The atmosphere outdoors had the texture of wetted, cold cotton. Malachy’s car was parked at the curb; although Malachy had picked him up in it from St. John’s, it was only now that Quirke recognized it, with a dull shock, as the big old black Humber once owned by Judge Garret Griffin, his adoptive father. The Judge, now dead, was Malachy’s natural father; he had done them both great wrong. Why was Malachy driving the wicked old man’s motorcar- what was it, a gesture of forgiveness and filial piety?
Quirke suggested that they walk. They set off along Mount Street, their footsteps rising up a beat late behind them. There was coal dust from the city’s fireplaces suspended in the fog; they could feel the grit of it on their lips and between their teeth. At the corner of Merrion Square they turned left in the direction of Baggot Street.
“By the way,” Quirke said, “do you know that young one at the hospital, Conor Latimer’s daughter?”
“Latimer? Which department is she in?”
“I don’t know. General, I imagine. She’s a junior.”
Malachy pondered; Quirke could almost hear the sound of his brain working, as if he were flicking through a set of file cards; Malachy prided himself on his memory for detail, or used to, before Sarah died and he lost interest in such things. “Latimer,” he said again. “Yes. Alice Latimer- no, April. I’ve seen her about. Why?”
The traffic lights at the corner of Fitzwilliam Street, turning red, pierced through the mist with an unnatural and almost baleful brightness.
“Phoebe knows her. They’re friends.” Malachy was silent. Mention of Phoebe always made for constraint between the two men; after all, Phoebe had grown up thinking Malachy, not Quirke, was her father. “It seems,” Quirke said, clearing his throat, “she hasn’t been heard from for some time.”
Malachy did not look at him. “Heard from?”
They turned right onto Baggot Street. A tinker woman in a tartan shawl accosted them, doing her piteous whine; Quirke gave her a coin, and she gabbled a blessing after them.
“Phoebe is worried,” Quirke said. “It seems they’re in the habit of speaking every day on the phone, she and the Latimer girl, but it’s been a week or more since she had a call from her.”
“Has she been at work, April Latimer?”
“No-sent in a sick-note.”
“Well then.”
“Phoebe is not convinced.”
“Yes,” Malachy said after a pause, “but Phoebe does worry.” It was true; for one so young, Phoebe had known a disproportion of misfortune in her life- betrayal, rape, violent deaths- and how would she not fear the worst? “What about the family?” Malachy asked. “Bill Latimer would be her uncle, yes? Our esteemed Minister.” They both smiled grimly.
“I don’t know,” Quirke said, “I don’t think Phoebe has spoken to them.”
“And the brother? Hasn’t he rooms in Fitzwilliam Square?”
“Oscar Latimer- is he her brother?”
“I think so.” Malachy was brooding again. “She has a bit of a reputation, so I hear,” he said, “the same Miss or I should say Doctor Latimer.”
“Yes? A reputation for what?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. Drinks a bit, goes about with a fast crowd. There’s a fellow at the College of Surgeons, I forget his name. Foreigner.” He paused, frowning. “And that one from the Gate, the actress, what do you call her?- Galway?”
“Isabel Galloway?” Quirke chuckled. “That’s fast, all right.”
They were crossing at the top of Merrion Street when a green double-decker bus appeared suddenly out of the fog, bearing down on them with a roar, and they had to skip in haste to the safety of the pavement. A reek of porter from the doorway of Doheny & Nesbitts made Quirke’s stomach heave.
“So she might have gone to En gland, in that case,” Malachy said, and gave a little cough.
Quirke knew what “gone to En gland” was a euphemism for. “Oh, come on, Mal,” he said drily. “Wouldn’t she have got one of the likely lads at the hospital to help her with any little problem in that line?”
Malachy did not reply, and Quirke, amused, glanced at him and saw his mouth tightened in a deploring pout. Malachy was consultant obstetrician at the Hospital of the Holy Family and did not take kindly even to the suggestion that April Latimer or anyone else could have got an illegal abortion there.
At the Shelbourne, outside the revolving glass door, Quirke balked. “I’m sorry, Mal,” he muttered, “I can’t face it.” The thought of all that chatter and brightness in there, the winking glasses and the shining faces of the morning drinkers, was not to be borne. He was sweating; he could feel the wet hotness on his chest and on his forehead under the rim of his hat that was suddenly too tight. They turned and trudged back the way they had come.
Not a word was exchanged between them until they got to the Q and L. Quirke did not know why the shop was called the Q and L, and had never been curious enough to ask. The proprietor- or more properly the proprietor’s son, since the shop was owned by an ancient widow, bedridden these many years- was a fat, middle-aged fellow with a big moon face and brilliantined hair slicked flat. He always seemed dressed up for the races, in his accustomed outfit of checked shirt and bow tie and canaryyellow waistcoat, tweed jacket, and cream-colored corduroy slacks. He was prone to unpredictable, brief displays of skittishness- he might suddenly yodel, or grin like a chimp, and more than once Quirke had been present to witness him essay a few dance steps behind the counter, clicking his fingers and stamping the heels of his chestnut-brown brogues. Today he was in undemonstrative mood, due to the dampening effects of the fog, perhaps. Quirke bought a Procea loaf, six eggs, butter, milk, two small bundles of kindling, a packet of Senior Service, and a box of Swan Vestas. The look of these things on the counter flooded him suddenly with a wash of self-pity.
“Thanky-voo,” the shopman said plumply, handing over change.
In the flat Quirke unplugged the electric fire- it had made little impression on the big, high-ceilinged room- and crumpled the pages of an ancient copy of the Irish Independent and put them in the grate with the kindling on top and lumps of coal from the scuttle and set a match to the paper and stood back and watched the flames catch and the coils of heavy white smoke snake upwards. Then he went into the kitchen and scrambled two eggs and toasted slices of bread under the gas grill. Malachy accepted a cup of tea but would eat nothing. “My God,” Quirke said, suspending the teapot in midpour, “look at us, like a pair of old biddies on pension day.” They had been married to two sisters. Quirke’s wife, Delia, had died in childbirth, having Phoebe; Malachy’s Sarah had succumbed to a brain tumor two years ago. Being a widower suited Malachy, or so it seemed to Quirke; it was as if he had been born to be bereaved.
Angelus bells were tolling from all quarters of the city.
Quirke sat down at the table, still in his overcoat, and began to eat. He could feel Malachy watching him with the melancholy shadow of a smile. A sort of intimacy, however uneasy, had developed between the two of them since Sarah’s death. They were indeed like two sexless cronies, Quirke reflected, two aging androgynes shuffling arm in arm down the wearying middle stretch of life’s long road. Malachy’s thoughts must have been running on the same lines, for now he startled Quirke by saying, “I’m thinking of retiring- did I tell you?”
Quirke, teacup suspended, stared at him. “Retiring?”
“My heart is not in it anymore,” Mal said, lifting and letting fall his left shoulder, as if to demonstrate a deficiency of ballast on that side.
Quirke set down his cup. “For God’s sake, Malachy, you’re not fifty yet.”