Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

BABS (wounded) : Why must you always undermine me?

FREDERICK ( taking her hand ): Oh, my sweet Babs, I’m trying to protect you. You’re such a naif. Anyway, I need you here with me. I couldn’t possibly run the chateau on my own.

BABS: Sometimes I despise this chateau.

FREDERICK ( simply ): It is our destiny. ( He goes and stands meditatively under the large portrait of their father hanging over the fireplace .) Hamlet , eh? ’To be or not to be.’ It really is the question, when you think about it.

(There is a thunderous noise overhead. BABS rushes to FREDERICK’s side)

BABS: Oh Frederick! I’m so frightened!

FREDERICK ( pulling a fencing sword down from the wall ): Don’t worry, Babs, I’m here!

(The door bursts open and INSPECTOR DICK ROBINSON, SCOTLAND YARD comes in, with HORST and WERNER caught under either arm. LOPAKHIN slouches in after them, looking disgruntled.)

INSPECTOR DICK ROBINSON: Well, we’ve solved the mystery of the noises and the missing egg-beater. Bosnians, hiding out in your attic.

FREDERICK: Great Scott!

INSPECTOR: It’s not uncommon, sir. Too lazy and undisciplined to get their own house in order, these parasites come over to proper countries to eke out a living — or in this case, seemingly, to drive good honest aristocrats out of their chateaus.

BABS ( covering her eyes ): Oh, they’re hideous! I can’t bear to look at them!

INSPECTOR: Don’t worry, Ma’am. Where these miscreants are going, no one will be troubled by them for a long, long time.

HORST (sneering) : Up yours, copper.

INSPECTOR: Why, you impudent — ( makes to strike him )

FREDERICK: Stop!

(Everyone turns to FREDERICK in surprise)

FREDERICK: Maybe they are lazy and undisciplined. But society is to blame too. These men deserve a second chance. I want to offer them a job working on my vineyard.

INSPECTOR: These are dangerous men, Your Excellency…

FREDERICK: Maybe so. But it’s what Father would have wanted. It’s what this vineyard means. ( To the BOSNIANS ) What do you say, lads? It’s tough, backbreaking work and you won’t get rich from it. But are you game?

(The BOSNIANS disengage themselves from INSPECTOR ROBINSON and cross the floor to kneel at FREDERICK’s feet.)

BOSNIANS: My liege.

FREDERICK ( laughing ): Arise, arise! We’re not stuffy aroundhere. Well! It looks likewe’ll have a harvest after all!

LOPAKHIN (to himself) : Gah!

BABS: Oh, how wonderful!

( The door bursts open. It is MAM’ SELLE, the comical French maid .)

MAM’ SELLE (dramatically) : Your Excellency, I have kicked the dog.

INSPECTOR (startled) : I beg your pardon?

BABS ( laughing ): Don’t worry, Inspector! She means she has cooked the duck!

FREDERICK: Oh Mam’ selle — you are a duffer!

( They all laugh and leave together, except LOPAKHIN, who remains in the room .)

LOPAKHIN: Well, ‘Your Excellency’, it looks like your old-fashioned brand of idealism has won the battle. But I know your Achilles’ heel now — your fragile sister, Babs… and I won’t rest until I have her, and your precious vineyard is nothing but rubble…

I threw myself into my work. What else could I do? I must have called the house a hundred times; Bel wouldn’t even come to the phone. Depending on whom I talked to, she had just stepped out, or wasn’t feeling well, or was in the bath; she seemed to be perpetually in the bath these days. Beyond that — whether she had swallowed her pride and returned to playing Ramp , repeating her small act of rebellion nightly in front of an audience, or whether she was cloistered away in her own misery, shunned by the others — I had no idea. ‘She left her bag here,’ I’d say. ‘Tell her to call me if she wants it dropped over.’ They’d promise to pass on the message, and that would be all I could do until the next day, when the process would be repeated.

As for Mirela, whenever she answered the phone I hung up straight away; even though a part of me burned to talk with her, plead with her, in the same way that murderers are said to feel compelled to revisit the scene of the crime. I couldn’t go out to the house myself for fear of running into her; so, as November stretched on towards Christmas, and the streets filled up with fairy lights and shifty-looking men selling spruces and pines from the backs of flatbed trucks, I buried my guilty conscience in work, and I tried not to think about anything else.

Fortunately there was plenty of work to occupy me. November-December is the busiest time of the year for those of us in the Yule Log business, and Processing Zone B was pushed to the limit. Everything seemed to be operating at double speed. Cigarette breaks were abandoned for the month, and we often worked overtime so that we could meet our quotas: Edvin, Bobo, Pavel, Arvids, Dzintars and me bent silently conscientiously over our machines, while the trucks waited rumbling at the loading bay, and Mr Appleseed patrolled the tiles with his pointer held behind his back. By now I had picked up a smattering of Latvian and mastered the vagaries of the sugar-frosting machine to become an exemplary Bread Straightener; I can point to my own modest part in Processing Zone B’s late rally to overtake C-shift and claim the Productivity Hamper. Not only that, but I used my position of influence and good command of spoken English to raise staff grievances and try to improve conditions for the workers. Over lunch, while Mr Appleseed was ranting about how he’d never have believed there could possibly be a crowd of wasters worse than the Latvians until he’d met these new Estonian bastards, I would delicately and imperceptibly steer the conversation around to the showers.

‘What about the showers, Fuckface?’

‘Well, there aren’t any…’

And Mr Appleseed, to give him his due, listened, and promised to bring it up at the next management briefing. Meanwhile, I agitated among the workers themselves, disseminating ideas I had heard the builders talk about back in the house. It wasn’t always easy. Most of the time they would just look at me as if I’d proposed we all relocate to the moon. ‘Don’t you want a job?’ they would say. ‘Do you want them to send us all home?’

‘Of course not,’ I’d say. ‘I’m just saying we need to organize ourselves to make sure, you know, we don’t get sold down the river. To get a fair shake of the stick.’

‘What river?’ they’d say. ‘What stick?’

But I persisted; and at times when it seemed especially hopeless I would tell myself I was doing it for Bel, offering it up to her like a kind of prayer, as if somehow it would reach her and steal over her and she would without quite knowing why stop despising me and want to talk to me again.

In the evenings I laboured over my play. Practically speaking it was a lost cause, given the new regime at the theatre; furthermore, ever since the Bosnians had been discovered, my villain Lopakhin had been upping the ante. Currently he was dancing such rings around Frederick that I was beginning to wonder if the latter was really up to the job. Still I pressed on, thinking that if I could just say what I wanted to say, here on a blank piece of paper, a miraculous change would be effected and the universe would be restored.

And then one night, I suppose about two weeks or three after that wretched tryst, the telephone rang. Somehow I knew it was for me: I threw down my pen and dashed into the living room. But it was only Mother, calling to harangue me for not RSVPing to some dinner invitation she’d sent me. It was a stormy night outside and the connection was bad: the line woofed and hissed with interference and I had trouble making out what she was saying.