Holy Orders A Quirke Novel Read online

  “And what did you do?” he asked.

  It was some moments before Molly replied. “I didn’t know,” she said, very softly. She stroked the forehead of the sleeping child. “She never told me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why? You might as well ask the wind why it blows.” She slowly shook her head. “She wouldn’t tell me, but then there was no more hiding it.”

  “Hiding what?”

  “That she was granen—in the way of a babbie coming. And she hardly more than a babbie herself.” She stopped, and Quirke saw to his surprise that she was smiling, coldly, with narrowed eyes. “She told him, though.”

  Quirke waited a beat. “She told Packie?”

  The woman nodded. “Aye. She told him it was the sharog, and all about the things he done to her—and not only her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sure, wasn’t he doing it with half the childer in the camp!”

  “There were other girls, like Lily—?”

  “Girls, aye, and the lads, too, the ones he was supposed to be teaching the book learning to. He didn’t care what they were, so long as they were childer.”

  “Why had none of them spoken? Why hadn’t they told what was happening?”

  She looked at him pityingly. She did not have to speak; he knew what the answer was. To whom would he have spoken, when he was a child at Carricklea? Who would have believed him? Who would have so much as listened?

  “What did Packie do,” he asked, “when she told him?”

  “He wouldn’t have it that it was the priest, of course, so he sent Mikey and Paudeen after that poor young fellow instead. Somebody had to pay the price.”

  “But you knew it wasn’t Jimmy Minor that she meant when she said it was the sharog. You knew which of the two it really was.”

  “Ach!” She made a grimace, screwing up her mouth as if to spit. “What matter was it what I knew? Himself knew it too, anyway.”

  “But he knew it wasn’t Jimmy.”

  “What matter? It was the sharog done it, that was enough for him. Sure, you couldn’t touch the priest—you’d have no luck after that.”

  “And the baby?” he said. “What happened?”

  The woman was gazing at the child, her hand still resting on her forehead. She shrugged. “She hadn’t a strong enough hold of it. How could she, after the sinful way it came to her?”

  “I see.”

  “Do you, now.” The woman glanced at him from under her eyelashes, smiling in malice. “So you’re satisfied, then. You had the great sleep, and learned what you came to learn, and now you’ll be off.”

  He gazed back at her, and slowly her smile faded, and she looked away from him.

  “Why did you tell me?” he asked.

  “Why would I not?” she answered quickly, with a flash of almost anger.

  “And what if I tell?”

  She brought out her tobacco and papers and set them in the lap of her red skirt and began to roll a cigarette. “Who would you tell?” she asked.

  “The Guards?”

  That seemed to amuse her, and she nodded to herself, bleakly smiling. “Mikey and Paudeen will be gone by morning, across the water, on the boat.”

  “To where?”

  “Over to Palantus—England, as you’d say. That’s the place to get lost in.”

  Quirke expelled a low, slow breath. “So,” he said, “Packie is sending them off, yes?”

  She shrugged. “They’ll not be found, the same two, and there’s no use that peeler looking for them—you can tell him that from me. Them are the boys that knows how to hide.”

  The moon was edging its way out of the square of velvety sky above the half door. How strange a thing, Quirke thought, a silver ball of light floating there in the midst of that dark emptiness.

  Molly stood up, the cigarette unlit in her fingers. Quirke looked up at her. “Go on,” she said, “go on off now. I’ve said enough and you’ve heard more than is good for you.” He rose to his feet. He was a head taller than she was. “You’ll not come round here again, I know,” she said, lifting her eyes to his.

  “Will I not?”

  She put up a hand and grasped the back of his neck and drew his head down to her and kissed him. He smelled the harsh scent of her body and breathed her gamy breath. He made to put his arm around her waist but she drew back from him quickly. “Go on now,” she murmured, pressing both her palms against his chest. “Go on with you.”

  He stepped back. Outside, the dog gave a soft, beseeching yelp. The faint music had started up again. Or was it, Quirke wondered, only the wind, keening?

  20

  He walked back into the village and found a hackney cab to drive him home. Slumped in the back seat he had slept again, briefly, and had only woken up when the car was pulling into Mount Street. When he saw the figure slumped in the doorway he thought it must be one of the working girls who patrolled here at night looking for business. They all drank, and this would not be the first time he had stumbled on one of them passed out in a stupor. He climbed the steps and crouched down beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched, and looked at him, and then in a flash of pallid moonlight he saw who it was.

  “Christ,” he said, “Phoebe!” His heart pounded and his mouth had suddenly gone dry. She clung to him, and said she was sorry, that she had not meant to give him such a shock. He got her to her feet and opened the door with his key. “I’m sorry,” she said again, but he told her to shush, and led her into the hall. She seemed not to be hurt, yet she was so shaken he had to help her up the stairs.

  In the flat he put her in one of the two armchairs that stood at either side of the gas fire. She was still trembling. Her skin had a greenish pallor, and her eyes as she stared fixedly before her seemed enormous. He fetched a blanket from his bed and wrapped it about her shoulders. Then he went into the kitchen and poured a brandy and carried it back into the living room. She drank a little of it and began to cough. “Tell me what happened,” he said, keeping his voice steady.

  She told him how she had gone out for a walk and how the man in the sheepskin jacket had overtaken her and caught her by the wrist and pushed her back against the railings. “I thought he was going to kill me,” she said.

  “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know. I had seen him before, though, when I was with Sally. I think she thought he was following her, when all the time it was me he was after. It’s almost funny, isn’t it.”

  He crouched down beside the arm of the chair, sitting on his heels, and took her hand. It was cold, cold and moist, and seemed so thin and frail that he felt his heart contracting. “What do you mean, he was after you?”

  She shook her head slowly, gazing at the fire as if mesmerized. Her voice when she spoke sounded wispy and faraway. “When I was little,” she said, “there was a gas fire like that in the nursery, behind a screen. I never understood about the gas—I thought it was the filaments themselves that were burning, and I was always puzzled why they didn’t get burnt up.”

  Her hand lay in his, chill and lifeless, like the corpse of a bird. “Tell me what happened,” he said again.

  She turned her face to him and blinked slowly. She had stopped shaking, and all her movements now were ponderously slow, as if she were moving underwater. “He cursed at me,” she said, “and crushed my wrist in his hand—I thought he was going to break the bones.” She took her hand from his and drew back the cuff of her blouse from her other hand and showed him the bruises. “You see? I couldn’t believe the strength of his grip.”

  Quirke stared at the livid marks on her wrist, his mouth twitching. “What did he say?”

  She turned to look at the fire again. “He said to tell you,” she said, “that he was from Mr. Costigan, and that Mr. Costigan wanted you to know that he was keeping an eye on you.”

  * * *

  He let the telephone ring for a long time, and was about to hang up when Isabel answered. She sounded sleepy and irritated
. “Who is this?” she demanded. He said he was sorry, he knew it was late but he needed her to come round. “Phoebe is here,” he said. “She’s had a fright.” Isabel was silent for a moment. He supposed she was disappointed; no doubt she had thought he was calling because he was lonely and wanted her company.

  “Of course, I’ll come straightaway,” she said, trying to inject warmth into her voice and not quite succeeding. In the midst of a squabble recently she had said she was tired of hearing him talk about Phoebe. “In fact,” she had said, putting a hand on her hip and striking a pose, “I have to say I’m disenchanted in general with your daughter, whom you spoil, and whose whims and fantasies you indulge.” He would have been angrier had he not been distracted by the thought that she might have rehearsed this speech, for certainly she had delivered it as if she were onstage. They had been friends once, she and Phoebe; Isabel was another thing he had taken from his daughter.

  He went back to the living room. Phoebe was sitting forward in the armchair, nursing her bruised wrist in her other hand and gazing intently at the fire. He thought of her as a child, in Mal and Sarah’s house, sitting like this before the gas fire there, wondering why the filaments did not burn away.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later Isabel arrived, brisk and bright as a hospital nurse, the heavy fur of her coat exuding the coolness of the spring night outside. She sat on the arm of Phoebe’s chair and held her undamaged hand, as Quirke had held it a while ago. “The troubles your father gets you into,” she said, clicking her tongue. She glanced over her shoulder at Quirke. “Who is this Costigan person and why is he sending you warnings?”

  Quirke was lighting a cigarette. “He’s what you might call a manager, I suppose. He makes things happen, or prevents them.”

  “Is he the one who had you beaten up, that time?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  He came forward and stood with his back to the fire. Phoebe sat, silent and staring, like one of El Greco’s afflicted saints. Isabel regarded Quirke, shaking her head. “And how have you annoyed him this time?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “That means you know but you’re not prepared to say.” He offered her a cigarette but she waved it away. “It’s one thing to have you beaten up,” she said. “God knows I often think of doing the same thing myself. But sending thugs to attack your daughter in the street, that’s too much.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “It’s to do with Jimmy Minor’s death, isn’t it?” She looked down at Phoebe. She was still holding her hand. “Phoebe? Is it?”

  Phoebe shrugged listlessly. “I don’t know,” she said. She lifted her eyes and looked at Quirke. “Is it, Quirke?”

  He sighed, and leaned an elbow on the mantelpiece, and told them about Packie the Pike, and what Packie’s woman had told him. When he had finished they were silent, all three, for a long time. Then Isabel spoke: “So he was killed by mistake, Jimmy Minor?” she said with bitter incredulity.

  “I don’t think I’d call it a mistake,” Quirke said. He considered the toes of his shoes. “Someone had to die, and it couldn’t be the priest.”

  Isabel snorted. “Why not? He raped their child.”

  “Jimmy should have stayed out of it,” Quirke said.

  Phoebe looked up at him, frowning. “Are you saying it was his own fault?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. He didn’t know the kind of people he was getting involved with.”

  Isabel was suddenly indignant. “A pack of tinkers—?” she began.

  “Not just them,” Quirke said. “Costigan, the church. All that.” The moon, he saw, was in the window here, too, its crooked face leering down.

  “How did Jimmy know about it?” Phoebe asked. “How did he find out about this priest, and what he’d done?”

  “Someone must have told him,” Quirke said.

  “Who?” Isabel demanded.

  “The same person who told me.”

  Isabel was watching him closely now. “The tinker’s woman? You seem to have had quite a cozy chat with her.”

  Quirke said nothing to that, and turned away.

  Another silent interval passed; then Isabel spoke again. “So: what will you do?” she asked.

  “I’ll talk to Hackett,” Quirke said.

  “Your detective friend?” Isabel curled her lip. “And what will he do?”

  “He’ll go after Packie Joyce.”

  “Will he arrest him?”

  “I don’t know. He’ll try to get Packie’s sons back from England. If they can be found.”

  Phoebe suddenly stood up, letting the blanket fall from her shoulders. “Nothing ever happens,” she said in a thin, bitter voice. “People commit murder and get away with it.” She looked at Quirke, her lower lip trembling. “You let them get away with it.”

  Quirke stepped forward, putting out a hand, but she drew away from him quickly. “Don’t touch me,” she said.

  “Nobody kills a priest,” Quirke said, his voice gone weary. “Not even the likes of Packie Joyce will kill a priest. It’s what I said—Jimmy should have stayed out of it.”

  There was a brief silence; then Isabel rose from where she had been sitting on the arm of the chair. “Come on, Quirke,” she said, “walk your daughter home. I’m off.”

  * * *

  They waited in the street for a taxi, and when one came Isabel turned to Quirke and kissed him quickly on the cheek and gave him a hard look, gazing searchingly into his eyes, then stepped away and said she would phone him in the morning. Quirke and Phoebe watched the taxi drive away, then turned and walked up the street, across the crescent, past the Pepper Canister. The moon was bright enough to throw sharp-edged shadows athwart the pavements. The wind had dried up most of the rain but here and there patches of dampness persisted, gleaming like pewter. At the corner of Herbert Place Quirke glanced across at the canal in the darkness and the towpath leading away into the denser darkness under the trees.

  “Is that girl staying with you still,” he asked, “Jimmy’s sister?” Phoebe nodded, tight-lipped; she was still angry at him. He did not blame her; he was angry at himself. “Will you tell her what I’ve told you?”

  “I don’t know,” Phoebe said, keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead.

  A white cat crossed the road in front of them, padding along swiftly with its belly low to the ground. When it reached the railings on the other side it stopped, with one paw lifted, and looked back at them, its eyes flashing like shards of glass. Quirke thought of Packie’s woman, felt again her hand on the back of his neck, her lips on his. He was tired; he longed for sleep.

  They came to the steps of Phoebe’s flat. She had her key in her hand. He asked if she would like him to come up with her, but she said no, she would be all right. “Tell her,” he said, “tell Jimmy’s sister I’m sorry.”

  * * *

  Phoebe opened the door of the flat and went in. There was a smell of cocoa still. For a second she felt all the crushing weight of the world’s banality and indifference. She took off her coat and hung it on a hook on the back of the kitchen door. She paused, taking a deep breath, then walked forward, into the living room, where Sally, standing by the window, turned to her with a strained, expectant look, and lifted a hand to her hair.

  Later, lying in bed, Phoebe gazed up into the darkness, nursing her aching wrist against her breast. Her eyes felt scalded but she could not sleep. She and Sally had gone and sat at the kitchen table, as they had sat that first night, and Phoebe had talked while Sally listened, the darkness pressing eagerly against the tall window beside them, as if trying to overhear what was being said. Now and then a car went past, and once someone had laughed in the street, directly below.

  As she spoke, Phoebe had the impression of pouring something, some clear, cold liquid, into a bottomless vessel. Sally, even as she sat there, seemed to be moving away from her, sliding backwards smoothly, silently, inexorably, as if the walls all around them had dissolved and
they were suspended in space, two planets locked in mutual repulsion. At the end, when Sally knew everything that Quirke had found out, she had risen from her chair and walked into the living room and stood again at the window, her arms folded, holding herself tightly, staring out into the dark. Phoebe had left her there, and gone into her room and undressed quickly and got into bed and turned out the light. But sleep would not come.

  Now she thought of David. Had he and Sally kissed, in that brief moment when they were alone? She found she did not care. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  At last she fell into a restless sleep. She dreamed of the man in the sheepskin jacket, except that in the dream he was also Jimmy Minor. Tell Quirke, he said, that I’m watching him. And he laughed.

  A chink of sunlight coming in at the window woke her. She lay for a moment, listening, testing the silence. Nothing came back. She went out to the living room. Sally was gone; she had packed her things and slipped away in the night. On the table there was a note, scrawled with a pencil in large letters on the inside of a torn-open Craven A packet. Thanks. S. In one of the loops of the S there was a small, bone-white button. Phoebe stared at it, then picked it up and put it to her lips.

  * * *

  He had always loved the trappings of his faith, the heavy silk vestments in their gorgeous hues of green and blue and purple, the mingled perfumes of incense and lilies, the glint of candlelight on paten and pyx, the weight of the jewel-encrusted chalice when he lifted it in both hands above his head and the altar bells behind him began their urgent jangling. It was, he knew, a kind of idolatry, but he felt the Lord would forgive him, since the Lord forgave so much. Yes, he loved the church and all it stood for, yet on mornings like this, dank and rainy, he could not prevent his heart from sinking when he came through from the sacristy and genuflected before the altar, under the ruby eye of the sanctuary lamp, and felt the chill of the marble floor strike upwards into his bones.

  The nave was dim and draped with tall shadows. Crossing himself, he proceeded with grave tread from the altar and down the side aisle towards the confessional, counting out of the corner of his eye—one must not be seen to look directly—the number of penitents awaiting him. There they knelt in line, hunched and meek, the two old biddies who were his regulars, a bald, portly fellow he had not seen before (a Guinness clerk, he surmised, or something lowly in a bank), three schoolboys, and a woman in a fur coat and a hat with a black veil. He set his name tag in the slot above the door of the confessional, and stepped into his place in the central box, which always reminded him of an upright coffin. He was pulling the narrow double doors closed before him when he glimpsed a young woman approaching along the aisle. She was plainly pregnant. His heart sank deeper in his breast. Pregnant girls were always difficult.