Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

there, beside the bridge, leaning in the light from the streetlamp with a fuzz of sallow mist surrounding it.
    The street was deserted, and the only sound was that of her own footsteps clicking on the pavement. Her mind was in turmoil. Inside, she seemed to be suddenly in a strange place, where she no longer knew the people she had known, the people she thought she had known. Was this jealousy? Was this what it felt like to be jealous, this frenzy of the mind and this dull hard pain in the breast? Faces rose up, David’s face, Sally Minor’s, and hung there before her, stark, hollow-eyed, like the masks in an ancient Greek play. She was in a sort of panic; she imagined herself revolving slowly round and round, like someone who had been hanged. She did not want to feel this way; she did not want to be thinking these thoughts.
    They had not kissed. David and Sally, they had not kissed, she was sure of it. That was all the work of a fevered imagination. It was. It was .
    If only Sally had said something about David, something simple and innocent. He’s nice. I like him. You’re lucky.
    She wished Sally would go; she wanted her to go now, to be gone when she returned, gone back to Kilburn or wherever it was, to her flat over Mr. Patel’s shop, to the smell of curry and the sound of the grocer’s children squabbling. She wanted never to have known her. She wanted that kiss not to have happened. She wanted—
    She had not heard him come up behind her. Afterwards, it seemed to her that before anything else she had caught his smell, of cigarette smoke and wet sheepskin. He was wearing the same cloth cap; she recognized it at once. Strange, how she could think of so many things in such a short span of time, a couple of moments, no more than that, before he stepped in front of her and caught her by the wrist. He was the man who had come into the café that first day and looked at Sally and at her before going out again, into the rain. He was the same man who had been standing opposite the flat, by the railings above the towpath, with a cigarette cupped in the palm of his hand. Why had she not paid him more attention?
    He had thrust his face close up against hers and was saying something. He had not twisted her arm, he was only holding it, but in such a steely grip that she feared he would crush the little knob of bone at the side of her wrist. Should she scream? She was sure her voice would not work.
    What was he saying? She could not make it out. She tried to concentrate. The police would ask her what he had said, they would want to know the words, the exact words. “Listen,” he said in a savage whisper. “Listen to me, you fucking bitch.”
    Behind him she saw the willow tree by the bridge, its hanging head wreathed in glowing gray light. With the greatest feeling of surprise she asked herself if this was where she was going to die, if this was the moment.

19

    The rain, the endless rain, was still drifting slantwise when the taxi swung into the main street in Tallaght. The driver, a burly fellow with a wheeze, had already complained breathily of having had to come so far out of the city, and Quirke had annoyed him all the more by pointing out with weary sarcasm that it was a taxi he was driving, and that the meter had clocked up two pounds so far and was still running. “Bleeding middle of the night, too,” the driver said with an angry gasp, and lapsed into a sulk. It was not yet nine o’clock. Quirke sighed. He had done so much in this long day, had traveled so far, and he was tired. He had the sense of things closing up, of the big top being dismantled and the animals being shut away in their cages, of the spangled bareback rider taking off her greasepaint by the light of a flickering lamp.
    They passed through the village and at the crossroads Quirke pointed to the muddy lane leading to the tinkers’ site. “I’m not going down there,” the driver protested indignantly. “That’s where them knackers have their camp.” Quirke told him to stop, saying that he would walk the rest of the way. The fellow turned in his seat and peered at him incredulously. “I’m telling you,” he said, “there’s nothing but tinkers out here.” Quirke, getting out his wallet, did not reply.
    Outside, in the darkness and the stealthy rain, Quirke stood and watched the headlights of the taxi as it reversed along the boreen, until it turned with a crashing of gears and drove off. The night closed suddenly around him.