Anne Enright - The Forgotten Waltz

Miles in the room behind me, with the rug rolled up, old twinkle toes.

Once round the dresser!

Teaching me Irish dancing, singing out the patter: one two three, one two three, down -kick and tip and heel -fall , bang, kick up, heel-step tip-drum.

And just for a moment, I do not care what kind of a man he was. Perhaps it is the way the snow opens up a space, but for a moment, all my memories of my father are chocolate-box, and smell of winter: icing sugar thrown on the fire, in a shower of yellow flame, a crate of satsumas cold from the garage, my mother in a Nordic knit, Miles with a daughter under each arm standing on the doorstep, listening to Mr Thomson down the road, playing ‘Silent Night’ on his military bugle. Of course Christmas in this house was always a bit of a torment – there was always, before the day was out, some crisis with handsome, pissed old Miles – but it started well. Bursting through the door to find our presents in heaps at either end of the sofa – Fiona’s one end, mine the other – a big comfortable sofa, the fabric a dark embossed red; picked out, along the seams, with a beige fringe.

There I am, on my father’s knee, a little pietà. I am waiting to be tickled, playing dead.

My father lifts one hand and holds it high.

‘Is that the way?’

‘I’m dead!’

I start to wriggle to the floor and, as I slip across his knees, he pounces, finding the spaces between my ribs and digging in. By the time I have hit the carpet I am beside myself. I am out of my skin, stuck to the spinning floor. I am tied to my body where his fingers hold me together, as I fly apart.

‘No! No!’

My father tickling me from the sofa, as I squirm on the ground, my shoulders churning into the carpet.

‘Oh no!’

His cigarette is clamped between his in-rolled lips: he gathers my ankles in one big hand, then he turns to leave the cigarette in the ashtray.

‘Oh the mouse,’ he says. ‘Oh the mouse,’ and his fingers dance and scrabble across the soft underside of my foot.

Being dead was like being tickled, except that when you flew out of your body you never came back.

When I was twelve or so, I used to practise astral flying – it must have been a fashion then. I lay on my back in bed, and when I was fully heavy, too heavy to move, I got up, in my mind, and left the house. I went down the stairs and out the front door. I walked or I drifted along the street. If I wanted to, I flew. And I imagined, or I saw, every single detail of the passing world; every fact about the hall or the stairs and the street beyond. The next day I would go out to look for things I had noticed, for the first time, the night before. And I found them, too. Or I thought I had.

The pubs have shut: there are shouts in the distance and the screams of girls. I lean my forehead against the cold glass, as the traffic lights change and change again. It is time for bed. But I don’t want to go to bed. I want to keep them company another little while: my father and mother, dispersed as they are along the sweet, bright arc of the dead.

A COUPLE OF months ago, I saw Conor on Grafton Street. He was pushing a buggy, which gave me pause, but then I recognised his sister beside him, home from Bondi. He did not seem surprised to see me. He looked up and nodded, as though we had arranged to meet.

His lips were chapped, I noticed. The light was too strong on his face – the way the sun sets straight down Grafton Street – and when we circled around, the better to see each other, I was bizarrely worried that my skin had aged.

‘All right. You?’

‘Yeah.’

His sister was watching us, with a look so tragic I felt like asking her did the budgie die.

‘Oh my goodness!’ I said, instead, and I bent down to look under the hood of the buggy. There was her baby, a little shock of humanity, looking me bang in the eye.

‘Gorgeous!’ I said, and asked how long she was staying, and what the news from Sydney was while Conor seemed more and more tired, just standing there.

After I walked on I got the blip of a text in my pocket.

‘Are we married?’

I kept going. I put one foot in front of the other. A second text arrived.

‘Need to talk about stuff.’ I glanced around then but Conor was thumbs deep in his mobile. Fatter too, in the harsh light. Or, not so much fat as more solid. He glanced up, and I had, as I turned away, an impression of his weight along the length of me, top to toe.

‘I’m just saying,’ says Fiachra. ‘He’s small, good-looking, witty.’

‘So?’

‘He’s your type.’

‘I don’t have a type.’

‘I’m just saying.’

So all right, they are both on the smallish side. They are both good company; both hard to know well. But underneath the charm Conor is an absent-minded sort. And Seán? When the party stops, when the door closes, when the guests go home…

They are completely different people. People love Conor, but they do not love Seán. They are attracted to Seán, which is not the same thing. Because Seán has a permanent joke in his eye, and it is usually you – the joke I mean – he is such a tease. And he likes to boast a little. And he likes to do you down.

My grey-haired boy.

He always compliments the thing you don’t expect. It is never the thing you made an effort with: the dress, or the jewellery, or the hair. He compliments the thing that is wrong, so it gets more wrong all night.

‘What do you think?’

Coming down the stairs, ready to go out: there is something about my expectant look that annoys him.

‘I like the lipstick.’

These days, it is always my mouth. I should not have told him about my father in the hospice. I know that now. I tell him less and less.

My poor, raggedy mouth.

Seán Peter Vallely, born 1957, educated to be obnoxious by the Holy Ghost Fathers, reared to be obnoxious by his mother, Margot Vallely, who loved him very much, of course, but was so disappointed he did not grow up tall.

You could be worn out by it, that’s all. By this man’s inability to lose.

I am only thirty-four. That is what I caught myself thinking. There is still time. There is something the fat on his chest does – I mean, he has very little fat on his chest, and anyway I do not care – but there is something this layer does, the effort it makes, that is dispiriting. And I do not mind until his eyes check me over, like the mirror does not see him.

Then, as though he knows what I am thinking, he says, ‘Look at you. You should be out there. You should be.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know.’

Neither of us can say the word ‘baby’.

‘I don’t want to be out there,’ I say. Thinking, He will use this as an excuse to get rid of me .

And, This is one of his tactics too .

I came in late, one Saturday, after ending up in Reynards talking shite with Fiachra until three in the morning, just like the old days. I stumbled about the bedroom, and there was, I admit, a bit of cavorting as I discarded my clothes, then I jumped into bed and snuggled up.

Seán, who had been asleep, was having none of it. Recollection is dim, but, between one grope and the next, I must have conked out. Only to wake maybe two hours later in such a state of fright, I suspect he shoved me in my sleep. He was lying in the darkness with his eyes open, as he had clearly been doing for some time. He said something – something horrible, I can’t remember what it was – and we were in the middle of breaking up; shouting, grabbing dressing gowns, slamming doors. It went from Fiachra to everything, with nothing in-between.

You always .

You never .