“Perhaps I misunderstood.”
“I wrote; how could I not? I revised and edited those three, of course. But mainly—” She stopped. “Perhaps I had lost faith in myself. The life I led in those days was not suitable to composition, but that is hardly an excuse. If I had wanted it enough—But that is not it. I did. I wanted it so much, it was all twisted in my heart.” She paused and added: “Mostly, I burned what I wrote. A costly waste of paper.”
“Oh, that is tragic,” I said, before I could stop myself. “Even though I had suspected something of the kind, to hear you say it like that, so calmly—”
“I assure you, they were better off burned.”
“But you did not destroy everything?”
There was a long pause before she answered. “No, not everything.” She sat up. “Perhaps we have shared enough confidences for one day, Mary. I would like to rest. Will you apologize to all of them downstairs for me?”
AS WE WALKED HOME, THE WIND HAD STILLED AND THE CLOUDS had gone, exposing the stars in their unruly brightness. I was roiled by the conversation I’d just had and by the music, my thoughts like a tangled skein of yarn I could not find the end of.
“What was that song?” I finally asked; it seemed like the simplest question.
“It’s called ‘The Lass of Aughrim.’”
I puzzled over why the title was familiar. “Oh. That song in ‘The Dead,’ am I right?” How had James Joyce gotten mixed up in this? Who would be next, Samuel Beckett?
“I’m impressed you know that.”
“Surprised, you mean.”
“At the improvement of your mind by extensive reading? Never,” Liam said in his best Dr. Ravenswood manner before going on as himself. “I presented a paper about it once, in the course of which I also learned to sing it. When I saw it at her piano, it was like an old friend. But I should not have sung. It’s only dodgy men in her novels who are musical. It was a mistake.”
“A mistake? I don’t know. They may all fall in love with you now, which might be awkward.”
“That’s right atop my list of worries.”
“Liam!”
“What?”
“Sing something else?”
After being convinced I meant it, he began a song, I think in Italian, that I had never heard before either, while my gaze rose to the stars and my worries, at least for that moment, were silenced.
We are just vessels. The art is eternal.
As we neared home, we stopped walking and he stopped singing. We paused at our gate for a moment, as if waiting for something to happen. I had the urge to pull his head down and kiss him. Instead I said: “Maybe let’s just walk for a while. It’s so beautiful.”
Without answering, he turned away from the house and we continued the way we’d been going. The lane wound past the turning to the manor house and led through fields bordered by hedgerows; I used to walk there in the winter, but lately I had been too busy with farming.
“Why didn’t you tell me you could sing?” I asked, conscious again of not asking the question I really wanted to ask. Which was what? It fluttered around the edge of my tangled thoughts, just out of reach. “You never even hum, for god’s sake. And yet you have the most beautiful voice! And I’m so envious of people who can sing.”
“Perhaps that was why. I didn’t want you to be eaten up with envy,” he offered.
“Ever the gentleman.”
“What did you talk with her about, upstairs?”
“Lots of things.”
“‘The Watsons’?”
“I was getting around to that. Then she sent me away.” I gave him the outline of what we had discussed, adding: “You would have done a better job getting her to talk about it.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
We walked on for a while in silence, listening to the odd scratchings and rustlings, the sounds of the night going about its business. I could see very little and yet I felt confident; it was as if sight was a function not just of my eyes but of my entire body. I had the sense, always there but seldom noticed, of feeling the dark world around me: the movement of air on my skin, the ground under my half boots. I was about to comment on how odd this was when Liam said:
“I wanted to apologize for something. It’s been on my conscience.”
“What’s that?”
We walked on a little longer before he finally muttered: “For that night at the Angel.”
“Oh.” I feigned a laugh. “Are you still thinking about that?”
“Tell me you aren’t,” he shot back, seeming no longer at a loss for words. “Look me in the eye and tell me you aren’t. Thinking about that.”
It was too dark to look him in the eye. “From time to time.” By which I meant, often. “You don’t have to apologize. There’s no law that says a person has to fuck you, just because you want to fuck them.” I heard his intake of breath; had my verb choice appalled him? I hoped so. “It would be nice to know why you—But actually? I don’t need to know that. People are complicated. They’re full of contradictions.” Especially people like you, I was tempted to add, but didn’t: it was mean, not necessarily true, and more to the point, risked betraying too much feeling. Which was a real danger, alone in the dark as we were, for once with no fear of being overheard.
“You’ll never forgive me, then.”
“What? Don’t flatter yourself. Do you think I attach so much importance to . . . that?” Yet my tone revealed I did. How had he maneuvered me into this? It was like verbal aikido. “If it’s forgiveness you want, you’ve got it.”
There was a pause before he said, “That isn’t actually what I want.”
My heart started pounding, but I was determined not to make this easy for him. Not too easy, anyway. “So, what then?”
We’d stopped walking. He turned to look at me, his face a pale outline in the dark. He hesitated, cupped my chin, and lifted my face up. After seeming to think about it, or waiting to be stopped, he kissed me, tentatively and then with more assurance. His mouth was muscular, his breath like tea. I could smell his skin, like salt and soap and the tang of earth from the garden.
Then he buried his face in my neck with a groan, hands pulling me against him, following the line of my corset down my back, and coming to rest where it ended. “I’m sorry, I can’t help it, I’m distracted. I’m a lunatic,” he whispered into my neck. “I can’t stand it any longer, I must speak. Knowing you are there—just across the hallway—”