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1
(June 2018)
The summer of 2018 is notorious for the drought that comes with it. For years Christine will listen to Erik’s uncle Al say that he “never saw the like of it”, grass scorched white and cracking underfoot, cows coming in to be milked with sunburned teats and not a thing to be done about it. It will be a narrative for the years, a landmark in time. The drought, that came after the late spring and the blizzard and the hurricane.
No sane person would ever have predicted such weather. They’d be laughed at.
But while the drought is notable, bordering on historic and not just in living memory, Christine will remember this summer for other things.
She will remember it for sitting in the garden reading Epitaph because John Henry said she should (“In the field of historical fiction about real people it’s uncontested,” and that starry look in his eyes. He wasn’t impressing her. “It’s a western.” His dramatic gasp, hand over heart. “My dear Christine, it is so much more than a western. It is art.”). For garden parties and barbecues, the sweetness of cheap pre-made cocktails on her lips (off-brand Sex on the Beach from the supermarket, and if it ever saw a peach in its life that was as close as it got to being what it said it was). For lying on her bed with the windows open trying to tempt in a breeze, ruminating about queerness historical and otherwise and listening to Florence’s Ceremonials album on repeat (a whole entire mood, if she’s being quite honest).
Mostly, she will remember this summer for Erik.
It is the first summer she has had with him, their relationship hardly three months old. And she already knows she wants to spend the rest of her life with him, if he will have her.
(He will, and they will be very happy, but she doesn’t quite know that yet.)
For now, she is sitting in the garden behind the house that Kate and John Henry and Morgan have leased. Nadir is managing the barbecue, burgers sizzling and the most serious look of concentration on his face that a man has ever worn. Morgan has assigned himself to mixing up some real Sex on the Beach, after his muttered complaints about “drinking this rubbish” and John Henry is “supervising” though Christine suspects he’s wondering when to swoop in and steal a kiss. Kate has been regaling her with surgical tales of the Western Front in WWI, and she’s fiddling with her phone and the loudspeaker, insisting that they listen to some My Chemical Romance, namely ‘The Ghost of You’. Erik did go into the house to get ice for the new cocktails, but that’s ten minutes ago now, and Christine doesn’t know how he could have gotten lost when the freezer is two minutes from the door, but she decides to go and look for him.
She swallows down the last of her pre-made cocktail (and it really is sickeningly sweet) and stands up, slipping into the house. They don’t notice her go, all absorbed in their own things, but no big deal. She’s more interested in finding Erik now.
Maybe she’ll steal her own kiss.
She finds him swaying in front of the freezer before she hears the music, before she realizes he’s singing. His skinny jeans hugging his hips, his loose shirt, hair combed back and her mouth is dry and she hears the low hum of his voice,
“—the sweet heat of her breath in my mouth I’m alive, with her sweetened breath and her tongue so mean she’s the—”
“—angel of small death and the codeine scene.” She couldn’t help it, she had to sing along, and he freezes and turns around, gaping at her, and the grin spreads across her face.
“If you wanted a kiss you only had to ask,” she says, the music still playing from his phone in his pocket, and he snorts, and grins as she steps into his arms.
“If you’re offering then I’ll gladly take you up on it,” a twinkle in his eye and one brow quirked.
The distorted half of his face is soft beneath her palm, and as his hand slides to cup the back of her head, she raises onto her tippy toes, and presses her lips to his.
(So engrossed is she, that she never notices when Nadir steps in behind her, wondering what’s taking them so long, and snaps a picture that she’ll one day stick into an album, and label, 29 June 2018, Nadir catching us when we were supposed to be getting ice for cocktails, Erik threw a cube of ice at him when he saw the picture, and blushed to the tips of his ears, but she’ll leave that bit out.)
2
(October 2018)
Nadir is staying in Dublin for the week because he has a difficult case and wants to spend as much time as possible in the Law Library, so Erik is quite pleased to have the place to himself. In fact, the first thing he did was text Christine and they agreed she’d “keep him company.”
That was also the very excuse she gave Lilly, who raised one eyebrow and looked very much as if she was trying not to laugh.
“I’m sure he couldn’t possibly manage on his own without you.”
Christine gave her her best innocent smile. “Someone has to remind him to eat.” And it wasn’t exactly a lie because he never eats enough and always forgets to take breaks when he’s working.
So it is with Lilly’s blessing that Christine will be keeping Erik company while he is bereft of Nadir’s presence. And to make sure that he does eat, she stops in Apache for a large pizza, a bucket of popcorn chicken, and garlic bread on her way. She already has a bottle of red wine in her bag. Casillero del Diablo, Cabernet Sauvignon. Erik doesn’t drink much, but it’s one of his favourites. And it goes well with pizza.
The perfect way to have a party for two, on the first evening of the week. And if food, and wine, should lead to cuddling and more than cuddling, then she’s not going to object.
She’s been looking forward to this ever since she heard Nadir was going to be away. And Erik’s bed is small, but it fits the two of them nice and cosy.
(Sometimes, how thin he is can have its advantages.)
She’s hardly been able to sit still all day for thinking of the lovely time they’re going to have.
With her late tutorial session, he’s due to be home before she is, and so she’s texted him to have the table ready for when she arrives, and she knows it will be. Erik is nothing if not efficient.
It’s only a small juggle when she reaches the door to open it, box of onion rings and bucket of popcorn chicken balanced on top of the pizza and braced against her hip. The lights are off, and she wonders if he’s fallen asleep (it wouldn’t be the first time, man needs to sleep more at night) as she closes the door behind her. She nips into the kitchen, finds the table set as she knew it would be, and puts down the food. Then she swings her bag onto the table as well and takes out the bottle of wine, sets that down too and puts the bag on the floor.
Time to find Erik.
It is only then that she hears the music, soft and low coming from the sitting room. He’s probably completely absorbed in it. No wonder he didn’t hear her come in.
That soft music, she knows the song it goes with. What is it again?
She slips into the sitting room, and sees the silhouette of him lying on the couch in the darkness, his voice a hum as he sings along below the music, “…I will rove and I will ramble, ‘til my heart no longer craves, our brazen da-ays…”
She steals to his side, and still he doesn’t stir, singing quietly, his eyes closed, and before he can realise she’s there, she kneels down and kisses his forehead.
He jumps, his eyes snapping open, and she flicks on the lamp so he can see her. His face is pale, a flush creeping into his cheeks, and before he can move, she plants another kiss to the space between his eyes.
“Gotcha.”
And his laugh is low and warm, as his hand wraps around hers. “Menace.”
3
(June 2024)
It is three weeks since they married, four days since they got home from their honeymoon to the house that is newly theirs, and still it hardly feels real. There are photographs of their wedding, a new ring on her left hand and a matching one on his, the memory of two weeks with him alone in a cottage in Connemara, and still it feels like a grand dream, vivid and conjured from the depths of her imagination, that had lingered with her from night into waking day. As if she might blink and wake up in her old bedroom in Lilly’s house to a text from Erik, you won’t believe what I dreamt last night.
I’d believe it alright, she thinks, and snorts.
But it wasn’t a dream. It was real, it is real. They got married in front of their friends and family, and Lilly was crying and so was Erik’s mother and Uncle Al and Nadir, and it was all she could do not to cry too, to think how fortunate they are that they can be married, that they can have each other like this. How fortunate they are that Erik is alive and well, after the surgery that saved his life. (She is learning not to think about it, but it’s difficult.)
They really are married, and every time she remembers it’s a flutter in her chest that makes her giggle.
She walked out to Tesco to get a few bits, namely the ingredients for a lemon meringue pie. She hasn’t done any baking since they moved in, had too much else to think about with the move and the wedding preparations and Erik’s recovery, so there wasn’t an ounce of flour or a tablespoon of caster sugar to be had in the house, but that’s all remedied now. The lemon meringue pie first, she thinks, and then maybe scones. Surprise Erik with the recipe out of Phyllis Browne’s book, send a picture of them to John Henry to tease him. The man’s such a helpless baker he can’t even get a scone recipe to come together. (“Biscuit scones,” he called what he took out of the oven, and Erik prodded them and muttered, “I’m not even sure they’re edible.”)
(They were, as it happens, edible. And extremely sweet.)
When she went to Tesco, Erik’s intention was to organize his bookshelves. He hasn’t had a proper chance since they moved in, hadn’t the energy for it for a long time, and the chaos was starting to bother him, so when she sets the shopping on the table she heads upstairs to see how he’s getting on.
She hears the music, first, something lively, sounding a touch Scottish maybe but she’s not sure. It’s a song she hasn’t heard before, she doesn’t think, and it’s a nice surprise. She can’t hear the singer’s voice because Erik is singing over it, but she doesn’t mind because Erik has a wonderful voice. She’d listen to Erik sing all day if she could.
“You’re alive, you’re alive and the stars are on your side, feel the wonder of the world you are alive…” his voice lifts her up, carries her into the room and she wants to dance, wants to take him in her arms and spin him around, but he’s standing on a chair in front on the bookshelf, three books in a pile in his left hand and he hasn’t noticed her come in and she doesn’t want him to fall. It’d be just like him to take a tumble off the chair at the sight of her, so she slips from the room again and creeps back downstairs, grinning to herself. She’s going to have to find that song and listen to it herself.
Besides, time enough to kiss him when she brings him up a slice of fresh pie.
4
(August 2024)
Often when she is working in her study she doesn’t bother putting on any music. Not that she can’t work to music, because she can and she prefers to, but because she can hear Erik’s music playing from his study across the hall. They’ve only been married a couple of months, but already they’re in the habit of leaving their doors open as they work, and it’s an excellent arrangement. If she tires of his musical choice, which isn’t often, she just puts in her earphones, and all is well.
Erik’s own ears are delicate so he prefers not to wear earphones unless he has to, and there are times when he finds headphones too uncomfortable, so she doesn’t mind that he plays his music out loud. Their tastes are similar enough as it is.
Plus, it’s got the bonus of getting to hear him sing along. And that’s enough to brighten the worst of days.
Today her topic is the 1977 general election, her second favorite next to 1948, if only for the Independent Labour candidates who deprived some actual Labour candidates of potential seats. It’s a bit of a departure from Salazar and the Estado Novo, but it’s good to vary topics every now and then, freshens the brain. Like reading a novel after a scholarly text, something a bit different and all the better for it. So 1977 it is, and the resignation that came with it that the ‘70s had been far from socialist. And if John Henry has been waxing poetic about that half-minute colour clip of Noël Browne from 1979, well no matter. No one need ever know it’s been in the back of her head.
She’s always had a bit of a soft spot for ‘70s Noël. Erik has too though he mightn’t admit it.
But her interest has been spiked in 1977, this time, because of the Christians for Socialism movement, who was encouraging voters to vote Communist and Sinn Féin and independent Left. An old Twitter post of all things has brought them to her attention, and she hasn’t asked John Henry yet but she assumes he doesn’t know about them when he hasn’t mentioned them. He’s never been shy when it comes to talking about his topics of interest.
So engrossed is she in her reading, that it takes her several minutes to realize Erik is singing dramatically to a song she has never heard before.
“They took Sir Roger home again, in the year of ’65, and with his comrades of ’16 in peace and tranquil lies…”
Sir Roger? Is it a song about Casement? Erik, listening to a song about Roger Casement of all people—
She snorts just to think about it.
If she’s not mistaken it sounds like the Wolfe Tones. Erik has never listened to the Wolfe Tones. The Dubliners, yes. Luke Kelly, definitely. But the Wolfe Tones?
You really do learn something new every day.
The song finishes, and she’s just looking back at the article she’s reading, wondering what will come next, when it starts again, and Erik starts singing again “‘Twas on Good Friday morning…” and that’s it. It really is. She has no objection to the song, it sounds like a decently good tune, but Erik listening to it on repeat? She’s got to see what he’s working on, got to see what’s possessed him. Has he been replaced by John Henry while she was distracted?
She pushes back her chair and stands, and walks out of the room and across the hall into his study.
Erik is quite engrossed in his double-screen desktop, and his singing, and he doesn’t notice her in the doorway. She slips inside and still he doesn’t look up, and she’s beside him before he notices and pauses the music.
“If you’re enquiring about the song,” and he sounds mildly defensive, “I’m finding singing to it is helpful for data input. It sets a very nice rhythm.”
“I wasn’t going to object,” and she drops a kiss to his hair that leaves him looking mollified, “I was just curious that’s all.” Indeed, he has SPSS open on one screen, that hell program, and old sheet music on the other. “If it helps with coding this stuff then so much the better.” He always complains when he’s coding things. If this keeps him from complaining then so much the better. “I only ask that after a few more rounds, you try the same thing with Hamilton or something. Don’t want one song losing its effect.” Don’t want it stuck in my head either, she thinks but does not add.
He considers, and nods. “Fair enough. I will bear it in mind. Now please,” and he smiles with a hint of mischief in his eyes, the music starting again, “the Wolfe Tones.”
5
(June 2025)
The morning of the first anniversary of the day they got married, she wakes alone in bed. So used is she to waking first that it takes her a minute to realise she’s alone in the bed, and when she does she blinks her eyes open and frowns.
Where has he gotten to?
They’ve both decided to take the day off and spend it together, and she’d been looking forward to their lying in bed together for as long as they wanted to. To wake up and find him not there, well. It’s a bit of a disappointment, really.
It’s a nice bright morning, sun filtering in through the gap in the curtains, and she sighs and decides she might get up. Lying here isn’t likely to bring him back any quicker, not when he’s already smoothed over the covers on his side of the bed.
What has gotten into him at all?
Maybe she can persuade him to come back to bed...
Now there’s a thought.
And it is with that very thought in mind that she sits up, swallows a mouthful of the water from her glass on the bedside locker, and rolls out from under the covers. Into slippers, and her blue silk dressing gown, and resolving to find her husband and drag him back to bed she pads out of the room and down the stairs.
As she reaches the bottom steps, she hears the music. Soft, the strains of Lisa Hannigan, coming from the kitchen, so that’s the direction she veers in. If she’s not mistaken, it’s the very end of ‘Teeth’, so that means ‘Lille’ is next and—ah, yes, she’s right.
That soft swaying start, and then Erik’s voice, sweet and gentle. “He went to sea, for the day...” and her heart swoops.
‘Lille’ has always been one of her favourites. Since, God, 2009 maybe? She used to doodle the lyrcis of it in school and sing it under her breath in Irish, along with Luan Parle’s ‘Ghost’. Hearing Erik sing it—
Hearing Erik sing it, she is quite prepared to forgive him for leaving her in bed.
She steps into the kitchen, and there he is, at the cooker, swaying slightly, a stack of pancakes on a plate beside him.
“I went to war, every morning...”
“...I lost my way, but now I’m following...”
And he doesn’t turn around when he hears her, but she sees the way he dips his head, and she knows he’s smiling.
“...what you said in my arms...”
“...what I read in the charms...”
She wraps her arms around his waist, and presses herself into his back, and he giggles and sings softly, “now it’s dead and gone and I am free...”
And together they will sing the song to its end, and then he will turn around and kiss her and tell her how he was planning to surprise her in bed with pancakes and strawberries and she’ll kiss him back and say that they can have the pancakes and then return to bed with the strawberries, and with some cream, and he’ll flush to the tips of his ears, and she’ll know she has him.
She’ll cup the back of his head, and reach up to kiss him, and he’ll smile into her mouth, and that will be when they’ll wish each other a happy anniversary, and not a moment sooner.
For now there is swaying with her arms around him as they sing and the pancakes sizzle, and she wouldn’t ask for anything else.
+1
(June 2025)
That evening, she’s lying on the couch with her head in his lap, warm and comfortable and sated after a wonderful day in his company, and his fingers are gentle twining with her hair, his free hand wrapped around her own as he smiles to himself, and she presses closer to him, snuggles into the softness of his belly as he sings, softly, an old song of Elvis’ made different, made better, by how Erik sings it, for her and her alone. Intimate, instead of sweeping. Quiet, instead of grand.
“...I guess I’ll never know the reason why you love me as you do...that’s the wonder...the wonder of you...”
And she closes her eyes, and squeezes his fingers, and sighs, and in this moment, when time has stilled just for them, there is nowhere else in the world she would rather be, than right here, exactly where she is.