An Evening of Long Goodbyes (13 page)

‘Why did your Granny have a shaving-mirror?’

‘Well it had been Grandfather’s, I think I told you that, if you’ll cast your mind back to a minute or so ago –’

‘Oh right,’ she’d respond, chewing. ‘So, did she get better?’

‘No, as I said, that was when she died, you see…’

‘Oh right.’

And then the terrible silence until I could summon up another, anecdote after anecdote like swine driven over a cliff, tumbling down and down into the dizzying blue void!

‘Well, let’s talk about you,’ I said finally, as people are less easily diverted when talking about themselves.

This proved to be disastrous.

‘Well, I went to school in Holy Child,’ Laura began, ‘which you probably know all about from Bel. It was brilliant, I had such a laugh. I wasn’t into arty stuff like she was – I would have loved to’ve been able to, like, just sit around in cafés all day smoking and being arty – but I suppose I’m just naturally practical, like my future has always been really important to me. Like you have to think about getting a good job and stuff.’

‘You do,’ I said. ‘You really do.’

‘Anyway, after my exams I got into Business and Technology in the Smorfett Institute –’

‘Isn’t that where they did all those experiments on monkeys?’ I interjected.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s actually one of the best IT solutions centres in Europe.’

I didn’t fully understand what this meant, other than it had to do with computers and entailed lots of ‘opportunities’; but whatever it was, upon graduating she decided to look for something more ‘people-oriented’. ‘I like people,’ she said.

‘Who doesn’t?’ I said.

As such, she continued, she was naturally drawn to the high-octane world of insurance.

‘Excuse me a minute,’ I said. Suddenly feeling rather dry, I went into the kitchen and took a fresh bottle of Fetzer from the cooler. I suppose I must have remained standing there for longer than I realized, because Mrs P asked me if I was all right.

‘Master Charles, the dinner is okay? The food it is nice?’

‘What? Oh – yes, yes, Mrs P. Bravo. A tour de force.’

‘You look like you are tired.’

‘Me? Not at all, raring to go.’

‘But you are rubbing the eyes…’

‘Oh, just taking a breather, you know… I say, Mrs P, have you ever heard of anyone choking on an oyster?’

‘On an oyster?’ She gave this some thought. ‘No, Master Charles, an oyster I don’t think is possible.’

‘That’s what I thought. Oh well, never mind. Once more unto the breach, I suppose…’ I took the wine and returned to the dining room. Laura smiled as I seated myself and then began telling me about the relationship she had been in during this exciting period in her life. It was quite serious; in fact they went out for almost five years.

‘Five
years
?’

His name was Declan. He was manager of a service station on the Bray Road. ‘He was doing really well,’ she said, ‘the money’s really good in forecourt retail and he was in contention for another service station, in Deansgrange. But we just wanted different things, you know?’ They had parted ways six months ago when Declan decided to give up his job and go to Australia for a year: ‘It’s great out there!’ Laura said. ‘Imagine, Christmas on the beach! Wouldn’t that be mad!’

‘Why didn’t you go, so?’ I asked, beginning to wish that she had.

‘Oh, it was really sad,’ she mooned, ‘like I was really sad about it for a while, cos like I really loved him, he was so nice and funny and just loads of crack to be around –’

‘Loads of what?’

‘But, like, it’s all very well for him to just give up his job and go off and have a laugh for a year, but you know, I have responsibilities. I didn’t want to let everyone in work down. And as well, I’m a woman, you know?’

There was a pause here that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with; eventually I said, ‘Oh yes?’ in a tone that hopefully conveyed interest but not surprise.

‘Well yeah, so like, I felt I had a responsibility to myself too, and to all the women that have been repressed over the years, to build a stable career for myself. I wasn’t going to give that up just for some
man
.’

I drank my glass of wine in one swallow and poured myself another. ‘You felt a responsibility to all the women who hadn’t been allowed to work in the insurance industry?’ I said, just in case I’d missed something.

‘Yeah,’ she nodded vigorously, ‘and do you know, Charles, it was completely the right decision. Like, I was really upset about Dec, but the people in the company have been so good to me. It’s like a family to me now. And it’s been so fulfilling to me in terms of expressing myself as a person. I got promoted nearly straight away, I’m a Team Leader now, even though I’ve only been there a year. At first some of the girls were jealous and they thought it was just because I went to Holy Child, but now we’re all best friends and a really good team and we just have such a laugh.’

‘Congratulations,’ I cut in. ‘You know, I wonder if we ought to –’

‘And I get a car and a phone and if I make my bonus there’s this gorgeous apartment – well, it’s in sort of this bad area but there’s like a security guard and electric fences, so it’s fine – I’m maybe going to move into with this girl from work. It’s such a good job. Like I envy Bel being, you know, an actress and having so much free time and stuff, but I love having the security and the opportunities, and there’s good holiday pay too –’

‘Holidays,’ I seized desperately. ‘Did you go anywhere nice for your holidays?’

‘Oh yeah,’ her face lit up and at last she took off her jacket and propped her elbows on the table. ‘Like last year me and some of the gang from work went to Greece – oh, it was mad, we met this great bunch of lads, Irish lads, you know – oh, they were mad. One night, right, it was tequila night in this Irish pub we’d go to and we were all locked, anyway suddenly the lads came in and tore off our T-shirts –’

‘How awful!’ I cried, bidding for the feminist vote.

‘We were breaking our shites laughing,’ she continued, ‘God, I’ve never drank so much in my life, practically every night we used to end up on the beach watching the sun come up, drinking vodka…’

‘Corinth?’ I gasped weakly. ‘Minos?’

‘What?’

‘What?’ I said in a strangulated, despairing whisper.

There was a silence, and I looked at Laura – really
looked
at her – and had the sudden impression that I was having dinner with a simulacrum, a
knock-off
. I felt like the man who buys the box of genuine wartime memorabilia at auction, and brings it home to discover, under the first layer, piles and piles of shredded newspaper.

‘Well, this is all fascinating,’ I managed to croak, ‘but we should probably get started on the, ah, vases…’

‘You’re right,’ she said, backing her chair away from the table and taking a personal organizer from her jacket pocket. ‘That was lovely, by the way. It’s actually a really good idea, having dinner first and getting to know each other, I must say it to my department manager.’ She stepped over to the dresser and on tiptoes scrutinized the top shelf. ‘Obviously these’ll have to be valued, so I’m just going to do an inventory and give you a rough estimate, okay?’

‘Fine,’ I said, and filling my glass once more watched as she picked things up and put them down, affixing mental price-tags to each and making diligent notes in her electronic pad. Even her face looked somehow
wrong
. Close-up she bore only a passing resemblance to the girl in Bel’s school annuals, and adjust the lights as I might I could not get her to look any more like her. How had this come to pass? Did the Laura I had fallen in love with exist only in the yearbooks? An image imprisoned in seven grainy pages, just as I was trapped in the corporeal world?

I glanced over at the clock. My God, could it only be half past nine? Laura chattered on as she went about her vivisection; I ground my nails into my palms. My last night in Amaurot wasted, my grand love story in tatters, and nothing to show for it but some over-insured vases! Then – like a ray of hope – I perceived the sound of the key in the front door. ‘Pardon me one moment.’ I sprang to my feet and dashed out to the hall, catching the newcomers just as they were sneaking off upstairs. ‘Bel! Thank God! And is that Frank with you? My dear fellow, what a pleasant surprise!’

‘All right?’

‘Charles, we’re actually quite tired, I thought we might go straight to –’

‘Yes, yes, you’ll stop by the dining room just for a minute, though, won’t you? I know Laura is dying to see you…
please
, Bel…’

‘Ow, Charles, let go… all right, but just for a minute.’

‘I’m just going to run into the jacks first and have a slash,’ said Frank.

‘Yes, capital, you do that.’ He lumbered off and Bel, with the sigh of a surgeon called back into the emergency room just as she is about to leave for home, took off her gloves and preceded me into the dining room.

‘
Laura
,’ she said, laying her handbag on a chair, ‘how
wonderful
to see you!’

‘Oh my God, Bel!’ Laura turned from her inventory with a exclamation of delight. ‘How
are
you?’

‘I’m fine. Charles is keeping you entertained, I see?’

‘Oh yes, we’ve had such a laugh – do you know, I was just talking about you to Bunty the other day, no one’s even
seen
you in I don’t know how long…’

‘Oh, you Smorfett girls have such busy social lives,’ Bel countered with a smile, pouring a glass of wine. ‘I suppose I just sort of fell by the wayside.’

‘Well, you still look
gorgeous
, you look so
artistic
, did you get those second-hand?’

‘Thanks, so do you – where did you get that lovely suit? It makes you look so
mature
–’

‘Oh, I just grabbed it off the rail, I don’t really have time to shop these days, I’m so busy at work –’

‘Laura’s been promoted,’ I informed Bel.

‘But what about you, Bel, are you still acting, or…?’

‘Oh, you know, finding my feet,’ Bel said. ‘It takes time.’

‘Mmm,’ Laura nodded, returning her attention to the Chinese jade. ‘You know, I had no idea your family had so much –’ she stopped herself, blushing. ‘Sorry – it must help, though, knowing you have all this to fall back on…’

Blood might well have been spilled if at that moment Frank had not wandered in with a bag of chicken balls – his favourite dish, until I met him I hadn’t been aware that chicken came in balls. ‘All right?’ he inquired of the room in general, and then, his eyes falling on Laura, ‘Holy
fuck
.’

‘I
don’t
believe it,’ Laura brought a hand to her chest.

‘How the fuck are you?’ he bellowed, opening his arms wide.

She jumped into them with a happy scream. ‘I
don’t
believe it,’ she said again, somewhat muffled by Frank’s embrace.

‘What don’t you believe?’ Bel asked her when finally she re-emerged.

Face flushed with serendipity, she launched into an interminable explanation. I sat down heavily and started drinking her glass of wine. It seemed that Frank had been one of the licentious holiday-makers in Greece: indeed, he was one of Laura’s beloved T-shirt-snatchers.

‘I’ll never forget that night,’ she laughed, repeatedly.

‘I won’t either,’ Frank leered, eyeing her handsome chest.

‘Remember that rep… what was his name… he looked like a takeaway…’

‘Onion Bhaji!’ Frank roared with delight. ‘Onion Bhaji, what a bollocks!’

‘Remember when my friend Liz wanted to shag him and he was in her room shagging her flatmate and she burst in and said, “You’d better not use all your sperm up on her” –’

‘And remember when we went on that hike and he drank all the sangria and we threw him off that cliff –’

They threw back their heads and guffawed.

‘Did she say
sperm
…?’ I whispered to Bel.

Bel was watching the pair of them with a faint smile.

‘Ahem, Bel –’

‘Charles,’ she said without looking at me, ‘we ought to have more wine. We may be here for some time.’

It was a relief to go down to the cellar, to close the warped door on their debauched reminiscence and the non-events of their subsequent lives, and breathe in the mossy, deliquescent air. There was something about it – the bare slats, the stained concrete of the walls, the spare creak of floorboards underfoot – that always renewed me. Descending the rickety steps, I thought how glad I was that Bel had come home, and how really the dinner hadn’t been all that bad; I may even have chuckled once or twice, thinking of Laura’s agonizing conversation. And then I saw the racks. They were almost entirely empty.

In disbelief I glanced from one bare slat to the next. Redundant rack-labels peeked sadly back at me like tiny white tombstones. At first, idiotically, I thought that the bottles might have been misplaced. I looked behind the great oak casks, under the brambles of electrical cable, among the crates of empties by the stairs. Then I simply stood there, agape. All that remained was a shelf of dubious liqueurs, gifts to the family over the years that no one, until now, had resorted to opening. Everything else had been taken. My hands trembled. First Laura, now the cellar, the inviolable cellar – it was as if the world were taunting me, bearing down with all its imbecilic might:
Your efforts are in vain
, it was saying.
We have already won
.

For some minutes I was completely at sea. Then I took a deep breath. The night wasn’t over yet. I still had a chance to put an end to Frank’s reign of terror. Clenching my teeth, I gathered up an armful of the uncontemplatable liqueurs and stormed back up the stairs.

Frank was recapitulating his triumphant revenge on the cunt from the pub earlier that day; Laura gazed at him adoringly, hanging on every gruesome word. Bel had moved her chair to curl a proprietary arm around him.

‘ – so after we let the air out we broke the windows and got the radio, and then we set it on fire, see, and then we went up to his house where he lives with his Granny, and there were all these fuckin like gnomes in the garden, so we started pickin them up and throwin them at his house and shoutin, y’know, Come out, you cunt, until he came out. He had a crowbar and his brother this bollocks called Rory had one of them metal bicycle pumps, and we had a two-by-four length of plywood and –’