Anne Enright - The Forgotten Waltz

The other thing I noticed was that Seán doesn’t really like eating. I don’t mean he doesn’t like food, I mean he hates all the chewing and swallowing – I suppose there is much to dislike. Despite which, there was always huge restaurant palaver: the choice of table, the crack of the napkin, endless discussion about the wine, and a vague prissiness about pasta that was not home-made. The foreplay, you might say, went on forever. Then the food would arrive and he would wait. He might fold his hands together and finish his point, or make another point. Finally, he would take that ceremonial first bite, go Mmmm mmmm, and praise the dish: the toffee-ness of the cherry tomatoes, or some such. Then, a bit of ordinary eating – chomp chomp – until the moment I realised he had stopped and was looking at the food. He might attempt another forkful but lose heart before it entered his mouth. Then a bit more staring; a kind of altercation. Finally, he would stage some distraction, grab a last morsel, and push away the plate.

Then he would look up at my, still-chewing, mouth.

I was in love with this man – clearly I was in love, or at least obsessed; the rhythms of his appetite were something I took so personally. But God knows, I could eat for Ireland, so I always felt a bit lonely after our lunch dates; not just greedy, but also thwarted or rejected, as if the food was all my fault.

‘Wonderful,’ he would say. ‘Have you ever had it with pesto?’

I wondered what it would be like to live with that across the table from you, breakfast lunch and dinner. Did they all wait with their tongues hanging out, until he gave the nod? Did they stop when he stopped? Aileen, it seemed to me, was the kind of woman who would count the number of peas she put on your plate. All that containment.

I’m afraid Evie doesn’t eat ice-pops, do you, Evie?

Either they were a perfect match, I thought, or they hadn’t had sex in years. Once the idea came to me, it made enormous sense. This was why they were so neat and polite. This was the sadness in the look he gave me, when he turned back in Fiona’s hall.

But, though I lost seven – count ’em – pounds, living on love alone, I did not think about Aileen much in those office weeks. To be honest, I forgot that Aileen, or even Conor, might exist. When I came home, I was sometimes surprised to find him in the house. He seemed so large and so real.

Who are you?

Such is the delight of a long working day.

We made love properly for the first time, myself and Seán, early one evening, after we rolled back from our Friday lunch and rolled into a party for a guy who was taking a year out to be with his yacht. We managed to linger after everyone had gone, and the details of what corner we found and what we did; how we managed it, and who put what where, are nobody’s business but our own.

WHAT IS IT about wives? There is this thing they do – because I am not the only one this has happened to. I am not the only one who was invited in.

I picked up the phone one day before Christmas and I heard the person on the other end of the line say:

‘Oh hello, I am looking for Gina Moynihan.’

‘That’s me!’

‘Hi Gina, this is Aileen – you know, Seán Vallely’s wife?’

And I thought, She has found us out .

I remember every word of the conversation that followed; every bare syllable and polite inflection. I played it in my head for days afterwards, note perfect. I could sing it, like a song.

‘Oh, hi,’ I said. A little too fast. With a slight choke on the ‘Oh’. It might, if you were listening very closely, have sounded more like, ‘Go hi’. Aileen, however, did not miss a beat.

‘I got your number from Fiona, I hope you don’t mind. I wanted to invite you over, after Christmas. We have our New Year’s Day brunch, I don’t know if Fiona ever mentioned it, we just do a sort of brunch, and Seán does that consommé thing with vodka, for people who need a cure. What do you call them?’

It was the most words I had heard out of her in one go. It took me a second to realise she had stopped.

‘Bull Shots?’ My voice sounded strange. As well it might.

‘That’s the one. It’s from eleven thirty, though people wander in any time.’

She wasn’t giving me a chance to refuse, or indeed to accept. She said, ‘Seán would love to see you, and Donal of course.’

Donal?

‘Lovely,’ I said.

Maybe she meant Conor.

‘You know where we are – the one on the corner as you take the left up to Fiona’s.’

‘Yes, I think so,’ I said.

‘The rough grey wall?’

‘Rough’ that was nice. She did not say, ‘the old granite wall’, she was much too tactful for that.

Nor did she mention – why should she? – the night I had parked opposite that wall and looked up at her house for two hours, until, one by one, the lights went out. I don’t know why I did this. Fiona and Shay were in Mount Juliet for the weekend, so there was no risk of them passing by and recognising the car: that was certainly a factor. I wanted to be close to him, I suppose. I wanted to see the cube of light in which he sat. I also wanted to discover if they still slept, Aileen and Seán, in the same room. I let the car window down. The night air was completely still. Front window bright: front window dark. A baffled light from the back of the house, blocked by corners and half-open doors. Off. A different light turned on. A head rising and dipping, in silhouette, on what must be the landing – that middle window above the door. They have a house like a child’s drawing of a house; sweet and square.

No one puts the cat out.

By 1 a.m. I am no further on.

I am cold though, and so drained by the excitement of that head bobbing on the landing that I can hardly prise my fingers off the steering wheel to start the damn car.

But of course Aileen did not mention this on the phone. She didn’t say, ‘If you like the house so much you might as well knock at the door.’ She just said, very tactfully, ‘The rough grey wall,’ and I said, ‘Aha.’

I have a fluffy ended biro on my desk; a gift from my niece when she was five or six. It pokes out of my pen holder; a ballerina in a froth of blue feathers, and I stroke my face with her when I am on the phone sometimes, while the feathers twitch and waft about in the breeze of my breath. Or I look at her face, which is always smiling.

‘I think I know it,’ I said. ‘New Year’s Day?’

‘You will come. Brilliant,’ said Aileen. ‘I hope so anyway. Bye!’

‘Bye,’ I said, but she was already gone.

Aileen as socialite, ticking the calls off her list. She did not give me a chance to turn her down. Clever Aileen, no pressure, just a bit of fun. Competent Aileen. Aileen whose little fat sits in sad, middle-aged pouches about her boy’s body, who is too busy, God knows, to bother about such things, and what is there to be done, anyway, when you’re on the damn Crosstrainer three times a week. Busy with the house and with the garden. Busy with the shopping. And the cleaning. Busy with the child. Does she have a job? I think so, though I never asked, and it is certainly too late now, to pause while teasing the lobe of my lover’s ear to whisper, ‘So what does your wife do all day?’ into its red concavities.

She doesn’t know, I decide. If she knew, or even suspected, she would get Conor’s name right.

Or maybe she does know, and got it wrong for fun.

We had met, by the time of his wife’s weird social impulse, two more times. There was no doubt the first time, no hesitation. We agreed, smiling, to a Northside lunch and, as I made my way up O’Connell Street, I got a text from his phone that read: