16. RAFE #2
When the performance finally ends, my handkerchief is a crumpled ball, and Diana’s cheeks are blotchy. I extricate my hand from hers, resisting the urge to shake it out and rid myself of whatever her touch has done to me.
Placing my hands on my thighs, I turn in my seat to speak to her. “Are you all right?”
She dabs her eyes again. “I’m so sorry. I was completely overwhelmed.” She bites down on her lip, which is trembling ever so slightly, and I wish I could put my arms around her and comfort her.
“Too much champagne at the interval?” I ask in an attempt to lighten the mood.
She lets out a breathy laugh. “Maybe.” Holding out my well-used handkerchief, she adds, “I’m guessing you don’t want this back?”
“Keep it.”
She fists it tight. “How embarrassing. It’s just…
” She gestures at the now-empty stage. “It was so…” Fading off, she shakes her head.
“Sad. She loved her child so much… it’s just…
oh. And to die for someone else, for her child…
to secure their future. It’s just… it’s everything…
” She heaves a sharp breath, and I grip the lapels of my jacket to stop myself reaching out for her. “Sorry. I never cry at the opera.”
“You’ve been before?”
“Yes. My mother took me occasionally. Dad would never. He doesn’t like this sort of thing.
And we never went on family outings.” She sighs, a tiny hiccup of a sob in the sound.
“I’ve never found it this moving. I think I was too young to grasp the tragedy in the stories before.
Madame Butterfly is new to me. Wasn’t it beautiful? ”
The story is a tragic one, focusing on a Japanese girl known as Butterfly, who falls for an American naval officer, Lieutenant Pinkerton.
They get married, spend one fruitful night together, and then he returns to America.
In his absence, she raises his son and waits for his return.
Meanwhile, he marries an American woman who agrees to raise the child Butterfly bore him, and they return to Japan to claim him.
Butterfly, abandoned by Pinkerton, agrees to give up her son, then ends her life.
“It was.” I pause, reassess, then add, “Brutal, but beautiful.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, my thoughts wander to my daughter, and I frown.
Have I truly done enough for Lizzie? She’s been everything to me for eighteen years.
Have I been as good a father as I could have been?
Have I done as much for her as my parents did for me?
“Do you think she did it for her son?” Diana asks.
“I don’t know. She loved Pinkerton and he betrayed her, so the shame of being abandoned would also have been at play.
But as parents, we’re always trying our best, even if we’re never tested to that degree.
There’s always some sacrifice involved in parenting, especially when you love your children that much.
You want to put them first, but we can never know if what we’ve done is right or whether it will help.
We can only do what we believe is the right thing.
I think that’s why it resonates so strongly. ”
When Diana’s face falls, I realise my error. I’ve ranted about parenting, voicing my own concerns, when Diana’s father, perhaps her mother too, never put her first. If they had, she wouldn’t be here now.
I should say something else. Something comforting, but at the same time, I don’t want to emotionally trespass on this young woman, and we’ve already sat through a chunk of the opera holding hands, which seems too much already.
“We should go,” I announce. “The car will be outside.”
If Diana thinks it’s strange that I gave her a lecture on parenting and then aborted the conversation completely, she doesn’t let on.
Together, we leave the box, weaving through the crowds and collecting our coats.
Outside, the rain is falling in sheets. A true October rainstorm. Freezing, too. Next to me, Diana pulls her coat close while I search for the car. There’s no sign of it, but traffic is rammed, bumper to bumper.
I pull out my phone and bring up my driver’s contact details. “Where are you?” I say when he answers.
“Can’t get to you, sir. I’m on the other side of Covent Garden, stuck in the one way system. You can wait or—”
“We’ll wait,” I say, hanging up.
“Wait for what?” Diana asks.
“Car’s stuck in traffic on the other side of the marketplace,” I explain. “It might take a while.”
The corner of her mouth slips up. “Are you afraid of a little rain?”
I gesture at the downpour. “That’s not a little rain.”
Her eyes appear to sparkle, glinting honey in the darkness. “Car’s over there?” she asks, pointing in the direction I indicated.
“Apparently so,” I confirm, and before I can stop her, she starts running across the slick cobbles. “Come on!” she calls over her shoulder, rain already running rivulets down her face. “We’ll be home faster this way.”
The pink of her dress skims the wet ground, and she lifts it with one hand, exposing her shoes and delicate ankles.
The air is cold and the rain is heavy, but Diana’s smile is joy-filled and genuine, and the brightness in her eyes makes it feel like a summer’s day.
She’s spun my world on its axis and sent me into another season entirely.
How she can weep like that in the opera and smile like this now, I don’t know, but the pleasure it gives me to see her this way takes me by surprise.
Before I know it, I’m doing something I haven’t done for years. I’m chasing a woman in the rain. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever done this, especially not after a night at the Royal Opera House.
As my limbs warm and my blood pumps, my leather shoes striking the puddles, water splashing up and soaking my pants, I feel more alive than I have in all the weeks since the night at Delirium.
But tonight, in the rain, in the dark, champagne mellowing my mood and Diana’s laughter spilling through the air, everything feels real.
Delirium was heady and feverish, almost toxic in its intensity.
But this moment, this experience, yields a purity that reminds me of what it’s like to be young and to fall in love.
“I think you might be crazy,” I call after Diana as I catch up.
“I’ve been told that before,” she replies, grinning at me in a way that makes my heart beat too hard and fast, as if it’s in a rush to reach the finish line.