Benjamin Black - A Death in Summer

Should he say, now, that it was all Costigan’s doing? He could claim Costigan had put him up to it, that it was Costigan’s idea, cutting off Sinclair’s finger and sending it to Quirke because Quirke had been asking questions about St. Christopher’s. And as for St. Christopher’s, he could blame Dick Jewell for all that.

“Will you share the joke, Teddy?” Hackett asked.

Teddy had not realized he was laughing. “Baldy Dick,” he said. “That was Jewell’s nickname at St. Christopher’s. It’s what all the boys called him, Baldy Dick.”

“Why was that, Teddy?”

Teddy gave him a pitying look. “Because he was a Jew!… Get it? Baldy Dick?”

“Ah. Right. And you used to go out there with him, to see the boys?”

All this, Teddy suddenly thought, was a waste of time. He wanted to be gone, wanted to get out of this room and into the Morgan and motor off somewhere pleasant, Wicklow or somewhere. “We all did,” he said, “we all went along-Costigan, too.” He laughed again. “He was a regular visitor.” He might even drive out to Dun Laoghaire and book himself onto the mail boat and take a little jaunt down to London, that would be nice.

“Costigan, too?”

Hackett was staring at him.

“What?”

“You said Costigan was a regular at St. Christopher’s, along with you and Mr. Jewell.”

“Yes. Costigan, and the others”-he grinned-“all the good Friends of St. Christopher’s.” He sat up straight on the chair and boldly returned the detective’s look. “But Costigan is your man, Inspector,” he said. “Costigan is your man.”

Hackett leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table again, and smiled, almost tenderly. “Go on, Teddy,” he said. “Tell me all about it. Speak up, now, so the Super can hear you.”

An hour later they telephoned Carlton Sumner and he came in shouting for his son and threatening to get everybody in the place fired. Hackett drew him to one side in the dayroom and spoke to him for a little while, and Sumner stared at him, and grew quiet, turning pale under his yachtsman’s tan.

Although he had not been away for much more than a couple of days, Sinclair felt almost a stranger in the flat. It was because of his hand that everything had a new and problematical aspect. Right-handed all his life, he felt now like a left-hander being forced clumsily to use his right. It was a strange sensation, very confusing. He could not get a grip on things, or no, it was not that he could not get a grip, but that he did not know quite how to come at things, what angle to approach them from. When he held the kettle under the tap in his right hand he had to turn on the tap with his left, in a series of minute calibrations, for even the tiniest effort caused the stump of his missing finger to flare and throb. He thought of his hand as an animal, a feral dog, say, slouched on its hunkers with its fangs bared, and himself frozen in front of it, fearful of giving the brute the slightest provocation. It was not so much the pain that hampered him as the fear of pain, the paralyzed anticipation of it. And if such a simple action as filling a kettle was so awkward, how was he going to use a tin opener, or a corkscrew, or a bread knife, or any of the ordinary things that life required the use of?

He would have to have help, it was as simple as that. He would have to get someone to come and assist him, or just to be there, at first, until he got the hang of things, until he got over being afraid all the time of starting up the pain again. He sat down at the kitchen table while the kettle boiled. How would he get the tea caddy open? He felt like a child, an infant. Yes: he would have to call someone.

He got her at last at the hat shop. It was where he should have called first, had he been able to think straight. It was the middle of a weekday afternoon, so of course she would be at work. Two days in hospital, a mere two days of being plied with cups of tea and having his pillows plumped for him, and he had forgotten the simplest facts about life outside the ward.

Even dialing the phone was a problem; he had to put the receiver on the table and dial with his right hand and then snatch it up again when the number started to ring.

She sounded surprised to hear his voice. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I couldn’t think who else to call. I mean, you were the first person I thought of calling, when I realized I had to call someone.” He paused; the kettle was about to boil. “I feel a fool, I feel like a big baby. Can you come?”

She came, as he knew she would. “It’s all right,” she said, “I was due time off, and Mrs. Cuffe-Wilkes was in a good mood.” Mrs. Cuffe-Wilkes was the owner of the hat shop. Phoebe smiled. “Though you’re lucky-she’s not in a good mood very often.” She was wearing the black dress with the white collar that was her working outfit, and a black cardigan, and patent-leather pumps. Her hair was tied with a red ribbon; it went over the crown of her head and down past her ears and was tied somehow at the back of her neck. Her face with the dark hair drawn away from it seemed made of porcelain, delicate and fine and pale.

They were shy of each other, and tried not to touch at all yet only succeeded in bumping into each other at every turn. He had given up in his attempt to make tea and now she filled the kettle with fresh water and set it to boil, and put out cups, and found the sugar bowl and the butter dish, and sliced the bread.

“Does it pain you all the time?” she asked.

“No, no. It just makes me clumsy. I thought, since there’s nothing wrong with my right hand, I wouldn’t have any problem, or not much, but everything seems to be the wrong shape and the wrong way up. It’s all in my mind; it’ll fade.”

“I could stay and make you some dinner,” she said, not looking at him. “If you’d like.”

“Yes, I’d like you to stay. Thank you.”

They were sitting at the table, and when the kettle was boiled and she got up to make the tea the sleeve of her dress brushed against his cheek.

“Phoebe,” he said. She was at the stove, busy with the teapot and the tea. She said nothing, and did not turn to meet his gaze. “Thank you for coming.”

She brought the teapot to the table, and when she put it down he took her left hand in his right. She looked at their two hands, entwined. “I thought you hadn’t-” she said. “I thought you didn’t-”

“Yes,” he said. “So did I. We were both wrong, it seems.”

He smiled up at her but she did not smile in return. He still had hold of her hand. He gave off, she noted, a very faint hospital smell. He stood up then and kissed her. She did not close her eyes. A curling wisp of steam rose from the spout of the teapot, as if the genie, the genie who would grant all wishes, were about to materialize, with his turban, and his big mustache, and his stupid, his wonderfully stupid grin.

David at last drew his face back from hers. “Phoebe-” he began, but she cut him off.

“No, David, wait,” she said. “I have something to tell you. It’s about Dannie.”

Dannie could have gone to David Sinclair; even though he was in the hospital she could have gone to him. But instead it was to Phoebe, her new friend, that in the end she came. And it was a new version of Dannie, too, that Phoebe met. For Dannie was in a state, oh, a royal state, as she said herself, with almost a laugh. It was one of the refinements of her mysterious condition-the doctors, it seemed, were baffled by her-that even when she was in the deepest distress there was a part of her that was able to stand off to the side, observing, commenting, judging, mocking. She said, “Not bad enough to feel so bad, I have to see myself feeling it, too.”