Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

‘You’re talking like a Stalinist!’ I cried. ‘People don’t get jobs to achieve things and learn values ! They do it because they have to, and then they use whatever’s left over to buy themselves things that make them feel less bad about having jobs! Can’t you see, it’s just a terrible vicious circle!’ I broke off to claw at my bandages. The itch had seized control of my entire head; it was getting worse and worse and scratching didn’t do any good. Mother coolly turned her attention back to the room, where the florid-faced drunk had been ousted from his residency on the piano lid and someone had humorously struck up a funeral march. ‘Damn it,’ I declared in anguish, ‘damn it, you wouldn’t think it was such a barrel of laughs if you’d worked a single day in your life —’ halting abruptly as Mother turned stiff and white as alabaster. ‘Your charity work, of course,’ I said quickly, and then, seeing a lifeline, ‘I say, maybe I could do charity work.’ It didn’t look too hard: gala luncheons, wine-tastings, celebrity auctions, none of these would be beyond me — The glass in Mother’s hand began to tremble. ‘Or — how about a vineyard? I could start making my own wine, in the, you know, in the garden, and then sell it —’

‘I’m glad we had this discussion, Charles,’ Mother said glacially. ‘I only wish we’d had it sooner. Your allowance will be discontinued as of next week. That seems to be the best way of going about this. I shall speak to Geoffrey tomorrow.’

‘Fine then!’ I threw my hands in the air. ‘I mean it seems to me that I’m the only one who cares about this place. It seems to me that I’m the one who’s been keeping it going all the time you were away, I’m the one who’s been telling Mrs P what to do, and feeding the peacocks, and burying them when they die. But if all anyone thinks is that I’m some sort of a moocher …’

‘There’s no need to raise your voice, Charles.’

‘I’m not raising my voice!’ I shouted. The architecture of the room was contorting itself into the strangest shapes. Over Mother’s shoulder I caught sight of Harry, the light falling in such a way as to appear to be emanating from him — a plaited, peasant-jacketed sun, with Bel and Mirela on either side of him like pretty, laughing moons. What did that make me, I wondered feverishly? A splinter? An asteroid, left to languish alone in the cold dark outer reaches of space? Then over Mother’s other shoulder my eyes fell on Frank, who saluted me with his can of beer — ‘Damn it, if that’s all anyone thinks, why not go the whole hog and fling me out on my ear while you’re at it! In fact, why don’t I save you the trouble, and fling myself out on my ear! Because, because I didn’t come here to be insulted!’

‘No one’s insulting you, Charles. If you’re not even capable of having a calm, rational discussion —’

‘I’m perfectly calm! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ like to calmly go upstairs and, and rationally pack my suitcases —’

Mother stepped wordlessly out of my way. Heart pounding madly, I marched for the door. In the hallway the staircase loomed up, crowned with spires and shadows like something from a German Expressionist film. ‘A moocher!’ I whispered as I climbed the steps. ‘A moocher!’ It was simply too monstrous. After everything I had done for the house, to be charged with lethargy, with ‘chronic laziness’ — with not caring , when all I did was care!

I had been wounded terribly; it appeared furthermore that all those drinks had finally caught up with the painkillers and mounted some sort of campaign on my brain. Yet even as I packed my suitcase, even as I made my way back down the stairs, even as I removed my coat from the closet and spent more minutes than were strictly necessary standing there brushing imaginary dust from the lapels, if one person had come after me to remonstrate — to say, Charles, can’t we talk about this? or Don’t be a duffer, old chap, come and have a drink — I’m sure I would have thrown down my bag and laughed the whole thing off. I even went back into the recital room, just in case someone had meant to come but had been delayed. I stood by the door and I watched them, talking and laughing and swirling about the room like coloured smoke, and no one came.

Once, many years ago — I must have been about ten or so — I gatecrashed one of my parents’ parties. Putting me to bed, Mother had hinted, as she always did, at the dreadful things that would befall me if I strayed from my room. But I couldn’t bear any longer not to know what went on down there; so, shortly after eleven, I stole back down the stairs. As luck would have it I walked straight into Father. I thought he would be angry; but he was in a jovial mood, and he said that if I was that curious I could stay up for a very short while, provided I sat quietly in the corner and didn’t let Mother see me.

At first it was so exciting I was quite overcome. The ballroom was a jungle of expensive fabrics, heavy with the steam of a dozen mingled perfumes that promised all sorts of things I didn’t understand. Though it was dark, there was light everywhere you looked: catching on the platters of mysterious foodstuffs, refracting through dancing glasses of Shiraz and Sauvignon, glinting off chokers, rings, tiaras — so that if you half-closed your eyes it seemed like the air was alive with fireflies. And the noise! Who would have thought that a roomful of grown-ups talking about nothing could produce such a roar?

But most remarkable of all were the thin girls who stood dotted here and there among the circling guests. They rose above the heads of the others like statues in a garden; they looked very bored and they never spoke. These were Father’s models, here to showcase whatever new suite of cosmetics was being launched; they weren’t supposed to talk, in case it lessened the effect. Father called them his canvases: the idea was that guests could pause and study them as they moved on to the next conversation.

When I would see them in the days leading up to these parties, skipping down the staircase from Father’s study, these girls didn’t look so much older than me. Some of them were nice; they were from all kinds of places, though they mostly lived in Paris, where they’d been working with the lab. But tonight they had been changed into something not quite human. There was an apocalyptic quality about them that was almost frightening, as if they were outside of time, or as if they were the same all the way through, without blood or guts. Their eyes looked at you and passed right through you. They stood with their limbs bent in motionless arabesques, blazing silently like priceless, preternaturally beautiful anglepoise lamps.

Now and then people found themselves in my corner by mistake — gaunt couturiers with shaven heads, or creepy sensuous-looking men with crushed-velvet suits and brilliantined hair, who smoked spicy cigarettes and who may, in retrospect, have been women. ‘Oh,’ they’d say, confronted by my ten-year-old stare, ‘hello’; then tugging at their ivory cigarette-holders or making anxious goldfish-mouths they’d hurry back the way they came.

But where were they going, I began to wonder, what were they making their way to? When, in short, was the thing going to start ? It took a long time before it dawned on me that this walking around talking was the whole point of the evening. I was bitterly disappointed. Now when the jewel-strewn old ladies came over to pat my head I no longer bothered to give them my best cub-scout smile, because I knew that none of them was going to say, ‘Charles, now it is time for the trampoline, and we would like you to have the first bounce,’ or ‘Charles, we have set up this boring party to try and trap a spy, now we need someone inconspicuous, for example a small boy, to discover him, or her.’