Christine Falls: A Novele

by Benjamin Black

  She had stopped listening to him. She looked into the water, its surreptitious slap and sway.

  “I did my best for him,” she said. For a second he did not know who it was she meant. She lifted her eyes from the surface of the pool and looked at him almost pleadingly. “Do you think Mr. Crawford was a bad man?”

  Quirke turned up his empty palms and showed them to her.

  “He was a man, Brenda,” he said. “That’s all. And now he’s gone.”

  30

  SISTER ANSELM WAS SURPRISED, NOT BY THE THING ITSELF BUT BY THE suddenness of it, the finality. Yet when the summons had come for her to go immediately—immediately!—to Mother Superior’s office she had known what to expect. She stood before the wide expanse of Sister Stephanus’s desk and felt like a novice again. All kinds of unexpected, stray things went through her head, scraps of prayers, lines from old medical texts, snatches of songs she had not heard in forty years. And memories, too, of Sumner Street, the games they played, the skipping ropes and spinning tops, the chalk marks on the pavements. Her father singing and then shouting. Her mother with her freckled arms plunged to the elbows in a tub of suds, her lower lip jutting out as she blew away from her face the strands of hair that had come loose from the bun she always wore. After her father had knocked her down the stairs she came back from the hospital with her leg in an iron brace and the kids on the block were first in awe of her but soon they were calling her names, Peg-leg, of course, or Peggy’s Leg after the candy stick, or Hopalong Farrell. The convent had been an escape, a sanctuary; she told herself, with bitter amusement, that everyone was crippled there and she would not be noticed among them. She had no vocation for the religious life, but the nuns would educate her, and an education was what she had set her heart on, since there would be nothing else for her. They sent her to college, and to medical school. They were proud of her. One of them got an uncle who worked at the Globe to put in a paragraph about her—South Boston Girl’s Medical First. Yes, the Order had been good to her. So what right had she to complain now?

  “I’m sorry,” Sister Stephanus said. She was doing that thing she did, her checklist, touching with her fingertips the lamp, the blotter, the telephone. She would not look up. “I got the call this morning from Mother House. They want you to leave right away.”

  Sister Anselm nodded. “Vancouver,” she said tonelessly.

  “St. James’s needs a doctor.”

  “You need a doctor here.”

  Sister Stephanus chose to misunderstand.

  “Yes,” she said, “they’re sending someone. She’s quite young. Just qualified, I believe.”

  “Well, that’s grand.”

  The room was cold; Stephanus was mean about things like that, the heating in the place, hot water for baths, the novices’ linen. Sister Anselm shifted her weight from her aching hip. Stephanus had invited her to sit but she preferred to stand. Like that brave patriot—who was it? someone in an opera?—refusing the blindfold when he faced the firing squad. Oh, yes, lame Peggy Farrell, the last of the heroes.

  “I’m sorry,” Sister Stephanus said again. “There really is nothing I can do. You know as well as I, you haven’t been happy here for some time now.”

  “That’s right: I haven’t been happy with the way things are going here, if that’s what you mean.”

  Sister Stephanus made a fist and struck the knuckle of her index finger sharply on the leather desktop.

  “These matters are not for us to judge! We have our vows. Obedience, Sister. Obedience to the Lord’s will.”

  Sister Anselm gave a low, dry laugh.

  “And you’re confident you know what the Lord’s will is, are you?”

  Sister Stephanus sighed angrily. She looked drawn, and when she bunched up her lips like that it made the gray bristles on her upper lip stand out. She was getting old, old and ugly, Sister Anselm thought, she who was once known as the loveliest girl in South Boston, Monica Lacey the shyster lawyer’s daughter whose family beggared themselves to send her to Bryn Mawr, no less, from where she came back a lady and promptly broke her father’s heart by declaring she had heard God’s call and wanted to be a nun. “Our bride of Christ, by Christ!” Louis Lacey cried bitterly and washed his hands of her. Now she looked up.

  “You wear your conscience on your sleeve, Sister,” she said. “Others of us must live in the real world, and manage as best we can. It’s not easy. Now, I have work to do, and you’ll need to be packing your things.”

  The silence drew out between them. Sister Anselm looked up at the window beside her and the winter sky beyond. What life did they get, in the end, either of them?

  “Ah, Monica Lacey,” she said softly, “that it should have come to this.”

  31

  THE MORNING OF JOSH CRAWFORD’S FUNERAL DAWNED WHITE AND cold, and more snow was forecast. The burial had been delayed to await the arrival from Ireland of Sarah and Mal Griffin and the Judge. At the graveside Sarah in her black veil looked to Quirke more like a widow than a daughter. The Judge was rheum-eyed and vague. Mal in his dark suit and dark silk tie and gleaming white shirt had the air of an officiating presence, not the undertaker himself, perhaps, but the undertaker’s man, there to represent the professional side of death and its rituals, and Quirke pondered again the irony that such a funereal figure should in his true profession be an usher at the gates of life.

  It was a day of solemn celebration for the Boston Irish. The Mayor was there, of course, and the Governor, and the Archbishop officiated at High Mass and later at the cemetery said the prayers over the coffin. The Cardinal had been expected, but at the last minute had sent his regrets only, confirming the rumor that he and Josh Crawford had got into a fight over the awarding of a state haulage contract the previous year. Old men, as some wag at the funeral remarked in a stage whisper, do not forget. The Archbishop, tall and silver-haired and handsome, every inch the Hollywood image of a prelate, intoned the service of the dead in a sonorous singsong, and when he finished a single snowflake appeared out of nowhere and hovered over the mouth of the grave, like the manifestation of a blessing from above being reluctantly bestowed. When the prayers were done there came the little ceremony of the scattering of the clay, which never failed to catch Quirke’s morbid fancy. A miniature silver shovel was produced and Sarah was the first to take it. The earth fell on the coffin with a hollow rattle. When the shovel was offered to the Judge he shook his head and turned away.

  The Archbishop put a hand on the old man’s sleeve and spoke to him, inclining his film star’s fine, silvered head.

  “Garret, it’s good to see you, even on such a sad occasion.”

  “We did our old friend proud today, I think, William.”

  “Yes, indeed. A very great man, and a loyal son of the church.”

  Sarah and Quirke walked together toward the cars. She was thinner than when he had last seen her, and there was a vehemence in her look that he did not recognize. She asked him if he had talked to Phoebe, and when he looked blank she clicked her tongue at him angrily.

  “Did you tell her what I told you?” she said. “For God’s sake, Quirke, you can’t have forgotten!”

  “No,” he said, “no, I didn’t forget.”

  “Well?”

  What could he say? Behind her veil Sarah’s lips tightened to a bitter chevron, and she quickened her pace and walked on, leaving him struggling on his stick in her wake.

  AT THE HOUSE THE FAMILY LINGERED IN THE ENTRANCE HALL IN AN uncertain cluster, awaiting the rest of the mourners. Phoebe’s face was blotched from weeping and the Judge looked about him as if he did not know where he was. Sarah and Mal held apart from each other. Sarah took off her hat and stood fingering the veil; she would not look at Quirke. Rose Crawford took his arm and drew him aside.

  “You don’t seem the most popular family member today,” she murmured. The cars were arriving in the drive. She sighed. “Will you keep me company, Quirke? It’s going to be a long day.”

  B
ut at once she was separated from him as first the Archbishop made his stately entrance and she went forward to greet him. Then the others came in behind him, the clerics and the politicians and the businessmen and their wives, ashen-faced, blue-lipped, muttering to each other of the cold and looking about with covert eagerness, wanting drink and food and warm fires. The red-haired priest from St. Mary’s was there, and Costigan, in his shiny suit and horn-rimmed spectacles, and there were others whom Quirke recognized from the party for the Judge that night at Mal and Sarah’s house. He watched them gathering, and followed them into the drawing room, where the funeral meats were set out, and as he listened to the hubbub of their mingled and clashing voices, a sense almost of physical revulsion welled up in him. These were the people who had killed Christine Falls and her child, who had sent the torturers after Dolly Moran, who had ordered that he be thrown down those slimed steps and kicked and beaten to within an inch of his life. Oh, not all of them; no doubt there were those among them who were innocent, innocent of these particular crimes, at least. And he, how innocent was he? What right did he have to stand upon a height and look down on them, he who had not even found the courage to tell his daughter the truth of who her parents were?

  He went to where Mal was standing by one of the tall windows, his hands in the pockets of his buttoned-up suit jacket, looking out at the garden and the gathering snow.

  “You should take a drink, Mal,” he said. “It helps.”

  Mal turned his head and gave him that look that he had, frog-eyed and blank, then went back to contemplating the garden.

  “I don’t recall it helping you much,” he said mildly.

  The wind blew a billow of snow against the window; it made a wet, soft sound. Quirke said:

  “I know about the child.”

  Mal’s features registered the faintest frown but he did not turn. He pushed his hands deeper into his jacket pockets and jingled something there, keys, or coins, or the dog tags of the dead.

  “Oh?” he said. “What child is that?”

  “The child that Christine Falls was carrying. The one that wasn’t stillborn. Christine was her name, too.”

  Mal sighed. For a long moment he was silent, and then said:

  “Funny, I don’t remember snow when we were here, all those years ago.” He turned his glance and looked into Quirke’s face in search of something. “Do you, Quirke? Do you remember snow?”

  “Yes, there was snow,” Quirke said. “A whole winter of it.”

  “So it was.” Mal, facing the window again, was nodding slowly, as if at word of some far-off wonder. He lifted a finger and tapped it on the bridge of his glasses. “I had forgotten that.” The light from the garden was dead white against his face. He cracked his knuckles pensively.

  “She was yours, wasn’t she?” Quirke said. “Your child.”

  Now Mal dropped his eyes and smiled.

  “Oh, Quirke,” he said, as if almost with fondness, “you know nothing, I’ve told you that before.”

  Quirke said:

  “I know that the child is dead.”

  There was another silence. Mal was frowning again, and glancing here and there distractedly, from the garden to the folds of the roped-back drapes to the floor at his feet, as if there were a thing he had lost that might be found anywhere, in any of these places.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said absently. Then of a sudden he turned fully toward Quirke and laid a hand on his shoulder. Quirke looked at the hand; when last had either of them touched the other? “All this business,” Mal said, “why can’t you let it go, Quirke?”

  “It won’t let me go.”

  Mal considered this for a moment, pursing his lips judiciously. He let his hand fall from Quirke’s shoulder.

  “It’s not like you, Quirke,” he said, “this stubbornness to see a thing through.”

  “No,” Quirke said, “I suppose it’s not.”

  And then all at once he saw it, the entire thing, and how wrong he had been all along, wrong about Mal, and so much else. Mal had turned his head and was watching him again, and when Quirke met his eye he saw what Quirke had suddenly seen, and he nodded once, faintly.

  QUIRKE WANDERED THROUGH THE HOUSE. IN JOSH CRAWFORD’S library the fire of pine logs was burning as usual and the light from the window gleamed on the upper cheek of the globe of the world. He went to the table where the drinks were and poured himself half a tumblerful of scotch. Behind him Rose Crawford said, “Goodness, Mr. Quirke, you do look grim.” He turned quickly. She was stretched in an armchair under a tall, potted palm. Her tight black dress was rucked at the hips and she had kicked off one of her shoes. She had a cigarette in one hand and an empty martini glass in the other, tilted at an angle. She was, he could see, a little tipsy. “Do you think,” she said, proffering the glass, “you could fix me another one of these painkillers?”

  He went to her and took the glass and returned to the table.

  “How are you?” he said.

  “How am I?” She considered. “Sad. I miss him already.” He brought her the drink and handed it to her. She fished out the olive with her fingers and munched it ruminatively. “He was funny, you know,” she said, “in his awful way. I mean humorous. He made me laugh.” She spat the olive stone delicately into her fist. “Even in these last days, when he was so ill, we were still laughing. Means a lot to a girl, the occasional chuckle.” She squinted up at him. “I guess you wouldn’t have appreciated his jokes, Mr. Quirke.” She put out her fist and he opened his palm and she dropped the olive stone into it. “Thanks.” She frowned. “Sit down, will you? I hate to be loomed over.”

  He went and sat on the sofa that was set back from the fireplace. The snow outside was falling fast now, he fancied he could hear the huge, busy whisper of it as it swamped the air and settled on the already blanketed lawn and on the invisible terraces and stone steps and graveled walkways. He thought of the sea out there beyond the garden, the waves a dark, muddy mauve, swallowing the endless fallings of frail flakes. Rose too was looking toward the windows and the slanted, moving whiteness beyond.

  “Coincidence,” she said. “I just realized, he died on our wedding anniversary. Trust him.” She laughed. “He probably planned it. He had powers, you know. It’s true, you think I’m making it up—he could read my mind. Maybe he’s reading it now”—she looked at Quirke with a lazy, sly smile—“though I hope not.” She heaved a shivery sigh, weary and regretful. “He was a mean old buzzard, I suppose, but he was my mean old buzzard.” Her cigarette had gone out, and he rose and brought his lighter and held it for her, leaning on his stick. “Look at you,” she said. “They did beat up on you, didn’t they?”

  “Yes,” he said, “they did.”

  He returned to the sofa; he noticed that his glass was empty.

  “But you must be happy, now,” she said, “with Sarah here?” When she spoke the name she put into her voice a huskily mocking tremor. She grinned at him. “Why don’t you tell me about her: her, and Mal, and Delia.”

  He made an impatient gesture.

  “That’s all old history,” he said.

  “Oh, but the old stuff is always the best. Secrets are like wine, Josh used to say—they get a richer flavor, a finer bouquet, with every year that passes. I’m trying to picture the four of you here”—she waggled the stem of her glass to indicate all that she meant by here—“happy and gay. Parties, tennis on the lawn, all that. The two beautiful sisters, the two dashing medical men. How Josh must have hated you.”

  “Did he tell you that?” he asked with interest. “That he hated me?”

  “I don’t know that we ever got that far in our discussions of you, Mr. Quirke.”

  She was making fun of him again. She sipped her drink and watched him with faint merriment over the rim of her glass.

  “Will you,” he asked, “go on payrolling this business with the babies that he was operating?”

  She lifted her eyebrows and opened wide her eyes.


  “Babies?” she said, then turned her head aside and shrugged. “Oh, that. He made me promise I would. It would be his ticket out of Purgatory, he said. Purgatory! Honestly! He really believed all that, you know, Heaven, Hell, redemption, angels dancing on the head of a pin—the whole caboodle. He would get furious when I laughed. But how could I not? Laugh, I mean.” She looked down. “Poor Josh.” She began to cry, making no sound. She caught a tear on a fingertip and held it out for him to inspect. “Look,” she said, “neat Tanqueray, with just the faintest hint of dry vermouth.” She lifted her head and a palm frond brushed her cheek and she swatted it away. “Goddamned things,” she said, “I’m going to have every one of them yanked up and burned.” She let her shoulders droop. She sniffed. “A gentleman,” she said in a parody of a bobby-soxer’s twitter, “would offer his handkerchief.”

  He heaved himself up again and limped across to her and handed her the folded square of linen. She blew her nose loudly. He realized that he wanted to touch her, to caress her hair, to run a finger along the clean, cool line of her jaw.

  “What will you do?” he said.

  She wadded up the handkerchief and gave it back to him with a wryly apologetic grimace.

  “Oh, who knows,” she said. “Maybe I’ll sell this dump and move to rotten old Europe. Can’t you see me, in furs, with a lapdog, the most sought-after widow in Monte Carlo? Would you make a play for me, Quirke? Accompany me to the roulette tables, travel with me on my yacht to the isles of Greece?” She laughed softly down her nose. “No. Hardly your style. You’d rather sit in the Dublin rain nursing your unrequited love for”—she let her voice sink tremulously again—“Saarrah!”

  A log shifted in the fire and a rush of sparks flew up, crackling.

  “Rose,” he said, surprised at the sound of her name in his mouth, “I want you to stop supporting this thing with the children. I want you to cut off the funds.”