Vengeance: A Novel (Quirke) (28 page)

“Where were you, lad, on that fatal evening?

Can you prooooove your whe-ere-abouts?

If I ask Miss Griffin if she saw you

Will she back up your cast-iron al-i-biiieee?”

He danced now in the direction of the sofa, and as he swept past he grabbed Phoebe’s wrist and drew her stumbling to her feet and took her in his arms and waltzed her off around the room at such a pace she felt her feet were hardly touching the floor. His brother, meanwhile, threw himself back on the sofa, clapping his hands and raucously whinnying.

Phoebe, her heart hammering in its cage, saw the room spinning around her. She was dizzy already. She could smell the man who was holding her, his odor a mingling of sweat, cologne, and something else, sharp and sour, a faint acid reek. On the second turn around the room she glimpsed over Jonas’s shoulder the door opening, and someone, a woman, coming in. For a second the woman’s face, slender and pale, was a point of stillness in the general whirl; then Jonas swept on, whirling Phoebe with him. They passed by James, asprawl with his arms stretched out at either side along the back of the sofa, watching her with huge enjoyment. Then in rapid succession came the window, the sideboard, the sofa and James seated, the Jellett abstract, and then the woman again, in the doorway.

Jonas too had seen her, and veered towards her now, and letting go of Phoebe’s left hand he caught the woman by the wrist and pulled her into the dance with them. On they dashed, three of them now, whirling and whirling. The woman seemed quite calm, and merely amused, as if she were used to this kind of thing. Smiling, she kept her eye fixed on Phoebe. Abruptly Jonas let go of both of them and flung himself down with a great laughing gasp to sprawl beside his brother. Phoebe stumbled, and would have fallen if the woman had not put an arm round her waist and held her firmly. They waltzed on together, the woman keeping no better time to the music than Jonas had. She was wearing a green silk blouse and a black skirt with petticoats underneath it.

“I’m Mona,” she said. “Mona Delahaye. And you’re Phoebe, yes? I know your father, a little.”

The song ended and they stopped, and Phoebe stood panting, and smiled back at the smiling woman, and thought how little like a widow she seemed. Both twins now regarded them with keen interest. Mona ignored them, and walked to the rosewood sideboard and poured herself a gin, and added a splash of tonic. “You two,” she said accusingly, addressing the twins over her shoulder, “you’ve used all the ice again!”

Jonas looked sideways at his brother, and James put his hands on his knees and heaved himself to his feet with a histrionic sigh. “Oh, all right,” he said, “I’ll go.”

When he had left Mona went and sat where he had been sitting, pressing down her skirt and ballooning petticoats with a careless gesture, and smiled at Phoebe again and patted the place beside her. “Come,” she said, “come and sit.” She turned her head and spoke to Jonas. “Move over, you.”

Phoebe did as she was invited and came and sat down beside Mona. She felt exhilarated, but dizzy, too, more than dizzy—how much gin had she drunk?—and her tongue felt thick and she had difficulty focusing her eyes. Mona had grabbed Jonas’s glass and with her fingers fished out what remained of the ice cubes in it and dropped them into her own drink.

“Hey!” Jonas said, laughing as he attempted to take back his glass. “You are a cow.”

“And you’re a pig,” Mona answered complacently.

They were like a pair of spoiled siblings fighting over a toy, Phoebe thought. This observation seemed to her at once profound and funny. She blinked—could she be tipsy already?

Mona turned to her. Mona had the most extraordinary violet eyes that tapered at their outer edges and turned up into points. Her scarlet lipstick made her face seem all the more pale. She was very lovely, though her lips were a little thin. Phoebe wondered what it would feel like to be a man kissing that mouth. At that moment, as if Mona had read Phoebe’s thoughts, she parted her lips and Phoebe glimpsed between them the fire-pink sharp little tip of her tongue. That was what she would do if she were being kissed, she would open her mouth like that, just barely parting the lips, and the tip of her tongue would dart out.

“You look quite wild,” Mona said. “What have these two brutes been doing to you?”

“Oh, just—dancing,” Phoebe said. Her head felt terribly heavy all of a sudden, and she leaned back against the sofa, letting her shoulders droop.

“She’s a very good dancer.” Jonas spoke in a soberly judicious tone.

“Yes, she is,” Mona said.

She was still smiling and gazing searchingly at Phoebe.

“She has wings on her heels.” Jonas, too, was looking at Phoebe, leaning forward to see past Mona.

“Have you?” Mona said, still gazing at Phoebe. “Have you wings at your heels?”

With both those pairs of eyes fixed on her, Phoebe felt as if she were an exotic creature perched in a cage and being stared at. What a narrow face Jonas had, a narrow face and a wide mouth, which gave him a faintly cruel look.

James came back with the ice and Jonas insisted that they all have another gin and tonic. Phoebe protested feebly that she did not want anything more to drink, but was ignored. She was still sitting with her head leaning against the back on the sofa and her hands resting limply in her lap. Mona, beside her, touched her hair, peering more deeply still into her eyes. “Jonas,” she said, “you haven’t given her anything, have you?”

Jonas, at the sideboard again pouring drinks, threw her a look of exaggerated outrage. “As if I would!” He brought them their glasses. Phoebe had difficulty holding hers, though it felt wonderfully cool. She lifted it before her face in both hands and watched with fascination a drop of condensed moisture making its way in a gleaming zigzag down the misted side. It seemed to her magical, a thing never witnessed before now. She wanted to tell the others about it but did not think she would be able to find the words.

“Come along,” Jonas said briskly, extending a hand to each of them and taking Phoebe’s glass. “Let’s us face the music, my dears, and dance!”

The two women stood up. Phoebe’s knees wobbled, and she reached out before her for support, and Mona took her hand and put an arm round her waist again, and slowly they began to dance. James and Jonas too were dancing together now. Round and round the floor they went, the two couples, in opposite directions. Each time they passed each other Jonas would make an elaborate, eighteenth-century bow, and James would laugh his laugh.

Phoebe, her head spinning, felt herself gliding off into a sort of trance. Her feet seemed very far away, and glancing down she saw with surprise that they were moving as if by themselves, to their own rhythm, pacing out the measure of the dance. Once her arm brushed against the side of Mona’s breast, but Mona seemed not to notice. The scarab-green silk of Mona’s blouse felt as if there were electricity running through it.

On the record, Sinatra’s voice had a sad little sob in it.

Someone kicked the door from outside and it flew open and an old man in a wheelchair, with a mane of gray hair, propelled himself over the threshold. He glared at the dancing couples and his face darkened with fury, and there was a sort of rumbling sound in his chest as the words gathered there, and he made a fist of his right hand and smashed it down on the arm of the wheelchair.
“This is a house of mourning!”
he bellowed, in the thundering tones of a hellfire preacher.

The dancers halted. Phoebe swayed on her feet. Mona’s arm was still encircling her waist. She seemed to be laughing, very softly.

“Hello, Grandad,” Jonas said brightly. “Care for a snorter?”

The man in the wheelchair looked at him, his head trembling and his eyes blazing. “You young whelp!” he said, half choking on the words.

Everything in front of Phoebe had begun to swim. Her head felt so heavy, so heavy. She took a step forward and leaned her forehead on Mona’s shoulder. “I think,” she said, and her voice was so thick now she could hardly make it out herself, “I think I’m going to…”

*   *   *

Isabel was late, as so often. Quirke did not mind. He was in McGonagle’s, in the back snug, known for some reason as the Casbah, where only the most regular of regulars were allowed to enter. He had the
Evening Mail
before him on the table, quarter-folded, which was the way he liked to read a newspaper, and a large whiskey at his elbow. The Casbah, cramped and cozy, struck a faintly nautical note. It might have been the cabin of a trawler. There was a lot of dark brown wood that somehow was always faintly and stickily damp to the touch, and the head-high wooden partition that separated it from the rest of the pub had a row of small low-set frosted-glass windows that were reminiscent of portholes. The air was shadowed and smoky, but a chink of evening sunlight from somewhere had set a glowing jewel in the bottom of the whiskey glass.

He was reading a story about a case of criminal conversation, in which a man had sued his business partner for having an affair with his wife. “Criminal conversation.” Who thought up these terms? Maybe it was a direct translation from the Latin. The case was a nasty one, with evidence not only from the three people involved but also from hotel clerks and chambermaids and even from one of the conductors on the Howth tram. What must the woman feel? Perhaps he might ask Isabel.

He knew very well he should not be drinking whiskey so early in the evening. In fact, he should not be drinking spirits at all. He had promised Phoebe he would keep to wine only, and that even wine he would take in moderation, yet here he was, breaking that promise. It was a familiar sensation, this slight buzz of shame at the back of his mind.

There were certain conditions, most of them bad, that had become ingrained in him over the years, so that now he could not imagine his life without them. First and foremost of these conditions was dislike of himself, a mild but irresolvable distaste for what he did and what he was. In his better moments, his rare self-absolving moments, he regarded this permanent state of self-deprecation as, paradoxically, a sign of some virtue. For if he disapproved of himself, must there not be a finer side to him, however firmly it was turned away, that was doing the disapproving? Surely the truly wicked ones thought nothing of their wickedness, were not even aware of it, or if they were they gloried in it, like Iago or Milton’s Satan. Of course, by maintaining a low regard for himself he was giving himself the excuse to carry on as he wished to, with no thought for anyone else. Being bad, as he was, and as he acknowledged he was, lifted a weight of responsibility from his soul.
I do as I do and can do no other
. That was a motto a man could live with.

Isabel arrived at last, a vision of summer itself in a loose white linen dress and red slingback shoes with high heels. She plonked her leather handbag down on the folded
Mail
and began to scrabble about in it.

“Here,” Quirke said, offering her his packet of Senior Service, “have one of mine.”

“Thanks,” she said, taking a cigarette and leaning down to the flame of his lighter. “And for Christ’s sake get me a drink, will you? Vodka and ice. I feel as if my head is about to burst.”

She sat down opposite him on the low stool, exhaling an angry cone of cigarette smoke. She was having trouble with the director of the play she was rehearsing. Quirke braced himself for a tirade, and went to the hatch and signaled to the barman. When he sat down again Isabel suddenly laughed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I won’t start, I promise.” She took another long drag on her cigarette. “But that
bastard,
honestly—that little
bastard
!”

“What’s he done now?”

She opened her mouth to speak but shut it again, and again laughed. “No,” she said, “I said I wouldn’t, and I won’t. It’s a lovely evening outside, I’m going to have one drink with you, then we’re going to take a taxi home and you’re going to—well, you know what you’re going to do, being the gentleman that you are and ever ready to lay a cool hand on a hot girl’s brow. I mean a girl’s hot brow. Or do I?”

She leaned across the table and kissed him. The barman, his big moonface looming at the hatch, cleared his throat pointedly.

They drank their drinks, the little fingers of their free left hands entwined on the table between them. Quirke admired the way the glowing spot of gold reappeared in the bottom of his glass each time he set it down. Where was the light coming from? He could not see. He did not care. Maybe Isabel was the one who would save him. From what? From himself, first.

To keep herself from complaining about the director, Isabel complained about the play instead. “Talk about kitchen sink, my God!” she said, throwing her eyes to the ceiling and putting on what he thought of as her comical El Greco face. “Sink, tin bathtub, chamber pot, and all. Can life really be like that?”

“Mostly it is,” Quirke said.

“And the jokes! All of them seem to be about cows—the thing is set in the bog somewhere. Is that how country people are?”

He laughed. “How do you mean?”

“Oh, you know—stupid and comical.”

“We’re all like that.”

“I’m not!” she said indignantly. “You’re not. Well”—her lips trembled on a laugh—“I’m not, anyway. You know I play the mother? The one playing the daughter, so called, is forty if she’s a day. And my husband is about eighteen, and has spots.”

Quirke squeezed her finger more tightly. He liked to listen to these rants of hers; they amused and soothed him. He watched her long pale animated face. She was a handsome woman, still. She worried that she might be too old to have children, she had told him so one night over an after-show dinner in the Trocadero, tears shining in her eyes and her mouth slack. She had been a bit drunk. He wondered if she remembered. They both worried about babies, but his worry was of a different order to hers.