Like All Other Men
He watched her for a long time among the women across the dancefloor in the half-light of the afternoon. She wasn’t tall or beautiful, but he couldn’t take his eyes away. Some of the women winced palpably and fell back as they were passed over. Others stood their ground and stared defiantly back. She seemed quietly indifferent, taking a few steps back into the thinning crowd each time she found herself isolated on the floor. When she was asked to dance, she behaved exactly the same. She flashed no smile, gave no giddy shrug of triumph to betray the tension of the wait, the redeemed vanity.
Nurses, students, actors and actresses, musicians, some prostitutes, people who worked in restaurants and newspapers, night-watchmen, a medley of the old and very young, came to these afternoon dances. Michael Duggan came every Saturday and Sunday. He was a teacher of Latin and history in a midlands town forty miles from Dublin, and each Friday he came in on the evening bus to spend the whole weekend round the cinemas and restaurants and dancehalls of O’Connell Street. A year before he had been within a couple of months of ordination.
When he did cross to ask her to dance, she followed him with the same unconcern on to the floor as she had showed just standing there. She danced beautifully, with a strong, easy freedom. She was a nurse in the Blanchardstown Chest Hospital. She came from Kerry. Her father was a National Teacher near Killarney. She had been to these afternoon dances before, but not for a couple of years. Her name was Susan Spillane.
‘I suppose everybody asks you these questions,’ he said.
‘The last one did anyhow.’ She smiled. ‘You’d better tell me about yourself as well.’ She had close curly black hair, an intelligent face, and there was something strange about her eyes.
‘Are your eyes two different colours?’
‘One eye is brown, the other grey. I may have got the grey eye by mistake. All the others in the house have brown eyes.’
‘They are lovely.’ The dance had ended. He had let her go. It was not easy to thread a way through these inanities of speech.
A girl could often stand unnoticed a long time, and then it was enough for one man to show an interest to start a rush. When the next two dances were called, though he moved quickly each time, he was beaten to her side. The third dance was a ladies’ choice, and he withdrew back into the crowd of men. She followed him into the crowd, and this time he did not let her slip away when the dance ended. It was a polite convention for women to make a show of surprise when invited for a drink, of having difficulty making up their minds, but she said at once she’d love a drink, and asked for whiskey.
‘I hardly drink at all, but I like the burnt taste,’ and she sipped the small measure neat for the two hours that were left of the dance. ‘My father loves a glass of whiskey late at night. I’ve often sat and had a sip with him.’
They danced again and afterwards came back to the table, sipped the drinks, sat and talked, and danced again. Time raced.
‘Do you have to go on night duty tonight?’ he asked as it moved near the time when the band would stand and play the anthem. He was afraid he would lose her then.
‘No. I’m on tomorrow night.’
‘Maybe you’d eat something with me this evening?’
‘I’d like that.’
There was still some daylight left when they came from the dancehall, and they turned away from it into a bar. They both had coffee. An hour later, when he knew it was dark outside, he asked awkwardly, ‘I suppose it’s a bit outrageous to suggest a walk before we look for a place to eat,’ his guilty smile apologizing for such a poor and plain admission of the sexual.
‘I don’t see why not.’ She smiled. ‘I’d like a walk.’
‘What if it’s raining?’ He gave them both the excuse to draw back.
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ she said.
It was raining very lightly, the street black and shining under the lamps, but she didn’t seem to mind the rain, nor that the walk led towards the dark shabby streets west of O’Connell Street. There they found a dark doorway and embraced. She returned his kisses with the same directness and freedom with which she had danced, but people kept continually passing in the early evening dark, until they seemed to break off together to say, ‘This is useless,’ and arm in arm to head back towards the light.
‘It’s a pity we haven’t some room or place of our own,’ he said.
‘Where did you spend last night?’ she asked.
‘Where I stay every weekend, a rooming house in North Earl Street, four beds to the room.’
It was no place to go. A dumb man in the next bed to his had been very nearly beaten up the night before. The men who took the last two beds had been drinking. They woke the dumb man while they fumbled for the light, and he sat up in his bed and gestured towards the partly open window as soon as the light came on. Twice he made the same upward movement with his thumb: he wanted them to try to close the window because of the cold wind blowing in. The smaller of the two men misinterpreted the gesture and with a shout fell on the man. They realized that he was dumb when he started to squeal. She didn’t laugh at the story.
‘It’s not hard to give the wrong signals in this world.’
‘We could go to a hotel,’ she said. He was stopped dead in his tracks. ‘That’s if you want to, and only — only — if I can pay half.’
‘Which hotel?’
‘Are you certain you’d want that? It doesn’t matter to me.’ She was looking into his face.
‘There’s nothing I want more in the world, but where?’ He stood between desire and fear.
‘The Clarence across the river is comfortable and fairly inexpensive.’
‘Will we see if we can get a room before we eat or afterwards?’ He was clumsy with diffidence in the face of what she had proposed.
‘We might as well look now, but are you certain?’
‘I’m certain. And you?’
‘As long as you agree that I can pay half,’ she said.
‘I agree.’
They sealed one another’s lips and crossed the river by the Halfpenny Bridge.
‘Do you think we will have any trouble?’ he asked as they drew close to the hotel.
‘We’ll soon find out. I think we both look respectable enough,’ and for the first time he thought he felt some nervousness in her handclasp, and it made him feel a little easier.
There was no trouble. They were given a room with a bath on the second floor.
‘I liked very much that you gave your real name,’ she said when they were alone.
‘Why?’
‘It seemed more honest …’
‘It was the only name I could think of at the time,’ and their nervousness found release in laughter.
The bathroom was just inside the door. The bed and bedside lamp and table were by the window, a chair and writing table in the opposite corner, two armchairs in the middle of the room. The window looked down on the night city and the river. He drew the curtains and took her in his arms.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘We’ve plenty of time before going out to eat.’
While she was in the bathroom he turned off the light, slipped from his clothes, and got into the bed to wait for her.
‘Why did you turn out the light?’ she asked sharply when she came from the bathroom.
‘I thought you’d want it out.’
‘I want to see.’