Benjamin Black - Holy Orders

There used to be, Quirke said to the girl, a box of sweets called, if he remembered rightly, Fire and Ice. “They were pineapple-flavored, and came in two sorts, clear amber and a white crunchy kind. Do you still sell those?”

“Of course, sir,” the girl said. She came from behind the counter and opened a narrow panel behind the display window and reached an arm through.

Phoebe was watching Quirke with a puzzled smile. “Don’t you remember?” he said. “I used to bring you here every Christmas when you were little and buy you a box of them — Fire and Ice.”

“Oh, yes,” Phoebe said. “Of course — of course I remember.”

“Here you are, sir.”

The girl held up the box for Quirke to see. Under the cellophane covering the sweets were as he had described them, light amber and chunks of snowy white.

“Yes,” Quirke said, and had to smile. “Yes, that’s them.”

* * *

They walked in St. Stephen’s Green, under the budding trees. The sunshine for all its brightness gave little warmth, and the air was sharp. Ducks waddled on the path beside the pond, waggling their tails and quacking. “This is where we used to come, then, too, after we’d been to Noblett’s and you’d had your sweets. Then we’d go to the Shelbourne and you’d drink hot chocolate and put your sweets under the table and eat them on the sly.”

Phoebe nodded, smiling. She had the box of sweets under her arm. “Tell me where you’re going, Quirke,” she said.

“Hmm?” He looked at her distractedly, calling his thoughts back from the days when she was young and still thought he was her uncle.

“You said you were thinking of going away?”

“Did I? Oh, I don’t know. I may have to go. We’ll see.”

He stopped, and put a hand on her arm and made her stop with him. “I’m sorry, Phoebe,” he said.

She gave him a puzzled look. “For what?”

“For everything.” He gazed at her, still holding her by the arm, smiling at her helplessly. There was so much to say, and, he realized now, no way of saying it. It seemed to him this girl, so pale, so serious, so intent, was the only creature he had ever loved. He had got Delia while wanting Sarah, her sister, but getting and wanting, what had these to do with love? “I wronged you,” he said, “I wronged you grievously, and I’m sorry.”

She looked at his hand on her arm. “You’re beginning to frighten me, Quirke,” she said.

“Yes, I know.” He shook his head in annoyance at himself. “I shouldn’t try to—” He stopped, and took his hand from her arm and let it drop to his side. “The fact is,” he said, with a sad, lopsided smile, “it’s too late, isn’t it.”

“Too late for what?”

“For everything,” he said again.

He leaned his face down suddenly and kissed her cold cheek. Then he gave her that strange, crooked smile again, and turned and walked away.

She watched him go, through light and shade, under the trees. When she could no longer see him she went and sat down on a metal bench. In the flowerbed beside her the daffodils leaned their heads as if listening to some far, faint sound. She set the box of sweets on her lap and laid her hands on it. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. She had no memory of Quirke bringing her to that shop, all those years ago; no memory at all. What had he called the sweets? Fire and Ice? Yes, she thought: fire and ice.

* * *

Quirke watched the clock on the wall of the waiting room. It had a clay-white face and long, spindly black hands. It was an electric clock, he saw, for the second hand swept round and round in smooth, swift circles. He remembered the clocks in Carricklea, big wooden affairs that old Crowther, the janitor, wound once a week, with a big shiny key. They had Roman numerals, and their second hands progressed in a series of tiny jerks, quiveringly. What became of things, he wondered, things like those old clocks? They would hardly be there still, would they? Carricklea had been shut down a decade ago; the building was empty now, so far as he knew. Would someone have bought the clocks, some local watchmaker, maybe, or tinkers, looking for a bargain? He thought of the tinker woman Molly, intently rolling her cigarettes in the light of the oil lamp, her black hair gleaming. He remembered the taste of her mouth, its wild tang.

There were two other people waiting. Patients. Was he a patient, too? Not yet, strictly speaking. They had put him to stand against the cold metal plate, with a lead blanket to protect his chest from the radiation. “Quite still now, please, Dr. Quirke!” The machine, pointing at his head, had whirred a moment, and it was done. The radiologist had given him the X-ray plate in a buff envelope and sent him upstairs, where he had handed the envelope to the receptionist, a steel-haired woman with butterfly glasses who had smiled at him coldly, showing her teeth, and directed him to a chair while she went into the consultant’s office, with the envelope.

Ten past ten on a sunny weekday morning. Through a tall window on the far side of the room he could see down the length of a narrow garden to the mews at the back of Fitzwilliam Place. Rain and shine, rain and shine, turn and turn about. Volatile weather, the world busying itself, fraught with burgeoning life.

Twelve minutes past.

Of the two waiting with him, one was a middle-aged woman, handsome, with permed auburn hair and worried brown eyes. She kept opening her handbag, searching in it, then shutting it again with a sigh. She had smiled at him when he came in, with that important-looking envelope in his hand, which she had pretended not to see. An envelope that big had to have something serious in it. Maybe she had handed hers in already.

The other person was a young man with a cocky expression and narrow oiled black sideburns. He reminded Quirke of someone, though he could not think who. He had a jittery leg, the left one; it beat away like the arm of a sewing machine, the knee fairly bouncing, though he seemed unaware of it.

He had been about to leave the flat, on the way here, when the telephone had rung, and he had stopped, hat in hand. Who would be calling him at this hour? He thought of not answering it, but then picked up the receiver. Hearing Hackett’s voice, he put it down again, without a word. He did not want to speak to Hackett now. Whatever it was, it would have to wait.

The receptionist came out of the consulting room. She had a curious way of opening the door only some inches and insinuating herself around it and then closing it soundlessly behind herself. Was it that she had instructions to let none of those waiting have even a glimpse into that secret inner place, before their turn came to enter and be told the good news or the bad? She sat down at her desk. Quirke liked the way that women, before sitting down, would run a hand deftly under the seat of their skirts, smoothing them out.

Isabel. He should have called Isabel. If the news Philbin had for him was bad, it would be all the harder now to break it to her. Yes, he should have called her, should have told her where he was, warned her of what he was waiting for, so she would be prepared.

The woman with the perm was first in. Sweetman was her name; he heard the receptionist say it. She rose, clutching her handbag, and walked forward towards the white door, starkly smiling. Sweet Mrs. Sweetman. Quirke silently wished her well. He and the young man exchanged a blank look. Frankie the barman! That was who he looked like — the same smooth hair and blue-shadowed chin, the same oily glance, the same cockiness.

Fifteen minutes past. The second hand swept on, unfaltering.

He sneezed violently, making the receptionist start and stare at him. His cold was coming along nicely.

At half past, Mrs. Sweetman emerged from the consulting room. Quirke and the fellow who looked like Frankie scanned her face surreptitiously, searching for a sign. She gave none, and passed them by, leaving a trace of her perfume on the air.