An Evening of Long Goodbyes

by Paul Murray

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘I thought business was booming.’

  ‘It’s not booming that much,’ he said. ‘And there’s rent to pay, and food and stuff for you lads…’

  ‘All right, all right,’ I snapped. Was it that he enjoyed seeing me brought low? Was that it? I wiped my brow with the back of my hand.

  ‘You could always get a job, Charlie. I’ve a mate’s got a warehouse, if you want I could give him a call. He’s a good bloke, and the money’s –’

  ‘A job, oh yes,’ I ejaculated. ‘Why don’t I just get a job, and sell off my soul to the highest bidder, and then everybody’s happy. If you ask me it’s a damned poor reflection on so-called society that in this day and age the only way a man can survive is to sacrifice his ideals and his dreams and his whole identity –’

  ‘That’s it,’ Frank agreed. ‘As me oul lad used to say, there’s nothin comes easy in this life…’

  ‘Wait a second,’ suddenly something in the newspaper on the table caught my eye. ‘Look at this –’ I folded the page over and raised it up. ‘“Sick of the employment rat race? Still waiting for your slice of the pie?”’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Here, see? With the picture of the pie, and the rat looking sad?’

  ‘Oh right.’

  ‘“Tired of watching your friends get ahead while you’re stuck doing the same old thing? Dublin is booming, and there’s enough to go around for everybody. If you want your slice of the pie, contact Sirius Recruitment, Ireland’s leading premium specialist in IT, multimedia and e-business solutions NOW. Why waste any more time? Call now and JOIN THE PARTY!”’ I laid the paper back down with an air of vindication. ‘Well, there it is, old man. There’s your answer. Give my regards to Broadway, if you get a chance.’

  ‘Eh, isn’t that all computer stuff though, Charlie?’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Like, IT and multimedia and that.’

  ‘Well, what if it is? I’m not an idiot, am I? I went to college, I can learn how to multimedia-ize and so forth. Anyway, that’s just industry jargon. All it means is that they want people with a can-do spirit, such as myself. I’m going to go and see them.’

  ‘Yeah, and I s’pose if it doesn’t pan out I can always ring me mate…’

  ‘Yes, well, thanks, but much as I’d like to be stuck in some dingy old rat-race of a warehouse while, you know, my friends get ahead and Bel swans around in her fancy theatrical space,’ reaching into the fridge for a can, ‘I have to start thinking of myself. I’m not spending the best years of my life sleeping on people’s floors.’

  ‘You need your own place all right,’ Frank agreed.

  ‘Well of course I’d like to move into my old place,’ I plunked the can emphatically on the table. ‘Obviously in an ideal world there wouldn’t be any question about it. But this preposterous theatre is what Bel wanted and I can’t be expected to put my life on hold just in case it all goes wrong. I have to put the house behind me and, you know, claim my slice of the pie. I’m my own man now. Give my regards to Broadway.’

  ‘Yeah, you said that already Charlie.’

  ‘Well, I mean it.’

  8

  Trinity College, where I’d crossed swords briefly with higher education, was located right at the heart of Dublin, and as most of my time there had been spent bunking off lectures to play croquet with Hoyland, or flaneuring with him about the streets, I had come to know the city quite well. It was a comfortable, scuffed sort of a place, rather like an old shoe, consisting for the most part of greasy spoons, third-rate department stores and dingy pubs patronized by scrofulous old men. The talk among my peers then had been of where one would emigrate to after one had graduated – Dublin in those days wasn’t the type of place one contemplated sticking around in, not if one had any kind of pep or ambition. I say ‘in those days’, though it was only a handful of years ago. It was evident as soon as I stepped off the bus that everything had changed.

  Frank was right: everywhere you looked something was being dug up or remodelled or demolished. The dilapidated shops and hostelries were gone, and in their place stood extravagant cafés, bijou stores full of minimalist chrome furniture, couturiers announcing the very latest fashions from Paris and London. The air crackled with money and potential. Help Wanted signs hung in every window; the streets teemed with people and beeping cars. It was like being backstage at a musical – everyone hurrying to get to their positions, scenery being carted on and off – or one of those old Ealing comedies where a ship is wrecked and its cargo of whiskey washes up on the shore of some wee Scottish island, except here instead of whiskey the crates were full of Italian suits and mobile phones, and instead of getting drunk the natives were running up and down trying on pants and ringing each other up.

  The sky had brightened, tipping impasto clouds white-gold; the slanting October sun gave everything a new-minted look. As I stood on O’Connell Bridge consulting my street-map, with the river flowing beneath me, heterogeneous lights and sounds all around, jostled by umbrellas, schoolbags, newspapers, personal organizers, it all felt quite miraculous; and now someone bumped me, and the map fell out of my hands, and I let myself be carried off by the crowd. We surged up College Green, joined at every interstice by further tributaries of people, and it would have been easy to convince oneself that here was not just a random collection of bodies coincidentally going in the same direction, but a mass, a movement, on its way to doing something profound. I was so taken by the whole thing that I nearly walked right past Vuk, who was slouched against some railings in a line of nondescript foreigners. He hailed me and I stopped and said hello and asked what he was doing. ‘Waiting,’ Vuk said – I say Vuk, though I couldn’t swear that it wasn’t actually Zoran – ‘for papers.’

  ‘Really?’ There were about a million people ahead of him and the queue didn’t seem to be moving at all. I told him that the newsagent’s up the road wasn’t half so busy, if he wanted to go there instead, but he didn’t appear to understand me. Maybe it reminded him of home and the bread lines and so forth. I should have asked after Mirela, but I didn’t want to delay, and if she was kissing that Harry I preferred not to know about it; I quickly made my excuses and continued on my way to Merrion Square.

  Sirius Recruitment was housed in a graceful grey building with tinted glass doors, in which I conducted a quick inspection of myself before going inside. It had to be said that my attire was not ideal for the occasion – the dinner jacket slightly foxed, the waistcoat a trifle gaudy. However, the rest of my suits having been redistributed among the patrons of the Coachman, I didn’t have an alternative; and secretly I thought it gave me a rather dashing, The Mummy Takes Manhattan sort of a look, even if Frank had said I looked more like Frankenstein’s butler, and Droyd had called me a shirtlifter. But they would soon see that what I lacked in style was more than made up for in can-do spirit.

  I entered a spacious chamber filled with cool, silvery light. The distant sound of twinkling chimes permeated the air, and fresh-cut lilacs adorned the reception desk. One wall of the chamber was covered with photographs, showing the Sirius Recruitment team with satisfied customers, or enjoying themselves after a hard day’s work. Everyone was smiling and hugging each other. After the horrors of my recent life, all the serenity and welcome rather took me aback. In fact, for a moment I simply stood and gaped, like the man who has stumbled on the back door to Heaven; and then a voice addressed me, a voice of indescribable musicality.

  ‘Hello,’ it said.

  I looked round. There behind the desk sat a beautiful receptionist. ‘H-hello,’ I stammered back. She was exquisite, tawny and elfin, wearing a telephone headset so tiny and golden it looked positively genteel.

  ‘You look lost,’ she said playfully.

  ‘No,’ I began, then stopped – realizing in that moment, for the first time since the Folly exploded, that lost was what I undeniably was. ‘That is, yes,’ I said. ‘What I mean is, I’m looking for
a job.’

  ‘Then you’re in the right place to start,’ she laughed. ‘Fill in this form and Gemma will see you shortly. She’s the boss,’ she added. ‘But don’t worry, she’s an absolute sweetheart.’

  I took a seat on a long plush couch and set to work. The form didn’t present me with much difficulty, there being several pages (Previous Experience; Languages; Other Skills and Abilities; Long-term Plans and Ambitions) that I was able to skip right over. I was soon finished and could turn my attention back to the photographs, mentally inserting myself beside the beautiful receptionist at the staff outing to the Go-Kart track, covering her with Silly String at somebody’s thirtieth birthday party…

  ‘Charles?’

  I snapped awake. A woman was standing at the end of the curving reception – a tall, regal woman with fine crow’s-feet. ‘Gemma!’ I bounded up to take her hand.

  ‘Follow me to my cubicle,’ she laughed.

  We threaded through a kind of open-plan maze of potted plants, water coolers and cappuccino machines. Everywhere workers talked on the phone or tapped at their computers with an air of quiet satisfaction. Gemma’s cubicle was at the back, by a long window giving on to a well-manicured Victorian spice garden.

  ‘First of all, Charles,’ she said, motioning me to sit, ‘I want to thank you for coming in to see me today.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said. Her cubicle walls were crowded with more pictures: the Sirius gang at a rodeo, on top of the Empire State Building, at a performance of Cats.

  ‘Before we start talking about you,’ Gemma said, ‘I’d like to tell you a little bit about our agency, and hopefully convince you that you made the right decision coming here.’ She didn’t seem at all perturbed by my bandages, I noticed; it was as if she were able to see past them, to the man underneath. ‘Why Sirius? Well, as we both know, Ireland is experiencing growth like never before in its history. In fact our economy is the envy of all of Europe.’

  Unless she actually liked the bandages, it struck me suddenly, that wouldn’t be beyond the bounds of possibility –

  ‘Where has this growth come from? The answer is simple: you.’

  ‘Me?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘You, and other young graduates like you. You see, it’s Ireland’s highly educated, highly motivated young workforce that’s made it such an attractive prospect for foreign companies seeking to invest. The information-technology revolution is making things happen that a couple of years ago seemed like science fiction, and here in Ireland we’ve been able to put ourselves at the forefront of that cutting-edge technology. Charles, would you like a mochaccino?’

  ‘Yes, please, Gemma.’

  ‘At Sirius,’ she continued, stepping over to a gleaming chrome machine in the corner, ‘we’re aware that our employees – our partners, we like to call them – are among the very best in the world. That’s why when Bryan and I founded this company, back in the mid-nineties –’ she gestured back to a photograph of Bryan sitting on the bonnet of a gold Saab with his arm curled around Gemma, outside the graceful grey building – ‘we were determined that we weren’t going to be one of those stodgy places that sends its temps off to Timbuktu for the day to lick envelopes.’ Expertly she worked the machine’s levers and knobs, releasing bursts of steam into the milk. ‘We think of our employees not as automatons to be ordered about, but as creative, talented individuals with flair.’ She handed me a cup and sat down opposite me. ‘We have all kinds of clients. As a Sirius partner, you could find yourself designing the website for an indigenous start-up, or working on e-solutions for the Irish branch of a huge multinational. You could be creating a 3-d simulator for an oil-drilling concern – or customizing the software for a top recruitment agency!’

  We both laughed, although I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. ‘The one thing I can promise you is that you will never be bored here, Charles. We want you to develop your talents to the fullest – because that’s when you make us look good, and we all make more money!’

  We laughed again. ‘But seriously,’ she uncrossed her legs and sat forward, ‘what I’m saying is that without you there is no Sirius Recruitment. So, although I’m the head of the company, I like to say that I’m working for you.’ Gemma sipped her mochaccino and licked away the foam. I pictured myself having an affair with her, Bryan weeping desolately in his Saab. ‘Some people might think that that’s no way to run a business. They might call us naïve, or utopian. But we say to them, the future is utopian. And we’re in the business of making the future. The changes we see around us in the city now – the new cars, the new hotels, the restaurants and sushi bars – owe their existence to the technology revolution – to people like you and me. Soon, we predict that everyone will be doing things our way.’

  She tossed back her sleek dark hair and folded her hands. ‘But that’s enough self-promotion. Tell me, Charles, what was it that attracted you to us?’

  ‘Hmm? Sorry?’

  ‘Why did you choose Sirius Recruitment?’

  ‘Oh…’ I had been busy wondering what I would do when the beautiful receptionist found out about Gemma and me; it was a hell of a bind. ‘Well, mainly because of the things you said in your ad. The whole rat-race, you know, I was getting pretty fed up of it.’

  She nodded encouragingly, motioning me to continue.

  ‘Well, I mean, the fact is…’ I began. ‘The fact is…’

  The fact was, I wasn’t sure how much I should tell her; but then I looked into those cool grey eyes and everything just came spilling out: Mrs P’s stowaways, Bel’s theatre group, Mother giving away my room, Boyd and the air hostesses, moving into Frank’s. ‘But I mean Frank is one thing,’ I told her. ‘This fellow Droyd is another matter entirely. Yesterday, for example, he dried his washing in the oven even when I quite bluntly asked him not to. Now the whole apartment smells like socks. It’s utterly intolerable. If I don’t find somewhere of my own I don’t know what I’ll do. I mean I’m already getting hives. So you see it really is important that I get my slice of the pie right away.’

  Gemma considered this in silence. Then she said slowly, ‘Charles, those are all good reasons. Because you can’t separate your work from your life, can you? How can you be expected to do justice to your individual talent and flair if you’re sleeping on somebody’s floor?’

  ‘This is what I ask myself,’ I said.

  ‘Okay,’ Gemma said. ‘Well, the important thing is not to panic. We have literally thousands of companies begging us for bright young computer-literate people like you. It’s simply a matter of matching your history with the business profile that best suits you. So let’s not waste any more time, and we’ll…’ She flicked open the application form then flicked it back again with a concerned expression. ‘Charles, you did know that there were actually four pages to this booklet, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Because I’m noticing that a lot of the sections have been left blank here.’

  ‘I didn’t need to bother with most of it,’ I explained.

  ‘Oh,’ Gemma said. ‘Okay. Really there’s no reason why you should have to fill out some boring form, is there, we can just… okay, so it says here that in college your primary degree was in Theology.’ She looked up. ‘That must have been fascinating!’

  ‘Yes,’ I said vaguely. ‘Actually, it was Father’s idea, you see it was the only course in Trinity I was able to get into, so the plan was to take it until Junior Soph and then hopefully transfer into Law.’

  ‘Law, ah, I see. And then…?’

  ‘Well, then Father died.’

  ‘Oh…’ Gemma shrank back minutely. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry…’

  ‘It’s perfectly all right,’ I assured her. ‘But that put paid to Law for the time being.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gemma nodded gravely, ‘so instead you…’

  ‘I left college at that point,’ I said. ‘I felt I needed time to think.’

  ‘Okay, good, and then you…?�
��

  ‘Actually, that takes us right up to the present day,’ I told her.

  ‘Oh,’ Gemma said. ‘Oh.’ She lowered her eyes, as if to scrutinize the blank pages of the application form. ‘So since then you’ve been… thinking?’

  ‘Oh, you know, knocking about, doing this and that.’ I sipped thoughtfully at my mochaccino. ‘Funny how the time just sort of goes, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ Gemma agreed heavily, making a steeple of her fingers and pressing it to either side of her nose. ‘Obviously what I’m wondering here, Charles, is how all this ties up to your career in information technology.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said simply, stroking my chin.

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me just exactly what it is that interests you in this field…?’

  I thought I detected a hint of something in her voice. I couldn’t say what it was, exactly, but I began to have the inexplicable feeling that I had dropped the ball in some important respect. Suddenly I found myself thinking of the bank manager and how I’d shaken his faith in the system with my baccarat losses and wayward mortgage; I didn’t want to do the same thing to Gemma.

  ‘Well,’ I said slowly, ‘the fact is that information technology is indispensable these days. It’s inescapable. Because I mean everyone needs information, don’t they, or else, you know, how would we know anything? So now everywhere you go there’s, there’s information.’ I glanced furtively at Gemma. She was chewing the end of a ballpoint pen; I couldn’t tell if this was a good or a bad sign. ‘And technology,’ I went on, ‘much the same story, all over the place, making things faster and… and…’ for a moment I faltered, but then I had a burst of inspiration – ‘and when you think about it, really what better way to find out your information, than with technology? And vice-versa, what better way to learn about technology, than with, you know, information?’

  ‘Good,’ Gemma said opaquely when I’d finished. ‘Good.’ She picked up the application form again. ‘Charles, for my own records there’s something I just need to make sure of, so if you wouldn’t mind, what I’m going to do is read out this list of computer languages and applications, and if you’ve worked with them or are familiar with them or have encountered them before in any way at all I want you to say “Yes”, okay?’