Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

Much of the material relating to Gene Tierney is based on Tierney’s autobiography, Self-Portrait , written with Mickey Herskowitz (Berkley Books, 1980). The title was inspired by the song ‘An Evening of Long Goodbyes’ by Rachel’s, from their album Selenography . With thanks and respect to Rachel’s. For their support and generosity during the writing of this book, I would like to thank my parents, Christopher and Kathleen Murray, Simon Prosser, Natasha Fairweather, Juliette Mitchell, Sarah Castleton, Andrew Motion, John Boyne and everyone who helped with the early chapters, especially Tim Jarvis, Andrew Palmer and Neil ‘Stewarty’ Stewart. Neel Mukherjee and Chris Watson provided a home from home and some fine cuisine. Thank you to Miriam McCaul for keeping the world turning and the sun shining.

A black wind was blowing outside the bow window. All afternoon it had been playing its tricks: scooping up handfuls of leaves and flinging them over the lawn, spinning Old Man Thompson’s weathervane this way and that, seizing rapaciously at Bel’s ruby leather coat as she battled down the driveway to her audition. Now and then, from the rear of the house, I would hear it shriek through the bones of the Folly, and I’d look up from the TV with a start. If this were Kansas — I remember thinking — it might have been the beginnings of a terrible Twister; but this wasn’t Kansas, and what the wind blew in was worse than witches or winged monkeys. For today was the day that Frank arrived at Amaurot.

It was after four but I was still in my dressing gown, recuperating on the chaise longue in front of an old black-and-white movie that starred Mary Astor in an array of hats. I’d been out the night before with Pongo McGurks and possibly overdone it a little, insofar as I’d woken up on the billiard table with a splitting headache and wearing someone else’s sarong. By now, though, I was feeling much better. In fact, I was feeling particularly at one with the world, supping at a bowl of special medicinal consommé that Mrs P had made for me, thinking that no one wore a hat quite like Mary Astor — and then I caught my first sight of him, it: a large, vaguely humanoid shape shifting about behind the glass frieze that looked on to the hallway. It didn’t fit any of the shapes that should by rights have been there — not Bel’s slender figure, nor Mrs P’s squat domestic trapezium: this shape was bulky and distended, grotesquely so, like one of those self-assembly Ikea wardrobes I’d seen advertised on TV. I raised myself up on my elbows and called out: ‘Who’s there!’

There was no reply; and suddenly the figure was gone from the glass. I put down my consommé with a little sigh. I am not so vain as to think myself, in the general run of things, any more heroic than the next fellow; still, a man’s home is his castle, and when Swedish furniture decides to have a wander through it, one must take the appropriate measures. Tying the belt of my dressing gown and picking up the poker, I stole over to the drawing-room door. The hallway was empty. I cupped a hand to my ear, but heard only the sound of the house itself, like an endless exhalation of air echoing between the high ceilings and wood floors.

I was beginning to think I must have imagined it; but I seemed to remember someone telling me about a rash of break-ins recently, so just to be certain, I continued down the hall. There were plenty of nooks in which a miscreant could hide. Holding my poker at the ready in case he tried an ambush, I checked the library and the recital room — slowly twisting the knob, then swiftly thrusting open the door — to find nothing. Nothing lurked behind the Brancusi Janus; no one loomed beneath Mother’s sprawling poinsettia. On an impulse I tried the double doors of the ballroom: they were locked, of course, as they always were.

Relieved, I was on my way to the kitchen to have a cursory look around and also to see if there was anything by way of biscuits to follow the consommé, when a noise came from behind me. I spun round just as the door of the cloakroom burst open — and there, lumbering towards me, was the hideous Shape! Without the benefit of frosted glass between us, it was even more gruesome — my nerve quite failed me, the poker freezing mid-swing–

‘Charles!’ cried my sister, ghosting up suddenly at the Thing’s shoulder.

‘Haugh,’ the Thing snarled, before I recovered my wits and caught it a good blow on the temple, sending it tumbling to the floor with a thud which rattled Mother’s china collection clear in the next room.

There was a moment of silence. Outside the house the wind snapped and howled.

‘God, Charles, what have you done ?’ Bel said, hovering apprehensively over the stricken beast.

‘Don’t worry, he’s still breathing,’ I reassured her. ‘Anyway, it’s no more than he deserves. Breaking into someone else’s house like that — it’s a good thing you weren’t here on your own, Bel, he’s a vicious-looking brute.’

‘That’s frank , Charles,’ she moaned.

‘Yes, it is, and I wish you hadn’t had to see it, but the fact is that this is the world we live in, and —’

‘No, you idiot, I mean that’s Frank , he’s a — a friend of mine. We’re going out this evening.’ She knelt down to examine the creature’s forehead. ‘If he regains consciousness.’

‘Oh,’ I said. Through the door I glimpsed Mary Astor dancing a daring Charleston in a man’s trilby, and wished — not for the first or the last time — that I could step into the screen and join her.

‘Is that all you can say, “Oh”?’ Bel half-rose again the better to chastise me. ‘The poor guy takes an afternoon off work just to give me a lift back from that stupid audition, and then before I can even offer him a drink, you — you assault him.’

‘I thought he was a burglar,’ I protested.

‘A burglar,’ Bel repeated.

‘Well, there’s been that rash of break-ins,’ I said, ‘and…’ there was really no nice way to put this, ‘he does look like a burglar, Bel, you have to admit. I mean, look at him.’

We turned our attention to the figure on the floor. He wore a denim jacket, a grubby white shirt and nondescript brown shoes. He was very large and, in some unplaceable way, lumpy. His head, however, was what really fascinated me. It resembled some novice potter’s first attempt at a soup tureen, bulbous and pasty, with one beetling eyebrow, a stubbly jaw and less than the full complement of teeth; to describe his ears as asymmetrical would be to do asymmetry a disservice.

‘What do you mean, “disservice”?’ Bel exclaimed when I pointed this out to her. ‘Charles, you practically kill someone and all you can think to do is stand around criticizing his ears ? What’s wrong with you?’

‘It’s not just his ears,’ I said. ‘Think about it: can you imagine what Mother would say, confronted with that ?’

‘I know quite well what she’d say,’ Bel said sourly. ‘She’d say that she felt quite faint, and could someone please pour her a glass of gin.’

‘Mother’s nerves are no laughing matter,’ I reproved her, but she was already heading for the kitchen, reappearing a moment later with a tea-towel full of ice cubes just as her creature was coming to its senses.

‘Janey,’ it said. ‘Fuck.’

‘Are you all right?’ Bel asked, after hauling it with both hands up to a sitting position.

‘I dunno what happened,’ the creature said. ‘I was lookin for the kitchen and I must have got lost cos then I was in this room with all these coats and then it was like somethin hit me…’