The Narrow Road to the Deep North(30)

What?

And only then did she look up.

I mean, she said, I mean you’re Ella’s. But tonight. Tonight you’re mine.

She laughed lightly, as though it all meant nothing.

As a companion.

Lifting her hand, she waved it behind her ear in a gesture of dismissal.

You know what I mean.

But he didn’t. He had no idea at all. And he felt both excited and frightened, that what she said meant nothing, that it meant everything. She was elusive. He was lost.

As the table candles were extinguished by the waiters, the band struck up with ‘Auld Lang Syne’ as a swing waltz. It was a memory being made of coming together and separating, circles forming only to be torn apart. At the end of every few bars another musician would reach forward and snuff out the candle in front of him.

Dorrigo found himself dancing with Amy, and as the dance floor slowly descended into darkness, she somehow came to rest her head on his shoulder. Her body seemed to be inviting his into a supple, shared swaying. As his body cautiously melded into hers, he again told himself it was nothing, that it meant nothing, that it could lead to nothing.

What are you mumbling? she asked.

Nothing, he whispered.

As they circled, their bodies found a strange peace in resting on each other that was also the most terrible anticipation and tension. He could feel her breath, the slightest breeze on his neck.

The last candle was snuffed, there was a bar of darkness, the curtains suddenly dropped from the windows and—to gasps of wonder—a full moon flooded the room. The waltz now circled to its finale, and he understood the whole event as a strange nostalgia for a future that everyone feared would never belong to them, a sense of tomorrow already foretold and only tonight capable of change.

In the quicksilver light and blue ink shadow, couples slowly separated and clapped. For a moment they were looking at each other and he knew he could kiss her, that he only had to lean slightly forward into her shadow and he would fall forever. But then he remembered who they were and instead asked if she wanted another drink.

Take me home, she said.





11



AT THE HOTEL she took him to the rooms where she lived with Keith. He sat down in a russet armchair. He could smell Keith’s brilliantine on the antimacassar, his pipe tobacco in the brocade upholstery. Amy wound the gramophone, put on a record she said she wanted him to hear, placed the needle and sat on the arm of Dorrigo’s chair. The piano shuffled, the sax swept in and out with the breeze off the ocean that ruffled the lace curtains, and a voice began to sing.

A tinkling piano in the next apartment

Those stumbling words that told you

What my heart meant

A fairground’s painted swings

These foolish things

Remind me of you

It’s Leslie Hutchinson, she said. Apparently he is, you know, familiar with the ladies of the Royal family.

Familiar?

She smiled.

Yes, she said very softly, looking across at him. Familiar.

She laughed again, from her throat, and he thought how much he liked the full-bodied, large-souled feel of it.

The song ended. He stood up and went to go. She put the record on again. He said goodbye. At the door he leant in, kissed her politely on the cheek, and when he went to pull away, she leant her face in against his neck. He waited for her to pull her head away.

You’ve got to go, he heard her whisper. But she kept her face against his.

The gramophone needle was ch-ch-ing as it circled the record’s end.

Yes, he said.

He waited but nothing happened.

The needle remained stuck in its groove, scratching circles of sand into the night.

Yes, he said.

He waited but she did not move. After a time, he put one arm lightly around her. She did not pull away.

Soon, he said.

He held his breath until he felt her ever so slightly press into him. He did not move.

Amy?

Yes?

He did not dare answer. He breathed out. He shuffled his feet to better get his balance. He had no idea what to say, worrying that to say anything more might upset this delicate equation. He let his hand drop and shape her waist, expecting her to push it away. But instead she whispered:

Amie. French for friend.

His other hand found the wondrous curve of her buttocks.

My mother, she said, taught me that when I was little.

She did not push that hand away either.

Amy, amie, amour, she used to call me. Amy, friend, love.

A winning trifecta, Dorrigo said.

She turned her lips onto his neck. He could feel her breath on his skin. He could feel her body with his, now hard, and he was embarrassed to realise that she must be able to feel him. He did not dare move in any direction in case it broke this spell. It was not clear to him what this meant or what he should do. He did not dare kiss her.





12



DORRIGO FELT A warm hand creeping up his legs and jolted awake. It took him some moments to realise it was the early-morning sun stepping across his room. He found a note from Amy under his door saying that she would be busy until mid-afternoon with hotel business—there was to be a lunchtime wedding reception—so she would not be able to say goodbye.