Benjamin Black - A Death in Summer

Sinclair listened to these complaints in silence. Her vehemence was disproportionate to the topic. Phoebe was a far stranger creature than he had at first imagined. He sensed a darkness in her, he even pictured it: a circular gleaming black pool, as at the bottom of a deep well, perfectly still except for now and then when the surface shivered for a moment in response to some far quake or crack and sent off a flash of cold light. She was really not his type. Usually he liked dim girls, not brainy but with plenty of spirit, raucous and bouncy girls who would pretend to fight him off as he steered them backwards towards a sofa or, on rare occasions, a bed, but then with a gurgle of laughter would give in. He could not imagine making that kind of rough advance to Phoebe, could not imagine making any kind of advance at all. She was thin, too, so very thin. When they were taking their seats in the cinema and his hand accidentally brushed against hers he had been shocked by the chill boniness of it, and despite himself he had been reminded of the dissecting room. Why was he there with her, what was it he wanted, or expected? Where Phoebe Griffin was concerned, he did not understand himself.

To his surprise she asked him if he would like to come back to her place for coffee. The invitation was issued so unaffectedly and with such directness that he said yes straight off, without thinking. Almost immediately, however, he began to have doubts. It was as if they were children and she had asked him to come and play house with her, but they were not children, and the kind of play he might join her in would not be childish. This was his boss’s daughter. Yet it was Quirke who had invited him to dinner to meet Phoebe, and what was he to think that was, if not an encouragement to… to what? He did not know. This was all very puzzling. What did Quirke expect of him? What did Phoebe expect of him? What did he expect of himself? And why, anyway, had he phoned her, in the first place? As he walked along beside her, the two of them silent now, he saw himself a little like a condemned man walking towards his fate.

They were silent on the bus, too. Before he could fumble the money from his pocket Phoebe had paid for both of their tickets. She folded the slips of paper and pressed them into his hand, smiling complicitly, as if it were a secret code she was entrusting to him. They sat on the top deck and watched the glimmering streets going past. Although it was only ten-thirty and still warm, there was no one about, for the pubs had not shut yet. The trees in Merrion Square were darkly massed, their upper leaves splashed garishly with lamplight at fixed intervals. Sinclair disliked the nighttime, always had, since a child; it gave him an obscure sense of desolation. He thought with longing of his own place, the armchair by the window, the curtains drawn, the record player waiting to be turned on.

Phoebe reached up and pulled the cord and they heard the ping of the bell downstairs in the driver’s cab.

Her room was well proportioned, with a high ceiling and a picture rail that ran all the way round the walls, but it was very small to be living room, bedroom, and kitchen all in one. While she brewed the coffee he walked about with circumspection, looking at her things, trying to seem interested but not inquisitive. There was a photo in a silver frame on the mantelpiece of Quirke as a young man, with a young woman on his arm-his long-dead wife, no doubt.

“Their wedding day,” Phoebe said from across the room, making him start. She came and brought him his cup, and together they stood looking at the picture of the happy couple. “Her name was Delia,” Phoebe said. “Isn’t she beautiful, even in that quaint outfit? I never knew her-she died having me.” She gave him an oddly impish glance. “So imagine my life of guilt,” she said, in a film star’s drawl. He did not know what to say to that.

There was only one chair, beside the fireplace, and she made him take it, while she went and sat on the bed. There were cardboard boxes on the floor; he remembered Quirke saying that she had recently moved. He drank his coffee. It was too strong, and had a scorched bitter taste; it was bound to keep him awake for hours.

“Do you like my father?” Phoebe asked. He stared at her, widening his eyes. She was sitting on the bed with her legs folded under her and her back resting against the wall. She wore a dark dress with a white collar-was it the same one she had worn that other night, at Jammet’s? Her hair gleamed in the lamplight, blue-black, like a crow’s wing. She was very pale. “Sorry,” she said, and gave a little laugh. “I suppose that’s not the kind of thing one should ask. But do you?”

“I don’t know that it’s a matter of liking,” he said carefully.

“He walks a bit like John Wayne, have you noticed that?”

“Does he?” He laughed. “Yes, I suppose he does, a little. Maybe all big men walk like that.”

“What’s he like to work with?”

He had the distinct impression that these questions were not about her father at all, but about him.

“He’s very professional. And we work well together, I think.” He paused. “Does he like me?”

“Oh,” she said gaily, “we don’t talk about such things.”

He did not smile. “What things do you talk about?” Few, he supposed, knowing Quirke.

She considered, tilting her head, birdlike, to one side. “Well, he does talk to me about the work itself. This latest business, for instance-that man Jewell, who was shot.” She was silent for a moment, looking into her cup. “He tells me you know his daughter-no, his sister, is it?”

“Yes, Denise-Dannie, she’s called. I’ve known her since college.”

“Do you know her well?”

He hesitated. That question again, the same one Quirke had asked him. “We play tennis together now and then,” he said.

“Hmm.” She studied him with a closer intent. “I’m sure,” she said, “you’d be a good friend to have.” She uncurled herself from the bed and went to the little stove in the corner and poured more coffee for herself. She turned to him and lifted the percolator inquiringly, but he shook his head. She went back and crawled onto the bed and composed herself as before.

He wondered if he might risk a cigarette, and as if she had read his thoughts she said, “You can smoke if you like. There’s an ashtray on the mantelpiece.” She watched him fetch out his cigarettes and light one, and then stand up to take the ashtray and set it on the floor beside his chair. “What’s it like, being a Jew?” she asked.

Again he stared, expelling a surprised quick stream of smoke. It was a question he had never been asked before, a question he had never expected to be asked. He gave a brief helpless laugh. “I don’t think I do think about it. I mean, you don’t think about what you are, do you?”

“But I don’t think I am anything, you see. I’m just like everybody else, here. But you-you have an identity, a race.”

“It’s not really a race.”

She waved an impatient hand. “I know, I know,” she said, “I know all about that, the Semitic peoples, and so on. But the fact is, you are a Jew, a member of a tiny, a tiny minority. That must feel like something-I mean, you must be aware of it, part of the time, at least.”

He saw what it was. Despite what she claimed, she did not think she was like everybody else, not at all; she thought she was like him, or what she took him to be, an outsider, an outcast even, a paleface among the Comanches.

“My people weren’t religious,” he said, “and if you’re not at least a little bit religious then you’re not really a Jew.”

“But in the war, you must have been-you must have felt…?”

He set his cup, which still had coffee in it, on the floor beside the ashtray. “I’ll tell you a story,” he said. “The war was ending, and the news of the concentration camps was starting to come out. It was Easter time, when the Catholic Church collects a yearly offering from parishioners, you know? One dark night there was a knock at our front door and my mother sent me to answer it. There, on the threshold, was the biggest, reddest-faced priest I had ever seen, a real clodhopper, his neck bulging over his collar and his little pig eyes popping. He looked down at me along the length of his soutane, and in the thickest Cork accent you can imagine said, ‘ I’m here for the Jews! ’” She put her head to the side again, frowning uncertainly. “The dues, he meant,” Sinclair said, “the Easter dues, only a Cork d always comes out as a j.”