter how loudly his blood clamored for it; no, he would not. “He says he’s going to retire.”
“Retire? But he’s so young.”
“That’s what I said.”
“He should marry again, before it’s too late.”
“Who would he marry?”
“Isn’t this country supposed to be thronged with women looking for a man?”
He called the waiter and asked for another glass of wine. Rose lifted an eyebrow but made no remark.
“By the way,” he said, “I bought a car.”
“Well, you devil, you!”
“It was very expensive.”
“I should hope so. I can’t see you in a cheap jalopy.”
When they finished their lunch he suggested they should go for a drive. Rose gave the Alvis barely a glance- Rose was not easily impressed, and when she was impressed she was careful not to show it-and when they had got in she would not let him drive off until he had put on the tie with the painted blonde on it. He laughed and said that if they were stopped by the Guards he would be arrested for causing a disturbance of the peace. “Add the fact that I have no driving license, and I’ll probably end up in jail.” His brain was fizzing pleasantly from the effects of the champagne and the two glasses of Chablis, and he felt almost skittish. He pulled down the mirror so he could see to knot the ridiculous tie. Rose sat sideways in the seat, watching him.
“You’d like that,” she said.
“What would I like?”
“Being in jail. I can see you there, in your suit with the arrows on it, contentedly sewing mailbags and writing your memoirs in the evenings before lights-out.”
He laughed. “You know me too well.” He smoothed the tie and readjusted the mirror and started up the engine. “I’m glad you’ve come back,” he said. “I missed you.”
Now it was her turn to laugh. “No, you didn’t. But it’s nice of you to say so.”
They went out by Rathfarnham and set off up into the mountains.
“You didn’t drive, before,” Rose said, “did you?”
“No. Mal taught me. It wasn’t difficult to get the hang of it.”
“And you’ve bought yourself a brand-new, shiny car.” She patted the polished dashboard. “Very smart. I imagine it impresses the girls?”
He did not answer that. The sunlight of earlier was gone now, and the day had turned iron-gray. Between them, too, unaccountably, something had darkened a little, and for a number of miles they did not speak at all. The mountainsides, burnt by frost, were ocher-colored, and there was ice at the sides of the road and patches of snow lay in the lee of rocks and in the long, straight furrows where turf had been cut. Below, to their right, a circular volcanic lake appeared, the water black and motionless, unreal-seeming. Winding higher and higher on the narrow road they felt the air growing steadily thinner and colder, and Quirke turned the heater on full. At Glencree there was a sudden squall of sleet, and the windscreen wipers had a hard time coping with it.
“I used to come up here with Sarah,” Quirke said. “It was here one day, somewhere around here, that she told me Phoebe was my daughter, mine and Delia’s, not hers and Mal’s.”
“But you knew that already.”