‘Do you still want me?’
He was silent.
‘Do you?’
‘You know I do.’
‘Then leave Grace.’
‘I can’t!’
‘Come away with me.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! You’ve got no money, nowhere to live.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re not living in the real world, Flor.’
‘If you come away with me I’ll leave Colin.’
‘What? You’re bribing me to leave my wife? You are priceless!’
‘You want Colin to be free and you want me. It’s simple.’
‘You’re out of your mind. Where are we supposed to go? What am I supposed to say to Grace? “There’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is Flora’s dumped Colin. The bad news is I’m leaving you”.’
Flora ignored him. ‘We could go to Tigh na Mara. No one would ever think of looking for us there.’
‘It’ll be uninhabitable by now. It’s been on the market for years.’
‘We’d manage. It can’t be that bad. And if the roof’s blown away, we’ll camp out. Like we used to.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘We can live there to begin with. None of the family need know we’re there. It will give us time to think. To plan. It will be like it used to be. Just us. And we’ll be happy.’
‘It’s just a fantasy! You’re living in the past.’
‘I was happy in the past!’ she said fiercely. ‘So were you! Why shouldn’t we live there? Why shouldn’t we be happy again?’
‘Flora, I have a life. Family. Friends. Commitments. I give piano lessons. Lectures. I’m trying to write a book. I have commissions for articles. I have a diary and it’s full.’
‘But your life is empty.’
‘If I gave it all up, what… who—’ His voice gave out. His head shot up and, blinking rapidly, he appeared to study the patterns on the artexed ceiling. Flora stared at his exposed throat, the protruding Adam’s apple rising and falling as he swallowed. Rory lowered his gaze but didn’t meet her eyes. ‘If I gave all that up, who would I be? The other half of you? I can’t just… walk away from everything.’
‘Like I did.’
‘I can’t. I won’t.’
‘Not even to save your son from my corrupting influence?’
‘It will end one day, with or without my intervention.’
‘You’re very confident of that, aren’t you? You think he’ll dump me.’
His smile was bleak. ‘No, I don’t. That’s why I’m here. Don’t undersell yourself, Flor. Colin is bewitched. Like his father before him. Like Hugh.’
‘So you think I’ll dump him?’
‘I know you will. When they try to help heroin addicts kick their habit, they put them on something called methadone. It’s a heroin substitute. Not so dangerous. And it reduces the physical cravings.’ Rory paused to allow his words to sink in. Flora stared at him, appalled. ‘You’ll finish with Colin. Eventually. You won’t be able to pretend any more. Not now you’ve seen the real thing again.’
She lifted her hand, drew it back and slapped him hard across the face. Rory saw the blow coming but made no move to avoid it. His head yielded slightly as her palm connected with his face and his eyes closed involuntarily. As his cheek reddened he opened his eyes and stared into Flora’s. His lips moved in an abortive attempt at a smile. ‘And you thought you could get through all this without touching me, didn’t you?’ He turned away, opened the front door and, without looking back said, ‘You won’t be able to pretend any more now, Flor. And, if it’s any consolation, neither will I.’
When Colin returned from his rehearsal some hours later he was surprised to find Flora exactly as he’d left her: asleep in bed, apparently dead drunk, but unaccountably, she was now wearing one of his shirts and the bed was strewn with damp and crumpled tissues.
Rory was right, of course. (When was the bastard ever wrong?) Things were never the same after that visit. I don’t think I had ever thought about Rory when making love with Colin, but after I’d seen him, after he’d put the idea in my mind, things were different.
I was furious. And very sad. Rory destroyed what I had and I didn’t have all that much. He’d known exactly how to break up my relationship with Colin, but he’d given little thought to the consequences for me. I had nowhere to go. I still had no money. I got the odd interview, but somehow I always seemed to blow it. Actually, if I’m honest, I have to admit I didn’t always make it to interviews if they were early in the morning. Hangovers were becoming more of a problem, so much so that even Colin got irritated enough to complain about my drinking. But he didn’t understand why I was drinking. Why I had to.
I suppose I was falling apart even before I ran away to Scotland. And I was pretty damn sure Rory was too. Music had always been his defence against me, against people, everything. Without that, how did he bear the emptiness of his life? The wonder was that he’d lasted as long as he had.
I knew it was only a matter of time and time was one thing I did have. So when he rang me two weeks after his visit, I wasn’t surprised. Relieved, that the waiting was over, but not surprised.
1987
Rory lay awake, staring at the window, waiting for the first grey light, listening for the first birdcall. In the silence he was aware of sounds in his own ears, of his own breathing, even of his digestion. It was 4.00am and he was hungry, but lacked the energy to get out of bed. Grace lay beside him, her back towards him, her breathing soft and steady. He lay on his back with his arms on top of the duvet, aware, as he always was, that one hand was warm and the other cold. He rubbed the cold hand with the warm to stimulate the circulation, listened to the whisper of skin brushing skin, then spread his hands and stretched his fingers, letting them sink into the soft depths of the duvet.
He no longer woke expecting his hand to be restored, expecting to find it had all been a bad dream. That shattering daily disappointment had lasted for some years, but nowadays he woke in the full knowledge of what had been lost. He awoke every day with the sensation of a weight on his chest, as if he were being pressed to death.
His left hand was moving, fingering something absently on the surface of the duvet - the tune in his head, but only the left hand moved. He could feel muscle impulses in his right hand as he thought the music through, but apart from his thumb and little finger, there was no response, no movement he could control. He could feel the music in his right hand, but couldn’t finger it.
He tried to remember what his hands looked like when he used to play. He’d spent nearly thirty years watching his hands move up and down keyboards, so it wasn’t difficult to remember. What was difficult was coping with the memory. Watching his hands move in his mind’s eye, Rory heard what they were playing. The Waldstein. The adagio molto in the second movement. He’d recorded the sonata in 1973. It had been well-received, selected as a Gramophone Record of the Month. It had sold well and there were plans to record more Beethoven - there had been talk of the Hammerklavier - when the accident happened.
Rory ran through the list once again of great piano pieces he’d never played, would never play now. He’d become an expert in masochism, but he still wasn’t sure which was more painful: to list the pieces he’d never played, or the pieces he would never play again. He tortured himself in this way, probing wounds to see if they were healing and as he probed, he opened them up again. Then, once his soul’s blood was running freely and nothing could staunch the flow, he’d list the pieces of music he would learn to play if ever his hand were restored to him. Sometimes he’d take down the dusty scores and study them, as a kind of mental preparation for a miracle.
The dawn chorus began. A robin solo as usual. Then a blackbird. Then an answering blackbird. Rory tried to notate the trio in his head, incorporating a ground bass of distant lorries as they rumbled along the main road. In the dim light he could see his hands more clearly now. Scars were visible, pale raised lines that caught the light and gleame
d as he turned his right hand over, noting how muscle had wasted. His left arm and hand looked bigger than the right.
Grace had said his hands were beautiful. Beautiful in repose; even more beautiful when they played. She would gather up one or both of his hands and press them to her mouth, or cheek, sometimes her breasts. He felt a stirring in his groin at the memory of Grace’s hands on his body, of his hands on Grace. He watched his hands, the memory of his hands, removing Grace’s clothes, languorously, to an accompaniment of soft laughter, but when in his imaginings she was naked, he saw it wasn’t Grace, but Flora. Except that it wasn’t really Flora, whom he’d never seen naked except as a child. The woman of his imaginings was a Flora he’d never seen, never held, but one he thought about - not often, but often enough to know that the thought was to be avoided, like his musical lists; that thought, if pursued, would lead to more self-lacerating pain.
Was there a limit to all the pain? If he suffered enough, punished himself enough, would he finally reach saturation point? And would it then stop? Would he eventually feel no more pain, no more desire? Would he pass through some sort of barrier, descend to a hellish underworld where his senses were cauterised, where there was no more longing and therefore no more suffering? Rory wondered how much more he would have to go through before he reached that point. There must surely be a limit, a pain threshold at which the mind either disintegrates or numbness sets in. A death of the spirit and the senses.
He thought of Flora, anaesthetised by vodka and sex. He’d tried both. He couldn’t drink enough to dull his mind. He threw up before he achieved oblivion. Sex, with Grace and others, tired his body but left his mind untouched, craving something - he’d no idea what - that he believed only Flora could supply.
What was the ultimate pain? What refinements were there that he hadn’t yet experienced? What could he do to push himself through that barrier, so that, if he survived it, he would suffer no more?
The cacophony of the dawn chorus reached an ecstatic fortissimo. It was obvious really. And quite simple. Amazing how his mind had baulked at it for so long. Grace had known for years and taken steps to ensure neither he nor the children could ever inflict this particular pain. With something like a feeling of exaltation, Rory got out of bed, stealthily, so as not to wake Grace. Closing the bedroom door behind him, he went downstairs to the sitting room.
Grace was woken by music. Music she knew well, yet it was somehow unfamiliar, as if she hadn’t heard it in a long while. As she struggled to surface from sleep she became aware of a piano playing. Beethoven. A sonata. But it wasn’t just the music that was familiar… She sat bolt upright in bed, fully awake now and listened intently.
It was Rory. She knew it must be Rory. She stifled a cry, pressing a hand to her mouth so hard that her lips hurt, crushed against her teeth. Her mind flooded with joy. She was scrambling out of bed, stumbling towards the door before she realised that this was no miracle. With a dawning sense of horror she realised Rory had found his own recordings and was playing one of them.
Grace ran downstairs, calling out his name.
He was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room with his back towards her, his pyjama-clad legs crossed, his naked torso hunched over a group of records spread out on the carpet in front of him. He was rocking back and forth like a small child, listening to his own recording of the Waldstein sonata, a recording that used to make Grace cry even before the accident.
She didn’t speak but approached slowly and knelt down beside him. His face was wet with tears and his eyes were closed. His hands were spread out in front of him, pressing down into the carpet as if supporting him, preventing his collapse, his fall into the abyss.
Grace was afraid to touch him, afraid to speak. She didn’t think he knew she was there and she feared to disturb his agony, as one might fear to wake a sleepwalker. Nor did she want to speak over the music, interrupting whatever it was Rory had decided to put himself through. She simply wanted to be present, to endure it with him. So she sat on the floor facing him, in case he should open his eyes. She watched him weep, listened to him play, letting her own silent tears flow as Rory’s hands thundered out the final joyous chords of the Waldstein.
Chapter 23
1987
Rory wandered through the garden at Orchard Farm and found Hugh in the greenhouse, potting on seedlings. He was engrossed in his work and didn’t notice Rory arrive. Standing in the doorway, watching Hugh’s big hands manipulate the fragile seedlings so lovingly, Rory felt soothed. He remembered watching Archie perform the same task, explaining that young seedlings can recover from a damaged leaf, but not a damaged stem, so they should always be handled by their leaves. Rory had helped his father on many an occasion. His long, supple fingers, exquisitely sensitive, were ideally suited to the delicate tasks of sowing seed, pricking out and potting on. He thought how familiar and reassuring it might feel, to plunge his fingers now into the warm, damp compost, to handle something small and beautiful, so full of potential life.
Hugh had straightened up and was looking at him expectantly.
‘You’ve come to talk about Flora.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve seen her?’
‘Yes. At Colin’s place. She’s living there.’
‘So I gathered.’
‘We had a God-almighty row.’
‘I can imagine. You know, it’s really nothing to do with you,’ Hugh said gently, brushing compost from his hands. ‘With any of us. Colin’s twenty-one. It’s his life.’
‘She’s not paying him any rent. She hasn’t even got a job. And she looked bloody awful.’
‘You haven’t seen her in a long time.’
‘She’s drinking again. You can tell. She looks… puffy.’
Hugh looked at Rory and thought he too looked awful - thin, red-eyed, as if he weren’t sleeping. Turning back to his workbench, Hugh said, ‘If only she’d let us help.’ He resumed his task, but Rory knew he was still thinking about Flora. He didn’t feel he’d been dismissed, nor did he feel the need to talk. He knew Hugh was comfortable having silent company in the humid, fragrant heat of the greenhouse. The warmth and Hugh’s repetitive movements with trowel and dibber made Rory feel tired.
‘Are you sleeping?’
Hugh’s gentle enquiry jerked him out of his reverie. ‘What? Oh… No, not very well.’
‘You should talk to the doc about that. I’m sure he could give you something.’
‘No. Grace would do her nut. We don’t have pills of any kind in the house. She still worries about me.’
‘We all do. It’s because we love you.’
Rory smiled awkwardly. Hugh had never lost his clerical way of talking easily about love. It embarrassed Rory, yet he could never quite bring himself to deride it. He admired Hugh’s honesty, his refusal to simplify, to judge. Hugh’s love encompassed and nourished them all. Rory didn’t ask himself if Hugh’s love for him was still partly sexual. He didn’t really care any more, he simply thought of Hugh as a friend. A good friend. Someone he could talk to. The only one, in fact.
‘You’d do anything for Theo, wouldn’t you?’
Hugh looked up, surprised. He considered a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose I would.’
‘Commit a crime?’
‘No, I don’t think I’d do that. Not unless it were to save his life.’
‘Would you do something wrong? Something that would harm other people? To help Theo, I mean?’
‘I suppose I might. It’s hard to say. Look, what’s the matter?’
Rory raised his head to look Hugh full in the face, searching his eyes for a lie. ‘Do you think I’m bad?’
‘Bad?’
‘Yes.’
Hugh stared at him for a moment, then said, ‘No. Not bad. Selfish. I think you’re utterly selfish.’ He smiled gently. ‘But I don’t think that makes you bad. Do you think you’re bad?’
‘No.’ Rory lowered his eyes and Hugh knew he was looking down at his own hands. ‘Bu
t I sometimes wonder if I’ve been punished.’
‘For something you’ve done?’
‘No. For what I’m going to do.’
When Grace came home and found Rory gone she wasn’t unduly concerned until she saw the sealed envelope propped up on her desk. Her first thought was that he’d left a suicide note, so when she read the few lines that informed her he’d walked away from the marriage leaving no forwarding address, she was at first relieved.
Rory was alive and planning a future.
It just didn’t include her.
What Rory and I did was bad. Unequivocally bad. We hurt people, lots of people, people who didn’t deserve to be hurt, people who, on the contrary, deserved to be loved and protected.
No one knew exactly what had happened. No one was able to put all the pieces together, apart from Hugh who must have guessed straight away. I walked out on Colin, but he didn’t tell anyone, afraid his parents might gloat, I suppose, or appear inordinately pleased. Then Rory left Grace. It wouldn’t have occurred to Colin to burden his mother with his own problems, so Grace assumed I was still living with Colin.
Poor Colin coped on his own. He believed I’d left him for someone else, but he didn’t know who. I hoped he’d never know and I could see no reason why he ever should. I wanted him to believe ours had been a good relationship, that I’d genuinely liked him, really wanted him, because it was true, I had. I wanted Colin to feel good about our affair because my brother was wrong. Colin wasn’t a substitute for Rory. (If Colin had come anywhere near being a substitute for Rory, I would never have left him. It was uncharacteristically modest of Rory to think that anyone could replace him in my life.)
But Colin didn’t feel good of course. He felt rejected. Who wouldn’t? He refused to accept my money (Rory’s money) and I had to hide it in the pockets of his trousers and tuck it into corners of drawers before I left.
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