Christine Falls

by Benjamin Black

  Claire in her housecoat was slumped on the couch in front of the television on which some dumb quiz show was playing-who gives a fuck what the capital of North Dakota is?-and he paused in passing by her and gave her shoulders a shake and told her to get up and start packing. She did not move, of course, and he had to come back and put his fist in front of her nose and shout at her. He was in the bedroom, throwing shirts into the old carpet bag that had once belonged to his daddy, when he felt her behind him-he had developed a sixth sense, and could feel her presence without looking, as if she was a ghost already-and turned to find her leaning in the doorway in that tired-out, drooping way that she did, the housecoat pulled shut and her arms folded so tight it was like this was the only way she had of holding herself together.

  “There were people here today,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah? What people?” He had not realized he had so many shirts and coats and pairs of jeans-where did it come from, all this stuff?

  “They were asking about the baby,” Claire said.

  He went still suddenly, and turned slowly to look at her. “What?” he said softly. He was holding in his hand a belt with a buckle shaped like a steer’s head with horns.

  She told him, in that wispy voice she had developed lately, that sounded as if it was wearing out and would soon be just a sort of sighing, a sort of breathing, with no words. It was the Irish guy and the nurse. They had asked her about little Christine, and the accident, and what had happened. As she spoke she paused now and then to pick at stray bits of lint on the housecoat. She might have been talking about the weather. Once she stopped altogether and he had to give her a push to get her started up again. Christ, a clockwork ghost, that was what she was turning into! He would have gone at her with the belt except that she looked so strange, sort of not here, but lost somewhere inside herself.

  He paced the room, gnawing on a knuckle. They would have to go tonight-they would have to go now! As if she sensed what he was thinking, Claire took note for the first time of the bag on the bed, the gaping drawers, and the closet doors standing open.

  “Are you leaving me?” she said, sounding as if it would not much matter to her if he was.

  “No,” he said, stopping in front of her with his hands on his hips and speaking slow so she would understand him, “I’m not leaving you, baby. You’re coming with me. We’re going west. Will Dakes is out there, he’s in Roswell, he’ll help us, help me find a job, maybe.” He moved closer to her and touched her face. “We can start a new life,” he said softly. “You could get another kid, another little Christine. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He was surprised how little, really, he minded her saying that to Cora about the doctor’s test, or telling the Irish guy about the accident-surprised, in fact, at how little he cared about any of that. The Irish guy, Rose Crawford, that nun and the priest, they were the past now. But he knew they would be coming for him, and soon, and that the two of them had to get away. Claire’s cheek was cold under his hand, as if there was no blood at all under the skin. Claire; his Claire. He had never felt so tenderly toward her as he did at that moment, there in the doorway, with the snow coming down outside and the light failing and the walnut tree in the window holding up its bare arms, and everything ending for them here.

  HE WAS DRIVING TOO FAST. THE ROADS WERE SLICK UNDER THE SOFT new snow. Every time a cop car passed by heading into the city he expected it to swing around on two wheels and come bumping over the central divide after them with its blue light flashing and its siren going. The girl would be back at the house by now and would have told them her story, and he knew, of course, what a story it would be. He did not care. In two days they would be in New Mexico, and Will Dakes would file off the engine number and whatever else needed to be done, and the car would be sold and he and Claire would take the money and travel on, to Texas, maybe, or maybe they would go north, to Colorado, Utah, Wyoming. The wide world was before them. Out there, under those skies, Claire would forget the kid and would be her old self again, and they would begin to live, like they had never lived before. He saw through the swirls of snow the red light flashing ahead, at the crossing. It reminded him of the girl, of Phoebe, and he smiled to himself, feeling good remembering her sprawled under him on the back seat of the car, and he put his foot down. Yes, life was just starting, his real life, out where he belonged, in those wide-open spaces, on those plains, in that sweet air. The barrier was coming down, but they would make it. They would flash under it and on the other side there would be a new place, a new world, and they would be new people in it. He glanced at Claire beside him. She was feeling the same excitement, the same wild expectancy, he could see it in her face, in the way she was leaning forward with her neck thrust out and her eyes wide, and then they were on the tracks, and suddenly-what was she doing?-she reached out a hand sideways and snatched the wheel and wrenched it out of his grip, and the big car screeched and spun on the snow and the shiny steel rails and stopped, and the engine stopped, and everything stopped, except the train that was rushing toward them, its single eye glaring, and which at the last moment seemed to raise itself up as if it would take to the black air, shrieking and flaming, and fly, and fly.

  34

  PHOEBE HAD DISLIKED THIS ROOM FROM THE FIRST TIME SHE SAW IT. She knew Rose had meant well, putting her here, but it was more like a child’s nursery than a bedroom for a grown-up. She was tired-she was exhausted!-but she could not sleep. They had thought she would want them to stay with her, to sit by the bed holding her hand and looking down at her with their sorrowing, pitying eyes, and in the end she had pretended to be asleep so they would all go away and let her be by herself. Since Quirke had spoken to her in the hall she had wanted only to be alone, so she could think, and sort things out in her head. That was why she had gone to the garage to sit in the Buick, as she used to do when she was a child, hiding herself away in Daddy’s car.

  Daddy.

  SHE HAD HARDLY NOTICED ANDY STAFFORD WHEN HE CAME INTO THE garage. He was just the driver-why should she notice him? She thought he had probably come to polish the car, or check the oil or inflate the tires, or whatever it was that drivers did when they were not driving. She had not been afraid when he got behind the wheel and drove her away, or even when he turned the car off the road and went along the track to the edge of the dunes where the wind was blowing and she could hardly see anything through the snow. She should have spoken, should have said something, should have ordered him to turn back; he might have done as he was told, since that was what she presumed he had been trained to do. But she had said nothing, and then they had stopped and he was climbing into the back seat after her, and there was the knife…

  WHEN HE LEFT HER IN THE VILLAGE SHE HAD NOT TELEPHONED THE house. There were many reasons why she would not, but the main one was simply that she would not have known what to say. There were no words she could think of to account for what had happened. So she had set off walking, down the main street and out of the village and along the road, despite the cold and the snow and the soreness between her legs. At the house it was Rose who had come to the door, pushing Deirdre the maid aside and taking her by the arm and leading her upstairs. Rose had needed only the simplest words-car, driver, dunes, knife-and at once she understood. She had made her drink a mouthful of brandy, and had told the maid to run a bath, and only when Phoebe was in the bath had she gone off to summon Sarah, and Mal, and Quirke, who was not there, who was never there.

  Then there had been the fussing, the tiptoed comings and goings, the cups of tea and bowls of soup, the whispered consultations in the doorway, the bumbling white-haired doctor with his bag and his minty breath, the police detective clearing his throat and twiddling the brim of his brown hat, embarrassed by the things he was having to ask her. There was that strange exchange with her mother-with Sarah-it had sounded as if they were talking not about her but about someone else they had both known in another life. Which, she reflected, was true. Before, she had been certain of who she was; now
she was no one. “You’re still my Phoebe,” Sarah had said, trying not to cry, but Phoebe had answered nothing to that, having nothing to say. Mal was his usual totem pole. Yet of the two of them, these two who until a few hours ago had been her father and her mother, it was Mal whom she most loved, if love, any longer, was the word.

  The worst of it now was the bite mark on her neck, where Andy Stafford had sunk his teeth in her. That was the real violation. She could not explain, she did not understand it, but it was so.

  She would not speak of Andy Stafford. He was the unspeakable, not because of the knife, or what he had done to her, or not solely for these reasons, but because there were no words that would, for her, accommodate him. When the police telephoned Rose to tell her Andy and his wife were dead, killed when the Buick stalled on a level crossing, Phoebe was the only one who was not shocked, or even surprised. There was a neatness to their dying, a tidiness, as at the end of a fairy tale she might have been told as a child, first to frighten her and then, with all resolved and the wicked trolls slain, so that she might be satisfied and go to sleep. Toward Andy himself she felt nothing, neither anger nor revulsion. He had been a steel edge at her throat and a hard body pounding down on hers, that was all.

  Quirke, arrived at last, came and stood at the foot of the bed, leaning awkwardly on his stick. He asked her to come back with him, to Ireland. She refused.

  “I’m staying here for a while,” she said. “And then I’ll see.” He looked as if he would plead with her, but she made her face hard, lying there against the pillows, and he lowered his head like a wounded ox. “Tell me,” she said, “there’s one thing I want to know-who named me?”

  He raised his eyes, frowning.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who gave me the name Phoebe?”

  He looked down again.

  “They called you after Sarah’s grandmother, Josh’s mother.”

  She was silent for a long moment, turning it over in her head, then “I see,” she said, and without looking at her again Quirke turned and limped out of the room.

  SARAH AND MAL SAT TOGETHER ON A LITTLE GILT SOFA ON THE WIDE landing at the top of the great oak staircase. The last of the day’s stealthy light was drifting down from the big curved windows above them. Like Quirke, Sarah too felt that she had been struggling all day through mire and ice, over frozen wastes, along treacherous roads, and now had come to some kind of a stopping place at last. The skin on her hands and on her arms was gray and grainy and seemed to be cringing, somehow, like her mind. The look of the broad expanse of carpet on the landing, like a nubbled, pale-pink ice floe, made her feel slightly ill; the carpet, like so much else in the house, had been installed at Rose’s command, Rose, who no doubt knew everything, too, that there was to know.

  She said:

  “Well-what do we do now?”

  “We live,” Mal answered, “as best we can. Phoebe will need our help.”

  He seemed so calm, so resigned. What goes on in his mind? she wondered. It struck her, not for the first time, how little, really, she knew of this man with whom she had already spent a large part of her life.

  “You should have told me,” she said.

  He stirred, but did not turn to look at her.

  “Told you what?” he murmured.

  “About Christine Falls. About the child. Everything.”

  He expelled a long, weary breath; it was like listening to a part of his self leaking out of him.

  “About Christine Falls,” he said, echoing her. “How did you find out-did Quirke tell you?”

  “No. What does it matter how I found out? You should have told me. You owed it to me. I would have listened. I would have tried to understand.”

  “I had my duty.”

  “My God,” she said, with a violent, shaking laugh, “what a hypocrite you are.”

  “I had my duty,” he said again stubbornly, “to all of us. I had to keep it together, under control. There was no one else. Everything would have been destroyed.”

  She looked at the carpet and again her insides quailed. She closed her eyes, and out of that darkness said:

  “You still have time.”

  Now he looked at her.

  “Time?”

  “To redeem yourself.”

  He made a strange, soft sound in his throat which it took her a moment to identify-he was laughing.

  “Ah, my dear Sarah,” he said-how seldom he spoke her name!-“it’s too late for that, I think.”

  A clock struck in the house, and then another, and yet another-so many! As if time here were a multiple thing, different at all levels, in every room.

  “I told Quirke about Phoebe,” she said. “I told him the whole thing.”

  “Oh, yes?” He did his faint laugh again. “That must have been an interesting conversation.”

  “I should have told him years ago. I should have told him about Phoebe, and you should have told me about Christine Falls.”

  He crossed his legs and fussily hitched up the knee of his trousers.

  “You wouldn’t have needed to tell him about Phoebe,” he said mildly. “He knew already.”

  What was it she was hearing-could it be the tiny echoes of the clock chimes, still beating faintly in the air? She held her breath, afraid of what might come out of her mouth. At last she said:

  “What do you mean?”

  He was looking at the ceiling high above, studying it, as if there might be something up there, some sign, some hieroglyph.

  “Who do you think got my father to phone me here in Boston the night Delia died?” he asked, as if he were not addressing her but interrogating that something which only he could see in the shadows under the ceiling. “Who was in such torment that he couldn’t bear the thought of having the child around, to remind him of his tragic loss, and was prepared to give her to us instead?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head, “no, it’s not true.”

  But she knew it was, of course. Oh, Quirke. She had known it all along, she realized now, had known it and denied it to herself. She felt no anger, no resentment, only sadness.

  She would not tell Phoebe; Phoebe must not know that her father had willingly given her away.

  A minute passed. She said:

  “I think I’m sick.”

  He went still; she could feel it, like something in him stopping, some animal version of him, stopping with all its senses on alert.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “There’s something wrong with my head. This dizziness, it’s getting worse.”

  He reached sideways and took her hand, cold and limp, in his.

  “I need you,” he said calmly, without emphasis. “I can’t do it, any of it, without you.”

  “Then put an end to this thing,” she said with sudden fierceness, “this thing of Christine Falls and her child.” She turned the hand he was holding and gripped his fingers. “Will you?” Now it was his hand that went limp. He shook his head once, the barest movement. She heard the foghorns, their forlorn calling. She released his hand and stood up. His duty, he had said-his duty to lie, to pretend, to protect. His duty, that had blighted their lives. “You knew about Quirke and Phoebe,” she said. “And you knew about Christine Falls. You knew-you all knew-and you didn’t tell me. All these years, all these lies. How could you, Mal?”

  He gazed up at her from where he sat; all he looked was tired. He said:

  “Perhaps for the same reason you didn’t tell Quirke, from the start, that Phoebe was his daughter, when you thought he didn’t know.” He smiled wanly. “We all have our own kinds of sin.”

  35

  QUIRKE KNEW IT WAS TIME TO GO. THERE WAS NOTHING HERE FOR him any longer, if there ever had been anything, except confusion, mistakes, damage. In the bedroom he turned Delia’s and Phoebe’s photographs once more to face the room; he did not fear his dead wife anymore; she had been exorcised, somehow. He began to pack his bag. The daylight was at an end, and beyond the windows the v
ague snow-shapes were merging into shadow. He felt unwell. The central heating made the air in the house dense and oppressive, and it seemed to him he had been suffering from a headache, more or less, since the night he had arrived. He did not know what to think, about Phoebe, Mal, Sarah, about Andy Stafford-about any of them. He was tired of trying to know what he should think. His anger at everything had subsided to a background hum. He was conscious too of a faint, simmering sense of desperation; it was like that feeling that would threaten to overwhelm him at the start of certain days in childhood when there was nothing in prospect, nothing of interest, nothing to do. Is that how his life would be from now on-a sort of living afterlife, a wandering in a limbo among other souls who, like him, were neither saved nor lost?

  When Rose Crawford came into the room he knew at once what would happen. She was wearing a black blouse and black slacks. “I think mourning becomes me,” she said, “don’t you?” He went back to his packing. She stood in the middle of the floor with her hands in the pockets of her slacks, watching him. He had a shirt in his hands; she took it from him and laid it out on the bed and began expertly to fold it. “I used to work in a dry cleaners,” she said, and glanced at him over her shoulder. “That surprises you, I bet.”

  Now it was he who stood watching her. He lit a cigarette.

  “Two things I want from you,” he said.

  She laid the folded shirt in his suitcase and took up another and began to fold it too.