Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

‘Mmm?’ she said absently.

‘When you did The Cherry Orchard , and you forgot your lines. You went totally blank, do you remember?’

‘Of course I remember,’ she said.

‘I was telling Frank about it and I realized I never did ask you what happened.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I suppose I mustn’t have learned my part very well.’

‘You had that big fight with Mother,’ I said. ‘And the next day you got sick. But we never talked about it.’

She looked at me curiously. ‘I have a better idea, Charles,’ she said, getting up. ‘Go to bed. Drink your drink and go to bed, and tomorrow you’ll have forgotten all about this.’

‘I thought you said we ought to be remembering things.’

The vodka made the air seem close and velvety like a cushion. Behind her the sky sparked silver again and reeled into darkness and I thought suddenly of Gene Tierney waking up in her hospital bed after her electric-shock treatment not knowing where, or who, she was.

‘You know what happened,’ she said quietly.

‘Tell me again.’

She chewed her knuckle thoughtfully. She looked at the clock, the dying embers in the fire. ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘You won’t believe me anyway.’ She picked up the azaleas again and went to the curtain, beating them rhythmically against her palm. ‘But it wasn’t that night everything happened,’ she said. ‘It was a few days beforehand. We all got half-days that week, so we could go and practise our lines. It must have been a Wednesday, because the maid was off. I was in my room, going over a couple of scenes, when I heard this — I don’t know how to describe it. In my memory it’s just this sound of… trouble. I didn’t know what it could be. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone in the house. I opened the door to see what it was, and I found this girl, standing there, totally naked. Just standing there, it was like something out of a dream. She had this blue eyeshadow on and she was staring right at me but I don’t think she knew I was there. I don’t think she knew where she was. Her eyes were just these blanks. For a minute we stood there blinking at each other, and then Father came round the corner and she bolted off down the stairs. I was left there looking at him. I think I said something like, ‘What’s up?’ And he grabs me and goes, ‘Christabel, there’s been an accident, I need you to help.’ He kept saying it over and over. He wouldn’t let me go. There was no accident, obviously. But whatever had happened the girl was in hysterics, and she wouldn’t let him go near her. So I had to go and look for her. She was in the utility room, wedged in behind the dryer, you know where Mrs P keeps the ironing board? I found her in there and Charles, all I wanted to do was get in beside her, she looked so small and thin, so defenceless, like a little animal. Wearing nothing at all except this eyeshadow, all this dark-blue eyeshadow, that made me think of those scary Egyptian goddesses, Isis and Nephthys and those ones? But I talked to her and took her to the bathroom and washed her and calmed her down. She was okay after a while. There was nothing really the matter with her. She’d just freaked out. She was just so young . She went upstairs to put on her clothes and I called her a taxi. Father stayed out of sight. Then she was gone, and I went back to my room to read my lines, and it was like nothing had happened. He didn’t say anything to me about it and I didn’t intend to tell anyone else. Not to protect him, necessarily. More that I thought if I didn’t tell anybody it would feel less like something that had really happened. But of course I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Suddenly it was like everything in the house revealed this new meaning. The locked doors, the photographs. I’d stand in my room and look at all the things he’d given me, the clothes, jewellery, perfume, and I’d think, did he give the same things to his — to the models? Did he pickup three of everything at the airport? Or did he see something looked nice on some girl he was…’ She paused decorously. Outside the night shuddered and boomed. ‘And then I started throwing up. I couldn’t keep anything down. Mother thought it was nerves because of the play. Maybe it was, partly. And the night it was on, she was so sweet, telling me not to worry and how she’d played Varia when she was a little older than me and then before I could stop myself it all came out. I was crying and everything just came out. I didn’t think how she’d react. Or I thought she would want to know. I mean I thought that that was the whole point of the truth, that you told it. And you know she was always the one chasing after us to stand up straight and tuck in our shirts and not steal Thompson’s apples. For a while when I’d finished she didn’t say anything. I remember she was standing beside the sink with her mouth closed, and I was sitting at the kitchen table in this ridiculous Russian ballgown just wishing she’d say something. But then when she did I wished she would stop because it was so horrible. The main thrust of it, though, was that I had made the whole story up. She was so angry — so angry I was worried she might damage herself, and I started thinking that I must have made it up, and I wondered why I would do such a horrible thing, which is when everything got confusing.’

She stepped across to the mantelpiece and trailed her fingers over the marble; I lifted the glass to my lips and found it was empty. I reached for the bottle.

‘If I hadn’t told her, everything would’ve been fine. She knew anyway, that’s what I realized afterwards. Everybody does it. It’s a part of the fashion world. They take these fourteen-year-old girls away from their homes, they turn them into fantasies, they make them famous and rich and in return… well, who could resist it, making love to an actual work of art, to your very own creation? It’s a kind of a droit de seigneur , I suppose. And then they wonder why two years down the line their artworks are anorexic or swallowing razor blades. But of course Mother knew about it. I presume they’d come to some kind of arrangement. Or maybe she didn’t care what he did, so long as it was discreet. All she wanted was to have the city at her feet again, everybody paying her compliments like in the old days. Like at that dinner party tonight, she was so happy. She was even thinking of giving you a room in the new wing, Charles, if you hadn’t made such a mess of things. But she never forgave me. I broke the rules. Everything’s fine as long as nobody tells. Everyone knows and everyone pretends not to and that’s how the world keeps turning. But once the truth starts coming out, the entire artifice crumbles. There’s too much at stake for that to be allowed to happen. That’s what she was trying to tell me the night of the play. And you know, she always did say an actress should never concern herself overly with the truth.’ She cupped her hands round her vodka glass and hunched her shoulders. ‘But I never was much of an actress.’

She paused and drank and refilled the glass. I wanted to stand up and say something but there was a weight pressing down on my chest and I was having some kind of problem with my vision. I didn’t seem to be able to make out the whole room: instead individual areas were being illuminated one by one, like lights in a pinball machine — the pink vinyl suitcase at my right foot; the hounds tearing at Actaeon; the swell of green metal over the front wheel of the Mercedes outside the garage; Bel’s legs white as candlesticks under the whipping black dress as she came back and stood in front of me.

‘But you know all this,’ she said. ‘I know you know. Maybe not all of the details, necessarily. But enough. That’s why you’ve been falling over yourself trying to get out of the place, first that half-witted plan to go to Chile, and then when that didn’t work you storm out after some tiff with Mother? Because she told you to get a job, you leave your ancestral home and move in with Frank?’