Dancing in the Dark (32 page)

‘Coffee?' He removes the mugs and comes back with freshly filled ones from a galley kitchen where I can see stainless steel appliances and dark-blue handmade tiles. ‘So . . . what can I do for you?'

I'm embarrassed by the chill in his voice. ‘I just came to find out when you were leaving for California.' It has to be one of the most obviously lame excuses of the century.

‘Can't wait to see me gone, eh?'

‘Quite the opposite. I need to organize things.'

‘What for?' He looks into his mug.

‘Uh . . . Mexico?' Suddenly, it is all I ever wanted, to ride beside him through clear mountain air, to smell the damp richness of the jungle, to learn a world far wider than the narrow one I've so painstakingly built for myself. I hear a tiny tearing noise, a painful little rip, and know it is the sound of my roots finally loosening.

‘Ah,' he says. ‘Yes.'

‘You asked me if I wanted to join you.'

‘I see.'

He doesn't want me to go with him after all. I shouldn't have come. I'm mortified at having put us both in this awkward situation. Time to change the subject.

‘This is wonderful,' I tell him.

‘The boat or the coffee?'

You, I want to shout. You, Fergus, with your glittering eyes and your burning enthusiasm and your strong, beautiful body. But after that stilted little exchange, there doesn't seem much more to say. ‘Both.'

‘Want to see the rest?' He doesn't sound as if he cares either way.

I'm grateful for the change of pace. I'll let him show me round, and then get back on dry land as fast as my feet will take me. I'll head off back along the Embankment and hope the tears will hold until I can reach the cold harbour of my flat. We shan't meet again, I know that. The bleakness of my Fergus-less future is frightening. ‘Love to,' I say.

‘Come on, then.'

I follow him along a passage, past a bedroom and a cubbyhole with a computer in it, papers and books, his study, I guess. Past a bathroom. Another bedroom. It's extremely civilized, neat as a pin, tastefully idiosyncratic. I think how much I'd like to live in a space like this, waking up each morning to the light on the river, the sound of water against the hull.

He pauses at the door of another room. ‘And here we have the master bedroom. En suite, you'll note. Not just a bedroom but a lifestyle.' There is a mocking note in his voice. He's getting at me. My desire for stability. My narrow mind. My fear of the unexpected. The room is mostly bed, under a skylight. There's a pile of suitcases in one corner, the sort which used to make my heart sink when I was a child. By the door is a small chest of drawers.

‘Fergus . . .' I place my coffee mug carefully on the chest.

‘What?' He is wary.

I take a step towards him and his eyes change colour, still the same brilliant blue, but warmer now, delphinium-blue, the colour of the sea in Corfu on a sunny day, indigo. I put my arms round his neck. I kiss him full on the mouth and he pulls his head away.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,' he says.

‘You said you'd wait until I asked you.'

‘I did so.'

‘Well . . . I'm asking.'

For a moment I am terrified that he will reject me; my palms are sweaty with fear. But then he draws me in to him, so close I can smell the coffee in the weave of his shirt, the soap under his jaw, the sweet scent of his skin. His hands are under my shirt, on my bare skin. Together, we fall on to the bed. ‘Is this what you want?' he asks. ‘And this?'

‘Utterly. Totally. What about you?'

‘This is what I want,' he says. ‘And this.' He starts to kiss me. My lips first, my neck, my breasts. It is as though this is the very first time, each separate particle of my skin yearning to be touched so I can at last understand how it feels. I look up at him, and there are tears in his eyes, the tears a man might want to shed on seeing his home again after a lifetime's absence. ‘Theodora,' he murmurs. ‘How much I've longed for this. From the very first moment we met.'

And as he moves above me, I'm thinking, me, too. I'm thinking how short life is, how quickly it passes, how easy it is to waste. Roots are not the only way for things to grow strong, I realize, as I think of all the lovely things still to do and that this is one of them, kissing this particular man, learning the weight of his body, the curve of his shoulder, the scar below his collarbone, the way his eyelashes lie on his cheek. We are so attuned that it is as if we have been lovers for years and as he enters me, as I give myself up to him, I'm inside his head and he is thinking the same thoughts that I am, of Mexico and parrots and lime trees, of silver nutmegs, golden pears, gardens in the jungle, pleached beech hedges with each leaf rimed with frost, I'm thinking of sunshine and warm seas and I'm arching under him, begging him to give me something I've never had because I've never allowed myself to feel like this before, never surrendered, never let myself loose, because I'm soaring, on the verge of a thousand rings of light, diving into a galaxy of spectacular constellations, grateful, calling his name again and again, no longer in control, ‘Fergus, Fergus,' but he doesn't hear me for he is calling too, my name on his lips like a roll of thunder, lightning, star-shine and moonshine, as we drop away at last into the easy flowing oceans of love.

And he is thinking that his hunger is at last assuaged, the castanet-rattle of bones finally stilled, he has come home, his restlessness submerged in the still places at her core. He is thinking of dolphin-haunted seas and clipped box hedges, of parrots harsh among vine-hung branches, of this feel of her breast in his mouth, the flutter of her heart against his lips, the sweet shake of her mouth as she comes, the disbelief in her eyes, as if she shouldn't be doing this but oh, oh, she can't help herself, his prim and passionate Theodora, dizzy with love as she cries out, loose-limbed in his arms.

The sun through the skylight is warm on his back. Then the mounting urge again, the hunger, her hands taking him, delicate as mice, showing him where she wants him to be, bold as a hoor, sweet as a virgin, Theodora,
a cuisle,
pulse of my heart, gift from God. He sees the two of them then, in the love-dabbled future, walking over white sand, ducking into doorways for a kiss, raindrops like diamonds on her hair, standing on top of mountains with the world spread before them, riding green oceans, and then he is roaring her name once more, ‘Theodora . . . ah Jesus,' a steam engine, a jet plane, his climax boiling inside him now, an ever-rolling stream, shooting like stars from his joyful body, melodies stereoing round him, he shall have music wherever he goes, the amazing grace of it, her mouse-cries in his ear, lips flushed, fleshed with desire, love is the sweetest thing, Agas in his future now, babies tumbling about his feet, the upthrust of his seed, ah, ah, oh, sweet Jesus . . .

We sit looking out at the river. He is holding my hand, I am holding his. We are wearing towelling bathrobes because we know there is no point getting dressed again just yet. Though I know they will return, the fears of the past weeks have receded so far into the distance that I can hardly perceive them. The river glides past us, fiery with the noontide sun.

‘Your tattoo,' I say lazily. ‘Why a flamingo?'

‘It's a crane,' he says.

‘OK, why a crane?'

‘Very strange birds, cranes. Revered in all kinds of mythologies as symbols of strength and endurance, longevity, even wisdom. That seemed to fit.' He grins at me. ‘Not that I knew any of this at the time. It was the result of a hard night's drinking and the need to sit down somewhere which wasn't a cobbled street. So I went into a tattoo parlour . . .'

‘As anyone might.'

‘. . . and chose the crane. What I also discovered later is that in ancient China, a crane is the symbol of the relationship between a father and his son. It seemed serendipitous.' He presses my hand against his heart so I feel the strong beat of it under the skin. ‘You're going to come to Mexico with me, is that right?'

‘Anywhere. Anywhere.' I'm thinking I could understand how my mother could follow a man to the ends of the earth, because I will follow this one, anywhere he leads. It's called love.

‘
Kilderkin
,' Fergus says. ‘
Desuetude
.' He presses my fingers again, pulls back the edge of my dressing gown. ‘
Lollipop, oriole, amorous
.' He leans over and kisses my shoulder. ‘
Love
.'

‘Love,' I repeat. ‘The best word of them all.'

‘The only necessary word.'

There is so much to learn, but this I already know: it will not be a conventional life we share. But then, try as hard as I might, I never quite managed conventional.

Maybe I'm too much like my mother.

Looking at her, he sees his book rush towards him, Grace Fargo settling herself, drawing her skirts about her, big bosomed or flat chested, she would tell him when the time came, and, too, his mother's thin blue-veined eyelids as she drew her final breaths, and Brendan's soiled hair on the filthy pillow, goodbye Brendan, your head against my breast,
moi croidhe,
my friend, lost forever now in the waters of death,
and there shall be no more pain, neither shall there be any sorrow
. Mexico gleams like Aztec gold, but next time he –
we
– visit the place, it will be different. The cold eyes of the
muchachos
had frightened him, now he could admit it, had terrified him, if truth be told, a bullet to the heart, a drag of the heels and himself buried in the all-devouring jungle, never a soul to know or to mourn, let alone care,
Author Disappears on Mexican Trip
, an obit in the papers and that's that. With his once-and-future Theodora beside him, it will be another thing entirely.

‘By the way . . .' He reaches behind him for the newspaper on the coffee table. ‘Sean sent me this from Dublin. It's something you should see.' His fingers run up her arm, reflexive action, purely unplanned, can't help himself, and she pushes her mouth towards him, kisses him lightly, eyes blazing like stars.

‘What is it?'

‘I came down to your place to show it to you. Thought you might find it . . . intriguing.' Unfolding the newsprint pages, passing them to her, the Prince of the Church with his beringed hand raised to bless the multitudes. No reaction, except she's wondering why she should be interested. ‘Is this something to do with your brother?'

He's shaking his head.

‘Do you want me to read the whole thing?'

He points at a paragraph halfway down the page.

. . .
left the seminary in Boston and taught at Boston College for a year before being appointed as Head of History at a small Catholic liberal-arts men's college in Maybury, Vermont. He was plucked from there to become coadjutor to Bishop Juan Martinez, then appointed bishop himself, before being elevated to his own metropolitan arch-diocese. In the seventies and eighties, he made a name for himself through his firm pronouncements, often taking up a position directly opposed to both the current administration and, indeed, his own superiors. He was also responsible for spearheading the ‘Get Your Hands Dirty!' initiative, a new social agenda aimed at shaking out the calcified orders of monks and nuns. A man of unshakable principle, independent and widely admired for the moral authority which underlies his work, Cardinal O'Donnell seems to have been marked out from the first as one destined to make a rapid rise through the hierarchy. Thirty years on, he appears poised to take up the very highest office of all, when events require
. . .

Words fling themselves at me, a hail of unnecessary information.
Coadjutor, calcified, social agenda, moral authority
. Only one phrase is of any importance
. . . a Catholic liberal-arts men's college in Maybury, Vermont . . .
It can only mean St Joseph's.

Fergus's arm is around my shoulders. ‘Look at his photograph,' he says. ‘And then look at yourself in the glass.'

‘There's no need.' I am staggered, dumbfounded, gobsmacked. Is this, after all, the man I have been looking for all along? If so, it explains so many things, why my mother wouldn't tell me who he is, what the compelling reasons she'd spoken of were. How frightened she must be that with one word, I would destroy the construct of decades.

‘The man's saying Mass at Westminster Cathedral this afternoon.' Fergus's face is very gentle. We stare at each other. I lean forward and kiss him hard on the mouth. ‘I think you should be there.'

‘Fergus,' I say. And pause. I've never said it before, not to anyone. Never felt it. My bones are soft. ‘I love you.'

We turn down Victoria Street in the direction of the river. As we approach the Piazza, we can see a crowd gathered outside the Roman Catholic cathedral.

As I hesitate, Fergus takes a firm grip on my sleeve and pulls me after him. He asks a women with a rosary in her hand what everyone is waiting for.

‘It's Cardinal O'Donnell,' she says. ‘The American cardinal.'

Fergus pretends surprise. ‘I read about him in the paper.'

‘He's celebrating Mass inside,' says the woman. ‘He'll be out soon.'

Through the loudspeakers which have been rigged up outside the cathedral, I can hear voices chanting. The congregation inside murmurs in response, as do many of those standing round me. Most of them have dropped to their knees and are crossing themselves.

‘Come on.' Fergus is pushing his way right up to the front of the crowd.

I am anxious. Not sure what to expect. A bolt of lightning, clouds parting and a heavenly finger pointing at the cardinal's head? A celestial voice announcing that this is my father? Of course not. My stomach flutters with apprehension. Even if he looks as similar to me as the picture in the paper does, it will not prove anything. Now that we're here, I would rather be somewhere else.