by Paul Murray
‘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 lau
ghed, 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 –’
‘Sorry to interrupt, would anyone like some, ah, Rigbert’s? It’s made from genuine loganberries…’
‘Weren’t you scared?’ Laura gushed.
‘Nah, we go straight in, dujj, bop – it was over in a few minutes.’ He sat back, sipped at his Rigbert’s, and with a Napoleonic air sniffed, ‘I don’t think we’ll be hearing from that particular cunt again.’
‘Aren’t you amazing,’ Bel teased, tickling his elbow. Frank looked annoyed.
‘But what if he comes after you?’ it suddenly occurred to Laura, bringing a fearful hand to her mouth.
‘He wouldn’t dare,’ Frank snorted, ‘cos if he did, he knows I’d just kick his head in again, only even worse.’
Laura responded with a long-drawn-out ‘Wow…’ as if she were melting. It was quite erotic in spite of her and I experienced a brief flash of jealousy.
‘Livin with his Granny,’ he remarked contemptuously, ‘what a cunt.’
‘Charles, where on earth did you get this?’ Bel’s face scrunched up in disgust. ‘It’s absolutely repulsive.’
‘It was down in the cellar. I think it was a gift from that poisonous maiden aunt of Mother’s, the one who lives in a boathouse.’
‘Something about it tastes horribly wrong.’
‘I’d imagine that’s the “dash of wild rhubarb”. I thought it might be a change – anyway, these two’ll hardly notice.’ I nodded at our guests, who were talking intently, foreheads nearly touching. ‘Doesn’t it bother you?’
Bel laughed scornfully. ‘It would be like being jealous,’ she said, ‘of a sack of polystyrene chips.’
‘Mmm.’ I folded my hands and cast a wistful glance at the sack of polystyrene chips I had so failed to bring to life. ‘So where were you this evening? Did you help firebomb that unfortunate’s house?’
‘Charles,’ she waved her hand impatiently, ‘I wish you’d just stop exaggerating everything like that –’
‘Well he said…’
‘Oh, he’s as bad as you, he’s only trying to impress that nitwit. He makes half of it up, it’s just a silly boys’ game that sooner or later they’ll get bored with and forget about.’
‘The thing about Titanic,’ Laura said, ‘is that it has something for everyone.’
Bel withdrew her arm from Frank and, with a woeful pretence at sisterly concern, shuffled her chair over to me. ‘So,’ she whispered, ‘is she everything you hoped she’d be?’
‘Don’t, Bel, I’ve suffered enough for one evening.’
‘Has it been that bad?’ Bel asked, attempting to conceal her amusement.
‘It’s been catastrophic. I mean, at least he is colourful in a delinquent sort of way. She’s like a valium overdose.’
‘Is she what you’d call a Golem, then?’
‘She’s a Golem Team Leader,’ I said sorrowfully.
‘She does seem to’ve gotten worse since I last saw her,’ Bel mused. ‘All the same, Charles, you did bring this on yourself. I mean this is what happens when you pick your girlfriends out of school annuals.’
‘She really did photograph well…’
‘That’s exactly why – thanks, Mrs P,’ as Mrs P bussed in, stacked up the dishes in one hand and left again in one swift motion, ‘but that’s exactly why you need to get out into the real world and see people, do things –’
I made an indistinct mumble, picturing myself wandering the desert scrubs of Chile with a plastic tiara and an Improving Book –
‘Seriously, because Charles it just won’t work out, falling in love with people simply because they’re good-looking, or because they’re named after Gene Tierney movies.’
‘It’s as good a reason as any,’ I objected, suddenly feeling emotional. ‘Anyway, what if for some people the real world just doesn’t feel right, and they know it won’t ever feel right, surely it’s better for everybody if those people just stay out of the way, and, and…’
I realized I was perspiring, and that I must have been talking loudly. Frank was drawing some kind of a map for Laura, which they seemed too engrossed in to have overheard; but Bel regarded me thoughtfully, a little like she had the night we found out about the bank. My head swam. I downed the rest of my Rigbert’s, embarrassed.
‘… join a monastery?’ she finished my sentence for me.
‘Presumably there’s some kind of Michelin guide for monasteries…’
‘There’s Baker’s Corner,’ Frank pointed to the salt cellar, ‘and here’s Kill Lane, this sauce bottle, right? So Ziggy’s is here, up next to the Texaco. Last time we were there me and this bloke Droyd, right, he had fourteen yokes and I had eleven –’
‘My boyfriend was going to run that Texaco,’ Laura said sadly.
The long hand of the clock inched towards twelve again. I heard Mrs P going up to bed. By now MacGillycuddy would be installed outside with his camera; outside where I could just make out through the room’s reflec
tion on the glass the shadowy edges of trees.
‘Charles, what happened with you and that Patsy girl?’ Bel drew invisible diagrams with her finger on the tabletop. ‘You really liked her for a while, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, her…’
‘And then you stopped seeing your friends – what happened? Did something happen?’
‘A fling, that’s all that was. Why, you think I should be settling down, do you? Find an heir for my vanished fortune?’
‘Well, you can’t fling for ever, can you? I mean, Charles, it won’t be much fun here on your own…’
As she said it, I could sense a sudden discomfort. She didn’t look up, but her finger moved more quickly over the wood.
I reached for a bottle with an elephant on the label. ‘You never did tell me where you went with Frank today.’
‘If you must know,’ she said coolly, ‘we spent the afternoon looking at flats.’
‘Flats?’ The oysters performed a somersault in my stomach.
‘Yes, we’re going to move in together.’ With an aloof expression she took a sip of the new liqueur, and gagged – ‘what is this?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said faintly. ‘Possibly something to do with elephants.’ Inside my mind everything was whirling like a carousel spun out of control.
‘It’s worse than the other stuff, it’s undrinkable…’ She drank a little more, the fingers of her free hand quivering slightly. ‘Anyhow there’s no point you overreacting. It doesn’t have to be permanent, it’s not like we’re getting married or anything. I have to get out of here and I don’t have any money, so it’s the logical decision.’
‘But… but what…’ I knew there was no point saying this, but I couldn’t stop myself: ‘Bel, what can you possibly see in him?’
She darkened. ‘Look, whatever I say you’ll persist in seeing him as a monster. But he’s not. He’s a person, he’s sweet and he’s kind and he doesn’t pretend to be anything he isn’t, and furthermore he has nothing to do with this place, or with Holy Child or Trinity or with Mother or Father or any of their friends –’