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 Sean, 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:
‘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. Sean 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 Sean 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. Sean 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. Sean 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:
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 –
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.
