Benjamin Black - Holy Orders

“And what about the other one, the tinker, what’s-his-name?”

“Packie Joyce? A detective I know is going out to Tallaght to talk to him. He’s asked me to come along.”

His wine glass was empty. He turned again in his chair, lifting a hand to summon the waitress.

* * *

The rainstorm was thrilling. In Baggot Street the trees shivered and shook like racehorses waiting for the off, and fresh green leaves torn from their boughs whipped in wild flight down the middle of the road or plastered themselves to the pavements as if hiding their faces in terror. The two young women had to fight their way along, the gale ripping at their clothes and handfuls of rain spattering in their faces. When they tried to speak the wind filled up their mouths, and they had to turn and walk backwards with their arms linked, leaning close against each other so that their temples almost touched.

Sally thanked Phoebe for introducing her to her father and remarked how good-looking he was. Phoebe did not reply to this. Yes, it was true, she supposed, Quirke was handsome; it was a thing she did not notice anymore. For some time, though, when she still believed he was her uncle, she had been soft on him. It was silly, of course, and would have been even if he had not turned out to be her father. To recall now how she had felt for him in those days made her suddenly frightened, as if she were poised on the very tip of some aerial, intricate structure, the Eiffel Tower, say, or one of the arms of some great bridge, and the force of the feeling surprised her, and shocked her, too. She began to ask herself, as she had done so often in the past, how Quirke could have left her in ignorance for all those years, how he could have been so coldhearted, but then she stopped. It was no good, asking such questions. The past was the past.

They reached the house on Herbert Place in a flurry of wind and raindrops, and ran up the stairs and burst into the flat, laughing breathlessly and shaking the rain from their hair. “My feet are sopping!” Sally cried happily. “Your floor will be ruined.”

They kicked off their shoes and struggled out of their wet coats, and Phoebe knelt and lit the gas fire, then said she would make something hot for them to drink, tea or coffee, or spiced lemonade, maybe, and went off into the kitchen. When after a little while she came back, carrying a tray with a jug and two glasses on it, Sally was standing in rippling rainlight by the side of the window, looking down into the street. Her mood had changed, had darkened. She was frowning, and gnawing at the side of her thumb.

“What’s the matter?” Phoebe asked.

Sally started, and turned to her with a strange look, wild and distracted, then made the effort to smile. “I was thinking about James,” she said, “thrown into the water, like some poor beast.” She looked down into the street again. “Who could be so cruel?”

“I made us some hot lemonade,” Phoebe said, conscious of how feeble it sounded. “I put cloves and honey in it. Come and sit by the fire and get warm.”

Sally seemed not to have heard her. The rainlight made her face into a silver mask, solemn and burnished. “I feel so strange, just to think of it,” she said. “And yet I can’t let it go, I have to know what happened — I have to find out.”

Phoebe went and set the tray on a low table by the fireplace and sat down on the rug there, folding her legs under herself. After a moment Sally came and joined her. “I’m sorry,” Sally said. “You’re probably tired of hearing me going on and on like this.”

“Of course I’m not,” Phoebe said, pouring the lemonade into the glasses from a glass jug. “Jimmy was my friend.”

They sipped their steaming drinks. “It’s funny,” Sally said, “how you all call him Jimmy. When he was at home he would never let anyone call him anything but James. He said it was bad enough being so small without having to be called by a little boy’s name.”

“I don’t think I ever heard anyone calling him James, before I met you.”

Sally was watching the soft blue flames playing over the ashy filaments of the gas fire. “I suppose he wanted to be someone else, up here.” She smiled. “I think he was a bit ashamed of the rest of us, so boring and ordinary. ‘Little people,’ he used to say, ‘that’s what we are — little people.’ He had such dreams, such ambitions. ‘You’ll see, sister mine, you’ll see what I make of myself, someday.’”

She shifted her legs under herself, making herself more comfortable. The spiced drink had given a glow to her cheeks, and the light of the fire set a reflected gleam in her eyes. “When I first went off to London he wouldn’t speak to me, you know — wouldn’t write, didn’t telephone, nothing. I was annoyed, annoyed and hurt, thinking he had taken my brother’s side against me. Then, after a month or so, a long letter arrived from him out of the blue, telling me all the news and asking me how I was liking London. I think he had been jealous of me, at first, and angry at me for being the one who got away, out of Ireland altogether, while he was stuck here. That was supposed to have been him. He was the one who was supposed to be living in London and working in Fleet Street. But poor James, he couldn’t hold a grudge for long. In that first letter he wrote I could read between the lines how envious he was of me, though he wasn’t cross anymore.”

The rain was heavier now, and beat like sea spray against the window. Sally sighed. “It’s cozy, here,” she said. “I feel protected.” She smiled at Phoebe. “Thanks for taking me in. To tell you the truth, I hated that hotel, and was getting ready to go back to London, until you spoke to me in the street. I knew straight off we’d be friends.”

To Phoebe’s surprise she felt sudden tears pricking her eyes; only with an effort did she manage to hold them back. It was strange, to be so moved, to suffer such a sudden rush of tenderness, and for a moment she felt dizzy again.

“Has it occurred to you, Sally,” she heard herself say, “that what my father said might be true, that you may never find out what exactly happened to Jimmy — to James?”

Sally frowned. “Do you think it’s true?”

“Things happen here that never get explained, never get accounted for,” Phoebe said. “Ask my father — he can tell you.”

Now Sally laughed. “Don’t forget, I grew up here — I know what this place is like, the secretiveness, the hidden things.” Phoebe said nothing, and they looked away from each other. After a silence Sally said, “But they wouldn’t — Dr. Quirke, the Guards — they wouldn’t let James — I mean, they wouldn’t let his death go unsolved, would they? Your father wouldn’t let that happen — I know he wouldn’t.”

Again Phoebe was silent. Sally’s words seemed to jangle for a moment in the air between them.

Sally took a sip from her glass. “This is lovely,” she said. “Lovely and spicy, and warm.”

“Yes,” Phoebe said. “My mother used to make it for me, when I was little. The woman I thought was my mother, that is.” Sally looked at her inquiringly and she shrugged. “Oh, it’s complicated,” she said.

“Yes, but tell me.”

“My mother died when I was born, and my father — my father gave me away, to his brother, Malachy — his adoptive brother, really — and Malachy’s wife, my father’s sister-in-law.” A small knot had formed between Sally’s eyebrows, and Phoebe smiled sympathetically. “I told you it was complicated. My father and Malachy Griffin married two sisters. My father married Delia, who died, and Mal married Sarah, who brought me up.”

“Sarah?” Sally said. “That’s my name, you know.”

“Yes,” Phoebe said, lowering her eyes, “I thought it must be.”