Benjamin Black - Elegy For April

She was halfway up the stairs when she stopped and came back down again, and fished more pennies out of her purse, and put them in the slot and dialed Quirke’s number. She could not think if there had been an occasion before in her life when, as now, she craved so much the sound of her father’s voice.

NEXT MORNING AT TWENTY MINUTES AFTER EIGHT SHE ARRIVED on foot at the corner of Pembroke Street and Fitzwilliam Square and spotted the unmistakable figure of Quirke, enormous in his long black coat and black hat, waiting for her in the half-light of dawn. Got up like this, he always made her think of the blackened stump of a tree that had been blasted by lightning. He greeted her with a nod and touched a fingertip to her elbow through the sleeve of her coat, the only intimacy between them he ever seemed willing to permit himself. “You realize,” he said, “it’s not everyone I’d venture out for, at this hour of the morning, in this weather.” He turned, and together they set off diagonally across the road, the fog clutching wetly at their faces. “And to call on Oscar Latimer, into the bargain.”

“Thanks,” she said drily. “I appreciate it, I’m sure.” She was remembering the look that Jimmy and Isabel had exchanged at the Dolphin last night, but she did not care; she needed Quirke with her today, to give her support and keep her from losing her nerve.

They climbed the steps of the big four-story terraced house, and Quirke pressed the bell. While they waited Phoebe asked him if he had telephoned the hospital, and he looked blank. “To inquire about April,” she said, “the sick-note she sent in- did you forget?” He said nothing but looked stonily contrite.

There was a smell of coffee in the hallway; Oscar Latimer not only had his consulting rooms but also lived here, Phoebe recalled now, in a bachelor apartment on the two top floors, in what April used to describe scornfully as unmarried bliss. Why had she not remembered that? It accounted of course for his answering the phone so late last night.

The nurse who let them in had a long, colorless face and large teeth; her bloodless nose narrowed to an impossibly sharp, purplish tip that was painful to look at. When Quirke introduced himself she said, “Oh, Doctor ,” and seemed for a second on the point of genuflecting. She showed them into a cold waiting room, where there was a large rectangular oak dining table with twelve matching chairs- Phoebe counted them. They did not sit. On the table were laid out the usual magazines, Punch , Woman’s Own , the African Missionary . Quirke lit a cigarette and looked about for an ashtray, coughing into his fist.

“How are you?” Phoebe asked him.

He shook his head. “I don’t know yet, it’s too early in the day.”

“I mean, since you… since you came home.”

“I bought a car.”

“You did?”

“I told you I was going to.”

“Yes, but I didn’t believe you.”

“Well, I did.” He looked at her. “Don’t you want to know what it is?”

“What is it?”

The nurse with the nose put her head in at the door- it was as if a hummingbird had darted in its beak- and told them Mr. Latimer would see them now. They followed her up the stairs to the first floor, where her master had his rooms.

“An Alvis,” Quirke said to Phoebe, as they climbed. “I suppose you’ve never heard of an Alvis.”

“Have you learned to drive?”

He did not answer.

Oscar Latimer was a short, slight, brisk young man, smaller somehow than it seemed he should be, so that when she was standing in front of him, shaking his hand, Phoebe had the peculiar impression that she was seeing him at some distance from her, diminished by perspective. He had an air of extreme cleanliness, as if he had just finished subjecting himself to a thorough going-over with a scrubbing brush, and exuded a sharp, piney scent. His hand in hers was neat and warm and soft. He had freckles, like April, which made him seem far younger than he must be, and his boyish fair hair was brushed sharply away on both sides from a straight, pale parting. He had the beginnings of a mustache, it was no more than a few bristling, ginger tufts. He glanced at Quirke with faint surprise. “Dr. Quirke,” he said. “I didn’t expect you this morning. You’re well, I hope?” He had stepped back and with an adroit little dive had got in behind his desk and was already settling himself before he had stopped speaking. “So, Miss… Griffin,” he said, and she caught the slight hesitation; she had never considered abandoning the name Griffin and calling herself Quirke instead-why should she have, when Quirke had not given her his name in the first place? “What can I do for you?”

She and Quirke had seated themselves on the two small chairs to the right and left in front of the desk. “It’s not about me that we’ve come,” she said.

The little man looked sharply from her to her father and back again. “Oh? Yes?”

“It’s about April.”

Quirke was smoking the last of his cigarette, and Latimer with one finger pushed a glass ashtray forward to the corner of the desk. He was frowning. “About April,” he said slowly. “I see. Or rather I don’t see. I hope you’re not going to tell me she’s in trouble again.”

“The thing is,” Phoebe said, ignoring the implications of that word again , “I haven’t heard from her, and none of her other friends have either, since a week from last Wednesday. That’s nearly… what is it?… nearly twelve days.”

There was a silence. She wished that Quirke would say something to help her. He was studying a large photograph hanging among framed degrees on the wall behind the desk, showing Oscar Latimer, in a dark suit and wearing some kind of sash, shaking hands with Archbishop McQuaid. What was it Jimmy Minor had called McQuaid? That whited sepulchre in his palace out in Drumcondra . The Archbishop wore a sickly smile; his nose was almost as sharp and bleached as that of Latimer’s nurse.

Oscar Latimer drew back the cuff of his jacket and looked pointedly at his watch. Sighing, he said, “I haven’t seen my sister since- well, I don’t remember when it was. She long ago cut herself off from the rest of us and-”

“I know there was- there was tension between her and your mother,” Phoebe said, in an effort to sound conciliatory.

Latimer gave her a look of cold distaste. “She as good as disowned her family,” he said.

“Yes, but-”

“Miss Griffin, I don’t think you understand what I’m telling you. As far as we’re concerned, I mean the family, April is a free agent, beyond our influence, outside of our concern. She’s gone twelve days, you say? For us, she left much longer ago than that.”

The room was silent again. Quirke was still gazing distractedly at the photograph.

“I didn’t say she was gone,” Phoebe said quietly, “only that I haven’t heard from her.”

Latimer let fall another sharp little sigh and again consulted his watch.

Quirke at last broke his silence. “We wondered,” he said, “if April might perhaps have been in touch with her mother. Girls tend to cleave to their mothers, in times of difficulty.”

Latimer regarded him with amused disdain. “Difficulty?” he said, as if holding the word up by one corner to examine it. “What do you mean by that?”

“As Phoebe says, your sister hasn’t been heard from, that’s all. Naturally her friends are worried.”

Latimer fairly hopped where he sat. “Her friends?” he cried- it was almost a bleat. “Don’t talk to me about her friends! I know all about her friends.”

Quirke let his gaze wander again over the walls and then refixed it on the little man behind the desk. “My daughter is one of those friends,” he said. “And your sister is not beyond their concern.”