Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

‘Charlie,’ he said, ‘I need you to come with me.’

‘Me?’ I said.

‘I can’t go down there on me own. It’s down the bad end. I need reinforcements.’

‘Well, I’d love to help you, old man, but the fact is I can’t , I mean I’ve got a dinner party to go to and Mother’ll have conniptions if I’m late, I mean it’s bad enough I’m not bringing a date…’ I tailed off feebly. Damn it, what did he want me there for? Didn’t he know my track record in fisticuffs? How could there possibly be a bad end of Bonetown? Laura’s cool green eyes looked into mine as she folded the tie over and back on itself.

‘Hell,’ I said faintly.

‘Right,’ he bounded purposefully out the door. Laura tied the tie tight and I felt something pressed into my hand. It was the stringless Dunlop tennis racket. ‘Good luck,’ she said, and planted a kiss on my cheek.

We ran down the street with our jackets over our heads, dancing between ravines full of muddy water, over petrol rainbows and a moonscape of scorched earth, until we came to a low concrete bunker. The steel shutters had been covered with many layers of graffiti; the pitted ground outside was littered with cigarette ends and broken needles. I had been here before.

‘We’re going in?’ I said. ‘Into the Coachman?’

Frank turned to me and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Charlie, I want you to just follow me and do exactly what I tell you, right?’

‘Right,’ I squeaked. I gripped my tennis racket a little tighter. ‘Fine. Well. Once more unto the breach, eh, old chap…’

‘And don’t say anythin either, all right?’

We went through the door, which didn’t immediately seem to make any difference to the volume of water falling on our heads. A dozen pairs of hostile eyes fell on us. I looked around dumbstruck. It was the sort of place Egon Ronay must have nightmares about: warped linoleum on the floor, too-bright lights, no furniture to speak of other than rickety stools and picnic tables marked Dept of Forestry. At the bar were sitting six men with literally no foreheads, one of whom bared his teeth at us.

‘All right?’ Frank said. No one spoke. Casually, Frank passed his plank from one hand to the other and we began to sidestep along the wall, as though skirting the rim of a volcano. From the bar, the eyes tracked us, but the men did not move. At last we reached a door marked Gents and pushed through. I heaved a sigh of relief and immediately wished I hadn’t. There was an indescribably putrid stench that grew worse and worse as we walked along a narrow corridor and arrived at a steel door with a grille set at eye-level. With an almighty clanging and booming, Frank started beating it with his plank, until the grille slid back to reveal a pair of moist black eyes.

‘Yes?’ a voice said.

‘We’re here for Droyd,’ Frank growled.

‘Francy!’ the voice said. ‘Is it yourself? Wait till I get these —’ The grille slid shut again, and a complex series of unlocking noises ensued. At last the door swung open. We were greeted by a thin man in his forties, with lank hair and bad skin and the general appearance of having recently taken part in an oil slick. Cigarettes of unequal length burned between the middle fingers of his right hand. ‘Long time no see, Francy.’ He nodded at me. ‘Who’s this, your butler?’

‘We’re here for Droyd,’ Frank said before I could set him straight.

‘Droyd, eh?’ Cousin Benny stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘Haven’t seen him. Sorry.’

‘He ran off with three months’ rent.’ Frank lifted the plank threateningly. ‘I know you been sellin him gear,’ he said.

Cousin Benny seemed to find this amusing. ‘Have you not heard?’ he said. ‘Droyd’s gone straight. Clean as a whistle.’ He shook his head and sighed. ‘No loyalty, these kids. Take the best years of your life, then they just chuck you aside…’

With a gurgle of anger, Frank pushed past him; I raised an eyebrow in apology and followed him in.

The first thing that struck one about the room was the smell: a mouldering collection of various species of decay — food, bodily waste, rotting brickwork. There was no furniture or carpeting, just mattresses, mildewed mattresses strewn everywhere. It was so dark that it took a moment to make out the comatose forms on top of them, and another to see that most of these were children. There were fifteen or twenty of them, lying down or propped in corners, with drooping eyelids and nodding heads, as if they were coming home tired out after a school trip. Many of them I recognized from throwing fireworks at me in the street, and with a sick feeling I glanced from mattress to mattress until I arrived at the two moon-faced trolley children, slumped with hands clasped and a blackened ampoule at their feet.

Cousin Benny had closed the door. He stood beside it, half-hidden in the sepulchral light, exhaling a huge cloud of smoke into the pall that hung over the sleepers. Everything was perfectly still: it was like some unholy parody of peace. I realized my hands were trembling and folded them behind my back. Then there was a gasp. Frank, who had waded out into the middle of the sea of bodies, darted over to the far wall. He bent down and rose again with a tracksuited form lying limply in his arms. It was Droyd, deep in a swoon, and looking, quite unexpectedly, like something out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. ‘Fuck off,’ he murmured drowsily. ‘Fuck off.’

When it was clear that he couldn’t be woken, Frank slung him over his shoulder. Puffing, he turned to Cousin Benny in the corner. ‘I’m takin him, Benny,’ he said. ‘I’m takin him.’

‘Go ahead,’ Cousin Benny said. The twin plumes of smoke twirled up like incantations from his fingers. ‘He’ll be back.’

‘Don’t get in me way.’ Frank took the first steps towards a peeling door in the corner. ‘Watch him, Charlie.’ Swallowing, I brandished the tennis racket.

Cousin Benny smiled mockingly. ‘What’s he goin to do, blackball me from his club?’

But as Frank stumbled over to the door, he withdrew to a safe distance. ‘Take him,’ he called after us. ‘He’ll be back. He’s only a cunt. You’re all only cunts. He’ll try and clean up, and then somethin’ll happen and he won’t be able to hack it, and he’ll be back here with the money —’

I slammed the door shut behind me: and then, mercifully, we were back on the street. Frank laid Droyd down on the concrete and we sucked in cold wet air as if it were manna from heaven.

I noticed my right cufflink had come loose. I tried to fix it but my damned hands were still shaking too much. It was damned annoying. My dinner jacket was by now completely soaked as well. I leaned against the wall and took deep breaths and waited for the shaking to stop. Finally it abated sufficiently for me to make the necessary adjustment. Then I clapped my hands together. ‘Right,’ I said.

Frank had sunk on to his haunches beside Droyd, and was staring at his feet with an air of utter dejection.

‘Not much of an afternoon,’ I said, ‘but all’s well that ends well, I suppose.’

Nobody said anything.

‘That is, all’s well that ends well,’ I repeated carefully.

‘Charlie, what are we goin to do?’ Frank said.

‘Well, I’d better get a move on to that dinner,’ I said. ‘I’d ask you along only it’s black tie, you see, and —’

‘No, about the money , Charlie, about the fuckin rent .’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said vaguely. ‘Something’ll turn up, I imagine.’

Frank did not appear to derive much succour from this. A wave of impatience rose up through me. Couldn’t he understand I had problems of my own? Couldn’t he stop thinking about money for five minutes?