Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

firmament, of course, the famous Father Mick, champion of the poor and the downtrodden, the kiddies’ friend, the tamer of drunken fathers and lawless tinkers.
    Quirke carried the drinks to the table. Father Honan, with a parting quip that left his three admirers shaking their heads and chuckling, came back and sat down. “My Lord, Doctor,” he said, picking up his glass and admiring the whiskey’s amber glow, “you’ll have me under the table.”
    “ Y ou didn’t know Jimmy Minor, then,” Quirke said.
    The priest looked from the glass to him and back again. He took his time before answering. “I think I said, didn’t I, that I’d never met the poor chap?”
    “Yet he must have known of you, or something about you.”
    The gray eyes narrowed again, glinting. “Something about me?” the priest said, very softly. When he spoke like this, so quietly, he seemed to caress the words, and Quirke thought of a hand with fine pale hairs on the back of it caressing a cheek, fresh, smooth, unblemished.
    “He wrote to you,” Quirke said. “He asked to interview you.”
    “Apparently he did. But I don’t know what it could have been that he wanted to talk to me about. Do you?”
    “I’ll say again—something about your work, maybe.”
    “Maybe so, maybe so. We’ll never know, now, will we.”
    They watched each other, sitting very still, hunched forward a little in their chairs. One of the turf logs in the fireplace collapsed softly, throwing sparks onto the hearth and rolling another ball of smoke out across the floor. Quirke picked up the cigarette case. “What’s this?” he asked, pointing to the monogram on the lid.
    “Fleur-de-lis,” the priest said. “A woman had it done for me, years ago.” He smiled at Quirke’s raised eyebrow. “Oh, yes, Doctor, I too was loved, once.”
    “What happened?”
    “Nothing happened. She was married, and I was young. She came to me for confession, invited me home to meet her husband. He was a builder—or an architect, was it? I can’t remember. Well-to-do people, anyway. She knitted socks for me, and gave me that”—pointing to the cigarette case—“and nothing, Dr. Quirke, nothing happened. I suppose you can’t imagine a love like that?”
    Quirke gazed at the cigarette case where it lay on his palm. “Why did you telephone me, Father?” he said. “Why did you want to talk to me?”
    The priest threw up his hands, laughing softly. “Such questions, Doctor, and you ask them over and over! I already said, people told me things about you. I was curious to see what you were like. And now I’ve seen you, and I think you are a very angry man. Oh, yes—I can see it in your eyes. That place—Carricklea, was it?—marked you for life, that’s plain.”
    “Are you going to tell me now to forgive and forget?”
    “I wouldn’t dream of it. Y our pain is your own, Doctor. No man has a right to tell you what to do with it.” He smiled his glinting smile, then suddenly sat upright and clapped his hands on his knees. “And now,” he said, “I must love you and leave you, for the hour is late and Desperate Dan will be fretting that I’m gallivanting about the town and neglecting my priestly duties.” He stood up, and held out a hand. “I’m very glad to have met you, Doctor. I hope our paths will cross again. Good night to you, sir.”
    He made a brisk bow from the shoulders, and walked away. Quirke had not spoken, had uttered no farewell. He sat gazing into his glass, in the depths of which the glow from the fire had set a ruby light burning. It reminded him of the light of the sanctuary lamp behind that stained-glass wall he had come up against so disconcertingly at Trinity Manor.
    Father Honan, heading towards the door and passing by the three priests at their table, sketched a sort of swift, ironical blessing over their heads. One of them rose hastily to speak to him, but Father Honan did not stop, only put a finger to his lips and shook his head smilingly, and passed on out, through the doorway. A moment later he was back, however, and crossed swiftly to where Quirke sat. “A thing I meant to say to you, Doctor: a great theologian—which of them I can’t for the moment recall—once asked, ‘What kind of a self-respecting God would concern himself with the poor likes of us?’ Or words to that effect. I don’t know what the answer might be, but the question, I find, affords me comfort, especially in times of anguish and loss of certainty.