Anne Enright - The Forgotten Waltz

‘The Gresham 328.’

That was all. No, ‘I need to see you,’ no, ‘I will wait for you there.’

There was nothing before the second assignation either; ten long days later in a hotel out by the airport. No rude talk, no photo enclosed of something untoward.

Just: ‘Clarion 29’.

And from me: ‘OK’.

We discussed, on each occasion, the decor; the pictures on the walls and the colour of the carpet: a hearty, natural brown in the Gresham and a strangely non-existent green in the airport hotel, where all the guests were on their way through. Seán had booked and paid each time – at a guess in cash. It was like we were born to it. No emails, no paper trail, just two, instantly deleted texts.

And inside this scaffolding we had erected of jaunty, fake arrangements and silence, after the bare number on my phone’s display, and the walk past reception where no one bothers to call my name, when the door has been found and knocked upon, the thoughtful champagne uncorked and, eyes averted, with a terrible small smile on both our lips, the carpet discussed, we had – I don’t know if ‘sex’ is the word for it, although it was also, quite definitely, sex – we did, or had, just what we wanted, and when that wasn’t enough, we pushed it farther, and had some more.

We didn’t talk much.

Silence made it that bit filthier, of course. And people do not speak, in a dream. Or if they speak, it is not in a real way. I think about how quiet it was in those two rooms as we made our way through the deliberate and surprising actions that brought us skin to skin. It was daylight. You could hear the Friday afternoon traffic and, at two o’clock, the clock chimes from the GPO. There wasn’t much kissing. Maybe this is why it all seemed so clear – too clear – why so few words were said.

But also, perhaps, because there was too much to say, and all of it wrong.

Or maybe I am being romantic, here. I mean, who knows what Seán was thinking, at that stage. He did say – I think I remember him saying – ‘Sssh.’

And, actually, that first time in the Gresham was a bit hurried and mishandled. Seán afterwards a little agitated, almost brusque. But the second time. The second assignation. Was perfect.

What was he like in bed? He was like himself. Seán is the same in bed as he is the rest of the time. The connection is easy to see, when you have made it once, but before you do, it is one of the great mysteries: What is he like?

This.

And this.

I watched him dress, in the airport hotel, and I stayed on after he left for his flight. I said I wanted a shower, but I did not take a shower. I got up and sat on the chair and looked at our after-image, his towel abandoned on the floor, the final print, on the wrinkled sheets, of the movements we had made. Then I pulled on my clothes and went out to the bar, where I sat in the secret hum of his scent and drank one single whiskey and watched, all about me, a mayhem of dragged suitcases and flights diverted and sad farewells.

‘We drove up from Donegal, the day,’ a woman said to me, with tears in her eyes, and a pint of lager in front of her. ‘She’s off in the morning,’ indicating a woman of great age and girth on the banquette beside her, with hair done up, like my country grandmother’s, in a thin, grey wrapover braid.

The old woman, whose clothes and teeth were all American, nodded to me mournfully, while across the bar, three big slabs of young-fellas checked me out, then turned their attention to the big-screen TV.

The bedroom, when I walked back to it, was truly empty. Even our ghosts were gone. Or perhaps there was something left – I tried to leave the door open but glanced back at the last moment and pulled it shut behind me instead.

I handed the key in at reception: four space-age consoles on stalks, each manned by an Eastern European with a crisp manner in a black suit. I chose the shortest queue and a blonde receptionist, with ‘Sveva’ on her name tag. I had plenty of time to read it – whatever the problem with the couple ahead of me was, by the time I got to her, we were old friends. She checked her console screen and said, ‘Yes, that’s all been taken care of,’ and gave me a smile, bright with indifference, and I thought – I wanted to ask her, suddenly – Where will it end?

Three days later, with her wonderful sense of timing, Aileen rang, like a woman arriving in a panic as the ship pulls away from the quay. She was too late. We had already embarked – isn’t that the word that people use? – on our affair.

Back in the office, the flirtation had died. I loved the blank look I gave him beside the coffee machine, the indifferent, ‘See you tomorrow,’ as I pulled my coat off its hook. This was the power our secret gave us. As far as the gossip was concerned, the trail had gone cold.

This must be the rule; that people are madly obvious before they get it together and pathetically obvious when it all stops – but when it is all happening, when the deal is done and they’re at it like knives, then they are as quiet as a government minister with an account in the Cayman Islands, and twice as good at helping old ladies across the street.

‘Hi Seán, sorry about the Poles. I’m still after them to get the numbers for you. They say Thursday. Is that all right?’

‘It’ll have to do.’

‘I’ll keep pushing,’ I say, desire like a kick of blood, that hits low down, then spreads all through me, delicious and alight. It is contained, held by the secret, my skin is the exact shape of it, because I am the secret, I am the money , and this makes me feel I could do anything.

Anything.

Except tell anyone, of course. Which means I can do nothing, in actual fact, in real life. Except be still and know.

‘Thursday,’ you say. ‘What’s that in Polish?’

‘Czwartek.’

‘Oooh. Nice.’

But the deal was not done after the first meeting in the Gresham Hotel. Nothing was certain, afterwards. If anything, he seemed disappointed – with himself, with me, with the inevitability of it all.

‘Give it five minutes,’ he said, when I tried to leave with him.

He placed his finger against my lips, rough and human, and then he was gone, leaving me to the blank walls and the digital display of the hotel clock, which refused to change. Five minutes. I stood by the window and saw him emerge on to the street below, bareheaded, hunched under the November drizzle.

That was it.

No arrangements, no hint of an arrangement.

Which might explain my little lapse outside his gate a week later, sitting in my car until after midnight, hanging on to the steering wheel. Because a week waiting for him to call is a very long time. You could go mad in a week.

You could go mad in an afternoon.

Our hands met, once. In bed. I remembered the shock. Our hands touched when we were otherwise naked and busy, and it was actually embarrassing – such was the charge of reality they held. I apologised, the way you might to a stranger you brush against in the street.

For a week, after the Gresham Hotel, I pulled his love towards me, sitting utterly still and thinking of nothing but the next split second, and then the next, when he would materialise, smiling, in front of me, or my phone would jump at his call.

But it did not jump. No matter how many split seconds I imagined, in how many long days, it just refused.

I did meet him sometimes, of course: I passed his desk, he passed mine. We discussed, on one occasion, the hidden calories in your average café latte. And then he moved on.

At home, I was cross with Conor all the time. How could he be with me all evening, eat Indian takeaway, watch ‘The Sopranos’, and not realise the turmoil I was in? If love was a kind of knowledge then he could not love me, because he hadn’t the faintest clue. It was a strange feeling. Some fundamental force had been removed from our love; like telling the world there was no such thing as gravity, after all. He did not know me. He did not know his own bed.