by Paul Murray
‘Can’t it wait till after the show?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It can’t.’
‘Wait, how am I supposed to –’ But she was gone.
I turned to Frank. ‘You didn’t let MacGillycuddy in, did you?’
‘What, Charlie?’
‘Never mind…’
On stage, the action had restarted. Harry was in a courtroom, remonstrating with a fellow in a wig. ‘You’re out of order, sir!’ the wig was saying. ‘Never have I seen such insubordination!’
‘M?’ I called softly, making my way down the dark aisle. ‘M?’
‘Shut up,’ audience members hissed; someone tried to punch me in the leg as I went by.
This was absurd. It was far too dim to see anybody’s face. Bel must have imagined it. Just to be sure, though, I went back to the recital room to ask Mrs P if she’d seen anything unusual – and there, on a stool I was sure had been unoccupied when I left a few minutes earlier, he was: propped at the bar, drinking a glass of milk.
‘You,’ I said.
‘Ah, it’s yourself,’ he said, and he flashed me a disingenuous grin, no doubt in the hope of distracting me from whatever it was he was slipping back into that long brown envelope, which in turn went under his pullover.
‘Bel wants to see you,’ I said curtly.
‘Thought she might,’ MacGillycuddy said with a sigh. ‘Thought she might.’ He speared an olive from the dish at his elbow, and heaved himself to his feet. I shot out a hand to grab his arm. ‘Not so fast,’ I said.
MacGillycuddy looked at me with a faint air of amusement.
‘I want to know what’s happening to my sister,’ I said. He smiled gently, and then, one by one, began to prise away the fingers fastened around his wrist.
‘Tell me, damn it!’ I gasped, wincing with pain. ‘And don’t give me any of that hooey about confidentiality, MacGillycuddy, you wouldn’t know confidentiality if it sidled up to you and whispered confidentially in your ear –’
‘You know, I never could understand the appeal of all this theatre stuff,’ MacGillycuddy mused, delicately bending back my index finger, my middle finger. ‘Everybody pretending they’re somebody else, mixing things up till you can’t even remember who they started out as. Give me a nice documentary any day. A nice history programme. The facts, ma’am. Jes’ the facts.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I said through clenched teeth and eyes full of tears.
‘Ah yeah,’ he stepped away, absently rubbing his freed hand. ‘Must be a lot of history in an old place like this.’ Turning his back, he dawdled over the burnished floorboards out to the hallway. ‘You know what history does, don’t you, C?’ pausing to examine the portrait of Father. ‘It repeats itself’
‘What do you mean?’ distractedly coming away from the bar. ‘What’s happening?’
But, sucking his teeth, MacGillycuddy had passed out of sight. From the doorway Father’s painted face looked down, thin lips buckled inscrutably shut, as though reserving judgement to himself for all eternity. Somnambulantly I wheeled round and stumbled back into the theatre.
‘Where were you, Charlie?’ Frank leaned over to me when I returned. ‘You missed a deadly bit, the judge didn’t want to put in the ramp cos he said that the hospital was this like special historic building you can’t put new bits on, and Harry went on this big speech about how if someone wasn’t able to walk up the steps of the law, then the law had to come down and carry them…’
‘Oh,’ I said, looking at the figures on the stage with a gnawing in the pit of my stomach.
‘By Jove, sir!’ the judge was pounding his gavel for all he was worth. ‘You can’t just waltz in here and turn two centuries of the law upside-down! We have procedures for dealing with cases like this, formal channels –’
‘My client doesn’t give two pins about your formal channels!’ Jack Reynolds QC exclaimed, rolling up his shirtsleeves. ‘You know why? Because it’s the same bunk she’s been hearing her whole life!’ A buzz ran around the courtroom set. ‘That’s right, bunk!’ he repeated. ‘Her whole life, she’s been pushed down the “formal channels” other people have chosen for her. And she should be happy to go where she’s pushed, that’s what you’re thinking! She should be glad to have someone to push her! She’s in a wheelchair, isn’t she? She’s a cripple, isn’t she?’
This time the ripple of noise ran right out into the audience and for a moment drowned out even the judge, who thrashed his gavel, roaring, ‘Order! Order! By God, sir, if I don’t see some respect for this court, I’m going to come down and teach it to you myself!’
‘Well, it’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’ Harry bellowed back. ‘It’s what you’re all thinking, so why don’t you say it! A cripple!’ He swung his finger round to Bel, sitting pallidly in her corner looking over to the cavernous darkness of the wings, where MacGillycuddy would be waiting with that long brown envelope… ‘Because that’s what you do with people, put them in neat little boxes with neat little labels, so you don’t have to think about them any more! That’s your system! That’s your “procedure”! Well by golly, those wheels are going to turn, whether you like it or not, the wheels of Justice, the wheels of Destiny –’
‘You’ve got to give him respect, Charlie,’ Frank whispered. ‘He may be a ponce, but he’s a deadly lawyer, that Harry. Like you can see why your one Mirela fancies him.’
I didn’t reply: I was struggling with these coloured dots that were floating before my eyes, and this horrible sensation that the words the actors were speaking on stage no longer belonged to the play, but to a darker something beneath it, that stretched to take in not only us but the walls and ceilings and foundations…
And now Harry and Mirela were alone, back in Harry’s chambers. ‘No, no, no!’ she was crying. ‘We can’t tell her, we can never tell her! Last night was a mistake – a wonderful, an exhilarating mistake, but one we cannot allow to happen again!’
‘Oh, Ann,’ Harry said desperately, ‘don’t you see? It wasn’t Mary that I loved, but her court case. The chance to strike a blow for our differently-abled friends, the opportunity to further the cause of freedom – that’s what I fell in love with. But my love for you is for you alone – not just for your beauty, and your promising career as a model, but because you’re real – because of your soul and heart, the soul and heart that Mary still has to find within herself –’
‘What’s wrong, Charlie?’ Frank whispered. ‘Do you need to go to the jacks?’
‘But she loves you,’ Mirela said tearfully, gripping on to his lapels.
‘No,’ Harry said. ‘Mary never learned to love, curled up in the shell of that wheelchair. But these last few weeks, the court case, have changed her. We have led her up the ramp of self-knowledge; perhaps this will be what pushes her over the brink, into redemption.’ He reached out a hand and ran it down her hair; she laid her teary cheek against his cravat. I leapt from my seat and hurtled out the door.
MacGillycuddy sat at the base of the maids’ stairs, shaping his toothpick into some sort of animal; I was past him before he had a chance to speak.
The dressing room was empty and the floor covered from end to end with photographs: glossy black-and-white shots, blown up to about the size of a sheet of typing paper; quite professional looking. I picked one up. It was my room – you could see the old poster that Harry had left up, Jimmy Stewart kissing Donna Reed in It’s A Wonderful Life; the wee hours of the morning, according to the digitized numbers in the bottom right-hand corner. Blurred by motion and the scant light, the lustrous black hair caught mid-swing, the body on the bed appeared no more substantial than smoke: a genie billowing from the lamp, curling up to the lucky chump that freed her… I let it slip back down to join the others. There must have been thirty or forty of them. Strewn across the floor like that, they resembled a kind of mosaic, the limbs interlocking anonymously towards some larger, indeterminate meaning; with here and there a motif from the waistcoat, hung on
a chair in the background, or the prosthesis, gleaming dully like a bad joke. Little was left to the imagination: they’d put on quite a show, between themselves and MacGillycuddy.
Sounds of distress emanated from the little water closet in the corner. I picked my way over and knocked on the door. ‘Bel?’
There was a retching noise, quickly covered by the flush of the toilet. ‘Go away,’ the small voice came back.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Of course I’m not all right,’ the voice said.
‘Well – are you coming out?’
She took a moment to consider this. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m never coming out.’
More choking noises ensued. I went back to the long counter, the bare bulbs blazing for no one, and stared into the mirror at my own unreadable visage. Then I turned one of the deckchairs round and sat down on it. A few moments later, Mother appeared at the door in her hospital shift. ‘Where’s your sister?’ she demanded.
I gestured lethargically at the locked door. Mother marched over to it without appearing to notice the photographs under her feet. She rapped once and, in a voice that could have cut metal, ordered Bel to come out. There was only a short delay; then the key turned in the lock and Bel emerged, shamefaced and grubby with tears.
‘What were you thinking?’ Mother grabbed her by the arm and tugged her towards the door. ‘You’re on in the next scene, come on!’
But she resisted, pulling her arm free and shying back to the corner.
‘What,’ Mother said very quietly.
Bel tried to speak, but it just came out as nonsense: she turned crimson and hung her head.
‘Bel,’ Mother said, ‘whatever issues you may have, they can wait till afterwards. I will not allow you to ruin this night. I will not allow it, do you understand?’
‘But didn’t you see?’ Bel managed now, pointing to the floor. ‘Didn’t you see?’
‘What I see,’ Mother said, raising her voice, ‘is a vain, troubled girl letting a temper tantrum jeopardize everything we have all worked so hard to achieve –’
‘A temper tantrum?’ Two high pink spots appeared in Bel’s cheeks.
‘That’s exactly what it is,’ Mother sailed on. ‘It may offend your principles, but what we have been offered here tonight is a lifeline – not only for the company, but for this house, this family, to pick itself up and dust itself off, to make Amaurot known and important again, as your father would have wanted –’
‘This family,’ Bel broke in, ‘What family? Why do you go on even pretending to care about these things, when everybody knows all you want is to get back on the society pages, so people will invite you to gally openings again –’
‘Christabel,’ Mother said in a measured, sibilant voice, ‘I understand that you are having problems. But there are ways we can address them. There are doctors –’
‘ – and you’ll turn a blind eye to everything that’s going on as long as you get it, and that’s what Father would have wanted, isn’t it?’
Mother slapped her across the face in a single, precise motion.
‘I say!’ I cried, springing out of the deckchair.
Mother’s livid countenance was enough to stop me in my tracks; she looked like something that had just floated up out of a tomb. ‘The play,’ I pleaded, back-pedalling slightly. ‘We have to finish the play, don’t we?’
This seemed to bring her to her senses. She cleared her throat and smoothed down her shift. She turned once more to Bel – who was staring into space with an expression not so much of shock as of revelation – and said in a tone cool and rational as water: ‘Charles is right. We can continue this discussion later. Are we agreed?’
Bel, whose cheek still bore the crimson imprint of her hand, nodded mutely.
‘Good,’ Mother said, straightening up. ‘Now, you are on in the next scene. Charles, you will follow us, please.’
She led Bel by the elbow over the sea of glossy black-and-white flesh and out the door. MacGillycuddy was still sitting where we had left him, at the foot of the maids’ stairs: the two women passed him without a word and went on in the direction of the wings. But I stopped and looked at him. Before I had a chance to say anything, however, he launched into a long self-exculpatory speech to the effect that he was merely a tool of the client, and that he just did what they told him to, and that all he offered was a little peace of mind –
‘Peace of mind? You call selling pornographic photos to a wretched, addled girl peace of mind?’
‘This is the way she wanted to do it,’ MacGillycuddy said querulously. ‘This was her idea, not mine. She asks me to do a little job for her, ring up a few of that muppet’s old girlfriends, find out what makes him tick – I do it. Everybody’s happy. She comes back to me two weeks later, she’s not sure, she thinks he’s banging the refugee, she’s distraught, she can’t sleep – what am I supposed to do? I’m in a position to deliver the facts. You’re saying I should have turned her away?’
Suddenly I was too exhausted even to be properly angry at him. I closed my eyes and held my head. ‘Get out of here, MacGillycuddy.’
‘It’s not my fault if she’s like you,’ he said, raising his hands defensively, ‘with a head like fuckin cement. I just gave her the facts. There’s no right or wrong about a fact. I can’t be held responsible if –’
I feinted at him: he sprang sideways, like a cat from a hurled stone, and then slunk away towards the back door. ‘And don’t come back!’ I called after him; then joined the others crowded anxiously around the wings.
The lawyer and the beautiful model were back in the kitchen. They had decided to come clean about their affair; now they were waiting for Bel to return from visiting Mother and the new ramp so that they could tell her. In the script this leads Bel to an epiphany, wherein she realizes what a horrible person she’s been and in a spirit of setting things to rights decides to undergo the revolutionary but potentially fatal new procedure – which goes tragically awry, killing her and leaving Harry and Mirela free to get married. But of Bel there was no sign: Mirela had given her cue three times now, and the two of them were beginning to look a little edgy.
‘I hope nothing’s happened to her,’ she said from the table, looking to the crevasse on the far side of the stage.
‘Who knows?’ Harry improvised. ‘Possibly the thought of taking her destiny into her own hands, instead of moving her to re-evaluate her role in society, will cause her to shrink back into moral cowardice.’ He lifted a pedagogical finger. ‘In which case, Ann, it will be up to you and me to convince her –’
But no convincing was necessary, because at that moment Bel walked out on to the stage.
The audience gasped.
‘Ah, Mary,’ Harry stammered. ‘Where’s your wheelchair?’
Without replying, Bel crossed the floor to come in behind Mirela, who sat stock-still, staring at the table. Bending down, she whispered, quite audibly, in her ear: ‘Cuckoo.’
One or two of the spectators laughed nervously. Beside me, Mother murmured something I could not make out. Bel rounded the table and came upstage to where Harry was standing with his shoulders raised slightly, as if girding himself for a blow; and for a long tense moment, everything around them seemed to fade into darkness. She gazed at him with the same dissecting gaze I had been subjected to on a couple of occasions. ‘Golem,’ she said; then she turned and walked gracefully offstage, breezing right by us in the wings as if we weren’t there.
The audience rustled uncomfortably. Mirela fell back limp in her chair. For a moment the house, the world, seemed to list in utter disarray. Then Harry snapped back to life. With an opportunism one could not help but admire, he went to Mirela, drew her to her feet, and said: ‘Don’t you see what’s happened? We’ve saved her. Oh darling – we’ve saved her.’ And with that, he pulled her to him and kissed her.
‘The curtain,’ Mother gurgled in my ear. ‘The curtain, for the love of God –’
I bounced over
to the panel, where the tubby stage manager stood dumbstruck, and pulled a likely looking lever. The curtain fell to absolute silence.
‘We’re ruined!’ Mother wailed. The cast and crew gathered wretchedly around, looking to one another in bewilderment. One of the actors proposed quite earnestly that we take advantage of the curtain to flee and begin a better life elsewhere; this was vociferously seconded by the others, but before I could suggest Chile as having much to recommend it, a great noise rose up from the other side. It was huge and amorphous – like an avalanche, I thought, or an entire forest falling down – and then the whoops and hurrahs began, and the curtain was winched back up for us to be confronted by a standing ovation.
A triumph, the reviews would say next day: Harry Little’s amiable melodrama lulling the audience into a false sense of security, then delivering from nowhere a knockout punch, when the growing love between her sister (a luminescent Mirela Pribicevic) and the dashing young lawyer (Little) prompts wheelchair-bound Mary (sympathetically played by Belle Hithloday) to literally find her feet and take her first faltering steps into solitary but redemptive freedom. What seems at first a slight though generous work examining the difficulties of the mobility-impaired in getting in and out of buildings, reveals itself in a shocking and conflicted resolution almost Lacanian in its prematurity – the latter half of the play is only seventeen minutes long – to be an explosive commentary on the nature of freedom and the compromised but still cathartic power of love and also the theatre in the modern world – etc, etc.
‘Ironic, isn’t it,’ I said. ‘I mean, it looks like your little épater les bourgeois may actually have saved the day.’
‘It hadn’t escaped me,’ she said dully, as the doctor-cum-joyrider conga’d by with a drink with a little umbrella in it. Around us the party was in full swing: Bel was watching it from between her knees, her expression with every passing second becoming more remote, like a Cinderella who has outstayed her time to see not only her carriage change back to a pumpkin, but Prince Charming’s suitcase fall open and a whole horde of glass slippers spill across the floor… I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my thighs, and massaged my bandaged scalp. ‘Damn it, Bel – what on earth were you thinking?’