Christine Falls: A Novele (15 page)

Cora Bennett had moved down in the bed and now her foot came out from under the sheet and started trying to wriggle its way into his shorts. He got up and put on his shirt and pants. He was sitting on the end of the bed pulling on his boots when she scrambled to her knees and waded forward and draped herself over his back, the way Claire liked to do, and he could feel her naked breasts and belly pressing against him. “It’s late,” he said, trying not to sound irritated, which he was. She breathed a hot, low laugh into his ear, her hands reaching down to his crotch. He had to admit, she certainly was something. That thin mouth of hers could do some special things, things no one, certainly not Claire, had ever done for him before. She asked when she would see him again, but he said nothing, only turned and kissed her quickly and stood up, buckling his belt. “So long then, Tex,” she said, with that smile again, kneeling there on the bed naked in the lamplight, with those flat breasts, the nipples dark and shiny like his bruises. Tex, she was calling him. He did not think he liked that. It felt as if she was laughing at him.

He went out by the front door and around by the side of the house—something skittered in the boughs of the walnut tree—and hauled himself up the wooden stairs and through the French door. The place was silent, and still there were no lights burning, he was relieved to see. He was bone tired, and his knee and his cut mouth hurt like hell. He limped into the bedroom, making hardly a sound, but of course Claire woke up. She raised herself on an elbow and peered at the luminous hands of the clock beside her. “It’s late,” she said, “where were you?” and he said “Nowhere,” and she said his voice sounded funny, and when he did not answer she switched on the lamp. When she saw his mouth and the swelling on his cheekbone she jumped up from the bed like she had been scalded, and then there was the usual palaver. What happened? Who did it? Was there a fight? He stood motionless in the middle of the floor, arms hanging and eyes cast down, waiting for her to finish. Did women really feel all this stuff, he wondered, or were the fluttering and squeaking and hand-wringing just their way of getting through the first minute of a crisis while they figured out what to do? She soon calmed down and went off to the bathroom and came back with wads of cotton wool and Lysol or something and warm water in an enameled bowl. She made him sit down on the side of the bed and began dabbing at him with the disinfectant, which stung. He thought of Cora Bennett, lying below in the dull yellow light of the lamp beside her bed, and his anger flared again. He felt weakened, as if he had let her take something away from him, something inside him that no one should ever even be allowed to see. Yet what angered him most was not the memory of what they had done together in her bed and how it might have affected him, but the fact that he had told her his plan for Stafford Limos.

“What happened?” Claire said again, calm now that she had something to be busy at. “Tell me,” she said, almost commanding, “tell me what you were fighting about.”

She was standing over him, pressing a pad of wet cotton against his face; he could feel the blanket warmth of her body. Her hands were capable and strong, surprisingly strong for such a skinny girl. He was being, he realized, mothered, for the second time that night, but how differently this time, with none of Cora’s hot tenderness. Claire put her hand to the back of his head to make him sit steady and pressed the swelling there and he flinched. Suddenly it came to him, out of nowhere, that it was not one of M’Coy’s buddies who had whacked him with a chair leg, but the barman, Pete the goddamned barman, with his baseball bat! He recalled him in the passageway, a tough little harp with a boxer’s nose, leaning over him and asking him if he was okay. Of course, it had to have been him—he would naturally have sided with M’Coy and the others. Andy clenched his fists on his knees. Somehow this betrayal was the thing that made him most angry now, angrier even than he had been when he broke the beer glass and stuck it at M’Coy’s throat. He could just see Pete, the little bastard, sidling out from behind the bar and taking up a batter’s stance, hefting the bat in his hands, waiting for just the right moment to give it to him across the back of the head. Well, he would get his, would Pete; some night at closing time after he had locked up and was stepping out by that steel door into the alley on his way home to his harp wife and his harp kids Andy would be there, waiting for him, with a tire iron—

Claire had taken the cotton pad away from his forehead and was leaning down to look into his face. “What is it, Andy?” she said. “What’s wrong?”

He stood up quickly, a red flare of pain exploding in his gut, and pushed her aside and limped to the window. “What’s wrong?” he said with a furious laugh. “What’s
wrong
? Half of goddamned Boston is laughing behind my back—that’s what’s wrong. Andy Stafford, the poor schmuck who can’t get it up!”

Claire gave a little mousey cry. “But that’s…” She faltered. “How can they say that?”

He glared out at the walnut tree where it stood shivering in the wind. She knew, he had heard it in her voice, she knew what they had been saying about him; she had known all along how it would be, how they would talk about it, and distort it, and laugh at him behind his back, and she had not warned him. For all his anger there was a part of him that was ice-cold, standing off to the side, calculating, judging, thinking what to do next, thinking what to think next. It had always been like this with him, first the rage and then the icy chill. He thought of Cora Bennett again and another wave of anger and resentment rolled over him, resentment at Cora, at Claire and the baby, at this house, at South Boston, at his job, right back all the way to Wilmington and his lowlife family, his old man who was not much more than a hobo and his mother in her brown apron like Cora Bennett’s, smelling of cheap booze and menthol cigarettes at nine o’clock in the morning. He wanted to put his fist through this windowpane, he could almost feel it, the glass smashing, slicing his flesh, cutting down to the clean, white bone.

Claire was so quiet behind him he had almost forgotten she was there. Now in that little-girl voice that set his teeth on edge she said:

“We could try again. I could see another doctor—”

“—Who’ll tell you the same thing the other one did.” He had not turned from the window. He gave a bitter laugh. “I should do up a sign to hang it around my neck.
It’s not me, folks, I’m not the dud one!
”

He heard her quick intake of breath, and was glad.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry, too. Sorry I ever let you persuade me to take in that kid. Whose is it, anyway? Some Irish whore’s, I suppose.”

“Andy, don’t…” She came and stood behind him and put up a hand to massage the back of his neck, as he sometimes let her do. Now he jerked his head away and then was sorry he had, but only because of the pain, which had a liquid feel, as if his skull was filled partway to the top with some sluggish, oily stuff that swayed sickeningly at every sudden movement he made. A car passed by on the street, going slowly, its headlights dimmed; a Studebaker, light green, it looked to be, with a white top. Who would be driving down this street at four in the morning? “Come to bed,” Claire said softly, her voice heavy with weariness, and he turned, suddenly exhausted, and followed her meekly. As he was taking off his shirt he wondered if she would smell Cora Bennett on him, and realized he did not care, not at all.

QUIRKE DID NOT CONSIDER HIMSELF A BRAVE MAN, MAYBE NOT EVEN A
courageous one. The fact was, his courage, physical or otherwise, had never been tested, and he had always assumed it never would be. Wars, murders, violent robberies, assaults with blunt instruments, the newspapers were full of such things, but they seemed to take place elsewhere, in a sort of parallel world ruled and run by a different, more violent, altogether more formidable and vicious species of human being than the ones he normally encountered. True, casualties from this other place of strife and bloodletting were brought to his expert attention all the time—often it seemed to him that he was in a field hospital far behind the front line, a hospital to which never the wounded but only the dead were delivered—but it had not occurred to him that one day he might himself be wheeled into the dissecting room on a trolley, bloodied and broken, like poor Dolly Moran.

When the two toughs materialized behind him out of the fog that autumn evening he knew at once that they were from that other world, the world that up to now he had only read about in the papers. They had an air of jaunty relentlessness; they would stick at nothing, these two. Early rage or hurt or unlovedness had hardened for them into a kind of indifference, a kind of tolerance, almost, and they would beat or maim or blind or kill without rancor, going about their workaday task methodically, thinking of something else. They had a smell, flat, sweetish yet stale, which was familiar to Quirke but which for the moment he could not place. He had stopped on the corner of Fitzwilliam Street to light a cigarette and suddenly they were there, on either side of him, the thin, red-faced one on his left, on his right the fat one with the large head. The thin one grinned and touched a finger to his forehead in a sort of salute. He looked uncannily like Mr. Punch, with those chafed red cheeks and a nose so hooked the sharp tip of it almost touched his lower lip.

“Evening, Captain,” he said.

Quirke glanced from one of them to the other and without a word set off swiftly across the road. The two came with him, still to right and left, keeping pace effortlessly, even the fat one, whose globular head was prodigiously huge and set with tiny eyes like glass beads; his coarse hair hung about his face like the strings of a mop; he was Judy to the other’s Mr. Punch. Quirke commanded himself not to hurry, and to walk as normal—but what was normal? In a conversational tone the red-faced one said:

“We know you.”

His fat friend agreed. “That’s right, we do.”

Gaining the corner of Mount Street Quirke halted. Office workers were passing by, hunched against the misty air—
witnesses,
Quirke thought,
innocent bystanders
—but Punch and Judy seemed oblivious of them.

“Look,” Quirke said, “what do you want? I have no money on me.”

This seemed to amuse Mr. Punch greatly. He leaned his head forward to look past Quirke at fat Judy.

“He thinks we’re beggars,” he said.

Fat Judy laughed and shook his huge head incredulously.

Quirke thought it necessary to maintain an air merely of irritation and exasperated bafflement; after all, he was a citizen returning home from work, and this impudent pair were keeping him from the blameless pleasures of the evening. He looked about. The twilight was much farther advanced than it had been a minute ago, and the fog was much more dense.

“Who are you?” he demanded. He had aimed for righteous indignation but it came out sounding merely peevish.

“We’re a caution,” Mr. Punch said, “that’s what we are,” and he laughed again, pleased with himself; pleased as Punch.

Quirke gave an angry grunt and threw away his cigarette—he had forgotten about it, and it had gone out—and strode off along the pavement in the direction of his flat. It was like the moment in McGonagle’s that day after he had realized the true import of what Costigan had said to him: he was not exactly frightened, being in a public place and so near to home and shelter, but he had a sense of something being about to shift enormously and send him sprawling. All efforts at flight seemed unavailing, as in a dream, for no matter how he hastened, still Punch and Judy easily kept pace with him.

“We’ve seen you, hanging around,” Mr. Punch said. “Not advisable, in this sort of weather.”

“You could get a cold,” the fat one said.

Punch nodded, his hooked nose going up and down like a sickle.

“You could catch your death,” he said. He glanced past Quirke at his companion again. “Couldn’t he?”

“You’re right,” fat Judy said. “Catch his death, definitely.”

They came to the house and Quirke halted; only with an effort did he keep himself from scampering up the steps.

“This your gaff?” Mr. Punch asked him. “Nice.”

Quirke wondered wildly if the two intended to come inside with him, to climb the stairs and elbow their way through the door into the flat and…and what? By now he really was afraid, but his fear was a kind of lethargy, hampering all thought. What should he do? Should he turn and run, should he burst into the hall and shout for Mr. Poole to call the police? At that moment the two at last moved away from him, stepping backwards, and the red-faced Mr. Punch made that salute again, tipping a finger to his forehead, and said, “So long, then, Captain, we’ll be seeing you,” and suddenly they were gone, into the gloom and the fog, leaving behind only the faintest trace of their smell, which Quirke at last identified. It was the smell—stale, flat, spicily sweet—of old blood.

HE WOKE WITH A SHOCK TO THE SHRILLING OF THE DOORBELL. HE HAD
fallen asleep in an armchair beside the gas fire. He had dreamed of being pursued through a version of the city he had never seen before, down broad, busy avenues and under stone arcades, through sunlit pleasure gardens with statues and fish ponds and crazily elaborate topiary. He did not see his pursuers but knew that he knew them, and that they were relentless and would not stop until they had run him down. When he woke he was sprawled in the chair with his head askew and his mouth open. He had kicked off his shoes and peeled off his socks. A spill of rain clattered against the window. He squinted at his watch and was surprised to find that it was not yet midnight. The bell rang again, two sustained, angry bursts. He could hear not only the sound of the bell but the electric whirring of the little clapper as it vibrated, beating on the metal dome.
Why arcades? Why topiary?
Widening his eyes and blinking he got himself up and went to the window and drew up the sash and put his head out into the tempestuous night. The fog was gone and all was wind and rain now. Below, Phoebe stood in the middle of the road, clutching herself about the shoulders. She was wearing no coat.

“Let me in!” she cried up at him. “I’m drowning!”

He fetched a key from a bowl on the mantelpiece and dropped it down to her. It spun through the darkness, flashing, and rang on the roadway with a money sound, and she had to scramble to retrieve it. He shut the window and went and stood in the doorway of the flat and waited for her, not willing to go down and risk an encounter with the unsleeping Mr. Poole. The yoke of his shirt had got wet when he leaned out of the window and was damp across his shoulders. It made a pleasant coolness, and his bare feet too were cool. He heard the front door open and a moment later a faint breath of the night came up the stairs and wafted against his face. He always found affecting the air’s little movements, drafts, breezes, the soughing of wind in trees; he was, he realized, still half in a dream. There were voices briefly below—that would be Poole accosting Phoebe—then the sound of her uneven footsteps ascending. He went down to the return to meet her. He watched her rise towards him, a Medusa head of wet hair and a pair of naked, glistening shoulders; she was barefoot, like him, and carried a shoe dangling from each hand, hooked by a back strap on an index finger, and had her purse under her arm. She wore a frock of midnight-blue satin. She was very wet. “For God’s sake,” Quirke said.

She had been to a party. A taxi had brought her here. She thought she must have left her coat behind. “The fact is,” she said, molding her lips with difficulty around the words, “I’m a bit drunk.”

He walked her to the sofa, the satin of her dress rustling wetly, and made her sit. She looked about, smiling inanely.

“For God’s sake, Phoebe,” he said again, wondering how he might get rid of her, and how soon.

He went down to the bathroom on the return and fetched a towel and came back and dropped it in her lap. She was still gazing about her blearily. “I’m seeing two of everything!” she said, in proud delight.

“Dry your hair,” he said. “You’re ruining the furniture.”

She spoke with her head inside the towel. “I’m only wet because you left me standing out there so long. Plus the fact that I got out of the cab in Lower Mount Street by mistake.”

He went into the bedroom in search of something for her to wear. When he returned to the living room she had dropped the towel to the floor, and sat blinking and frowning, more of a gorgon than ever, with her toweled hair standing on end.

“Who was that man downstairs?” she said.

“That would be Mr. Poole.”

“He was wearing a bow tie.”

“He does.”

“He asked me did I know where I was going. I said you were my uncle. I think he didn’t believe me.” She snickered. “Ooh,” she said, “I have a drip,” and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. Then she asked for a drink.

He went into the kitchen and filled the coffee machine and put it on the gas to brew. He laid out a tray with cup, sugar, milk jug. “Where was this party?” he called to her.

Her answer came back muffled. “None of your business.”

He went and glanced through the crack of the kitchen door into the living room but drew back when he saw her standing in her underwear with her arms lifted, pulling the blue frock over her head. She had the slightly thick waist of the Crawford girls, her mother and her aunt, and their long, shapely legs. The coffee was rumbling in the pot but he delayed a while before he brought it in, waiting for her to be finished changing.

He carried the tray into the living room. Phoebe, wearing the pullover and clownishly outsized slacks he had given her, was fiddling with the wooden mannequin.

“Stop that,” he said sharply. She let her hands fall from the doll but did not turn, and stood with her head bowed and her arms hanging at her side, herself a slack-stringed marionette. “Come on,” he said, less sharply, “here’s your coffee.” She turned then and he saw the big, childish tears sliding down her cheeks. He sighed, and put the tray on the floor in front of the sofa and went and took her, gingerly, in his arms. Limply she allowed herself to be held, and put her face against his shoulder and said something. “What?” he said, trying to keep the harsh edge from his voice—how was it that women, all women, wept so much? “I can’t hear you.”

She drew away from him and spoke through burbling sobs. “They won’t let me marry him! They won’t let me marry Conor Carrington!”

He turned from her and crossed to the fireplace and took a cigarette from the antique silver box on the mantelpiece. The box had been a wedding present from Sarah and Mal.

“They say I can’t marry him because he’s a Protestant!” Phoebe cried. “They say I’m not to see him anymore!”

His lighter was empty of fuel; he patted his pockets; he had used his last match to light the gas fire. He went to the marble-topped sideboard, where there was a copy of yesterday’s
Evening Mail,
and tore a strip from the bottom of a page, revealing a theater advertisement on the page underneath. He returned and lit the slip from the gas flame. His hands were quite steady, quite steady. The cigarette tasted stale; he must remember to put fresh ones in the box.

“Well?” Phoebe said behind him in consternation, indignantly. “Are you not going to say anything?”

Punch and Judy,
the advertisement had said,
the new hit comedy!
—
last three performances!
Oh, Mr. Punch, what have you done?

“Tell me what you’d like me to say,” he said.

“You could pretend to be shocked.”

She had stopped crying, and gave a great sniff. She had not expected much from him in the way of support but she had thought he would at least be sympathetic. She studied him with an indignant eye. He looked even more remote than usual from the things around him. He had lived in this flat for as long as she could remember—when she was a child her mother used to bring her with her on visits here, as a chaperone, she had suspected even then—but he seemed no more at home in it now than he had in those days. Padding barefoot about the floor, all shoulders and little feet and big, broad back, he had the look of some wild animal, a bear, maybe, or an impossibly beautiful, blond gorilla that had been captured a long time ago but still had not come to understand that it was in a cage.

She went and stood beside him, facing the fireplace, with her elbows resting on the high mantelpiece, which he was leaning back against. She was not drunk anymore—she had not really been drunk, in the first place, but had wanted him to think she was—only sleepy, and sad. She studied the framed photographs on the mantelpiece.

“Aunt Delia was so lovely,” she said. “Were you there when…?” Quirke shook his head. He did not look at her. His profile, she thought, was like the profile of an emperor on an old coin. “Tell me,” she urged, softly.

“We had a fight,” he said, flat and matter-of-fact and a touch impatient. “I went out and got drunk. Then I was in the hospital, holding her hand, and she was dead. She was dead, and I was still drunk.”

She went back to studying the photographs in their expensive, silver frames. She touched the one of the foursome in their tennis whites, tracing their faces with a fingertip: her father, and Sarah, and Quirke, and poor, dead Delia, all of them so young, smiling, and fearless-seeming. She said:

“They looked really alike, didn’t they, even for sisters, Mummy and Aunt Delia? Your two lost loves.” To that he would say nothing, and she shrugged, tossing her head, and walked to the sideboard and picked up the newspaper and pretended to read it. “Of course,” she said, “you don’t care that they won’t let me marry him, do you?”