An Evening of Long Goodbyes

14

THERE’S BOSNIANS IN MY ATTIC!

A Tragedy in Three Acts

by Charles Hythloday

SETTING: A crumbling chateau on the banks of the Marne.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

COUNT FREDERICK A Count, the young master of the house. Battling with the past and with the dog-eat-dog world of the French wine industry to restore his Father’s vineyard to its former glory.

BABS His sister, a beautiful if judgemental would-be actress.

LOPAKHIN A Machiavellian bank manager/theatre impresario, who is staying at the chateau but secretly plotting to destroy it and build a railway through it and steal Babs away from Frederick.

[Note. Why has Frederick let Lopakhin stay in the house in the first place?]

MAM’ SELLE A comically inept French maid

HORST AND WERNER Some Bosnians

INSPECTOR DICK ROBINSON, SCOTLAND YARD

ACT ONE SCENE ONE

(The drawing room. COUNT FREDERICK is gazing pensively out the window when BABS bursts in in a state of agitation, followed insidiously by LOPAKHIN.)

BABS (agitatedly): Frederick! Oh Frederick! The peasants are revolting!

FREDERICK: I know! Don’t they ever wash?

(pause for laughter)

BABS: How can you joke at a time like this? The harvest is next week! How are we supposed to reap it with no peasants?

FREDERICK: (grimly): I know. Just when it seemed that the vineyard was finally getting back on its feet. (Turns pensively.) I can’ t understand it. They’re normally such a jolly bunch. It’s as if someone had been stirring them up by circulating false data about the EU’s new Agricultural Policy. But who would do such a thing?

LOPAKHIN: Why don’t you just give up, Frederick? That’s what I don’t understand about you. You’re an intelligent man. Why do you persist in trying to revive this old dump? When you could have a railway station right here where we’re standing, or a multiplex cinema.

FREDERICK (coldly): There’s another thing you don’t understand, Lopakhin, and that’s a thing called tradition. My father worked this vineyard, and his father before him, and his father before him. It’s not about money. It’s about producing a half-decent bottle of Burgundy. It’s about giving employment to generations of local peasants, although frankly they don’t deserve it. We will never sell this chateau! They will have to wrest it from our very hands!

BABS (sadly): That reminds me. The bank manager called again this morning. He wants to speak to you urgently. And Frederick, things keep going missing around the house! And those noises — those inhuman noises! (she weeps)

FREDERICK (putting his arms protectively around her): Don’t worry, Babs. No one’s going to harm you. (Defiantly.) And inhuman or otherwise, no one’s going to drive us out of this chateau, not if Scotland Yard has anything to say about it!

LOPAKHIN: Scotland Yard? (exits hastily)

FREDERICK: There’s something I don’t trust about that fellow. Sometimes I wonder if he really is the young Belgian student backpacking his way around Europe that he claims to be. I mean for one thing he doesn’ t have a backpack. And he’ s been here for months. It’ ll take him another forty years to get round Europe at this rate.

BABS (laughing): Oh, Frederick, don’t be silly! He’s a dear, an absolute dear! He’s terribly clever, and he knows ever so much about theatre. (bashfully) He wants to put on a production of Hamlet in the village. He thinks I would make a perfect Ophelia.

FREDERICK: Babs, darling, you know the doctors forbid you from acting. Your health’s far too fragile for that. Anyway, I think he’s leading you up the garden path. Who’s going to go to a theatre production in the village? The damn peasants?

BABS (wounded): Why must you always undermine me?

FREDERICK (taking her hand): Oh, my sweet Babs, I’m trying to protect you. You’re such a naif. Anyway, I need you here with me. I couldn’t possibly run the chateau on my own.

BABS: Sometimes I despise this chateau.

FREDERICK (simply): It is our destiny. (He goes and stands meditatively under the large portrait of their father hanging over the fireplace.) Hamlet, eh? ’To be or not to be.’ It really is the question, when you think about it.

(There is a thunderous noise overhead. BABS rushes to FREDERICK’s side)

BABS: Oh Frederick! I’m so frightened!

FREDERICK (pulling a fencing sword down from the wall): Don’t worry, Babs, I’m here!

(The door bursts open and INSPECTOR DICK ROBINSON, SCOTLAND YARD comes in, with HORST and WERNER caught under either arm. LOPAKHIN slouches in after them, looking disgruntled.)

INSPECTOR DICK ROBINSON: Well, we’ve solved the mystery of the noises and the missing egg-beater. Bosnians, hiding out in your attic.

FREDERICK: Great Scott!

INSPECTOR: It’s not uncommon, sir. Too lazy and undisciplined to get their own house in order, these parasites come over to proper countries to eke out a living — or in this case, seemingly, to drive good honest aristocrats out of their chateaus.

BABS (covering her eyes): Oh, they’re hideous! I can’t bear to look at them!

INSPECTOR: Don’t worry, Ma’am. Where these miscreants are going, no one will be troubled by them for a long, long time.

HORST (sneering): Up yours, copper.

INSPECTOR: Why, you impudent — (makes to strike him)

FREDERICK: Stop!

(Everyone turns to FREDERICK in surprise)

FREDERICK: Maybe they are lazy and undisciplined. But society is to blame too. These men deserve a second chance. I want to offer them a job working on my vineyard.

INSPECTOR: These are dangerous men, Your Excellency…

FREDERICK: Maybe so. But it’s what Father would have wanted. It’s what this vineyard means. (To the BOSNIANS) What do you say, lads? It’s tough, backbreaking work and you won’t get rich from it. But are you game?

(The BOSNIANS disengage themselves from INSPECTOR ROBINSON and cross the floor to kneel at FREDERICK’s feet.)

BOSNIANS: My liege.

FREDERICK (laughing): Arise, arise! We’re not stuffy aroundhere. Well! It looks likewe’ll have a harvest after all!

LOPAKHIN (to himself): Gah!

BABS: Oh, how wonderful!

(The door bursts open. It is MAM’ SELLE, the comical French maid.)

MAM’ SELLE (dramatically): Your Excellency, I have kicked the dog.

INSPECTOR (startled): I beg your pardon?

BABS (laughing): Don’t worry, Inspector! She means she has cooked the duck!

FREDERICK: Oh Mam’ selle — you are a duffer!

(They all laugh and leave together, except LOPAKHIN, who remains in the room.)

LOPAKHIN: Well, ‘Your Excellency’, it looks like your old-fashioned brand of idealism has won the battle. But I know your Achilles’ heel now — your fragile sister, Babs… and I won’t rest until I have her, and your precious vineyard is nothing but rubble…

I threw myself into my work. What else could I do? I must have called the house a hundred times; Bel wouldn’t even come to the phone. Depending on whom I talked to, she had just stepped out, or wasn’t feeling well, or was in the bath; she seemed to be perpetually in the bath these days. Beyond that — whether she had swallowed her pride and returned to playing Ramp, repeating her small act of rebellion nightly in front of an audience, or whether she was cloistered away in her own misery, shunned by the others — I had no idea. ‘She left her bag here,’ I’d say. ‘Tell her to call me if she wants it dropped over.’ They’d promise to pass on the message, and that would be all I could do until the next day, when the process would be repeated.

As for Mirela, whenever she answered the phone I hung up straight away; even though a part of me burned to talk with her, plead with her, in the same way that murderers are said to feel compelled to revisit the scene of the crime. I couldn’t go out to the house myself for fear of running into her; so, as November stretched on towards Christmas, and the streets filled up with fairy lights and shifty-looking men selling spruces and pines from the backs of flatbed trucks, I buried my guilty conscience in work, and I tried not to think about anything else.

Fortunately there was plenty of work to occupy me. November-December is the busiest time of the year for those of us in the Yule Log business, and Processing Zone B was pushed to the limit. Everything seemed to be operating at double speed. Cigarette breaks were abandoned for the month, and we often worked overtime so that we could meet our quotas: Edvin, Bobo, Pavel, Arvids, Dzintars and me bent silently conscientiously over our machines, while the trucks waited rumbling at the loading bay, and Mr Appleseed patrolled the tiles with his pointer held behind his back. By now I had picked up a smattering of Latvian and mastered the vagaries of the sugar-frosting machine to become an exemplary Bread Straightener; I can point to my own modest part in Processing Zone B’s late rally to overtake C-shift and claim the Productivity Hamper. Not only that, but I used my position of influence and good command of spoken English to raise staff grievances and try to improve conditions for the workers. Over lunch, while Mr Appleseed was ranting about how he’d never have believed there could possibly be a crowd of wasters worse than the Latvians until he’d met these new Estonian bastards, I would delicately and imperceptibly steer the conversation around to the showers.

‘What about the showers, Fuckface?’

‘Well, there aren’t any…’

And Mr Appleseed, to give him his due, listened, and promised to bring it up at the next management briefing. Meanwhile, I agitated among the workers themselves, disseminating ideas I had heard the builders talk about back in the house. It wasn’t always easy. Most of the time they would just look at me as if I’d proposed we all relocate to the moon. ‘Don’t you want a job?’ they would say. ‘Do you want them to send us all home?’

‘Of course not,’ I’d say. ‘I’m just saying we need to organize ourselves to make sure, you know, we don’t get sold down the river. To get a fair shake of the stick.’

‘What river?’ they’d say. ‘What stick?’

But I persisted; and at times when it seemed especially hopeless I would tell myself I was doing it for Bel, offering it up to her like a kind of prayer, as if somehow it would reach her and steal over her and she would without quite knowing why stop despising me and want to talk to me again.

In the evenings I laboured over my play. Practically speaking it was a lost cause, given the new regime at the theatre; furthermore, ever since the Bosnians had been discovered, my villain Lopakhin had been upping the ante. Currently he was dancing such rings around Frederick that I was beginning to wonder if the latter was really up to the job. Still I pressed on, thinking that if I could just say what I wanted to say, here on a blank piece of paper, a miraculous change would be effected and the universe would be restored.

And then one night, I suppose about two weeks or three after that wretched tryst, the telephone rang. Somehow I knew it was for me: I threw down my pen and dashed into the living room. But it was only Mother, calling to harangue me for not RSVPing to some dinner invitation she’d sent me. It was a stormy night outside and the connection was bad: the line woofed and hissed with interference and I had trouble making out what she was saying.

‘Which dinner?’ I said.

‘The dinner, Charles, for goodness’ sake, the Telsinor dinner, the invitations were sent out over a week ago.’

‘Well I didn’t get one,’ I said, riffling through the correspondence sitting in the fruit bowl: bills, bills, final demand…

‘That really is most galling, because I entrusted them a week ago at least to that —’ Here a roar of wind enveloped the building and the connection was submerged in whistles and pops — ‘… see to it personally that they were delivered right away.’

‘What?’ I said, putting a finger in my ear. ‘Where are you calling from? You sound like you’re in the middle of a hurricane.’

‘I’m on my mobile,’ she said. ‘It’s new. I said I gave them to that friend of yours to deliver, I don’t see why you shouldn’t have got yours…’

‘What friend?’

‘Oh, that fellow. The postman, Macavity the Mystery Cat, or whatever his name is.’

I experienced a familiar sinking feeling. ‘He’s no friend of mine,’ I said.

‘That is infuriating,’ Mother said again. ‘I shall have to look into it. Well, anyway, it’s Thursday night at eight sharp, black tie — I mean black tie, Charles, it is a formal occasion, so none of your comedy dicky bows, if you please —’

‘But what is it?’ I broke in. ‘You still haven’t told me what it —’

‘Telsinor,’ her voice crackling down the line like an ancient gramophone recording. ‘I’ve said it three or four times, it’s to officially launch the partnership with the Centre. Nothing overly grand, a dozen or so guests. However, Mr O’Boyle has very kindly agreed to attend in person, so it will be an opportunity for us to thank him for all his generosity.’

‘Oh,’ I said unenthusiastically. I didn’t see what point there was dragging me along, and I was about to say as much when Mother beat me to it. ‘I should add, Charles, that I had misgivings about inviting you. Grave misgivings, in fact. I had hoped, naively perhaps, that your stint at the Civil Service might teach you a thing or two about responsibility and pulling one’s weight. But to judge by the incidents at the premiere that has not been the case.’

‘What incidents? You can’t blame me for any of th—’

‘The Golem business, Charles, that’s your little hobbyhorse, isn’t it? But anyway, I don’t intend to discuss the matter now, other than to say that what took place that night was inexcusable. You are a grown man living under your own roof, however, and if you insist on ignoring your Higher Power and taking the slippery slope to perdition that is your business. It is no longer my place to intervene. What I will not tolerate is the deleterious effect you are having on your sister. You know quite well that she has had difficulties, and yet you continue to fill her head with romantic nonsense. But no matter —’ raising her voice to drown out my protestations of innocence of any kind of influence over any aspect of Bel’s life — ‘no matter, I decided I would invite you anyway, because I wanted to show Mr O’Boyle our gratitude not only as a theatre but as a family. Because this affects us personally, Charles. As you know, they are pledging a significant sum towards the renovation of the house. More importantly, it seems that they are willing to make a commitment to clear all arrears outstanding and secure it financially for the foreseeable future, meaning that the house will remain in the family name into the next century. Whether we deserve it or not is another question, of course. Nevertheless, I want the whole family to be there to commemorate the occasion, even those black sheep who seem to prefer to skulk about the peripheries. Also,’ she added judiciously, ‘what I have just said notwithstanding, I thought you ought to see your sister before she leaves.’

A jolt passed up my arm. ‘Before she what?’ I shook the handset as the connection descended again into fizzing. ‘Before she what?’

‘—cially keen on it,’ she resurfaced, ‘nevertheless it seems a matter of simple good manners as much as of maturity. Please stop whatting me, Charles, it’s most annoying —’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ I burbled, ‘but what was that you said? About Bel leaving?’

‘Yes, leaving,’ Mother said impatiently. ‘Honestly, doesn’t anything reach you in your little cocoon out there? She’s going to Yalta for six months with the Kiddon girl. Some sort of a Chekhov masterclass. You know Bel and Chekhov.’

My mind felt like it had been dropped into a hornets’ nest, with far too many questions to sort into any kind of coherent order. ‘What?’ I said faintly.

‘Yalta, Charles, it’s in Russia. She’s been planning it for weeks. You see this is what happens when you cut yourself off —’

‘But when is she — I mean to say — when?’

‘Friday, I told you, that’s why we’re having the dinner Thursday night. A sort of a double celebration.’

Blood roared in my ears: I sank to my haunches and leaned against the door. ‘The Kiddon girl had some friend at the opening night of Ramp,’ Mother was saying. ‘She approached Bel shortly afterwards and offered her a place on this excursion, although don’t ask me why, after that performance…’

‘For six months?’ I whispered. ‘In Russia?’

‘I know, it’s costing an absolute fortune. I did have my doubts, especially as the girl seems barely capable of tying her shoelaces at the moment without it turning into a German opera. But the hope is that a few months in her own company might give her time to pull herself together and perhaps even rejoin us here on Planet Earth. And the Kiddon girl assures me that these people are quite reputable, it’s quite prestigious, in fact —’

‘Who?’ I said.

‘This body, I believe it’s called the Knipper Foundation —’

‘No, no, the — Kiddon, who is this Kiddon girl you keep talking about?’

‘You know her, Charles, Kiddon — what is her name? Jessica. She was in school with Bel. Her father is some sort of a noise at Deloitte and Touche.’

‘Well, I’ve never heard of her,’ I said. ‘And if you ask me the whole thing sounds quite preposterous, letting Bel go flimmering off around Russia with some perfect stranger —’

‘She’s not a stranger, Charles, I’ve spoken to her on the telephone myself and she seems a very sensible and level-headed girl who will I hope be a good influence on your sister,’ putting just enough stress on the word to make her meaning clear. ‘Please don’t be difficult about this. I do think it’s for the best.’ She paused. ‘She hasn’t been very happy here lately,’ she said.

‘But wasn’t she going to tell me?’ My voice was giving way on me now. ‘I mean, wasn’t she even going to say goodbye?’

‘I don’t know, Charles,’ Mother said wearily. ‘Why must you pester me with these questions? If you’d simply RSVP like everybody else it would save us all a lot of trouble. Now are you coming to the dinner or aren’t you?’

‘Well, yes, obviously, but —’

‘Good. Eight sharp, remember.’ Mother’s voice acquired a metallic echo as the reception began to break up. ‘Formal, Charles. And bring a guest. Candida Olé tells me Patsy’s back from her voyages, it might be nice if you —’ There was a far-off crash and the line went completely silent.

To the casual observer it might have appeared that I was overreacting. But I knew Bel — I was the only one who did; I was the only one who could comprehend what a gesture like this meant. Yalta, for heaven’s sake! Who on earth ever went to Yalta? No, I could read between the lines. This was her fresh start, and she was making it alone; and even if she did come back in six months — six months! — she would not be coming back to us.

The rest of that evening is something of a blur. I have a vague recollection of going to the petrol station and buying four or five bottles of the abhorrent German Riesling, after polishing off that Bulgarian Cabernet; I have a sketchy image of me sitting cross-legged on the living-room floor in the wee hours of the morning, drinking the last dregs of some sort of unspeakable wine-in-a-carton I had found under the kitchen sink, presumably intended for famines or droughts or that kind of emergency situation, weeping deliriously as I went through her suitcase: spreading her clothes out over the carpet, tipping the contents of her little make-up bag on to the table — lipstick, vaporizer of Chanel something-or-other, crumpled tissue, the Telsinor phone everyone had been given, coins, the beads of a broken bracelet, and at the very bottom the silver disc she’d taken to wearing lately, winking at me in all of its childlike, ineffable simpleness, as if it held the answer to everything…

But it’s quite possible I just imagined it; and the next thing I knew it was eleven thirty-eight on a Wednesday morning and I was standing with shaking hands by the conveyor belt, which had just come to a halt.

Everyone was looking at me, expecting that I had jammed up the frosting machine again; to me, too, this seemed like the most plausible explanation. But I hadn’t. The machines had just stopped. And Mr Appleseed, now that we cast about for him, was nowhere to be seen. We took off our gloves, shrugged and muttered. Then the tannoy squawked and a voice boomed into the room, summoning us to the Bread-Cutting Zone for a meeting.

This caused even more of a stir. A meeting? We had never had a meeting before. I hadn’t even known there was a tannoy. It was rather exciting — a meeting, just like real workers! Chests swelled and voices bubbled in excitement as we filed through the double-doors.

‘Maybe they’re giving us a pay rise,’ Bobo said.

‘Maybe they’re putting in a new vending-machine,’ said gingery Arvids, ‘with proper snacks in it, and not just slices of bread.’

By the time we arrived, the Bread-Cutting Zone was already crowded with overalled figures — including, I saw to my surprise, C-shift, who weren’t supposed to start work for another six hours. The Daves, the two drug-addled teenagers who ran this section, were standing by a column, looking on with more than their usual degree of befuddlement. The sweaty bread-mixers were there, hands covered in dough; the raisin-and-poppy-seed people; the lank-haired girls from the washing-hall, even the men from Zone T, pumpernickel-bread division, who shrouded their work in a Masonic secrecy and who frankly we all found a little odd.

The hall was abuzz. Gossip and rumour climbed the walls and bounced from the corrugated roof. At the top of the room, plastic boxes had been arranged into a kind of dais: the great slicing machines stood solemnly on either side, their blades held motionlessly aloft, giving them the air of acolytes at some mystical ceremony. Just as the chatter reached a peak, there was a scuffling, booming noise. Instantly a hush fell. Mr Appleseed had appeared on the dais. He was staring out at us in his customary cloven-hoofed posture, tapping a microphone. By his side was a metal device about the size of a smallish filing cabinet, with a spindly, claw-like appendage extending from the top. ‘Vending-machine,’ I heard Arvids murmur next to me, but his voice was faint and discordant in the suddenly charged silence.

‘Gentlemen,’ Mr Appleseed croaked, ‘and ladies. Thank you for your attendance. Today is an auspicious day in the history of Mr Dough. The company is about to take a great leap forward, and we are very privileged to be here to witness it.’ Here and there low voices could be heard translating for those whose English wasn’t up to scratch.

‘You have all worked hard today,’ he continued, ‘just as you do every day. You might not think I see it, or appreciate it, but I do. And I know I speak not only for myself but for the entire board of Northwestern BioHoldings Group plc and its shareholders when I commend you for your dedication and your spirit. Mr Dough is not always the easiest environment to work in. The dust, the great heat — the conditions here are far from ideal, as has been pointed out to me in no uncertain terms.’

At this a few people turned to grin at me or give me friendly punches on the shoulder, which in my fragile condition I did not appreciate.

‘It is not a job for the weak-willed or the delicate. One might say that in a perfect world no one would have to do jobs as tough as yours are. It is unquestionably a job for men, or, in some cases, women.’ He silenced a burst of applause with a raised hand. ‘But today, with the help of science, I am proud to tell you that we are one step closer to that perfect world.’ To another round of applause, this one scattered and rather muted, he stepped behind the metal apparatus and pressed a button. Lights blinked and the arm began to whir through the air. ‘Meet BZD2348,’ said Mr Appleseed. ‘This particular model has been primed to perform all the tasks currently undertaken by the Yule Log Division. Observe.’ He placed an unfrosted loaf on to a tray protruding from one end of the machine. There was a grinding noise as the machine swallowed it up, a series of clanks, and then, mere seconds later, it spat it out again — not only sugared on top but neatly packaged in the festive Yule Log box. The machine’s arm lowered. It hummed obsequiously. ‘Marvellous,’ chuckled Mr Appleseed. ‘What this in essence means is that thanks to top-of-the-range German technology, a single device can do all the work of, in this case, five Latvians and Fuckface — but at four times the speed and a fraction of the cost.’

A couple of stray handclaps rose and reverberated through the lofty chamber. Suddenly a gap seemed to have emerged between the six of us and the rest of the crowd. People were giving us funny looks, a mixture of sympathy, fear, and poorly disguised relief.

‘Other models can be fitted out for baguettes, soda bread, pasties, and what have you,’ Mr Appleseed called out, drawing the audience back to him. ‘By the end of the month, we hope to have Mr Dough converted into a fully automated factory.’ There was a palpable drop in pressure as three hundred people drew their breath. ‘The installation begins today,’ Mr Appleseed went on. ‘As of this afternoon, Mr Dough will be closed, and will remain closed until such time as the changeover is complete. So it remains only for me to thank you again for your months, and in some cases years, of dedicated service, and to wish you the very best for the future.’ He looked down at us, as if surprised to see that we were still standing there. ‘That is all.’

No one spoke. No one moved.

‘What!’ I exclaimed.

‘Fuckface? You have a question?’

‘You mean to say you’re firing us? All of us?’

‘I’m glad you asked me that, Fuckface. It’s important that we’re all completely clear about this. The answer is that no, it is not correct to say we are firing you. Your employer is and remains the recruitment agency that leased you out to us. So a more constructive way to look at it would be to say that the agency has completed its contract with Mr Dough. And you can all take pride in a job well done. I should add that anyone with a suitable qualification in IT is more than welcome to submit their CV for consideration for positions in our new Robot Programming Division. Are there any more questions? No? Good.’ He stepped down from the platform and, the machine trundling behind him, left by a door at the back.

As soon as he was gone the chamber filled with noise again. But although there was breast-beating, although there were lamentations and woebegone faces and even a few tears, still no one seemed exactly surprised. No one seized a box and began smashing up the slicing machines; no one grabbed the microphone and declared that he wasn’t leaving until Mr Appleseed’s blood had been spilled and who was with him? Instead everyone simply seemed to accept defeat. Already a few people were shuffling out of the door we had come in. I was shocked. Were these the men I had worked with side by side on ten-hour shifts in the furnace of Processing Zone B? Was this the indomitable spirit that had won us the Productivity Hamper?

‘We’re not just going to let them get away with this?’ I appealed to my comrades. ‘I mean, we’re not just going to lie down like dogs, are we?’

‘What else can we do?’ said Pavel, moving towards the exit.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t we go on strike, or something?’

‘We’ve already been sacked, Fuckface,’ Edvin pointed out. ‘There’s not much point going on strike when you’ve already been sacked.’

‘Anyway, you have already done enough,’ gravelly voiced Dzintars chipped in surlily.

‘Me? What did I do?’

‘Always complain, complain. Never just do the job. Always Mister Moany-Moan.’

‘I was only trying to make things better for you,’ I protested. ‘You can’t blame me for this.’

‘What do you know about how it is for us?’ Dzintars growled.

‘All right, all right,’ Bobo intervened. ‘No point fighting about this now.’

‘Maybe we could make a deal with, how you say, the Union of Robots?’ chuckled Edvin.

‘Well, sarcasm isn’t going to help anybody,’ I muttered. But my inflammatory rhetoric proved useless. Word had filtered back that the pay cheques were being given out at the factory gate, and no one wanted to risk any trouble; though to be accurate people weren’t lying down like dogs so much as filling their pockets with marzipan bread and Danish pastries and whatever else they chanced upon on their way back to the locker room. The factory was suddenly full of men in blue uniforms we hadn’t seen before. As soon as the herd left an area, they would move in behind us to seal it off with plastic barriers. We were silent now, everyone retreated into his own thoughts.

There was a long, slow-moving queue at the gate: one of the blue-uniformed men was handing out cheques. Once they had been paid, few of the men hung around. They would stand outside for a minute, talking and shaking their heads; then, in clusters of twos and threes, they would mooch off down the street. In a corner of the loading area near the back of the building, more uniformed men were taking roughly robot-sized boxes from an articulated truck.

Bobo, Arvids and the rest of Yule Log Division were among the last to leave.

‘Name?’ The uniformed man had a jaw thick with stubble and a baton hanging at his side. I wondered if he and his cohorts had also been hired from the agency, especially for the occasion.

I gave my name. He found it on his clipboard and ran a line through it, then handed me an envelope. As I went outside to join the others, it struck me that Sirius Recruitment must have known about the lay-offs in order to deliver the monthly pay cheques several days early. I studied the figure at the bottom and did the arithmetic in my head; if I was correct, they had paid us up until eleven thirty-eight of that morning, and not a minute more.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Bobo said, looking blankly at the slip in his hand.

‘I know, of all the penny-pinching… You know, I bet if you invited them to dinner they’d be exactly the type of people who not only would they not bring any wine but then you’d find out they’d been starving themselves for three days beforehand — I say —’ as the paper fluttered free from his hand. ‘What is it?’

He crashed down on to the kerb and put his head in his hands. I chased after the cheque and caught it as it careened merrily along the gutter. Wiping away the dirt, I read at the top BOBODAN ‘BOBO’ BOBEYOVICH, and beside it a figure identical to the one on mine, comprising wages, overtime, back pay, money for untaken holidays. But beneath that had been printed DEDUCTION: agency fee 1200.001E; and beneath that, DEDUCTION: accom. 108 nts @ 8.58 p.n.; and then DEDUCTION: visa reg. & proc.; DEDUCTION: handling; DEDUCTION: air fares & insurance; on and on they went, DEDUCTION DEDUCTION DEDUCTION, until one found oneself at the bottom of the page, where nestled in a little blue box sat neatly NET: 000.00.

I whistled softly to myself. Then, hearing a noise, I turned to see the gate close and a heavy bolt slide into place. Two of the men stared at me with folded arms from the other side.

Arvids, Edvin and Dzintars, who had been standing about in comparable attitudes of despair, now made a move to go. Pavel pulled Bobo to his feet and they trudged off down the road; I trotted after them, worthless cheque crumpled in my fist. The sky was heavy and dull and cold. Trucks rumbled by in clouds of exhaust fumes that made my eyes sting. What was happening to my life? Was this how it worked in the real world? Was it nothing more than a sand storm through which one walked with one’s eyes closed, every moment obliterated by the next? We arrived at the crossroads where the Latvians would turn off for their barracks and I would continue on for the bus.

‘What will you do?’ I said. ‘Where will you go?’

‘Call the agency,’ Dzintars said.

‘Call the agency? After that?’

Dzintars shrugged.

‘No agency, no visa,’ Edvin elaborated.

‘But…’ I stood there chewing my cheek: I couldn’t just let them go, B-shift couldn’t be let just dissipate like ghosts in the afternoon, as if the last few weeks had never happened. And yet it appeared that there was nothing left to say, nothing except –

‘Chin-chin,’ Bobo clapped me on the shoulder. ‘See you later, old sport.’

‘Chin-chin, Fuckface,’ the others said, nodding at me; then taking their Yule Logs out of their pockets, they set off up the hill.

(Scene. A crumbling chateau by the Marne. Enter FREDERICK, a Count, and BABS, his tragic sister.)

FREDERICK: I don’t care what the bank manager said! I may not have any money left, but I’m still the Count, and I’m going to take on the dog-eat-dog world of the French wine industry and produce a half-decent Burgundy if I have to plant every grape myself!

(BABS is weeping constantly.)

FREDERICK (seizing her arm): Damn it, Babs, can’t you see? What we have here is a dream, and as long as we re together no bank manager can touch it, because it’s a dream, I mean to say it’s not just –

FREDERICK: Damn it Babs, please stop crying

FREDERICK: Babs, you’re probably wondering about the other night, well the fact is it was all a plot of Lopakhin’s

FREDERICK: Damn it Babs

FREDERICK: Damn it

‘How’s the oul play goin, Charlie?’

‘Hmm? Oh, passably well, passably well… Just taking a breather at the minute, obviously…’

‘Oh, right,’ shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. ‘Eh, I was just wonderin about that rent…’

‘Rent?’

‘Yeah, it’s just that your man was on lookin for it again, gettin a bit narky…’

‘Oh,’ I said spiritlessly, playing with a tassel. ‘Well, I’ll write you a cheque later on, will that do?’

‘A cheque, oh right, grand job,’ clearing his throat conversationally, ‘here, I was talkin to me mate what has the warehouse and he says there’s a shift goin if you’re —’

‘Ha, no fear!’ I said, looking back at the television.

‘Oh right so.’ He continued to hover behind. ‘Eh… is that Bel’s lipstick?’

‘Yes, yes it is, as a matter of fact.’

‘What are you doin with it?’

‘Oh, you know, just sort of holding it. Helps me focus.’

‘You all right, Charlie?’

‘Me? Tip-top. Never better. Still, best get back to the old play, no rest for the wicked, ha ha…’

‘Ha ha…’

The play wasn’t going well, obviously; the play was going terribly. I didn’t know how it had happened, exactly, but Lopakhin was running the show now, and every time I picked up my pen and tried to rectify matters, it only made them worse. For instance, Frederick had gone to Monte Carlo for a two-day cork-makers’ conference, but Lopakhin told Babs that he’d sold his half of the estate and run off to gamble away the proceeds — and Babs believed him, why did she believe him? So now while Frederick was footling about with tax concessions for a bunch of grasping Portuguese farmers, Lopakhin had his sister on her own and was spinning her such appalling lies — black was white, up was down, Frederick was a shady obsessive who was stifling Babs’s acting and romantic career — that I sometimes felt quite unwell and had to go and sit in the dark for a while.

Nevertheless, it was all I had left. I had not called Gemma at Sirius Recruitment. My experience at Mr Dough had soured for me the whole idea of working; or rather it had served to confirm what I suspected all along, namely that working for a living was a mug’s game. ‘The way I see it,’ I said to the others, ‘if you’re not rich, you’re poor, and the only way to get rich is either to be rich already, or take up some sort of a crime, like architectural salvage or robbing old ladies — no offence, I mean.’

‘Ah you’re all right, Charlie,’ Frank said.

‘Gnnhhhrhh,’ snored Droyd from his stupor on the sofa.

‘Or starting a recruitment company,’ I mused bitterly.

So, as outside the streets grew day by day chillier and darker, and the fateful dinner party floated before me like an uncontemplatable abyss, I whiled away my hours in my dressing gown in the armchair. I wrote a line of my play and scratched it out; I swamped myself in vast deluges of memory; I concocted plan after fantastical plan by which to force Bel to stay — including, but by no means limited to: skywriting a carefully worded apology in the area of sky adjacent to her bedroom window; feigning to have contracted a life-threatening illness; having my play finished, submitted and produced to great acclaim at the Abbey, starring Bel Hythloday, ideally before Wednesday; ringing up Mother and proving to her by exhaustive analysis of her recent behaviour that Bel was in no fit state to travel; actually contracting a life-threatening illness viz. Lassa Fever by concentrated association with Boyd Snooks. But most of the time I did what I did best, which was nothing.

I thought sporadically of returning to my monograph. I had reached the 1950s now: all the films were in that lurid Hollywood colour that made everything look at once gaudy and exhausted. Gene had stopped wearing make-up years ago, but the overripe tones saturated her too, accentuating the vacancy that grew at the heart of her performances. If she had been trying to hide herself in her earlier films, in those last four — Personal Affair, The Egyptian, Black Widow, The Left Hand of God — she was gone. Sleepwalking would be putting it kindly: everything about those performances pointed to a person who was no longer actually there — the inertia, the lifelessness of her movements, the opacity of the beautiful eyes.

The Left Hand of God would be her last starring role in a movie. As soon as the film was completed she fled Hollywood and holed up in New York with her mother. The studios promptly suspended her for breach of contract, and accused her publicly of prima donna tantrums. Reporters hounded her; the telephone rang day and night until finally her mother disconnected it.

In the New York apartment everything became confused. She slept for days on end. She didn’t recognize the faces of her friends. She had never been political before, but now became obsessed with Communist plots: she thought the Communists were trying to poison her, she thought they were replacing the words on the pages of the books she read. She stopped eating, then went on a diet of chocolate and bread and butter and gained twenty pounds in a couple of weeks because she thought she was pregnant and eating for two. Every night she imagined she gave birth, and every night the Communists stole her child; or she dreamed that Daria was no longer in an institution, but in the house of a couple living down the street. Her brother would find her in the middle of the night, banging on the neighbours’ door, demanding that they give her her daughter back. At last she was committed to the Harkness Pavilion asylum, New York.

Electro-convulsive therapy — ECT — was at that time considered a breakthrough in the treatment of the mentally ill. By administering an electric shock directly to the brain, it seemed that patients could be temporarily jolted out of their psychoses. The shock made them forget everything; and as Gene commented, you can hardly be depressed about what you don’t remember. She was given thirty-two of these treatments over a single year. Every time she woke up not knowing who or where or what she was. Gradually, some of her memories would come back; generally, childhood first, then adolescence, then the middle past. But the months and years preceding the treatment did not. They were simply gone — impersonally stripped away, as if they had never happened, so that years later, when she came to write her autobiography (entitled, self-deprecatingly Self-Portrait), she had to rely on newspaper scrapbooks, letters, the testimony of friends.

Her life in the institution became one long grey anonymous blur, punctuated by the electric current. And in some ways it worked: she was pacified, docile; she knitted, made tables, scrubbed floors; she was happy to be relieved of the burden of her identity. But she remained in dread of the ECT sessions. She recounts one occasion, waking up in the usual state of utter limbo, and — although, of course, she did not know why — suddenly becoming so angry that she punched the nurse standing over her right in the jaw. In revenge, the nurse brought her to the ward where the hopeless cases were kept and left her there for the day. Gene herself was so far gone, however, that she mistook them for Method actors from the Stanislavsky school. She stood there and applauded, all day long.

It struck me that it might not be such a great shift, from Hollywood actress to mental patient. The hospital, like the studio, exercised strict controls on every aspect of your image, your routine, how you thought and spoke and acted; the patients were like actors who had stumbled too far into the script and could not find their way back out. Perhaps this was why Gene was released when she was: she knew how the system worked, she knew what they wanted from you: and she had what she called her model’s trick, the ability to change her look for whatever the scene demanded. Trader, outlaw, dust-bowl Salome, frontier girl, aristocrat, Arabian, Eurasian, Polynesian, Chinese — she knew how to remake herself to order; she could make it look, given time, as if nothing was wrong. And no one could tell, or at least no one troubled to look at what was still transpiring beneath the lovely exterior.

But I could tell; and perhaps that was why, as the days tightened around us like a noose, the garishness and the threadbare plots of those late films seemed curiously to fit my wintering world of curtailed greys and blacks; her sleepwalking performances seemed, somehow, to strike a chord in me, and even to provide a sad strain of company.

The night Frank and Droyd had their set-to it started to rain and did not stop. It was as if the belly of the sky had been cut open: the water thrashed against the window with such vehemence that the outside world was obliterated. The walls of the flat shook and groaned in the wind, and at one point the entire building seemed to pitch forward, sending junk skating off the shelves to the floor.

I was sitting in my dressing gown, trying to watch the television. The reception kept going: every few seconds snow crunched up on to the screen like a nervous tic. Frank was in his bedroom with Laura, working on his bookshelves, which for all the banging they were making seemed to be progressing very slowly; although as Frank had no books anyway, I suppose there was no real hurry. There was a knock at the door, and Droyd appeared from somewhere to answer it. Three cadaverous young men were standing in the hall.

Droyd, I should point out at this juncture, was a changed man from the boorish lout who had first moved in. One hesitates, obviously, to blow one’s own trumpet, or put oneself forward as a civilizing influence, but whatever the reason, it seemed he was thoroughly reformed. He scarcely played his music at all now; he would sit by the window or in front of the television peaceful as a lamb. In fact, one could almost say he was too quiet for a lad his age. He seemed to have abandoned his musical career, and also appeared to sweat more than was customary. But this was to split hairs. All I knew was that he hadn’t called me a shirtlifter or tried to steal my wallet in weeks.

Anyway, there we all were and Droyd called to me from the doorway that he was going out to play football if that was all right, and I replied that I didn’t see why not, not listening all that intently because one really had to concentrate if one wanted to hear the TV what with the reception, and that would have been that, had Frank not at that moment happened to come out and ask what was going on.

‘Jus’ goin out for a quick game of football,’ Droyd said, as a peal of thunder broke over the roof.

At first I thought Frank hadn’t heard him; he was giving the cadaverous youngsters a long, hard look. But then he said, ‘Y’ are not.’

Droyd muttered something to his pals, who sloped off down the hall, then turned back to Frank. ‘Wha?’ he said.

‘I don’t want you hangin round with them lads,’ Frank said.

‘Wha?’ Droyd said. ‘Why not?’

‘Cos they’re scumbags,’ Frank informed him.

‘That’s bollocks,’ Droyd said. ‘They’re me mates.’

‘I don’t care,’ Frank said. ‘They’re scumbags.’

‘Ah for fuck’s sake!’ Droyd was not happy with this verdict. ‘D’you expect me to just sit around all day on me fuckin Tobler? Am I not even allowed have mates now?’

‘Oh, let him go, Frank,’ I chipped in from the armchair. ‘It’s a sin to keep a growing lad cooped up in here all the time.’

‘He doesn’t mind bein cooped up when it suits him,’ Frank jibed. ‘He doesn’t mind sittin around on his hole eatin me food when he’s supposed to be out lookin for a job.’

Droyd assumed an attitude of wounded outrage. ‘I tried lookin for a job,’ he said. ‘I told you, it’s impossible to find one now, cos of all the foreigners. There’s no room for the Irish any more. Like I got on the bus the other day, an’ I couldn’t even sit down cos of all the refugees takin up the seats. What’s that about, when the Irish can’t get a seat on their own bus? That’s what we should be worryin about, ’f you ask me. ’F you ask me, they should send the lot of them back where they came from. Like maybe not the Chinkies from the takeaway, or them lads from down the kebab shop, but the rest —’

‘You can’t blame the foreigners for you sittin round doin nothin all day,’ Frank interrupted this polemic.

‘I don’t do nothin!’ Droyd protested. ‘I go out every day for me methadone, don’t I?’

‘Goin for your methadone’s not a proper job,’ Frank said.

‘Fuck’s sake!’ Droyd exclaimed wildly. ‘He doesn’t have a job either, why don’t you fuckin nag him for a change?’

‘That’s a completely different set of circumstances,’ I said. ‘That’s a matter of principle.’

‘Do you want to end up like Charlie?’ Frank demanded, not appearing to have heard this. ‘Is that what you want?’

‘Just fuckin leave off, would you?’ Droyd clutched his head manically. ‘You sound like me oul lad, fuckin naggin me and naggin me and all he ever done himself was go down the boozer and get locked —’

‘I’m not naggin you, I just don’t want you hangin round with them gearbags —’

‘You can’t tell me what to do!’ Droyd cut him off. ‘You’re not even me mate any more. You used to be a laugh, but now you’re just tryin to be posh, bein with that bird, an’ — an’ him,’ levelling a finger at me. ‘I mean it’s not his fault he’s like that. He was born that way. But you’re fuckin tryin to be like that, and all you’re doin is makin a laugh of yourself! Well I’m fuckin sick of it! It’s fuckin depressin in this place! I had more fun in the fuckin nick! So stick it up your bollocks, Frank!’

He didn’t come home that night, or the night after.

‘He’ll be back when he’s hungry,’ I said. ‘There’s no point getting in a state.’

‘But maybe something’s happened to him,’ Frank said anxiously, pressing his nose to the streaming glass.

‘What could possibly happen to him? He can take care of himself. He’s not a child, after all, I mean he’s been in prison, hasn’t he?’

Frank was not convinced: but to be truthful, I paid little heed to Droyd’s disappearance. I was busy with worries of my own, with fretting and remembering and framing unworkable plans; and now I woke up to find only one day remaining before the dinner party and Bel’s departure.

The rain was still beating down: it looked like a perfect day for sitting around in one’s armchair feeling blue. I had an appointment at the hospital to have my dressing changed, however, so I caught a bus into the city and sat glumly on the examining table as the doctor unwrapped me and prodded me with blunt instruments and asked me if it hurt. It didn’t: I was too lost in my own thoughts — of grey Russian skies and the wild endless steppes and how they compared to my dismal little oubliette in Bonetown. So when he said the wound had healed, it took a moment to register.

‘What?’ I said, snapping awake. ‘Healed?’

‘Won’t do any more good covering it up,’ he said. ‘Time to let the air at it. Hold on, let’s give you a look at yourself.’ He went to his drawer and fetched a hand-mirror and held it up in front of me: and there looking back at me was Charles Hythloday ‘Anything wrong?’

‘No, no, I just —’ I cleared my throat. ‘I seem to have aged rather.’

The doctor laughed, and told me that that would clear up in a couple of weeks, and he wrote out a prescription for various unguents and poultices. ‘Nice weather for ducks,’ he said as I left, nodding at the window.

It should have been something special, to feel the rain on my face again after three months of clammy bandages; it should have been an occasion, to be me again after all this time as a Nobody. But all I could think of was tomorrow, and Bel. As I came back down Thomas Street I was rehearsing the impassioned speeches I might make to her at the dinner; and some of them I found so moving that I didn’t notice at first that what I vaguely remembered as a short-cut down behind Christchurch had instead led me into a maze of dilapidated flats. By the time I realized, and stopped to take my bearings, I was already hopelessly lost.

I retraced my steps, but every time ended back in the same place. Everything looked alike in this rain, and there didn’t seem to be anyone around to ask directions. Then as I took in my surroundings properly I began to hope there was no one around; and I remembered the story Pongo McGurks told about getting lost in this locale and being set upon by street Arabs, and how they’d put a penknife to his throat and told him they were going to sell his internal organs to Dubai; and only that on the spur of the moment he’d thought to tell them that he was a Christian Scientist and for religious reasons wouldn’t be allowed to have the organs replaced, and persuaded them to make do with his Cartier watch and a couple of credit cards belonging to McGurks père, heaven knows what might have happened. Getting panicky, I picked a street at random, conjecturing that I might have more success this way than by deliberately trying to find my way out. But it quickly emerged that I wouldn’t, and I had just stopped again to tell myself that the situation was more serious than I had first thought when a bony hand shot out of the shadows and tugged me down an alleyway. Before I knew where I was I had been bundled to the ground, and a skinny figure in a hood bounced down on to my chest. ‘Gis your fuckin money,’ he hissed.

‘Don’t hurt me!’ I cried. ‘I’m Amish — no, wait, I’m — blast, what was it?’

‘The money,’ he snarled.

‘Right, right,’ I gabbled, fumbling for my wallet.

‘Hurry up,’ cuffing me roughly.

‘Ow!’ I wept, finally locating the damn wallet and passing it up to him — and then at the last second pulling it back. ‘Just a minute,’ I said.

‘Don’t try anythin,’ he warned.

I squinted at him through the rain. ‘Droyd?’ I said.

This gave him pause. ‘Yes?’ the figure said warily.

‘It’s me, you idiot!’ I expostulated, pushing his knee aside. Droyd appeared totally thrown by this. He sat up and blinked heavily. I realized that he had never seen me unbandaged before.

‘It’s Charles!’ I elaborated. ‘Charles!’

He put his hand over his forehead a moment. ‘Ah fuck,’ he said. Then, without further consultation, he turned tail down the alley.

The apartment was already in a state of upheaval when I eventually got back.

‘It’s the landlord!’ Laura shouted in my ear from the safety of the bathroom. ‘He called again about the rent!’

A loud crash issued from the next room. ‘I thought we paid the rent!’ I shouted back.

‘He says he’s going to evict you!’ Laura returned over the sound of the back coming off the dysmorphic sofa and a heartfelt ‘Fuckin — culchie — pig — bastard —’

‘What’s he doing in there?’ putting my hands over my ears.

‘Breaking things, maybe you shouldn’t mention about Droyd —’ She dropped her voice as Frank abruptly hove into view and demanded to know what about Droyd.

She was right: the news did little to calm matters.

‘Ah fuck Charlie!’ he wailed. ‘This is very bad, this is very bad.’

‘Well I know, I mean I have the luxury of my own face for all of five minutes and then somebody’s punching it —’

‘Where did he go? Did he say where he was goin?’

‘He was mugging me, neither of us had time to exchange pleasantries.’

‘But, like —’ he tugged his hair desperately. ‘How did he look?’

I considered this. ‘Very focused,’ I said. ‘Obviously concentrating on the job at hand, and —’

‘No, Charlie, did he look like — did he look like he was usin?’

I didn’t know quite what he was getting at, and before I could puzzle it out he had rushed off to his room, staggering back in a moment later with a green-and-white sock in his hand, to tell us that the money was gone.

Everything was gone, as a matter of fact; the apartment had been cleaned out. All of Frank’s savings; anything of value that could be carried away from the salvage; the blighter had even made off with my penny jar. It occurred to me that the extent of the theft was such that it must have been proceeding over some time. Only then did we realize that this month’s, last month’s, maybe even before then’s rent had never made it to the landlord. ‘Ah Jaysus,’ Frank gasped as if he had been winded, dropping into the chair.

The phone began to ring.

‘And now that I think of it, that story of his about the dog waylaying him on the way to the post office, and running off with the giro for the electricity? That was pretty unlikely too…’

The phone stopped ringing momentarily, then started up again.

Frank didn’t sleep at all that night; I knew this because I didn’t sleep either. I sat at the kitchen table in the candlelight and listened to him in the next room, barging restlessly through the furniture like one of those lumbering, outmoded-looking mammals, a pangolin or a three-toed sloth. My play was laid out before me, not that I held any hopes for it now. Lopakhin had won, Frederick and I both knew it. The vineyard’s reputation was in tatters. Lopakhin had photographed Frederick in what appeared to be a deep embrace with Babs and released it to the press. It was a total fabrication, of course: what had really happened was that Babs, believing Frederick to be gone for ever, had signed her half of the estate over to Lopakhin and then in a fit of despair thrown herself down the stairs; and she would almost certainly have died, had Frederick not happened to come back early from the cork-makers’ convention and found her lying there in the hall and saved her life by performing mouth-to-mouth on her. But this innocent act, in the hands of Lopakhin and his scurrilous friends in the newspapers, looked like it was going to be enough to ruin Frederick’s name, on the very day he was about to unveil his new vintage Burgundy to the notoriously conservative French wine industry. The fiendishness of Lopakhin’s plot seemed to have shocked him into a kind of stupor; and now all he did all day was sit in his study, sticking wine labels in his scrapbook and playing backgammon with the Bosnians, as if marking time until the inevitable end. It was depressing; I don’t know why I didn’t just leave it and go to bed. Perhaps I hoped that by simply staying awake I could somehow hold the world as it was: keep it in that dark, rain-filled moment, and stop the fateful day from coming.

Laura’s pyjamaed silhouette appeared in the doorway. ‘What are you doing up?’ she said. ‘You should go to bed, there’s no point both of you worrying.’

‘I’m not worrying about Droyd,’ I scowled.

‘You’re not?’ she said, walking past me to the refrigerator.

‘If you ask me, we should be counting our blessings.’ I spoke sotto voce so Frank wouldn’t hear. ‘It takes a particularly low sort of a blackguard to steal a man’s penny jar.’

‘Are you worried about Bel?’ She opened the refrigerator door and a neat rectangle of light unfolded over her face like a blank page. I began to reply and stopped. Somehow it had slipped my mind how simply, how matter-of-factly lovely she was; and for an instant I was seized by the old hope that I could blink my eyes and transport the two of us to another, less contrary world, a world that could fit that kind of beauty. ‘You should be glad about it,’ she said, pouring a glass of lactose-free chocolate milk. ‘It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. Like she’s so into it, all that acting stuff.’

‘I am glad,’ I said unconvincingly, then trailed off and restarted suddenly: ‘I say — do you remember a girl in your class by the name of Kiddon? Jessica Kiddon?’

Laura mulled this over, reciting the name under her breath. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘Who’s she?’

‘She’s the girl Bel’s supposed to be going off to Yalta with,’ I said, frowning. ‘Apparently she was in Bel’s class. But I don’t recall seeing her in any of the yearbooks.’

‘It’s a big school, though, Charles. Like who could possibly remember a whole yearbook?’

‘Mmm.’ I made an ambiguous, throat-clearing noise.

‘But I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. Like I’m sure she’ll be totally fine.’

‘Mmm,’ I said again, not intending for it to sound quite as bleak as it did. She drifted behind me and placed her hand on my neck. ‘Charles,’ she said gently, ‘did you ever hear that thing, if you love somebody, set them free? It was in that ad for ice cream? With the talking bear?’

Her fingers stroked my nape; I hung my head, and shut my eyes. The kitchen was filled with the rumble of the rain against the glass.

‘It’s like someone’s angry with us,’ she said, as if to herself. Then she snapped her fingers and spun back round to me. ‘I’ve finally realized who you look like!’ she said.

‘What?’ I said, startled.

‘Without your bandages — it’s been driving me mad since you came back from the hospital. It’s that painting, you look just like that painting in your house.’

‘What painting?’ I said. ‘There’s lots of paintings.’

‘You know, that one of that guy. The one in the hallway. You look just like it.’ She laughed again, pleased with this observation, then cut herself short as Frank huffed into the room. He had a frazzled, wild-eyed, vaguely prehistoric look about him, rather like one of those cavemen that they find from time to time encased in ice.

‘Charlie,’ he said, ‘we have to do something.’

I thought this meant we were finally going to contact the authorities, and I began drawing up a list of stolen properties. But it wasn’t what he meant. He was proposing that we ourselves go and out and look for Droyd.

‘You can’t be serious,’ I said.

‘We can’t just leave him out there,’ he said. ‘We can’t just leave the little feller out there roamin the streets, in the rain and the cold.’

I protested; I pointed out that there was every reason why we should leave him roaming the streets, given that he had lied to us and misled us and stolen three months of rent and basically abrogated the social contract, not to mention the whole penny jar business –

‘Will you forget about the fuckin penny jar!’ Frank exclaimed. ‘Who else is goin to look for him if we don’t look? No one, that’s who. We have to find him, or — or before you know it they’ll sling him back in jail!’

There had been four years’ worth of pennies in that jar; but Frank was insistent, and eventually I caved in and agreed to help, if only because it was obvious that he had no idea how to organize a search. He seemed to think you could just go out and wander around. I told him that if there were to be any point to this at all, we had to be methodical and exhaustive. The last sighting of Droyd had been in Christchurch, and I surmised that he was probably still in the city, it being more plentiful in terms of old ladies and unwary tourists. The obvious strategy was to fan out over the centre, but as there were only the two of us, we decided to take a side each: I the area south of the Liffey, and Frank the north, reconvening at lunchtime to compare notes. We left at first light.

The rain was still coming down, dripping from the fairy lights strung between the lamp-posts, from the tinsel and the Japanese lanterns, making the streets a carnival of jostling umbrellas. In spite of the hour and the weather, great throngs of people were pouring up and down the thoroughfare, laden with bags of Christmas shopping. The windows of the department stores glittered with kitchenware, electronic doodads, gorgeous mannequins swathed in opulent fabrics. The atmosphere was so dizzy and unreal that I began to get rather disorientated and to forget who I was looking for. I kept seeing Bel’s face everywhere; I kept thinking that these people hurrying down the Royal Hibernian Way must be rushing to get ready for tonight, and picturing my dinner jacket waiting for me on the back of the bedroom door.

Still, by one o’clock, when I met Frank as arranged by the statue of that woman with the fish cart and the décolletage, I was able to tell him categorically between mouthfuls of my crêpe that having comprehensively covered the southern metropolitan area I could confirm that Droyd was definitely not staying in the Conrad, the Westbury or either of the Jury’s Inns, and that he hadn’t been in Tie Rack all morning. Frank turned a funny colour when I told him this. I wondered if he was hungry and I asked him if he wanted some of my crêpe.

‘Tie Rack?’ he exclaimed. ‘Why the fuck would he be in Tie Rack?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I thought he might spend the money on a tie.’ Tie Rack struck me as the sort of place someone like Droyd would buy his ties.

At this point the strain of it all became too much for Frank. He started going berserk. His speech does not bear repeating here: suffice to say it was fuck this and fuck that, cunt this and cunt that, suddenly everybody was a cunt — but the general gist of it was that I must have been living with my eyes closed for the last three months if I thought any cunt in Bonetown ever had call to wear a tie except when they were up in court, or would ever in their entire lives get past the door of the Westbury, or had anything at all to do with any of that stuff; that Droyd had spent the money on heroin, that all there was to spend it on in Bonetown was heroin — ‘Heroin, Charlie!’ he yelled. ‘Heroin! The whole fuckin place runs on heroin!’

I didn’t reply. People were beginning to stare. He stopped waving his arms about, and looked me full in the eye, quivering with anger. Then he took my crêpe and threw it in the dustbin. ‘Come on,’ he said, stomping off in the direction I had just come from.

The route we took can’t have varied much, cartographically speaking, from my original exhaustive search earlier on: yet it seemed like another city, existing alongside the glossy one I knew. This city was composed of dead ends and blind alleys and back streets full of garbage bags, and had its own cast of inhabitants, who lived in a permanent stench of urine and decay and had to be nudged to life with a toe before one could question them as to Droyd’s whereabouts. Sometimes they were too intoxicated to speak; sometimes they tried to make up stories in the hope of getting some change. Sometimes they didn’t respond to the toe, and we would have to roll them over and squint at their grubby faces till we were sure they weren’t him. The sheer volume of these wretched people was incredible. And as we made our way back down Grafton Street, I realized that they were here too, had been here all along, living their heroiny lives: slumped by cash machines, lurking in suspicious-looking groups around dustbins, making lunatic speeches to office workers who scurried by pretending not to hear, or simply ghosting wall-eyed through the crowd, with beakers from McDonald’s and misspelled cardboard signs.

It was slow, painful work. As the day dragged on, and yet another pile of garbage bags disclosed yet another human form, it started to seem as if there could hardly be anyone left who hadn’t, in some fashion, fallen through the cracks; and the city began to take on the appearance of a newspaper photo, when you look at it close up and at some unannounced point the image gives way, leaving you with a collection of unsignifying dots in a vast empty space; so much space that you forget there had ever been a picture at all. ‘He’s not here,’ Frank said bleakly.

We trudged down the quays and caught the bus back to Bonetown. We sat on the top deck. Frank stared straight ahead, making the small-animal noises he made when he was picking his Lottery numbers.

Laura had taken the day off work to stay in the apartment in case Droyd reappeared. But the only contact had been from the landlord. ‘I couldn’t really understand what he was saying,’ she said. ‘But he was really angry. He kept going on about how no city slicker was going to make a laugh of him.’

‘Ah fuck,’ Frank said, collapsing into his armchair. ‘Ah fuck.’

‘If only I could get my deposit back from that stupid estate agent!’ Laura said. ‘She won’t give it back to me, Frank!’

‘That’s it,’ Frank said. ‘That’s it. We’re going to be fucked out.’

I shook my head fatalistically. ‘Plus ça change,’ I said, ‘plus c’est la même chose.’

‘Charlie, for once could you not talk French?’

‘Of course,’ I said understandingly. ‘Of course.’

There was clearly nothing more I could do here, and time was moving on. I excused myself quietly, leaving him sitting in his armchair with the vacant air of a man under hypnosis; I went to my bedroom and began to change into my evening wear. I had just run into the usual difficulties with my bow tie when there was a knock at the door. It was Frank, holding a length of wood.

‘I know where he is,’ he said.

‘You do?’ I said, undoing the knot again. ‘I say, Laura, you couldn’t give me hand with this, could you?’

‘He’s in Cousin Benny’s,’ Frank said. ‘I know it. It’s the only place left he could be.’

‘Ah yes, the infamous Cousin Benny.’ Laura pushed up my chin and adjusted the collar. ‘Well, give him my best if you see him, tell him not to worry about the, the mugging —’

‘Charlie,’ he said, ‘I need you to come with me.’

‘Me?’ I said.

‘I can’t go down there on me own. It’s down the bad end. I need reinforcements.’

‘Well, I’d love to help you, old man, but the fact is I can’t, I mean I’ve got a dinner party to go to and Mother’ll have conniptions if I’m late, I mean it’s bad enough I’m not bringing a date…’ I tailed off feebly. Damn it, what did he want me there for? Didn’t he know my track record in fisticuffs? How could there possibly be a bad end of Bonetown? Laura’s cool green eyes looked into mine as she folded the tie over and back on itself.

‘Hell,’ I said faintly.

‘Right,’ he bounded purposefully out the door. Laura tied the tie tight and I felt something pressed into my hand. It was the stringless Dunlop tennis racket. ‘Good luck,’ she said, and planted a kiss on my cheek.

We ran down the street with our jackets over our heads, dancing between ravines full of muddy water, over petrol rainbows and a moonscape of scorched earth, until we came to a low concrete bunker. The steel shutters had been covered with many layers of graffiti; the pitted ground outside was littered with cigarette ends and broken needles. I had been here before.

‘We’re going in?’ I said. ‘Into the Coachman?’

Frank turned to me and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Charlie, I want you to just follow me and do exactly what I tell you, right?’

‘Right,’ I squeaked. I gripped my tennis racket a little tighter. ‘Fine. Well. Once more unto the breach, eh, old chap…’

‘And don’t say anythin either, all right?’

We went through the door, which didn’t immediately seem to make any difference to the volume of water falling on our heads. A dozen pairs of hostile eyes fell on us. I looked around dumbstruck. It was the sort of place Egon Ronay must have nightmares about: warped linoleum on the floor, too-bright lights, no furniture to speak of other than rickety stools and picnic tables marked Dept of Forestry. At the bar were sitting six men with literally no foreheads, one of whom bared his teeth at us.

‘All right?’ Frank said. No one spoke. Casually, Frank passed his plank from one hand to the other and we began to sidestep along the wall, as though skirting the rim of a volcano. From the bar, the eyes tracked us, but the men did not move. At last we reached a door marked Gents and pushed through. I heaved a sigh of relief and immediately wished I hadn’t. There was an indescribably putrid stench that grew worse and worse as we walked along a narrow corridor and arrived at a steel door with a grille set at eye-level. With an almighty clanging and booming, Frank started beating it with his plank, until the grille slid back to reveal a pair of moist black eyes.

‘Yes?’ a voice said.

‘We’re here for Droyd,’ Frank growled.

‘Francy!’ the voice said. ‘Is it yourself? Wait till I get these —’ The grille slid shut again, and a complex series of unlocking noises ensued. At last the door swung open. We were greeted by a thin man in his forties, with lank hair and bad skin and the general appearance of having recently taken part in an oil slick. Cigarettes of unequal length burned between the middle fingers of his right hand. ‘Long time no see, Francy.’ He nodded at me. ‘Who’s this, your butler?’

‘We’re here for Droyd,’ Frank said before I could set him straight.

‘Droyd, eh?’ Cousin Benny stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘Haven’t seen him. Sorry.’

‘He ran off with three months’ rent.’ Frank lifted the plank threateningly. ‘I know you been sellin him gear,’ he said.

Cousin Benny seemed to find this amusing. ‘Have you not heard?’ he said. ‘Droyd’s gone straight. Clean as a whistle.’ He shook his head and sighed. ‘No loyalty, these kids. Take the best years of your life, then they just chuck you aside…’

With a gurgle of anger, Frank pushed past him; I raised an eyebrow in apology and followed him in.

The first thing that struck one about the room was the smell: a mouldering collection of various species of decay — food, bodily waste, rotting brickwork. There was no furniture or carpeting, just mattresses, mildewed mattresses strewn everywhere. It was so dark that it took a moment to make out the comatose forms on top of them, and another to see that most of these were children. There were fifteen or twenty of them, lying down or propped in corners, with drooping eyelids and nodding heads, as if they were coming home tired out after a school trip. Many of them I recognized from throwing fireworks at me in the street, and with a sick feeling I glanced from mattress to mattress until I arrived at the two moon-faced trolley children, slumped with hands clasped and a blackened ampoule at their feet.

Cousin Benny had closed the door. He stood beside it, half-hidden in the sepulchral light, exhaling a huge cloud of smoke into the pall that hung over the sleepers. Everything was perfectly still: it was like some unholy parody of peace. I realized my hands were trembling and folded them behind my back. Then there was a gasp. Frank, who had waded out into the middle of the sea of bodies, darted over to the far wall. He bent down and rose again with a tracksuited form lying limply in his arms. It was Droyd, deep in a swoon, and looking, quite unexpectedly, like something out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. ‘Fuck off,’ he murmured drowsily. ‘Fuck off.’

When it was clear that he couldn’t be woken, Frank slung him over his shoulder. Puffing, he turned to Cousin Benny in the corner. ‘I’m takin him, Benny,’ he said. ‘I’m takin him.’

‘Go ahead,’ Cousin Benny said. The twin plumes of smoke twirled up like incantations from his fingers. ‘He’ll be back.’

‘Don’t get in me way.’ Frank took the first steps towards a peeling door in the corner. ‘Watch him, Charlie.’ Swallowing, I brandished the tennis racket.

Cousin Benny smiled mockingly. ‘What’s he goin to do, blackball me from his club?’

But as Frank stumbled over to the door, he withdrew to a safe distance. ‘Take him,’ he called after us. ‘He’ll be back. He’s only a cunt. You’re all only cunts. He’ll try and clean up, and then somethin’ll happen and he won’t be able to hack it, and he’ll be back here with the money —’

I slammed the door shut behind me: and then, mercifully, we were back on the street. Frank laid Droyd down on the concrete and we sucked in cold wet air as if it were manna from heaven.

I noticed my right cufflink had come loose. I tried to fix it but my damned hands were still shaking too much. It was damned annoying. My dinner jacket was by now completely soaked as well. I leaned against the wall and took deep breaths and waited for the shaking to stop. Finally it abated sufficiently for me to make the necessary adjustment. Then I clapped my hands together. ‘Right,’ I said.

Frank had sunk on to his haunches beside Droyd, and was staring at his feet with an air of utter dejection.

‘Not much of an afternoon,’ I said, ‘but all’s well that ends well, I suppose.’

Nobody said anything.

‘That is, all’s well that ends well,’ I repeated carefully.

‘Charlie, what are we goin to do?’ Frank said.

‘Well, I’d better get a move on to that dinner,’ I said. ‘I’d ask you along only it’s black tie, you see, and —’

‘No, about the money, Charlie, about the fuckin rent.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said vaguely. ‘Something’ll turn up, I imagine.’

Frank did not appear to derive much succour from this. A wave of impatience rose up through me. Couldn’t he understand I had problems of my own? Couldn’t he stop thinking about money for five minutes?

‘Well maybe you’ve got this landlord character all wrong,’ I said. ‘Maybe if you just explain it to him, he’ll understand. Explain that, you know, Droyd stole the money to spend on drugs and that you’re very sorry but you’ll get it to him as soon as you can. Didn’t you say he was an ex-policeman? An ex-policeman’s going to understand about these things, isn’t he?’

Frank laughed hollowly for about five minutes. I simmered and kicked my heels and twirled the Dunlop tennis racket in my hand. Suddenly Frank reached up and grabbed it. ‘Charlie, you can get us some money can’t you?’

‘Me?’ I said incredulously. ‘Where am I supposed to get you money?’

He rose to his feet and stood over me. ‘Charlie,’ he said, ‘this is no time to be a scabby bastard.’

‘I’m not being any kind of a bastard. I don’t have any money,’ I said, backing away.

‘But you have to,’ he insisted mechanically, advancing on me, swinging his tree-trunk arms. ‘You’re from fuckin Killiney you’ve all got loads of money —’

‘Damn it, can’t you think for just two seconds?’ I shouted at him. ‘If I had any money at all do you think I’d be living here? In a slum? Do you think I’d be spending my day traipsing around looking at heroin addicts, or hauling people out of opium dens? I was supposed to be moving in with air hostesses! Air hostesses, Frank! From Sweden! I mean, did it ever once occur to you that this might not be my ideal living situation, trapped in a ghetto with a scrap merchant and a juvenile delinquent?’

For a moment, I was sure he was going to hit me. But he didn’t. Instead his face seemed to sort of crumple; and covering it with his hands, he sank back down to the ground.

A small voice piped up: the rain had woken Droyd. ‘I’m sorry, Frankie,’ he said in slurred, slow-motion words, tugging Frank’s elbow. ‘It’s all about the music now, I swear.’

‘That’s what you said the last time, you geebag,’ Frank said, grinding his teeth.

‘This time I mean it,’ Droyd pronounced. Rain spilled down his lolling forehead. ‘I swear. Don’t worry, Frankie, we’ll get out of this fuckin kip. We’ll go to Ibiza, an’ we’ll sit on the beach all day drinkin cans… an’ all the birds’1l be after us, cos we’re the men…’

‘Just shut up, you cunt. Can’t you see I’ve fuckin had it with you, you fuckin juvenile delinquent.’ Frank sank his head in his hands and buried it between his knees. ‘We’re fucked,’ he sobbed. ‘We’re fucked.’

I put my hands in my pockets and shuffled uncomfortably. Away to the east, somewhere beyond the power lines, the first guests would be arriving for dinner. If I left now I could still make the starters. Tomorrow, perhaps Frank and I could sit down together and figure out a plan; there was no point dallying any longer, getting into Mother’s bad books on top of everything else. I was just turning to say pip-pip and set off across the waste ground when suddenly I had a premonition. Suddenly, vividly, I could see myself, sitting at the dinner table and relating today’s adventures to Bel. I was presenting it as a kind of a picaresque yarn about the difficulties I had had getting here tonight. But she didn’t appear to be seeing the funny side; instead she was getting angry and launching into me as I tried to enjoy my duck terrine. Frank puts a roof over your head, she was saying, and this is what do you do for him in return? You let Amaurot slip through your fingers, and now you’re going to let them take Apt C Sands Villas as well?

I glanced down. Droyd had fallen back asleep with his head on Frank’s shoulder. Look, I told the premonition-Bel, Mother said eight sharp. She had been very clear on that point, and Lord knows she was close enough to disinheriting me as it was. And furthermore, what about you? I said, pointing to the premonitory suitcases waiting in the hallway beneath the glass frieze. I don’t see what you’re getting so high and mighty about, when you’re traipsing off to Yalta. When do you think Frank and Droyd will get to go somewhere like Yalta? Never, that’s when. They’ll probably never get out of this godforsaken place.

But none of this seemed to matter. She just looked at me in that way she had, and I looked down guiltily at my imaginary duck terrine.

And then I had an idea.

Admittedly it didn’t seem like much of an idea at first, particularly when we turned out our pockets and found we had only four pounds seventy-eight in change (Frank’s) and one unusually coloured pebble from Killiney Beach (mine) by way of collateral. But after we had taken Droyd back to the flat and put him to bed in Frank’s room and barricaded the door with the sofa and the tallboy and a set of dumbbells that kept falling off the bar and told Laura not to let him out no matter what, I brought Frank outside to the van to discuss it. He was understandably shaken by events and before he’d listen to anything he insisted on smoking some of his hashish to calm him down; and as I was feeling rather in need of calming down myself, and I hadn’t any baccy, I took some of it too and put it in my pipe. Then, when we were both calmer, I outlined my plan.

‘The best way to look at it,’ I said, ‘is that basically we have nothing left to lose. In a way that’s a sort of an advantage, do you see? It means we can take bigger risks, because, I mean, how much worse can things possibly get?’

‘I don’t know, Charlie,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I just don’t know.’

‘I’m good at it,’ I said. ‘Honestly. It’s probably the one thing in the world I’m actually good at.’

Frank shook his head, sending scurrying little puffs of redolent smoke.

‘You’ll just have to trust me,’ I said; and, with a small but expressive moan, he handed over his last four pounds seventy-eight.

And even as we approached in the van, it was apparent that this was a fated night. The rain was falling vertically and bouncing off the glass roof, and the floodlights shining through it gave the dog-track, as we neared it, a kind of a halo, so that it seemed to glow, like a magical city, as if everything that had happened in our lives were no more than a yellow-brick road bringing us here. Drawing up in the van in a humble and trepidatious silence, I had the most curious sense that things had come loose from their everyday fixtures. Colours seemed brighter, sounds deeper, starker; thoughts and memories, past and future, bled out of their confines into the air. The Roma women with gold teeth selling magazines in the car park, the inhuman voice announcing the next race over the tannoy — everything seemed to carry a secret marker; everything took on the glaze of destiny.

I managed to persuade Frank to stay up in the bar this time. A little table with two chairs waited for us right beside the window. Outside, the stands were full and the atmosphere electric — literally, as over the stadium thunderclouds swirled and massed. I ordered a Tom Collins and set to work.

2003 Masterpiece Ivor Biggun Trouble in Paradise 5/1

2018 Twink’s Mother Dunroamin The Great Pretender 8/3 on

2040 Flashdance My Other Dog’ s A Mercedes Liberty Bell evens

Picking the winners did not require much divination on my part. If there were, as seemed increasingly to be the case, unearthly forces at work that night, they were making little effort to disguise themselves. Instead they seemed to be using the dog meet to single me out and pillory me for my recent errors in judgement. Oh Brother!; Good-time Charlie; I’m Off — in every race there was a barely concealed indictment, meant solely for me; and every indictment cruised infallibly into victory. The money poured in thick and fast, and after an hour and a quarter of it my nerves were in shreds. Needless to say, this was completely lost on Frank.

‘All right, this next one,’ he scanned the racing-sheet. ‘Looks like a straight fight between Brits Out and… You Tore Me Down.’ And he looked up. ‘What’d you think, Charlie, is it Brits Out or —?’

‘You Tore Me Down, damn it!’ I exclaimed miserably. ‘You Tore Me Down, what else could it possibly be? This whole programme has been nothing but a, but a witch hunt…’ rubbing my fists in my eyes.

‘You all right, Charlie?’

‘Of course I’m not all right, I mean a fellow makes one mistake and instead of letting him make amends everybody just wants to gloat and point the finger. What about Harry, why does he get off scot-free? Why don’t they name a few dogs after him?’

‘Charlie, I think all that ganja’s makin you a bit paranoid.’

‘Don’t be absurd,’ I tugged at my collar. ‘Damn it, why is it so hot in here? Don’t you find it oppressively hot? I say, get me a Manhattan, will you?’

‘You prob’ly shouldn’t be drinkin so much on top of it either, Charlie.’

‘Don’t touch that, I’m perfectly fine, anyway it’s helping me concentrate, I said don’t touch it —’

Frank shrugged and put his pencil in his mouth and looked through the next race as I snapped my fingers for the lounge girl. ‘Right… How’s Your Billabong eight to one… McGurks Mutual Finance Limited five to one… Oh wait, Shit Creek nine to two on favourite. Shit Creek, ha ha…’

You Tore Me Down thundered home, and so did Shit Creek. Frank whooped and went to collect our winnings. I watched the clock over the bar. They would be finishing their soup by now. Would Bel be wondering where I was? Or would she be glad I wasn’t there?

‘’Member the last time we were here, Charlie?’ Frank sat down cheerfully with another wad of bills. ‘With Bel, that was a good laugh, wasn’t it?’

‘Mmm.’

‘It was that time she was tryin to get into that play,’ he reminisced. ‘’Member? Fuck’s sake. Mad about that fuckin play she was. I thought she’d top herself when they told her she couldn’t be in it, she was that into it.’ He piled the money into a little stack and sat back in his chair with his arms flung expansively over the back.

‘Damn Chekhov,’ I muttered.

‘Dunno why, like. All it is is these Russians goin on about their fuckin orchard and tryin to ride each other. Beats me why she’d be so mad into it. Do you know why she was so mad into it, Charlie?’

‘She was in it in school,’ I mumbled into my Manhattan. ‘She forgot her lines.’

‘Ah yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised. Cos like, maybe in the olden days it was good, like before they had special effects and stuff. But now, I mean, it’s just fuckin borin. Like you don’t even see the fuckin Cherry Orchard. No, wasn’t my type of thing at all…’

I tuned him out, watched the lightning play along the rooftop. The family of aristocrats returning to their old house… it was coming back to me, it’s about to be sold off, but they don’t do anything about it. I remember becoming quite fond of them; they were a lazy, amiable bunch, quite gay in spite of everything — that’s the spirit, I remember thinking, sunny side up…

‘All she ever talked about was that play,’ Frank recalled. ‘She even made me learn this speech to help her, that was like a whole fuckin page long. What was it it went like?’

It was the spring: Father hadn’t been around, so Mother had dragged me along instead; we sat on stiff-backed chairs in the freezing auditorium, a dozen expensive perfumes intermingling over deeper, older school smells of Christmas tests, double gym, morning assembly and ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. Giddy children whispered, parents clutched mimeographed programmes; Mother sat erect on my left, mouthing the words with Bel whenever she came on — she played an old maid, always fretting and nagging and waiting to be romanced by another girl in a hairnet with a false moustache on –

‘Think Ania!’ Frank bellowed, making me jump in my seat. ‘Your grandfather your great-grandfather and all your forebears were serf owners that owned livin souls! Don’t you see human beins gazin at you from every leaf and tree trunk, don’t you hear voices —’

And then she forgot her lines. How had she forgotten them? When for the last two weeks she’d been doing nothing but wandering around the house with a towel over her head, mumbling away incessantly to herself like Franny Glass? And she had breezed through the first half with no trouble at all. Yet here she was centre-stage, with her mouth half-open and her arms held out like a men’s room attendant waiting for someone to hand them a towel and clearly no idea how to proceed –

‘Don’t you see human beins gazin at you from every cherry tree in your orchard?’

It didn’t take long for the audience to cotton on, and for giggles and snickers to begin to escape the smaller members; I squirmed in my seat and felt my face go hot and wished I had the courage to just run up on stage and deus ex machina pull her out of their wretched play and disappear with her into the night. Someone, a teacher presumably, hissed the line from the wings, but she didn’t seem to hear; she stayed frozen to the spot, like a deer caught in headlights. The actors tried to continue the scene around her, but it was impossible, ludicrous — and people were enjoying the spectacle now, they guffawed heartily as the teacher hissed out the line again, and the room filled with derisory applause as the curtain hastened down, and Mother’s hands rested perfectly still and white on her purse –

‘Yet it’s perfectly clear that, to live in the present,’ Frank went on, ‘we must first at — atone for our past and be finished with it —’

‘Give it a rest,’ I murmured, ‘there’s a good fellow.’

She had been furious afterwards, Mother, I mean, even though the play had restarted five minutes later and Bel, though jittery, had managed to get to the end without any further hiccups, which I thought was a credit to her, and anyway surely these things were just an occupational hazard — there was no reason for Mother to say what she’d said, and if you asked me it was no coincidence that it was the very next day that Bel had got sick and the doctor had had to come –

‘ — and we can only atone for it by suffering —’

Because that trouble before the play, the shouting and the broken crockery, that had been enough to put anybody off, and when Father didn’t come home we had driven to the school in a hissing white-hot silence: but that’s how it had all started, the sickness and the doctors and then Father too, then two years of white coats and not sleeping and drugs with unintelligible names and one’s jaw hurting from clenching one’s teeth all the time — that’s when it all began, at that infernal play, why did she have to keep circling back to it, why couldn’t she just forget it?

‘ — by suffering by extraordinary unceasing exer —, exertion —’

‘Damn it —’

‘Forward, friends! Don’t fall behind!’

‘That’s enough —’ my hand coming down so hard that the ashtray skipped right off the table and exploded on the floor.

‘Janey, Charlie, I was only havin a laugh.’

‘Sorry,’ I said curtly, knocking back my drink.

‘Seriously, you feelin okay, Charlie?’

‘No,’ I said. How could they just let her go, without saying anything? How could they pretend nothing was wrong, let it all happen again, just so they could get her out of the way?

‘You prob’ly just need a bit of food,’ Frank said. He turned to the girl knelt sweeping up the shards of the ashtray and asked her to bring over ten packs of peanuts.

I exhaled jaggedly. I felt small and spent; I didn’t want to think about it any more. ‘How much money does this fellow want anyway?’ I said, gesturing at the heap of notes. Frank did some mental calculations, then started scribbling on a beermat. It would take us all night at this rate, I thought with a sinking heart; and by then she would be gone, gone into the snowy wastes.

The mechanical voice announced the next race. I went to the bar and ordered a Guinness for Frank and a dry martini for myself, with a shot of Calvados while I was waiting. Outside the sky had cleared enough to make room for a brace of stars, which swam about in a comforting way. I returned to the table to find Frank wearing an odd expression. ‘Look,’ he whispered.

His arithmetic had carried him off the beermat and on to a left-behind newspaper, and he was pointing to a line in one corner: something about An Evening of Long Goodbyes, which sounded vaguely familiar.

‘It’s that dog what Bel bet on the last time,’ he said. ‘Remember the one that bit that young lad?’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘So it is. I thought I recognized the name.’

‘Look at the odds, Charlie,’ he whispered. ‘They’re astromonomical.’

‘Hardly surprising, after that last farrago. I’m amazed they’re still letting it race.’

‘But think, right, if we put everything we have on it, we’d have enough for the rent, and the ESB, and the gas, and…’

‘Yes, but you’re forgetting, it wouldn’t win, you see, that’s why the odds are —’

‘But if we put down say two hundred blips, then —’

‘But it wouldn’t win, damn it. If it were the only dog running it wouldn’t win. That dog’s a born loser, can’t you understand that?’

With a hurt look, Frank retreated to his beermats. I sat back splenetically with the form. An Evening of Long Goodbyes, indeed. Put all our money on that? After what happened last time? Funny I hadn’t noticed it earlier, though… With a diversionary cough, I reached for the left-behind newspaper. Now this really was queer. Unless it was a misprint, it appeared that the bookmakers were giving outlandishly long odds not just against proven reprobates like An Evening of Long Goodbyes, but against all of the dogs running in the 2130, bar one. This dog, one Celtic Tiger, was favourite by such a distance that a return on his victory would be minuscule: but his previous times seemed unusually slow.

The prudent thing would be to treat it as a low-risk investment: bet on Celtic Tiger and take the minimal return. And yet — I looked over my shoulder around the bar: business appeared to be proceeding as usual — and yet what if we had stumbled across some kind of gambling anomaly? What if there really were something in the air tonight? What if that something — or someone — were trying to reach us, help us, via the unconventional vehicle of An Evening of Long Goodbyes?

‘What are you thinking, Charlie?’

I ran my eyes over and over the tiny text. But suddenly my gambler’s intuition had deserted me. I had no idea what to do.

I took a deep breath. The prudent thing: generally — although it might at times seem otherwise — I had always done what was prudent. I had clung to things — to people, beliefs, certain modes of living. I had tried to hold them still, I had tried to shore them up against the vicissitudes of fate. Where had it got me? Everything I had tried to hold had escaped me. Perhaps the secret was to do the opposite: perhaps to keep the things one loved one had to gamble them; one had to give all the heart, live in the aleatory moment… I reached for the pencil and filled out the betting slip.

It was obvious as soon as the dogs were led out on to the field that we had made a terrible mistake.

Immediately the stadium erupted. Chants rose up, flags were waved, ne’er-do-wells linked arms and jigged, all for the benefit of Celtic Tiger, aka, we soon learned, The Bookie’s Despair.

‘Bollocks,’ said Frank.

It took two men to squeeze Celtic Tiger into its trap. It must have weighed a hundred pounds, consisting primarily of haunches and gnashing fangs; whatever biological connection it had to the greyhound family, it must have been pretty tenuous. The other dogs, who had evidently encountered it before, looked singularly depressed — apart from An Evening of Long Goodbyes, that is, who was gazing off hopefully at the concession stand. What really struck one was its air of unchecked malevolence. I had never experienced evil of such magnitude at such close proximity, apart from lunches with Mr Appleseed. Yet in spite of this, Celtic Tiger seemed to inspire an almost religious fervour. The punters looked to it with the worshipful, desperate love of a parched country for the annual rains. ‘God bless you, Celtic Tiger,’ said a worn man next to us at the window, his weathered cheeks wet with tears. I realized that for these people, Celtic Tiger must be one of the few certainties in life: aside from death, of course, and nurses. The starter’s gun sounded and the rabbit scooted away.

We cheered on An Evening of Long Goodbyes as best we could, but I doubted he could have heard us. Within seconds, Celtic Tiger was out on its own, prancing along taking the salutes of the crowd, while the other dogs remained behind at a respectful distance. It was like some kind of canine Nuremberg rally.

‘This is a fiasco!’ I cried. ‘Those other dogs aren’t even trying! What’s the point having a race if they’re too afraid to overtake him?’

Just as I said it, a ripple of consternation ran through the stands. All of a sudden one of the dogs had broken away from the pack and was quickly making up ground — which wasn’t hard, considering Celtic Tiger had all the zip of a Panzer tank.

‘That’s a brave dog,’ one of the punters next to us said grudgingly.

‘It’s not so much it’s brave,’ his companion said. ‘It’s more like it’s forgotten what it’s supposed to be doing.’

‘It’s him!’ Frank whispered to me.

I quickly apprehended what had happened. A chap in the front row of the far stand had unwrapped a sandwich, and An Evening of Long Goodbyes had caught sight of it. The spectators could boo and curse him all they wanted now. I knew that all he was thinking about was that sandwich, and he would not be diverted, not by them, nor by the finishing line which loomed up ahead, nor by those intimidating looks the larger dog was giving him as he drew up alongside it –

‘That’s it!’ I pounded encouragingly on the glass, attracting glowers from the punters around me. ‘That’s the stuff!’

— and abandoning all pretence of sportsmanship, Celtic Tiger burst its muzzle as if it were paper and fastened its jaws around its rival’s throat.

‘What!’ howled Frank. ‘Referee!’

It was carnage. At first, some of the more bloodthirsty punters cheered it on: but quickly even they turned pale and went quiet, and the whole stadium was silent except for the yelps of An Evening of Long Goodbyes and the murderous snarls, snaps and tearing noises produced by Celtic Tiger. ‘Why doesn’t somebody do something?’ I appealed. But no one did anything. Celtic Tiger wasn’t even running any more, it was being dragged by the smaller dog, who struggled gamely on towards his sandwich even with Celtic Tiger latched around his neck. The other dogs had backed up into a small uncertain huddle some distance down the track; some lay down or rolled over, their dolorous baying segueing into the groans of Frank and the small minority of unwise men who had bet against the favourite — as An Evening of Long Goodbyes, drenched in blood, froth dripping from his mouth, uttered a long-drawn-out moan and toppled over on his side.

The silence seemed to deepen; the punters buried themselves guiltily in their pints. I couldn’t take any more. I staggered away to the bar, squeezed in beside a silver-haired gent, and with the small sum of money that was now all we had left, ordered myself a triple whiskey. So much for destiny, I thought bitterly; so much for giving all the heart. The world had made suckers of us again. Cousin Benny’s words kept circling through my head: we were cunts, we would always be cunts.

A gasp went up at the window for some fresh outrage on the track. I took a slug from the glass without looking round, wincing pleasurably at the sour familiar kick. To hell with the damned race. I had enough whiskey here to get stinking drunk. At least when I was drunk I knew where I stood: and I didn’t need anybody’s directions to get there. To hell with Frank, and the lousy dinner party; to hell with Bel too. Let her leave if she wanted to leave, let her write off the one person who actually cared about her, who didn’t think of her as an eternal outpatient with impossible dreams…

The punters roared in anguish.

‘Sounds like someone’s taking a beating,’ the silver-haired gent beside me remarked.

‘Someone’s always taking a beating,’ I muttered without looking up.

‘I suppose that’s true,’ the gent agreed.

I turned around. The smoke was making it hard to see, and the room kept spinning, but when I squinted I could make out a well-cut if somewhat vieux jeu worsted suit and a pair of wire-frame spectacles. I wondered what he was doing here with this rabble. He motioned the bargirl to refill our glasses and, as if in answer to my question, said: ‘Still, one has to take one’s chances, doesn’t one?’

‘I don’t see why,’ I said, clinking my ice cubes.

‘Come on, Charles,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘You know why.’

The room seemed to lurch, and a sweltering buzz rose up from my toes to engulf me. At that moment the crowd roared again and the punters at the bar rushed over to the window. I found myself thrown forward: standing on tiptoes, I peered blearily over the mass of heads.

It appeared that Celtic Tiger, having vanquished his foe, had not gone on and finished the race like a sensible dog, but instead had turned his attentions on the dogs grouped miserably together a hundred yards behind.

‘For fuck’s sake!’ the crowd were crying, clutching their heads as the cowardly dogs turned tail and fled with Celtic Tiger now in hot pursuit. ‘The other way, you prick! Run the other way!’

‘Too much PCP,’ a whiskery geezer with defeated eyes observed beside me.

But that was not all. At the other end of the track — far away from where the stewards were trying to fend off Celtic Tiger with a steel pole — An Evening of Long Goodbyes was beginning to stir. At first no one noticed — everyone was too busy trying to convince the renegade favourite to rejoin the race — but then a lone voice cried out, ‘Hey! That thick dog’s not dead yet!’

There was a pause and then a collective rustling, as people checked the number in the programme: and then, sporadically, from one or two points in the crowd, the shouts came: ‘An Evening of Long Goodbyes! An Evening of Long Goodbyes!’

The dog’s tail thumped once, twice against the ground.

Seeing this, more voices joined in. The shouts grew louder. ‘An Evening of Long Goodbyes! An Evening of Long Goodbyes!’

And slowly, painfully slowly, the dog picked himself up, until, on legs as frail and ungainly as a newborn calf’s, rain pasting his fur to his bony head, he stood there blinking at us in wonderment.

The clamour was deafening. Men shouted and pummelled the glass and stamped their feet. ‘That’s it!’ they bellowed. ‘Go on, you cunt! Go on, Goodbyes!’ Everyone was of one voice, as if the only reason any of us were there was to cheer on this chewed and rather mangy-looking dog, which seemed to feed on these waves of furious noise and energy and — as the cheering grew to a roar, as Celtic Tiger was ushered into a cage by two men with cattle prods — now wagged his tail, and began to trot towards the finishing line.

‘Sprezzatura,’ a voice in my ear said; and I looked round to see, in the midst of the churning punters and the pillars of smoke, a familiar grey emanation. ‘What?’ I said faintly. He smiled hermetically, and pointed out the window; and turning, I saw the rainy stadium filled with men in top hats and tails, with black dicky bows and carnations in their buttonholes, cheering on the dog they’d bet against as the voice behind me mused, ‘What was it Oscar used to say? In a good democracy, every man should be an aristocrat.’

I spun round — there was so much I wanted to ask him, there were so many things I didn’t understand. ‘Wait!’ I cried. ‘Come back!’ But he was already halfway to the door, hoisting on to his head, as he melted into the throng, what appeared to be a giant sombrero… And now, after a series of dramatic collapses, An Evening of Long Goodbyes finally hauled his carcass over the line, and the place went crazy. It was as if we had just won a war. People whooped and sang; they tore up their losing stubs and threw them in the air like confetti. Frank appeared, laughing, and caught me in a bear hug. ‘We done it, Charlie!’ he exclaimed. ‘We done it!’

Someone must have overheard him, because before I could correct his grammar, we were picked up and borne along on a sea of strangers’ hands to the betting hatch, where, with the crowd amassed behind us, the clerk hastily agreed that it would be poor form to declare the race forfeit, and paid out our winnings on the spot. Everybody in the bar applauded; Frank asked if anybody wanted a drink, and it turned out that most people did; and everything was so breathless and euphoric that it took me a while to pinpoint that irritating bleeping noise. Finally I realized it was Bel’s phone. I had brought it along to give back to her tonight. It appeared to be having some kind of an episode. I pressed some buttons to make it stop and it started talking to me — a girl’s voice, someone looking for Bel.

‘She’s not here,’ I shouted, putting a finger in one ear. ‘She’s at home.’

‘I can’t get through to her at home,’ the girl said.

‘They’re having a dinner thing,’ I said.

‘Oh. Well, can you pass on a message?’ The girl had a husky, rasping voice, as if she made a regular thing of smoking too many cigarettes. ‘Will you tell her Jessica wants her to —’

‘Wait, you’re Jessica?’ I interjected.

‘Why, does my fame precede me?’

‘It most certainly does,’ I averred. ‘I’d like to know what you mean, running off with my sister.’

‘I wasn’t aware I was running off with anyone,’ the girl said. ‘Who is this, anyway?’

‘It’s Charles,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Bel told me about you,’ she added, rather pointedly.

‘That’s neither here nor there,’ I said. ‘The fact is, Bel is clearly not fit for — what did you mean by that last remark? What did she say about me?’

‘All sorts of things,’ Jessica said light-headedly, as if she had never until now believed they could be true.

‘Well, be that as it may,’ I muttered uncomfortably. ‘The thing about Bel is —’

‘Aren’t you going to this dinner?’ she interrupted. ‘Or have you been blacklisted?’

‘Yes, I am going,’ I snapped. ‘Look, just give me your damned message, will you?’

‘Certainly,’ she said primly. She told me that their flight was at seven, so would Bel get a taxi for four, and pick her up on the way? I said I would pass this on; there was a pause, and just as I was about to look for the off button, the voice came again: ‘Charles?’

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t think Bel means those things she says about you, you know.’

‘Mmm,’ I said ambiguously.

‘And Charles?’

‘What?’

‘I promise I’ll take good care of her in Russia.’

‘Oh.’ I was rather touched. Possibly she was making fun of me, but somehow I didn’t think so; there was a warmth in her voice that was really quite appealing. ‘Well, thank you.’

‘You’d better get to your dinner before everyone’s gone to bed,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said; and then, ‘You know, when you get back perhaps we ought to go for a drink or something. I’ve written a play and there’s a part you might be interested in…’

She laughed, and said she’d see. ‘But our paths will cross again, Charles, somehow I’m sure of that…’

I tucked the phone away, beaming to myself. That old Hythloday magic! I was back in business!

It was now quite late. I went to find Frank and told him I was getting a taxi back to Amaurot. However he insisted on driving me over himself. This struck me as a damned decent gesture, and as we left I had another of my ideas: ‘You know, why don’t — ow!’

‘You all right, Charlie?’

‘Obviously I’m not all right, who put all those stairs there?’

‘I think they were there on the way in too.’

‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ I admitted. ‘I wish… I wish they hadn’t opened that second bottle of champagne, might have gone to my head a little…’ as he hoisted me up off the tarmac and closer to a ring of prettily spinning cartoon stars. ‘B’ what I was saying was, why don’t you come along to dinner too? I mean, you’re not in black tie, but…’

‘Van’s over here, Charlie.’

‘But don’ you worry about that,’ I dismissed these concerns with a wave of the hand; I was feeling magnanimous and iconoclastic and suddenly no obstacle seemed insurmountable. ‘I’ll explain about all that. Mother’s an absolute, an absolute pussycat if you know how to handle her — and anyway, I’ll just tell her that you’re my guest, and a, a damn fine fellow…’

‘Thanks very much, Charlie.’

‘Not at all, not at all — I say, look at that. Someone’s left behind their astrakhan jacket.’

The van’s headlights had illuminated an especially desolate section of the car park, where in a patch of weeds lay a discarded heap of clothing. It appeared to be emitting sounds of distress. I couldn’t remember if jackets typically did this or not.

‘Just a second —’ I got out and weaved my way over the unsteady gravel to the heap.

‘What is it?’ Frank called from the van

‘Hmm…’ The astrakhan jacket looked up at me with a pair of hopeful brown eyes. A long pink tongue tentatively licked my hand. ‘It seems to be An Evening of Long Goodbyes.’

‘They must have dumped it,’ Frank said, coming over.

‘Dumped it? Don’t be absurd. How could they have dumped it? Why, that dog’s a hero — a hero!’

‘Don’t think it’s goin to win many more races, though, Charlie.’ He was right. The dog’s flanks were streaked with blood. One of his legs was badly chewed, and his eyes and snout bore the gouge-marks of Celtic Tiger’s teeth. He laid his head back on the ground, panting rapidly.

‘But that’s — I mean to say, of all the…’ I scratched the back of my neck and lapsed into a confounded silence. ‘What are we going to do? I mean we can’t just leave it here.’

‘Ah Jay, Charlie, I thought we were in a hurry.’

I held up a finger for silence. My mind was clamouring at me to make a connection: something to do with the greyhound and the reflection of the moon in this long, kidney-shaped puddle –

‘Aha!’ I fumbled about in my pocket until I’d found what I was looking for: the pale disc of metal Bel had become so enamoured of; now I knew what it was.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a dog-tag, old sport.’

‘What, like a soldier has?’

‘No, like a dog has…’ It was the same one Bel had bought with her pocket money years and years ago, along with a red-leather collar and leash. It had been meant for the spaniel we hadn’t been let keep, the one she’d worried over so; she’d been going to get its name engraved on it, if we’d ever got so far as to give it a name. Someone must have unearthed it in the attic.

‘What would Bel be doin carryin that around, though, Charlie?’

‘Shh,’ I said, blinking back the haze of alcohol that ringed my brain, trying to puzzle it out. I didn’t know why Bel was carrying it around. It had to mean something. Was it that she’d never got over losing that spaniel? Had she been pining for it all this time? Or was it something more complicated? Did it have something to do with Mother? Or me? I frowned, swaying on the tarmac. Bel’s understanding of the world was byzantine at the best of times, and often there were complex movements involved, such as things being signs, or standing for other things that to a normal person they had obviously nothing to do with. But the fact was that here was a dog being offered to us on a plate: not a spaniel, admittedly, and possibly requiring some minor surgery — still, given the fateful quality of the night so far, it seemed remiss to simply ignore it.

‘Charlie — ah, Charlie, what’re you doin?’

There was blatantly not time to explain this to Frank.

‘Ah here, you’re not puttin that wet thing in my fuckin van —’

‘Talisman,’ I huffed, ‘lucky — symbolical — might bite Harry —’

‘Bark!’ barked An Evening of Long Goodbyes.

‘Bark, that’s right, good boy, we’re going for a ride in Frank’s van, aren’t we? Yes we are!’

‘For fuck’s sake —’ as he unlocked the loading doors and I stowed the dog in the back, where he curled up pacifically in a nest of altar cloths and priests’ vestments Frank had taken from a church that was being turned into a shoe shop. ‘Charlie, are you thinkin if you give her a dog Bel’ll forgive you for boffin that one-legged bird?’

‘I wish you’d stop saying I boffed her, it really is a most disagreeable turn of phrase.’

‘Well, for ridin her then.’

I thought about it. ‘Yes,’ I said. I studied the dog through the doors. He panted amicably at us. ‘Although,’ as Frank closed the doors up, ‘you know, An Evening of Long Goodbyes is such a cumbersome name. We ought to give him a new one.’

‘Yeah, like I was thinkin maybe that’s why it ran so slow, cos like it was draggin round all them words after it.’

‘Yes, quite, anyway, what I’m thinking is — Ozymandias.’

‘Oz-y-mandias?’

‘You know, the poem. Ozymandias, king of kings, look on my works, ye mighty, something something, I forget the rest — has a kind of a grandeur to it, don’t you think? Kind of a presence?’

‘I dunno, Charlie, it sounds a bit gay.’

‘A bit gay?’

‘A bit, yeah.’

‘Well what do you suggest?’

‘How about Paul?’

‘Paul? You can’t call a dog Paul. Why would you want to call it Paul?’

‘I had a mate once called Paul.’

‘So did I,’ I remembered; and we both reflected for a moment. ‘I suppose he does have a sort of a paulish quality. Well, maybe we should leave it for the time being. Bel might have her own ideas.’

We got into the van. Frank stowed our winnings in the glove compartment and started the engine.

‘Funny to think she’ll be leavin, though, isn’t it Charlie?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think maybe she’ll be all right.’ For as the city began to unreel through the window, and with all that money in the glove compartment, it felt like there was time still to set things to rights, to turn the clock back on old hurts. The night seemed limitless and replete with possibilities; everything glistened with water as if it had just come into being. ‘Well who’s this?’ as a long brown nose poked between the seats and smiled doggishly at us.

‘Bark!’ he said, as we hit the motorway and picked up speed.

‘What’s he sayin, Charlie?’

‘He’s saying, “Forward, friends! Don’t fall behind!”’

‘Bark!’

‘That’s right, old chap,’ I laughed, rubbing his chin. ‘That’s right —’