Infidelities by Kirsty Gunn Read Free Book Online

thinking about it, a whole kind of energy came alive in her in a rush, a feeling of yes – and she decided that she would go out. Just go out that second. Put the rest of it off – the phoning, the sorting out the flat, unpacking – and instead step out likeshe’d stepped out then, single and clear and full of youth and energy and the future. As if nothing could trouble her in the world, nothing at all.
    She picked out a pair of jeans from her bag and pulled them on, found her jacket where she’d left it cast across the bedroom chair, and went downstairs and out the door.
    *
    The magnolia tree was right where she’d left it. Standing shock still in the night air, the branches whitened in the cast of the streetlamp and all the beautiful blossoms crowded upon the branches but utterly motionless, like each of them was waiting for something. Elisabeth stopped for a second, no, she must have stopped for a full minute, waiting herself as she stood there before the tree. The night was warm. The earlier chill she’d felt in the day, when she’d got off the train, had been absorbed into something lovely in the air, a kind of early summer heat it was like, and the moisture too had evaporated, giving the navy sky and air around her this lovely wide sense of expansiveness, comfort, contentment. She felt as though she could just take off her jacket right there, that she could just be wearing her T-shirt in this dark warm air … And she did, she took off her jacket, and with that mood of carelessness came the feeling of being young again, like she was in her early twenties, before composing, before performing, before meeting Edward and marriage and moving to Scotland and to the island … Before any of it and here she was, running aroundthe place like she used to run around, going out late, staying up all night and working in bars and restaurants and going to weird, out-of-the-way music festivals and concerts in abandoned warehouses that only started at midnight and were all lit up by candelight … Remember that time …
Remember it?
the blossoms asked her.
Who you once were? Who you are?
She realised that when she’d come out the door she’d had no idea what she was going to do with this navy-coloured night but she knew now.
    There was a pub on the corner of her street where she used to go, years ago, and she would meet Ed there sometimes, after work, or they would go across for a late-night drink, or sometimes she would go there on her own and take a seat up at the bar, talk to the barman who she knew, and there was an old Irish priest who used to drink there, like a character out of a Graham Greene novel, Ed always said. She would often talk to him too, a clever, clever man, sit for a while and talk with him about sin and death and hopefulness …
Where is that old priest now?
The place used to stay open late, she remembers, lying in bed and the window open to the pale blue early summer sky. Not like a pub at all, in London, but like an Irish bar, or a New York City bar. Coming closer to it, though, she saw that it had been painted, given some sort of treatment, a theme of sorts – what was that? It used to be a beaten-up-looking kind of place but now she could see it had been decorated to look that way, that was it, glamorous and tattered, like a kind of salon – still it was the same place as she remembered, the same kindof crowd inside, same kind of music coming from the jukebox, used to be, though tonight it was coming from a band set up in the corner, a guitarist and a drummer and someone on the violin … That’s who she used to be.
A
violinist
. Elisabeth smiled. The door was open so she went inside.
    *
    The noise and number of people hit her in a rush. Men and women pushed up around the bar, or were seated at little tables, gathered together and talking, laughing. There was great heat coming off them, energy, as though each person there couldn’t be more engaged by those around them, lit up by their company and