Elegy for April by Benjamin Black Read Free Book Online Page B

had done to him that had convinced him to check himself into St. John’s, disgust and shame at the bruiser and brawler he had become, reeling through the streets in search of a pub that he had not already been barred from? At eight in the morning on Christmas Eve he had ended up at the Cattle Markets in an awful dive packed with drovers and buyers, everyone drunk and shouting, including him. He had looked up and found himself confronting hisreflection in the pockmarked mirror behind the bar, hardly recognizing the bleared and bloodshot, gray-faced hulk, slumped there with his hat clamped on the back of his head, with his fags and his rolled-up newspaper and his ball of malt, the drinker’s drinker—
     
The doorbell buzzed, making him jump. He went to the window and looked down into the street. It was Perry Otway, of course, with the Alvis.
     
     
     
     
     
    5
     
THE DOLPHIN HOTEL ON ESSEX STREET IN TEMPLE BAR HAD BEEN the little band’s meeting place from the start. No one remembered which of them it was that had first chanced on it, but given the nature of the establishment it was probably Isabel Galloway. The Dolphin was a well-known watering place among the theatrical crowd, but the people who frequented it were mostly of a previous generation, blue-suited old boys with carbuncular noses and well-preserved women of a certain age in fauvist lipstick and too much rouge. The wood-paneled bar was rarely crowded, even on Saturday nights, and the restaurant was not bad, if they felt like eating there and were in funds. Phoebe in her heart thought the little band a little pretentious— when had they started calling themselves by that Proustian label?— yet she was glad of her place among them. They were not the Round Table and the Dolphin was not the Algonquin, but they, and it, would do, for this small city, in these narrow times. There were five of them, exclusively five: Patrick Ojukwu, the Prince; Isabel Galloway, the actress; Jimmy Minor; April Latimer; and Phoebe. To night, however, they were four only, a subdued quartet.
     
“I don’t see why we’re being so concerned,” Isabel Galloway said. “We all know what April is like.”
     
“It’s not like her to disappear,” Jimmy said sharply. There was always a mild friction between Jimmy and Isabel, who tossed her head now and gave a histrionic sigh.
     
“Who says she’s disappeared?” she asked.
     
“We told you, we went to her flat, Phoebe and I. It was obvious she hadn’t been there since Wednesday week, which was the last time Phoebe spoke to her.”
     
“Of course, she could just have gone away,” Phoebe urged, as she had urged so many times already, on the principle that she might be encouraged to believe it herself if she saw that the others did.
     
Jimmy gave her a scathing look. “Gone away where?”
     
“You’re the one who told me I was being hysterical,” Phoebe said, aware that she was flushing and annoyed at herself for it.
     
“But sweetheart, you were being hysterical,” he said in his Hollywood twang. He gave her one of his smiles, not the real, irresistible one, but the smirking mask he had learned to put on, to charm and cajole. She sometimes asked herself if she really liked Jimmy; he could be sweet and affecting, but there was something dour and surly in his nature, too.
     
No one spoke for a time, then Isabel said, “What about the sick-note she gave to the hospital?”
     
“We’ve all sent in sick-notes without being at death’s door,” Jimmy said, turning to her and letting the smile drop. His legs were so short that even though the chair in which he sat was of normal height his feet did not quite reach the floor. He turned to Patrick Ojukwu. “What do you think?” he asked, unable to suppress an edge of truculence in his voice.
     
It was April who had met Ojukwu first and introduced him to the little band. He had been accepted more or less readily; Jimmy had shown the least enthusiasm, of course, while IsabelGalloway, as April drily