Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

to tell him about Sally being in the flat, but somehow there seemed no way of saying it that would sound natural. Now, of course, David was surprised to see this stranger standing in front of the fireplace, applying her lipstick in the mirror over the mantelpiece. He would assume Sally was a friend of Phoebe’s who had called in, for he would have no way of knowing who she was, much less that she was staying here; what would he say when he found out the true circumstances? David did not like surprises. He had been away for the weekend, visiting his aunt in Cork. Sometimes Phoebe wondered about this aunt, if she really existed and were not a convenient invention. But where had he been, if not in Cork? She had no reason to be suspicious, and yet she was.
    Phoebe stepped past him in the doorway, arranging a smile as she did so. “Sally, this is David Sinclair,” she said with a brightness that sounded fake even to herself. “David, Sally Minor—Jimmy’s sister.”
    Sally turned from the fireplace as David advanced, and the two shook hands. Sally knew who he was, for Phoebe had told Sally about him. But Sally’s knowing about David was all the more reason for Phoebe to have told David about Sally. She began to feel slightly sick. It was teatime and she and Sally had been getting ready to go to the Country Shop. Why had David not telephoned to say he was on his way to the flat? He rarely did anything unannounced or unplanned for. She did not dare to look at him directly—had she felt his attention sharpen at the way she had said Sally’s name? She told herself she was being ridiculous. What had she to feel guilty about? A kiss? She was no longer sure it had really happened, that she had not imagined it.
    This was Sally’s third day at the flat. On the previous day, Sunday, Phoebe had said there was someone she had to visit. “My aunt,” she had said, taking her inspiration from David, “she’s quite ill—I go to see her every Sunday.” Of course there was no aunt, but the prospect of spending the long, idle day alone with Sally had frightened her. So she had taken herself off to the Phoenix Park—it was the only place she could think of—and had spent a miserable afternoon trailing around the zoo, gazing blankly at the animals in their cages and being gazed back at with matching indifference. That evening Sally, perhaps sensing Phoebe’s nervousness, had gone to the pictures on her own and had not come back until after midnight, by which time Phoebe had made sure to be in bed.
    “Actually,” she said to David now, “we were just going out.”
    She could feel him looking at her with a darkly quizzical eye. “May I come along?” he asked.
    “Of course,” she said. “I’ll just get my coat.”
    She hurried into the bedroom. She knew she should not have left the two of them alone together. They were strangers; they would be desperate to think of something to say to each other. She glanced around the room in a faint panic. Everything her eye fell on had a suggestive aspect: the big ugly bed, her slippers beside it, a salmon-colored chemise that had slipped from the back of a chair and lay in a silken heap on the floor, like an illustration of her distraction and helplessness and, yes, of her sense of guilt, too. A thought came to her: Do I love David? How strange, that she had never asked herself this question before. Somehow, it had not come up, in her mind; it had not seemed relevant to anything that they had together. Why ask it now? She pressed her eyes tightly shut and stood for a moment with her head bowed, trying to gather together the parts of what seemed her scattered self. How deep the darkness was behind her eyelids, how frightening were those depths. She grabbed her coat from the wardrobe, leaving the metal hangers jangling on the rail.
    When she returned to the living room Sally had gone back to the mirror while David was standing by the window with his hands in his pockets, looking into the street. The silence between them seemed contrived, somehow. Had they been talking about her, and stopped when she came in? But what would they have been saying, what would they have had to say about her? “Well then,” she said, trying to sound normal, “shall we go?” But what was normal, now?
    When they came out into the street the sun was suspended low in the sky and the pavement before them, lately rained on, was all a shivery glare. Seagulls, unnaturally white, were wheeling at an immense