Christine Falls: A Novele by Benjamin Black Read Free Book Online Page A

stepped into the room and stopped, staring first at her mother’s bowed back and then at Quirke, who unseen by Sarah lifted high his eyebrows and his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug of bewildered innocence. The girl hesitated a moment, a faint fear coming into her face, then soundlessly withdrew and as soundlessly closed the door.
    The spectacle of another female in tears, the second this evening, was rapidly making Quirke sober. He offered Sarah his handkerchief, but she fumbled in a pocket of her frock and brought out one of her own and held it up for him to see. “I always keep a handkerchief handy,” she said, “just in case.” She gave a congested laugh and blew her nose, then braced her hands on the sink again and lifted her face to the ceiling with a hoarse, infuriated groan. “Look at me, my God! Standing in my own kitchen, crying. And for what?” She turned and contemplated him, shaking her head. “Oh, Quirke, you’re hopeless!”
    Encouraged by her tearful smile Quirke lifted a hand to touch her cheek, but she twitched her head aside, no longer smiling. “Too late, Quirke,” she said, in a hard, tight voice. “Twenty years too late.”
    She tucked the handkerchief into the sleeve of her dress and took off the apron and set it on the sideboard and stood for a moment with her hand resting on the cloth as if on a child’s head, her eyes downcast and blank. Quirke watched her; she was stronger than he was, in the end, far stronger. Again he moved to touch her, but again she flinched from him and he let fall his hand. Then she gave herself a faint shake and turned and walked out of the room.
    Quirke stayed where he was for a minute, gazing into his glass. It puzzled him, how with people nothing ever went as it seemed it should, or as it seemed it might. He sighed. He had the hot and guilty sense of having tinkered with something too delicately fine for his clumsy fingers. He put down his glass, telling himself to leave and not say another word to anyone. He was halfway to the door when it was pushed open brusquely and Mal came in. “What did you say to her?” he demanded. Quirke hesitated, willing himself not to laugh; Mal looked so perfectly, so theatrically, the part of the irate husband. “Well?” he snapped again.
    “Nothing, Mal,” Quirke said, trying to sound both blameless and contrite. Mal watched him narrowly. “You’re a troublemaker, Quirke,” he said, in an unexpectedly mild and almost matter-of-fact tone. “You come to my house, drunk, on this night when my father—”
    “Look, Mal—”
    “Don’t Look, Mal me!”
    He stepped forward and planted himself in front of Quirke, breathing loudly down his nostrils, his eyes bulging behind his spectacles. Maggie appeared in the doorway, in a repeat of Phoebe’s appearance earlier. Seeing the two men confronting each other she, too, quickly withdrew, with a gleeful look.
    “You have no place here, Quirke,” Mal said, speaking evenly. “You may think you have, but you haven’t.”
    Quirke made to step past him but Mal put a hand against his chest. Quirke leaned backwards, teetering on his heels. He had a sudden vision of the two of them grappling clumsily, grunting and swaying, their arms thrown about each other in a furious bear hug. The urge to laugh was stronger than ever. “Listen, Mal,” he said, “I was bringing Phoebe home, that’s all. I shouldn’t have taken her to the pub in the first place. I’m sorry. All right?” Mal was clenching his fists again; he now looked like the thwarted villain in a silent film. “Mal,” Quirke said, trying to put conviction into his voice, “you have no reason to hate me.”
    “I’ll be the judge of that,” Mal said quickly, as if he had known what Quirke was about to say, as if he had heard it said before. “I want you to stay away from Phoebe. I’m not going to allow you to turn her into another version of yourself. Do you understand?”
    There was silence between them then, a