Christine Falls: A Novele

by Benjamin Black

  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 vague 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.

  “Oh, yes?” she said. “And what things would they be?”

  “I want you to promise me to stop the funds for this business with the babies. And I want you to let Phoebe come home with me.”

  She shook her head briefly, concentrating on the shirt.

  “Phoebe is going to stay here,” she said.

  “No.” He was quite calm; he spoke softly. “Let her go.”

  She put the second shirt on top of the first in the suitcase and came and took the cigarette from his fingers and drew on it and gave it back to him.

  “Oops,” she said, “sorry—lipstick again.” She measured him with a smiling look, her head tilted to one side. “It’s too late, Quirke. You’ve lost her.”

  “You know she’s my daughter.”

  She nodded, still smiling.

  “Of course. Josh, after all, was in on your little exchange, and Josh and I had no secrets from each other. It was one of the nicer things about us.”

  It was as if something had swooped down on him suddenly from above—he saw its darkness against his eyes and seemed to feel the beating of its wings about his head. He had taken her by the shoulders and was shaking her furiously. The cigarette flew from his fingers.

  “You selfish, evil bitch!” he said between clenched teeth, that winged thing still flapping and screeching around him.

  She stepped back, deftly disengaging herself from his grasp, and went and picked up the burning cigarette from the carpet and carried it across the room and dropped it into the empty fireplace.

  “You should be careful, Quirke,” she said, “you could set the house on fire.” She kneaded her shoulder. “What a grip you have—really, you don’t know your own strength.”

  He saw that she was trying not to laugh. He launched himself forward on his resistant leg, crossing the space between them as if it were not a walk he was doing but a sort of upright falling. He did not know what he might do when he reached her, whether he would slap her, or knock her to the floor. What he did was take her in his arms. She was of a surprising lightness, and he could plainly feel the bones beneath her flesh. When he kissed her he crushed his mouth on hers and tasted blood, whose, hers or his, he was not sure.

  THE NIGHT, GLOSSY AND DENSELY DARK, PRESSED ITSELF AGAINST THE windows on opposite sides of the room. Rose said, “You could both stay, you know, you and Phoebe. Let the rest of them go back to Mother Ireland. We might make it work, the three of us. You’re like me, Quirke, admit it. You’re more like me than you’re like your precious Sarah. A cold heart and a hot soul, that’s you and me.” He began to speak but she touched a fingertip quickly to his lips. “No, no, don’t say anything. Silly of me to ask.” She tw
isted away from him and sat on the side of the bed with her back turned. She smiled wryly at him over her shoulder. “Don’t you love me even a little? You could lie, you know. I wouldn’t mind. You’re good at lying.”

  He said nothing, only rolled onto his back, the pain in his knee flaring, and gazed up at the ceiling. Rose nodded, and searched in the pockets of his jacket for his cigarettes, and lit one, and leaned over him and put it into his lips.

  “Poor Quirke,” she said softly. “You’re in such trouble, aren’t you. I wish I could help.” She went and stood in front of the mirror, frowning, and combing her fingers through her hair. Behind her he sat up on the bed; she saw him in the glass, a great, pale bear. He reached for the ashtray on the bedside table. “It’s probably not a help,” she said, “but there’s one thing I can tell you. You’re wrong about Mal and that girl, the girl with the baby—I can’t remember her name.” He looked up and met her eyes in the mirror. She shook her head at him almost pityingly. “Believe me, Quirke, you got it all wrong.”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “I know I did.”

  HE WAS AT ST. MARY’S EARLY. HE ASKED TO SPEAK TO SISTER STEPHANUS. The nun with the buckteeth, wringing her hands, insisted there was no one who could see him at that hour or, her look implied, at any other hour, for that matter. He asked for Sister Anselm. Sister Anselm, the nun said, was gone away—she was in another convent now, in Canada. Quirke did not believe her. He sat down on a chair in the lobby and put his hat on his lap and said he would wait until there was someone who would talk to him. The young nun went away, and presently Father Harkins appeared, his jawline rawly aflame from the morning razor and his right eye twitching. He came forward with his smile. Quirke pushed himself to his feet on his stick. He ignored the hand the priest was offering him. He said he wanted to see the child’s grave. Harkins goggled at him.

  “The grave?”

  “Yes. I know she’s buried here. I want to see whose name is on the gravestone.”

  The priest began to bluster but Quirke would have none of it. He hefted the heavy black stick menacingly in his hand.

  “I could call the police, you know,” Harkins said.

  “Oh, sure,” Quirke said with a dry laugh, “sure you could.”

  The priest was growing increasingly agitated.

  “Listen,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper, “Mr. Griffin is there—he’s there now, visiting, before he leaves.”

  “I don’t care,” Quirke said, “if the Pope is there. I want to see that gravestone.”

  The priest insisted on his coat and his galoshes. The young nun brought them. She glanced at Quirke and could not suppress a glint of renewed interest and even admiration—evidently she was unused to seeing Father Harkins made to do what he was told.

  The morning was raw, with low, rolling clouds and a wet wind driving flecks of sleet before it. Quirke and the priest went around by the side of the building, through a kitchen garden patched with snow and down a graveled pathway to a low wooden gate, where the priest stopped, and turned.

  “Mr. Quirke,” he said, “please, take my advice. Go from here. Go home to Ireland. Forget all this. If you walk through this gate, you’ll regret it.”

  Quirke said nothing, only lifted his stick and pointed it at the gate, and the priest with a sigh undid the latch and stood back.

  THE CEMETERY WAS SMALLER THAN HE EXPECTED, JUST A BIT OF FIELD, really, sloped at one corner, with a view of the city’s towers to the east, huddled in a winter mist. There were no headstones, only small wooden crosses, leaning at all angles. The size of the graves was a shock, each one no more than a couple of feet long. Quirke walked down a straggling pathway toward where a figure in overcoat and hat was crouched on one knee. All Quirke could see of the man was his bowed back, and while he was still some way off he stopped and spoke. It was Mal’s look, hunched and tense; but it was not Mal.

  Even when Quirke spoke the figure did not turn, and Quirke walked forward. He could hear his uneven footsteps crunching the gravel, interspersed with the small thud of his stick on the stony path. A gust of wind threatened to take his hat and he had to put up a hand quickly to keep it from flying. He drew level with the kneeling man, who looked up at him now.

  “Well, Quirke?” the Judge said, slipping a set of Rosary beads into his pocket, not before he had kissed the crucifix, and took up the handkerchief he had been kneeling on and rose with an effort. “Are you satisfied now?”

  THEY WALKED THREE TIMES AROUND THE PERIMETER OF THE LITTLE graveyard, the bitter cold wind blowing in their faces, the old man’s cheeks turning blotchy and blue and Quirke’s knee keeping up a steady growl of pain. To Quirke it seemed that he had been trudging here like this all his life, that this was what all his life had been, a slow march around the realm of the dead.

  “I’m going to get her out of this place,” the Judge said, “little Christine. I’m going to get her into a proper cemetery. I might even bring her home to Ireland, and bury her beside her mother.”

  “Would you not have some trouble explaining her to the customs people,” Quirke said, “or could you fix that, too?”

  The old man gave a sort of grin, showing his teeth.

  “Her mother was a grand girl, full of fun,” he said. “That was what I noticed about her first, when I saw her at Malachy’s house, the way she could laugh at things.”

  “I suppose,” Quirke said, “you’re going to tell me you couldn’t help yourself.”

  Again that sideways grin, lion-fierce. “Hold off on the bitterness, Quirke. You’re not the injured party here. If I have apologies to make it’s not to you I have to make them. Yes, I’ve sinned, and God will punish me for it—has already punished me, taking Chrissie from me, and then the child, too.” He paused. “What were you being punished for, would you say, Quirke, when you lost Delia?”

  Quirke would not look at him.

  “I envy your view of the world, Garret,” he said. “Sin and punishment—it must be fine to have everything so simple.”

  The Judge disdained to answer that. He was squinting off in the direction of the misty towers.

  “What they say is true,” he said. “History repeats itself. You losing Delia, and Phoebe being sent out here, and then me with Chrissie, and Chrissie dying. As if it was all destined.”

  “I was married to Delia. She wasn’t a maid in my son’s house. She wasn’t young enough to be my daughter—to be my granddaughter.”

  “Ah, Quirke, you’re a young man still, you don’t know what it’s like to watch your powers failing. You look at the back of your hand, the skin turning to paper, the bones showing through, and it gives you the shivers. Then a girl like Christine comes along and you feel like you’re twenty years old again.” He walked on a few paces in silence, musing. “Your daughter is living, Quirke, while mine is dead, thanks to that murdering little bastard—what’s his name? Stafford. Aye: Stafford.”

  Quirke could see Harkins lurking by the gate; what was he waiting for? He said:

  “I honored you, Garret—I revered you. For me you were the one good man in a bad world.”

  The Judge shrugged.

  “Maybe I am,” he said, “maybe I am of some good. The Lord pours grace into the weakest vessels.”

  That passionate tremor that came into the old man’s voice, that tone of the Old Testament prophet, why had he not noticed it before now? Quirke wondered.

  “You’re mad,” he said, in the mildly wondering tone of one who has made a small, sudden and surprising discovery.

  The Judge chuckled.

  “And you’re a coldhearted bastard, Quirke. You always were. But at least you were honest about things, with certain notable exceptions. Don’t go spoiling your bad reputation now by turning into a hypocrite. Give over this I revered you business. You never gave a second thought in your life to anyone but yourself.”

  “The orphans,” Quirke said after a moment, “Costigan, that crowd—was that you, too? Were you running the whole thing,
you and Josh?” The old man did not deign to answer. “And Dolly Moran,” Quirke said, “what about her?”

  The Judge stopped, holding up a hand.

  “That was Costigan,” he said. “He sent those fellows to look for something she had. They weren’t supposed to hurt her.”

  They walked on.

  “And me?” Quirke asked. “Who sent those fellows after me?”

  “Have a heart, Quirke—would I want to see you hurt the way you’ve been hurt, you, that were a son to me?”

  But Quirke was thinking, putting it together.

  “Dolly told me about the diary,” he said, “I told Mal, he told you, you told Costigan, and Costigan sent his thugs to get it from her.” Out in the harbor a tugboat hooted. Quirke thought he could see from here a section of the river, a blue-gray line humped under scudding cloud. “This Costigan,” he said, “who is he?”

  The Judge could not resist an amused, malicious snort.

  “Nobody,” he said. “What they call over here the paid help—true believers are scarce. There’s a lot that are in it for the money, Quirke—Josh’s money, as it was.”

  “And no more.”

  “Oh?”

  “There’ll be no more funds. I made Rose promise.”

  “Rose, is it? Aye—and I wonder, now, how you went about extracting a promise of that order from that particular lady?” He glanced at Quirke. “Cat got your tongue, eh? Anyway, Rose’s funds or no, we’ll manage. God will provide.” He laughed suddenly. “You know, Quirke, you should be proud—the whole thing started with you. Oh, aye, it’s true. Phoebe was the first, it was her that gave Josh Crawford the idea. He telephoned me, in the middle of the bloody night, it was, wanting to know what happened in Ireland these days to children like Phoebe, children that weren’t wanted. I told him, I said, Josh, the country is overflowing with them. Is that so? said he. Well, send them over here to us, he said, we’ll find homes for them soon enough. In no time we were dispatching them by the dozen—by the hundreds!”