Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

into her face. He spoke a name, Costigan, that she recognized, but she did not know how, or from where.
    She had been terrified and she was shaking still; she could hear her own teeth chattering and she was afraid she would wet herself. All she could think of was that the man might come back, might grab her by the wrist again and call her names and warn her to warn her father …
    She pushed herself away from the railings and began to walk. She was trembling so badly by now she was surprised her bones did not rattle. She was going in the same direction as her attacker; should she not go back to the flat? But Sally was there—she did not want to see Sally. She went on. She had difficulty keeping in a straight line; her knees knocked together and her feet kept getting in the way of each other and she felt she was going to trip at any moment and fall headlong onto the wet pavement.
    She turned into Mount Street Crescent. The flank of the Pepper Canister Church loomed above her, foursquare and reassuring. Sanctuary. That was what she was in need of.
    In Mount Street itself the air was gauzy. She put her hand up to her face and found that she was crying. She searched in her pockets for a handkerchief but could not find one. Why had she come out without her handbag? Or had she brought it with her and had the man stolen it? No, he had not meant to steal from her; that had not been what he was about.
    Before she knew it she had mounted the steps shakily and was ringing Quirke’s doorbell. Please, Quirke, she thought, please be home . She pressed the button again, and kept her finger on it, and heard, very faintly, from three flights up, the bell shrilling in her father’s flat that she knew now with certainty was empty. All at once her knees gave way, and even though she clutched at the brass doorknob she could not hold herself upright, and slowly she slid down with her back against the door until she was sitting in a heap in a corner of the doorway, weeping.
    * * *

    A moment had passed, it seemed no more than a moment, yet all at once everything was different. He was no longer sitting, with the china cup in his hand, but lying, rather, lying full length, on his back, on the narrow bed. How could that be? He let his eyes roam over the vaulted black ceiling above him. He was quite calm, quite at ease, and this surprised him. He looked to the side. The child was asleep in the other bed, with a blanket pulled over her and her thumb in her mouth. Her eyelids were pale pink and burnished, like the inside of a seashell, and it seemed to him he had never before seen anything so delicate, so lovely.
    He braced his hands on either side of him on the bed and raised himself up a little way. The woman was leaning on the open half door again, with her head and shoulders outside, just as she had been leaning when he arrived. He must have made a sound for now she turned and looked at him. He sat up, still pressing his hands against the bed for support, but there was no need, he was no longer dizzy. In fact, his head was wonderfully clear. He had been sleeping. The woman must have drugged him; there must have been something in the drink she had given him. He did not care. He had not felt so rested in a very long time.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, “I seem to have…” He did not know what to say. It did not matter. Nothing mattered.
    The woman shut the window and advanced slowly between the beds and stood looking down at him. Her expression was one of mild interest, tinged with amusement. “I was keeping an eye out for himself,” she said. “Had he of found you here he’d say we were spurking and that’d be the end of you.”
    “Spurking?” Quirke said.
    “Doing it, you know.” She bit her lip, laughing a little. “ Spurking, we call it.”
    “ Y ou said this was your place,” he said, “that no one would come here.”
    “Himself knows no bar,” the woman replied darkly.
    Quirke looked again at the sleeping child. She was breathing through her mouth, making eerie animal sounds, little yelps and whinnies. “Dreaming,” the woman said, looking too at the girl. “What about, God knows.”
    She sat down beside Quirke on the bed. He looked at her toes braced on the bare planks of the floor. Feeling his look, she waggled them. “What did you give me to drink?” he asked.
    “’Twas tea”—she pronounced it tay —“and nothing but. Y ou had a great sleep, all the same. Y ou’re the weary man, surely.”
    He smiled