Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

Bel beat her hand on the table. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ she cried. ‘All you’re doing is trying to sound like you think Father would have sounded if he’d ever bothered to speak to me!’ I flinched. Frank looked round momentarily. ‘It’s different ,’ she said, more quietly. ‘It’s like being in another world where you don’t always know what’s going to happen, what time dinner is served. It makes me feel like I’m alive .’

‘You couldn’t possibly be romanticizing it just a little, could you?’

‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand,’ she said coldly.

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that; she was right, probably. She shunted her chair back up towards Frank, and I had the curious, surprisingly painful sensation that even though I was going to Chile, still it was she who was leaving me.

We had put quite a dent in the liqueurs; Laura was gabbing away with a new pink glow in her cheek and a woozy, alcoholic sparkle in her eye. She intermingled talk with giggles and playful slaps. Bel smiled mirthlessly and wouldn’t look at me.

‘You see?’ Laura had pulled back the collar of her blouse and was showing Frank her bra strap. ‘Magenta.’

‘Just looks red to me,’ Frank leered over her bone-white throat.

‘They have special names,’ Laura said. ‘Like cerulean, that’s a kind of blue. Christabel’s eyes are that colour. In school I was always really jealous of your eyes — I never told you, Bel.’

‘Really?’ The lights were low but I could tell from the way she bowed her head that Bel was blushing.

‘I didn’t know what it was called, like I just thought it was blue? But then I was looking at eyeshadow in Boots and there was one just that colour, cerulean… I wondered if Charles’s eyes would be that colour too and they are!’ She beamed at me. I may have blushed a little too.

‘So do you always wear knickers the same colour as your bra?’ Frank inquired with an anthropological expression.

I kicked Bel under the table. She started laughing.

‘I do sort of understand,’ I said.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Give me some more of that horrific elephant concoction, would you?’

I poured her a glass, and yawned absently. ‘Ought to be pushing on soon, though…’

‘What, do you two want to be alone ?’

‘I want to go to bed , illuminating as this underwear conversation undoubtedly is. Anyway, didn’t I tell you? She’s had a boyfriend for the last five years.’

‘Surely not!’ Bel said in mock disgust. ‘What, instead of waiting for you, the man she’s never met?’

‘No, but… I mean all that time I spent pining over her and writing her songs and so forth —’

‘You only wrote one song, Charles.’

‘Well, all right, but still I always thought — you know, when things went wrong with the girls one actually knew — that she was somehow there .’ I shook my head. ‘Five years. With a petrol attendant called, called Dec!’

‘ Because I could not stop for Dec, he kindly stopped for me —’

‘Yes, very funny — oh.’ Without a sound, the lights had gone out.

Laura shrieked. There was a tinkle of glass. ‘What happened?’ she said with a quaver.

‘The lights have gone out,’ Bel’s voice came acidly.

‘Prob’ly a fuse,’ Frank said with an air of professional indifference.

‘I’ll call Mrs P,’ I said, getting up and fumbling about for the bell rope. The blackness had a dizzying effect. Knick-knacks tumbled to the floor around me.

‘Oh, let her sleep, Charles, for heaven’s sake, surely we can manage to change a fuse…’

‘It’s awful dark…’

‘Could be a power cut, o’course.’

‘God — you don’t think they’ve — Charles, do you remember seeing an electricity bill in among the others? I’m pretty sure we pay direct debit, but —’

‘I don’t really remember, there were so many…’

‘Oh my God ,’ she said despairingly.

‘Ah, don’t worry… here…’

‘Do the other houses still have their lights on?’

‘You can’t see any other houses from here,’ I said, quickly interposing myself between Laura and the window.

There was a scratching noise and Frank’s face appeared in the flame of a cigarette lighter; Laura halted on the way back to her seat, seeing Bel had repositioned herself in his lap. ‘Is there any candles?’ Frank said.

‘Mrs P has some in the kitchen,’ Bel said, without getting up. Frank was taking advantage of the darkness to give her inappropriate squeezes.

‘It’s so dark ,’ Laura said sadly, holding her arms tight to her body and wheeling about to moon at the window.

‘Well, I’ll get them, shall I,’ I said irritably.

‘I got such a fright,’ Laura said almost to herself — and then froze: ‘Oh my God! There’s someone out there!’

‘What?’ Bel said, half-rising –

‘Don’t be silly! Frank, give me your lighter and I’ll get these —’

‘There is , there’s someone like standing out there —’

‘Look, it’s, it’s probably just a tree or something,’ taking her firmly by the shoulder and turning her away from the window, ‘why don’t you come with me and find these candles?’

‘Okay…’ she followed obediently out and down the hall. ‘Oh — Charles, is that your hand?’

‘Oh yes, sorry —’ evidently she wasn’t in the market for squeezes –

We went into the empty kitchen. Laura leaned herself against the table as I rifled through innumerable drawers. ‘So how long are Christabel and Frank going out?’

‘I don’t know — can you hold this lighter for me, be careful it’s hot — a month or so, maybe?’

‘And is it serious?’

‘Well, apparently they’re moving in together.’

‘Oh,’ she said thoughtfully.

I moved on my hunkers to the cupboard beneath the sink, pawing in the uneven light through Brillo pads, oddly shaped brushes, stern plastic bottles of bleach and detergent, letters postmarked France, Germany, Slovenia, maps — wait, letters? maps? — but here were the candles, no time to pursue this now: ‘Here, you take this one,’ lighting mine from her wick and hastening back out towards the dining room. I was thinking that this power cut could be a blessing in disguise. There was no way Laura could insure anything else, so surely she would go home; and the darkness would be an extra incentive for Frank to strike, which was why we needed to install these and get the room cleared ASAP — ‘so… Charles, do you have a job or…?’ her face bobbing politely towards me in the candlelight.

‘What?’

‘It must be really interesting, living in a house like this?’

‘Oh…’ Was I imagining it, or did I detect a change in her tone — an attentiveness that hadn’t been there a moment ago? ‘Oh, yes, well, it’s interesting, you know, but it can be taxing too —’

‘Oh, sorry —’ as her swinging hand brushed mine –

‘That’s quite all right — I say, this is rather like that scene in La Dolce Vita , isn’t it?’

‘Mmm, yeah, I was just thinking that…’

As if on cue, a low moan emanated from above. Laura gripped my arm.

‘Who is there?’ a cracked voice called. ‘Who is walking down there?’

‘Just us,’ I called back, as Laura pressed herself up to me. ‘That is, me and Laura.’

‘Who is it?’ Laura whispered. I could smell her breath, fecund with wine and Rigbert’s.

‘It’s Mrs P…’ The stairs groaned slowly. Mrs P rounded the banisters in a long white shift dimly visible through the gloom.

‘There’s been a power cut,’ I said. ‘We’ve got some candles, there’s no need for you to come down.’ The stairs continued to groan one by one. Laura’s fingers tightened around my arm. ‘Tell you what,’ I told her, ‘why don’t you go ahead to the dining room and I’ll be in as soon as I get her to go back to bed.’