Benjamin Black - Holy Orders

Still she strained to listen, but still there was no sound from the living room, or from anywhere else — the world seemed to have fallen into a shocked silence. She imagined Sally still sitting as she had left her, on the rug, with her legs folded under her, as confused and full of wonderment as she was.

What was she to do, what was she to think?

Maybe Sally would leave; maybe she would fetch her vanity bag and pack her things into her suitcase and hurry from the flat and out of the house, without a word of good-bye, and be gone. At the thought, Phoebe felt something inside her drop suddenly, like something falling soundlessly in a vacuum.

She looked down. In one hand she was holding the lemonade glass, while the other was locked into itself in a fist, white-knuckled, quivering. The rain at the window seemed to be trying to say something to her, a slurred, secret phrase. Her heart was still struggling in her breast like a trapped animal. She turned up her clenched fist and opened it slowly. Pressed into an indent in her palm was what at first she took to be a small white pill with holes pierced through its center. She gazed at it in bewilderment. Then she realized what it was. It was not a pill, but a button, a button she must have ripped from Sally’s blouse.

* * *

They sat opposite each other at the kitchen table and talked for what seemed an age, holding themselves very straight, with their fists set down in front of them on the table, as if they were engaged in some contest, some trial of skill and endurance. Afterwards Phoebe would not be able to recall a single thing they had said; all she knew for certain was that the kiss had not been mentioned. How could it have been? For some things there were no words; she knew that. What she did remember was the urgency in their voices, or in her voice, anyway, the excitement, and the fear. She thought she had never known such a jumble of emotions before. There had been crushes at school, of course, but they had meant nothing. She recalled too the night one Christmastime in that pub — Neary’s, was it, or Searson’s? — when a narrow-faced woman with thin lips painted crimson had kept staring at her and at closing time had come up to her and offered her a lift home, which she had refused. That was the extent of her experience of — of what was she to call it? She did not know. Whatever it was that had occurred between her and Sally as they sat on the rug in front of the gas fire was a new thing in Phoebe’s life, unexpected, unlooked-for, and frightening, but also, although she was not yet prepared to admit it, exciting, too — oh, exciting beyond words.

On they talked, on and on, with Sally smoking cigarette after cigarette, and gradually the sky outside cleared and the sun came out, angling sharp spikes of light down into the street. Sally said, in a very casual-seeming tone, that she would get her things together and leave — she would go back to the Belmont — but Phoebe would not hear of such a thing. “I won’t let you go,” she said, though of course it did not come out as she had meant it to, and she felt herself blushing. “I mean,” she added hastily, “there’s no need for you to go, and anyway the Belmont is a dreadful place, I won’t think of you going back there.”

“You’ve been very kind,” Sally said, the words sounding stilted and formal. “But I feel I should go and leave you to get back to normal.”

“Oh, no,” Phoebe said quickly, and it sounded in her own ears like a wail, “you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. I’m — I’m glad of your company. Honestly, I am,” she added, almost in desperation.

“I know,” Sally said. “And I’m glad to be here. But…”

In the silence that followed this exchange they had to look away from each other, clearing their throats. Phoebe knew that Sally was right, that she should leave the flat and go back to the hotel, but she knew too that she did not want her to go, not yet, not with everything unresolved between them. But how was anything to be resolved? The fact of that kiss, speak of it or not as they might, was a taut silken cord, invisible but all too tangible, by which they were held fast to each other now. Phoebe knew, and she wondered if Sally knew it too, that they should snap the cord at once, this moment, without delay. But would they?

Sally was gazing pensively into the street. “Everything is so confused,” she said, in a faraway voice. “I feel — I don’t know what I feel. Strange. Lost. When James — Jimmy, I mean, I may as well call him that, since everyone else does — when Jimmy died part of me died, too. That sounds like something someone would say in the movies, I know, but it’s true. You can’t imagine what it’s like, being a twin. You’re never just yourself — there’s always an extra part, or a part missing. I can’t explain. You know, when people have an arm or a leg amputated they say they can still feel it, this phantom limb, that sometimes they can even feel pain in it. That’s how I am now. Whoever killed Jimmy killed a bit of me, too, but the bit that’s dead is still there, somehow.”

Phoebe wanted to take Sally’s hand in hers, to hold it tightly, yet she knew she must not, must absolutely not. She stood up from the table; it was a relief to be on her feet. “Let’s go out and get some things for lunch,” she said.

Sally shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”

“You will be,” Phoebe said. “Come on, we can go to the Q and L.”

“The Q and L? What’s that?”

“It’s my local grocer’s. Wait till you see Mr. Q and L, in his checked suit and his canary waistcoat. He looks the image of Mr. Toad.”

“Is that his name?” Sally said incredulously. “Queue-and-ell?”

“Of course not. That’s the name of the shop. I don’t know what he’s called. He’s sort of mad. Don’t be surprised if he serenades you with a bit of opera, or does a pirouette.”

Sally stood up. “Well,” she said, “he certainly sounds different from my Mr. Patel.”

“Mr. Patel doesn’t sing or do ballet steps?”

“No. I’m afraid Mr. Patel is a grouch.”

They smiled at each other. Was it getting easier? Were they beginning to relax? It was as if, Phoebe thought, they had been walking for a long time at the very edge of a steep precipice, with the wind pulling at them, trying to drag them over, and now they had at last stepped away from the brink, and she felt shaky with relief but also with a faint regret for the danger that had passed.

They put on their coats and walked up to Baggot Street. The sun made puddles of molten gold on the rain-wet pavements, and above them small white puffs of cloud were gliding across the sky like upside-down toy sailboats. Phoebe would have liked to link her arm in Sally’s but knew she could not. Was this how it would be from now on, with even the most innocent token of friendship become suddenly suspect?

At the shop they bought a wedge of Cheddar cheese and slices of cooked ham and a bag of small hard Dutch tomatoes, two apples and some green grapes, and a packet of Kimberley biscuits. The shopkeeper, sleek-haired and fat, today wore a tweed hunting jacket and a waistcoat of hunting pink instead of his accustomed canary-yellow one. While he served them he hummed under his breath the slaves’ chorus from Aida, and when he handed them their change he did brief, sinuous passes with his hands, like an Oriental dancer, and said thanky-voo , as he always did, pursing his lips and opening wide his big round feminine eyes. The two young women dared not look at each other, and when they came out into the street they burst into laughter and had to stop, their shoulders shaking. “You’re right,” Sally said, in a muffled, delighted scream. “He’s exactly like Mr. Toad!” And, laughing, they leaned towards each other until their foreheads touched, and for a moment it was as if that kiss in front of the gas fire had never happened, or as if, having happened, it might happen again, but this time with the greatest simplicity and ease.