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Erik is still in hospital when they start the move. It is only a matter of hours, between when Al tells him about the gift of a house and when he tells Christine that they will have a house of their own.
He has not slept since he heard the news, touched too deep inside by the kindness of his uncle (his one uncle, true enough). That Al sold his cows, and most of his land, to see him well set up. And yeah maybe there is some truth to his saying that he doesn’t want to milk cows all his life, that he wants to retire and do things and see the world, but Al is only fifty-seven. He’s still too young to draw down any of his private pension, and giving up his cows—
The thought of Al giving up his cows—
The thought of going to Sligo, and instead of walking through fields only having one field, instead of cows cropping grass in the cool of an evening only silence—
Something cold clenches inside of him.
He never entertained notions of going back to the farm. Never once considered staying there and keeping it as a going concern, but the fact of it all being gone, and for it being for him—
It doesn’t sit right within him at all. But it’s too late to do anything about it now.
So he tells Christine. And when the tears threaten she smooths back his hair and kisses him, and there are tears in her eyes too.
“He’s too good to us,” she whispers, and he knows she sees Al as being like an uncle to her too, knows that she counts him as a very dear friend, knows she will miss those fields and those cows almost as much as he will.
But she kisses him, and lays her head down on his shoulder, and with the pain in his chest dulled by the painkillers, with the tiredness heavy in his bones, he closes his eyes, and she doesn’t leave until she knows he is soundly asleep.
Then she goes and hugs Al for being the sweetest man she knows aside from his nephew, and enlists him and Nadir and John Henry and Morgan for heavy lifting duties.
The house is already painted inside from its previous owners, the garden already coming to life with flowers after the winter. But they are going to need furniture, and while she is happy with the kitchen as it stands, it needs a new fridge.
By the time he is out of hospital she has already graduated. He couldn’t be there but he could see it, and John Henry streamed the moment she collected her parchment to Nadir’s iPad, and he watched it in his hospital bed with his mother on one side of him and Nadir on the other. There were tears in his eyes that he couldn’t hide, and when Nadir excused himself to go and make a call, he turned his head into his mother’s shoulder and she held him as he cried.
Two days later Christine is back, and she brings her parchment in to show him, and now at last he gets to give her the kiss he would have given her, if he could have been with her.
It’s a little more vigorous than advised in his condition. She blushes to the tips of her ears when the monitor shows his heart rate picking up.
He gives her another kiss for good measure.
He comes home to the apartment he shares with Nadir, has shared with him for thirteen years, since they were very new students starting out in university. He is too tired to go and see the new house, too tired to want to do anything other than sleep, but that’s fine because Christine has forbidden him from seeing the new house until she is satisfied with it. It will be his duty, when he is well, to lay out his new study, and the thought of it is enough to keep him entertained as he dozes, listening to the cds of his father, thinking of Christine and what photos of her he’ll position on his desk.
(His father’s was the last music he listened to before they wheeled him off to surgery, singing softly a song of his own composition, that he composed when he, Erik, was born. And knowing there was a five percent chance he might not survive the surgery, knowing he might never listen to another piece of music again, it made it a little easier to bear, to listen to his Dad, and know that he had a chance to survive that his Dad had not.)
(His mother was the second-last visitor he had that morning, a short visit, just to hug him and tell him he would be alright, and she would come to see him just as soon as she was allowed, and they each pretended there were not tears in both of their eyes. And she left, so Christine would be the last, and they didn’t speak, couldn’t speak, just held each other, for as long as they could.)
He goes for his walks, the ones he is supposed to take, to build up his strength and prevent blood clots, but he never walks in the direction of the estate where the house is. And sometimes it is Al who comes with him, being a stern uncle, and sometimes it is his Mum, so she can fuss and insist he not tire himself, but mostly it is Christine, and she smiles at him when he asks who’s overseeing the decorating, and says she gave Kate a full list of specifications.
(She cannot bear to be away from him any longer than she has to. Some nights she can’t sleep for seeing again how pale he was when she was first allowed to see him afterwards, all the wires and tubes, the tiredness heavy in his eyes, and he smiled, just slightly, when she moved the oxygen mask out of the way to brush her lips against his, but his voice was groggy and rough when he tried to speak, and she shushed him, and cradled his hand to her lips, and it was not so very long until he slipped back into sleep.)
She moves her own things in before he has the energy to sort through anything of his.
It’s already a month since his surgery, two and a half months to the wedding.
Very nearly four years since his spontaneous proposal on the street, and he has to pause every time he realizes how close they are to actually marrying.
Nadir insists on giving him his grandmother’s piano, for the house.
As long as Erik has shared this apartment with him, he has loved that piano and kept it tuned and plays it every chance he can get, but the thought of Nadir just giving it to him, as a gift, is overwhelming.
The piano is an antique. It must be worth a fortune by now. Not to mention the family history attached to it, and Nadir would just give that to him.
He does his best to persuade Nadir to keep it, but Nadir is emphatic. “You’re the only one who plays it, you should have it.” Then he tries to insist on paying for it, but Nadir is again obstinate. “My best friend and you want to buy this thing off me?” The affront he manages to put into it is honestly impressive. “Just accept the gift, Erik!”
“But it should be kept within the family!”
“You are family!”
And so it is settled. The piano is his, and Nadir and John Henry and Morgan shift it into a lorry for moving to the new house, along with crates of books, and records, and his record player, and most of the contents of his wardrobe, what he wants to keep.
Some of those clothes really do just need to go.
The more private items (hidden in the bottom drawer beside his bed, beneath an extremely boring music journal, and they are just for personal use, though occasionally to be enjoyed in the company of Christine), those he bags himself, to be personally moved.
There are his violins, his guitar, his father’s guitar. The accordion he bought and taught himself to play just to prove a point. The flute he has not touched in years, the tin whistle he has not looked at in even longer.
The framed photographs of Christine.
His degree parchments.
The shoeboxes of draft papers and corrections. The folders of draft stages of his thesis. His actual thesis. His collection of obscure lit journals. His stereo and two-screen desktop. Boxes and boxes and boxes of cds.
He’s not allowed to lift any of it.
His room emptied of almost all of its contents, Christine joins him for the night to stave off the hollowness. He is not passed fit enough yet for anything more taxing than kissing, but kiss her he does, and hold her close, and she is careful with him as he leans into her, her fingers gentle carding through his hair.
(She holds him as he sleeps, his head heavy against her shoulder, his lips slightly parted, and in the small hours, only the softest sounds of cars outside, and his gentle breathing against her neck, she thinks of just two months until their wedding, of four years of waiting, of his face half-caught in wonder when she said yes, his hair cut on only one side and half in disarray, and her heart is full of love, aching with it, and she is deeply, endlessly, grateful that the aneurysm was found in time.)
(Instead of planning a wedding, and a move, she might have been planning a funeral, and whatever twist of fate preserved her from that world she will never know, and never allow herself to dwell on it, when what matters is that he is here, and he will be well.)
The last of his things loaded into Nadir’s car, sent on ahead. On this morning, he walks towards the estate, Christine on his arm. It’s early April but the sun is bright and with his scarf and hat he wears his sunglasses too, for the preservation of his eyes. He would not stand it if he got a headache on his first day in the new house.
Out of the courtyard onto the street. Turn right down past the restaurants, Christine’s fingers twined with his. Around the corner, across the road. Past the hardware shop and the uniform shop and the office supplies shop. Under the pines that line the wall along the estate. It’s a shorter walk than his walks the other days, but there’s something different about it, a quality in the air. He has never moved house before, not like this. Moving out of home was a gradual affair, over the years he’s been in Maynooth, and there are still old clothes and books and things in his room in his mother’s house, memorabilia from his school days that there was never a need to pack up and bring. When his mother married Bill, they did not move out, he just moved in, to the house she had bought with his father when they married, even though Al insisted they could stay at the farm if they wanted, that he didn’t mind.
He spent almost as much time growing up in Al’s house as he did in his mother’s. His night sky chart is still pinned to the ceiling of the guest room, peeling at the edges, and when he was eight and couldn’t sleep, Al would lie down with him, and he’d cuddle into his uncle who was the closest thing he had to a dad, and they’d name all the stars in turn. Aldebaran, Alphard, Arcturus … until he fell asleep, and in the morning there would be a glass of milk waiting for him on the nightstand, and two chocolate biscuits.
He shouldn’t be crying. It’s ridiculous to cry over something like this. He’s moving in with Christine, to the house where they’re going to live, to the house where they’re going to share their lives. It’s not like he’s leaving Nadir forever. It’s not like they’ll never go to Sligo and stay with his mother or Al. What’s he crying over?
It’s the after effects of the surgery. They talked about unusual sadness, overwhelming emotions. That must be it. It can’t be over anything as ordinary as moving house. People move houses everyday. They can’t all break down over it.
But he’s crying, and Christine’s eyes are damp with tears, and they stop walking, and her arms come around him, warm and steadying, promising that she’s right here, she’s not going anywhere. Christine, his Christine. And they’re moving in together, and they’re going to get married in two months and spend the rest of their lives together, another forty years together and more and he’ll be old and grey and she’ll still be holding him in her arms, whispering in his ear that it’s alright, it’s alright.
“I love you,” he whispers, his voice hoarse and groggy with tears, with feeling, and she smiles up at him, her smile wobbling, and kisses his cheek, and whispers, “I know.”
He composes himself, and she dabs his face dry, and they move on, into the estate. Fifth on the left, she said, and yes, Nadir’s car is reversed into the lane, the boot door open. A perfectly lovely house, two-storey like those either side of it, a lawn in front and a garden in back.
A house for him to fill with music, for them both to fill with books, and she will sing and he will play and they will dance to his record player and her laugh will light up every room.
He loves it on sight.
The front door is closed, Nadir mysteriously disappeared, and she pushes it open, and they step inside.
It closes with a click behind them, the hall softly suffused with light, and she leans into him, and her voice is soft.
“Welcome home, Erik.”
They walk it slowly, every room all laid out, boxes of books and cds still waiting in the sitting room for them to go through together. A second record player, a gift from John Henry, so he doesn’t have to move his out of his office. Everything arranged and neat as a pin. A downstairs bedroom, if the stairs are too much for him, or for guests. Three upstairs, one serving as her study, the other as his, boxes all waiting for him to attend to, when he has the energy for it, a new pine desk, stained dark, a bookshelf, and while the books are waiting for his attention, his framed photographs of her are arranged on the shelves.
Her study, and the bookshelves are already filled with heavy history texts, arranged alphabetically by topic. Framed photographs on her desk, and he walks around it to see what ones she has chosen, and laughs to find the two 1964 prints of Noël Browne, the one he bought her and the one John Henry bought her, and a print of the soldier taking down Salazar’s portrait in the Carnation Revolution (a favourite of hers, that she has told him all about), and one of the two of them, taken by Morgan, dancing in the early morning beneath the stars, that night of the Perseids, her hair glowing gold in the firelight, and he is smiling softly at her.
“I’m putting a wedding picture beside it,” she says, and kisses him.
That evening there is a party, a small affair. His mother and Bill, and Lilly and Al, and Al hugs them both, and Nadir and Michelle (and Erik is beginning to suspect that things are getting serious for Nadir), and John Henry and Morgan and Kate. Their dearest friends and family, who have been with them through it all.
He’s not supposed to drink, not yet. He’s decided he’ll probably never take up drinking again. But he has one shot of John Henry’s green chartreuse, and puts on the first record he lays his hand on. Thin Lizzy, ‘The Boys are Back in Town’ in the background. Al grabs Bill and drags him into a dance, and it’s the single funniest thing Erik has seen in longer than he can remember.
(Afterwards, everyone gone home, he puts on ‘Wasteland, Baby!’, and with Christine in his arms they drift-dance slowly, eyes closed, the sandalwood candles casting a soft glow, and she sighs into his collarbone, and he kisses her hair, and they hold each other close, unable to speak, each wishing, deep down, that his health were not so brittle, that they could keep each other, just like this, forever.)
The move completed, his health improving, they organize their joint book collection. All the music-related books — and some of the literary ones, especially the collections of Shakespeare, Keats, and Shelley — migrate onto his shelves. There are a good deal of poetry books and novels with which to fill the shelves in the living room. The conflict comes in where they have multiple copies of books — they keep his Harry Potter , her Darren Shan, his Les Mis , her Tolkien. With His Dark Materials , they agree to keep both of their sets , though they compromise on Sherlock Holmes, and maintain half of each of their collections. The Danielle Steel’s are his, familiar old friends of suspect quality, the fairytale retellings her s . A question arises over Isaac’s Storm , the 1900 Galveston Hurricane being one of his few history interests, the fact of it being a history book sending it to her shelf instead, the novelistic style of it suggesting the sitting room. In the end he claims it, and they reach a compromise on Thanks for the tea , to each keep their own copies.
(He has several passages marked in his, has ruminated on small bouquets of wildflowers picked along the Atlantic shore, and for all he has few tastes in history, he will admit to feeling tender over that book, and the memory of the week in Baile na hAbhann with John Henry.)
He goes for his walks, he brings her flowers. He visits the secondhand shops and the shops of trinkets and finds little things to bring home, to their home. Small paintings, pretty vases. A small model violin. A small bronze statuette of a cow and calf, to remind him of Al, always, and the cows that brought them this house. Candles and diffusers. Elegant mugs, and ones that are nearly amusing. The lady that works in Carraig Donn comes to know him by name, and enquires after his fiancée.
He brings all the little things home, and tries to imagine it from the perspective of an outsider, someone who has never known them, reading about them fifty years from now, and what they might think, of all these little gestures, and how they could never believe how much it is he loves her.
She coos over his gifts, sets the little bouquets of flowers aside for pressing. They eat, and he chooses one of his records — sometimes Wasteland, Baby! , sometimes ‘ Stardust ’ , sometimes Delta , sometimes something else entirely — and they hold each other close as they sway to the music, and afterwards, the tiredness setting into his bones, the dull ache in his breastbone reminding him that he is not fully healed, not yet, she helps him to bed, and lays him down, and they kiss, and hold each other close, and whisper in the darkness, until sleep takes them both (him first, then her) and they sleep curled around each other, perfectly happy, perfectly content, each of them exactly where they belong.
There are the wedding preparations. Flowers selected and ordered (tea rose and orchids), reception arrangements already made, church booked for 7 June. She sent out the invitations while he was still in hospital, when he insisted on not delaying the wedding (and even now she raises the question of delaying the wedding, until he has regained his full strength but this is the one thing he will deny her; he has waited very nearly four years already, the last two years the most difficult of all, he will not delay their wedding a second longer than it needs to be, and damn his health but he will be well enough, so help him Lord). Hartnett, his top piano student, is already practicing the first dance (that he made sure to have finished composing before his operation) and making good progress on it. Cooney and Conway, his violinists, are working on the music for the ceremony.
His suit needs to be re-tailored, to account for the toll of his recovery.
In late April he revises his will. He composed it before going into hospital, for fear he should have a reaction to the anaesthetic, or a haemorrhage, or suffer an infection, or his heart simply fail, but with the house and the money from Al his circumstances have changed.
(The money and the house to Christine, the piano back to Nadir and several other things gathered through their long friendship, his father’s guitar to his mother, photographs to her and to Christine, some things to Al, a select part of his book collection to John Henry and some of his records, his Delacarte research to Kate, more of his records to Morgan, his compositions and his watch and his cufflinks and everything else to Christine, right down to his sandalwood cologne.)
An updated record of his wishes for his funeral, to go with the will. A recitation of Auden by John Henry, Morgan to play the accordion, Nadir to give the eulogy, black orchids, Conway to play an extract of the piece from Baile na hAbhann in a minor key, a copy of the wedding dance to be buried with him, and the tiger’s eye cufflinks Christine once brought him from Portugal.
He has given the whole matter a good deal of thought.
It helps to be prepared.
All of it written down, he is free to push it from his mind, and focus on the wedding.
Though he will not be playing his own first dance, he tests it every time she is out of the house.
It was a mutual decision not to hire a band or a singer. So much of their taste in music, of the music that matters to them, cannot be contained in a single voice. They jointly arrange the playlist, and, for the sake of tradition, include the Siege of Ennis. They consider whether or not to include the Baile na hAbhann piece, that in some way led to his proposal, and then decide it is too sacred to include, to have played for so many people who would not understand it, and the history of how it was composed, on those walks by the ocean, in that thatched cottage, with that green chartreuse.
He leaves the choosing of the wine to her, but ensures that there will be chartreuse.
By early May he is feeling more himself, and they falsify photos of her graduation, for the sake of posterity, and so his absence from the official photos is not so glaring.
She does not speak of wishing her father could be alive to give her away, of wishing her mother could be the one to hold her hand and braid her hair, but he sees it in her eyes, and holds her all the closer.
(Lilly will walk her down the aisle, standing in for both of her missing parents.)
The last day of their unmarried lives. He plays for her, and kisses her. They put on ‘Wasteland, Baby!’, and do not dance but do hold each other close. They lay each other down by the fire — though it is June — and he cards his fingers through her hair, and she kisses the long scar down his chest, from the surgery that has saved his life, that has ensured he will be here to see the morning, and breathes Sonnet 116 into his skin, love alters not with his brief hours and weeks …
He whispers that he will love her always, will love her to the end of time, and she kisses him and whispers that she knows, and as long as their atoms exist somewhere in the universe she will love him too, and they hold each other a long time, and do not speak.
A little after eleven, an hour out from their wedding day, she rises, and goes to Lilly’s house, where her dress awaits. He rises, too, and Nadir collects him in his car, and brings him out to the hotel. He has already booked into his room, has already arranged the suite where he and Christine will stay tomorrow night. His suit is waiting for him, his violin, and there in the darkness, the lights down low, perfectly alone, he looks out the window at the stars, and plays, quietly, just for himself.
And when the tiredness comes, heavy and insistent that he be rested for the biggest day of his life, he lies down, and hits play, and listens as his father’s voice wraps around him.
The tears come, unbidden, but welcome.
He can barely eat the morning of the wedding. Al forces dry toast into him with a stern eye while his Mum insists he drink no less than three cups of tea. His fingers fumble doing up the buttons of his shirt, until Nadir rolls his eyes and helps him. He checks ten times that Nadir has the rings, until John Henry sits him down and squeezes his hands to keep them from shaking, and reminds him to breathe.
He does not trust his skin to tolerate the mask today. The heaviest of make-up must suffice, carefully daubed on to hide the deformity.
Bill goes with him for a long walk. Neither of them say anything, until the very end, when his stepfather turns to him, and squeezes his fingers, and with damp eyes whispers that he’s proud of him.
Erik’s throat is too tight to speak. He settles for hugging him.
Every time he looks to his Mum, there are tears in her eyes. She gives him a watery smile and says, “This is why I didn’t wear mascara.” Then she hugs him and kisses his cheek and says, “Andrew would be very proud.”
It is the seventh time this morning he cries.
The eighth time comes when he finds Al, smoking outside. For as long as he can remember he has never seen his uncle touch a cigarette, and when he says, shocked, “You don’t smoke”, Al’s smile is thin.
“Not for thirty-one years, nine months, and twenty-four days.”
The calculations come quick and easy. Thirty-one years, nine months, and twenty-four days. 7 June 2024 back to 14 August 1992. The day he, Erik, was born.
Before he can say anything, his uncle is pulling him into a hug, is whispering, “I think I can make an exception for today.”
They make it to the church, the small gathering. His family, and their dearest friends in the world, the small handful of Christine’s dear Portuguese friends. No pomp, no ceremony.
He stands facing the altar, back to the door, Nadir at his side, and hardly dares to breathe.
Christine, for her part, has set aside her grief, set aside her anxiety for this day. The only worry in her heart is that it might be too much too soon for Erik, after his surgery. But that’s three and a half months in the past and for all that he still looks so frail, and she is so careful with him, he is well.
She eats, and drinks tea, and dresses. Kate twists wildflowers into her hair, Michelle fixes her makeup. They each dress, and Lilly has tears in her eyes, but her smile is steady, and proud.
“You couldn’t be more lovely.”
Her own smile is weak, until Kate looks up from her phone, and smiles. “Erik is perfectly himself,” and she turns her phone to show the text from John Henry, which says exactly that, followed by, “tell the bride-to-be not to worry.”
And there are tears in her eyes but they are not of worry or sadness, only great swelling love for their friends.
A great swelling love, that sustains her all the way to the church doors, all the way to Michelle walking down the aisle in front, to John Henry kissing her cheek before he links his arm with Kate’s, and they follow Nadir’s girlfriend down the aisle. And Lilly’s arm is linked with hers, her hands wrapped carefully around her bouquet, the tea rose for her, the orchids for Erik, and she thinks of her parents’ wedding picture, both of them so young, neither knowing what would lie in store for them, how their time would be cut short, and she thinks of Erik waiting for her, of his condition, and hopes, fervently, to have more years than they had, hopes, fervently, to have a lifetime.
Then she composes herself, and the bridal march swells, and she is walking down the aisle towards the man who is to be her husband, who she is to share the rest of her life with, whom she has known she loved since that first evening beneath the ancient elm, when he told her of his face, and she kissed him.
He does not turn to face her, and she knew he would not, for all that he is the most special man in the world there is that odd sense of traditional propriety in him and where in another man it might be stifling, in him it makes her love him more and she smiles as she gets closer, smiles as she is close enough to reach out and touch him, as Lilly gently releases her, and she takes the last steps on her own, to stand beside him, and face the priest.
And now Erik turns, just slightly, just enough, and his face is pale, his eyes damp, the wave of his hair threatening to slip from its slicked back hold, chaotic even now because he refused to get it cut, but his smile is more beautiful than she has ever seen it.
(Afterwards there will be speeches and cakes and dances. She will hold him close through that first dance, just for them, her head against his chest and his arms around her, his heart beating strong in her ear, his sandalwood cologne familiar and soothing. And Al will sweep her out of his arms when it finishes so he does not wear himself out, but she and Erik will hold each other close through the most special songs they’ve picked for this night, each one whispering of how they feel, of the aching throbbing deep in their hearts for there to be only them, them forever. And one of the songs will be a recording of his father, ‘You Go to My Head’ that she slipped in, and she will sit with him and lean into him as everyone else dances the Siege of Ennis and Al will spin his mother around the floor even as Lilly spins Bill, and at the end of the night it will be Michelle who catches her bouquet, and something unfathomable will cross Nadir’s face, but it will not matter to them, not on this night. And she will squeeze Erik’s hands, their wedding bands shining gold, and kiss him there to the cheers of the crowd as he grins into her mouth, before she leads him up to their suite, up to their bed, and there for the first time, beneath the covers, they will hold each other and touch each other and love each other, as gentle as can be, for the first time as husband and wife, for the first time since he learned he would need surgery, and they will hold each other close, all through the night.)
(In the morning there will be a visit to her parents’ grave, there will be a journey to the West to where his father lies, and they will leave a twined orchid and tea rose at each headstone. And he will take her to a little thatched cottage, with whitewashed walls, by the Atlantic shore, and with screaming seagulls and curlews overhead, the crashing of the waves against the rocks, they will wind up an old record player, and hold each other close as the music drifts, and for two weeks there will be only them, only this, the rest of the world ceasing to exist, and he will bow his head, and her lips will be soft, and welcome, beneath his.)
He smiles at her, and she smiles at him, her heart fluttering, his fingers gentle curling around her wrist, and they turn as one to the altar, ready, and willing, and barely able to breathe, for love.