Holy Orders A Quirke Novel by Benjamin Black

Author:Benjamin Black [Black, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780805094404
Amazon: 0805094407
Barnesnoble: 0805094407
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2013-08-19T23:00:00+00:00

13

Phoebe had moved the previous winter from a bed–sitting room in Baggot Street to a flat in Herbert Place. She had hesitated over moving there, since that was where her friend April Latimer had lived before her disappearance. But Phoebe was not superstitious, and anyway the flat was at the other end of the street from where April’s had been. And it was a lovely flat; she was lucky to have found it. She had two big rooms on the first floor, the front one overlooking the canal and Huband Bridge and the willow tree that grew there. The back room, the bedroom, was a bit gaunt, with heavy mahogany furniture—a vast wardrobe, two chests of drawers, and a tallboy—but it had a big square-shaped window that was always full of light, particularly in the morning, and quite a few of its many small panes seemed to be the original glass, and gave a wonderful rippling effect, especially when rain was streaming down them. Strange to think of the generations of people, long gone now, who had stood here, looking out on the gardens and the mews and, beyond them, the roofs of the houses on Herbert Street. She did not mind that her father lived just round the corner, in Mount Street; she knew there would be no question of his dropping in on her. The very notion of Quirke dropping in on anyone was laughable.

She had offered Sally the bedroom, but Sally had taken one look at the four-poster double bed with its absurdly squat legs and said she would be fine on the sofa in the front room. There were spare sheets and a pillow, but for bedclothes she had to make do with a wool throw from the back of one of the armchairs, with her own overcoat on top. When they had done assembling the makeshift bed they stood back to admire it, with their hands on their hips, and smiled at each other in complicitous fashion; friends already, Phoebe thought, and something thickened for a moment at the back of her throat.

Phoebe made cocoa for both of them and with their mugs they sat on the floor in front of the gas fire in the lamplight, listening to the sound of the rain falling outside. Phoebe was reminded of being at boarding school, that time one Easter when she was fifteen, and she and another girl had stayed on when everyone else had gone home for the holidays. Phoebe’s parents had been away in America, visiting her grandfather, who was ill. She could not remember what the reason was for the other girl staying behind. Her name, Phoebe remembered, was Monique, which seemed very exotic, like the name of someone in a foreign film. It had been exciting, in a queer, cozy sort of way, being there together, just the two of them, in the almost deserted school, with only the head nun, Sister Aloysius, and a couple of young novices to look after them.

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