Their final performance of Tosca was electrifying, and they received ovation after ovation, plaudit after plaudit, from the seemingly insatiable audience. Amelia and Constance sat in the same private box where they had been only weeks before, when all their lives had been so different. Brendan couldn’t help himself: when he came out for his curtain call, he plucked a pink rose from one of Marla’s bouquets and threw it to his wife-to-be, amidst roars of approval from audience, cast and crew - all except Marla and Alfredo, who rolled their eyes at each other while Amelia kissed the crown of petals and placed it in her hair.
Compared to the opening celebrations at the mayor’s official residence, the Tosca farewell party was a bit more restrained. It was held at the very top of the Teatro. The manager presented each of the principal singers with an engraved silver goblet in thanks for a very successful and entirely sold-out run. Alfredo put on a smile, but his secret itinerary was going round and round in his head. His bags were packed, and a river taxi was booked to pick him up at four o’clock that morning.
Constance was adamant that it was bad luck for Amelia to spend the night before her wedding with her future husband, so the two women left discreetly for a light supper back at the ship and an early night. The mayor insisted that the rest of them continue the party at his house. Brendan protested that they couldn’t possibly put him to any more trouble, but the mayor wouldn’t take no for an answer, especially when he heard that Brendan’s family was unable to attend the wedding on such short notice.
‘I need to go back to the house for something,’ Alfredo said. ‘I might see you later on.’ Without waiting for a reply, he turned away and hurried down the steps. Brendan tried to follow him, but the increasingly drunk mayor was having none of it. He ordered more champagne, and three chorus singers cornered Brendan to joke about his last night of freedom.
When Alfredo got back to the house that he and his friends had called home for a little under a month, he went to his bedroom and began writing what he considered the easier of his two farewell notes.
My dear Marla,
I’m no good at goodbyes, so I hope you’ll understand that I can’t stay any longer, and that it has nothing to do with you. I can’t thank you enough for your friendship and your professionalism over the past year. I wish you all the success in the world, and I hope our paths will cross again in the future.
With love,
Alfredo
He sealed it and placed it under Marla’s pillow. Then he went back to his room to write his letter to Brendan, but every time he tried to write down how he felt, it sounded all wrong. After ripping several frustrated attempts to shreds, he sat on the edge of the bed with the heel of his hand pressed to his good eye to stop the tears. When he looked up, he realised there was only one sheet of paper left, and he finally let his heart speak instead of his head.
Dearest Brendan,
This is the hardest letter I’ve ever had to write. By the time you read this, I will be long gone. I can’t stay. There are too many reasons to fit on this page, but you know most of them already. Only know that I wish you and Amelia everything you hope for in the future. Thank you for asking me to be your best man, but I just cannot do it. I'm sure you'll find a better man for the job. I'm so sorry if I've made things difficult on your most special day. I will never forget this time in Venice. Forgive me if you can.
Your friend,
Alfredo Moretti
He kissed and sealed the envelope, resisting the urge to crush it into his coat pocket with the rest of the torn paper. Instead, he carefully placed it under Brendan’s perfect white pillows.
There was a knock at the door and Alfredo jumped, but to his relief it was only the driver of the water taxi he had booked. The old man was early, so he agreed to take Alfredo around the city one more time before they headed for the airport.
By the time the extremely intoxicated Marla and Brendan escaped the suffocating hospitality of the mayor, it was almost morning. As they crept upstairs with their shoes in their hands, Marla whispered, ‘I’m so glad you and Amelia had the sense to make the wedding service late in the afternoon, so we can have a lie-in!’
‘Shh!’ Brendan hissed. ‘Don’t wake Alfredo. At least someone had the sense to try and have a good night’s sleep. I hope he’s written his speech.’ With that they parted, stifling giggles, and passed out as soon as their heads hit the pillows.
Hours later, Brendan woke suddenly from a blurred dream, convinced he could hear someone shouting, but it was only the good-humoured gondoliers vying for business. He pushed his fragile head under his pillow for cover, and it was then that he found the letter.
16
A quarter of a century later, Alfredo Moretti stood in his living room staring at Brendan Fiscetti’s letter like a waxwork dummy, frozen by the sheer weight of memory, loss and regret.
He slowly realised he had been standing in the same spot for so long that the sky had completely changed colour and the hungry sparrows had begun arguing with each other outside his window. His left leg had gone numb. When he moved he stumbled, in more need of his walking stick than usual. He cursed under his breath as the blood returned to his heavy foot and the pins and needles kicked in, coursing up to his thigh as if thousands of fireflies were trapped under his skin. He held his breath and stamped his foot on the floor, over and over, until their tide began to break. Then he switched off the light and headed awkwardly up to bed, clutching the letter from his long-lost friend in sheer bewilderment.
Fergal was the first to wake and come downstairs the next morning. He saw that the letter from Brendan was gone and looked towards the ceiling, wondering what Alfredo’s reaction had been. He didn’t have to wait long to find out. Alfredo descended the stairs, grumpy after a terrible night’s sleep, and headed for the kitchen and coffee. The doorbell rang. Alfredo was so preoccupied with Brendan’s letter that he had forgotten he had a ten o’clock lesson with the singing butcher. Fergal welcomed him in and went to alert Alfredo, who thanked him abruptly, downed a full glass of water in one go and began apologising profusely to the burly figure in the music room.
During the day’s lessons, Alfredo found himself drifting off, then getting angry with himself for letting the past distract him. By the end of his day, he was sure of one thing - he wanted to see Brendan Fiscetti before he left Rome. But he was terrified and embarrassed when he thought of how he had behaved all those years ago. He knew it had partly been the fault of his own youth. He thought of Fergal, trying to reach for some kind of sophistication and wearing it like an ill-fitting uniform, at the cost of not being himself. Alfredo knew he had to strike a fine balance between guiding Fergal and allowing him to make mistakes, and that he had a responsibility to lead by example. He was going to start by meeting Brendan and apologising properly for the past.
Fergal’s day was full, as usual - an Italian lesson in the morning, then the post-lunch shift at the restaurant - but all he could think about was Father Mac’s abandoned visit and the letter from Signore Fiscetti. When he brought the lemon tea to Brendan’s dressing room, Brendan noticed that he looked downhearted.
‘What’s wrong, Fergal?’ he asked.
Fergal seized on the first excuse he could think of. ‘I was...I was thinking about my exam. I had my first preliminary vocal exam not long ago. I only just passed. I’m still ashamed of myself.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Brendan said forcefully. Fergal was taken aback. ‘It’s admirable that you set yourself high standards, of course, but everyone is allowed to have a bad day. It’s just unfortunate that an examiner was in the room when you had yours. And he passed you in the end, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘There’s no supposing about it. Tell me, what do you think singing is?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you think singing is?’
Fergal wasn’t really sure what he meant; he shook his head. ‘It’s just something I’ve just always been abl
e to do.’
‘Yes, I know that. You’re what they call a natural. But singing is more than that. Do you want to know what I think? Singing, Fergal, is truth and beauty. Singing is honesty, even if that honesty is the hardest thing to achieve. How can you possibly move anyone if you are not moved yourself? Singing can be an immense responsibility, almost like being one of the soothsayers of years gone by. Emotionally, you must be as honest as you can, regardless of what the words are, whether they’re Italian or English or what have you. As long as the feeling is truthful, that’s an international language. Do you understand?’
‘I think so.’
‘Try not to think about it too much. I’m sure Alfredo has it all planned out for you. And try not to beat yourself up so much, young man. Have a little holiday from yourself.’
Fergal did feel a little better.
The half-hour curtain call came across the tannoy. ‘Did...’ Suddenly Brendan looked a little less certain. ‘Did Alfredo get my note?’
‘I didn’t really see him last night or this morning,’ Fergal said, ‘but he definitely must have got the note, because I left it on the piano and this morning it was gone.’
Brendan didn’t know what to think.
Over the next few days, Alfredo picked up the phone to dial Brendan’s hotel more than once, but as soon as the number rang, his nerve gave way and he hung up on the hotel receptionist. Any time the phone in Brendan’s room rang, his first thought was that it might be his old friend, and he grew increasingly upset when it was always housekeeping asking him if he had enough towels. Every evening, when Fergal came to his dressing room, Brendan couldn’t help dropping his gaze in the vague hope that there would be an envelope in his hand, and then tutting at himself in annoyance when there was none.
Finally, Alfredo knew he had to do something; precious time was running out. He scribbled a note asking if Brendan would join him for lunch one afternoon, or for a late supper after one of his performances if he preferred - Alfredo remembered what a night-owl he had always been. He put his phone number at the top of the page, sealed the envelope and gave it to Fergal to deliver. Fergal smiled broadly as the pale blue envelope was placed in his hand as carefully as a Holy Communion wafer.
When he closed the door behind him, Alfredo found that his heart was racing. He went into the front room and poured himself a large glass of red wine.
At the Teatro, Fergal handed Brendan the note and saw his face cloud over for a moment. ‘Thank you, Fergal,’ he said. ‘Give me a moment alone, would you?’
Once the door was closed, Brendan put on his glasses and sat staring at his name on the front of the perfect blue envelope, remembering the last time Alfredo had written to him, all those watery years ago. He laughed a little at himself when he saw his nervous expression in the mirror. He opened the note too quickly with his big hands, almost tearing the folded invitation.
‘Well, well, Mr Moretti, my lost friend,’ he said as he read the contents over and over, ‘I see you still like to do things at the last minute!’
Fergal, running down the stairs of the Teatro, had no way of knowing just how much the contents of the innocent-looking envelope would influence his own life.
Father Mac had had a hard year, filled with broken people in broken situations who he could only try to put together again with his particular brand of Catholic glue. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had an unbroken night of sleep, without some needy parishioner on his doorstep or making him jump when the telephone by his bed rang. But that morning’s frantic knock on the door of St Bridget’s meant he would see Fergal a lot sooner than he had expected.
Paddy Flynn Sr, Fergal’s father, had been born at the wrong time in history. Career prospects for men of his generation and religious persuasion were all but non-existent, as was his confidence. In his head, he should have been an all-Ireland hurling champion turned coach, but his temper, among other things, had held him back. He had recently started working as a part-time security man in a box like an upright coffin in a car park near the city centre. The only thing that made it bearable was the bottle of whiskey that he hid in his coat and drank from throughout the night.
Paddy had spent the evening fuming in the pub. His sons’ hurling team had lost badly, and he felt the referee had been biased in favour of the other team. More than a few times Paddy had cursed him from the sidelines, calling him a ‘dozy culchie cunt’, mortifying his three sons. If his other son Fergal entered his mind at all, he felt nothing but a secret spark of jealousy that Fergal had been able to escape.
For some reason, when he was due to head down the road to start his shift, he dreaded it even more then usual. He had been to the doctor on the quiet the previous week and had been told in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t stop smoking and drinking then he risked serious heart disease. As usual, Paddy paid the doctor not one blind bit of heed. If anything, the advice had made him drink and smoke even more.
When the little Hitler of a supervisor made his round of the car park early the next morning, he thought he’d caught Paddy Flynn asleep: he was slumped against the inside of the security box. The supervisor booted the side of it, calling him all the lazy bastards under the sun, but when there was no reaction he stopped the abuse and looked into Paddy’s purple, oddly peaceful face. When the ambulance came, he was pronounced dead on the scene from a massive heart attack. He wasn’t even fifty.
When the police arrived at Angela’s door in Walker Street, she assumed one of her boys was in trouble. When they told her Paddy was dead, she thought they meant her eldest son, named after her husband, and she almost fell to the ground in shock. A policewoman helped her up and managed to explain that it was her husband, not her son, who was dead.
Angela screamed. All the neighbours came out and someone called the doctor, who offered her a Valium, but for the first time in her life she refused. She felt as if she had taken about ten already. Someone called her sister Jeannie, who came round right away, and someone else found the twins. Ciaran, the youngest, had been in a deep sleep upstairs. When a huge policeman woke him up, he nearly wet himself.
Angela suddenly spoke to the policewoman. ‘How the fuck are we gonna tell our Fergal? He’s in Rome.’
‘Is he on holiday?’
‘Holiday, my arse!’
‘Do you have a number for him?’
‘No, but Father MacManus will know. He’s at St Bridget’s. Will somebody go over and tell him our Fergal has to come home?’
‘Do you feel up to identifying your husband at the morgue?’ the policewoman asked gently.
Angela started to cry, but she nodded her head. ‘I don’t want him lying there on his own. Can we go and get the priest first?’ And so it was a policeman who knocked heavily on the door of St Bridget’s House while Angela sat in the backseat of the car. Although Father Mac was shocked, he swung into action. He accompanied Angela to the morgue, where she identified her husband’s lifeless body and then threw up into her hand with shock. He drove her back to Walker Street and only agreed to leave her once her sons and her sister had all gathered to look after her. He promised to phone Fergal and arrange for him to come home as soon as possible. It was the last phone call in the world he wanted to make.
Fergal woke up just after ten o’clock, safe in the knowledge that he had the whole day off until his shift at the Teatro that evening. He stretched and yawned, and suddenly remembered he had been dreaming. He had been swimming with Father Mac in a clear stream, but then the water had started to get muddier and muddier, until they couldn’t see each other. That was when he had woken up.
He went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. As he was walking back to his room, wrapped in a towel, the phone rang in the hallway. He waited to see if anyone stirred. When it kept ringing, he realised that Daniela must have left and that Alfredo must be out too. He ran down the stairs two-by-two, suddenly wide awake, shouting, ‘Hang on, hang on, I’m coming!’
When he heard Father Mac�
��s voice, he thought for a selfish second that his plans had changed and he was coming to Rome after all. But then the terrible details unravelled, as did the large bath towel, but Fergal was too shell-shocked to notice that he was sitting on the stairs naked as the day he was born, on the day that his father had died.
‘Fergal, are you okay? Say something. I’m so sorry to have such awful news.’
Fergal was freezing all of a sudden, even though the house was more than warm, and he shivered from head to toe. He tried to hear his father’s voice in his mind. It was ironic - when he was growing up, he had wanted nothing more than for his father to be dead, but now that it was real he felt almost poisoned by the news. His blood felt as if it didn’t belong to him. He pinched himself angrily on the leg to make sure he wasn’t still dreaming.
Finally he was able to speak. ‘Where’s my ma?’
‘She’s in Walker Street, I think, or maybe with your aunt. She asked me to ring you and see about you coming home. I take it you want to come home, for the wake and all?’
Fergal was numb. The thought of having to go back to his old life made him feel sick, but he heard himself say, ‘Yeah. I’ll come back.’
‘Don’t worry about a thing, Fergal. I’ll arrange everything. Oh fella, I wish I was there with you to give you a hug. Is anybody there? Where’s Alfredo?’
‘I don’t know. I think I’m the only one in.’
‘You shouldn’t be alone on a day like this. Promise me you won’t be on your own. What about Alfredo’s sister?’
At that moment Alfredo put his key in the front door and Fergal fumbled with the towel and covered himself up. Alfredo had only to look at his face to see that something was wrong. It was all Fergal could do to hand him the receiver; it seemed to weigh a ton.
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