Beautiful World, Where Are You(2)

I think you’re the first person I’ve had a conversation with since I moved in.

He raised his eyebrows. Are you shy? he said.

You tell me.

They looked at one another. She no longer looked nervous now, but somehow remote, while his eyes moved around her face, as if trying to put something together. He did not seem in the end, after a second or two, to conclude that he had succeeded.

I think you might be, he said.

She asked where he was living and he said he was renting a house with friends, nearby.

Looking out the window, he added that the estate was almost visible from where they were sitting, just past the caravan park. He leaned over the table to show her, but then said it was too dark after all. Anyway, just the other side there, he said. As he leaned close to her their eyes met. She dropped her gaze into her lap, and taking his seat again he seemed to suppress a smile. She asked if his parents were still living locally. He said his mother had passed away the year before and that his father was ‘God knows where’.

I mean, to be fair, he’s probably somewhere like Galway, he added. He’s not going to turn up down in Argentina or anything. But I haven’t seen him in years.

I’m so sorry about your mother, she said.

Yeah. Thanks.

I actually haven’t seen my father in a while either. He’s— not very reliable.

Felix looked up from his glass. Oh? he said. Drinker, is he?

Mm. And he— You know, he makes up stories.

Felix nodded. I thought that was your job, he said.

She blushed visibly at this remark, which seemed to take him by surprise and even alarm him. Very funny, she said. Anyway. Would you like another drink?

After the second, they had a third. He asked if she had siblings and she said one, a younger brother. He said he had a brother too. By the end of the third drink Alice’s face looked pink and her eyes had become glassy and bright. Felix looked exactly the same

as he had when he had entered the bar, no change in manner or tone. But while her gaze increasingly roamed around the room, expressing a more diffuse interest in her surroundings, the attention he paid to her had become more watchful and intent. She rattled the ice in her empty glass, amusing herself.

Would you like to see my house? she asked. I’ve been wanting to show it off but I don’t know anyone to invite. I mean, I am going to invite my friends, obviously. But they’re all over the place.

In New York.

In Dublin mostly.

Whereabouts is the house? he said. Can we walk there?

Most certainly we can. In fact we’ll have to. I can’t drive, can you?

Not right now, no. Or I wouldn’t chance it, anyway. But I do have my licence, yeah.

Do you, she murmured. How romantic. Do you want another, or shall we go?

He frowned to himself at this question, or at the phrasing of the question, or at the use of the word ‘romantic’. She was rooting in her handbag without looking up.

Yeah, let’s head on, why not, he said.

She stood up and began to put on her jacket, a beige single-breasted raincoat. He watched her fold back one sleeve cuff to match the other. Standing upright, he was only just taller than she was.

How far is it? he said.

She smiled at him playfully. Are you having second thoughts? she said. If you get tired of walking you can always abandon me and turn back, I’m quite used to it. The walk, that is. Not being abandoned. I might be used to that as well, but it’s not the sort of thing I confess to strangers.

To this he offered no reply at all, just nodded, with a vaguely grim expression of forbearance, as if this aspect of her personality, her tendency to be ‘witty’ and verbose, was, after an hour or two of conversation, a quality he had noted and determined to ignore. He said goodnight to the waitress as they left. Alice looked struck by this, and glanced back over her shoulder as if trying to catch sight of the woman again. When they were outside on the footpath, she asked whether he knew her. The tide broke in a low soothing rush behind them and the air was cold.

The girl working there? said Felix. I know her, yeah. Sinead. Why?

She’ll wonder what you were doing in there talking to me.

In a flat tone, Felix replied: I’d say she’d have a fair idea. Where are we heading?

Alice put her hands in the pockets of her raincoat and started walking up the hill. She seemed to have recognised a kind of challenge or even repudiation in his tone, and rather than cowing her, it was as though it had hardened her resolve.

Why, do you often meet women there? she asked.

He had to walk quickly to keep up with her. That’s an odd question, he replied.

Is it? I suppose I’m an odd person.

Is it your business if I meet people there? he said.

Nothing about you is my business, naturally. I’m just curious.

He seemed to consider this, and in the meantime repeated in a quieter, less certain voice: Yeah, but I don’t see how it’s your business. After a few seconds he added: You’re the one who suggested the hotel. Just for your information. I never usually go there. So no, I don’t meet people there that much. Okay?

That’s okay, that’s fine. My curiosity was piqued by your remark about the girl behind the bar ‘having an idea’ what we were doing there.

Well, I’m sure she figured out we were on a date, he said. That’s all I meant.

Though she didn’t look around at him, Alice’s face started to show a little more amusement than before, or a different kind of amusement. You don’t mind people you know seeing you out on dates with strangers? she asked.