Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

caravan—no, this was more a notion, a concept, a menacing and ever-present potentiality. What he felt was that there was a light somewhere, jittery yet constant, shining urgently at him, which, however, he could not see and, he suspected, never would see. He knew what it was like, he could even describe it, were he to be called upon to do so: a circular white beam, intense yet somewhat diffused around the edges, and flickering, as if some component of the general apparatus, a taut, vertical wire, perhaps, were passing rapidly back and forth in front of it. It was off to his right, positioned in the middle distance, mounted, he thought, on a tripod or a tall slender pillar, or possibly a pole, but a rickety affair of some kind, anyway. Yet how could he know these things, how could he have even a general idea of them? For no matter how hard he tried to see it, whipping his eyes to the right suddenly to catch it off guard, as it were, the light always eluded him, always shifted on the instant, just beyond the margin of his vision. He was like, he thought, a dog chasing its own tail. There was no doubt that the light was his, that it had been set up and intended for him and him alone, but whether as guiding glow or a wrecking light he could not say.
    He stopped at the house and opened the wrought-iron gate. The hinges, with the mist for lubricant, did not set up their usual screeching. He looked up; the windows were dark, upstairs and down, though there was a half-moon of light in the transom above the front door. He climbed the granite steps, noting the glinting flecks of mica in the wet stone. The bell jangled afar in the depths of the house. He had to wait a long time, the garden smells of loam and rained-on greenery heavy in his nostrils. The irritation in his throat was worsening steadily. He wondered if Mal would have any brandy in the house. There would be plenty of bourbon and gin, thanks to Rose, but it was brandy he needed tonight. Brandy, and other kinds of succor.
    In the end it was Rose herself who opened the door to him. She was wearing slacks and a short jacket with enormous sleeves—a kind of kimono, was it? The light of the hall at her back made a haloed blaze in her dyed blond hair, reminding Quirke of the dandelion heads of the streetlamps.
    “Quirke!” Rose exclaimed, sounding surprised and, it seemed, not entirely pleased.
    Quirke took off his hat and shook raindrops like a scattering of jewels from the crown. “I phoned Mal this morning.”
    “Yes, you did,” Rose said drily, in her slowest southern drawl. “But he forgot to tell me you were coming round. He forgets everything, these days. Come on in. Y ou don’t look good.”
    She took his hat and coat and hung them on a coat rack, and led him along the broad high hall, with its gleaming parquet and gilt chairs and massively framed ugly dark brown portraits of bewigged, puce-faced worthies of an age or ages long gone. The mansion had been the embassy of some minuscule European principality—Quirke could not remember which one—and when for some reason the mission had been abruptly withdrawn, Rose and Malachy had bought it as it stood, furnished, carpeted, complete with chandeliers and all manner of quaint and curiously lifeless bijouterie. Quirke could not think why they had wanted it. It would never be a home.
    He watched Rose’s slim rear end as she walked ahead of him. She was still a handsome woman. He had gone to bed with her, once, a long time ago. Did Mal know about that? Would Rose have told him? But Rose and Mal, now—that was a conundrum Quirke knew he could never hope to crack.
    “Have you had dinner?” Rose asked over her shoulder.
    “Yes, I ate something,” Quirke said, though it was a lie.
    “We just finished supper, Mal and I. These days, our evenings draw to a gentle close earlier and earlier. I think eventually we’ll find ourselves retiring for the night sometime around midafternoon.” She glanced back at him with an eyebrow lifted. “ Y ou do look terrible, Quirke.”
    “I think I’m getting a cold.”
    “Sure seems it’s going to be an awful bad one.”
    They went through a green baize door and down three steps into a much narrower hallway. This had been formerly the servants’ quarters. “We’re living modestly, these days,” Rose said, and rolled her eyes.
    She opened the door into what must have been the servants’ parlor, a low-ceilinged room of a brownish aspect, with a big oak table in the