Christine came, and stayed six months.
He's not sure he would have survived that year without her.
(Mostly, she just let him talk, about anything, even things that had not yet happened to her, and to give these memories words made it easier to breathe, to know that they were shared with someone, and not just bound up in him.)
(She came back from—he's not sure when, 2060 maybe, and was only gone a week in her own time, he learned after.)
She was there through it, right at his side, as he and Patricia threw Darius' ashes into the wind of Brittas Bay, and she played 'Mo Ghile Mear' as an instrumental on her violin as the breeze carried the last of him away. And afterwards, when he couldn't sleep, she lay down beside him and wrapped her arms around him and didn't say a word.
When they came to him asking him to be part of a documentary about Noël, and he almost said no because he didn't think he could stand it, she was the one that gently persuaded him to say yes, instead, and he has never regretted it.
(And she didn't mind, when he didn't speak for a day afterwards, the heaviness in his chest too much for words.)
(How many times has he been in documentaries about the dead that have marked his life?)
When it became known that he was the RdC that Darius had dedicated his earliest books to, and his later ones, they came to ask him to talk about him. And through the ache in his chest, the terrible tightness in his throat, he found words to talk about him, too, and all that he was, words that kept their secret just out of view, but there, for anyone who wished to look closely enough.
He seemed to spend most of his time, that summer, writing and recording tributes to dead friends. And Harry was there in the middle, his death overshadowed by Darius and Noël, his life not as known, and there would not be documentaries made about him, would only be a few small things written by other photographers, for their journals and newsletters out of the public eye, but Raoul sat down and wrote about him just the same, and how he had been defiant and wonderful in his own way and one of his dearest friends, and had that published, too.
Let his death not go unnoticed by the world.
(Sorelli was in the habit of collecting every piece he wrote, and she kept them in scrapbooks. And after she died, he kept the scrapbooks going, because she would have liked him to, but he has a special scrapbook for all these pieces he's written, to mark dear lives gone from the world.)
(He knows Christine will write about him after he's gone, will write the piece that will memorialise him in History Ireland and maybe in other journals too, and one of the things he's requested is for her to add it to that scrapbook, beside all the others. All of them, united between its pages.)
Christine was there, too, when he sorted through the things Patricia had brought him, that Darius had wanted him to have. Books, and diaries, and letters, and old gifts, and photographs, mementoes from when they had been together, mementoes from when they had been friends, and something in between. A heavily annotated copy of the book he had written about Casement, twenty years before, that Darius was using as research for his next novel, before he died. She was the one that helped him find places for it all, and when the tears came, she quietly made him tea, and brought him tissues.
She slipped into the garden, when he opened the letter Darius had written him, but he couldn't read it, that night, because that writing so familiar blurred with the tears.
The next morning he read it, instead, in the grey light of dawn, and he has hardly touched it again, in all the years since, but the words are engraved on his heart.
I hate telling you like this…don't think I could have borne doing it in person…you know I would never ask you to cross the sea and if I had rang to tell you or sent a letter then you would have felt compelled to and I couldn't put you through that…I hope you can forgive me for not telling you sooner…
…always regretted the way it ended before…it was only after that I realised what a stupid fool I'd been but I didn't think you'd want me back and I wouldn't have blamed you…I still don't blame you…None of it was your fault, Raoul, I need you to believe that…I've always loved you even without you and I made a terrible job of showing it…you're the most special man I've ever known…
…don't let this weigh on you, please don't…
…I never deserved the love of someone like you…
…I don't want this to mark your life…
…You know I've never known what I believe in, but if there is something more, then take your time getting there…
…I love you…
…I'm sorry.
Three toasts, that night. More chartreuse. To Darius, to Harry, and to Noël.
He tried to write his own letter, back, knowing Darius could never read it but needing to write it just the same. But all it came to was, why? Why if you loved me why? Why didn't you tell me you should have told me could have told me we'd have found a way if I could just hear your voice again why didn't you tell me I wish you'd told me
Ink scrawled across paper, and he tucked it away and never looked at it again.
He went alone to visit Jack's grave.
Christine offered to go with him, if he wanted her to, but he told her that he needed to do it alone.
He brought only a canvas chair, and a bottle of red wine.
It was the first time, in years, that he spoke to Jack, but he set up the chair beside his headstone, and uncorked the bottle.
And he told him, told him about these three deaths. Told him too, properly, about Sorelli. Told him about Harry, and what they had been to each other.
("…he married a lovely woman called Sheila and they had a family. Named their son after you, I'm sure he told you that…")
("…you remember Noël, of course, though you always called him Doctor Browne, he's gone too now…")
("…and you never met Darius but I think I told you about him. You would have liked him, he…")
The sun was just setting, the cold breeze coming in off the ocean, when his voice failed him, hoarse from all the talking. He took just a sip of the wine, to ease the ache from his throat, and poured the bottle into the grass.
It's always been strange, since, visiting Jack, knowing he's the only one left, the only one who remembers him, and knows that he was.
It was late November when Christine went, back to that time far in the future. The quiet in the house when she was gone was almost unbearable, but not as terrible as it would have been if she had never come.
He went to Dublin Castle to watch the fireworks, the coming of 1998. One of the only times he ever did, and he might have celebrated it, in his usual quiet way, but after the year that 1997 had been it felt important to see the new one in a little differently.
He knew it had to be better than the one just gone, because there was no possible way that it could be worse.
And it was better. It was a good deal better, though even he will admit the bar was set low.
Sheila came to see him for his birthday, 6 January. He had been up to Belfast to see her once since the funeral, and felt guilty that he had not gone more, and he told her as much, as he made her tea, but she shook her head.
"Don't," she whispered, and her voice was soft. "You've had as difficult as time as I have, after Darius."
Hearing her say his name so easily caught him off guard, so much so that his hand shook as he poured the tea, and it scalded his fingers as it splashed. He yelped and shook his hand, and she was on her feet in an instant, pulling him to the sink, and forcing his hand under the cold water tap.
The burning ebbed away, as she held his hand there, and tears prickled his eyes, ridiculous useless tears, and he didn't want her to see them so he blinked hard and looked out the window and willed them to go away, but they just came harder.
Her fingers were firm, gentle curled around his wrist, keeping his hand steady.
"I know what you were to each other," she whispered, "you and Harry. I know some part of him loved you still and I think you felt the same, and that's what I came to tell you, that it's okay. I don't mind. I've never minded, and you need to grieve him in your own way. I understand."
As he gaped at her, hardly daring to breathe, she turned the tap back off, and wrapped a cloth around his hand. "Now sit down," and her voice was still so soft, "and let me make you tea. Where do you keep the biscuits?"
It was as if he had been absolved of something he had not remembered committing, a tiny easing of the ache in his heart.
As if he had been given permission, to feel the way he did.
Sheila rang him regularly after that, once a week, like Harry. And it was always a relief, to hear her voice at the other end of the line.
The spring passed easily, and Christine came and stayed with him through the month of May, through all those first anniversaries, and it was not easy but it was bearable. Better than it could have been.
They made a trip to Brittas at the end of the month, and sat on the grassy dunes looking out over the sea, and the violin she played was all he could hear.
Alex Daaé came to see him on the second of June.
Not Alex from the future, come backwards, like he was so used to. The Alex of linear time, that he had last seen newly-widowed at his own wife's funeral more than six years earlier.
Raoul swallowed and invited him in, offered him tea which he accepted, but he seemed awkward, fidgeting with his hands. Raoul set the tea down in front of him, and some resolve crossed his face as he nodded to himself.
"Professor—"
"Raoul. Call me Raoul."
"Raoul," he swallowed and sat a little straighter, his blue eyes piercing meeting Raoul's gaze. "I just got back from 1947. I don't know if you remember—"
The impression of a memory, a warm summer's evening, Sorelli laughing and Christine shooing them out of the kitchen before her younger (youngest) self appeared, gone back in time for the very first time.
"May. May 1947. We were discussing Parnell while Christine—"
Alex nodded. "While she was meeting herself in Sorelli Conway's kitchen. I've just got back from there."
Raoul pushed the biscuits over to him. "Tell me about it again."
And Alex did.
("All those times I sat in front of you in class and you never—" "I didn't think you'd appreciate learning your own future from your lecturer." "No wonder you never passed any remarks when I was late." "I had the hardest time not telling you to stop making ridiculous excuses.")