Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

indeed the look of some celestial figure seated in judgment. Or no, no, what he was like was someone pretending, pretending to be a judge, playing the part of one, for a joke, but a joke that no one would dare laugh at, and that would end with whoever it was who was on trial being found guilty, and sent away red-faced and sobbing, with bruised and swollen palms clamped under his armpits and his bare knees knocking. Nike affected a little cough, it was hardly more than a dry clearing of the throat, which in the corridors of Carricklea the boys had learned to listen out for, since it was the only warning they would have of his approach, for he moved with wraithlike quiet, seeming not to walk but glide, on soundless soles.
    In his years at Carricklea Quirke had not been beaten very often by Nike, and, even if he had, that would not have been the thing that frightened him the most. It was a special kind of fear that Nike instilled, intimate, warm and clammy, and faintly indecent. When the figure of the Dean broke in on Quirke’s thoughts, especially at night, as he lay in bed in the murmurous dark, he would experience a jolt in his chest, like the jolt that would come from suddenly calling to mind some serious instance of wrongdoing, or an unconfessed mortal sin. Even now, thinking of those days, he felt again that same hot qualm of oppressive, objectless guilt.
    He looked at the tumbler before him on the table. It was empty. He had no recollection of drinking the whiskey, yet he must have drunk it, for all that was left was a single, amber drop glistening in the bottom of the glass. The old man was saying something. “What?” Quirke said. “Sorry?”
    “Ah, nothing, nothing,” the old man said, smiling. “ Y ou were miles away.” He came to the table and seated himself opposite Quirke. It was an effort for him to maneuver his twisted body up onto the chair. He sighed hoarsely. “Are you feeling any better?” he asked.
    “Yes. Yes, I’m fine now.”
    “It was the nerves that were at you, I’d say. Nerves can be a terrible thing. Thady is the name, by the way. Thaddeus, that is, but Thady I’m called.”
    Quirke brought out his cigarette case, opened it on his palm, and offered it across the table. He noticed the tremor in his hand, very faint, as if an electric current were passing along the nerves. The old man was gazing greedily at the row of cigarettes laid out invitingly before him. “I’m not supposed to,” he said, “due to the bronicals.” He took one, however, and leaned to the flame of Quirke’s proffered lighter. When he drew in the first mouthful of smoke he was at once convulsed by a bout of coughing that caused his wasted frame almost to close on itself, as if there were a hinge at his waist. When the seizure had passed he sat gasping, a baby-pink spot glowing on each cheekbone and his mouth a quivering oval. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he croaked, “they’ll do for me yet, the fags.”
    He poured another go of whiskey into the tumbler on the table. In the aftermath of the coughing fit his hand, too, like Quirke’s, had the shakes, and the bottle rattled against the rim of the glass.
    They talked. The old man had been here, at Trinity Manor, for more than sixty years. “The fathers took me in, you know, doing odd jobs. I was only a youngster at the time, eleven, I was, or twelve, I can’t remember.” The place had been an orphanage then, he said. He gave Quirke a quick glance from under his leaning brow. “And you?”
    “Me?”
    “ Y ou have the look about you—the look of places like this place used to be.”
    “Yes,” Quirke said after a moment. “Yes, I suppose I must have. I was at Carricklea.” It sounded strange, when he said it like that, as if he were speaking of his old school, the alma mater where he had played cricket, and worn the school tie, and had been surrounded by lots of jolly chums; where he had been happy. “Have you heard of it?”
    “Oh, I have, indeed.” The old man nodded slowly. “That was a hard station, so I’m told.”
    “It wasn’t easy, no. I was younger than you were when you started here—I was nine.”
    “And what about before that?”
    “Oh, other places. Most of them I don’t remember now.”
    The old man forgot himself and took a deep draw of his cigarette, and once again had to cough, though this time not so violently as before. He thumped a fist gnarled and waxy like a turkey’s claw into the hollow of his chest. “Ah,