house, I knew it as soon as I crossed the threshold. With the milk and the bag of eggs in my hands I stood motionless, not breathing, nostrils flared and one ear lifted, an animal invaded in its lair. Calm summer light stood in the hall and three flies were circling in tight formation under a peculiarly repulsive, bare grey light-bulb. Not a sound. What was it that was amiss, what scent or signal had I caught? There was a flaw in the atmosphere, a lingering ripple where someone had passed through. Cautiously I moved from room to room, mounted the stairs, the tendons in my knees creaking, even peered into the damp-smelling broom cupboard behind the scullery door, but found no one lurking there. Outside, then? I went to the windows, checking the co-ordinates of my world: the square in front, innocent of any sign that I could see, and at the back the garden, tree, fields, far hills, all Sunday-still in the cottony light of afternoon. I was in the kitchen when I heard a sound behind me. My scalp tingled and a bead of sweat came out at the hairline and ran a little way swiftly down my forehead and stopped. I turned. A girl was standing in the doorway with the light of the hall behind her. The first impression I had was of a general slight lopsidedness. Her eyes were not quite level, and her mouth drooped at one side in the slack lewd way of the bored young. Even the hem of her dress was crooked. She said nothing, only stood there eyeing me with dull candour. Some moments of uncertain silence passed. I might have taken her for another hallucination, but she was far too solidly herself for that. Still neither of us spoke, then there was a shuffle and a cough, and behind her Quirke appeared, stooping apologetically, the nervous fingers of one hand jiggling at his side. Today he was wearing a blue blazer with brass buttons and a high shine on the elbows, a shirt that had once been white, narrow tie, grey slacks sagging in the rear, grey leather slip-ons with buckles on the insteps, white socks. He had cut himself shaving again, a bit of bloodstained toilet paper was stuck to his chin, a white floweret with a tiny rust-red heart. Under his arm he carried a large scuffed black cardboard box tied with a black silk ribbon.
“You asked about the house,” he said—had I? “I have it all”— bending a glance in the direction of the box—“here.”
He stepped past the girl and came forward eagerly and put the box on the kitchen table and undid the ribbon and with loving deftness set out his documents, fanning them like a hand of outsize cards, talking the while. “I’m what you might call a spoilt solicitor,” he said with a melancholy leer, showing big, wax-coloured teeth. He was leaning across the table, holding out to me a sheaf of yellow-edged pages crawled all over by elaborate sepia script. I took them and held them in my hands and looked at them; they had the flat, mildewed fragrance of dried chrysanthemums. I scanned the words. Whereas . . . hereinunder . . . given this day of . . . A gathering yawn made my nostrils tighten. The girl came and stood at Quirke’s shoulder and looked on in listless curiosity. He had launched into an elaborate account of a historic, long-running and intricate dispute over land rent and boundaries and rights of way, illustrating each stage of the wrangle with its piece of parchment, its deeds, its map. As he spoke I saw the players in the little drama, the shovel-hatted fathers and long-suffering mothers, the hothead sons, the languishing consumptive daughters with their needlepoint and novels. And I pictured Quirke, too, got up in fustian, like them, high-collared in a dank attic room, crouched over his papers by the glimmer of a guttering candle stub, while the night wind sighed through the slates and cats prowled the cramped back gardens under a moon like a paring of polished tin . . . “The son got hold of the old one’s will and burned it,” he was saying in a husky, confiding whisper,
“You asked about the house,” he said—had I? “I have it all”— bending a glance in the direction of the box—“here.”
He stepped past the girl and came forward eagerly and put the box on the kitchen table and undid the ribbon and with loving deftness set out his documents, fanning them like a hand of outsize cards, talking the while. “I’m what you might call a spoilt solicitor,” he said with a melancholy leer, showing big, wax-coloured teeth. He was leaning across the table, holding out to me a sheaf of yellow-edged pages crawled all over by elaborate sepia script. I took them and held them in my hands and looked at them; they had the flat, mildewed fragrance of dried chrysanthemums. I scanned the words. Whereas . . . hereinunder . . . given this day of . . . A gathering yawn made my nostrils tighten. The girl came and stood at Quirke’s shoulder and looked on in listless curiosity. He had launched into an elaborate account of a historic, long-running and intricate dispute over land rent and boundaries and rights of way, illustrating each stage of the wrangle with its piece of parchment, its deeds, its map. As he spoke I saw the players in the little drama, the shovel-hatted fathers and long-suffering mothers, the hothead sons, the languishing consumptive daughters with their needlepoint and novels. And I pictured Quirke, too, got up in fustian, like them, high-collared in a dank attic room, crouched over his papers by the glimmer of a guttering candle stub, while the night wind sighed through the slates and cats prowled the cramped back gardens under a moon like a paring of polished tin . . . “The son got hold of the old one’s will and burned it,” he was saying in a husky, confiding whisper,
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