Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

legend.”
    “Like all history.”
    He smiled at her blankly, nodding. Something dangerous had come into the atmosphere, a sense of rancor. He did not want a fight.
    “So,” she said, “tell me what’s been happening. It feels as if I’ve been away forever.”
    He saw again fleetingly, but with startling clearness, that image of the canal bank, the soft darkness over the water, the leaning, stealthy trees. “Jimmy Minor was killed,” he said.
    Still perched on the chair arm, with her shapely legs crossed, she had forgotten about the book and was examining idly the toe of one of her shoes. Now she frowned, and seemed to give herself a tiny shake. “What?”
    Quirke added another drop of whiskey to the cold dregs of coffee in his cup and drank. The bitter taste made him wince. “Jimmy Minor,” he said. “ Y ou met him, didn’t you? Reporter on the—”
    “I know who he was,” she said sharply, turning to look at him. “That friend of Phoebe’s. Killed, you say?”
    “Murdered. Someone, or some ones, beat him to death. He was found in the canal below Leeson Street Bridge.”
    She was gazing at him now in what seemed a kind of wonderment. “When?”
    “Couple of days ago.”
    “My God,” she said tonelessly. She rose and walked to the fireplace and put one hand on the mantelpiece and stood there, facing the mirror, her eyes hooded. She was silent for a time, then spoke in an oddly faraway voice. “Don’t you ever feel anything?”
    He looked at the pale back of her neck. “How do you mean?”
    “ Y ou just—you just announce these things, as if…” She stopped. She was shaking her head. Now she turned. She was pale, and her mouth quivered. “Don’t you even care?”
    “About what? About Jimmy Minor being killed? Of course I care—”
    “ Y ou don’t !” she cried. “ Y ou couldn’t, and speak of it in that—that offhand way.”
    He sighed. “I care,” he said, “of course I care. But what good does caring do? Caring is only another way of feeling sorry for yourself.”
    She was looking at him with such intensity that her eyes seemed to have developed a slight cast. “What a monster you are, Quirke,” she said softly, almost in a murmur.
    He turned away from her, suddenly furious. It was always the same, there was always someone telling him how awful he was, how cold, how cruel, when as far as he could see he was only being honest.
    “What about Phoebe?” Isabel asked behind him. “Is she all right?”
    “She’s fine. She was upset when she heard, but now she’s fine.” He wanted to say, She’s my daughter, isn’t she? And the Quirkes don’t care. But he was remembering Phoebe in the hotel that day, after he had told her, her ashen face, her trembling hands. Perhaps she was not fine; perhaps she was not fine at all. “ Y ou might ring her up,” he said.
    He still had his back turned to her, afraid she would see the bloodshot anger in his eyes. But then, suddenly, in an instant, the anger drained away, and he just felt tired.
    He returned to the mantelpiece and took another cigarette and lit it. Isabel had sat down again, in the armchair this time, and was staring into the pulsing grid of the gas fire. “Give me some more whiskey, will you?” she asked. “In a glass. I don’t suppose you have any gin?” She frowned distractedly. “I should buy a bottle, keep it here”—she gave a cold laugh—“for emergencies.”
    He fetched a tumbler from the kitchen and poured a measure of whiskey and handed it to her, his fingers brushing hers; her skin felt cold and slightly moist. He had an urge to take her by the arm and drag her behind him into the bedroom and strip her of her clothes and lie down with her and clasp her against him, the chill, long length of her, and smell her hair and her perfumed throat, and put his lips to hers and forget, forget everything, if only for a few minutes. He wondered why he was so upset. Perhaps after all he did care about Jimmy Minor, perhaps he cared more than he knew or dared acknowledge. He was a mystery to himself, always had been, always would be.
    “Tell me what happened,” she said.
    He leaned an elbow on the mantelpiece. He realized that he was glad of the heat of the fire; he too must have been cold, without knowing even that. “A courting couple spotted the body,” he said. “It was naked, in the water—” It . He glanced at her, expecting her to pounce on the word and begin berating him again, but she said nothing.