The highlight of the early '70s was Sorelli winning her Academy Award. An excellent highlight, as things go.
It would prove to be the highest point for several years to come.
Not that it was all bad. There were moments shining through, things that were great at the time and continue to be in memory even as they feel a little darker, a little tainted by what was happening around them.
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, for playing a stern mother in a romance film. She had been offered a war film as well, the role of a matron in an army hospital and it would have paid more, but she turned it down as she did every war film she was ever offered.
It was a personal thing, a principle, and Raoul loved her all the more for it.
And as it happened, turning down the war film was for the best. It was a complete flop, and though the romance has been almost lost to time, there's something oddly satisfying in knowing that on a list somewhere of award winners, the name Sorelli Conway is listed, and can never be forgotten.
Darius had gone with her to America, as moral support. And Raoul spent the night pacing and smoking cigarettes, waiting for the phone call that would come and tell him whether she had won or not. And when it finally came, he laughed and cried to hear her voice on the line, to hear the tears and her smile, and Darius' laugh. And when the line broke up he found the half-bottle of chartreuse and drank a toast to her name, with only the fire as his witness.
They went for dinner when she got home. Himself and Darius, and her and Christine. And they chose a small place in Bray, because such was the fuss that to see her out in Dublin would have made it into the papers, and they wanted peace to celebrate.
And then they went dancing, just themselves, in the parlour of the house in Malahide, and it was the best celebration they could have had.
It was in June that year that Skeff died.
The news of it was such a shock that Darius made sure he was sitting first before telling him.
It was not as if Skeff had been well. He had had a recurring problem with his heart for years, and Raoul had often visited him on his stays in hospital. He was even after spending a few weeks in hospital again, but Raoul was so sure that he was doing better, and then to hear that he was dead—
The weakness was enough to make his head spin.
Skeff.
Skeff who he had known for the best part of thirty years. Skeff who held informal Sunday discussions of literature and politics and society that Raoul went to just as often as he could. Skeff who visited him in Newcastle and when he was confined to his bed before Newcastle and who brought him stories from Trinity to keep him from getting bored, who told him of his own time in the sanatorium in Davos and helped him feel a little more real in those weeks after his diagnosis, before he ever met Jack. Skeff. How could he be dead?
It was all he could do to breathe steady, and Darius pressed a glass of brandy into his hand.
(It was Noël who had told Darius, and when Raoul read the next morning the lovely things that Noël said about Skeff in the papers, that was when the tears came.)
Skeff's death coloured the whole summer.
He left Dublin with Sorelli, left Darius to his writing, and they went for a long drive around the country, lasting two weeks. They spoke only as much as they needed, shared the driving between them, as if they both knew they needed to run, needed to get away, just for a little while.
And when he got back to Dublin it was to the news that he had been offered a regular column in the Irish Times, if he wanted to take it. And he hesitated, unsure, because it was one thing to write letters or the odd article, and it was quite another to write a regular column, but Darius squeezed his hand and kissed his cheek, and whispered, "something practical for you to do."
He was always better when he had something practical to do, so he took it.
Darius made him feel real, gave him form when he felt himself falling adrift. The weight of him at night, pressed close, made it easier to breathe.
He did not dream so much of Philippe, with Darius' breath soft in his ear.
In December that year, with Sorelli and Christine, they sat together on the sofa and split a bottle of wine, while they watched the documentary RTÉ had made about Noël. And Raoul couldn't put his finger on it, but there was this odd heavy feeling in his heart, even surrounded by these people the dearest in the world to him, even seeing that slight smile in Noël's face on the screen. Beyond words, this strange feeling, and it was not just the shots of Newcastle sanatorium, not just the memory of walking those halls. The sanatorium had been closed for seven years by then, these black-and-white images of it seeming far from real. It was not seeing that that brought it on, more a sense of something, an odd feeling of time.
He caught Christine's eye, he has always remembered that, ever since, how her eyes seemed especially blue that evening, a little watery, and the smile she gave him held that unnameable thing from deep in his chest.
He might have asked her, maybe, what it was that drew those almost-tears to her eyes, but he never has, not then, and not in all of the years since.
It does not feel like the sort of thing to be spoken of.
Sorelli spent a good part of the summer of 1971 in hospital.
Gallbladder problems, and it had to come out. And then there was an infection that condemned her to stay there a while longer. He visited her every day, brought her flowers and books and newspapers and scraps of things he'd heard. And she was bored and sore and frustrated at being in hospital for the first time since the TB in her bones, the first time in thirty years, and he knew she was full of memories, knew they were coming sharp and keen, and there was nothing either of them could say, there, about them.
It was the first time he really noticed the grey in her hair.
Darius had had to go to London, to meet with his publisher. And Raoul lay down on their bed, and thought of these new silver threads in Sorelli's hair, and let the tears come.
(Afterwards, after she left the hospital, he insisted she stay with him until she was well, and she moved into that downstairs room he had lived in, when he was newly diagnosed with his tuberculosis and again after his fall. And there was something oddly comforting, in having her so close by again, in sharing the same space with her, and he found that he didn't want her to leave.)
1972 was better.
In hindsight it was a reasonably good year. There was the political drama, of course, of Noël growing apart from the Parliamentary Labour Party and the internal fighting in it that nearly drove Raoul mad. But outside of that he could even say he was happy. His writing was going well, his research fantastic. There were students in several of his classes who showed great promise, and a thesis he was supervising showed every possibility of being a ground-breaking piece of work.
His health was good, twenty years after the tuberculosis. So long as he was careful to get plenty of sleep and eat well he was able to avoid most sicknesses that went around. A bad cold could knock him, but 1972 was a good year on that front. Not like 1971, when he seemed to have a cold every week which was distinctly unpleasant. Sorelli's health, too, was better than it had been. She was back working, back causing scandal in the newspapers by speaking out against things, and there was an interview series with her in the Irish Times over the course of three weeks that sparked great debate and writing of letters.
That was how he really knew she was back to herself.
She moved back to her own cottage in Wicklow that spring and both he and Darius missed her around the house.
Darius was doing beautifully. He was still lecturing to his students, still analysing Austen and Fanny Burney and anyone else who caught his fancy. Still writing his own novels, and though they were (mostly) censored in Ireland for being too controversial, they were popular in England, and he was over and back to London, talking to publishers and press.
The pride in Raoul's heart was more than he could put words to, to see Darius doing so well at what he loved. To have people writing letters to him over his books, something that he had created, separate from his research, separate from his classes. Something wholly made of him, and Raoul read each of his books, and treasured them.
They were stories of war, mostly. World War I, and World War II, because Darius had flown a bomber plane, for a short time near the end and knew what he was writing about. And they had romance, and half-implied romance of the homosexual kind which was why they were censored though Darius was not so daft as to write it plain on the page for all to see. There was one set in a sanatorium, because he had had a friend who was a nurse, when he still lived in England. And sometimes Raoul could find a glimmer of himself in the pages, or it felt that way, and each time he opened one and saw the dedication inside, to RdC, it made something in his chest throb.
There were the Troubles in the North. The bombing, the fighting, the murder. And it angered him, to see that people could still do these things to each other. Catholic and Protestant, Unionist and Republican. All turning against each other, and he could understand why, he knew why but sometimes it felt as if people could never learn, as if all that happened would only ever lead to more of the same. And his sympathies lay with the Catholics, with the Republicans, for all that they had been through, for how they had been stripped of their rights, but the violence of it, the violence, people dead in the street, children—
How could he ever find that anything but abhorrent?
And it seemed at once so far away, and closer than he could ever dream of.
It was December.
December when Darius got the letter that called him to England. A professorship in Cambridge, if he wanted it.
And Raoul realised then that he must have applied for it, and never told him.
That was their first fight.
They made it up again. Made it up, and when Raoul turned fifty (fifty, him, a whole half decade old) in January, there was a party and it almost seemed as if they could pretend the offer had never happened.
But it hung over every day.
Darius knew, knew how terrified Raoul was of the water, knew flying frightened him to the bone, knew he had nightmares of these things and more. And still he had applied for it, still—
He wondered when it was that Darius had fallen out of love with him. Wondered if it was something that he had done, if he had not been enough, if he should have done more, could have done more.
But a professorship in Cambridge, and him unable to go—
He tried not to let it consume him, tried to focus on other things, think about other things. The impending election, Noël refusing to sign the pledge that he would abide by any and all decisions of the Labour Party, including going into a disastrous coalition, should he be re-elected, and the party refusing to let him stand. The wrangling over it, and Raoul agreed with Noël, and Sorelli did, and even with his head consumed by Darius, Raoul knew were he in that position he would refuse to sign too.
It's all well and good following the party line, but for some things a man in the Dáil needs a free vote, and with gunrunning north and south, how could anyone be expected to give up that vote?
And still Noël was the lone voice of dissent in the Parliamentary Labour Party, and the party refused to let him stand because he refused to sign the pledge.
"Might not be such a bad thing," and Noël had that slight smile. "I'll spend more time with Phyllis."
18 February 1973.
The day it all came down.
He and Darius were hardly speaking to each other by then. Every day more things disappeared, packed up to be shipped, as if all they had ever been was reduced to these bags, these boxes. As if it could ever be reduced to pieces of luggage. Thirteen years together, come to this.
And on that last day, as these things were loaded to be brought to the boat, they stood facing each other, each hardly daring to breathe, and it came to Raoul that it was like the first time they had kissed, the way they could only look into each other's eyes, only this time they were not drunk and dancing, this time it was an ending, and he might have laughed there in the hallway of his own house if he had thought he would be able to stop, thought he would not fall to weeping.
So he didn't laugh. And he did not feel like tears, did not feel much of anything, and Darius' arm twitched as if he was going to offer him his hand and then thought better of it, and neither of them could find words to say. Not I'm sorry, not I hope you'll be happy, not you'll write? even knowing they wouldn't, couldn't, not a word that could fit, until finally one found its way to Raoul's tongue.
"Why?"
And Darius swallowed, and shook his head. "It just felt like time."
And without another word, he was gone.
