“Well, good for you,” I said petulantly.
“The point is that this has got nothing to do with your being gay,” she said, leaning forward and looking me directly in the eye. “It has to do with you being dishonest. Can’t you see that? Anyway, I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in discussing this with you, do you understand me? I don’t want to know what you’ve been through since you left Dublin or whom you’ve been with or what your life has been like. I don’t want to know anything at all. I just want to know what you want from me.”
“I don’t want anything from you,” I said, keeping my voice low in order to show her that I was not looking for an argument. “But now that you mention it, I suppose I’m a little surprised that you had a child by me and never bothered to let me know.”
“It’s not like I didn’t try,” she said. “That afternoon, when we were in the Shelbourne, I told you over and over that I needed to talk to you in private. I even phoned you when you were upstairs in the room and told you to wait there for me.”
“How was I to know that’s what you wanted to talk about? No, once I was gone you could have—”
“And how would I have contacted you, even if I’d wanted to?” she asked. “I don’t remember you leaving a forwarding address with the concierge as you ran screaming out of the hotel.”
“All right,” I said. “But there were plenty of people who probably could have tracked me down if you’d really wanted to. Charles, for example.”
She softened a little at his name. “Dear Charles,” she said, her expression filling with warmth.
“I’m sorry?”
“Charles was very good to me. Afterward, I mean.”
“No, I meant my adoptive father, Charles,” I said. “Why, who are you talking about?”
“That’s who I’m talking about.”
“Charles was very good to you? Charles Avery? Are you kidding me?”
“No,” she said. “The poor man was absolutely mortified by what you’d done. He kept apologizing to people on your behalf and telling me over and over how you weren’t a real Avery, not that I cared much about that at the time, but even afterward, over the weeks and months ahead, he stayed in touch, making sure that I never wanted for anything.”
“I’m astonished,” I said after a lengthy pause as I tried to digest this. “I don’t have any major issues with the man, but he’s never shown a moment’s compassion or consideration toward me in my lifetime.”
“And did you ever show any toward him?” she asked.
“I was just a child,” I told her. “And he and Maude barely noticed me.”
She laughed bitterly and shook her head. “You’ll forgive me if I find that rather hard to believe,” she said. “Anyway, I was sorry to read in the papers that he’s back in prison. It’s been years since I’ve spoken to him, but if you’re in touch please pass on my good wishes. I’ll always be grateful to him for how he behaved in the couple of years after you did your disappearing act.”
“As it happens, I saw him not so long ago,” I told her. “He’s only got a few months left in Mountjoy. He’ll be out soon enough to cheat The Man from the Revenue yet again.”
“He’s too old to be in there,” she said. “They should let him out on compassionate grounds. A man with that much kindness inside him deserves better.”
I said nothing but ordered a couple more drinks from a passing bar boy, finding it almost impossible to reconcile the Charles in whose house I had grown up with the Charles that she described.
“I suppose you’re right, though,” she said eventually. “I could have found you if I’d wanted to. But what would have been the point? Julian told me what happened in the sacristy that morning. He told me who you were, all the things that you’d done, all the men that you’d been with. What would have been the point of me going looking for you? To have some type of sham marriage with a homosexual? I’d like to think I’m worth more than that.”
“Of course you are. I don’t know what else I can say.”
“If you had just told me. If you had just been honest—”
“I was very young, Alice. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“We were all young,” she said. “But we’re not so young anymore though, are we? You’re on a crutch, for God’s sake. What’s that about?”
I shook my head, not wanting to get into it with her. “I had an accident,” I said. “My leg never healed. Anyway, did you meet anyone else? I hope you did.”
“Oh that’s very good of you.”
“I mean it.”
“Of course I met other people,” she said. “I’m not a nun. Do you think I was sitting at home every night mooning over you?”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it.”
“I wouldn’t get too excited if I was you. Nothing ever came of any of them. How could it have? I was a married woman with a child and a missing husband. And it’s not as if I could get a divorce in this godforsaken backwater of a country. And so no man would ever stay with me. Why should he when I couldn’t give him a family of his own? You stole that whole part of life from me, Cyril, I hope you realize that.”
“I do,” I said. “I do. And if I could go back in time and change things, I would.”
“Let’s stop talking about this,” she said. “We both know where we stand on it. I need to know something else.” She hesitated now and I could see her expression grow more anxious than angry. “When Julian was dying,” she said, “why didn’t you get in touch? Why didn’t you tell me? I would have been out to New York in a heartbeat if I’d known.”
I looked down at the table and picked up a beer mat, trying to balance it on one corner as I thought of an answer. “To begin with, there was very little time,” I told her. “I only found out that he was in the hospital a few days before he died. That was the first time I saw him. And the second time was the night he passed away.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. What were you even doing there?”
“My partner was a doctor in Mount Sinai. He was treating Julian. I was a volunteer. I visited patients with no families.”
“Julian had a family.”
“I mean patients who, for whatever reason, had no family present. Some had been disowned by their families. And some didn’t want their families there. Julian was in the latter group.”
“But why? Why didn’t he want me with him? And Liam? They were so close.”
“Because he was ashamed,” I said. “He had no reason to be, but he was ashamed of the disease that he’d developed.”
“Of AIDS?”
“Yes, of AIDS. For someone like Julian, who had practically been defined by his heterosexuality, it was an insult to mind and body. It’s not how he wanted you or Liam to remember him.”
“You said in your letter that you were with him on that last night.”
“I was, yes.”
“Was he in pain?”
I shook my head. “Not by then,” I said. “He was drifting away, that was all. He was on a lot of morphine. I don’t think he suffered at the end. I held him as he died.”
She looked across at me, startled, and put a hand to her mouth.