Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

‘You’ve got to give him respect, Charlie,’ Frank whispered. ‘He may be a ponce, but he’s a deadly lawyer, that Harry. Like you can see why your one Mirela fancies him.’

I didn’t reply: I was struggling with these coloured dots that were floating before my eyes, and this horrible sensation that the words the actors were speaking on stage no longer belonged to the play, but to a darker something beneath it, that stretched to take in not only us but the walls and ceilings and foundations…

And now Harry and Mirela were alone, back in Harry’s chambers. ‘No, no, no!’ she was crying. ‘We can’t tell her, we can never tell her! Last night was a mistake — a wonderful, an exhilarating mistake, but one we cannot allow to happen again!’

‘Oh, Ann,’ Harry said desperately, ‘don’t you see? It wasn’t Mary that I loved, but her court case. The chance to strike a blow for our differently-abled friends, the opportunity to further the cause of freedom — that’s what I fell in love with. But my love for you is for you alone — not just for your beauty, and your promising career as a model, but because you’re real — because of your soul and heart, the soul and heart that Mary still has to find within herself —’

‘What’s wrong, Charlie?’ Frank whispered. ‘Do you need to go to the jacks?’

‘But she loves you,’ Mirela said tearfully, gripping on to his lapels.

‘No,’ Harry said. ‘Mary never learned to love, curled up in the shell of that wheelchair. But these last few weeks, the court case, have changed her. We have led her up the ramp of self-knowledge; perhaps this will be what pushes her over the brink, into redemption.’ He reached out a hand and ran it down her hair; she laid her teary cheek against his cravat. I leapt from my seat and hurtled out the door.

MacGillycuddy sat at the base of the maids’ stairs, shaping his toothpick into some sort of animal; I was past him before he had a chance to speak.

The dressing room was empty and the floor covered from end to end with photographs: glossy black-and-white shots, blown up to about the size of a sheet of typing paper; quite professional looking. I picked one up. It was my room — you could see the old poster that Harry had left up, Jimmy Stewart kissing Donna Reed in It’s A Wonderful Life ; the wee hours of the morning, according to the digitized numbers in the bottom right-hand corner. Blurred by motion and the scant light, the lustrous black hair caught mid-swing, the body on the bed appeared no more substantial than smoke: a genie billowing from the lamp, curling up to the lucky chump that freed her… I let it slip back down to join the others. There must have been thirty or forty of them. Strewn across the floor like that, they resembled a kind of mosaic, the limbs interlocking anonymously towards some larger, indeterminate meaning; with here and there a motif from the waistcoat, hung on a chair in the background, or the prosthesis, gleaming dully like a bad joke. Little was left to the imagination: they’d put on quite a show, between themselves and MacGillycuddy.

Sounds of distress emanated from the little water closet in the corner. I picked my way over and knocked on the door. ‘Bel?’

There was a retching noise, quickly covered by the flush of the toilet. ‘Go away,’ the small voice came back.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Of course I’m not all right,’ the voice said.

‘Well — are you coming out?’

She took a moment to consider this. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m never coming out.’

More choking noises ensued. I went back to the long counter, the bare bulbs blazing for no one, and stared into the mirror at my own unreadable visage. Then I turned one of the deckchairs round and sat down on it. A few moments later, Mother appeared at the door in her hospital shift. ‘Where’s your sister?’ she demanded.

I gestured lethargically at the locked door. Mother marched over to it without appearing to notice the photographs under her feet. She rapped once and, in a voice that could have cut metal, ordered Bel to come out. There was only a short delay; then the key turned in the lock and Bel emerged, shamefaced and grubby with tears.

‘What were you thinking?’ Mother grabbed her by the arm and tugged her towards the door. ‘You’re on in the next scene, come on !’

But she resisted, pulling her arm free and shying back to the corner.

‘What,’ Mother said very quietly.

Bel tried to speak, but it just came out as nonsense: she turned crimson and hung her head.

‘Bel,’ Mother said, ‘whatever issues you may have, they can wait till afterwards. I will not allow you to ruin this night. I will not allow it, do you understand?’

‘But didn’t you see?’ Bel managed now, pointing to the floor. ‘Didn’t you see ?’

‘What I see,’ Mother said, raising her voice, ‘is a vain, troubled girl letting a temper tantrum jeopardize everything we have all worked so hard to achieve —’

‘A temper tantrum?’ Two high pink spots appeared in Bel’s cheeks.

‘That’s exactly what it is,’ Mother sailed on. ‘It may offend your principles , but what we have been offered here tonight is a lifeline — not only for the company, but for this house, this family , to pick itself up and dust itself off, to make Amaurot known and important again, as your father would have wanted —’

‘This family ,’ Bel broke in, ‘What family ? Why do you go on even pretending to care about these things, when everybody knows all you want is to get back on the society pages, so people will invite you to gally openings again —’

‘Christabel,’ Mother said in a measured, sibilant voice, ‘I understand that you are having problems. But there are ways we can address them. There are doctors —’

‘ — and you’ll turn a blind eye to everything that’s going on as long as you get it, and that’s what Father would have wanted, isn’t it?’

Mother slapped her across the face in a single, precise motion.

‘I say!’ I cried, springing out of the deckchair.

Mother’s livid countenance was enough to stop me in my tracks; she looked like something that had just floated up out of a tomb. ‘The play,’ I pleaded, back-pedalling slightly. ‘We have to finish the play, don’t we?’

This seemed to bring her to her senses. She cleared her throat and smoothed down her shift. She turned once more to Bel — who was staring into space with an expression not so much of shock as of revelation — and said in a tone cool and rational as water: ‘Charles is right. We can continue this discussion later. Are we agreed?’

Bel, whose cheek still bore the crimson imprint of her hand, nodded mutely.

‘Good,’ Mother said, straightening up. ‘Now, you are on in the next scene. Charles, you will follow us, please.’

She led Bel by the elbow over the sea of glossy black-and-white flesh and out the door. MacGillycuddy was still sitting where we had left him, at the foot of the maids’ stairs: the two women passed him without a word and went on in the direction of the wings. But I stopped and looked at him. Before I had a chance to say anything, however, he launched into a long self-exculpatory speech to the effect that he was merely a tool of the client, and that he just did what they told him to, and that all he offered was a little peace of mind –

‘Peace of mind? You call selling pornographic photos to a wretched, addled girl peace of mind?’

‘This is the way she wanted to do it,’ MacGillycuddy said querulously. ‘This was her idea, not mine. She asks me to do a little job for her, ring up a few of that muppet’s old girlfriends, find out what makes him tick — I do it. Everybody’s happy. She comes back to me two weeks later, she’s not sure, she thinks he’s banging the refugee, she’s distraught, she can’t sleep — what am I supposed to do? I’m in a position to deliver the facts. You’re saying I should have turned her away?’