Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

me and let me write the odd par for her—you know, the latest coffee bar that’s ‘in,’ and what they’re wearing this year at the Chelsea Flower Show. My big breakthrough was a story I did on a mink farm in Henley-on-Thames, lots of color and a few jokes. The piece was noticed, and the following week I was offered a staff job.”
    Phoebe’s tea had gone cold without her noticing. “But now you’re back,” she said.
    Sally laughed dismissively. “Oh, no,” she said. “No I’m not. I came over because of James. I had two weeks’ holidays due, and here I am.”
    “Have you seen—have you seen your family?”
    “They don’t know I’m in Dublin. I’m sure they’re convinced the newspaper job is a fiction and that really I’m working in a whorehouse over there. My brother—have you come across my brother?” Phoebe shook her head, and Sally grimaced. “ Y ou haven’t missed anything.”
    The clear patch she had made on the window had misted over again, and again she cleared it and peered out at the street.
    “Are you expecting someone?” Phoebe asked.
    “What? No. No, I’m just—” She frowned, and looked into her cup. She was silent for a time. “Do you see the oily skin that’s on the surface of the tea?” she said, pointing into the cup. “I complained about that once to a waiter, in the Savoy, of all places—Madge the features editor was treating. It wasn’t tea I was drinking, in fact, but a glass of wine. The waiter gave a disdainful little smile and leaned over, very confidential, and said, ‘It is caused by your lipstick, Modom.’ I was mortified, of course. But that’s London for you.”
    They laughed, both of them; then Sally was silent again. At last, without looking up, she said, “What happened to James? Do you know? I mean, do you know the details?”
    Phoebe suddenly found herself longing for a cigarette. She had given up smoking years ago, and was surprised by the force of this unexpected craving. If she were to smoke now it would probably make her sick. It was so strange to be sitting here with Jimmy’s sister. It should be a sad occasion, but somehow it was not. It was impossible not to be charmed by the young woman’s stories, her dry manner of speaking, her laughter. She was the kind of person Phoebe would have liked to have as a friend. What a pity that she lived in London. Thinking this, Phoebe found herself wondering, as she often did, at her own decision to stay here, in this grim little city, working for Mrs. Cuffe-Wilkes and dining with her father once a week in the sepulchral gloom of the restaurant in the Russell Hotel, pretending not to notice how anxiously Quirke watched her glass, worried she would drink more than her share and leave him short. That was her life. There was David Sinclair, of course, but as much as she liked him—perhaps loved him, even—he was Quirke’s assistant and therefore a part of Quirke’s world. She did not often admit to herself how lonely she was, but now she did. This made her feel sorry for herself, not in the way that, she suspected, most people felt sorry for themselves, but at a remove, dispassionately, almost. Right now, for instance, she was able to look at herself quite coldly, at her drab coat, her black dress with the bit of white lace at the collar, her sensible shoes, the ruler-straight seams of her stockings. Phoebe Griffin, lonely, needy, and sad. Yet it was that Phoebe who was all these things; she herself, this other Phoebe, was over here, standing to one side, looking on. This gift of impersonality, if gift it was, she had inherited from her father, she knew that.
    “How long have you been here?” she asked.
    Sally shrugged. “Oh, a few days,” she said. This was followed by another silence, and then she laughed. “All right,” she said, “I know you’re too polite to ask, but I admit it: I have been following you.”
    “Why?”
    “I wanted to see what you were like. From the way James talked about you, I expected a cross between Joan of Arc and what’s-her-name, Clark Kent’s girlfriend.”
    Phoebe was astonished. “Did Jimmy talk about me?”
    “‘Jimmy’—of course, that’s what you call him. It sounds so odd, as if it’s someone else. Did he talk about you? My dear, he never stopped. He wrote about you in his letters, and then he used to phone me from the office, late at night, when the copy takers had gone home and there was no one around to know he was making trunk calls.