Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

‘Wow…’

It was mesmerizing to watch, balletic even. With perhaps fifteen feet of grass between them, they threw the cunts effortlessly from one to the other — the exchange perfectly synchronized so that at all times somebody was in mid-air — caught them, and set them gently on the ground. The cunts swore and yowled; in flight their faces became cartoonish, divested of threat. (‘They’re not really hurtin them,’ Frank said, forlornly raising his waffle iron.) Every so often one of the cunts would pick himself up and hurl himself at a shadow: every time — though we couldn’t quite make out how — he would be repulsed without making so much as a dent. For five minutes the colossal figures passed the invaders back and forth, voices ringing sonorously together — ‘they’re singing ’ — like jugglers swapping skittles in the Russian Circus.

‘Who are they?’ Bel breathed.

‘Beings,’ I said huskily.

‘What do you mean, beings ?’

‘Well, you know, supernatural beings.’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Charles.’

‘I know it sounds crazy, but Bel if you’d seen them earlier on, running about with the piano — running, mark you —’ I was about to tell her about my visions too, how I’d glimpse them from my bedroom window at the dead of night, when Laura cried sadly, ‘They’re going!’

Sure enough, the cunts — who to be fair had struggled pluckily, if vainly, against the two behemoths — were turning tail and scrambling down the driveway. Our rescuers, their work concluded, dusted themselves off and loped away in the opposite direction, to an enthusiastic round of applause from the contingent at the window, with the exception of Frank, who was mumbling that it wasn’t that hard to throw someone if you just knew how to hold them.

‘D’you really think they’re like supernatural ?’

‘There’s no question. No human being could possibly be that large.’

‘Don’t be absurd,’ Bel snapped. ‘Don’t listen to him, Laura.’

‘Look, have you ever tried to lift a Steinway?’

‘Hey!’ Laura pressed her nose to the glass. ‘Isn’t that your housekeeper?’

Mrs P, clearly discernible in her white shift, was bustling across the lawn to the spot to which our helpmeets had retreated. At first I thought she must be sleepwalking again, but she appeared quite awake; in fact she seemed to be scolding them, wagging her finger and addressing them sharply in words I could not quite make out.

‘This is preposterous,’ Bel said, turning on her heel and marching out the door. ‘I’m going to find out what’s going on.’

‘I see what you mean,’ Laura said to me.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Like, about the house being interesting.’

‘Never a dull moment,’ Frank clapped me heartily on the shoulder, ‘with me and Charlie on the piss, isn’t that right Charlie?’

‘Ah, yes, quite, quite right…’ distracted by a scuffling noise overhead and remembering that MacGillycuddy was still at large somewhere in the house; then realizing that I’d forgotten about the bomb, which would be going off shortly. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d engineer my exit in the midst of all this activity. The surfeit of events was making me groggy and a little nauseous; I felt like I had eaten too much cake. But there was still more to come. Feet were clattering on the steps and now, with a rather triumphal flush, Bel re-entered the room with the two shadows behind her.

‘Everyone,’ she announced, ‘I would like you to meet Vuk and… what did you say he was called?’

‘Zoran.’ Mrs P brought up the rear, shaking her head.

‘Hello,’ one of them said experimentally, as Bel guided him to an armchair. His cohort propped himself on the armrest. ‘We speak no English,’ he declared after a moment’s deliberation.

‘As you can see, there’s nothing remotely supernatural about them.’

It was true: close-up the new arrivals did appear to be human, and on top of that quite amiable, although they were disturbingly tall. Both were muscular with swarthy complexions and thick, arching eyebrows. One of them (Vuk?) was conspicuously handsome, with tousled hair and long, very white teeth; the other (possibly Zoran) had a round head and a mild, uncomplaining demeanour. They sat looking quite at their ease, glancing round disinterestedly at their surroundings. Mrs P, on the other hand, was staring abjectly at her feet, like a schoolgirl caught cheating on a maths test.

‘Well, this is very nice,’ I said after a moment, ‘but I’m still somewhat fuzzy as to who, ah, exactly they are…’

‘They are my sons,’ Mrs P said, fumbling despondently with the cuffs of her shift.

‘Your sons ?’

‘Wow…’

‘Yes. For three months now, they have been living hidden in the Folly.’

‘The Folly ?’

‘Charles, stop repeating everything she says.’

‘Sorry.’ I sat back heavily on the window-ledge; I dimly heard Laura asking if anyone wanted tea. Then, for some moments, the room withdrew from me. Mrs P’s sons! Living in the Folly! A lot of things were suddenly making sense — the apparitions, the mysterious breakfasts, the underpants and the phenomenal grocery bills, the pilgrimages, the letters under the sink, the disappearing household items and now several thousand pounds’ worth of missing gemstones and artworks. ‘Mrs P,’ I returned to the fray, adopting a severe tone, ‘I’d like to know what you mean by having your children living in the Folly.’

Mrs P trudged over to the fireplace, where she stirred up a couple of embers among the ashes of the fire she’d stoked that afternoon.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘Don’t bully her, Charles.’

‘Master Charles is right,’ she said fatalistically. ‘My sons are foolish, they want to help, so you find out and now I must tell you.’

‘Let’s start with what exactly they were doing with my piano.’

‘Please, Master Charles. Now you find out, perhaps I lose my job and you send me away. This is your choice. Still I am happy, that the four of us are together. But please, you must listen to the story from the very beginning.’ She sighed, as if she had come to the end of a long and difficult journey and knew that she would never embark on another.

‘When the war begins,’ she said, as Laura came in with a tray and made a circuit of the room, offering ‘ Tea ?’ in a deafening stage whisper, ‘my family is already separated. The boys in Belgrade, we are in Krajina. Then, with the war —’ She opened her hands to show something let fall to the floor. ‘Everything is the chaos. Friends, families, everyone is split up in a thousand different places. The men our leaders run away. It becomes very dangerous and we must run away too. My children I don’t know where they are. Alive or dead, I don’t know.’ In one motion her hands rose and then fell to her sides.

‘Why didn’t you tell us any of this?’ Bel said, stroking her arm. ‘We might have been able to help you, Mother knows people…’

‘Because it doesn’t end.’ Mrs P passed an agonized hand over her eyes. ‘It was not over. Not to know becomes like the hard knot inside me, it is something I must hold tight to. I come here, I find a job, I wait. Only if I stay quiet do I keep the connection to that time. If I speak I think I let go, I am saying, now, that was then, that life is over. But in silence, only praying to myself so I know, something may still change. I wait, write letters, I hear things from people who were lost and then like miracles appear, but with nothing but stories, terrible stories.’

She fell into a pensive silence. Vuk and Zoran grinned uncomprehendingly from their armchair. Frank swore as his Jaffa Cake fell into his tea.