He heard himself catch his breath. There was a body in the water.
It was a woman, wearing a black bathing suit and a rubber bathing cap. She was floating on her back with her eyes closed, her knees flexed a little and her arms outspread. The rim of the tight black cap blurred her features and at first he did not know her. He thought of slipping quietly away-his heart was still thumping from the start the sudden sight of her had given him-but just then she turned onto her front and began to swim with slow breast strokes toward the edge where he was standing. Seeing him towering above her on his stick she drew back in fright with a froglike thrashing of arms and legs, making the water churn. Then she came on again, with her chin lifted, ruefully smiling. It was Brenda Ruttledge. “God almighty,” she said, grasping the sides of the metal ladder and flipping herself up out of the water with a buoyant little bound, “you gave me an awful fright.”
“You frightened me, too,” he said. “I thought you were a corpse.”
“Well,” she said, laughing, “I imagine you of all people should know the difference.”
When she stepped from the ladder they found themselves facing each other in closer proximity than either of them had expected. He could feel the watery chill emanating from her flesh and even the blood heat behind it. Around them on the walls the water lights pranced and wallowed. She pulled off the bathing cap and shook her hair. “You won’t tell, will you?” she said, half seriously. “They don’t like the staff to use the pool.”
She stepped past him and bent to pick up her towel. It struck him that he had not seen this much of her ever before. She was broad-hipped, with short, rather thick, shapely legs. A country girl, built for childbearing. He felt old suddenly. She would still have been in her cradle when he was frolicking here with the lovely Delia Crawford. One kiss, he reminded himself, that was all that was between them, him and this girl, one stolen, tipsy kiss at a party that night he had first heard the name Christine Falls. She came back with the towel, drying her shoulders. The look of a woman’s face washed of its makeup never failed to affect him. When she lifted her arm he saw the little smudge of dark wet hair underneath.
“What happened to your face?” she said. “I noticed earlier. And you’re limping.”
“Took a tumble.”
She gazed into his face; he could see her not believing him. “Oh,” she said suddenly, “I’ve a drop on my nose!”
She sniffed, and laughed, and buried her face in the towel. Quirke thought: All this has happened before somewhere.
At the pool’s edge there were two cane armchairs on either side of a low bamboo table. Brenda put on a white terry-cloth robe and they sat down. The cane crackled like a fire of thorns under Quirke’s weight. He offered Brenda a cigarette but she shook her head. The reflections from the pool, calmer now that the water had calmed, moved in dreamy arabesques on wall and ceiling, reminding him vaguely of blood cells pressed between the glass slides of a microscope. Brenda said:
“What are you doing up, anyway, at this hour?”
He shrugged, and the chair made another loud complaint. “Can’t sleep,” he said.
“I was like that for ages, when I first came. I thought I would go mad.”
He seemed to hear a rasping something in her voice, a sorrowing catch. “Homesick, are you?” he asked.
Again she shook her head. “I was sick of home, that’s why I left.” She gazed before her, seeing not here but there, not now but then. “No,” she went on, “it’s the place I can’t get used to. This house. Those bloody foghorns.”
“And Josh Crawford?” he said. “Have you got used to him?”
“Oh, I can handle the likes of Mr. Crawford.” She turned to him, lifting her legs and tucking her feet under her and stretching the robe over her smooth, round knees. He imagined putting his face between her thighs, his mouth finding the cold wet lips there and the burning hollow within. “I was surprised,” she said, “when I heard you were coming.”
“Were you?”
Their voices traveled out over the water and struck faint, marine echoes from the walls. She was still studying him. “You’ve changed,” she said.
“Have I?”
“You’re quieter.”
“No more jokes.” He smiled glumly. “It’s something Phoebe said.”
“She seems nice, Phoebe.”
“Yes. She is.”
They were silent, and the echoes fell. Distantly in the house a clock struck a single, silver note, and an instant later from farther off there came another chime, and yet another, farther off still, and then the silence settled again. Quirke said:
“Tell me, what do you know about this charity work that Josh does?”
“You mean the orphanage?”
He looked at her. “What orphanage,” he asked slowly, “is that?”
“St. Mary’s. It’s out in Brookline. He gives money to it.” A tremor of unease touched her like the tip of a needle. What was he after? To change the subject she said, “Mrs. Crawford has taken a shine to you.”
He raised his eyebrows. “And how do you know that?”
“I just know.”
He nodded. “Your female intuition, is it?”
She flinched at the sudden cold mockery in his tone. She stood up and pulled the robe tight around her and walked away amidst the capering, ghostly lights, dangling the black bathing cap by its strap from her finger.
“Your niece was right,” she threw back over her shoulder. “No more jokes.”
27
HEAVY WAVES, BOXY AND THICK, ROLLED IN SLOW MOTION PAST THE lighthouse on its offshore rock and broke against the beach, lacing the air with ice-white spume. The coast sloped steeply here, diving off toward Provincetown and the vast Atlantic distances beyond. Quirke and Phoebe stood side by side on the concrete slipway, looking out to the horizon. A hard wind roaring in from the sea blew spray into their faces and whipped the flaps of their overcoats against their legs. Phoebe said something but Quirke could not hear her for the wind and the slushy clatter of the shingle rolling under the waves. He cupped a hand to his ear and she leaned close and shouted again, “I feel if I put out my arms I’d fly!” How young she was; the long and tedious journey from Ireland seemed not to have affected her at all, and her eyes sparkled and her cheeks glowed. Josh Crawford’s big Buick was parked behind them at an angle on the sandy track, humped and shining, like something huge that had slithered its way up out of the sea. Andy Stafford in his chauffeur’s greatcoat stood beside it, watching them narrowly, holding his smart peaked cap at his side, his oiled black hair blowing straight back and plastered against his skull. Slight of form in field-gray outfit and polished leggings he had the look of a boy soldier facing into the wind of battle.
Quirke and Phoebe turned and set off walking along the sandy pathway in the lee of the low dunes. A few clapboard holiday homes stood some way back from the sea, their paint peeling and windows hazed over from the salt winds. Quirke on his walking stick had to go gingerly for the ground was uneven and shifting in places and the marram grass looked tough and wiry enough to wrap itself around his ankles and send him sprawling. Despite having to stump along clumsily like this he felt so giddily light in the head it seemed he too might be plucked up by the wind and whirled away into the tumultuous sky. He stopped and brought out his cigarettes but the wind was too strong and his lighter would not light. They went on.