He dreams, more and more, of Philippe.
Strange, that it should be in the last weeks of his life, after seventy-eight years of missing him, that he should feel so close to his brother.
But Philippe is there every night, when he sleeps. The shadow of him walking, his footsteps on the stairs. His hands stark-white in the light cast by the fire, that ring on his small finger. His tall frame as he stands looking at the bookshelf. His laugh, so warm, so safe. Philippe. As if Raoul could open his eyes, and he would be right there, sitting beside him.
Sometimes Sorelli is there too. Her face stern as she leans across the table, or sipping tea by the window, or sitting in her chair, looking out at the garden, her hair pinned back. Both of them coming to him, as he remembers them best.
He has made peace with the fact that he has lived to be so much older than them. The odd grief of it died that summer of 1973, when he had nothing to do but rest, but sit, and read, and think. And he spent most of it with Sorelli, looking out at her garden, and she always insisted on draping a blanket over him so he wouldn't get cold, even when his injuries had healed, even when he could very well have gone back home. But he hadn't wanted to be alone, hadn't wanted to sit in that great big house and hear nothing but the echo of his own breathing, so he stayed, and they talked. Talked about the things neither of them had ever really spoken of to each other before, about Philippe, and about Christine, too. And about her Erik, because once Raoul knew about him then Sorelli wanted to talk about him, just a little. The things she had been holding inside too long, about the relief that Christine would not be alone.
Those long evenings, the two of them sitting looking out the window, sipping wine, or tea. And it was her who mentioned first, how odd it was to be so much older than Philippe had been, and how she wondered, sometimes, what he would have been like, if he had lived. If he could have lived. That she mentioned it at all gave him room for the words to come, and when he said how wrong it felt, so much of the time, that he should be there when Philippe wasn't, that he should be the one to have lived, she squeezed his fingers, and sighed.
"If someone told me right now," she whispered, "that he could come back, but it would mean losing you, then I wouldn't change a thing." And she swallowed. "And he wouldn't either."
"I have never been so frightened, as that night in Newcastle with Noël, when we thought you would die." A tear slipped down her cheek, and his breath caught in his throat.
His injuries healed, his heart healed. And there would always be a little crack in it, left by Darius, but he could breathe again.
August came, time to get ready for the new semester, and he went home. And the big house did not feel so very big and terrible, when Christine was there waiting for him, and she had a fire in the grate.
"I don't think I'll be staying long," she whispered, and hugged him.
Christine comes to him often. Both the Christine of this time, and other Christines, future Christines come back to see him from a time without him.
It is oddly touching, that he should continue to mean so much to her through her future, when these future versions are part of his past, ones he met in years and decades gone by, with Sorelli. But still she comes back to see him to a time when there is no Sorelli, and he finds it best if he doesn't think about it too much because it gives him a headache to consider time and the shape of it and the things it does. Enough to know that even in the far-off future that will never see him, that Christine is thinking of him, still.
He never asks her about her future. It is a silent agreement that she can tell him if she wants, but he doesn't want to have to know things, doesn't want her to have to talk about things if she doesn't want to. And he never asks about Erik, though he knows that for at least some of these future Christines that Erik is still a part of her life.
It just doesn't feel right, knowing pieces of the future of this boy who is the closest he has ever had to a son, when Erik himself cannot know them. It strikes him as deceitful.
(Though he will confess that when Erik had his car accident, it was a relief knowing that he would be all right, that he would have to be all right, because an older version of Christine had mentioned him as doing well in her time.)
Erik visits him every day, but his visits never collide with that of the older Christines, and Raoul wonders if that's something that time is responsible for as well, or merely a coincidence.
1974 was an unremarkable year, but after 1973 unremarkable was quite enough to be getting on with.
Mostly he read, when he wasn't working. And mostly it was about Casement, because that question of Jack's, remembered after his accident, of if Casement had been like them, wouldn't go away. And he came to the conclusion that Casement probably had been a homosexual too, and Jack would have liked that, but he didn't want to be certain when he hadn't seen the actual diaries himself, only the printed copy of them, and knowing what it is to deal in documents and transcription he wouldn't be surprised if there were mistakes in the typing. But the diaries were in London, and he couldn't go and see them because that would mean either a boat or a plane,
Sorelli solved the problem for him, when he finally told her that winter, on the cusp of 1975. "I'll look at them," she said. "Tell them that I'm writing a book, and photograph some pages if they'll let me. Take plenty of notes anyway." He gaped at her, and she grinned. "If you think I don't know your research methods by now…"
And it worked. She took a trip first to the NLI, several trips, and learned Casement's handwriting, and then she went to London. They didn't want her to photograph the pages, but she could confirm the writing in the phonecall she made to Raoul after that first day, and he felt a little weak to hear her say, yes, it's his. And she took plenty of notes, and brought them home to him in the spring of 1975, and he trembled to see them, and how she had copied some of the writing, how she had transcribed some of the lines.
(The May 1910 entries, about the weekend in Warrenpoint with Millar of surname-unknown, was enough to leave his throat dry.)
(28 May 1910. Left for Warrenpoint with Millar…Not a word said till – "Wait – I'll untie it" and then "Grand"…and so deep mutual longing… "Grand".)
So that was his project of 1975 and '76. And a little of '77. Reading all of the published books on Casement, the documents in the NLI, Sorelli's transcriptions. She was in London several more times, in those two years and a bit, for plays and for films, and she took more trips to the archives to see them for him, and every time he sent her with a list of queries that he wanted answers to.
The book, when it was written, was his masterpiece.
It is my considered opinion that the person who wrote the so-called Black Diaries was a homosexual, he wrote. It is also my considered opinion that the diaries were not forged, and were written by Sir Roger Casement.
The book's publication was limited, his conclusion considered too scandalous, which was why he kept Sorelli's name out of it, that she would not be made suspect by association. But its publication was sufficiently widespread that he saw his name creep into journals and conference papers on the question of Casement's authorship, and when, years later, many years later (nineteen years later in 1996) there was another book being prepared on the 1910 diary, his own book was published again, and this time he added Sorelli's name to it.
The world had turned. Homosexuality was no longer a criminal offense. And his best friend was dead, but the world deserved to know her contribution to the field of history. How she did not have to do it, but she did it anyway.
He only wished he could have made it known in her lifetime.
(He dedicated it, both editions, the 1977 and the 1996, to the memory of JS, because if it had not been for Jack, and the memory of him, he never would have started the research in the first place.)
It was 6 July 1977 when he ran into Harry.
Harry.
Twenty years since he had seen him. Twenty years, and a little more, since that last day in early February, the misting drizzle outside, when they kissed for the last time and parted.
(Were all his relationships doomed to break up in early February? Harry, and then Darius…)
He was walking in the Phoenix Park, mentally composing an article he wanted to write about Noël, and about how great it felt getting him back into the Dáil as an Independent Labour candidate after his years half in the political wilderness in the Seanad. And he was so busy, deep in his head, in his thoughts, that he didn't see the familiar face, until he heard someone call his name.
"Raoul!"
And he looked up, and it took him a minute he will admit, to place where he knew that face, the hair more grey than the sandy blond he remembered, but it was Harry.
Harry.
In spite of himself, he grinned.
He never bore any ill will towards Harry. Never bore any towards Darius either, even with the way things ended. But with Harry it had simply been a drifting apart, and nothing either of them could have done would have stopped it.
To see him again was as if the sun had suddenly peeked out from behind the clouds on the dullest of days.
They went to a pub. And while Harry had Guinness, Raoul contented himself with a glass of wine. And they talked, mostly, of what they were doing now.
Harry was still married, and his wife was called Sheila, and they were happy and had a son (in university in Belfast) and a daughter (still in school), and Raoul was happy for them.
"You're still causing trouble in the papers," Harry remarked, and Raoul grinned.
"Doing my best." And it felt as if twenty years had been taken off him.
They did not mention Jack. And Harry didn't ask him about his own relationship prospects, too discreet for that, knowing too well the way of things, but those would be for future conversations.
They parted with a hug, and Harry told him that if he was ever in Belfast, to look him up.
They both knew they could never go back to the way things were. And neither of them wanted to, but if they could be friends, that would be enough.
The noise Sorelli made when she heard he'd run into Harry made him snort, and she insisted on making him tea, so he could tell her all about it.
"There's so little other excitement at my time of life," she said with a perfectly straight face, and he almost choked.
"At your time of life? As if you weren't up at all hours last night with Christine." And he knew she had been because they were both staying with him and he could hear the giggling down the hall.
Her eyes sparkled, and it was all he could do not to snort again.
A/N: The quoted extract for 28 May 1910 is a genuine abbreviated entry from Roger Casement's 1910 black diary, as published in the 2002 collection of his black diaries edited by Jeffrey Dudgeon. Also included in Peter Singleton-Gates' published copy of some of the diaries from 1959.
As ever, if you enjoy please do review!