Christine Falls: A Novel by Black Benjamin

Author:Black, Benjamin [Black, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2007-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

19

QUIRKE HAD ARRANGED TO MEET BARNEY BOYLE AT BAGGOT STREET bridge. They strolled along the towpath where Quirke had walked with Sarah the Sunday that seemed so long ago now. It was morning, and a vapid sun was struggling to shine through the November mist, and there was a ghostly silence everywhere, as if the two men were alone in all the city. Barney wore a black overcoat that reached almost to his heels; beltless and buttonless, it swirled about his short fat legs like a heavy cloak as he toddled along. Outdoors, in daylight, he had a slightly dazed and bashful air. He said it was a long time since he had seen the world in the morning, and that in the interval there had been no improvement at all that he could make out. He coughed raucously. “Too much fresh air for you,” Quirke said. “Here, have a cigarette.” He struck a match and Barney leaned forward and cupped a babyish fist around the flame, his fingertips touching the back of Quirke’s hand, and Quirke was struck as he always was by this peculiar little act of intimacy, one of the very few allowed among men; it was rumored, he recalled, that Barney had an eye for the boys. “Ah, Jesus,” Barney breathed, blowing a trumpet of smoke into the mist, “that’s better.” Barney, the people’s poet and playwright of the working class, in fact lived, despite those rumors of queer leanings, with his long-suffering wife, a genteel water-colorist and something of a beauty, in a venerable white-walled house in leafy Donnybrook. But he still had his contacts in the old, bad world that had produced him. Quirke wanted information and Barney had been, as he put it, asking around the place.

“Oh, all the brassers knew Dolly Moran,” he said. Quirke nodded. Brassers were whores, he assumed, but how? Brass nails, rhyming with tails, or was it something to do with screws? Barney’s slang seemed all of his own making. “She was the one they went to when they were in trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“Up the pole—you know.”

“And she’d fix it for them? Herself?”

“They say she was a dab hand with the knitting needle. Didn’t charge, either, apparently. Did it for the glory.”

“Then how did she live?”

“She was well provided for. That’s the word, anyway.”

“Who by?”

“Party or parties unknown.”

Quirke frowned ahead into the mist.

“Look at them fuckers,” Barney said, stopping. Three ducks were paddling through the sedge, uttering soft quacks of seeming complaint. “God, I hate them yokes.” He brightened. “Did I ever tell you the one about my Da and the ducks?”

“Yes, Barney, you did. Many times.”

Barney pouted. “Oh, well, excuse me.” He had finished his cigarette. “Will we go for a pint?” he said.

“For God’s sake, Barney, it’s eleven o’clock in the morning.”

“Is it? Jesus, we better hurry up, then.”

They went to the 47 on Haddington Road. They were the only customers at that hour. The stale stink of last night’s cigarette smoke still hung on the sleepy air.

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