Christine Falls

by Benjamin Black

  She had not been surprised to see them; shocked, and frightened, too, but not surprised, not after Quirke had come knocking at her door again demanding to know what had become of Chrissie’s child. She would not let him in-she thought he might be a bit drunk-and would only speak to him through the letter box. She could not bear to see his face again. She knew she had said too much already, that day in the pub when he had poured all that gin into her and soft-soaped her into talking about Chrissie and the rest of it. Today he got angry when she would not tell him what he wanted to know. He thought the child had died, and asked her where it was buried. She would say nothing, standing behind the door with a knuckle pressed against her mouth, shaking her head to herself, her eyes squeezed shut. Had those two been there already, at the corner, had they seen him, had they heard him asking about the child? By then he was shouting at her, almost, and they would easily have heard what he was saying. In the end he gave up and went away, and after a while, when she was calm enough, she had started again to go to the shop for the bottle of milk and the paper and there they were, waiting for her.

  Now she was upstairs, at the window in the front room, still in her coat and hat. She had to put her cheek right up against the casement and look out at the edge of the curtain to see down to the corner. They were still there. The fat one was holding a match cupped in his hands and the other one, the one with the nose, was leaning down to get a light from it for his cigarette. She could feel a pulse ticking in her temple. She heard herself breathing, with a flutter at the end of each breath that she could not control. She went downstairs to the poky kitchen, where there was always a smell of damp and gas, and stood for a long time motionless beside the oilcloth-covered table, trying to get her mind to work, to concentrate, to tell her what to do. She took down an enameled tin marked Sugar from a shelf behind the gas stove and opened the lid and extracted a rolled-up school jotter with a yellowy-orange cover, and took it into the front room and leaned down at the fireplace and put it into the grate. She could not find the matches. She closed her eyes for a moment, and in the dark behind her eyelids felt a sudden blaze of anger. No! She thought of poor Chrissie throwing her head from side to side on the pillow and crying for her mammy, with blood and stuff everywhere, and no one to help her. No, she would not let Chrissie down a second time.

  The post office closed at five, she knew she would have to hurry. She could find no envelope except the old one she kept her Tontine Society books in; it would do. The glue had worn off the flap and she had to seal it as best she could with a bit of sticking plaster. She could barely write the address, she was in such a rush and her hands were shaking so badly. For all her haste she was dreading the moment when she would have to open the front door again and step into the street. What would she do if that pair was still out there, loitering at the corner, pretending not to see her? She was not sure that she had the courage to walk past them. Maybe she could go the other way, up the street, away from the corner, and around by Arbour Hill? But that would take longer, the post office would be shut when she got there, and anyway there was nothing to stop them following her still.

  She drew open the door and stepped out, hardly daring to look in the direction of the corner. But they were gone. She scanned the street from end to end. There was no one, except the old Tallon one opposite, who opened her front door an inch and stuck out her nose, pretending to be looking to see what the weather was doing. Nice calm evening. That was the thing to be, calm, nice and calm. Ma Tallon withdrew inside and shut the door softly. Would she have seen the pair on the corner? Not much happened in the street that Ma Tallon missed. But so what if she had seen them? No help there. She bit her lip and tightened her grip on her bag. She saw the dung stain on the path outside No. 12 and remembered her walk home through the soft darkness when she had linked her arm with Quirke’s. Should she call him, as he had urged her to do? For a second she considered it, her heart lifting. But no: Quirke was the last one she would call.

  She got to the post office five minutes before it was supposed to close but the young fellow behind the grille was already shutting up shop, and scowled when she came in. He was like the rest of them around here, and she was used to being scowled at; sometimes they even called her names, muttering the words out of the sides of their mouths as she was going past. She did not care twopence for any of them. When she put the envelope in the box it was a weight dropping from her conscience, and she felt better; it was like going to Confession, although she could not remember when she had last done that.

  She decided she would go to Moran’s and treat herself to a gin and water, just the one. She had three, however, in quick succession, and then another, more leisurely, and then a last one, for the road. As she walked home through the smoky dusk she began to feel a doubt: had she been too hasty in posting the envelope? Maybe those two were not who she thought they were, and even if they were, maybe it was not her they were watching. There were always things going on around here, thieving, and fights, and men found lying in the street with their teeth kicked in. If it was all no more than her imagination, Jesus, what had she done? Should she return to the post office and see if she could get back the envelope? But the place would be shut and the scowling clerk long gone, and anyway the post had probably been collected from the box by now. She belched, and a fiery tang of gin flooded the back of her throat. So what, anyway, if the thing was delivered? Let them suffer a bit, she thought, let them see what life is like down here.

  Because of the gin she had drunk she had to search with the key for the keyhole. In the hall she felt a draft from the back of the house but took no notice. Even when she heard the wireless playing softly in the kitchen-the Ink Spots crooning “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie”-she supposed it must have been on when she went out and in her hurry she had forgotten to turn it off. She hung up her coat and went into the living room. Here, too, the air had an unaccustomed chill; she must think of getting an electric fire put in before the winter, one of those ones with the red light in them that looked like logs burning. She was on her knees on the hearth, stacking up kindling in the grate and wondering where she could have put those matches, when she heard them behind her. When she looked over her shoulder they were standing in the kitchen doorway. Everything slowed down suddenly, as if a huge engine that she was inside of had switched into its lowest gear. She was struck by the things she noticed-that the fat one’s hair was a coarse, rusty color in the electric light and that his shapeless sweater was hand-knitted, and that the one with the hooked nose was redder than ever in the face and that the cigarette he was holding between a tobacco-stained finger and thumb was a roll-up. She saw too, perfectly clearly, what she knew she could not be seeing, the smashed pane of glass in the corner of the back door just above the latch, and felt the cold black night air pouring in through the hole. And why had they turned on the wireless? For some reason that was the most frightening thing, the wireless playing, those black fellows singing in their falsetto voices. “Evening, Dolly,” the hooked-nosed one said affably, and she felt what was at first no more than a tickling sensation between her thighs, but then the sudden, scalding gush of liquid ran down the insides of her legs and spread its dark stain around her on the rug where she was kneeling.

  THE TAXI WAS AN ANCIENT FORD THAT WHEEZED AND SHUDDERED. The ill-lit, smoky streets were silent. Quirke should have been used to this kind of thing, the late-night summons, the journey through the darkness, then the ambulance at the curb, the slewed police cars, and the lighted doorway where large, vague men loomed. One of them, in a long raincoat and a slouch hat, stepped forward to greet him. “Mr. Quirke!” he said, sounding pleased and surprised. “Is it yourself?”

  Hackett. Inspector. Big, broad-shouldered, slow, with a merrily watchful eye. It was he who had telephoned.

  “Inspector,” Quirke said, shaking a hand the size of a shovel. “Is Miss Moran here?” he asked, flinching inwardly at the fatuous sound of it.

  Hackett fairly twinkled. “Dolly?”
he said. “Oh, she is, she is.”

  He led the way into the hall, squeezing past two boffins from forensics dusting for prints. Quirke knew them, but could not remember their names; they nodded to him, with that expression forensics always had, po-faced and blank, as if they were covering up a private joke. The living room was a chaos of overturned chairs, spilt drawers, a disemboweled sofa, papers torn and strewn. A guard in uniform and cap, young, with acne and a prominent, triangular adam’s apple, was positioned by the kitchen doorway; he was a little green in the face. Beyond him there was more disorder, indecent in the glow of a single, bare bulb. The smell was so familiar Quirke barely registered it.

  “There she is,” Hackett said, adding with a gleam of irony, “your Miss Moran.”

  She had been tied to a kitchen chair, bound at the ankles with her own stockings and at the wrists with lengths of electric wire. The chair had overturned and she lay on the floor on her right side. She had worked one arm free of its bonds. Quirke was struck by the pose, the flexed knees and upflung arm: another mannequin.

  “You called me at home,” Quirke said, still bending over the corpse with his hands on his knees. “Did the hospital give you my number?”

  Hackett showed the piece of white pasteboard, clipped by its four corners in the hollow of his palm like a conjuror’s playing card.

  “It seems,” he said easily, “you left your calling card, on some previous social visit.”

  TWO

  7

  A YOUNG NUN WITH PROMINENT TEETH OPENED THE DOOR AND STOOD aside and motioned her to enter. At the sight of the long, gaunt room something inside her shrank back, and for a moment she was a child again, quaking on the threshold of Mother Superior’s office. Massive mahogany table, six high-backed chairs that no one had ever sat on, glass-fronted bookcases, a coatless coat rack; in a wall niche a three-quarters-life-sized statue of the Virgin stood disconsolate in pale blue and white, holding between two fingertips and a thumb, in an attitude of dainty misgiving, a large white lily, sign of her purity. At the other end, under a muddy picture of some sainted martyr, there was an antique desk with lamp and leather-bound blotter and two telephones-why two? Somehow, without her noticing, the young nun had left, shutting the door behind her without a sound. She stood in the midst of silence, the child in her arms asleep in its blanket. The trees outside the windows were unfamiliar, or did they only seem so? Everything here seemed strange to her, still.

  Another door, one that she had not noticed, flew open as if a wind were behind it. What entered was a tall nun, high-shouldered as a man, with a narrow, stark, pale face. She came forward quickly, both hands held out, her heavy black habit audibly displacing air, her face smiling and seeming at the same time surprised at itself, as if smiles were strangers to it. This was Sister Stephanus.

  “Miss Ruttledge,” she said, taking Brenda’s free hand in both of hers, “welcome to Boston, and St. Mary’s.”

  She had the usual nun’s musty smell. Brenda could not stop herself recalling the stories that were told at the convent when she was a girl about the sisters being forbidden ever to be naked and having to wear a special sort of swimming costume in the bath.

  “I’m very glad to be here, Sister,” she said, in a voice that annoyed her by its seeming meekness. She was no longer a child, she told herself, and this nun had no authority over her. She drew up her shoulders and stared back stoutly into the woman’s coldly beaming face. “Boston is very nice,” she added. That, too, sounded weak and silly. The baby kicked her in the side through its blanket, as if demanding to be introduced; quite the little miss already. The nun’s brittle smile slid downwards.

  “And this must be the baby,” she said.

  “Yes,” Brenda said, and held aside the rim of the blanket with her finger to show the tiny, livid face with its rosebud mouth and permanently startled blue eyes. “This is little Christine.”

  8

  CLAIRE STAFFORD WAS WONDERING IF THE DRESS SHE HAD CHOSEN was suitable for the occasion. You never knew, with nuns. It was green, with white trimming on the hem, and a scalloped neckline-not low, but maybe showing too much of her throat and the freckled slope under her collarbone. She would keep the green scarf wrapped loosely around her neck, and even keep her coat on, if she was allowed. She had not wanted to ask Andy for an opinion; you never knew with Andy, either. Mostly he did not notice what she was wearing, then suddenly, when she least expected it, he would turn on her and say something, some mean remark, mostly. Once he had told her she looked like a whore. She would never forget it. They were living at the time in the rooming house on Scranton Street. She was wearing jeans and white mules and a scarlet blouse knotted at the waist. He had come in after a long drive down from Albany, looking hot and tired and mad, and walked right past her into the galley kitchen and grabbed a beer from the icebox and said it to her over his shoulder. “Honey, you look like a ten-dollar whore.” He pronounced it hoor, just like her daddy did. She would not let herself cry; that would have made him even madder. Even in her hurt she saw yet again how beautiful he was, leaning against the icebox in his boots and work pants and stained white sweatshirt, his rodeo rider’s forearms gleaming and that lock of hair black as a crow’s wing falling across his forehead. The most beautiful boy she had ever known.

  Today he was wearing a pair of pressed dark pants over his cowboy boots, a white shirt with a woollen knit tie, and a sport jacket in tan checks with broad lapels. She had told him he looked nice but he had scowled and said he felt like Bozo the Clown. Now as they walked up the driveway to St. Mary’s he kept running a finger around the inside of his shirt collar and jerking up his chin and sighing. He was nervous, she could see that. He had talked nonstop in the cab, complaining about the pay he was losing by having to come here with her, but now he was silent, squinting up through the fall sunlight at the high, flat front of the orphanage that seemed to grow steadily higher the nearer they got to it. She, too, was a little scared, but not of the place. For she knew St. Mary’s, knew it like a home.

  The door was opened by a young nun she did not recognize. Her name was Sister Anne. She would have been pretty but for her buckteeth. She led them across the wide entrance hall and down the corridor toward Sister Stephanus’s office. The familiar smells-floor polish, carbolic soap, institutional cooking, babies-stirred in Claire an excited mixture of emotions. She had been happy here, or not unhappy. Somewhere high above, a choir of children was signing a hymn in ragged unison.

  “You used to work here, didn’t you?” Sister Anne asked. She had a South Boston accent. She had avoided looking at Andy, made shy, Claire guessed, by his cowboy’s good looks. “How do you like being a lady of leisure?” It was said good-naturedly.

  Claire laughed. “Oh, I really miss the place,” she said.

  Sister Stephanus looked up as they entered. She was seated at her desk, with a stack of papers before her. Claire suspected the pose was deliberate, but then chided herself for the bad thought.

  “Ah, Claire, here you are. And Andy, too.”

  “Good morning, Sister.”

  Andy said nothing, only nodded. He had put on a sulky look that was supposed to cover up his anxiousness. Despite herself, Claire experienced a brief surge of exultation: this was her place, not his; her moment.

  Sister Stephanus invited them to sit, and Andy brought up a second chair from the six around the table.

  “You must be very excited, both of you,” the nun said, leaning forward with her clasped hands resting on the papers on the desk. She smiled brightly from one of them to the other. “It’s not every day you become a parent!”

  Claire smiled and nodded, her lips pressed tight. Beside her Andy shifted his legs, making the chair creak. She was not sure how she was expected to take the nun’s words. Such a strange thing to say, straight out like that. In all the years she had spent here-first as an orphan after Ma died and her daddy had run off, then working in the kitchens and later in the nursery-she could never figure out Sister
Stephanus, or the other nuns, either, for that matter, never could quite get onto their way of thinking. They had been good to her, though, and she owed them everything-everything except Andy, that is: him she had got by herself, this dark-eyed, drawling, dangerous, lean-limbed young husband of hers. Trying not to, she pictured him as she had glimpsed him in the mirror while he was getting dressed that morning, the neat, unblemished, honey-colored back and the taut line of his stomach where it ran down into darkness. Her man.

  Sister Stephanus opened flat before her on the desk a brown cardboard file and put on a pair of wire-framed spectacles, pushing the earpieces in at the stiff sides of the wimple almost as if, Claire thought, she were giving her face a double injection. Claire blushed a little; the strange things that came into her head! The nun riffled through the papers in the file, now and then stopping to read a line or two, frowning. Then she looked up, and this time fixed on Andy.

  “You do understand the position, Andy, don’t you?” she said, speaking slowly and separating the words carefully, as if she were talking to a child. “This is not an adoption, not in the official sense. St. Mary’s, as Claire can tell you, has its own…arrangements. The Lord, I always say, is our legislator.” She glanced between them with eyebrows lifted, awaiting acknowledgment of the quip. Claire smiled dutifully, and Andy shifted his legs again, crossing them first one way and then the other. He had not said a word since they had come into the room. “And you understand too, both of you,” the nun continued, “that when the time comes it will be Mr. Crawford and his people who will decide on what education is suitable for the child, and so forth? You’ll be consulted, of course, but all those decisions will be theirs, in the end.”