Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

as he had seen Packie the Pike do earlier, he hoisted himself aloft, and ducked through the narrow entrance.
    The interior of the caravan was fitted out in much the same way as the one he had been in that afternoon, with a bed or bench along either side and an iron stove beside the door. There was a lace curtain above each of the beds, both of them drawn back and tied at the bottom with a piece of blue ribbon. Illustrations cut from glossy magazines were pinned to the sloping walls—pictures of landscapes with castles and greenswards, reproductions of paintings, a color photograph of Marilyn Monroe pouting at the camera. An oil lamp was suspended from the ceiling, and the stove was burning, and the air was heavy with the smell of kerosene and of wood smoke, but behind these smells there was a fragrance too, of some herb or spice that he could not identify.
    The woman was sitting on the bed on the right, rolling a cigarette. Her fingers were slender and delicate, but the nails, like her toenails, had sickles of black dirt underneath them. She had on the same white blouse she had worn earlier, and the same red skirt. There were small pearl studs in her earlobes. She did not look at him, but concentrated on making the cigarette, a tongue tip stuck at the corner of her mouth. He could think of nothing to say, and merely stood there, in his wet overcoat, holding his hat.
    Then he noticed the girl, the one he had seen with the woman earlier. She was sitting on the other bed, half concealed by the swath of lace curtain beside her. She had her back to the end wall, and had drawn her knees up and encircled them with her arms. She was watching Quirke with a solemn and unwavering gaze. He smiled at her, smiled as best he could. She did not smile in return, only went on gazing at him, as if she had never seen him or the like of him before.
    The dog, abandoned outside, whimpered piteously. The woman stretched out a leg sideways and pushed the bottom half of the half door shut. Inside the stove a log fell with a muffled thump.
    The woman sat forward, with her elbows on her knees, the cigarette in her mouth, and looked at Quirke. He fumbled for his lighter. The flame lit her face briefly, and found a glint in her glass-green eyes. “Sit down, will you,” she said. “ Y ou’re making me dizzy, standing up there like some sort of bloody bird.”
    He took off his overcoat and laid it on the end of the bed where the child was sitting, and set his hat down on it, then sat himself between it and the silent child. He and the woman were almost knee to knee now, as he and Hackett had been this afternoon. Was he here, he suddenly wondered, or was he imagining it? Was this another phantasmagoria he had stumbled into?
    “This is my place,” the woman said, “my own, so you needn’t be fearing anyone will come.”
    “Why would I be afraid?” he asked.
    The only answer she gave him was an arch, thin-lipped smile.
    She smoked her cigarette. She seemed wholly incurious as to why he was here, why he had returned so soon. He could hear the child’s congested breathing.
    “What’s your name?” the woman asked.
    “Quirke.”
    She nodded. He had the impression of her taking the name and testing it, as she would test a gold coin between her teeth. “I’m Molly,” she said. “Molsh, they call me— he calls me.”
    She watched him through the smoke of her cigarette. The girl on the bed was still fixed on him too, and he felt himself shrinking snail-like before these two pairs of unrelenting eyes.
    “And that’s Lily,” the woman said, indicating the child with a lift her chin.
    “Is she your—is she your daughter?” Quirke asked.
    Molly went on gazing at him, as if she had not heard, as if he had not spoken. Her mind seemed permanently elsewhere, engaged in some subtle and absorbing calculation. “She’s aras, ” she said, and seeing his blankness she touched a finger to her temple and gave it a half turn clockwise. “Born that way, and nothing to be done for it.” She turned to the child and spoke in a loud, calling voice: “Are you all right there, Lily?” The child said nothing, only shifted her slow gaze from Quirke to the woman, as if turning some heavy thing on a pivot, with much effort. “Ah, you’re grand,” the woman said to her soothingly. “ Y ou’re grand, so you are.”
    The dog gave a final, angry yelp, and they heard it trotting away, grumbling to itself.
    “Were them two nyaarks outside, did you