McDaid introduced her to various of his own friends who greeted him. They seemed very varied in age and apparent social status, as if he had chosen them from as many walks of life as possible.
‘Mrs Pitt,’ he explained cheerfully. ‘She is over from London to see how we do things here, mostly from an interest in our fair city, but in part to see if she can find some Irish ancestry. And who can blame her? Is there anyone of wit or passion who wouldn’t like to claim a bit of Irish blood in their veins?’
She responded warmly to the welcome extended her, finding the exchanges easy, even comfortable. She had forgotten how interesting it was to meet new people, with new ideas. But she did wonder exactly what Narraway had told McDaid. From the way he answered the enquiries of one or two more curious ladies, again Charlotte thought perhaps he knew quite a lot more than Narraway had implied.
She searched his face, and saw nothing in it but good humour, interest, amusement, and a blank wall of guarded intelligence that intended to give away nothing at all.
They were very early for the performance, but most of the audience were already present. While McDaid was talking Charlotte had an opportunity to look around and study faces. They were different from a London audience only in subtle ways. There were fewer fair heads, fewer blunt Anglo-Saxon features, a greater sense of tension and suppressed energy.
And of course she heard the music of a different accent, and now and then people speaking in a language utterly unrecognisable to her. There was in them nothing of the Latin or Norman-French about the words, or the German from which so much English was derived. She assumed it was the native tongue. She could only guess at what they said by the gestures, the laughter and the expression in faces.
She noticed one in particular. His hair was black with a loose, heavy wave streaked with grey. His head was narrow-boned, and it was not until he turned towards her that she saw how dark his eyes were. His nose was noticeably crooked, giving his whole aspect a lopsided look, a kind of wounded intensity. Then he turned away, as if he had not seen her, and she was relieved. She had been staring, and that was ill-mannered, no matter how interesting a person might seem.
‘You saw him,’ McDaid observed, so quietly it was little more than a whisper.
She was taken aback. ‘Saw him? Who?’
‘Cormac O’Neil,’ he replied.
She was startled. Had she been so very obvious? ‘Was that. . I mean the man with the. .?’ Then she did not know how to finish the sentence.
‘Haunted face,’ he said it for her.
‘I wasn’t going to. .’ She saw in his eyes that she was denying it pointlessly. Either Narraway had told him, or he had pieced it together himself. It made her wonder how many others knew; indeed, if all those involved might well know more than she, and her pretence was deceiving no one. Did Narraway know that? Or was he as naive in this as she?
‘Do you know him?’ she asked instead.
‘I?’ McDaid raised his eyebrows. ‘I’ve met him, of course, but know him? Hardly at all.’
‘I didn’t mean in any profound sense,’ she parried. ‘Merely were you acquainted.’
‘In the past, I thought so.’ He was watching Cormac while seeming not to. ‘But tragedy changes people. Or then on the other hand, perhaps it only shows you what was always there, simply not yet uncovered. How much does one know anybody? Most of all oneself.’
‘Very metaphysical,’ she said drily. ‘And the answer is that you can make a guess, more or less educated, depending on your intelligence and your experience with that person.’
He looked at her steadily. ‘Victor said you were. . direct.’
She found it odd to hear Narraway referred to by his given name, instead of the formality she was used to, the slight distance that leadership required.
Now she was not sure if she were on the brink of offending McDaid. On the other hand, if she were too timid even to approach what she really wanted, she would lose the chance.
She smiled at him. ‘What was O’Neil like, when you knew him?’
McDaid’s eyes widened. ‘Victor didn’t tell you? How interesting.’
‘Did you expect him to have?’ she asked.
‘Why is he asking, why now?’ He sat absolutely still. All around him people were moving, adjusting position, smiling, waving, finding seats, nodding agreement to something or other, waving to friends.
‘Perhaps you know him well enough to ask him that?’ she suggested.
Again he countered. ‘Don’t you?’
She kept her smile warm, faintly amused. ‘Of course, but I would not repeat his answer. You must know him well enough to believe he would not confide in someone he could not trust.’
‘So perhaps we both know, and neither will trust the other,’ he mused. ‘How absurd, how vulnerable and incredibly human; indeed, the convention of many comic plays.’
‘To judge by Cormac O’Neil’s face, for him at least, it was a tragedy,’ she countered. ‘One of the casualties of war that you referred to.’
He looked at her steadily, and for a moment the buzz of conversation around them ceased to exist. ‘So he was,’ he said softly. ‘But that was twenty years ago.’
‘Does one forget?’
‘Irishmen? Never. Do the English?’
‘Sometimes,’ she replied.
‘Of course. You could hardly remember them all!’ Then he caught himself immediately and his expression changed. ‘Do you want to meet him?’ he asked.
‘Yes — please.’
‘Then you shall,’ he promised.
There was a rustle of anticipation in the audience and everyone fell silent. After a moment or two the curtain rose and the play began. Charlotte concentrated on it so that she could speak intelligently when she was introduced to people in the interval. To know nothing would imply that she was uninterested, which would be unforgivable here.
She found it difficult. There were frequent references to events she was not familiar with, even words she did not know. There was an underlying air of sadness as if the main characters knew that the ending would include a loss that nothing could ever alter, no matter what they said or did.
Was that how Cormac O’Neil felt: helpless, predestined to be overwhelmed? Everybody lost people they loved. Bereavement was a part of life. The only escape was to love no one. She stopped trying to understand the drama on the stage and as discreetly as she could, she studied O’Neil.
He seemed to be alone. He looked neither to right nor left of him, and the people on either side seemed to be with others. Not once all the time she was watching did they speak to O’Neil, or he to them, not even to glance and catch the eye at some particularly poignant line on the stage, or a moment when the audience seemed utterly in the grasp of the players.
The longer she watched him, the more totally alone did he seem to be. But she was equally sure that neither did he look bored. His eyes never strayed from the stage, yet at times his expression did not reflect the drama. She wondered what was passing through his mind: other times and events, other tragedies related to this only in the depth of their feeling?
By the time the interval came Charlotte was moved by the passion she could not escape, which emanated from the players and audience alike, but also confused by it. It made her feel more sharply than the lilt of a different accent, or even the sound of another language, that she was in a strange place teeming with emotions she caught and lost again.
‘May I take you to get something to drink?’ McDaid asked her when the curtain fell and the lights were bright again. ‘And perhaps to meet one or two more of my friends? I’m sure they are dying of curiosity to know who you are, and, of course, how I know you.’
‘I would be delighted,’ she answered. ‘And how do you know me? We had better be accurate, or it will start people talking.’ She smiled to rob the words of offence.
‘But surely the sole purpose of coming to the theatre with a beautiful woman is to start people talking?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Otherwise one would be better to come alone, like Cormac O’Neil, and concentrate on the play, without distraction.’