The Forgotten Waltz

every woman’s back, so they could feel the warmth of it there.

I couldn’t be jealous. In the circumstances, that would be a bit silly.

Besides, his wife didn’t seem to mind.

I met her again in the hall, when Fiona was trying to head home and there was fuss about arrangements.

‘Oh don’t you go too!’

She touched my arm. She seemed – I am looking for the right word here – fond of me. As though there was something about me that made her nostalgic and hopeful, something that gave her a pang.

‘Sean can walk you back, whatever happens. Won’t you Sean?’

‘Sorry?’ He was standing inside the big room, with his back to us.

‘Walk Fiona’s sister down the road.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘As I keep telling my sister here, I am getting a lift back into town with Fiachra.’

Because Fiachra and his Fat Flower were at their last party ever – they might as well have brought their pyjamas. She had already taken one little nap on the sofa and had woken up for more.

I waved my sister and her husband away from the door and knew, as they walked into the country darkness, that it was not wise to stay. I watched them as far as the gate; Fiona tiny beside the bulk of her husband, reaching over to take his hand. Then I turned to Aileen and said, ‘Those mango slices are a crime!’

I had joined Sean and Fiachra as they hovered near his sleeping wife.

‘First year – no sex,’ Fiachra was saying into his wine glass. ‘Isn’t that what they say?’

‘Ah, stop it,’ said Sean. ‘You won’t know yourselves.’

Behind us, the woman slept, while the baby – I don’t know – smiled, or sucked its thumb, or listened and knew better, while, on the back of the sofa, the side of Sean’s hand touched the side of mine. I could feel the thick fold in the flesh, at the bend of the knuckles. And it was surprisingly hot, this tiny piece of him. That was all. He did not move, and neither did I.

But once we had begun, how were we supposed to stop? This sounds like a simple question, but I still don’t know the answer to it. I mean that we had started something that could not be ended, except by happening. It could not be stopped, but only finished. I mean the woman with the chocolate-dipped mango who was eyeing up the sherry trifle, and the boys with the Bulgarian complex that had three whole Bulgarian pools, two in the garden and one on the roof, and everyone with a last drink who was thinking about another last drink, and me sitting with my hand touching the side of Sean’s hand in his own house – we were all drunk, of course, but I could no more have left it at that than Fiachra’s baby could have decided to stay where it was for another couple of years. I could no more ignore it than you could ignore the smell of the sea at the road’s end -turn back without checking that the water was there and that it was wide.

Our reflections rolled and flickered over the flawed old glass of the four long windows, with all the loveliness of Christmas past and for a moment it was as though everything had already happened. We had loved and died and left no trace. And what it wanted, what the whole world wanted, was to be made real.

The minute Fiona left, I made my way to the kitchen, with a blagged cigarette in my hand. Sean was there, opening a bottle of red.

‘What’s that?’ he said.

‘Is this the way out?’

‘Don’t,’ he said.

I looked down at the cigarette and said, ‘Oh for God’s sake.’

I made my way to the sink, turned on the tap and drowned the thing, then opened the cupboards under the sink, one door after another, and threw it in Sean Vallely’s own, personal, domestic bin. After which, I straightened up and looked at him.

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘I love your units. What are they, oak?’

‘Something like that,’ he said.

And I wandered back into the fray.

It was getting to that time when everyone is unspooled and sad to be leaving, though they never actually do leave; the hour when bags are lost and taxis fail to arrive. It was the lost hour, the hour of unravelling intentions, and it was in this extra time, while Aileen hunted in the living room for Dahlia’s abandoned shoes, that I kissed Sean, or he kissed me, upstairs.

It was Fiachra’s fault. I have never been at an event with Fiachra which he has left voluntarily. Drunk or sober, he is the kind of guy who has to be dragged backwards through life. I offered to get the coats, just to move things along, and was halfway there when I heard Sean take the stairs behind me, saying, ‘I’m on to it.’ He followed me across the landing, and I made it into the au pair’s room before turning around.

I had expected – I don’t know what I had expected – some kind of collision. I had expected lust. What I got was a man who looked at me through pupils so open and black, you could not see the iris. What I saw, when I turned, was Sean.

I kissed his mouth.

I kissed him. And as kisses go it was almost innocent; a second too long, perhaps. Maybe two. And at the beginning of that extra second I heard Evie squeaking at the sight of us; towards the end of it, her mother’s voice downstairs.

‘Evie! What are you doing up there?’ making the child glance back over her shoulder, as my eyes rolled, a little comically, towards the door.

Sean pulled away. He took a breath. He held me at the hips. He said: ‘Happy New Year!’

I said, ‘Happy New Year to you, too!’ and Evie’s hands began to flap as she lifted her arms from her sides.

‘Happy New Year!’ she said, and she barrelled into her father. ‘Happy New Year, Daddy!’

He bent to kiss her too; a peck on the lips, and she encircled him with her arms and squeezed tight, and tight again.

‘Hoofa! Ooofa!’ said her father.

Then she turned to me.

‘Happy New Year, Gina!’ she said.

And she tilted her face up, so I could kiss her too.

The coats were gathered and Evie preceded us down the stairs. She put a soft white hand on the banister and walked carefully in front of us, one sock drifting towards her ankle, a row of corrugations around her calf where the elastic left its red reminder, her hair a little dishevelled, her cheek, as I knew from kissing it, sticky with stolen sugar. She had sneaked a go of the White Linen, but, from under her clothes, came the tired smell of a body that is not yet sure of itself. She seemed so proud; like a little herald, full of news beyond her understanding.

The front door was open and Dahlia stood on the doorstep facing the night, while Fiachra lingered inside the living room, draining a final glass. As we came down the stairs, the pregnant woman stretched her arms above her head. She looked a little fat, from behind; her spine curved back on itself, beautiful and sturdy, while her hidden belly lifted to the sky.

She dropped her hands.

‘Home’ she said, and turned around to me. ‘Are you right, so?’

Aileen obliged Fiachra into the hall, then she put coats on the parents-to-be and she kissed them both. Then Sean kissed them. Then Sean kissed me on the cheek, his hands pushing simultaneously at my shoulders, so it wasn’t so much a kiss as a kind of bounce back from each other. Then Aileen gave me a hug, and stood back to look at me. She put an admiring hand on my hair, just over my ear, and she said, ‘You must come again soon,’ and I said, ‘Yes.’

‘And Donal too.’

‘Conor.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Goodnight. Goodnight!’ and she watched, silhouetted in the doorframe with her lovely husband and her lovely daughter, as we got into the car and drove away.

‘God,’ said Fiachra, slipping down in the passenger seat in front of me, while his wife grunted at the gearshift.

‘God almighty. Out of there I thought we Would Not Get.’

I have thought about it a lot, since – how much Aileen did or did not know. When it all blew up in our faces,