Benjamin Black - Even the Dead

the rest is dross

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee

What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage.”

“Nice,” Rose said, with a skeptical look. “You believe that kind of thing, Quirke? You believe anything remains, when we’re gone?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Children, maybe?”

“Hmm. I haven’t got any of them, so I wouldn’t know.”

“Sorry, Rose.”

“For what? I’m not. I didn’t want them — too selfish.”

Quirke lit a cigarette. The air inside these glass walls was warm and sluggish; he could feel it on his lips and on his eyelids, a heavy, moist lacquer.

“Where’s Mal?” he asked.

Rose waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the garden beyond the many panes of glass. “Oh, somewhere off among his beloved flowers. Sometime soon, I think, he’s going to turn into a plant himself.”

Maisie came back with Quirke’s drink. When she leaned down to set his glass on the table he caught a whiff of tobacco smoke. He thanked her, and she smirked and bit her lip and went away again. Rose watched her go. “That girl,” she said, “was not born to be a domestic servant.”

“Is anyone?” Quirke said.

She gave him a hard look. “You’re not going to get all political on me, are you, Quirke?” she said. “The rights of the downtrodden masses and all that stuff?”

“No, Rose,” Quirke said, smiling, “I wouldn’t dare to lecture you.”

“Good.” She took a sip of her drink and made a face. “Doesn’t taste the same here, somehow,” she said. “You’ve got to be sitting by the bayou, listening to the frogs and the crickets and those old hound dogs a-howling.”

“Where exactly was it you were born, Rose?” Quirke asked. It was a thing he had never thought to ask her before.

“Oh, here and there. I don’t much like to think about those old times. My daddy was a drunk, and my mother — well, the less said about her, the better.”

“Do you miss it, America?”

“Do I miss it?” She thought about that for a while. “I guess I do. It’s a crazy country, the folks are mad as mules, but it’s exciting. I thought I’d had enough of excitement, which is why I came here.”

“And now you’re bored?”

She laughed, and leaned over and made a playful slap at him. “You’re a mischief-maker, you know that, Quirke? You say these things to me in that butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth voice, but I know what you’re up to, I know you’re trying to get me to compromise myself with some injudicious remarks about this green and pleasant land of yours.”

“That’s Blake,” Quirke said, “and he was talking about an altogether different land from this one.”

“Oh, you’re so smart, ain’t you,” she said, making another playful slap at him. Then she drifted into silence again, and looked out at the garden. “I wish you hadn’t left us so abruptly, Quirke,” she said. “I liked having you here. So did Mal — Mal especially. He’s real fond of you, you know.” She looked at him. “Or do you?”

His glance veered quickly away from her. “I don’t think I ever understood him,” he said. “And I don’t think he understood me, either.”

“Oh, he understands you, Quirke. He recognizes that sadness in you, that — oh, that nameless longing.” She smiled at him, amused and mocking. “He shares some of it himself. Don’t you see that?”

Quirke shifted uneasily on the metal chair. He could feel the perspiration on his back, between his shoulder blades. He had taken off his jacket but he was still too hot. “I don’t know, Rose,” he said. “I’m no good with this sort of thing. I don’t understand myself, much less others. Surely you’ve realized that by now.”

“Well, you’ve told me, often enough. So often, in fact, that I wonder if it’s not just a way of assuring yourself that you don’t need to make an effort. Making an effort with people is so tedious, wouldn’t you say, Quirke?”

She put her head to one side and gazed at him wide-eyed, smiling. Then abruptly she smacked her palms on the table and stood up. “Let’s go find Malachy,” she said. “I told him you were coming.”

They walked out into the day. After the oppressive air of the glassed-in room, the sky seemed higher than usual and of a richer blue, speckled with motionless small white clouds. The grass underfoot, burnished by a light that seemed not sunlight, was more silvery than green. Birds unseen whistled in the bushes all around.

“Nature,” Rose said gloomily. “Doesn’t it get you down?”

They found Mal standing in the midst of a clump of exotic-looking shrubs hung with great bundles of purple blossoms. He was wearing his lamp-shade hat, a khaki shirt, and corduroy trousers balding at the knees.

“Oh, hello, Quirke,” he said, looking surprised. “Back again?”

“I told you he was coming, honey,” Rose said. “For lunch? Remember?”

“Oh, yes, yes, that’s right, so you did.” He smiled at Quirke apologetically. “I’m so forgetful, these days.”

“How are you, Mal?” Quirke said.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. You look well too, if a little hot.”

“I decided to walk out from town. This sun is a killer — you should be careful.”

Mal smiled again, wistfully, and glanced at his wife. “Yes, I should, I should take care.”

“Well,” Rose said, “I’m going to leave you two fine gentlemen to your manly conversings, while I go and check on what that girl has fixed on to burn for our lunch.”

The two men watched her walk away. “Poor Rose,” Mal said, sighing.

Quirke glanced at him sharply. “What’s wrong?” he said.

“What?” Mal’s gaze had a groping quality, as if his shortsightedness had suddenly grown worse. “Oh, I feel she has so much to — so much to put up with.”

“Such as?”

Mal chuckled. “Such as me, for a start!”

He put a pair of secateurs he had been holding into the breast pocket of his shirt and took off his gardening gloves. “Did you get something to drink?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m fine. I hope Rose really did tell you I was coming, did she?”

“Oh, she did, she did. As I said, I forgot. Sorry, does that seem rude, to forget you were expected? Everything these days is just—” He lifted his hands in a helpless gesture and let them fall again. “Come,” he said, “let’s sit. You’re right, the sun is tiring.”

They crossed the lawn to where there was a wooden bench, the legs of which were overgrown with ivy. It was shady here, a cool, greenish spot. They sat down. Mal took off his spectacles and began to polish them with the flap of his shirt.

“The garden looks well,” Quirke said. “You’ve done a lot with it.”

“Yes, it’s not too bad. We have some nice things, despite our Mr. Casey’s best efforts to thwart me and kill off everything that can’t be eaten. I’m putting in ornamental grasses now. They’re much undervalued, grasses.” He smiled, ducking his head shyly. “But all this bores you, I know.”

“It’s just my ignorance,” Quirke said. “I can’t tell one flower from another.”

“Oh, you’d soon learn. It’s not so difficult.” He paused, looking about at the plants and the bushes with vague satisfaction. “I planted some new roses, too. I don’t think they’ll blossom this year — it’s too late in the season already.” He nodded slowly. “It all goes so quickly.”

Quirke was watching him. “What is it, Mal?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?”

“Rose came in this morning to summon me here. It was for a reason, wasn’t it?”

For a long moment Mal said nothing, and seemed almost not to have heard. Then he put his glasses on again and squinted at the sky, as if searching for something up there, in the blue, among those little floating cloudlets. “Fact is, Quirke,” he said, “I’m not well.”