He took up a post in Belfast.
It was not that he was running. It was not that he was afraid he would ever bump into Harry in the street and needed to be sure of avoiding him. It was more that he just needed to go, to be somewhere else for a little while. To be someone else.
He might have gone to London or Paris or even America. There would be different things for him in each of those places, each of them a world away from Dublin. But the aversion to boats that he acquired after Philippe's murder was also an aversion to planes, and the thought of being in a tiny capsule thousands of miles above the earth was enough to make him break out in a cold sweat.
So he took up a post in Belfast, and gave the house in Malahide to Sorelli to use as a base in Dublin, and turned his back on it all.
Turning his back on it all was not to last long. He enjoyed Belfast, he did. The libraries, the people, the university. The Unionist perspective towards the Irish State was far from his own, and while he had no problem with the British people, he did find it uncomfortable with his southern accent, with the Union Jacks flying high.
The highlight of it was Hugh, another professor in the history department, who kissed him when they were both far gone on wine. But the memory of Harry and how it ended meant he did not feel up to getting into any real relationship, and he couldn't bring himself to tell Hugh about Jack, felt it best to keep his time in the sanatorium to himself, so though they shared several pleasant nights and early mornings, he knew it would never become anything more.
Eleven months of Belfast, and when the news came that Noël and Jack McQuillan were thinking about starting a new political party, he decided the time had come to go.
The National Progressive Democrats had aspirations of becoming a great deal more than they were. Only Noël and McQuillan in the Dáil, but they were argumentative enough for ten men, and the parliamentary reports always had something entertaining when one or the other of them got going.
It was the first time Raoul ever officially joined a party. The first time he ever actually considered standing for a party, but he decided his talents lay more with letter writing and articles, the backroom work of discussing potential amendments, than being directly under the spotlight.
It was tempting, true, to consider running in any future general election, but the whirlwind of newspaper campaigns and debates was enough to keep him entertained on top of his research.
Especially when that research included analysis of three previous elections and their newspaper coverage.
Another man might be all electioned-out over it. For Raoul it was just enough to keep him from entertaining ideas of his own political career.
His other project was a book about Philippe.
Twenty years since his brother's death. How could he let that go unacknowledged?
What better person could there be, to write a tribute to him?
It was a duty, not a burden. One of the most important duties he could ever undertake.
Sorelli, when she heard of his idea, nodded and agreed that it was perfect.
"There's never a day that I don't think of him," and her voice was soft as she squeezed his hand. "I think he would be happy for you to write something."
Hearing her gave him all the courage he needed.
Twenty years since Philippe died, and he set pen to paper.
Handwriting it, first, seemed only right. Seemed more significant than simply sitting at his typewriter, and letting his fingers dance across the keys.
He would have to type it sometime, but the first draft should be his own.
He wrote about their parents, their father in the war. Wrote about their sisters who had died, and left out his own illness, left out the fear that must have been Philippe's, of something happening to him. He wrote, a little, about himself as a child, but wrote a good deal more about Philippe taking him to the beach and Philippe teaching him to sail and to ride horses. Wrote about how his brother had loved books, and music, and theatre, how he supported the republican cause and helped to hide Irish Volunteers from the Black and Tans during the War of Independence, the stories that had come down to him.
He wrote about Sorelli, and how Philippe had loved her and intended to marry her, and she told him things to put in, about Philippe writing her letters and visiting her every day in the hospital.
There was a long, late night, where they sat together looking through those old letters, and for the first time the tears didn't come but that ache was still just as heavy in his chest.
He wrote everything he could about the day Philippe died, about the stitched gash on his forehead, and left out that he could not really remember finding out. But he put in the inquiry, and Noël telling him about it when he was in hospital with the appendicitis, and how it seemed like it was the best news he could ever have gotten.
Sorelli read it all, his first reader. And afterwards she hugged him with tears in her eyes, and neither of them spoke a word.
Christine read it, and squeezed his hand, and said, "it's still in the library in my time."
Her time. Seventy years from then. And something lurched inside him, some unnameable thing, to know his brother would still matter, in that far distant future.
He squeezed her hand back. "Thank you."
November 1959, and the story of Philippe's life and death became a bestseller.
The Irish Times gave it an excellent review, and the Irish Independent included photos from its launch, and both of them caught him for interviews.
He was interviewed on the radio, and an English journalist came to ask him all about it.
He interviewed Sorelli too, and that was only fair.
There were two book signings, and Noël started a debate in the Dáil about the victims of renegade republican violence that made it into all the papers, and Christine snorted when she read the report of it and refused to tell him why she was so amused.
"Historian's joke," she said, mischief shining in her eyes, and it was all he could do not to laugh.
New Year's Eve, that year, was the closest thing to a family gathering.
Himself and Sorelli. Christine, and her father.
It was only his third time meeting Alex Daaé (that it didn't leave him completely faint was something of a wonder, considering how he felt the first two times he met the man, one time traveler is quite enough at any given time), and they left the ladies dancing by the fire to go into the library and look at books of old maps. Cartography was, it turned out, a special interest of Alex's, and when Raoul mentioned the old bound diaries of his great-great granduncle (or something like that) who was involved in making the first Ordnance Survey maps, Alex's eyes lit up.
In that moment, Raoul could see exactly where Christine got it from.
Looking at old maps and diaries, and sipping chartreuse, was the best New Year's Eve he had had in a long time.
1960 brought film deals for Sorelli, photographs of Christine sitting in his study looking completely at home there, a series of interviews with veterans of the War of Independence for his new book. It brought going to dances and after parties with Sorelli and touring around the country with Christine while Sorelli was in London. It brought a whole host of wonderful things, and an easiness in his heart that was something strange and new.
Mostly, 1960 brought Darius.
It was, all in all, a good year.
Darius was a professor of literature, over from Cambridge. His special area was the Napoleonic Wars and their appearance or lack thereof in novels of the time. He had an affection for Austen that reminded Raoul of a girl he had briefly been with in his Trinity days. Marietta, or something like that.
He liked his whiskey neat and his cigars expensive, and he had three freckles on his neck that were like a constellation.
Raoul came to know those three freckles very well.
They bumped into each other in the library. Literally bumped into each other. Raoul was reading through The Irish Times as he walked to where the books he knew he wanted would be. And he could admit even then that it was a poor decision to read and walk at the same time, and liable to lead to any number of potential accidents, including falling over the stools for reaching the books on the high shelves (and those bruises had taken weeks to heal).
In his defense, Noël and McQuillan had caused nothing but trouble in the Dáil the day before over the University College Dublin Bill, and the very description of Noël "taking the bit between his teeth" and "storming on" to make a two-hour speech was enough to leave him close to giggling despite his best efforts to remain composed. And that was on the third reading.
(The first time he actually had to stop reading, because the laughter was making him cry.)
He could not be blamed for being quite distracted, as he rounded the corner of the shelves and collided with the new literature professor.
His nose smarted something fierce, but he was just relieved it wasn't bleeding.
"Sorry."
"Sorry."
Two whispered words, and the flash of a bright smile, and that was it.
They went for coffee, and laughed, together, over the descriptions in the newspaper. Before he knew it, coffee with Darius was a daily affair, every morning, and they talked about the weather and the news and their research and anything that came to mind.
It was two weeks later that Sorelli came home from London, and she took one look at Raoul and cocked her brow.
"What's his name?"
His protests that no, he and Darius were not involved, and furthermore he had no interest in being involved, fell on deaf ears.
Sorelli just gave him a knowing smile and asked, "when can I meet him?"
Darius was more than a little taken aback at meeting the Sorelli, but they hit it off, and spent most of the evening discussing Beckett.
Christine smiled at Raoul, and squeezed his hand and said, "I met someone in a library once, too."
(One of the first times she told him something meaningful, something important about her own time, and his name had been (would be?) Nollaig, and he was a law student, and she left out the part that he had died but Raoul could see the sadness in her eyes and thought it best not to pry.)
(When the time did come, that the younger Christine came to his door and told him she had met someone in a library called Nollaig, he thought of that day nearly fifty years earlier, and of Darius, and the soft smile she had worn, and hugged her.)
Coming straight-out and asking Darius if he was a homosexual was not something that it was in any way appropriate to do. He had his suspicions, a feeling in his bones, and Sorelli certainly had hers, and if Christine had any she kept them to herself, but it was not something he could just ask. It was not decent and besides, if he was wrong and he asked, then there was every possibility of Darius becoming suspicious of him, and maybe having him arrested.
So he could not ask, for all that he wondered, and not for the first time he thought of how easy it had been with Jack, how easy it had been with Harry because of Jack, that they could not have such a question over each other.
Would that it could always be as simple as that.
He spent six months wondering over it. Wondering if the vagaries of fate that caused Christine to be a time traveler could also, maybe, cause him to meet his future lover by bumping into him in the library. He thought often of those hands, fingers marred with paper cuts and the touch gentle from turning pages, the skin so dark beside his. Thought of that smile and how it shone. Thought of those dark green eyes, and how they might look in early morning light.
Thought of the constellation freckles on Darius' neck, and what it might be like to kiss them.
Thought of the full softness of his lips, of the line of his arm and how he ached to brush his fingers over it.
(If he thought, more than once, of what it would be like to feel those hands on him, to feel those arms around him, laying him down, if he touched himself with eyes half-closed and whimpered into the darkness to the thoughts of those hands, those lips, that body of firm muscle pressed close to him, then nobody needed to know.)
(If he woke, more than once, from dreams of looking into those eyes, of gasping into that mouth, then that was for him alone to know.)
Noël told him he didn't quite seem himself, and he didn't feel himself but he lied and said he was just busy with his research.
Sorelli offered to ask Darius for him, to "put you out of your misery."
Christine told him that everything would work out for the best in the end, and one of her classic cryptic statements was enough to make him snort.
Darius' fingers, as they brushed the back of his hand handing him a cup of tea, made him shiver.
Belfast in late October.
A conference, the trees blazing orange and gold, the sun burning them in its light and the damp in the air of promised rain to make the world glisten.
He and Darius, and a bottle of wine.
This time, he would know who made the first move.
(Darius, stretching across the sofa.)
"I'm sorry," breathed into his mouth, those deep green eyes shining in apology.
His hand cupping the nape of that neck.
"Don't be."
Their lips, meeting again, Darius pressing him down onto the sofa, the weight of him, the heat, the pressure between his legs, and he spread himself, just a little, just so they could fit better, and Darius' hand slipped up beneath his shirt, and rested, warm, on his belly.
A question, a promise, a whisper.
He closed his eyes, and sighed.
Afterwards, lying together, Darius' fingers tracing his scar (lightly, lightly), half-dozing in the warm afterglow.
"You loved someone before, didn't you?" Darius voice little more than a whisper.
"I did." Jack, before and still, somewhere deep inside. Harry, in some way.
"Tell me about him."
Sing to me the story of…
So he did.
