He turned thirty on 6 January 1953.
He was home by then, had been home for six weeks, and still under orders to be careful and rest. His tuberculosis had been pronounced cured, all sign of active infection gone from his x-rays, gone from his blood, but he was still tired, tired and hollow from the haemorrhage, from the pneumonia.
From grieving Jack.
How could he celebrate his birthday, when Jack—
(Sorelli and Christine stayed with him, that first night he was home, and he slept between them, too exhausted to stay awake, but he surfaced to consciousness sometime in the night, could hear their soft breathing, and tears welled in his eyes, more than he could breathe against, and as he gasped quietly in the darkness all he could wonder was why he had to live. Why?)
He always meant to write something about Jack. He did write about his illness and his time in Newcastle, and it was published in a book that had a semi-decent circulation. He never told Christine about it, the young Christine of these years so very long on from that, not until recently, because it would be one more thing on her mind, and it might upset her, to know how ill he had been once, how close he came to not being here today, and she has always had enough on her mind without being upset by him and the things in his past.
So he didn't tell her until recently, and when he did she hugged him and her eyes were damp.
(Poor girl, but she has been through too much.)
That he has lived to be ninety-four is something of a miracle, to his mind.
And he would have written about Jack. He tried, so many times, looked at his picture and looked down at blank paper and tried to shape ink on it, but the words would never come, and what did come never seemed enough. That he loved him and continued to love him, still, some part deep inside, in spite of his other lovers, the ones who came after, when he knew about himself. It was always Jack, somewhere in his heart, Jack, who had taught him how to love, who had shown him the beauty in himself, who had brought light into his life.
Jack.
What words could ever be enough?
(At Erik's behest he has told him stories. And Erik often seems so young and so old at once, his distorted face and burning eyes, and he never could have had a son, but if he had, he would have liked him to grow up like Erik, with such kindness in his soul.)
(So he has told Erik stories, and some part of him knows that the words he has never been able to find, Erik will be able to frame.)
Even though it was late November when he left the hospital, Sorelli still insisted on daily walks by the beach.
All he wanted was to be left alone. To curl up tight in bed and try to forget how to breathe, and he almost resented her for it, resented her for bringing him out into the world, for trying to make him feel something other than the emptiness.
But she insisted that he needed to re-build his strength, and as she handed him his coat each morning there was no use in arguing with her.
(The cold still sank deep into his bones.)
He said something sharp to her, only once. Only one morning, and he cannot quite remember what it was, only that her eyes blazed at his words, and in a voice that was empty of all emotion she said, "you forget I've been where you are."
It drove the air from his lungs, made him gasp, and she held her head high and stood up and left.
He sat there a long time, feeling only the pounding of his heart, the ugly wound Jack wore as he died swimming before his eyes until it became Philippe's face, still and cold beneath his fingers and that stitched ridge above his eye, and he trembled as he stood, trembled as he went to find her.
Her face was splotched and red from crying, and she pulled him into her arms.
("I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice cracking. "I'm sorry.")
It was a little easier, after that.
His thirtieth birthday and in another world Jack would have been there. But Jack was buried somewhere beneath the clay in Clare, and there were only Christine and Sorelli.
And Noël, bearing a bottle of chartreuse, and the excuse that he was checking up on his health, though he did not stay long, and even then Raoul suspected it to be a ruse, but he kept that to himself.
He can still see Noël's expression, that almost-grimace, can hear his voice through the years, soft, and just a little tougher than normal.
Birthdays have little to recommend them.
In hindsight, it was as good a birthday as it could have been.
The next night Sorelli's play was opening at the Abbey, and Raoul would have gone to see it, if he had had the energy to leave his chair.
She had already forbidden him from attending, for the sake of not overstraining himself, but that would never have stopped him before. Before his illness, before Jack. But that evening the thought of being surrounded by people, of the heat of the theatre, of the closeness of everyone, was enough to make his heart pound hard.
To have to be out in the world— To be around those people he hadn't seen since before his illness— Who could never know, never understand—
The very thought of it was more than he could stand.
As she left he smiled thinly at her, and wished her well, but when she hugged him it did nothing to close the hollowness inside.
It was Christine who forced the life back into him.
Christine, that evening, a Christine who has not come to be in her own time now but who must have been thirty-five then, Christine who took one look at him and decided enough was enough. It was one thing to grieve, quite another to let it control his life, so after Sorelli had left, after he had sat there staring at the flames crackling low in the fireplace so long his eyes were damp from the heat, he heard her sigh, and music wound around him soft and low.
The record player, that he hadn't touched since before Newcastle. The gentle, familiar notes of 'Stardust'.
He looked up at her standing before him, at her hand stretching out, and didn't move an inch, couldn't bring himself to.
She rolled her eyes, and took his hand.
"Get up off the parliamentary side of your arse," and it was the strangest sort of sentence he had ever heard, "and get a little colour in your face."
But the thought of moving, the thought of dancing, and 'Stardust' playing of all songs—
"Come on." And she tugged his hand so that he had no choice but to stand. "You're going to dance," she said, "or so help me but I will play this song over and over until you cannot bear to hear it another minute."
He might have said, "I can't bear to hear it now," but Jack had liked this song, had loved this song, had once made him dance to it around their room when he was still half-stumbling with the vertigo, and the thought of Jack, that Jack would want him to dance—
He nodded dumbly, and let her draw him into his arms.
(It was hardly dancing, them swaying slowly around the parlour, hardly dancing or much of anything at all, but every time the song finished he went to the player and put it back to the start, and when the tears came to his eyes, as she held him close, she didn't mind at all, when they slipped down into her hair.)
(It was years later, forty years and more, while he ranted to her about historical inaccuracy in film after seeing Michael Collins, that she laughed and reminded him of how blank he'd looked when she told him to get up off the parliamentary side of his arse, and he snorted then to think that she'd quoted a film at him that she knew he would one day hate, and the snort turned to laughter, at her and a little at his younger self, for being so damn stubborn even in grief.)
(He has still never liked Michael Collins.)
Sometime around the middle of January it possessed him that he wasn't happy with the library in the house in Malahide. It started by just rearranging a few things, moving the old medical books to where he couldn't see them anymore and be reminded of their presence. And then he needed to fill the space left by them, so he brought in the history books from his office. Then he wasn't happy that they were all arranged by surname under general topics and he took everything off the shelves and drew up a map to rearrange it by general topic and specific topic and then by year of publication and surname.
It was early February by the time he was finished, with Christine and Sorelli enlisted as his helpers, but he looked at it all at the end and didn't feel any bit better for having done it.
The restlessness that compelled him to rearrange the library (and his study, and his collection of records, and his wardrobe) stayed with him, even through his daily walks on the beach, even through finally bracing himself enough to go to the theatre and see Sorelli's play. He walked to Glasnevin to visit Philippe on one cool day in late March, but still there was this thing burning inside of him that it was impossible to shake.
It was April. And he sat into the car that he hadn't touched in more than a year, that Sorelli had driven to keep it from getting damp, to keep the engine in order, and with only a note left to tell her that he was going, he left.
Clare.
Clare, where Jack's grandfather lived.
He had only the vaguest idea where the graveyard was, that only because Harry had clipped out the death notice and sent it to him, and Sorelli hid it until he had recovered enough from the haemorrhage to remember that Jack was dead, recovered enough that the shock would not trigger another one.
By the sea.
Overlooking the vast Atlantic, perched high on a cliff.
Such a place for a graveyard.
And he thought of a cottage that they had talked about having, and decided there was no where else Jack would rather be.
He looked down at that name carved into the stone before him, and the pain in his chest was such it felt as if he was haemorrhaging still.
He should have brought flowers.
He only thought of them afterwards.
To have deprived Jack of flowers—
He drove home. Drove home from Clare so fast it would have put Noël to shame. He had considered visiting Jack's grandfather, but the thought of seeing that old man, the thought of going to that man who had buried the grandson he thought the world of ,never knowing he was a homosexual, to go to him and lie and say that they had only been friends—
It was more than he could take. Too much. All of it too much.
It was after one a.m. when he stumbled in the door, legs too weak to support him anymore. After one a.m. and the house was quiet but he knew Sorelli would be waiting for him, knew she could hardly be sleeping.
And he found her, sitting in an armchair by the fire, reading a newspaper, or pretending to be. She looked up from it when he came in, and her eyes widened, her face paling, and before he could say anything, before he could open his mouth, she set the paper down and stood up and came to him, and drew him into her arms.
The tears that had been threatening beneath the surface, that had tried to blind his vision the whole way home, came hot and fast, and they sank to the floor, his head on her shoulder, her face in his hair and as he gasped for breath she tightened her arms around him, and rocked him and neither of them spoke, but neither of them needed to.
(It was the first time he had truly slept, slept without seeing Jack's pale face, slept without waking sweating, and when, at last, he did wake, it was there on the floor, still in Sorelli's arms, to the grey light of dawn, the fire burned out.)
(For the first time since Jack died, he felt light.)