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They have been together thirty-six years, when he proposes Connemara.
She has known for weeks now that there is something on his mind. He has been just a little quiet, just a little contemplative, playing melancholy little pieces composed by a shoreline, for a graveyard, more than thirty years ago. It has been a certain cast of his eyes, a tilt of his head, the slightly different part in his hair (the threads of silver woven through, still dark, still a little long, a little askew), the angle of his glasses. So many little things, and to someone else they might not matter, to a different pair of eyes, but he is her husband, and it is her job to know.
The worry about the condition of his heart is an old familiar weight, but he dispels it with one of his soft smiles, and kisses her.
He has long ceased to hide things from her, especially when it comes to his health. His health is too precious to both of them.
They decide on a month. A month in Connemara. July, like the year he and John Henry went down on a whim, and she was in Portugal. The year he proposed to her, on an impulse, there on the side of the street, his hair only half-cut.
A month, home in time for his birthday. He will have his music, and she will write. And it will be as if the world outside hardly exists, this cottage just for the two of them.
The setting sun on the water casts it golden, just like his eyes. His eyes, and the eyes he passed on to Andriú, and every time she looks at their son she sees him, sees him at twenty-five, gangly and awkward and just a little shy, and how he must have been at twenty-one, how he might have been, with a whole face.
(Andriú has dyed his blond hair black, and with it the resemblance to Erik is uncanny.)
She has long ceased to wonder how he would be with a whole face. If he had had a whole face, what myriad of things would have needed to be different? Would have come to be different? And those differences might have kept them apart.
She cannot countenance a world in which she did not love him, in which she never knew his gentle hands, and the press of his kiss. What sort of world would that have been? How would she ever have borne it?
(It is only the rarest moments, when she looks at Andriú and wonders on Erik. Mostly she looks on Andriú and just sees their son, the little baby she carried under her heart, the little boy she held in her arms, his fingers curled tight around one of her own.)
Andriú comes down to see them, in the second week. Erik has been baking scones, a recipe pulled out of a book he read once upon a time, so battered and old, now, so loved, held together with tape and hope, the words ones he can recite.
It is only a day that Andriú stays for, just a day. But on that day he goes for a walk with Erik, and when they come back he hugs her, and kisses her cheek, and there is a dampness almost like tears, almost like he has been crying.
(“What was it you said to him?” she asks Erik, after, and he smiles, just slightly, and whispers, “just some things that needed to be said.”)
Neither of them have ever been sailors. They could count on one hand the number of times they have each been on the water. But they hire a boat, and a man to sail it, and with the blue sky, and the waves rippling around them, they lie back, and whisper to each other, and kiss, and feel the water flow around them, feel as if this is all there is, all there should be. Just them, and the water, and the sky above. And he has not brought his violin out, but he hums to her, softly, and she leans into him, into his embrace, into his chest, and hears his heart beating, steady and firm, hears the soft whisper of each inhale, each exhale, and thinks of how she would keep him like this, just like this forever, if she could. Spend the rest of eternity just holding him, listening to him sing, feeling him alive and real beside her.
(She will not let herself remember, not now, how close she came to losing him.)
It is a damp evening, that evening. An Atlantic mist rolled in, a chill with it, and they light a fire in the grate. With the crackling flames in the darkened room, the drapes drawn to hide the world, she lies back in the armchair, and he takes his violin, and plays for her, something she has never heard before, a new piece born from his fingers, born from these days, and tears prickle the backs of her eyes, tears of love, love greater than anything, and there are no words to put it into the world, no words to give it voice, only her kiss pressed to his lips, and the soft pressure of his mouth.
He wears neither his mask nor his make-up. She is long past noticing the half of his face that he hides. Why would she notice it when she kisses it every night, and traces those stretching cracks that mark him out, that show him as different to the world? Why would she ever have a problem with it? It does not cause him pain (and it was the first question she asked him, all those years ago, under the ancient elm when he told her of it) and that’s all that matters to her. That he is not in pain, that he is not suffering quietly.
But it is lovely, to see his face like this every day, so free, the sun shining bright on it. And if he were not so conscious of it, she would tell him to keep his face like this always, and to hell with those who would say otherwise, who would call him unnatural.
He is happier, most of the time, when he can hide it, though he never hides from her. And he is happy, here, where he does not feel the need to hide it.
Clíodhna comes to visit, with Carina and Fiacha. The twins are due in a little over three months, Carina’s belly swelled beneath her dress, and Clíodhna dotes on her, sees to her every need, reminds Christine of Erik, and how he was when she was expecting each of their babies, even after his illness, even after he almost died.
It is a feeling inexplicable, that these twins of Clíodhna’s blood, of her blood and Erik’s, are carried safe by Carina, that they know for sure neither baby will have the condition Clíodhna and Erik share, that this is the safest thing, too, for Clíodhna’s own health.
(Clíodhna’s health has always been stronger than Erik’s, in spite of that shared condition, and she is careful to never risk it, and Christine has never known a greater comfort than that single fact.)
She has always loved Carina as if she were another daughter, Fiacha as if he were a second son, loved them for how Clíodhna loves them both, and every time she sees them, now, she loves them a little more, and her grandchildren-to-be.
She’s going to be a grandmother. The wonder of it.
Erik is going to be a grandfather. Somehow, the fact of that is almost more than she can get her head around.
(He confided to her, after Clíodhna told them the news, that he never thought he would see himself so old, never mind he is only sixty-one, about to be sixty-two, but something about becoming grandparents seems to confer age, and she kissed him and whispered that she hopes to see him a good deal older.)
They have few callers. John Henry comes to visit, once, alone, saying that he is on his way to visit a certain grave in a certain graveyard, and he is himself and not quite himself, but that is nothing to worry over, not when it comes to him, and the obsessions he has harboured as long as she has known him.
Morgan and Kate each drop in, too, separately, and she knows they are not following their wandering man so much as keeping an eye on him, and will be ready to take him back into his arms, when he needs them to.
Nadir drops in, too, with Michelle, and though they do not stay long (none of their callers stay long) they do decide to take a cottage of their own, next year.
Erik goes for a walk, every day, no matter the weather, and comes back with little scraps of pieces of music, composed for her. She goes for her own walks, and comes back with wildflowers to press, with fragments of things that might be poetry if she were a poet, and at night she strings them together, as he pieces his scraps into a whole, and they lie together, pressed close on the couch, just breathing, just existing, just having each other, and there is no need for words.
How many more summers will they have? How many more times will she watch the sun cast the silver in his hair to gold? How many more times will she watch the soft slow spread of his smile, feel his fingertips trace the back of her hand, taste his lips upon hers? How many more times will he kiss her good night, and again good morning and turn to her in the darkness, in the comfort of their bed, just to see her? It feels selfish to ask for more time than what they have had, selfish, when her parents had so little, and his had less, but ten lifetimes could never be enough to love him, to have him and to hold him. How could she content herself with just one when she needs him every moment? When she hears his laugh in her dreams, breathless and high and lovelier than any music, lovelier even than his own music? She would never have enough of him, not in any world, never grow tired of him. How could she, when he is the other half of her heart? The other half of her soul? Of herself?
She does not know it, has no way of knowing it, but she will see that light in his eyes thousands more times, wake beside him thousands more times, and kiss him good night, and good morning, and trace the creases of his face, trace her name tattooed on his hip as he traces her name tattooed on his. No way of knowing it, not for sure, but she feels it deep down, deeper than her heart, that he is hers, and she is his.
The month comes to an end, the time for them to return to Maynooth. And with her writing and his music, they set out for the east once more, with the promise that they will come again next year, and every year, to see the sea and the shaley beaches and the curlews dipping low. And it is a promise they will keep, and one they will cherish, for the rest of their lives.
He kisses her beneath the stars, and she smiles into his mouth, and knows she would never have it any other way.