Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

them narrowly from behind the drooping fronds of a potted fern. Doubt, like a wave of dizziness, made her feel light-headed for a moment. What had she done? What had she let herself in for? But then she looked at Sally, with her dark red hair and her beautiful soft brown eyes, and she took the valise from her and said, come on, they would get her settled in, and then they would go together and see Quirke.

11

    Isabel had a rehearsal, and suggested to Quirke that they should meet afterwards in the Shakespeare. When she came in he was there already, sitting on a high stool at the bar reading the Mail, with a glass of whiskey at his elbow. She paused in the doorway for a moment. She knew by the look of him that the whiskey was not his first drink of the day. Not that he seemed drunk—Quirke never looked drunk, to the naked eye. But there was a certain heaviness in the way he was sitting there, a certain plantedness, that she had come to know well. She went forward and tapped a finger on his knee, and was startled by the look of alarm he gave her and by the momentary panic in his eyes. She said nothing, though, only kissed him quickly on the cheek and perched herself on the stool next to his, taking off her gloves finger by finger.
    “I think, William,” she said to the barman, whom everyone else called Bill, “I think I might risk a G and T—to bathe the vocal cords, you know.” She smiled at Quirke. “That’s a nice shirt,” she said. “Blue does suit you.” She had forgiven him in the matter of the discarded bow tie, or said she had, at least. Now she looked about. “Good to be back,” she said. “The old haunts have their attractions.” The tour had not been a success; rural Ireland, she had observed wryly, did not seem ready yet for Ibsen.
    Quirke had folded his paper and put it aside. “What news of the world?” Isabel asked. He did not answer, and she peered at him more closely. “What’s the matter?”
    He glanced away. “What do you mean, what’s the matter?” he growled.
    “ Y ou look—I don’t know. Odd.” She was wondering how long he had been here and just how many whiskeys he had drunk.
    “I’m all right,” he said shortly.
    She went on studying him, tilting her head to one side, as if she were measuring him up for a portrait. Strange, but it was when he was in his lowest spirits or at his most distressed that he seemed most beautiful to her. She supposed beautiful was not the appropriate word, for a man so troubled and dour, yet it was the one she used, to herself. His gray eyes had a greenish gleam that made her think of the sea at evening, aglow and deceptively calm. He had delicate hands, too, for his size, and then of course there were those absurd feet, dainty as a ballet dancer’s, although a dancer’s feet, she reflected, in reality would be anything but dainty.
    What was she to do with him? It was a question she asked herself repeatedly, in no expectation of an answer. One day he would leave her again, she had no doubt of that. The thought, for a reason she could not fathom, made her feel all the more tenderly towards him, as if it were his suffering that was in prospect, not hers. She had once wanted to die because of him, or thought she had; but that had been another self, one she had left behind in the hospital bed where she had lain, recovering from the overdose, and readjusting her life. She was a different person now, harder, more detached, more determined to protect herself. And yet she still loved Quirke, she could not deny it, poor sap that she was.
    “Had a peculiar experience,” Quirke said now, still not looking at her.
    “Not funny funny, you mean?”
    He took a drink of his whiskey, followed by the familiar grimace that he did, drawing his lips back and making a sharp hissing sound between his teeth. “No, not funny funny,” he said. “I’m not sure I know how to describe it.”
    “Well, it’s left you in a peculiar state, that’s certain.”
    Now he did look at her, giving her a sidelong glance, and she saw again that glint of panic that made him seem impossibly young, as if there were a frightened little boy inside him, peering out—which, in a way, she supposed, there was. He told her how he and Hackett had gone to Trinity Manor, and about the priest there, Father Dangerfield, who had reminded him of Nike, and how the memory of Nike had upset him so much he had broken into a cold sweat and had almost run out of the room. “And then the