He held the lighter for her and she leaned down to the flame, touching the tip of one finger to the back of his hand and glancing up at him from under her lashes.
“Is this a coincidence?” he asked.
“Oh, no. I knew this was your haunt on Sunday mornings. Didn’t you use to meet Sarah here?”
Sarah was Mal’s late wife, whom Quirke had loved, or had thought he did.
“Yes, she used to come round sometimes, after she’d been to Mass.”
“That’s right — she was very devout, was Sarah. Her God rewarded her well, didn’t he, giving her that brain tumor.” She smiled at him. “You were awfully fond of Sarah, weren’t you. I was always a little jealous. You had all of us running after you, you cruel man.”
He laughed. “What was it you said to me once, about us being alike, you and I? Cold heart and a hot soul — that was how you described us.”
“Did I? I don’t remember. But I guess it’s about right. My Lord, look at that boy, how thin he is — don’t they feed their kids around here?”
“They come up from Ringsend. The unkillable children of the poor.” He glanced at her with a sly grin. “That’s Ezra Pound, by the way.”
“Touché, then. You always were well-read.”
“No, I’m not. I’m a magpie; I pick up bright scraps and store them away, to impress people later.”
“And, of course, we’re so easily impressed.”
They smoked their cigarettes and watched the boys at play. Rose crossed her knees and let one sandal dangle from her long-toed, shapely foot.
“Have you settled back into all your other old haunts?” she asked without looking at him. He could hear that she was still annoyed at him for moving out of the house on Ailesbury Road so abruptly.
“Settling in is not a thing I do very well,” he said.
“But you must be glad to be back in that apartment of yours,” she said. “So much livelier than our old place.” She paused. “Mal misses you, you know. He was shocked, the way you left like that.”
“I’m sorry,” Quirke said. “I suppose it seemed ungrateful.”
“Oh, we don’t require gratitude. We were glad to have you there — we were glad to help.”
He turned to her and studied her profile. Still she would not look at him, but kept her eyes on the raucous swimmers.
“What’s the matter, Rose?” he said. “It’s not just me moving out, is it?”
She said nothing for a while. There was something uncanny in the unwavering gaze she kept trained on the boys at the lock.
“Come round to lunch today,” she said at last. “We won’t try to hold on to you, or shut you into a room. Mal would like to see you. He has things to talk to you about.”
“What sort of things?”
“Oh, I’ll let him tell you himself.”
She dropped the butt of the cigarette on the gravel and trod on it with the heel of her sandal, then stood up. “By the way,” she said, “I almost forgot.” She unclasped her handbag and opened it. “I was going through some old things and found this.”
She handed him a photograph, faded and badly creased at one corner. It showed him and Mal, in tennis whites, each with an arm around the other’s shoulder, smiling into the camera. There were trees behind them and, in the distance, a tall white building. It had been taken in Boston, where Mal and he had studied medicine together.
“My God,” he said, “that must be, what, nearly twenty-five years ago?”
“Yes, and don’t you two boys look happy.”
He glanced up at her from where he sat, the newspapers scattered on the dry ground at his feet.
“What time shall I come?” he asked.
“Oh, whenever. We tend not to keep fixed hours anymore, Mal and I. We just take things as they come.”
He tried to return the photograph to her, but she shook her head. “You keep it. Put it in your wallet and just keep it.”
They gazed at each other for a long moment, then Rose reached out a hand and touched his face. “The years run on,” she said, “don’t they.” Then she turned and walked quickly away, with her head down.
* * *
He went out on foot to Ailesbury Road. It was a walk of half an hour or so. By noon the heat of the day was intense, and he was glad of his straw hat and his light linen jacket. He had felt like a truant when he left Mal and Rose’s house, and a pleasurably guilty sensation of freedom still persisted. His time was his own, and he could do entirely as he wished. Not that Mal or Rose had required anything of him while he was staying with them, yet he realized now how oppressed he had felt in the weeks when he was there, at their house. Why had he given in and let them take him over in the first place? Fear, he supposed. He hadn’t quite trusted Philbin’s diagnosis of his mental confusions and blackouts, and if he was going to die, he didn’t want to die alone. But it seemed now that Philbin had been right, and that he wasn’t going to die, and despite himself he savored the quickened sense of life his reprieve had given him.
It was Maisie who answered the doorbell.
“Good day to you, Dr. Quirke,” she said. “And isn’t it a grand fine day?”
“It is, Maisie, it’s a beautiful day.”
She took his panama hat and led him through the house, along the absurdly ornate hallway.
“How are you getting on, Maisie?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m getting on grand, Doctor,” she said. “Dr. Griffin is a lovely man.”
The pointed avoidance of Rose’s name made Quirke smile to himself; he could guess what Maisie thought of the mistress of the house.
“Here,” he said, “I brought you something.” He handed her a packet of twenty Player’s. “You’re not to say I gave them to you, mind. You shouldn’t be smoking at all.”
Maisie blushed and grinned and slipped the cigarettes into the pocket of her apron.
“You have me spoiled, so you have, Dr. Quirke.”
Maisie’s child, hers and her own father’s, had been born in the Mother of Mercy Laundry and immediately taken away from her and sent she never knew where — to America, probably, for adoption by a Catholic family there. Quirke supposed it had been for the best. How would she have survived in the world, unmarried and with a child to look after, a child that was the product of an act of incest? Yet he wondered what she felt, now, and if she pined still for her lost infant.
Rose was in the conservatory that gave onto the extensive back garden. She was sitting at a wrought-iron table, in front of a miniature palm tree. She had changed into loose linen trousers and a linen shirt. She had a tall glass before her with ice cubes and a sprig of something green standing in it. “I made myself a mint julep,” she said, “just for old times’ sake. You want to join me, Quirke?”
“Thanks,” Quirke said, “but I think not. Maybe something cool, though.” He turned to Maisie. “A glass of tonic water would be good. Plenty of ice, please, Maisie.”
“Right you are, Doctor,” Maisie said. “I won’t be a tick.”
“Pull up a chair and sit down,” Rose said. “You look hot, all right.” There was a book lying on the table. “Ezra Pound,” she said, giving him a dry glance. She picked up the book and leafed through it. “Cantos, he calls this stuff. I guess they’re poems. I don’t understand them.”
“I don’t think anyone does,” Quirke said. “I suspect they’re not meant to be understood. Think of them as music.”
Rose shrugged, and tossed the book back onto the table. “Seems a lot of nonsense to me. No wonder they locked him up in a loony bin. And he sure doesn’t think much of the Jews.”
He picked up the book and leafed through the pages, stopped at one, and read aloud: