It was six weeks later that she was presenting at her first conference.
Her first conference, a milestone in the life of any academic, and for Christine even more so. One ordinary thing to have in her far from ordinary life. How could he be anywhere but in the audience while she presented her first paper?
It was about Noël and tuberculosis, and her own theory – that she had been developing for seven years, from the summer before they first met, right after her father died – that Noël's tuberculosis had had a key influence on the Mother and Child Crisis. It was well-written and excellently argued, and he knew because she'd asked him to proofread it like she did with every draft chapter for her thesis, and it was always excellent work.
So he went, with Erik, because neither of them could bear to be anywhere else and both of them wanted to be there to support her. Some of the other speakers and attendees were faces he remembered from his own conference days before his retirement, and to see them there to hear Christine (and everyone else too but the only one he cared about was Christine) caught him a little sideways.
That they had seen him speak, once upon a time, and now they would see her—
The passage of time, whispering again.
He shook the hand of everyone who came up to him, and he couldn't help it but when they asked why he was there he told them he came to see his granddaughter, and they seemed to have forgotten he'd never married or had a daughter never mind a granddaughter, and they believed him, and it amused him to think that he could convince them of such a thing.
Erik sitting beside him was clearly trying not to smile as he looked at the program of scheduled talks.
The pride in his heart to watch Christine up there, so professional, so prepared, so precise, was more than could possibly be put into words. With the tears prickling his eyes he could hardly see her, and Erik must have noticed because he squeezed his hand, and Raoul gave him a watery smile to let him know that he was all right.
She handled the questions beautifully, including the one that was really a comment, and he'd always known it, but he saw, then, how brilliant she was going to be.
That wonderful, marvellous girl.
And how it filled his heart, afterwards, to see her so happy, dancing with Erik in his living room. Such deserved happiness, for both of them, with all they had been through.
He would give them every moment of it if he could.
He closed his eyes, and sat back in his chair, and let the music float around him, and thought of Sorelli, and how happy she would be, to know Christine would be so happy in her own time.
And how he missed her so terribly.
How he missed Sorelli with such an ache that year.
Between Christine, and Erik, and Anea, he hardly had time to be lonely. But he missed her. Every day he missed her. The ache seemed worse than ever.
He told Christine as much, that winter, the evenings closing in, and all those old memories so close to the surface. Told her about Sorelli and how he missed her and how she didn't have to have anything to do with him after Philippe died but she did anyway and it was how they came to be friends, because they'd both needed someone. Told her, for the first time, of how he was never able to go on the water, after Philippe's death, and how he has always had nightmares of it, all these years since. Told her not because he wanted to sadden her but because he needed to say it, and he knew she would understand.
Her fingers were solid and real between his, and he could never say how much it meant, to have her, and be able to tell her.
It was April when Erik came to him with scones.
He couldn't remember the last time he had scones, but he suspected it must be twenty years, or close to it, since he'd last visited Noël and Phyllis in their cottage in Connemara.
For Erik to appear with a collection of scones in a biscuit tin could only mean that Christine had gone travelling, and when he asked, Erik nodded. "Since yesterday afternoon."
A flash of a café, the smoke of a cigarette. Sitting at a table with two cups of tea and handing a newspaper across. The memory of it popped unbidden into his head, and when he glanced at the calendar he knew he was right.
She had said she was coming from April 2016.
How strange, to have been there when she arrived, and to see it from the other side when she left.
Time spinning in its little circle, coming back around again.
"April 1951," he said, and he couldn't help his smile. Erik looked up at him from the scones he was buttering, a query in his eyes as to how he knew, and he tapped the stack of papers on the table, the draft of her thesis. "She spent a week and loved every minute of it."
A week, right after it all came down. Right after Noël's resignation as Minister, and she'd read every newspaper and went with him to each sitting of the Dáil and they discussed it every evening, in this very kitchen, exactly sixty-five years earlier.
Erik was smiling, his eyes shining, as he passed over a scone, and Raoul broke off a bit of it to test it.
The taste took him back twenty years to that cottage in Connemara, Phyllis Browne's recipe. But how—how would Erik know it? And then it dawned on him. She'd included it in the book she'd written about her time with Noël, after he died.
And Erik must have read it, to have found it again.
(Time, coming back around, another whisper.)
It was Christine who told him about Erik's car crash, three days later. A future Christine come back. And when he told her the date, 17 April 2016, she sat down heavily and told him to be ready, that any minute the phone was going to ring, and it would be Anea to tell him.
A car crash.
"He's going to be all right," she said, and he was so stunned he couldn't speak, could only stare at her and remember too keenly the day she had told him Sorelli was about to die. "He will. He has a concussion, and broken ribs, and he'll need surgery for his shoulder but he's going to be fine so don't worry."
And he knew she was right, knew she had already lived through this, but how could he not worry?
He was ready when Anea rang, and ready when she arrived and collected him so they could go and see Erik.
For all the times he himself had been in hospital, the last time he had gone to see someone else was Harry, the day before he died.
The memory always so clear of that bandage wrapped around his head and how still he was lying there, not even able to breathe for himself.
The tears were dangerously close to the surface but he swallowed them down. It wouldn't do for Erik to see him cry, wouldn't do at all.
Erik was so pale, lying there in bed, the stitched gash on his forehead. It was all Raoul could do not to shudder at the sight of it, at the sight of that gash and all the wires and tubes, and he forced himself to smile so Erik wouldn't be worried, and told him that he'd told the nurses he was his grandfather, just to make him smile too, but the sight of Erik so injured, so broken, was almost more than he could bear.
He held it in, and it was only back in the car again that he lost his grip on the tears, and Anea pulled over and took his hand and held it tight as the shivering wracked him.
Her hand was soft, dabbing the tears away.
He was the one that had to tell Christine about the crash when she got back, and he never hated anything more.
Hardly had he told her that Erik was going to be all right when she was out the door rushing for the train so she could get to the hospital.
He couldn't blame her. He just swallowed, and braced himself, and rang Anea so she would know to be there when she arrived.
It was that very evening when Christine came to see him from the hospital, and she was pale and tired but smiling.
"We're going to get married," she said, and he stared at her, hardly daring to breathe. "We're going to get married. Erik proposed as soon as I got there."
It took a minute for the full force of her words to hit him. Going to get married…going to get married…Erik proposed… But when it did, he jumped out of his chair, and hugged her tight.
"Congratulations," and he was hoarse with tears and she was laughing in his ear, "Congratulations."
"I don't have any champagne so the chartreuse will have to do."
Her smile soft. "The chartreuse will be perfect."
The firelight soft, flickering across her face, her voice low. "Will you give me away?"
A beat, the tears prickling his eyes again, his heart skipping. Give her away...give her away...
He swallowed. "I would be honoured."
He hadn't had a use for his old piano in years. Hadn't touched it in who could tell how long and his fingers were too stiff anyway to play anything.
His fingers always fumbled on it anyway. It had always been Philippe's more than his, even in death.
Getting it tuned and promising it to Erik as a wedding gift was only the decent thing to do, and if anyone would treasure that old thing as it deserved, it would be Erik.
The happiness in his eyes as he told him made Raoul's heart swell to see.
That Erik chose to spend the last night before the wedding with him touched him to his core.
He never could have had a son, but if he had, then he'd be happy if he was even half the man Erik is.
Before Erik left, he hugged him, and told him that. And told him, too, that he couldn't think of any better man to love Christine.
"You've made her so happy," he whispered, watching the tears well in those hazel eyes. "And I'm sure that will never change, for the rest of your lives."
21 May 2016.
The day Christine married Erik.
One of the happiest days of his life, one of the happiest moments, as he walked her down the aisle, her arm linked through his, him leaning on his cane for support.
He bought a new suit for the occasion, and even got his hair trimmed.
The nineteenth anniversary of the day Noël died, the nineteenth anniversary of Harry's funeral. And she knew about one but not about the other because he had not told her about Harry (and he still has not), and when she told him her choice of date she squeezed his hand and said,
"I'd like you to have a good memory of the date." And then she smiled. "Besides, the day after is the anniversary of when I first went travelling. It feels right to have them close together."
Her choice, and, he decided, it was a good one.
That he was crying as he walked her down the short aisle in the registrar's office he didn't care. Of course he was going to cry. She was getting married, why wouldn't he cry?
He released her in front of the desk, and someone got him a chair, and as he watched them exchange their vows, Erik still so frail with his arm in a sling, as he watched them sign their names to those documents, the tears still trickled warm down his cheeks.
Anea squeezed his shoulder, and he looked up into her face, and found her crying too.
He held out hope all day that Alex would arrive, and he did.
After all his years he could, sometimes, sense when someone was bound to appear. And such a relief it was to see him, such a relief that he could share in the happy day.
He and Anea slipped into the kitchen to give Alex and the newlyweds some privacy.
The music was still spinning soft on the record player, and they could hear it through the crack in the door. And he was long past dancing, but he drew her into his arms, and she kissed his cheek, and they swayed there, slowly, peacefully, just feeling the music in their bones.
"They deserve every bit of happiness they can get," she whispered, and he smiled.
"And they'll have plenty of it."
He was not surprised that Christine disappeared in time. He just poured some more chartreuse, and set a new record going, and hoped she wouldn't be gone long.
And she wasn't. Ten minutes, tops, and she was back, flushed and smiling and so happy he wondered where she had been as she settled back into Erik's arms, and Alex grinned at him from the couch.
So happy, and he thought it best to let her keep it, just for herself.
He didn't expect her to tell him the next afternoon where it was that she'd gone to. Didn't expect her to sit across the table from him and look him in the eye and say, "I went to 1945."
He raised a brow, suspecting he knew what was about to come. "Anything interesting happen?"
The grin spread across her face, her eyes shining with the same happiness from the night before. "I kissed Sorelli. Or she kissed me. I can't remember. But we kissed, and she forgave me for never telling her about Philippe, and she told me she loved me and always had."
The tears were prickling his eyes as he hugged her, his voice hoarse as he whispered, "I've always hoped I'd live to see it."
("You knew all along and you didn't tell me." "I couldn't. I wanted to, so many times, but I couldn't." And she hugged him again and kissed his cheek and said, "I know. I understand.")
("I'm just glad to have her now.")