Benjamin Black - Holy Orders

Isabel had a rehearsal, and suggested to Quirke that they should meet afterwards in the Shakespeare. When she came in he was there already, sitting on a high stool at the bar reading the Mail, with a glass of whiskey at his elbow. She paused in the doorway for a moment. She knew by the look of him that the whiskey was not his first drink of the day. Not that he seemed drunk — Quirke never looked drunk, to the naked eye. But there was a certain heaviness in the way he was sitting there, a certain plantedness, that she had come to know well. She went forward and tapped a finger on his knee, and was startled by the look of alarm he gave her and by the momentary panic in his eyes. She said nothing, though, only kissed him quickly on the cheek and perched herself on the stool next to his, taking off her gloves finger by finger.

“I think, William,” she said to the barman, whom everyone else called Bill, “I think I might risk a G and T — to bathe the vocal cords, you know.” She smiled at Quirke. “That’s a nice shirt,” she said. “Blue does suit you.” She had forgiven him in the matter of the discarded bow tie, or said she had, at least. Now she looked about. “Good to be back,” she said. “The old haunts have their attractions.” The tour had not been a success; rural Ireland, she had observed wryly, did not seem ready yet for Ibsen.

Quirke had folded his paper and put it aside. “What news of the world?” Isabel asked. He did not answer, and she peered at him more closely. “What’s the matter?”

He glanced away. “What do you mean, what’s the matter?” he growled.

“You look — I don’t know. Odd.” She was wondering how long he had been here and just how many whiskeys he had drunk.

“I’m all right,” he said shortly.

She went on studying him, tilting her head to one side, as if she were measuring him up for a portrait. Strange, but it was when he was in his lowest spirits or at his most distressed that he seemed most beautiful to her. She supposed beautiful was not the appropriate word, for a man so troubled and dour, yet it was the one she used, to herself. His gray eyes had a greenish gleam that made her think of the sea at evening, aglow and deceptively calm. He had delicate hands, too, for his size, and then of course there were those absurd feet, dainty as a ballet dancer’s, although a dancer’s feet, she reflected, in reality would be anything but dainty.

What was she to do with him? It was a question she asked herself repeatedly, in no expectation of an answer. One day he would leave her again, she had no doubt of that. The thought, for a reason she could not fathom, made her feel all the more tenderly towards him, as if it were his suffering that was in prospect, not hers. She had once wanted to die because of him, or thought she had; but that had been another self, one she had left behind in the hospital bed where she had lain, recovering from the overdose, and readjusting her life. She was a different person now, harder, more detached, more determined to protect herself. And yet she still loved Quirke, she could not deny it, poor sap that she was.

“Had a peculiar experience,” Quirke said now, still not looking at her.

“Not funny funny, you mean?”

He took a drink of his whiskey, followed by the familiar grimace that he did, drawing his lips back and making a sharp hissing sound between his teeth. “No, not funny funny,” he said. “I’m not sure I know how to describe it.”

“Well, it’s left you in a peculiar state, that’s certain.”

Now he did look at her, giving her a sidelong glance, and she saw again that glint of panic that made him seem impossibly young, as if there were a frightened little boy inside him, peering out — which, in a way, she supposed, there was. He told her how he and Hackett had gone to Trinity Manor, and about the priest there, Father Dangerfield, who had reminded him of Nike, and how the memory of Nike had upset him so much he had broken into a cold sweat and had almost run out of the room. “And then the old doorman, who said his name was Thady, took me into the kitchen and gave me Powers whiskey to drink, and told me about this other priest that Hackett wanted to see, and where he was.”

Isabel was listening intently. “What was strange about that?” she asked.

Quirke shook his head and gave a sort of laugh. “That wasn’t the strange part,” he said. “The strange part was when I left the kitchen. Suddenly I was—” He stopped, and signaled to the barman.

“You haven’t drunk the one you have,” Isabel said, pointing to his glass and the whiskey in it.

“What?” He stared at the whiskey, and frowned, a look of confusion in his eyes. “Yes. Right.”

Bill the barman came, and Isabel said she would have another gin and tonic, even though her glass, too, was still half full. “And the good doctor here,” she added drily, “will have another Jameson, in case you might suddenly run out of the stuff.”

A customer came in, and between the opening and the shutting of the door Isabel glimpsed the pale yellow April sunlight on the pavement outside and the slanted, damp purplish shadows there. At the party in Mullingar, Jack Fenton, who had been playing Torvald to her Nora, had made a pass at her. It was a surprise — she had vaguely assumed he was queer — and rather flattering. She had considered taking him up on his offer, but then had thought better of it. She wondered if she should tell Quirke about him, about how he had put his hand on her bum and smiled his lopsided, cajoling smile. Quirke might be amused, and of course, although he would not admit it, he would be secretly gratified — all men loved to hear of their rivals being spurned. But no, she thought; Quirke was hardly in the mood this evening for romantic banter.

“The strange thing is,” he said, his eyes fixed on a point in space in front of him, “after I left the kitchen I must have had a kind of blackout, because the next thing I knew I was in a lavatory, standing by an open window with the rain blowing in my face.” He shook his head again, like an animal trying to shake off a cloud of flies. “Then I found Hackett waiting for me in the hall, and it seems only five minutes or so had elapsed, even though I thought I’d been with the old man in the kitchen for — I don’t know, half an hour, at least. And then…”

There was a side to Quirke, the uncertain, baffled side, that frightened Isabel, a little. She had thought about this in Mullingar, after the party, lying sleepless and a bit drunk in a lumpy hotel bed. A girl had to consider the future, especially a girl in her uncertain profession, and at her age, unmarried and childless. She did not think she had it in her to devote her life to looking after a weak man. She was weak herself, and needed strong people around her, to lean on. But what could she do? Love was love, and always demanded more than a lover was capable of giving. All the same, maybe she should not have shaken off Jack Fenton’s hand quite so brusquely.

“And then,” Quirke resumed, “the old man appeared, to see us out, but when I called him Thady he said that wasn’t his name.”

“So what was he called?” Isabel said, trying to keep the note of impatience out of her voice.

“I don’t know. Richie or something. But not Thady, anyway. And from his demeanor, the way he looked at me, and spoke, it seemed he had forgotten our talk in the kitchen. In fact, he behaved as if I hadn’t been with him in the kitchen at all.”

Isabel took a drink from her glass, playing for time. Now, affected by what Quirke was telling her, and the tone in which he told it, she too felt unsettled. “Well,” she said, “yes, I see what you mean about it being peculiar.” There was a brief silence. “So did you imagine it all, do you think? How could that be?”