Holy Orders A Quirke Novel (31 page)

“Of course, I’ll come straightaway,” she said, trying to inject warmth into her voice and not quite succeeding. In the midst of a squabble recently she had said she was tired of hearing him talk about Phoebe. “In fact,” she had said, putting a hand on her hip and striking a pose, “I have to say I’m disenchanted in general with your daughter, whom you spoil, and whose whims and fantasies you indulge.” He would have been angrier had he not been distracted by the thought that she might have rehearsed this speech, for certainly she had delivered it as if she were onstage. They had been friends once, she and Phoebe; Isabel was another thing he had taken from his daughter.

He went back to the living room. Phoebe was sitting forward in the armchair, nursing her bruised wrist in her other hand and gazing intently at the fire. He thought of her as a child, in Mal and Sarah’s house, sitting like this before the gas fire there, wondering why the filaments did not burn away.

*   *   *

Fifteen minutes later Isabel arrived, brisk and bright as a hospital nurse, the heavy fur of her coat exuding the coolness of the spring night outside. She sat on the arm of Phoebe’s chair and held her undamaged hand, as Quirke had held it a while ago. “The troubles your father gets you into,” she said, clicking her tongue. She glanced over her shoulder at Quirke. “Who is this Costigan person and why is he sending you warnings?”

Quirke was lighting a cigarette. “He’s what you might call a manager, I suppose. He makes things happen, or prevents them.”

“Is he the one who had you beaten up, that time?”

“Yes, I think so.”

He came forward and stood with his back to the fire. Phoebe sat, silent and staring, like one of El Greco’s afflicted saints. Isabel regarded Quirke, shaking her head. “And how have you annoyed him this time?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“That means you know but you’re not prepared to say.” He offered her a cigarette but she waved it away. “It’s one thing to have you beaten up,” she said. “God knows I often think of doing the same thing myself. But sending thugs to attack your daughter in the street, that’s too much.”

“Yes. I know.”

“It’s to do with Jimmy Minor’s death, isn’t it?” She looked down at Phoebe. She was still holding her hand. “Phoebe? Is it?”

Phoebe shrugged listlessly. “I don’t know,” she said. She lifted her eyes and looked at Quirke. “Is it, Quirke?”

He sighed, and leaned an elbow on the mantelpiece, and told them about Packie the Pike, and what Packie’s woman had told him. When he had finished they were silent, all three, for a long time. Then Isabel spoke: “So he was killed by mistake, Jimmy Minor?” she said with bitter incredulity.

“I don’t think I’d call it a mistake,” Quirke said. He considered the toes of his shoes. “Someone had to die, and it couldn’t be the priest.”

Isabel snorted. “Why not? He raped their child.”

“Jimmy should have stayed out of it,” Quirke said.

Phoebe looked up at him, frowning. “Are you saying it was his own fault?”

“No, I’m not saying that. He didn’t know the kind of people he was getting involved with.”

Isabel was suddenly indignant. “A pack of tinkers—?” she began.

“Not just them,” Quirke said. “Costigan, the church. All that.” The moon, he saw, was in the window here, too, its crooked face leering down.

“How did Jimmy know about it?” Phoebe asked. “How did he find out about this priest, and what he’d done?”

“Someone must have told him,” Quirke said.

“Who?” Isabel demanded.

“The same person who told me.”

Isabel was watching him closely now. “The tinker’s woman? You seem to have had quite a cozy chat with her.”

Quirke said nothing to that, and turned away.

Another silent interval passed; then Isabel spoke again. “So: what will you do?” she asked.

“I’ll talk to Hackett,” Quirke said.

“Your detective friend?” Isabel curled her lip. “And what will
he
do?”

“He’ll go after Packie Joyce.”

“Will he arrest him?”

“I don’t know. He’ll try to get Packie’s sons back from England. If they can be found.”

Phoebe suddenly stood up, letting the blanket fall from her shoulders. “Nothing ever happens,” she said in a thin, bitter voice. “People commit murder and get away with it.” She looked at Quirke, her lower lip trembling. “You let them get away with it.”

Quirke stepped forward, putting out a hand, but she drew away from him quickly. “Don’t touch me,” she said.

“Nobody kills a priest,” Quirke said, his voice gone weary. “Not even the likes of Packie Joyce will kill a priest. It’s what I said—Jimmy should have stayed out of it.”

There was a brief silence; then Isabel rose from where she had been sitting on the arm of the chair. “Come on, Quirke,” she said, “walk your daughter home. I’m off.”

*   *   *

They waited in the street for a taxi, and when one came Isabel turned to Quirke and kissed him quickly on the cheek and gave him a hard look, gazing searchingly into his eyes, then stepped away and said she would phone him in the morning. Quirke and Phoebe watched the taxi drive away, then turned and walked up the street, across the crescent, past the Pepper Canister. The moon was bright enough to throw sharp-edged shadows athwart the pavements. The wind had dried up most of the rain but here and there patches of dampness persisted, gleaming like pewter. At the corner of Herbert Place Quirke glanced across at the canal in the darkness and the towpath leading away into the denser darkness under the trees.

“Is that girl staying with you still,” he asked, “Jimmy’s sister?” Phoebe nodded, tight-lipped; she was still angry at him. He did not blame her; he was angry at himself. “Will you tell her what I’ve told you?”

“I don’t know,” Phoebe said, keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead.

A white cat crossed the road in front of them, padding along swiftly with its belly low to the ground. When it reached the railings on the other side it stopped, with one paw lifted, and looked back at them, its eyes flashing like shards of glass. Quirke thought of Packie’s woman, felt again her hand on the back of his neck, her lips on his. He was tired; he longed for sleep.

They came to the steps of Phoebe’s flat. She had her key in her hand. He asked if she would like him to come up with her, but she said no, she would be all right. “Tell her,” he said, “tell Jimmy’s sister I’m sorry.”

*   *   *

Phoebe opened the door of the flat and went in. There was a smell of cocoa still. For a second she felt all the crushing weight of the world’s banality and indifference. She took off her coat and hung it on a hook on the back of the kitchen door. She paused, taking a deep breath, then walked forward, into the living room, where Sally, standing by the window, turned to her with a strained, expectant look, and lifted a hand to her hair.

Later, lying in bed, Phoebe gazed up into the darkness, nursing her aching wrist against her breast. Her eyes felt scalded but she could not sleep. She and Sally had gone and sat at the kitchen table, as they had sat that first night, and Phoebe had talked while Sally listened, the darkness pressing eagerly against the tall window beside them, as if trying to overhear what was being said. Now and then a car went past, and once someone had laughed in the street, directly below.

As she spoke, Phoebe had the impression of pouring something, some clear, cold liquid, into a bottomless vessel. Sally, even as she sat there, seemed to be moving away from her, sliding backwards smoothly, silently, inexorably, as if the walls all around them had dissolved and they were suspended in space, two planets locked in mutual repulsion. At the end, when Sally knew everything that Quirke had found out, she had risen from her chair and walked into the living room and stood again at the window, her arms folded, holding herself tightly, staring out into the dark. Phoebe had left her there, and gone into her room and undressed quickly and got into bed and turned out the light. But sleep would not come.

Now she thought of David. Had he and Sally kissed, in that brief moment when they were alone? She found she did not care. Nothing would ever be the same again.

At last she fell into a restless sleep. She dreamed of the man in the sheepskin jacket, except that in the dream he was also Jimmy Minor.
Tell Quirke,
he said,
that I’m watching him
. And he laughed.

A chink of sunlight coming in at the window woke her. She lay for a moment, listening, testing the silence. Nothing came back. She went out to the living room. Sally was gone; she had packed her things and slipped away in the night. On the table there was a note, scrawled with a pencil in large letters on the inside of a torn-open Craven A packet.
Thanks. S.
In one of the loops of the
S
there was a small, bone-white button. Phoebe stared at it, then picked it up and put it to her lips.

*   *   *

He had always loved the trappings of his faith, the heavy silk vestments in their gorgeous hues of green and blue and purple, the mingled perfumes of incense and lilies, the glint of candlelight on paten and pyx, the weight of the jewel-encrusted chalice when he lifted it in both hands above his head and the altar bells behind him began their urgent jangling. It was, he knew, a kind of idolatry, but he felt the Lord would forgive him, since the Lord forgave so much. Yes, he loved the church and all it stood for, yet on mornings like this, dank and rainy, he could not prevent his heart from sinking when he came through from the sacristy and genuflected before the altar, under the ruby eye of the sanctuary lamp, and felt the chill of the marble floor strike upwards into his bones.

The nave was dim and draped with tall shadows. Crossing himself, he proceeded with grave tread from the altar and down the side aisle towards the confessional, counting out of the corner of his eye—one must not be seen to look directly—the number of penitents awaiting him. There they knelt in line, hunched and meek, the two old biddies who were his regulars, a bald, portly fellow he had not seen before (a Guinness clerk, he surmised, or something lowly in a bank), three schoolboys, and a woman in a fur coat and a hat with a black veil. He set his name tag in the slot above the door of the confessional, and stepped into his place in the central box, which always reminded him of an upright coffin. He was pulling the narrow double doors closed before him when he glimpsed a young woman approaching along the aisle. She was plainly pregnant. His heart sank deeper in his breast. Pregnant girls were always difficult.

In the gloom of the confessional he settled himself on the narrow seat and heard the two old women enter the penitential boxes to right and left of him, and kneel. He slid back the wooden panel by his right ear and dimly glimpsed the vague old face beyond the grille.
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned …
He knew already what the list would be—envious thoughts, inattention at Mass, a sixpence diddled from the greengrocer—and he let his mind wander. Africa. His beloved Nigeria, where he had spent three happy years as a missionary. Big-bummed women, the men all grins and gleaming teeth, and the children, with their chocolate skin and potbellies. Simple souls, eager to please, yearning to be loved.

He closed his eyes. Loving, that was the problem. The image rose before him of two native children, a boy and a girl, brother and sister, naked, standing hand in hand in sunlight with their backs to him, their faces turned, smiling at him over their shoulders. He recalled the feel of their dark, gleaming skin, the softness, the velvety warmth of it. Such innocence, such—such fragility. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

He had forgotten about the young woman until her turn came. He was tired, tired of people’s petty weaknesses, of their earnests of contrition, of their self-delusions, their evasions. In Africa, sin was colorful, a joyful glorying in all the dark possibilities the world had to offer. Here, these poor people, his own, were too small in spirit to be damned. Yes: Africa. He was glad to be returning there.

At first the young woman said nothing. He supposed she was steeling herself, working up her courage. Unmarried, no doubt. “What is it, my child?” he asked softly, leaning his ear towards the grille. “Are you in trouble?”

“I don’t go to confession anymore, Father,” she said.

He smiled, sitting there in the shadows. “Well, you’re here now. What have you to tell me?”

Again she was silent. He tried to make out her features, but she kept her head lowered, and anyway it was difficult to see through the grille. He caught a whiff of her perfume. She was nervous; she seemed to be trembling. This was going to take a long time and require much finesse on his part.

“I’ve nothing to tell you,” she said. “But I want to ask you something.”

“Yes, my child?”

She paused, then gave what seemed a laugh, bitter and brief. “Who forgives you
your
sins, Father?”

He felt a shivery sensation, as if a drop of icy liquid had coursed down his spine. “God does,” he said. “Who else?”

“And does He see into your conscience, do you think?”

“Of course. God sees everything, inside us and out.” He let his voice go gentle. “But it’s not my conscience we need to speak of here, is it?”

“Oh, yes, Father, it is.”

He drew near to the grille again and tried to see her. “Do I know you, my child?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “And I’m not your child.”

She was doing something to her clothing, fumbling with something. He saw a glint of metal, too. “You’re troubled,” he said. “Tell me what it is.” What was she doing? What was it she had in her hand? “Who are you?” he said. “What is your name?”

She did not speak. He turned his head away from her and looked down at his clasped hands where they rested on his soutane. The stole around his neck, a tasseled silk collar, was as white as bare bone.

*   *   *

She was afraid her nerve would fail her. She had thought everything out, had gone over it again and again in her mind, hardening herself. This was, she knew, the only way. Phoebe’s father would not do anything; neither would the police. It was up to her to make sure justice was done, and now she was going to do it. Were there people outside, she wondered, in the church? She had waited for nearly half an hour, loitering in the dimness just inside the door, until no more people were coming to join the line awaiting confession, but she could not be sure that latecomers had not arrived since she had slipped into the box. Anyway, a church was never completely empty; there were always those vague old men who tended to things, lighting candles, putting fresh flowers on the altar, whom no one ever noticed. Well, she would have to risk it. Even if she was seen, who would remember what she looked like? The place was barely lit, and people never remembered details, or if they did they always got them wrong.