Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

That time, however, I had been sure I was in the right. ‘I don’t see why you’re getting so worked up,’ I’d said. ‘Of course he’s not going to be angry. Why would he be angry?’

‘Don’t you know anything?’ she’d said, taking her finger out of her mouth. ‘That watch was grandfather’s.’

‘Well, so what? It was old . I don’t think it worked, even. This one is new . It has a radio and you can see the numbers in the dark. He needs an alarm clock. He always stays in bed too late, that’s why Mother shouts at him all the time. Come on, it can be from you as well. I don’t mind.’ But instead of leaping to accept this kind and unselfish offer, Bel covered her face with her hands, as if hoping to make the situation disappear.

‘Maybe we could get another watch, just to be on the safe side,’ I mused. ‘One exactly the same as the old one. Or maybe he won’t notice it’s gone. Or maybe he will, but he just won’t be angry.’

But Bel just stood there, shaking her head, swaying to and fro, repeating ‘Oh, Charles,’ in a way that after a while got under your skin and then really started to nag at you –

‘Well, what are we going to do , then?’ I shouted at last. ‘You’ll have to run away,’ Bel said automatically, and a trifle glibly for my liking. ‘Fine,’ I retorted, ‘so will you, then.’ ‘Why will I have to?’ she said. ‘I don’t know,’ I said irritably. ‘Because they’ll punish you too.’ ‘Why would they punish me? I didn’t do anything.’ ‘They just will , that’s all, you know what they’re like — well, so long, I don’t suppose I’ll ever see you again —’ ‘Charles, wait !’ running after me out of her bedroom and down the stairs and out the door to begin our new life in the gazebo, which continued happily enough until nightfall, when Bel — who was at that time deeply afraid of the dark, indeed unhappy about the entire concept of darkness, having developed grave doubts as to the likelihood of the sun, once it had been allowed to set, ever rising again, even when one told her that in one’s own experience, which remember was eight years compared to her five, it had always risen in the past: ‘But what if it doesn’t ?’ she’d say, whispering in case it might hear, ‘what do we do then ?’ — when Bel began to cry, and continued to cry, and would not be comforted even when I switched on the radio part of the radio alarm clock, till at last, worried that she was going to stop breathing, I took her hand again and led her back across the lawn, the house rising forbiddingly out of the twilight, ice-bolts of terror plunging through me, but still fair was fair, she’d been a good sport about the whole running-away business in the first place, she was good about that sort of thing, Bel was, even if she was a girl, if only she wouldn’t cry so much, and we went round to the back door to knock to be let in by whatever maid was there at the time, to troop in to Father in the drawing room and take our punishment…

Only this time, of course, there was no gazebo to run to, no higher power to arbitrate or condemn; there were only the facts, lying there inert as the glove on the table. Neither of us was sure of the protocol; so we merely stood, wilted slightly, as though the room were short on oxygen. It must have looked rather comical, the two of us with our hands in our pockets, staring at nothing, searching for the words to resolve or express or at least reanimate the scene, to carry it out of this awful moment. Then Bel got up and walked out. I tried to follow her, but I got my foot caught in the stringless Dunlop tennis racket, and by the time I’d pulled it free and gone down to the street she was nowhere in sight. And so, like a man in a hall of mirrors, or in an endless Chinese box of dreams, I stumbled back upstairs, and thrust open my bedroom door — only to find the room empty: emptier than a magician’s cabinet, emptier than anything ought possibly to be.

THERE’S BOSNIANS IN MY ATTIC!

A Tragedy in Three Acts

by Charles Hythloday

SETTING: A crumbling chateau on the banks of the Marne.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

COUNT FREDERICK A Count, the young master of the house. Battling with the past and with the dog-eat-dog world of the French wine industry to restore his Father’s vineyard to its former glory.

BABS His sister, a beautiful if judgemental would-be actress.

LOPAKHIN A Machiavellian bank manager/theatre impresario, who is staying at the chateau but secretly plotting to destroy it and build a railway through it and steal Babs away from Frederick.

[Note. Why has Frederick let Lopakhin stay in the house in the first place?]

MAM’ SELLE A comically inept French maid

HORST AND WERNER Some Bosnians

INSPECTOR DICK ROBINSON, SCOTLAND YARD

ACT ONE SCENE ONE

(The drawing room. COUNT FREDERICK is gazing pensively out the window when BABS bursts in in a state of agitation, followed insidiously by LOPAKHIN.)

BABS (agitatedly) : Frederick! Oh Frederick! The peasants are revolting!

FREDERICK: I know! Don’t they ever wash?

(pause for laughter)

BABS: How can you joke at a time like this? The harvest is next week! How are we supposed to reap it with no peasants?

FREDERICK: (grimly) : I know. Just when it seemed that the vineyard was finally getting back on its feet. ( Turns pensively .) I can’ t understand it. They’re normally such a jolly bunch. It’s as if someone had been stirring them up by circulating false data about the EU’s new Agricultural Policy. But who would do such a thing?

LOPAKHIN: Why don’t you just give up, Frederick? That’s what I don’t understand about you. You’re an intelligent man. Why do you persist in trying to revive this old dump? When you could have a railway station right here where we’re standing, or a multiplex cinema.

FREDERICK (coldly) : There’s another thing you don’t understand, Lopakhin, and that’s a thing called tradition. My father worked this vineyard, and his father before him, and his father before him. It’s not about money. It’s about producing a half-decent bottle of Burgundy. It’s about giving employment to generations of local peasants, although frankly they don’t deserve it. We will never sell this chateau! They will have to wrest it from our very hands!

BABS ( sadly ): That reminds me. The bank manager called again this morning. He wants to speak to you urgently. And Frederick, things keep going missing around the house! And those noises — those inhuman noises! ( she weeps )

FREDERICK ( putting his arms protectively around her ): Don’t worry, Babs. No one’s going to harm you. ( Defiantly .) And inhuman or otherwise, no one’s going to drive us out of this chateau, not if Scotland Yard has anything to say about it!

LOPAKHIN: Scotland Yard? (exits hastily)

FREDERICK: There’s something I don’t trust about that fellow. Sometimes I wonder if he really is the young Belgian student backpacking his way around Europe that he claims to be. I mean for one thing he doesn’ t have a backpack. And he’ s been here for months. It’ ll take him another forty years to get round Europe at this rate.

BABS ( laughing ): Oh, Frederick, don’t be silly! He’s a dear, an absolute dear! He’s terribly clever, and he knows ever so much about theatre. ( bashfully ) He wants to put on a production of Hamlet in the village. He thinks I would make a perfect Ophelia.

FREDERICK: Babs, darling, you know the doctors forbid you from acting. Your health’s far too fragile for that. Anyway, I think he’s leading you up the garden path. Who’s going to go to a theatre production in the village? The damn peasants?