Benjamin Black - A Death in Summer

Phoebe had been returning from work, strolling thoughtfully along Baggot Street through the summer dusk, when she had spied Dannie sitting in a huddle on the steps in front of the house with her arms around her shins and her forehead resting on her knees. It was the evening of the day that she had made that painful visit to David Sinclair at the hospital. Dannie seemed in a daze, and Phoebe had to help her up, and when they were inside, in Phoebe’s room, Dannie made at once for the bed and sat down on it, with her feet flat on the floor and her hands palm upwards in her lap and her head hanging. “Dannie, please, tell me what’s the matter,” Phoebe said, but Dannie only shook her head slowly, moving it from side to side like a jerky pendulum. Phoebe knelt beside her and tried to see into her face. “Dannie, what is it? Are you ill?”

Dannie muttered something but Phoebe could not make out the words. Phoebe stood up and went to the little stove in the corner and filled the coffee percolator and set it on the heat. She did not know what else to do. Her own hands were shaking now.

When the coffee was made Dannie drank a little of it, clutching the cup tightly with both hands, her head still bent and her hair hanging down. At last she cleared her throat and spoke. “You know I’m Jewish.”

Phoebe frowned. Had she known? She could not remember, but thought it best to pretend. She went back and stood by the stove. “Yes,” she said, “yes, I know.”

“I went to a Catholic school, though. I suppose my parents wanted me to learn how to fit in.” She lifted her head, and Phoebe was shocked by the look of her, the expression in her eyes and the deep mauve shadows under them, the slack and bloodless lips. “What about you, where did you go to school?”

“I went to the nuns, too,” Phoebe said. “Loreto.”

Dannie’s features realigned themselves; it took Phoebe a moment to realize that she was smiling.

“We might have known each other. Maybe we even met at a hockey match, or some choir thing. Do you think that’s possible?”

“Yes,” Phoebe said, “it’s possible, of course. But I’m sure I would have remembered you.”

“Do you think so, really?” The look in Dannie’s eyes turned vacant. “I’d like to have known you. We could have been friends. I would have confessed to you about being a Jew and you wouldn’t have minded. Not that anyone was taken in; they all knew I was different-an outsider.” She blinked. “Have you a cigarette?”

“Sorry, no. I gave up.”

“It doesn’t matter, I don’t really smoke. Only I get so fidgety I try to find something to do with my hands.”

“I could go out and buy some-the Q amp; L is probably open still.”

But Dannie had lost interest in the subject of cigarettes. She moved her blurred gaze about the room. She seemed exhausted, exhausted and in desolation-the word came to Phoebe and seemed the only one that fitted. Desolation.

There was shouting outside in the street, a couple arguing; they sounded drunk, not only the man but the woman, too.

“Have you been to see David?” Dannie asked. She sounded vague, as if she were thinking of something else, as if this were not quite the question she had meant to ask. The man in the street was cursing now, and calling the woman names.

“Yes,” Phoebe said. “I went to see him this morning, at the hospital.”

“How is he?”

“His hand is very painful, and they had given him some drug, but he’s all right.”

“I’m glad,” Dannie said, more vague than ever. She was still clutching the coffee cup, though she had taken no more than a couple of sips of the coffee. “So this is where you live. I wondered.”

“It’s terribly small. Hardly room enough for one.”

Dannie made a flinching movement and lifted up her face with its stricken look. “I’m sorry,” she said, “do you want me to go?”

Phoebe laughed and went and sat beside her on the bed. “Of course not-that’s not what I meant. It’s just that I don’t realize how tiny the place is until there’s someone else here. My father keeps trying to get me to move. He wants to buy a house for the two of us to share.”

Dannie had turned her head and was gazing at her now in what seemed a kind of dreamy wonderment. “Your father is Dr. Quirke.”

“That’s right.”

“But your name is Griffin.”

Phoebe smiled and lowered her gaze awkwardly. “That’s a long story.”

“I hardly remember my father; he died when I was very young. I remember his funeral. They say he was a terrible man. I’m sure it’s true. Everyone in our family is terrible. I’m terrible.” More striking than the words was the mildly pensive way in which she spoke them, as if she were stating a truth known to all. She looked into the coffee cup. “You know that what happened to David was my fault.”

“Your fault? How?”

“Everything has been my fault. That’s why I’ve come here-do you mind?”

Phoebe shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

Dannie set the cup on the floor and lay back abruptly on the bed. She folded both her arms over her eyes. Phoebe had not switched on a light and the last of the dusk was dying in the room. Dannie looked so strange, lying there, with her feet on the floor and her head almost touching the wall behind the bed. When she spoke, her words seemed to be coming out of a covered hollow in the air. “Do you remember,” she said, “at school when we were little, how they used to tell us to prepare ourselves mentally before going to confession? I used to go, you know, even though I wasn’t supposed to. I always liked examining my conscience and making a mental list of my sins.” She lifted her arms and squinted along the length of herself at Phoebe. “Did you invent sins?”

“I’m sure we all did.”

“Do you think so? I thought I was the only one.” She put her arms back over her face and her voice became muffled again. “I used to pretend to have stolen things. I’m sure now the priests knew I was lying, though they never said. Maybe they weren’t interested-I often thought they weren’t even listening. I suppose it was boring, a string of little girls whispering in the dark about touching themselves and talking back to their parents.”

She stopped. The couple in the street had gone, swearing and shrieking as they went.

Phoebe spoke. “What did you mean when you said that what happened to David was your fault?”

There was no reply for a long time; then Dannie dropped her arms away from her face and put her elbows behind her and pushed herself up until she was half lying, half sitting on the mattress. She coughed, and sat up fully, and with both hands pushed her hair away from her face.

“Phoebe,” she said, “will you hear my confession?”

It was dark in the room when Dannie fell asleep. She had drawn up her legs and lain down on her side and joined her hands as if for prayer and placed them under her cheek, and within moments her breathing had become regular and shallow. All the tension had drained from her and she seemed at peace now. Phoebe sat by her, not daring to move for fear of waking her. She wondered what she should do. The things she had heard in the past hour seemed a sort of fairy tale, a dark fantasy of injury, loss, and revenge. Some parts of it, she supposed, must be true, but which parts? If even a little of it was the case, she must do something, tell someone. She was frightened, frightened for Dannie and what she would be like when she woke up, what she might attempt; she was frightened for herself, too, though she did not know what it was exactly that she feared might happen to her. Yes, it was like a fairy tale, and she was in it, wandering lost by night in a dark enchanted forest, where strange night birds whistled and shrieked, and beasts moved in the thickets, and the brambles with their terrible thorns reached out to twine themselves around her limbs and hold her fast.