They went on until the road took them around a bend, and then stopped. There was a sensation of gliding, and settling, as if they had landed gently out of the air. Phoebe put three fingers over her mouth. Had she really laughed? “What did you think you were doing?” she cried. “We could have been killed.” He did not turn to her, only slid himself forward at the hips with a luxuriating sigh and rested his head on the back of the seat. He put on his chauffeur’s cap, too, and tipped it over his eyes. She sat up very straight and glared at him, at the little that she could see of him, in the almost horizontal angle he was sprawled at. “And why have you stopped?”
“Catch our breath,” he said, his voice coming up relaxed and amused from under the peak of his cap. She could think of nothing else to say. He reached up and adjusted the mirror and his eyes sprang at her again, seeming set more closely together than ever and cut across halfway by the shiny cap brim. He said in a low, insinuating sort of drawl, “Think I could try one of them English cigarettes?”
She hesitated. She could hardly refuse, but honestly-! She felt distinctly giddy still. She snapped open the silver case and offered it over the padded back of the bench seat. He reached his left hand lazily across and took a cigarette, making sure his fingertips brushed against her hand. She could have done with another cigarette herself-she was beginning to understand why people smoked-but she knew obscurely that she must not seem to be joining him in anything that smacked of intimacy. She shut the case and returned it to her handbag-or purse, she must remember to say purse, in this country-and took out her lipstick instead, and peered into the little mirror of her compact. She could see clearly the two spots of bright pink on her cheekbones and the unsuppressible, almost wild light in her eyes. Well, at least she was not sleepy anymore.
But when she had fixed her lips and put the lipstick and the compact away there seemed nothing else to do except sit with her hands in her lap and try not to look prim. The invisible thing that had sprouted earlier out of the silence between the two of them was turning rank now. Abruptly Andy Stafford stirred himself and rolled his window down a little way and threw out the unsmoked three-quarters of the cigarette.
“Tastes like rawhide,” he said.
He settled down as before, with his arms folded and his cap tipped over his eyes.
“Are you intending to stay here all day?” Phoebe demanded.
He waited a moment, and then said, putting on now the lazy, good-old-boy version of his drawclass="underline"
“Why don’t you come and sit up here in front, with me?”
She gave a little gasp.
“I think,” she said, with all the weight and command she could muster, “that you should take me home.”
It was peculiar, talking to him like this, ridiculous, really, since all she could see of him was the crown of his cap. He snickered and said:
“Home? That’s a long way, even for a car as fancy as this one.”
“You know very well what I mean,” she snapped. “Come on, drive-and not as if we’re in a race.”
He straightened, taking his time, and started up the engine. At the next crossroads he steered them back in the direction of the coast. They did not speak now, but she could sense how pleased he was with himself. Had he really said that, about her coming into the front seat with him? Yet for all the indignation she was forcing herself to feel she was aware of another, altogether involuntary feeling, a sort of buzzing, burning sensation at the front of her mind that was uncomfortable and yet not entirely unpleasant, and her cheeks stung as if she had been slapped in a hard yet playful, provocative way. And when they arrived at the house and he made a little prancing leap out of the car in order to open the door for her before she had even begun to reach for the handle he gave her a look that was at once mocking, intimate, and inquiring, and she knew he was asking her wordlessly if she intended to tell the others-Quirke, Rose, his employer-of all that had taken place in this past, fraught hour-but what was it, exactly, that had taken place?-and try not to as she might she responded to his silent query with a silent reply of her own. No, she would not tell, and they both knew it. Blushing, her forehead and cheeks fairly on fire by now, she brushed past him, not daring to look into his eyes again, saying only, and trying to make it sound brusque and offhand, that he had better go back to the village and collect Mr. Quirke.
THE MAN WAS WAITING FOR HIM ON A CORNER OF THE VILLAGE’S MAIN street. He looked like a big old storm-tossed crow, leaning there on his stick with his black coat blowing out sideways in the wind and his black hat tilted down over his face. Andy got out and made to open the passenger door, hoping Quirke would sit beside him, but Quirke had already opened a rear door and was climbing into the back seat. There was something about Quirke that Andy liked, or that at least he respected-he guessed that was the word. Maybe it was just Quirke’s size-Andy’s father had been a big man-and they had hardly got under way again when he started to tell him about his plan for Stafford Limos. As he talked, the plan came to seem more and more possible, more and more real, so that after a while it was almost as if Stafford Limos was already in operation. Quirke did not say much, but that was all right since Andy, as Andy realized, was really talking to himself.
He was about to turn off the road and head for Moss Manor when Quirke interrupted him-he had got up to the Porsche that he was going to buy with his first six months’ profits from the limo scheme-and said that he wanted to go to Brookline.
“A place called St. Mary’s,” Quirke said. “It’s an orphanage.”
Andy said nothing, only turned the car. He felt a trickling sensation down his spine. He did not have to be told; he knew where and what St. Mary’s was. He had thought he would never again find himself anywhere near the place and now here was this guy wanting to be taken there. Why? Was he one of the Knights of Whatever-it-was, over from Ireland to do some checking up on the facilities, see how the kids were being cared for, if the nuns were behaving themselves? And was he going to go there without telling Mr. Crawford? Andy began to relax. That must be it: Quirke was a snoop. That was fine. He even liked the idea of Quirke getting the goods on old man Crawford and that bitch Stephanus-what kind of a name was that anyway?-and the harp priest Harkins. There was a thing or two Andy himself could have told Quirke, if it was not for the business with the kid. Again he felt that trickle along his backbone. What if Quirke found out about the kid dying? What if-but no. How would he find out, and who would tell him? Not Stephanus or the priest, and old Crawford probably knew nothing about the accident, and had probably even forgotten about the kid itself, since there were so many at St. Mary’s and at the other places all over the state. For everyone, little Christine was history, and her name was likely never going to be mentioned again. Still, it was a pity he could not let Quirke know just what sort of a joint St. Mary’s was-unless, of course, he knew already.
28
QUIRKE HAD NOT EXPECTED A RECEPTION PARTY. HE HAD TELEPHONED St. Mary’s from a bar in the village. He had been kept waiting on the line for a long time, feeding dimes into the phone and listening to his own breathing making sounds like the sea in the mouthpiece, before he was put through to the Mother Superior. In a crisply cold voice she had tried to establish who exactly he was and what his business with her might be. He told her his name, and said that he was staying at Josh Crawford’s house, and asked for ten minutes of her time, adding that the matter was a delicate one and that he would prefer not to speak of it over the phone. When she heard who he was he fancied he heard a quick indrawing of her breath. The more evasive he became the more suspicious she sounded, but in the end, and with lingering reluctance, she agreed that he might come to Brookline. He put down the phone and ordered another scotch: it was a little early in the day, but he needed to fortify himself.