Benjamin Black - Holy Orders

In his years at Carricklea Quirke had not been beaten very often by Nike, and, even if he had, that would not have been the thing that frightened him the most. It was a special kind of fear that Nike instilled, intimate, warm and clammy, and faintly indecent. When the figure of the Dean broke in on Quirke’s thoughts, especially at night, as he lay in bed in the murmurous dark, he would experience a jolt in his chest, like the jolt that would come from suddenly calling to mind some serious instance of wrongdoing, or an unconfessed mortal sin. Even now, thinking of those days, he felt again that same hot qualm of oppressive, objectless guilt.

He looked at the tumbler before him on the table. It was empty. He had no recollection of drinking the whiskey, yet he must have drunk it, for all that was left was a single, amber drop glistening in the bottom of the glass. The old man was saying something. “What?” Quirke said. “Sorry?”

“Ah, nothing, nothing,” the old man said, smiling. “You were miles away.” He came to the table and seated himself opposite Quirke. It was an effort for him to maneuver his twisted body up onto the chair. He sighed hoarsely. “Are you feeling any better?” he asked.

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine now.”

“It was the nerves that were at you, I’d say. Nerves can be a terrible thing. Thady is the name, by the way. Thaddeus, that is, but Thady I’m called.”

Quirke brought out his cigarette case, opened it on his palm, and offered it across the table. He noticed the tremor in his hand, very faint, as if an electric current were passing along the nerves. The old man was gazing greedily at the row of cigarettes laid out invitingly before him. “I’m not supposed to,” he said, “due to the bronicals.” He took one, however, and leaned to the flame of Quirke’s proffered lighter. When he drew in the first mouthful of smoke he was at once convulsed by a bout of coughing that caused his wasted frame almost to close on itself, as if there were a hinge at his waist. When the seizure had passed he sat gasping, a baby-pink spot glowing on each cheekbone and his mouth a quivering oval. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he croaked, “they’ll do for me yet, the fags.”

He poured another go of whiskey into the tumbler on the table. In the aftermath of the coughing fit his hand, too, like Quirke’s, had the shakes, and the bottle rattled against the rim of the glass.

They talked. The old man had been here, at Trinity Manor, for more than sixty years. “The fathers took me in, you know, doing odd jobs. I was only a youngster at the time, eleven, I was, or twelve, I can’t remember.” The place had been an orphanage then, he said. He gave Quirke a quick glance from under his leaning brow. “And you?”

“Me?”

“You have the look about you — the look of places like this place used to be.”

“Yes,” Quirke said after a moment. “Yes, I suppose I must have. I was at Carricklea.” It sounded strange, when he said it like that, as if he were speaking of his old school, the alma mater where he had played cricket, and worn the school tie, and had been surrounded by lots of jolly chums; where he had been happy. “Have you heard of it?”

“Oh, I have, indeed.” The old man nodded slowly. “That was a hard station, so I’m told.”

“It wasn’t easy, no. I was younger than you were when you started here — I was nine.”

“And what about before that?”

“Oh, other places. Most of them I don’t remember now.”

The old man forgot himself and took a deep draw of his cigarette, and once again had to cough, though this time not so violently as before. He thumped a fist gnarled and waxy like a turkey’s claw into the hollow of his chest. “Ah, God,” he said, gasping softly. “Ah, the bronicals.”

It occurred to Quirke that Inspector Hackett would be wondering what had become of him. He wondered, himself, how the interview with Father Gallagher had progressed, or if it had progressed at all. No, not Gallagher — that was not the priest’s name. He put a hand to his forehead, trying to remember. Dangerfield! That was it. Nike was Gallagher, but the fellow here, who looked like Nike, was Dangerfield, Daniel Dangerfield. It seemed important to sort out these names, to fix them in his mind. He lifted the whiskey glass but then put it back on the table. The alcohol he had taken already must have gone to his head, that was why his brain was clouded and he could not think straight. Concentrate; he must concentrate. “You’d have known all the priests here, no doubt,” he said, “over the years.”

The old man cast a sharp look across the table. “Oh, aye,” he said, “all the fathers.” His manner had turned wary.

Quirke grasped the glass again and this time drank from it. Jameson was his tipple, but the Powers tasted good, all the same. “There’s a Father Honan, I believe,” he said. “Would you know him?”

“Father Mick, is it?” The old man smiled, though his eyes kept a guarded look. “He’s a grand man.”

“So they say.”

The old man waited, silent and watchful. What had he said his name was? Thaddeus — Thady. “Do you know him well?” Quirke asked.

“Oh, I do. Sure wasn’t he living here for the past I don’t know how long. A good and holy man.”

Quirke looked deep into Thady’s cloudy eyes. Was there something lurking in there that belied his warm words? “You say he was living here — where is he now?”

“He’s going off to Africa, I hear.”

“Yes, but where is he staying in the meantime?”

The old man let his gaze drift. “I believe he’s visiting his home place.”

“And where’s that?”

“Donegal.”

“That’s a long way away.”

“It is. It’s as far away as you can get.”

A silence fell. They could hear rain whispering at the window now, yet at that very moment a swish of sunlight filled the room. April. The old man offered the whiskey bottle again but Quirke put his hand over his glass. He was convinced there were things the old man knew but was not saying about Father Mick. He was asking the wrong questions, obviously — but what were the right ones? If only he could get his head clear. Beyond the window, off in the trees, some small shiny thing kept flashing, as if it were sending him an urgent signal. He should leave. His pulse was beginning to race again. “I’d better be going,” he said. He tried to stand, but once more his knees would not obey him.

“You’ll get wet,” the old man said. “Listen to that rain.” He was bent so far forward his chest was almost resting on the table. His head as well as his hands trembled slightly, and Quirke thought of a tortoise, its leathery skull waggling on a stalk of neck, its ancient eyes filmed over with a gray transparency. Thady. Thaddeus. He was gazing vacantly off to the side, and seemed to have forgotten Quirke was there. “He’s a great man for the good works,” he said, “the same Father Mick.”

Quirke blinked; that flashing thing in the trees was making his eyes ache. What was it? Something in a magpie’s nest, perhaps, a stolen brooch or shard of colored glass? But did magpies really steal things, or was that only a myth? “Good works?” he said, trying to concentrate.

Thady nodded. “Aye. With the kiddies, and the like. And the tinkers.”

Quirke waited, fingering the whiskey glass that by now was empty. The rain was beating still on the window yet there was a wash of watercolor sunlight on the opposite wall that was making the pale tiles paler still. “Why is he going to Africa?” he asked. “Is he being sent?”

The old man squinted up at him. “Sent?”

“If he’s doing such great work here, why is he going away?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t know about that. Don’t they take a vow of obedience?”