Part Twenty-seven
When they'd returned from the morgue, Ric went upstairs for a long, hot bath. He needed the time to let his thoughts wander, to dwell on what he was now supposed to do for his daughter and his friend. As he lay in the deep, hot water, he couldn't escape from the memory of how tiny that little boy had looked on the mortuary table. His flesh had been so cold, so hart and unyielding, so utterly dead. Part of him also felt dead he realised, dead inside from all the hurt he had caused and endured over the years. But here he was now, in a temporary haven of peace with Connie. She hadn't caused him any hurt, nor had he her. But how long this would last he couldn't possibly say.
At one point when Connie brought a cup of tea up for him, he wasn't entirely sure what to say to her. "You look very thoughtful," She said, putting the mug down on the corner of the bath. "I feel as though today has lasted for years," He said, unable to believe that they'd only arrived back in Holby that morning. "I know," She said, gently stroking his cheek. Holding her hand in place for a moment, he gazed up at her, unsure as to how to tell her what she meant to him right at this moment. Instead of trying to formulate any sort of phrase, he turned his lips to gently kiss the palm of her hand. "Come downstairs when you're ready," She told him softly, feeling unbearably moved by such a simple gesture.
When he eventually dragged himself out of the bath and went downstairs, she had made up the open fire in the sitting room, and was thoughtfully smoking a cigarette. "Do you feel better?" She asked, kicking herself for the stupidity of the question. "Not really," He replied, sitting down in the armchair at right angles to the fire. "If it doesn't sound too melodramatic, I feel dead." "Whether it is melodramatic or not," Connie said matter-of-factly. "It's how you feel." Getting up from the sofa, Connie moved to put another log on the fire, and as she moved away to sit down again, Ric caught at her hand, gently pulling her towards him. As she slid familiarly onto his knee, it occurred to her that what he really needed was someone to hold, to have someone close to him who actually cared about him enough to give him what he needed. It also seemed as he held her that he was now perhaps ready to talk.
"Do you remember how furious I was when I first found out about Jess and Zubin?" "As if I'll ever forget," Connie said dryly. "That was the most professional looking black-eye I'd seen in a long time." "I was so angry," He said with feeling. "That a man my age could have slept with my daughter, and if that wasn't all, made her pregnant. He looked so pathetic when he was struggling to tell me, as though he wanted to shrink away from what he'd done, which I suppose in a way he did. He tried to justify it, saying that they couldn't help it, as if that was ever any excuse. I felt as though he'd completely betrayed everything our friendship had ever meant to me. I was so angry with him for getting her pregnant, as though neither of them knew any better. Before that, when Zubin and I had argued over his not telling me about Leo's baby, I'd made him promise that there would be no more lies. He assured me that I could still trust him, when he was harbouring something far worse. After that, it meant that I could no-longer trust him, not with anything. Yet when Paris was born, all I wanted was to see him, and get to know him as he grew up, do the one thing I hadn't been able to do with Leo's baby. But, because I was living and working in Ghana by then, I only got to see him for a few days, when he was already six months old, and now he's dead. Is that my fault, Connie? Did that happen because yet again, I wasn't around to support one of my children when they most needed me?" "No, of course it wasn't," Connie told him gently but vehemently. "You did your best with the situations that were made available to you. Paris didn't die just because at first you loathed the idea of his parentage. That was a perfectly natural reaction, and you've done everything possible to try to rectify that breakdown in trust, when it certainly wasn't you who caused it in the first place."
They talked on in this vain for some time, Ric trying to find answers that Connie wasn't equipped to give him. "I'm sorry," He said after a while. "What on earth for?" Connie asked him, surprised. "You don't want to hear all this." "Would I be sitting here like this if I didn't?" She asked him fondly. "No, I wouldn't. So please, don't worry about it." After gently kissing him to hammer home her point, she said, "I think you need some way of relaxing." "Some hope," Ric said bitterly. "Ah, well, you've never had one of my massages, have you," Connie replied confidently. "One of your specialities, is it?" Ric asked dryly. "These hands weren't just made for mending broken hearts, you know. I can do things with tangled muscles that you could only dream of." "I don't doubt it," He said fondly, thinking that it wouldn't do him any harm in the slightest to be treated to some of her ministrations.
Leading the way back upstairs, Connie told him to remove all his clothes as she located what she wanted. When she returned to the bedroom, he had pushed back the duvet and was lying on his stomach on the bed. Switching on the little stereo on her dressing table, Connie inserted a CD that she knew would only add to the atmosphere. Ric was a little surprised to hear the dulcet tones of Eva Cassidy, but then Connie's prerogative appeared to be surprising him at every turn. Removing her own clothes so as not to get massage oil on them, Connie joined him on the bed and opened the bottle of oil. A wonderfully sopporiphic aroma of lavender and gardenia filled the air, making Ric breathe in appreciatively. Pouring some onto her hands, Connie began at the base of his neck, untangling all the tense fibres she could feel under her fingers. Ric didn't make a sound and neither did she, both of them allowing the music and Connie's hands to speak for them. As she moved gradually onto his shoulders, Ric knew that he didn't ever want to leave this languid limbo, it being so utterly restful compared to the rest of the world he inhabited. He could occasionally feel the graze of Connie's breasts on his back as she leaned over him to place the bottle of oil on the bedside table, but he couldn't have become aroused if he'd tried, he was simply too tired. After removing every possible knot from his shoulders, she moved down his left arm and then his right, piecing back together the muscles that were usually so firm yet supple, instead of being as hard and unyielding as rock as they were now. Her fingers often moved in rhythm to the gently flowing music, her hands playing him like a highly complex instrument. He could feel each tendon of his back being dealt with separately, being put back into its rightful place as she went. Her fingers were so nimble, her hands so delicately strong, that he marvelled at the things she was achieving with his strung out body. If he had been in a better mood, he mused to himself, she would be making him feel at least ten years younger. But as his brain had nothing to do, again and again it returned to the injustice of his grandson's death. He had been attempting to suppress his emotions all day, and to a greater extent he had succeeded. But when he heard the words of the next song on the CD, he could no-longer keep a hold on his grief.
"Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people, living for today."
God, but he'd give anything for the world to be like that, for there to be no pain, no possibility of the pain he and Jess and Zubin were feeling right now.
"Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too."
Why did this have to happen? Why did little Paris have to die when he had everything in the world to live for?
"Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can."
As the tears finally came, Ric briefly thought that he would have given every meagre possession he had to keep Paris alive. Even if he had been a part of a relationship he had originally despised, he had still been part of him, part of Ric Griffin, whatever that might have meant.
Connie had almost finished her traversing of Ric's body, when she felt a shudder run right through him. Looking up from her task, she saw the barely perceptible shake in his shoulders. This brought tears to her own eyes, because he was trying desperately hard to hide his grief from her, when all she wanted to do was to help him in any way she could. Putting the top back on the bottle and placing it on the bedside table, she lay down next to him, and gently tried to turn him towards her. He allowed her to do this, even though he badly didn't want her to see him cry, because he needed to cling to something, someone, anyone who would understand his grief. Connie didn't say a word, because words were not necessary for the comfort he needed. She held him as he clung to her, the hot tears running helplessly down his face. She kissed his cheek, tasting the salt from his tears, and ran her fingers soothingly through his hair. When he slightly shivered, she reached for the duvet, pulling it over them and trying to curl herself round him, to keep him warm as they gradually drifted off to sleep, the mental and physical exhaustion of the last day or so finally catching up with them. As the music softly died away and the CD reached its end, the two lovers slept, deeply if not soundly, with one hurdle over, but with the hardest ones yet to come.