Benjamin Black - Christine Falls

This one was called Harkins, and he was bog-Irish to the roots of his oily red hair. He shook hands with Andy and meanwhile gave him the once-over, all smiles and stained teeth but the little yellowish-green eyes cold and sharp as a cat’s.

“Pleased to meet you, Andy,” he said. “Claire here was just telling me all about you.” She was, was she? Andy tried to catch her eye but she kept her gaze fixed firmly on the Mick. “I was just passing,” Harkins went on, “and thought I’d drop in.”

“Sure,” Andy said. If he had just dropped in, how come Claire was in her best green dress with her hair all done up?

“The baby’s going to have a special blessing from the Holy Father,” Claire said brightly. She was still having trouble meeting his eye. What had this sky pilot been saying to her?

“You going to bring her over there to Italy, are you?” Andy said to Harkins, who laughed, those green eyes of his flickering.

“It’ll be a case of Mohammed coming to the mountain,” he said, “although I’m not sure the Archbishop would appreciate the comparison-His Grace will dispense the blessing on the Pope’s behalf.” Andy was about to speak again but the priest turned to Claire, cutting him off, and showing him he was cutting him off. “I’d best not dally,” he said, “for I’ve a few other calls to make.”

“Thanks for dropping in, Father,” Claire said.

Harkins went to the car and opened the door and threw his hat on the passenger seat and got in behind the wheel.

“God bless, now,” he said, and to Andy, “Keep up the good work!” whatever that was supposed to mean, and slammed the door and started up the engine. Firing on only six cylinders, as Andy heard with satisfaction. As the car pulled away from the curb-burning oil, too, by the look the exhaust smoke-Harkins lifted a hand from the wheel and made a rapid movement with his fingers, as if he were sketching something-was that a blessing? The archbishop would have to do better than that.

Andy turned to Claire. “What’d he want?”

She was still waving good-bye. She shivered, for the day was misty and chill. “I don’t know, really,” she said. “I guess Sister Stephanus might have asked him to call in.”

“Doesn’t trust us, huh?”

She heard what he was really saying-honestly, he was jealous of everyone!-and she sighed and gave him a look. “He’s a priest, Andy. He was just paying a visit.”

“Well, I hope he don’t visit too often. I don’t like priests in the house. My old ma always said it was bad luck.”

There were quite a few things Claire could say about Andy’s old Ma, if only she dared.

They went around the side of the house and climbed the wooden stairway. Claire told him Mrs. Bennett was out. “She called up to ask if there was anything I needed at the store.” She smiled over her shoulder at him teasingly. “Of course, I’m sure it was you she was hoping to see.”

He said nothing. He had been watching Cora Bennett. She was no beauty, with that bony face and mean mouth, but she had a good figure, behind the apron she never seemed to take off, and a hungry eye. He had dropped a few inquiring hints as to the whereabouts of Mr. Bennett but had got no response. Run off, probably; if he had been dead she would likely have said so-widows tended to be real fond of their late husbands, Andy always found, until someone turned up who looked a candidate to take the sainted one’s place.

In the house he walked into the kitchenette, wanting to know what there was for dinner. Claire said she had not thought about it yet, what with Father Harkins visiting and all, and anyway she wished he would say lunch, which is what folk ate in the middle of the day, not dinner, which sounded so low-class.

“So Irish, I guess you mean,” he said over his shoulder, opening a cupboard door and letting it slam shut again.

“No, that is not what I meant, and you know it.” Claire had grown up in a village south of Boston, with picket fences and white frame houses and a white church spire pointing up past the maples, all of which she seemed to think gave her a right to her New England airs, but he knew what she came from-German hog farmers who had lost their few acres to the banks in the hard times and moved upstate to try their hand at running a feed store until that failed too. Now in the kitchenette she walked up behind him and had him turn to her and took him by the wrists and made him put his arms around her waist, and then laid her fists on his chest and smiled up into his face. “You know that’s not what I meant, Andy Stafford,” she said again, softly, and kissed him lightly on the lips, a bluebird’s peck.

“Well,” he said, putting on his slow drawl, “I guess if there’s nothing to eat I’m just going to have to eat you .”

He was leaning down to kiss her when he looked past her shoulder and saw the bassinet on the table in the living room, and the blanket in it stirring. “Shit,” he said, and pushed her away from him and stalked to the table and violently picked up the bassinet by its handles and headed for the baby’s room.

“She’s asleep!” Claire cried. “She’s…”

But he was gone. When he came back he pointed a shaking finger in her face. “I told you, girl,” he said in a quiet voice, “the kid has her own room, and that’s where she stays when she’s asleep. Right?”

She could see how angry he was: his mouth was twitching at the side and he had that flecked look in his eye. He was still mad over Father Harkins being here-could he really be jealous, of a priest? “All right, honey,” she said, making her voice very slow and calm. “All right, I’ll remember.”

He went to the icebox and got a beer. She could never decide which was more scary, his rages or the way they suddenly ended, as if nothing had happened. He knocked the cap off the bottle and threw back his head and took a series of long swallows, his adam’s apple bobbing in a rhythm that made her think, blushing inside, of being in bed with him.

“That guy,” he said, “the priest-did he say if what’s-her-name spoke to old man Crawford yet?” She looked blank and he waggled the bottle impatiently. “Sister…you know…”

“Stephanus?”

“Yeah, her. She said she’d talk to Crawford about a job for me.”

The baby was trying out a few exploratory squeaks that sounded to Claire like the sounds a blind man would make feeling at something shiny with his fingertips; Andy seemed not to hear.

“I thought,” she said cautiously, “you weren’t interested in other work?”

“I’d kind of like to hear what he has to offer.”

Claire stood, half of her listening anxiously for the baby, who seemed to have changed her mind and gone back to sleep, and the other half considering the possibility of Andy not being on the trucks anymore. They would be like an ordinary couple- normal was the first word that came to her mind-but it would be the end of their happy nights alone together, just the two of them, her and little Christine.

SARAH HATED THE SMELL OF HOSPITALS, SUMMONING UP AS IT DID vivid memories of a childhood tonsillectomy. She could detect the smell even on Mal’s clothes, a mixture of ether and disinfectant and what she thought must be bandages that no number of dry cleanings could remove. She had never complained or even mentioned it-a fine thing it would be for a doctor’s wife to admit she disliked the smell of doctoring!-but he must have seen her once or twice wrinkling her nose, for nowadays he would vanish upstairs to change as soon as he was in the door. Poor Mal, trying to look after everyone, to take care of everything, and getting no thanks. Yet his side of the wardrobe reeked for her of that moment of childhood terror and pain under the doctor’s knife.