Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

She laughed, and took a step towards the hatch. Impulsively I took her arm. ‘This is absurd, I know,’ I said, ‘but in a few minutes this place’ll go up and after that I don’t know that I’ll ever see you again. So if you don’t mind — won’t you tell me why I feel we’ve met before?’

‘We have to hurry,’ she began automatically, and then stopped. ‘If you climb up on the bookcase,’ she gestured back towards the sleeping bags, ‘you can unfasten the tarp and lean yourself out from the top of the Folly. It’s a bit like flying, especially on a windy night.’

‘Why… you’re the angel!’ I exclaimed. ‘You used to wave to me!’

‘You thought I was an angel?’

‘Well… I mean I was never quite sure…’

‘I think you were usually drunk.’

‘Well, yes…’

‘You always looked so confused,’ she laughed again, and then it was her turn to take my arm. ‘Charles, what will happen to us? Will your mother give us over to the police?’

‘Of course not,’ I said earnestly. ‘She wouldn’t dream of it. We’ll talk to her, don’t worry. We’ll work something out.’

She seemed satisfied with this; she nodded and withdrew her hand. She looked me in the eye, and said gently, ‘Charles, what have you got in your trousers?’

I had forgotten all about Father’s portrait, and I confess that I was somewhat thrown by this remark; our momentum might have been fatally compromised had a reddened, anxious face not at that instant popped up through the trapdoor.

‘Well, well,’ I snapped back to life, ‘if it isn’t the rat come back for one last look at the sinking ship.’

‘Are you mad?’ MacGillycuddy shrieked. ‘There’s a bomb! What are you doing standing around talking?’

‘All right, all right.’ He disappeared again and I ushered the girl ahead of me — and there it was again, that tapping sound –

‘Do you have mice up here? Very large mice?’

She paused at the edge of the hatch, as if debating a point with herself. ‘It’s not mice,’ she said.

‘What is it then?’

She half-turned towards me, the cobalt eyes burying themselves in mine, and hitched up her skirt. I thought at first she was going to curtsey; then I saw that while her right leg was bronzed and strong, the left ended just below the knee: strapped around the stump were rough steel bands that attached it to a clumsy looking wooden prosthesis.

‘Oh…’

‘Something else I picked up on the road,’ she said. ‘A bomb. Or a mine. I don’t remember. I woke up and this was there instead.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said weakly — but she was already hastening down the steps. I hurried after her, clambering over the piano, for some reason passing Frank at the door –

‘All right?’ Frank said.

‘Over here! Come on!’ MacGillycuddy waved at us from behind a brake of shrubs and saplings. All the fear and urgency that until now had been dormant sprang up in us both: we dashed across the lawn, the girl clinging to my arm for balance. Above us the sky had darkened and the wind risen: it threw her hair about and grabbed at my cheeks like some huge, amorphous infant. We crashed down beside MacGillycuddy.

‘You think we’ll be safe here?’ Her breast rose and fell steeply as she caught her breath.

‘Don’t worry, running away is one thing that MacGillycuddy really does well, don’t you, MacGillycuddy?’

He pretended not to hear me, addressing himself instead to the girl. ‘Hope I didn’t alarm you, shouting like that,’ he said in an obsequious voice. ‘I was a bit surprised to find you still there. I thought you’d be long gone.’

‘Wait,’ her eyes flashed, ‘how long did you know about this bomb?’

‘Well, I planted it, you see — didn’t you get my note?’

‘It was you ? You planted a bomb in the Folly?’ Her voice grew shrill and she rounded on him with quite frightening ferocity. ‘Weren’t you going to tell me?’

‘I did tell you,’ MacGillycuddy protested, shrinking back as she loomed up over him. ‘I left Post-its everywhere, they were quite specific, “Get out, bomb,” they said, “Flee, explosion at 2 a.m.” I don’t see how you could have missed them —’

‘Post-its?’ The blazing eyes looked to me.

‘They’re a sort of self-adhesive notepaper,’ I began — ‘but look here, MacGillycuddy, you know this girl?’

‘Not intimately,’ MacGillycuddy blustered.

‘But, I mean to say, you knew that Mrs P had her children in the Folly?’

‘He brought my mother letters,’ the girl looked ready to rend him limb from limb, ‘from us, in secret. Then when we came here he arranged false papers for my brothers, for a price —’

‘So yes, in answer to your question —’

‘Well — blast it —’ the realization of his duplicity was building like steam between my ears, ‘I mean — when I came to you, and told you someone was stealing my furniture —’

MacGillycuddy had a decidedly besieged look about him. ‘I wonder how Frank’s getting on,’ he said hurriedly, standing up and peering into the darkness.

‘Don’t change the subject — though what is Frank doing there, exactly?’

‘He thinks he might be able to defuse it,’ he said. ‘I had to tell them about it, Charlie. I didn’t know what’d happened to you.’

‘That’s because you were upstairs hiding under the bed,’ I said. ‘Anyway, why aren’t you defusing it, seeing as it was your idea to ruin my plan, and it was your blasted bomb in the first place —’

MacGillycuddy waggled a little finger in his ear. ‘It’s one thing to make ’em,’ he said, scrutinizing the results, ‘and another thing entirely to switch ’em off.’ He cupped his hand to his mouth and bellowed: ‘Isn’t that so, Francy?’

Frank, a dim smudge at the base of the Folly, stopped what he was doing. ‘What?’ he called back.

‘I say, how’s that bomb going?’

Frank looked down between his knees. ‘Ah, there’s a good two minutes left,’ he shouted, ‘though you might want to keep clear of the windows.’

‘He’s going to be killed !’ The girl dragged slender white fingers down over her face.

‘Not at all. Sure he was in the UN. He’s done this loads of times.’ He put his hand to his mouth again: ‘Am I right, Francy?’

‘What?’ Frank stopped again and turned his head in our direction.

‘I was just telling Charles, you’ve done this loads of times.’

‘Just defuse the bomb!’ I cried.

‘I’d say it’s like riding a bike, is it? Once you learn, you never forget.’

Frank paused to consider this with what looked like a piece of wiring in his teeth.

‘Actually,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘it’s more like takin off a bra — like, you know how it works, and you’ve done it millions of times before, but still when you’ve got the girl there in front of you in the back of your van —’

‘For — would you stop distracting him!’

‘Get down , Charles!’ The girl grabbed my leg and pulled me down beside her.

MacGillycuddy looked at his watch. ‘Should be about eight seconds left,’ he said. ‘Five… four…’

We threw ourselves into the dirt.

A cloud drifted over the moon.

‘There,’ said Frank.

‘See?’ said MacGillycuddy.

Slowly we got to our feet.

The Folly was intact.

The girl and I looked at each other and laughed a foolish, happy laugh. Frank was laughing too, getting up and walking over to meet us. Without a sound, the power came on in the house behind us, and the windows streamed light onto the grass, making everything, after the hours of gloom, ecstatic and Disney-bright; the four of us gathered on the lawn, laughing and clapping Frank on the shoulder. ‘You did it!’ MacGillycuddy said.