Wednesday night it was a drinking competition, and I had her knocked out by the fourth round. On Thursday I ended up in one of the Northerners’ rooms, polishing off the mini-bar with the other Northern guy and Sean; the queen of international tax returns passed out on the second bed. On the last night – Friday – Sean met me on my way back from the ladies, and he turned to gather me up, saying, ‘Come here. I have something to show you.’ At least I think that is what he said. I may not remember the words exactly, but I remember his hand on the small of my back, and I remember knowing what we were about to do. It seemed that choice had nothing to do with it, or that I had chosen a long time ago. Not him, necessarily, but this; waiting for the lift in sudden silence with a man who did not even bother to court me. Or had that happened already? Maybe he would court me later. Things, clearly, did not happen in a particular order anymore: first this, and then that. First a kiss, and then bed. Maybe it was the drink, but my sense of time was undone, as idly as a set of shoelaces, that you do not notice until you look down.
In the lift we made small-talk. Don’t ask me what about.
A part of me said that there would be other people in his room, like the previous night’s fun – that we were still a happy bunch of people who were trying to move beyond the EU – another part surely hoped that there wouldn’t be. But there is little point in agonising over something so simple. We went upstairs to have sex. And it seemed like a great idea at the time. I was, besides, so drunk, I only remember it in patches.
We had an amazing session outside the room, I do remember that; as I resisted going in the door and he turned back to persuade me. My memory skips the beginning of it, like a needle in an old record, so I have lost the moment of decision, the leaning in. But I remember how he slayed me with kisses, how, when I struggled to open my eyes, I was surprised to find the hotel corridor still there; the dizzy carpet, the receding line of identical doors, and the wallpaper, in vertical stripes of scarlet flock. As I continued to leave and he continued to keep me, the kiss was a sweet argument and pursuit, so tranced and articulate, his left hand on my arm, the other holding his plastic door key, not yet slipped home.
It was the luxury of the kiss that held me, the pure pointless, greedy delight. Even when the lock whirred and the door clicked open, we carried on, and it was only the sound of people coming out of the lift that sent us scurrying inside, laughing in the darkness.
After the kiss – the five-minute, ten-minute, two-hour kiss – the actual sex was a bit too actual, if you know what I mean. There is another blank when I try to recall how we got from the door to the bed, after which, much enthusiastic bouncing and writhing, despite the fact that I couldn’t really feel much, I don’t think, and Sean (who is now the love of my life – my goodness, how it betrays him to say this), took about half an hour to come.
At the time, I thought it was the drink that slowed him down. But Sean only ever pretends to drink. Now I know him better; that inward look as he tries to catch his pleasure, the thing that puts him off his stroke, I realise, is age. Or the fear of age.
As if I cared about his age.
Or perhaps this is not how it was in Montreux. I might be imposing the lover I know now on the memory of the man I slept with then. He might have been, that first time, thrilling and keen, pitch perfect; the impulse inseparable from the action. Maybe that is what first times are for.
All I know is that one night, on the shores of Lake Geneva, in a small room among other small rooms, in the middle of Sean’s long effort, I turned my head to see his keys and loose change on the bedside locker; beyond them the open door of the bathroom where the fan still droned, and I remembered who I was.
I don’t know if Sean was surprised how quickly I left afterwards, but he was practically asleep and did not detain me. The last thing I remember was the door at my back and the long corridor stretching out on either side of me. I think I got lost. I have some idea that I tried – quite hard – to get into my room, but it was on the wrong floor: the numbers had confused me. I lurched through the carpeted corridors and got into lifts and out again, and I met no one, or maybe just one couple, who said nothing but stood in by the wall as I passed. But even this is not clear. Some shutter came down, and it did not rise until I woke the next day, safe in my own bed, half-undressed, with all the lights ablaze.
It maddened me. I did not feel guilty, exactly, but I did feel a little mad, I think. I couldn’t face the breakfast room, for a start. I put my sunglasses on and headed to a local patisserie, then I took my hangover to the railway station, and I got the first train out of there, a neat, old-fashioned little thing, with bench seats, which went a surprising distance up into the mountains, through tunnels and hidden passes, until it emerged into high meadow lands strewn with Alpine flowers and grazed by chocolate-bar cows with bells around their beautiful, pendulous, mauve necks. The few scattered houses had heart-shapes cut out of their wooden balconies, and white quilts thrown over the rails to air in the sun. And it was all so wonderful and silly, I decided to get out at Gstaad, which turned out to be a village of a few streets, with twee little shops, all with names like Rolex or Cartier. There was a Gucci shop and a Benetton shop and a delicatessen full of astonishing cheese. I walked the entire village, and there wasn’t a single place where you could buy cornflakes, or muesli, or even toilet paper and I wondered, did the rich people get these things flown in? Perhaps they did not need them: they had moved beyond.
My adultery – I didn’t know what else to call it – lingered in my bones; a slight ache as I walked, the occasional, disturbing trace of must. I had showered that morning, but I realised I would have to go back and clean up again, and the thought made me laugh out loud. It was a vaguely horrified laugh, but still. I did not feel guilty, that afternoon in Gstaad, I felt suicidal. Or the flip side of suicidal: I felt like I had killed my life, and no one was dead. On the contrary, we were all twice as alive.
I also felt, as I went to pack and face the dreaded Sean,that the whole business was a little disappointing, let’s face it – as seismic moral shifts go. In the foyer, and on the minibus to the airport, he ignored me so strenuously I felt like writing him a note. ‘What makes you think I might care?’ It was hardly worth mentioning; not to Sean and certainly not to Conor. And though this seems hard to believe, I returned to my Dublin life as though nothing had happened; as though the lake, the mountains, the whole of Switzerland, was a lie someone had told, to keep the rest of the world amused.
Toora Loora Loora
HINDSIGHT IS A wonderful thing. With hindsight it was clear there was something wrong with Joan long before my hotel encounter, that she hadn’t been entirely right for some time. But there were so many reasons we could not see it, not least of which was that she did not want us to.
Our mother was a great beauty, in her day. Appearances were important to her. And because she was, in a way, too beautiful, she worked hard to keep the show on the road. She loved to be normal; to chat and to charm. When she was ‘on’, she lit up the room.
I used to be jealous of those strangers, who looked at my mother and loved her for half an hour at a time. Sometimes, it seemed as though we only got the downside: the despair in front of the open wardrobe door, the loneliness when there was no one there to admire. There were times, on the phone, when you could hear the drag in her voice; a loss of belief, as though there might be no one listening on the other end of the line.
I didn’t get my mother’s looks, but I got some of that thing she had, the lift as you walk into a crowded room. I got some of her chat too, her addiction to the phone. And her avoidance of the phone. There were days she let it ring out, for reasons too painful and absurd to explain. It always worked both ways for Joan. Her pleasures were too deep; she had to manage them constantly. So she always looked ‘a fright’ or ‘fine’, which is to say, perfect. And she was tough as hell on the rest of the world. Ruthless. What worked, what didn’t – hundreds of rules about foundation, lipstick, about whether to conceal or reveal: arms over forty, shoulders over fifty, the lines on your neck. Illness was not something she allowed herself. It was so unattractive. And terribly hard on the skin.
My mother lived forever, every time you looked at her, and she smoked like Hedy Lamarr. She was the last smoker in Dublin. She snuck out into the garden to do it, so her grandchildren would not cry.
She was at it again, at Megan’s next birthday in Enniskerry. You would look around and find her gone, then just as mysteriously back again. Megan was nine, so this party was a much more civilised affair, with friends from school and parents who dropped them at the kerb. It was amazing how much had changed. Out the back, the rowan tree was a sturdy, tall thing, and the fence had been rebuilt, to hide the new houses that now blocked their little slice of view. Shay threatened to arrive home and then did not, so it was just myself and Fiona and our mother, and it seemed a long time since we had played at being couples around Fiona’s witty formica table, with the men outside, checking the sky for rain. There was no wine. We wandered about, cooking ready-made lasagne and drinking tea,
