The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright Page B

father, meanwhile, he was flirting with someone. It looked harmless, because Seán wasn’t tall. The way he leaned in, it made him look, as he teased one woman or engaged in serious conversation with her husband, merely friendly. But it never stopped. I noticed that, too. The way he put his hand on the small of 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.
    ‘Seán can walk you back, whatever happens. Won’t you Seán?’
    ‘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 Seán 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 Seán. ‘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 Seán’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 Seán’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. Seán 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 Seán Vallely’s own,