‘Thank you.’
She was standing beside him again, holding out the book, smiling. He took a deep breath. His mind had filled with palaces and gondolas and sheer, blind terror.
‘I ... I was going to go across to the buttery for a coffee. Would you like to come?’
She put the book down.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But I have an essay to finish. They take me a long time.’
He saw her turn to go and thought it was all over. But she hesitated and turned back.
‘Maybe tomorrow,’ she said. ‘If I finish my essay on time.’
She finished it and they went for coffee to Bewley’s instead, which was nicer anyway. By that evening, he had two fresh tickets for Deirdre. She met him outside the College gate and they walked down to Lower Abbey Street together. She was wearing a loose coat over a black cashmere dress, and in her ears were tiny jewels that he thought must be diamonds. He had never seen anything so lovely or so perfect.
He sat through the play like someone in a trance. He remembered only Deirdre’s words to Naoise, as they wait for Ring Conchubar to come for them:
Bend and kiss me now, For it may be the last before our death. And when that’s over, we’ll be different; Imperishable things, a cloud or a fire. And I know nothing but this body, nothing But that old vehement, bewildering kiss.
He walked her home that night through autumn-weary streets, thinking of vehement kisses, of breath on clouded breath, yet afraid even to hold her hand. They talked about the play, which she had found hard to follow, about Yeats, about their studies. She lived in Rathmines with an Italian family who thought she was at a girlfriend’s rooms at Trinity Hall.
‘Shall I see you again?’ he asked when they arrived.
‘Of course. You don’t think I borrowed that book just to read some old poetry?’
“You mean ...’
She smiled and reached up to kiss him. Not vehemently, but enough to bewilder him thoroughly.
‘I love you,’ he said.
‘I know.’ She smiled.
Was I that obvious?’
She shrugged.
‘Kiss me again, Patrick. And this time close your eyes.’
Autumn turned to winter, the sky over Trinity grew silent and heavy with snow. They were lovers now, both liberated and enslaved by the unexpected emotions that had come to rule their lives. Snow came, and rain, and days of bright, limpid sunshine when they walked for miles along Sandymount Strand or across the frosted solitudes of the Phoenix Park.
She did not live in a golden palace, though she admitted that ancestors of hers had indeed built the famous Ca’ d’Oro, the House of Gold, whose exquisitely gilded exterior had once made it the most famous of the many palazzi on the Grand Canal. He found a book on Venice in the library and discovered that the Contarinis had been the noblest of the city’s noble families. Eight of them had been Doges. They had owned palaces everywhere.
Her family now lived in what was, certainly, a palazzo, but not so grand as the Ca’ d’Oro. She promised to take him to Venice that summer, to meet her parents and the rest of the Contarinis. He wondered what she would make of Brooklyn or his uncle Seamus.
He wrote poems for her, atrocious things that filled him later with acute embarrassment and aching sadness. One commemorated a walk they had taken early one morning on a bright day in winter, along the beach at Sandymount. That had been the scene of their first quarrel, an event that had left him hurt and puzzled long afterwards.
Light lay on the sea like lozenges of silver. Far in the distance, beyond Dun Laoghaire, the Wicklow Mountains were veiled and elegant in an early morning haze. He held her hand. Above them, a seagull stooped through a world of violet and gold.
They sat side by side on the sand, looking out to sea.
When the summer comes,’ she said, ‘we’ll spend every day on the Lido, just gazing at the Adriatic. And in the evenings we’ll find somewhere to make love.’
‘It sounds perfect,’ he replied. ‘But not every day. I want to see St Mark’s. And Santa Maria della Salute. And...’
She put her finger over his lips, then bent and kissed him gently. He drew her to him, his right hand cupping one breast. As she lay against him, he unbuttoned her shirt, then bent down to kiss her skin. As he did so, he noticed a small pendant on a fine chain round her neck. Taking it between finger and thumb, he lifted it closer.
The pendant was made of gold. It was circular. One side was engraved with her name, ‘Francesca Contarini’, the other with a curious device: a seven-branched candlestick with a cross for the central column.
‘I haven’t noticed this before,’ he said. ‘What is it?’
Without warning, she snatched the pendant away from him and pulled it over her head. Angrily, she took it in her fist, then drew back her hand and flung it hard, into the sea.
‘Francesca! What’s wrong? What is it?’
She stood, trembling, buttoning her shirt with a shaking hand. He got up and tried to hold her, but she pulled away from him and started walking quickly along the beach. Bewildered, he ran after her, but she pushed him off. He could hear her crying.
He walked behind her until she tired. Her sobbing had grown softer. Behind them, their footprints were already being eaten by the encroaching waves. Finally she stopped and let him put his arm round her shoulders.
‘What is it, darling? I didn’t mean to upset you.’
She turned a tear-stained face to him.
‘Please, Patrick. Never ask me about this again. Promise me. Swear you will never mention it.’
‘I only ...’
‘Swear!’
He did as she asked and she seemed to grow calmer at once. She put her arms round his neck and kissed him on the forehead.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to be angry with you. Don’t ask me to explain. It has nothing to do with us. Nothing.’
For a long time afterwards, he thought the pendant must have been the gift of another man, a lover left behind in Italy; though she had sworn to him that there had been no one serious before him, and he had believed her. The pendant tormented him from time to time in the years to come. But he never asked her about it again.
The Living
FOUR
And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon.
Dalkey, Co. Dublin January, 1992
Three in the morning. The darkness inexplicably charged, the silence heavy and drugged. There would be another storm. It lay in his bones, like electricity, moving in a slow current. Outside, the cold chattered briskly, saying things he did not want to hear.
Light fell on light: across his desk, a tiny pool of yellow shining on ancient paper; through the window, a street lamp etching shadows out of the dim room. He could hear the sea in the distance, the tide coming in, small waves taking possession of the land. Or a single wave, repeating and repeating ceaselessly, until there was no more land, only water.
He had chosen the house for its view. It looked straight out onto Dublin Bay, and all last summer he had watched the sea perform its endless, slow ballet, as though it danced for him and him alone. Now, in mid-winter, he
