Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

‘All right…’ I took it from her and patted her on the knee. ‘Don’t go anywhere —’ although by the looks of her there was little danger of that.

‘She has a shock,’ Mrs P said, preparing a samovar of tea and placing it beside the glasses on a silver tray. ‘She should be drinking this, not the double brandies.’

‘Try telling her that.’

Mrs P paused and looked me in the eye. ‘What happen, Master Charles?’

‘Oh, nothing, really,’ I blustered. ‘Just the gals letting off a little steam. You know what they’re like.’

‘Mmm,’ Mrs P said equivocally, performing one of her half-shrug half-grimaces.

‘You should be happy though. Mirela’s gone down a storm.’

Mrs P frowned over at the middle ground, where her daughter and Harry stood deep in conversation with the telephone fellow. ‘I will be happier when it is over,’ she said. ‘I am old, I have seen enough fight. Excuse me, Master Charles, I must bring this man his drink.’

The party raged on. Not far away, Laura, who was already tipsy, pestered Mrs P’s sons to play her requests; Frank came in and out, carrying off entire sections of the buffet to the cloakroom, which he had kindly agreed to man while I stayed with Bel. The cast and crew, meanwhile, were full of themselves. The telephone fellow, after asking a newspaperman what he thought of the play, had pronounced himself delighted, and the air was alive with rumours: that he had commissioned Harry to write a new play with a vast budget; that Mirela was going to appear on a billboard for Telsinor; that everybody was getting a free phone in exchange for a phone mast being installed in the back garden at Amaurot.

Everyone acted as if the sabotaged ending had been planned all along. As for the pictures, when we went back up to the dressing room after the curtain call they had disappeared; no one mentioned them now, no one seemed to find it odd that it was Mirela, and not Bel, who cruised the room on Harry’s arm. It was as though here, too, the lines had simply been rewritten, with only the presence of Bel, sitting despondently in the wide berth the others had given her, to hint at the existence of an earlier draft.

On my way back to her I paused to eavesdrop on Niall O’Boyle and Harry, who had been buttonholed by a journalist. ‘And what do you see Telsinor getting from such an investment?’ the journalist was saying.

‘It’s not about us getting something out of it,’ Niall O’Boyle said. ‘What we’re talking about here is a — what did you say it was?’

‘Synergy,’ Harry said. He was still wearing his fusty costume from the play.

‘Exactly, a synergy. We’re both on the same team. This is the new Ireland, and it’s all about communicating . It’s about youth and young people talking to each other and turning over the old ways of doing things. And at Telsinor Ireland, we see ourselves as providing the equipment for creating that vision.’

‘The medium is the message,’ Harry put in.

‘And what about you?’ The journalist turned to him. ‘How do you feel about getting into bed with big business?’

‘Well,’ Harry said slowly, ‘I don’t think we’d say we were quote-unquote “getting into bed” with anybody…’

‘Exactly,’ Niall O’Boyle came in. ‘That’s a very old-fashioned way of looking at it. Because art, so-called big business, at the end of the day what they’re both about is people . For example, take Marla here,’ reaching over to take Mirela by the arm and presenting her to the journalist. ‘Someone like Marla is exactly what this centre, the Ralph Hythloday Centre, and Telsinor Ireland are about. It’s about creating a space for people where they can be who they want to be and say what they want to say. It’s about inclusivity and diversity. It’s east meets west, coming together in peace and harmony, young people forgetting about the past, turning their backs on war and politics and saying, It’s our turn now, and we just want to have a good time. For me, that’s really what the play was saying tonight.’

‘Was that what it was all about?’ the journalist said to Harry.

‘Well yes, in a way,’ said Harry, ‘because to communicate…’

I returned to Bel, still slumped dejectedly in her chair. ‘I don’t know what you ever saw in that charlatan,’ I said. ‘By golly, I’ve a good mind to go over there and clean his clock for him.’

The tea seemed to rouse her a little; she lifted her head and watched the ceiling flash white as the newspaper photographer went around the room taking pictures of cast members and guests.

‘It isn’t his fault,’ she said, after a long time.

‘I see,’ I said tartly. ‘I suppose Mirela put a gun to his head and made him do it. Or maybe it wasn’t her idea either, maybe they just tripped and fell into bed together —’

‘It’s the house,’ Bel said.

I turned around. ‘What?’

‘The house,’ she repeated. She was staring straight ahead of her, frowning slightly, as if trying to work out a complicated maths problem in her head: her voice was soporific, faraway-seeming. ‘It’s like it’s changing them,’ she said. ‘Like it’s making them do what it wants, so it can keep itself alive.’

I sat up with a jerk and pulled her head round so I could peer into her eyes. ‘Are you all right? Do you want me to get someone?’ Mrs P had just come in with a fresh tray of canapés: I waved my arm at her, but she didn’t see me.

‘Just look,’ Bel said simply, twisting the pendant in her fingers.

I looked, not knowing what I was supposed to be seeing. To the right there was a flash and a laugh and a group of people broke apart in front of the camera. ‘Why not get one of just you and the kids,’ I heard Niall O’Boyle say. ‘Take one of Georgie and the kids, why don’t you? Theatrical family, sort of thing.’

Bodies shuffled around: Harry linked his arm with Mother’s, Mirela doing the same on the opposite side, all three of them with their backs to us. ‘Ready?’ the photographer said.

‘Shouldn’t we have Bel in it too?’ someone — Mirela — asked; I heard Mother explain cursorily how Bel, for reasons of her own, preferred not to have her picture taken.

‘Perfect,’ the photographer said. ‘one more —’

‘Don’t you get it?’ Bel said. ‘They’re us.’

‘What?’

‘Everybody smile…’

‘They’re us ,’ she said: and at that moment the flash went off and, though I was sure I was going to say something, the light caught me right in the eye, so that whatever it was I forgot it; instead I reeled back blinking and waving my hands — ‘Though in that case,’ she murmured invisibly beside me, ‘who are we?’

I took a deep breath and placed my hands over my eyes, waiting for my vision to compose itself before I told Bel that what she was saying didn’t make one iota of sense and perhaps it was time to get Mrs P and go for a lie down somewhere quiet. But then her voice broke in my ear, ‘I’m going to get a drink,’ and I looked up through a glaze to see her move away across the floor, the long dress, the still-settling light, the roomful of strangers combining to give her the appearance of floating…

She didn’t come back. I knew she wouldn’t; still I waited an hour or so, there on the outskirts of the party, drinking gimlets and drifting along the peripheries of other people’s conversations: the men in suits discussing offshore investment, property, golf; their wives discussing property, holidays, surgery, good causes.

On my way out I encountered an argument in progress at the cloakroom. ‘I’m not sure you understand the severity of the situation,’ a lady was telling Frank in a chandelier-shattering falsetto. ‘It’s not just a question of expense. That fox fur is irreplaceable. It is a piece of history, can you comprehend that?’