Even the Dead (5 page)

She looked around the room. Clerks, shoppers, farmers’ wives up from the country. How Jimmy used to turn up his nose when he came in here, Jimmy the newshound, Jimmy the hotshot. All the same, he’d secretly liked the place. He had once said it reminded him of the kitchen at home, down the country, with the tea stewing on the range and his mother making fairy cakes.

She drank a cup of tea and ate half the sandwich. She had lost her appetite; the note from this Lisa person had taken it away. She had an urge to jump up and run over to the Green, to the bench by the pond, and clear up the mystery. Instead she made herself light a cigarette and sat smoking it, trying to see Lisa in her mind, trying to conjure up an image of her.

Ordinary,
the waitress had said.

She finished the cigarette, and folded the note and put it into a side pocket in her handbag, paid the bill, and left.

In the street the sunlight blinded her for a second or two. Then she crossed the road, past the jarveys on their jaunting cars, past the heavy, rich smell of their horses, and went in the park by the small gate, plunging into the shade under the trees like a diver, she thought, cleaving smoothly through the surface of a swimming pool, into its dimmer depths. She walked along the cool pathway under the row of lindens. She passed by the little humpbacked bridge.

When she saw the young woman sitting on the bench she remembered her at once. She was pale-complexioned, with dark chestnut hair. She wore no makeup. Her cream-colored linen dress was expensive but not new. She sat very straight, gazing before her as if in a trance, both hands clasped on her handbag on her lap.

“Lisa?”

The young woman started. “Oh!” she said. “It’s you. I didn’t think you’d come.”

Phoebe sat down beside her. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t remember your second name.”

“Smith,” the young woman said quickly, and bit her lip. “Lisa Smith. You remember me, from the agency?”

“Yes, of course I remember. I just couldn’t recall your name.”

The young woman was obviously in a state of terror. She was trembling all over, like a pony that had been galloping in panic for a long time and now had been brought to a stop.

“I couldn’t come into the café,” she said. “That’s why I gave the note to the waitress.”

“But—why couldn’t you come in?” Phoebe asked.

“I didn’t want anyone to see me. There might be someone there that knew me.” She put the knuckle of her thumb to her mouth and bit hard on it. “I have to keep moving, I feel if I stay in the open no one will—” She stopped.

“No one will what?”

Lisa looked away, the whites of her eyes flashing. “I don’t know,” she muttered.

“Well, anyway,” Phoebe said, trying to sound brisk and cheerful, “I’m glad to see you again. I don’t think we spoke much, when we were on the course, did we?”

“We just said hello, I think,” Lisa said. “You were always so busy.”

She looked away again, and Phoebe watched her. She really was terrified—but what was it she was terrified of?

“Can I ask,” Phoebe said carefully, “can I ask what it is you want to talk to me about?”

Lisa gave her head a rapid shake, not of refusal but in bewilderment. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know how to explain.” She opened her handbag and took out a packet of Craven A and a box of matches. She pushed open the packet and offered it to Phoebe. “Would you like one?”

Phoebe shook her head. Lisa’s hand was trembling so badly she could hardly hold the flame of the match steady to light the cigarette.

“You seem upset,” Phoebe said. “Will you tell me what the matter is?”

“I have to get away,” Lisa said in a low, urgent voice. “I have to find somewhere to hide.”

“Hide?” Phoebe said, a tingle running down her spine. “Hide from what?”

Lisa gave another quick shake of the head. “I can’t tell you.” She was even less of a smoker than Phoebe was, and kept taking little pecks at her cigarette and letting the smoke out almost as soon as she had drawn it in. “Something happened,” she said. “Something—terrible, and I have to get away.” She turned her head suddenly and looked directly at Phoebe. Her lower lip was trembling, and she seemed on the point of tears. Her eyes were a glittering shade of green. “Will you help me? There’s no one else I can ask.” She looked away then and put a hand to her forehead. “What am I saying? We’re practically strangers, we’ve hardly exchanged a word before in our lives, and here I am, begging you to help me. You must think I’m mad.”

Phoebe frowned. What was she supposed to say, what was she supposed to do? It was true, they were strangers, or as good as; certainly she knew nothing about this young woman, who she was or where she came from or why she was in such a desperate state. Yet she felt a tug of sympathy for her, and a sense that she must find a way to help her. Phoebe knew what fear was, knew what it was to be frightened and alone.

“But tell me,” Phoebe said, “why you came to me?”

“I didn’t! I just looked in the window of the café and saw you there and recognized you. I remembered you from the course. You seemed nice. So I wrote the note and asked the waitress to give it to you.” She took another quick, ineffectual drag on her cigarette. “I have no one, no one I can go to. My mother is dead, my father—” She stopped again, and tears welled in her eyes. “There’s no one,” she whispered, “no one.”

Phoebe looked around. On the bench next to them a tramp was asleep, lying full-length on his side with his joined hands cradling his cheek; he looked, Phoebe thought, like the figure of a saint on a tomb. By the pond a small boy was trying to launch a toy sailboat, his nursemaid in her white bonnet standing by, seeming bored and distracted. Ducks quacked, waggling their rear ends. A seagull swooped down, veered, and climbed the air again. The sky was blue, with little white puffs of floating cloud. This was the world, familiar, comforting; terror had no place here, yet here it was, plain in this young woman’s face, in her trembling hands, in the wild look of her eyes.

“What do you want to do?” Phoebe asked.

“What?” Lisa stared at her, uncomprehending.

“I mean, do you want to leave the country, is that it?”

“Yes. No. It doesn’t matter. No, I don’t want to go away. I can’t. I just need somewhere to be for a while, somewhere where no one will find me.”

“And you can’t tell me why.”

“No. Not now, anyway.” She shook her head yet again. “You probably think I’m some kind of con artist, trying to fool you into helping me so I can rob you. I swear, I’m not.”

Phoebe had an urge to put a hand on hers, but didn’t.

“I believe you,” she said, not knowing what it was exactly she was supposed to believe in.

The young woman caught something in her tone and looked at her more closely. “Have you been in trouble, in your life?”

“Yes,” Phoebe said, “I have. A long time ago—at least, it seems a long time.”

“What was it?—what happened?”

“It doesn’t matter. When you’re ready to tell me your story, maybe I’ll tell you mine. In the meantime, I think I know a place where you can go.”

“A place? Where?”

“At the seaside. Come on, I have to make a phone call.”

Lisa, who had relaxed a little, was suddenly tense again. “Come where?”

“Just over to the Shelbourne. There’s a public phone there, in the bar—I always use it.”

Lisa pressed her lips together tightly. She seemed very young suddenly, like a stubborn child. “I don’t want to go in there, into that hotel,” she said. “There are people who might see me there, too. That’s why I have to get away.”

“How do you mean?”

“There are people who will be looking for me. I can’t say any more, please don’t ask me.”

“All right,” Phoebe said. “Will you wait here?”

“Will you be long?”

“I’ll be as quick as I can. There’s a car I need to borrow, which is why I have to make a phone call.”

“Then I’ll wait,” Lisa said. She had thrown away her cigarette and was clutching her handbag again. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am. You really must think I’m some crazy person that’s latched onto you.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy. But you’ll have to tell me, sooner or later, what you’re afraid of.”

“I will, I will tell you, if I can.”

Phoebe stood up. “I want you to promise me that you’ll be here when I come back. You have to trust me, as I’m trusting you. If you go, I’ll never know what became of you, and that wouldn’t be fair. Would it?”

“I promise,” Lisa said. “But if I’m not here, I give you my word it won’t be because I went off of my own free will.”

Phoebe nodded. “I can’t think what kind of awful trouble you’re in, but I’ll do my best to help you.”

She turned quickly and walked back the way she had come. As she was about to cross the street, she paused and looked about herself carefully. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she had a crawling sensation across her back that suggested she was being watched. She told herself she was imagining things. But then, things had happened to her in the past, violent, savage things, that she would have thought were beyond imagining.

*   *   *

David answered on the third ring. She had called him at the pathology lab. She told him she needed to borrow the Morris Minor. When he asked her what for, she had her answer prepared: “I told Quirke I’d take him to hospital for his checkup.” She always referred to her father by his name; she couldn’t imagine calling him anything else.

“What hospital?” David asked. He sounded suspicious.

“St. James’s. Then I said maybe he and I would go for a spin in the country. Do you mind? Will you need the car?”

“No, I don’t need it at the moment. It’s in the garage.”

“Well then, can I have it?”

He was silent for some seconds. “Since when did you start taking Quirke for spins in the country?”

“He needs to get out. He’s been cooped up for weeks in that mausoleum on Ailesbury Road.”

Again a silence. “Oh, all right. You’ll have to come and get the keys.”

“I’ll be there shortly.”

She hung up, hearing the pennies fall inside the box, then left the hotel and hurried back across the street. She hadn’t really expected Lisa to be there still, and was surprised to find her sitting as she had left her, stiff with fear, her handbag on her lap.

“I’ll have to go to the Holy Family Hospital,” Phoebe said. “The car belongs to my—to my boyfriend, and I have to get the key from him.”

“Your boyfriend? Is he a doctor?”

Phoebe smiled wryly. “Sort of,” she said. “Now I’m going to get us a taxi. You’ll come with me.”

“I—”

“That wasn’t a question. I’m not going to leave you sitting here, frightened out of your life. You’ll be better off with me. You can wait outside the hospital, in the taxi, until I’ve got the car key.”

They hurried to the main gate and left the park and crossed to the taxi rank at the top of Grafton Street. There was a single taxi waiting, all its windows rolled fully down. The driver, a fat bald pink man, was asleep, his head resting at an awkward angle on the back of the seat and his mouth open. When Phoebe touched him, he snorted and shook himself, blinking.

The taxi inside smelled of hot leather, cigarette smoke, and of something else, warm and fleshy, that had to be the driver. He talked about the weather, complaining of the heat. “Can’t keep my eyes open,” he said, “then I’m awake all night, sweating. The wife says she’s going to leave me.” He chuckled, phlegm rattling in his throat. “You’re welcome, says I, off you go.”

The two young women in the back seat were not listening. They sat with their heads turned away from each other, watching the scorched streets go past, a hot wind through the open windows shivering their hair and making their eyes sting.

At the hospital Phoebe told the driver to stop and wait outside the front door. She ran inside, and at Reception asked for the key David had left there for her. The young woman at the desk gave her a surly look—David was the most eligible bachelor at the Holy Family, even if he was a Jew—and handed her the key ring.

“Thanks,” Phoebe said, and the receptionist, a mousy little thing with a cast in her eye, said sourly, “You’re welcome, I’m sure,” and turned away.

Lisa was huddled against the upholstery in the back seat of the taxi, her head sunk between her shoulders and her hands gripping each other in her lap.

“All right,” Phoebe said, “now we go to your place and pick up some necessities. How long will you need to be gone for?”

The question only added to Lisa’s anxiety. “I don’t know,” she said. “I hadn’t thought.”

“Well, you’ll just have to pack whatever you think you’ll need.”

“Need for where?”

“I told you—the seaside. Well, nearly the seaside. There’s a cottage, a chalet really, at—” She glanced at the back of the taxi man’s head; Lisa’s paranoia was catching. “You’ll see when we get there,” she said. “It’ll be fine. Now: where do you live?”

“Rathmines. I have a flat.”

“Good. We can pick up the car first.”

When he wasn’t using it, David kept the Morris Minor in a lock-up garage in a mews lane behind Herbert Place, where she had her flat. Phoebe didn’t like to drive, and rarely did, but this was an emergency. When she had paid the taxi fare—Lisa had tried to give her the money for it but she had brushed her aside—she unlocked the galvanized-iron door and with Lisa’s help dragged it up and open.

She hoped there was petrol in the tank. David often forgot to fill it, and they had got stranded more than once; he really shouldn’t have a car at all.

The engine was cold—yet how could it be, since the day was so hot?—and she had to use the crank handle to get it started. Then it took her a good five minutes to maneuver out of the narrow space and into the lane. Together she and Lisa hauled the heavy door down again, and Phoebe locked it. Having to help with these things seemed to calm Lisa a little, and she even smiled when Phoebe swore after letting the clutch out too quickly, making the little car buck like a startled horse.

Rathmines was quiet, basking in the afternoon’s hazy sunlight. Lisa’s flat was on the second floor of a tall, shabby, red-brick terrace house. Lisa went into the bedroom to pack, and Phoebe stood in the living room trying not to look about her too closely; she always felt uneasy in places where other people lived and disliked being among their intimate possessions, which always seemed to her somehow vulnerable and sad. Not that Lisa seemed to have many things of her own. The furnishings were the usual cheap stuff that only landlords would dream of buying. A few pictures hung on the walls, bad reproductions in plastic frames, but there were no photographs of relatives or friends. There was no smell, either, except the usual one that rented flats had. Maybe Lisa had just moved in and hadn’t yet had time to impress anything of herself on the place. Or maybe her impression was so light that it hadn’t registered, and never would.