Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

The clock struck for seven. I mixed myself a last, calmative gimlet and hastened to my room. I attached my collars and tied my tie; I clipped my cufflinks and buffed my shoes. From under the bed poked the small satchel of belongings I had allowed myself to bring away with me: a Latin American phrasebook; a parsimonious sum of money in dollars and pesos; an equally Spartan selection of socks and underwear; a photograph of the family; a plastic tiara that Bel had favoured during her days as a princess, years and years ago, in lieu of a picture of her; Father’s first edition of the collected poems of W. B. Yeats; an 8 × 10 of Gene from early in her career — when they’d called her the GET girl, for Gene Eliza Tierney, because she got what she wanted; or at least that was how it looked from the outside.

Laura’s yearbook photos were laid out chronologically on the coverlet from when I had been studying them earlier in the evening. As my eye fell over them now, it struck me that arranged like that they almost resembled a film reel: each year inscribed in a single frame, which if you projected them in sequence would show her coming — jerkily, fuzzily — to life before your very eyes; passing from wide-eyed childhood into full matinée-idol luminescence in a matter of seconds, appearing out of the ether like a djinn of the celluloid… And now, unbidden, my mind began to play the missing final reel: the scene where the doorbell rings and, giving my hair one last peremptory swipe, I run for the staircase, arriving at the midpoint just as Mrs P ushers in a slender young woman with long honey-coloured hair, who shrugs back her winter coat to reveal bare white shoulders and a dress black and sinuous as a flame; on the staircase, unseen, I observe her breathlessly — until suddenly our eyes meet, and at that moment we are transported into another world: a world where passions run simple and deep and come out in wisecracks and bold deeds, with room sometimes for an emotional monologue at the end; where everything is in its rightful place and there are no third parties waiting in the wings to change the dialogue, or close the scene for auction.

Now outside the first stars were emerging and beneath the orange-and-purple light everything cast strange teasing shadows. I turned my eyes to the tower, and had for an instant one of my visions, of capering satyrs and the angel peeping from the top; I blinked and they disappeared and all that was left was the decidedly unhallucinatory figure of Mrs P, returning from one of the aimless pilgrimages she had grown so fond of. Who would she cook for now, I thought, sipping at my gimlet; who would look out from this window and count stars…

And then the doorbell rang. Giving my hair one last peremptory swipe I made a dash for the stairs, coming to a stop midway and waiting there for Mrs P to hurry in from the garden and puff over to the door, clutching the handrail as it swung open and she ushered in an unmistakable form…

Nothing could have prepared me for this moment, I realized that straight away. It was overwhelming, even disquieting. She was beautiful, of course, intensely so; at the same time, seeing her moving around in three dimensions was rather a shock. To my overheated mind, the physicality of her seemed brazen, almost grotesque — less like a djinn than a statue come to life and colorized and standing in one’s hallway. Also, I couldn’t help noticing one or two departures from the dream-version of her arrival. The lustrous hair, for instance, was tied back into a functional ponytail. Then there appeared to be some confusion as to whether Mrs P was to be allowed to take her coat; and when in the end she did relinquish it, she revealed not a strapless evening gown but a mannish trouser-suit of anonymous high-street design. Watching from the stairs I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake: but then she lifted her eyes to me, and all the fear and dread that had enveloped me was erased.

How to describe them, those impossible planets, without lapsing into cliché? I will say only that in them I saw my own glittering afterlife, a blessed and fecund next world where milk and honey would be the order of the day; and a song awoke in my heart. ‘You’re Charles, I bet,’ she said.

‘Quite,’ I replied awkwardly, borne down the remaining stairs on a little cloud.

‘Somehow I knew you’d be tall,’ she said, cocking her head. ‘I just kind of knew.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, flushing, ‘although I wouldn’t say tall exactly, really I’m just upper-medium —’

‘I suppose I thought because Bel’s tall,’ she mused, ‘for a girl, you know.’

‘Yes, yes,’ I agreed without hearing — for it was clear already that words would be superfluous to us, that her true meaning was to be divined from the flutter of her hands, the glow of her skin.

‘So where’s these vases?’ she asked.

‘This way,’ I said, taking her by the hand and leading her eagerly into the reconfigured dining room. ‘There’s a few other bits and pieces…’

‘Wow…’ Her cheeks flushed as she took in the shimmering array. ‘Is it just the vases you wanted insured, or…?’ A delicious avarice caught in her voice.

‘Oh, everything, I suppose,’ I said carelessly.

‘Wow,’ she said again.

‘I thought you’d like it,’ I began to babble. ‘Most of the time it’s just sitting in boxes, I’ve been waiting so long for someone to come and make sense of it all…’

‘Index it,’ she murmured.

‘Index…’ I echoed, sighingly.

‘Appraise it,’ her lovely eyes drifted and lingered.

‘Yes, yes…’

‘I wonder what coverage’d be most suitable… it must be worth so much .’

‘Oh, well, I’ll leave that up to you. To me they’re just trinkets, really, playthings… there’s more to life than money, after all.’

‘You shouldn’t ever say that, Charles,’ she said sternly, turning to look at me. ‘No one likes to think about fire and theft, but, like, they happen every day. It’s your responsibility to take care of your valuables, because if you don’t, who else is going to?’

‘Quite so,’ I said, gazing at her tenderly, ‘you’re absolutely right.’ In certain modes, from certain angles, her pulchritude was positively breathtaking; looking at her I found I could almost forget about what lay ahead for me. My initial disorientation had quite passed now: I was glad I had her here, an accomplice for this last hallucinatory night, helping me turn these heavy moments, these woebegone lost riches, into a private carousel of light and gaiety and pleasure. ‘But that’s all ahead of us. Why don’t we eat first, get acquainted.’ I went to the door and dimmed the lights. ‘It’s important to have an understanding, a rapport , in these matters… Please, have a seat. Can I offer you a drink?’

‘I don’t know if I should…’ Her eyes flashed wickedly. ‘Okay so, do you have any Le Piat d’Or?’

‘I’m almost certain we’ve just run out — but perhaps you’ll join me in a gimlet? Vodka and lime juice, really quite delicious…’ and I rang the bell for the entrées.

Mrs P had outdone herself: the food was magnificent, heady, rhapsodic. Each course was a seduction, each flavour a Salome’s veil floating down to the palate. However, other than getting an oyster stuck in her throat, Laura appeared unmoved. She ate perfunctorily, without seeming to notice what was on the plate; throughout starters and the main course she betrayed nothing of the graceful, photographic Laura I’d fallen in love with. Conversationally, too, she was proving an elusive quarry. Far from our two souls melting into one, I found talking to her rather like climbing a mountain; a mountain of glass.

For one thing, no matter how much I dimmed the lights, some knick-knack or other kept catching her eye and she would get up to look at it. ‘Wow,’ she’d say, tossing one of those silly Fabergé eggs from palm to palm, ‘this must be really old.’