Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

For a long, desolate moment I could think of nothing to say to her. Outside Frank bayed and ululated his battle-plans; she sat bunched at the end of the divan, staring disconsolately into the cold fireplace.

‘Must have taken the wind out of your sails,’ I ventured gently, ‘the company turning you down like that…’

She wheeled round sharply. ‘How do you know about that?’ she demanded.

I shrugged; I wasn’t about to divulge how I came to be talking to MacGillycuddy, or that this was all he had told me. ‘I found out. You can tell me what happened, if you like.’

She crossed her arms on her knees and leaned forward, frowning slightly; I knew she wanted to tell someone , though she wasn’t entirely happy that it was me. ‘Well, I had an audition and they really liked me,’ she said, drawing her arms high up around her as if she were cold, ‘and I got a callback. It was only a couple of days ago — the day we went greyhound racing, that morning. I thought I’d got it, I really did. I thought this would be my big break. Not that it was much of a part or anything, but just to start, finally — and it was Chekhov , Charles, I knew that play inside-out. But then today I got this letter…’ She broke off; she’d turned her head, but I could see a tear shimmer and tremble against the orb of her eye. ‘They were quite frank, it was very helpful of them, really…’

‘So what did they say?’

‘They said that while they thought that technically my reading was very good, they were concerned —’ she took a deep, shivery breath, ‘that it wasn’t sufficiently alive to contemporary social realities. They said I didn’t have enough of a grasp on… on the world . You mightn’t think that’d be important for an actress, Charles, but you have to, they want to bring out all the elements in the play that are like life today, you see, and they didn’t think I could do it. I mean, they were right, there’s only so many parts for fake princesses —’ twisting up these last words bitterly as the tear detached at last to course exuberantly down her cheek; leaving me to sit and watch her, wishing that I weren’t so useless and that the few inches of divan separating us didn’t feel like a thousand miles, so that maybe I could say something to comfort her instead of getting up and going over to the mantelpiece to examine the dried flowers: other people’s dreams always embarrassed me, especially when they didn’t come true.

An audition: that was what MacGillycuddy meant, that explained what she’d been doing locked up with Frank every morning when I thought she was giving him reading lessons. It probably explained Frank himself, in fact; things didn’t get much more real than him, and Bel wasn’t one to do things by halves. She wanted so much from the world, there was so much she wanted to make it see : if she had to, she would turn away from her own life to do it — she would explode her past, she would take a bed with a criminal, lie back and think of realism …

And this Chekhov she had always been crazy about, ever since school when they had put on one of his plays. For weeks beforehand she had wandered around the house in her silver kimono with the enormous cerise flowers, incessantly mumbling her lines like some sort of itinerant monk (with the end result that on the night she had gone totally blank). Even now, if you made the mistake of asking her what was so great about him, she would go on long harangues about how not only had he written the defining plays of the twentieth century, but he had also been a doctor and treated thousands of peasants for tuberculosis, and he had founded a theatre, and he had supported his horrendous drunken family, and he had loved his wife even though she’d had an affair, and actually managed in spite of everything to like people and listen to their stories and try to be true to them…

‘It’s this house,’ she said now in a slow monotone, like Mother on one of her bad days. ‘It makes me feel like I’m already obsolete, like as long as I’m here I’ll never be able to belong anywhere else…’ She looked up at me suddenly with a streaked face and an expression that was a mixture of accusation and appeal. ‘Don’t you see, Charles? Maybe it’s better for both of us if things don’t work out with the bank. Maybe then we can get free of this place.’

I looked at her dumbly. Get free of this place? Didn’t she understand that Amaurot was special, that what we had here was special? Didn’t she know that outside everything was less , that it was smaller, meaner, indifferent? But she was serious: and she was still waiting for a reply, pinning me to the wall with that funny look, as if evaluating the very essence of what I was. Then, mercifully, Frank lumbered in, and I seized the opportunity to break away. I went to the drinks cabinet and made myself a Scotch and soda, which I drank with a deliberating air, pretending to turn what she’d said over in my mind. After a moment I was feeling more composed. I lowered the glass from my lips and began to tell her sagely, even-handedly, that although this audition was a disappointment all right, she shouldn’t let it cloud her judgement — that instead of rushing into anything, we should try and sort out the bank first and see how we felt after that. But she had turned around in her seat to devote her whole attention to Frank, who, through a combination of grunts and hand-flapping, was giving her details of his revenge plans. I didn’t care to interrupt, and I didn’t need her to translate either. Frank’s bestial jabberings were curiously eloquent: I could see all too clearly the breaking windows, the hurtling knuckles, the burning. In my already shaken state, I found the atmosphere was getting a little too apocalyptic; I topped up my drink and told Bel I would talk to her later. I couldn’t tell if she’d heard me.

Ascending the staircase, I pondered again over what she’d said. I told myself she was upset; I tried to convince myself that this was just an awkward phase — Bel’s life, after all, was a more or less continuous series of awkward phases. But I knew that in her eyes this audition business was more than just a temporary setback. She dreamed on a vast scale, and she placed her whole self within those dreams; minor things, setbacks, became great waves that spilled over her, threatening to swamp her. If by some elliptical process of reasoning she had arrived at the conclusion that it was the house that had come between her and the part — between her and the bright future she envisioned for herself — then it would be next to impossible to persuade her to stay.

My task was clear. I had to find some way to save Amaurot. I had to show Bel that it worked; that unlike the shifting, unstable world outside, Amaurot would always be a haven, where we could live completely, where the years moved forward or backward or stood still as we pleased. I told myself I was doing it for her, but in my heart I knew that if she left, the jig was up for me too. What would Amaurot be without her? Nothing more than an abandoned film-set, and I the thin shade of an actor, left behind after the director and soundmen and cameras were gone, reciting his lines to no one… Lying on my bed with the whiskey glass rested on my belly, I drew up strategy after strategy on the ceiling. But each idea that came to me had some insuperable flaw; until finally I was left with only one, the horror of which made me tremble so the ice cubes jingled in the glass…

‘Charles!’

I opened my eyes. Outside it had gotten dark. How long had I been up here?

‘Charles!’ Bel called again from the hallway. ‘Phone!’

I hurried down the stairs. ‘It’s the All-Seeing Something,’ Bel said, handing me the telephone.