Infidelities by Kirsty Gunn Read Free Book Online Page A

alive with it, all kinds of people, as though the whole world was there. Elisabeth made her way through them and would order what she always used to order – a vodka and tonic, lots of lemon, lots of ice. It was the drink for parties, remember? The parties? She would buy a pack of cigarettes too, later, and smoke one outside.
    ‘Hi there,’ the girl behind the bar shouted a little, over the band. ‘What can I get you?’ She was Australian, was she? Or from New Zealand? That jolly, capable sort of voice, that outgoing manner. The voice of someone who has spent a lot of time in the sun, lying on a beach beside a big blue sea, on a flat green lawn.
    ‘A V and T, yeah?’ she said, when Elisabeth told her what she wanted, and smiled. ‘Sounds good to me.’
    Elisabeth was fishing in her pocket for money. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘With a lot of ice, please. And lemon.’
    ‘Like it that way, myself.’ The girl smiled at Elisabeth again, only this time held her gaze. ‘Everything okay?’ she said.
    Elisabeth stopped, for a second her heart stopped – was that what was happening? Her heart was stopping? Her body stopping and this was the end, not later at all, as she’d thought, but here now, now … Then she steadied herself. ‘Can I get change for the cigarette machine?’ she said.
    The girl had turned back to the drink she was making. ‘Nah,’ she shook her head, shunting ice into a tall glass. ‘Don’t have one any more. But I’ll give you a fag if you want. I’m having a break in a minute. We can smoke outside.’ She turned around and gave Elisabeth another one of her smiles, straight off a beach, full of sun and long hot days.
    ‘Okay?’ she said.
    ‘Okay,’ Elisabeth replied.
    The whole thing just like being young again. That’s what Elisabeth thought later. The okay, okay. The no need to worry about anything, about what might happen next, because everything would be okay. That ease, that feeling of the night containing everyone and everyone was there together, that everyone might be your friend.
    Okay
.
    Okay
.
    She hears herself say the words.
    ‘Okay,’ said the girl again. ‘I’m going to come and find you, okay, in a minute, and we can go outside togetherthen and do that bad thing.’ She made a gesture of putting a cigarette to her mouth, inhaling, exhaling.
    Elisabeth nodded, ‘Sure’, and went back over towards where the band were playing. The violinist was running through a lovely A minor arpeggio, hunched over her instrument like she was an old Highland fiddler and drawing the bow over the strings as if she were at a ceilidh in the hills, that light feathery sound you heard at all the village dances on the island … It was pretty, arriving through the thick hum of the bar’s chatter and the thrum of the guitarist’s chords. And reminding Elisabeth of something. Of her flute, she realised. The flute in her Elegy for Strings, her Adagio – that same quality of an alternative sound that might well not be expected, that did not so much compete with or participate in the music made by the others in the orchestra, but was simply an alternative to it, weaving through the tune and lifting it, lightening it like a flight path of sound cut through the trees. Elisabeth was elated. She realised she was. To be hearing that sound now. And played in this way. And at this time. To be out late at night and on her own, deeply alone, in the way she loved to be, with all the world gathered around her for company if she needed it, but she probably didn’t after all. She wanted to dance, and talk to people, to stay out late and … stay. The band finished their number and everybody clapped.
    ‘Well,’ the singer said. ‘Well’, and they started into the next number.
    A boy beside her leaned in. ‘They’re good, aren’t they?’ and Elisabeth turned. He was young. Mid-twenties,late-twenties. Over his head the girl from the bar put up two fingers, mouthed ‘Now’ and pointed towards the