Benjamin Black - Holy Orders

Here was the shop, the Maison des Chapeaux. He crossed to the other side of the street and made for the purple shadow under the awning outside Lipton’s. The one-way street was busy with pedestrians and motorcars and the odd dray, and he had only an intermittent view of the window of the hat shop. He could see, dimly behind the glass, his daughter attending to a customer, taking down boxes and lifting out the hats and turning them this way and that for inspection. He could not understand how she put up with the work. Phoebe had a good brain and at one time had wanted to be a doctor, but nothing had come of it. Things had gone wrong in her life, and bad things had happened to her. Maybe this mindless job was part of the long process of recuperation, of healing. As he watched her, with people and cars flashing past, he experienced a sudden, swooping sensation in his chest, as if his heart had come loose for a second and dropped and bounced, like a ball attached to an elastic. He had long ago given up hope of being able to tell her how much he cared for her. After all, he was one of the bad things that had happened to her — for the first two decades of her life he had kept her in ignorance of the fact that he was her father. What right had he to tell her he loved her, even if he could manage to get the words out? Yet his longing to be allowed to look after her somehow, to protect her from the world’s awfulness, was a constant, hollow, and unassuageable ache at the center of his being.

None of the hats was to the customer’s liking, it seemed, and she left from the shop, while, inside, Phoebe set about putting the silly concoctions back in their nests of tissue paper and stowing the boxes away on the shelves. Quirke waited for a bus to pass by, then crossed the street and pushed open the shop door.

Phoebe turned in surprise. “Oh, hello,” she said.

A faint flush spread upwards quickly from her throat, making her pale cheeks glow. He had startled her, walking in from the street unannounced like that, and she did not like to be startled, he knew that. She glanced behind herself, in the direction of the made-over broom cupboard at the back of the shop that the proprietor, Mrs. Cuffe-Wilkes, liked to call her office.

“I was passing,” Quirke said, keeping his voice low. “I thought I might take you to lunch.” She looked at her watch. “Oh, come on,” he said cajolingly. “It’s past noon.”

At that moment Mrs. Cuffe-Wilkes appeared. She looked at Quirke sharply and frowned — men seldom entered the shop, certainly not men on their own — but then recovered herself and smiled. She was a large florid woman with brassy hair and an extensive smearing of rouge. She had prominent, bright eyes and a crooked little rosebud mouth. In her voluminous dress of shiny green silk, with her big bosom and short legs, she bore, Quirke thought, not for the first time, a strong resemblance to Queen Victoria in her late heyday.

Phoebe moved forward quickly, as if her employer could be expected to charge and must be headed off. “This is my father,” she said.

The woman reinstated her frown; she had heard of Quirke. He nodded, trying to appear pleasant and affable. “I was just saying,” he said, “that maybe I could take Phoebe to lunch.”

Mrs. Cuffe-Wilkes sniffed. “Oh, yes?” Both Quirke and Phoebe could see her dithering. Quirke might be disreputable in certain ways, but he was a medical man, a consultant at that, and his well-cut suit was of Harris tweed and his shoes were handmade. She forced herself to smile again, managing at the same time to keep those tight little lips pursed. “I’m sure that will be all right.” She glanced at Phoebe. “It’s nearly lunchtime, after all.”

* * *

They went round the corner to the Hibernian. The restaurant was not busy and they were shown to a table under a potted plant at the big window that looked out on Dawson Street, where the lemon sunlight glared on the roofs of passing cars.

“What’s the occasion for this unexpected treat?” Phoebe, smiling, asked.

“I told you,” Quirke said, “I was passing by.”

She put her head to one side and gave him an arch look. “Oh, Quirke,” she said, “you know you’re never just ‘passing by.’”

He nodded towards the sunlit street. “It’s spring,” he said. “That’s worth celebrating, isn’t it?”

She was still regarding him suspiciously, and he buried his face in the menu. She could never quite decide what to think about her father — what to feel about him, or for him, was beyond speculation — but today she could see that something was the matter. She knew well that assumed air of bonhomie, the forced and slightly queasy smile, the furtive eye and fidgeting hands. Maybe he had broken up with Isabel Galloway again and was trying to screw up sufficient courage to tell her. Phoebe and Isabel were friends, sort of, although in fact there had been a marked coolness between them ever since Isabel had taken up with Phoebe’s father. And then there had been Isabel’s suicide attempt after Quirke had left her the last time …

Quirke was talking to the waiter now, consulting him about the Chablis. Phoebe studied him, trying to guess what it could be he had to tell her — there must be a reason for him to take her to the Hibernian at lunchtime on an ordinary weekday. It was not to do with Isabel, she decided; Quirke would not be so agitated over a woman.

“I thought you weren’t going to drink during the day anymore,” she said when the waiter had left.

He gave her his wide-eyed look. “I’m not drinking.”

“You just ordered a bottle of wine.”

“Yes, but white wine.”

“Which has just as much alcohol as red.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “No no no — that’s only what the producers put on the label to make you think you’re getting your money’s worth.”

She laughed. “Quirke, you’re incorrigible.”

“Eat your prawn cocktail,” he said. “Go on.”

She cast a glance at his plate. He had pushed his own portion of prawns around in their pink sauce but as yet had not taken a bite of a single one. He must have a hangover, she decided; he never ate when he was hungover. She thought of delivering the standard lecture on his drinking, but what good would it do?

“How’s that boyfriend of yours?” he asked.

“David?”

He gave her a wry look. “How many boyfriends have you got?”

She had wanted to see if he would follow her in saying David’s name, but of course he would not. To Quirke, his assistant was always just Sinclair. “He’s very well,” she said. “Don’t you see him?”

“Not in the way you do. He’s not my beau.”

“My beau !” She gave a hoot of laughter. “I doubt he thinks of himself as anybody’s beau .”

The waiter came with the wine and Quirke went through the ritual of sipping and tasting. It was pathetic, Phoebe thought, the way he tried to pretend he was not dying for a drink. Next their fish was brought, and Quirke tucked his napkin into his shirt collar and took up his knife and fork with a show of enthusiasm, but it was again obvious that he had no stomach for food.

“Any sign of a ring?” he asked, not looking at her but poking at the sole with his fork.

“What kind of a ring would that be?” Phoebe inquired innocently, putting on a puzzled frown. “A Claddagh ring, do you mean? A signet?”

Quirke ignored this. “The two of you have been going together for how long now?” he asked. “About time he declared his intentions, I’d have thought.”

She laughed again. “My ‘beau,’” she cried, “‘declaring his intentions’—honestly, Quirke!”

“In my day—”

“Oh, in your day! In your day a gentleman had side-whiskers and wore a frock coat and gaiters and before proposing had to ask a damsel’s father for her hand in marriage, don’t you know.”