Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

She exhaled preparatively, and then said, ‘I wanted to apologize for what Mama did, for her stealing from you.’

‘Ah, right.’ I masked my disappointment with a cough. ‘There’s no need to, really. Water under the bridge, so forth.’

‘You must think we’re all crazy,’ she said in a low voice. Wisps of light crept in under the door, picking out silver on her downy arms.

‘No, no…’ I hurried to set her at ease. ‘I’ve heard far worse stories. For instance, this one chap I know, Pongo McGurks, his family had a butler, name of Sanderson — had him for years, used to swear by him, best butler they’d ever had, etcetera. Then they came back early from a weekend away to find him in Pongo’s mother’s wedding dress, about to have the toaster marry him to the cuckoo clock.’

‘Oh.’ She seemed not quite to know what to make of this. ‘And this happens often?’

‘No, I suppose it’s pretty rare,’ I conceded. ‘I mean it’s rare that you have a butler who’s a perfect size ten.’ This wasn’t coming out right at all.

Mirela frowned, and hooked a strand of black hair with a finger. ‘I must not be explaining it right,’ she said. ‘What I want to say is that Mama’s not really like that, you see. She’s not a thief. I told her over and over again, why do you steal from these people, they care about you, they will help us. But you must understand that it’s hard for her to trust people, after what has happened. At first she takes only small things you wouldn’t miss. But when she finds out about the bank, that you might lose the house, she starts to panic, she doesn’t sleep, she gets an idea she can steal enough to get us back home. As if there is anything to go back to there.’ She grimaced sardonically. ‘What I’m trying to tell you is, the reason she did these things is not because she is mad or a bad woman. She is just someone who terrible things have happened to.’ The sizzling cobalt eyes swivelled to confront me: I felt like I’d been skewered and lifted from my seat. ‘I wanted you to know that we are just a normal family that things have happened to. Do you understand me?’

‘Of course,’ I croaked, ‘of course.’

‘I knew you would,’ she said quietly. She looked down at her hands again and then suddenly said: ‘Did you notice my leg onstage tonight?’

‘Your…?’

‘My leg , Charles. You must have, everyone must have. I don’t want you to be diplomatic about it. Just tell me.’

‘I didn’t notice it,’ I said. ‘Honestly. Maybe a little at first. But I soon forgot.’

‘That was something else Mama wanted to do with the money,’ she reflected. ‘They can do amazing things these days, everyone says.’

‘It’s not that bad,’ I said. ‘I mean I think it rather suits you.’

Possibly this wasn’t the right thing to say; I wasn’t sure of the etiquette on missing limbs. But she started to laugh. ‘It’s good to finally have someone I can talk to about being blown up!’ she said.

‘It’s no joke,’ I averred.

‘The world never looks the same afterwards, does it?’ She stopped laughing. ‘When you realize that things can just happen like that.’ She bowed her head: I let my gaze settle on her face again, tried to figure out what it was about it that mesmerized me so.

‘I really am grateful to you for taking us in, Charles,’ she said. ‘Most people don’t even know what happened over there. They think we just come here to beg.’

‘That’s quite all right,’ I said. Sfumato , that was what the painters called it; a blurring or elision of the lines, the kind Leonardo had used to give his Mona Lisa her beguiling flux.

‘I knew you would understand,’ she repeated. A moment of silence drifted by. It was quite plain what she was getting at. The time had come to make my move. ‘That reminds me,’ I said, ‘there was something I wanted to say too. About the play, that is.’

‘Oh?’ She looked up.

‘Yes’ I said, thrusting my wrists out of my cuffs. ‘I meant to say that one thing that I found interesting — I found heartening about it — was what it said about love.’

‘Love?’ she repeated uncertainly.

‘Yes, the way it showed love could triumph over all the, ah, poverty and car-theft and so on.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Mirela said. ‘Yes, though it’s not really a love story, I don’t think.’

‘But the love between Bel’s character, for instance, and the, the chap with the moustache — what it said to me was, you know, that even when terrible things happen to you, and your life is uprooted, there’s still hope, because that’s just when you’ll meet that special someone who’ll sort of help you along with it all. That’s what I really took from it.’

‘Yes,’ Mirela nodded vaguely while inspecting a left-behind programme on the seat beside her. ‘That’s very interesting, Charles, because it wasn’t something that we were trying specifically to bring out as a theme…’

She wasn’t following me. ‘That’s the thing about love, though, isn’t it?’ I persevered. ‘You know, that it sort of turns up in unexpected places, even when it’s not strictly speaking a, a theme…’

‘Mmm,’ she said: then turned and added volubly, ‘Yes, you’re right, of course, and also friendship , you know, loving friendship, that’s very important in the play too. The kind that Bel had with her half-brother.’

‘Which one,’ I said.

‘The one that worked in the chip shop,’ she said.

‘Yes, that’s friendship all right,’ I agreed. ‘But there was love as well, such as when the heroin-addict chap and that girl who kept shoplifting from Marks and Spencer’s —’

‘Yes, but mostly friendship, Charles,’ she blurted, and then she paused and then there was an awkward silence. She was obviously too preoccupied by her big night to perceive the true meaning behind my commentary. Confound it, it was impossible to handle these delicate moments without the benefit of a face!

The silence persisted a while longer and then she said, quite out of the blue, ‘Have you met Harry?’

‘What?’ I said.

‘Harry, he’s the boy who wrote the play. Didn’t you meet him earlier today?’

‘I didn’t meet anyone,’ I said dolefully. ‘Bel told me to stay out of the way. I think she’d have locked me in the cellar if she could.’

‘Oh. Well, then, you have to come and meet him now,’ she said. ‘He’s so funny and clever and kind. I just know you’ll like him.’

Perhaps I was wrong to go immediately on the defensive; but a fellow doesn’t go ten rounds with Patsy Olé without learning a thing or two about the darker workings of the female mind. Suddenly she seemed far too animated. Could it be that her Balkan upbringing had not stretched as far as the protocol of torrid love affairs? Could it be that this Harry and his wretched play had so dazzled her that our tender moment together in the Folly had flown right out of her head?

‘I won’t,’ I volunteered.

‘What?’

‘I won’t like him,’ I said. ‘This Harry person.’

She laughed a sparkling laugh. ‘Don’t be silly! I’m positive you will. Anyway, you can’t hide away in here all night.’ She grabbed my wrist and, without looking me in the eye, pulled me to my feet. With a mounting sense of doom I found myself being tugged down the hallway, like an old dog being dragged off to the vet.

Father’s portrait had been reinstated just outside the recital room, with a plaque underneath it that read Ralph Hythloday Centre for the Arts , as if it had all been his idea. He looked trapped: our eyes met briefly, helplessly, as Mirela led me back to the party.

Inside the company had thinned out a little. Mother was holding court to a brace of journalists with her back to us just inside the door. The red-faced gent had gotten even redder; he stood with his cohorts in a ragged semi-circle around the piano, belting out some awful show-tune. Behind them, MacGillyguddy was peering into the old dumb waiter.