He again considered that this game of make-believe was in truth another in the string of risks that had carried him from iron handcuffs to silver cuff links. The wheel of fortune kept calling him a winner, and every time his number came up, he risked it all on the next spin: the escape, the accident, the Britannic. Big gambles paid off even bigger. So maybe it wasn’t just the Binghams’ good graces that he needed to win. They had taken a shine to him, and now here they were, practically begging him to carry off their daughter. Saying yes was a preposterous gamble, but saying no was pure idiocy.
As soon as Francis and the elder Binghams were settled, Anisette propped the violin beneath her chin and without a word or a glance at her audience she launched the bow at the strings. Francis had braced himself for an onslaught but he was immediately enraptured. The first note was a starter’s pistol in a musical steeplechase that cleared every high note without pause and let out on long runs that would have been called daring if Anisette weren’t so obviously and firmly in control of the tempo and the timbre. While her hands worked their expert magic along the body of the instrument, her face remained calm, even placid, but it was her eyes; oh, those eyes! It wasn’t just that they burned hot—though the look on her could have melted steel—it was that they were active and searching in a way that Francis had never seen before. Not from Anisette. Not from anyone else he could recall. Her eyes narrowed and then bloomed. The pupils were pinpricks and then vast pools of inky black. She was pushing herself through a journey—racing through sunlight, clouds, another sunrise, then nightfall—and bringing them all along with her. Mrs. Bingham inclined her head to one side, a slight smile on her lips; Mr. Bingham’s eyes were shut, either in sleep or in reverie. Perhaps they had grown accustomed to Anisette’s abilities, the way that people who live by the sea can forget that the sunset over a blue-and-foam bay can rend your heart with its raw beauty. But Francis was transfixed. When Anisette finished the piece with a sudden thrusting flourish, his hands broke unbidden into applause.
Mrs. B startled and Mr. B, roused from a postprandial nap, shook his head and looked crossly at Francis. The clapping seemed to break whatever spell had possessed Anisette, and with a winsome smile and a blush she was the Anisette of earlier: uncertain, eager to please—almost as if she too had been roused from sleep, mid-dream. Francis made a show of folding his hands in his lap and the elder Binghams resumed their poses—benevolence for her, somnolence for him. Anisette again raised the violin to the crook of her neck. She took a deep breath and the change came over her eyes once more.
Her encore worked the slow, sad, rough-throated end of the instrument. The bright sparks of the first song had faded, but they had lit something hard and slow to burn, like a coal fire that could glow all night. Anisette swayed, as if the violin were tethered to distant bells that tolled with each subtle pull. Like this, Francis said to himself. I could spend the rest of my days like this.
He was certain that he’d heard this piece of music before, but he could not remember where and neither could he put a name to it. He had gone rusty after his time in Mountjoy, which was a shame because one of the great benefits of life in Dublin in the years before his arrest had been re-immersing himself in music. He had met or maintained close relations with many of his best customers at the Opera House. It gave the whole operation a touch of class, he believed, that he could take orders between acts of Rigoletto—and it gave his clients the comfort of working with someone of obvious taste and refinement. Francis, have you any more of that cognac? Francis, can you get me that novel by Huxley? Mr. Dempsey, has your man any more of those photographs—for a friend, of course? His business concluded, he would settle into his seat. There were even times when an aria brought him close to tears, when an ingenue soprano sprung the lid on a boxed-up memory of—that was it.
This tune that Anisette was playing, with its achy questions, its plaintive appeal; he remembered now that he had heard it as a boy, in the house in Cork, when his mother was still alive. There had been a crush of people in the parlor—the big bodies of adults, a thicket of legs and skirts. A man was readying himself to play the piano. A young woman, a student of his mother’s, stood beside him with a violin and with a nod the two began the same piece of music that Anisette now drew from the strings of her instrument. Francis’s mother stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders. The perfume she always wore smelled tangy and floral. From the pressure of her fingertips—right, then left, right, then left—he could tell that she was swaying to the music, counting time as her pupil worked through the soaring trills and sudden choking stunts. There was the taste of plum pudding in his mouth, Martin stood next to him, his father was somewhere in the room, there was a fire in the grate, and then his mother’s voice was in his ear, framing the words Kreutzer Sonata. Her lips were so close that he felt the shape of these strange sounds as much as he heard them, as if she had spoken to him in a made-up language. He licked the last sticky crumbs of the pudding from his fingers and leaned back into the taut orb of his mother’s belly. This was in December 1921, St. Stephen’s Day. Michael would be born in March. She would be gone in August.
Francis was only nine when Mam died and Da whisked them out of Cork and off to Ballyrath. He knew things about his mother, factual things—she had red hair like his, she had a beautiful voice, she had gone to Boston to study music before she met Da—but he had trouble remembering her face. He had few clear memories of her that he could call up and peruse at will. Those days, and his mother, came only unbidden and in flashes.
Anisette stopped mid-measure, the bow shrieking against the strings. Her hair had come loose from its combs and the color burned in her cheeks. “Angus.” Her voice cracked, a broken whisper. “Is something wrong?”
Before he could answer, Francis realized he was crying. The tears had been pouring out of him and now he snapped the square from his pocket and mopped his face. When he rose it was on unsteady legs. The night had started as a lark but here, in its closing hours, it had taken on a profound weight. His eyes met Anisette’s and for a moment it was as if they were alone, exposed to each other. He feared that anything he said would banjax all his efforts to pass himself off as not-Francis. In that moment he did not have the strength to pretend. He had not come to the Binghams’ seeking anything more than a night out and a chance to climb a rung or two on the social ladder, but here was Anisette, with depths to her that he had never guessed, and all around her shimmered a memory of long-ago days.