An Evening of Long Goodbyes

4

‘It just seems so drastic…’

‘Not at all. You’d be surprised how many people are doing it these days.’

MacGillycuddy was sitting on the bench opposite, a sack of post resting at his heel. ‘People from all walks of life, from the mighty barrister to the humble greengrocer. It’s a lot more common than you’d think.’

A blackbird hopped about in the mouldering eaves above us. MacGillycuddy’s voice seemed to come from far away. ‘It’s the death part, that’s what’s bothering you. It’s a natural reaction, you hear that word and you start worrying. But the whole point is, you’re not dying. You’re pretending to die. Oh, it’s a big step, I’m not denying that. But really it’s not that much bigger than, say, getting a kitchen fitted, or buying a new car.’

‘Mmm…’ A thick fall of ivy hung down over the gazebo door, filtering damp light from the rambling orchard outside. Ivy was probably all that was holding it together, I thought morosely. No one came to this corner of the garden any more.

‘Another thing that people tend to worry about,’ he was saying, ‘is the loss of identity. There’s no getting round it, a man’s identity is something very special. Nothing tells you who you are like your identity, and losing it is something that each customer has to come to terms with in his or her own way.’ He shifted about on his seat, and raised a finger philosophically. ‘The important thing is to have a positive attitude. There’s no point faking your death if you’re not going to make the best of it. So what I say is, look at it as an opportunity. Don’t think of it as losing your real identity; think of it as trading in an old identity for a new one. How many people get to have two identities?’ He looked at me inquiringly.

‘Not many,’ I conceded.

‘Exactly. So have fun with it. Think of someone you’ve always wanted to be and — well, I’m sure you have plenty of ideas of your own. My point is, it needn’t be a negative thing. I’ve done a good few of these now and I can tell you honestly that in many ways I envy you, abandoning your life and your loved ones. It’s like a big holiday. But what do you think, does that sound any more attractive?’

I thought about it. Sales pitch aside, MacGillycuddy really did seem to have a good understanding of insurance fraud, and though there was still something gnawing at the pit of my stomach I was beginning to feel less apprehensive. ‘And you’re sure the policy’ll pay out?’

‘Sound as a bell.’ He thwacked the paper against his thigh. ‘Accidental death, can’t fail.’ A weak rumble came from outside as Mrs P hauled the garbage down the driveway to the gate. Seeing me still wavering, he continued: ‘Look. We’ve gone through the figures. You’re not the first person to be in this position. You care about your family. The bank wants to take their house away from them. You have a problem, this is the solution. It’s as simple as that.’ He paused Socratically, straightened his back, took a long draught from his glass of milk.

I clasped my fingers and studied the warped floorboards. Once upon a time, before it all went wrong, Patsy Olé and I had spent a happy night here against the clammy wood, serenaded by creaks and rustles and distant waves. And now to take my bow and disappear… The magnitude of it made it difficult to think straight; but magnitude was what was required now: courage, sacrifice, the graceful noblesse of the true aristocrat — sprezzatura, something grand and altruistic and absurd to fling in the teeth of the Golems –

‘Well?’

That line of Yeats’s: Fail, and that history turns into rubbish, All that great past to a trouble of fools –

‘I’ll do it,’ I said.

‘Good,’ said MacGillycuddy with a Faustian gleam, reaching into his jacket for a pencil and paper. ‘Now, as to the details…’

One might expect there to be a lot of work in bringing something as convoluted as a life to a close: so many loose ends to tie up! So many final movements to be choreographed! But to my surprise — to my dismay — after that morning it all simply fell into place, the intervening days eliding so that it seemed one minute I was there with MacGillycuddy in the decaying gazebo, and the next standing blearily at the curtains, watching Saturday dawn waxy and white, a carpet of frost on the lawn, gulls crying over the morning ferry in the crystalline blue distance; and then downstairs to pace out the void of those endless final hours, drifting through the rooms like an afternoon ghost, or fidgeting in the kitchen annoying Mrs P –

‘Aren’t you putting any ginseng in?’

‘No,’ taking down a jar of herbs from the cupboard, ‘I have told you already, Master Charles, we have no ginseng in the house —’

‘All right, what about some rhino horn, do we have any of that ground rhino horn?’

‘Master Charles, I do not know this recipe that you think of, but me I am very sure that ossobuco he does not need ginseng or rhino horn or Spanish fly or any of these things that you say.’

‘Well, good, but… I mean there’ll be oysters at least, won’t there?’

‘Yes, Master Charles, but please, it is difficult to work here if you are all the time watching over my shoulder…’

‘Oh — all right.’

‘And you will not be able to eat dinner if you keep eating all those biscuits.’

‘I can’t help it,’ I said apologetically, putting the lid back on the tin. ‘I don’t seem able to stop, it must be nerves or something.’

‘Mmm.’ She took a pinch of coriander from a jar and stirred it into a smoking pan. ‘Master Charles, excuse me but I hear you talking with Miss Bel a few days…’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes,’ she continued hesitantly, keeping her back to me, ‘when you say the banks are coming to take away the house…’

‘I see.’

She turned to face me now; lines of distress stood out around her worn eyes. ‘What will happen, Master Charles? Where will we go?’

I didn’t feel like I ought to discuss it with her, the matter being primarily one for the family; nevertheless, she deserved some reassurance. ‘I shouldn’t worry about the bank, Mrs P. It’s a simple crossed wire, that’s all.’ I put a hand on her shoulder and added in a confidential tone: ‘Anyway, I’m taking care of it.’

She didn’t seem to take much comfort from this, but turned without further comment back to the cooker.

‘I’ll go and check on the dining room,’ I said airily, stretching myself. ‘You’ll be all right in here, won’t you? You’re not feeling, you know, mad or anything?’ She rattled a saucepan by way of reply. On my way out I paused to look back at her, trying to store the image: red elbows amid steaming pots, tight bun of hair, the kindly curve of her jowl…

‘Ow!’

… and pushed through the door right into Bel. ‘Sorry,’ I reached down to help her up. ‘Here, let me take that…’

‘It’s okay — hang on, are you all right?’

‘Me? Yes, of course. Something in my eye, that’s all.’

I followed her into the dining room, where she set down her casket and brushed the dust from her blouse.

‘How much are you planning on bringing down? Because there’s boxes of Mother’s family’s stuff in the attic, if you want…’

‘Actually, I don’t think we could fit much more.’ We cast our eyes over the room.

‘It looks like Aladdin’s cave…’ From every corner treasures winked and glistened: bracelets, rings and ankle chains, jade and lapis, garnets and sapphires, Hindu statuettes, Turkish throw-rugs, antique pistols and scimitars, several inscrutable objets from Africa, spooky green Tahitian pearls, a Byzantine loros, amulets, orreries… ‘I don’t know Charles, it seems so ostentatious. I mean, if Caligula were coming to dinner, it might make sense. But it’s Laura. And she’s coming to talk about insurance.’

‘Well, there’s lots of things here she can insure, don’t you think she’ll be happy about that?’

‘You should leave out a calculator and some actuarial tables, I bet that would get her going.’

‘Yes, that’s very helpful, now could you hold the ladder a moment…’

Initially, when I realized I had double-booked, as it were, I thought I would have to cancel dinner. On the face of it, there didn’t seem much point in sparking off a romance with Laura if I were going to be for all intents and purposes dead next morning. But the more I thought about it — how long I had waited for this night to come, how many times I had dreamed of the moment she would walk through the door — the more I began to wonder if the two events were in some way connected. Could it be that my first meeting with Laura and my flight from Amaurot were meant to coincide? Was this Destiny showing her hand, telling me that our fates were to remain intertwined? If the bond between us were as strong as I felt, could it be — I hardly dared think it — could it be that we might somehow go on together, beyond the grave, so to speak? That she would come with me into my new life?

In short, though it was a little inconvenient, I decided that the dinner would go ahead after all. Given the circumstances, however, and our mutual destiny notwithstanding, I thought it would be wise to hurry things along as much as possible. This was why I had inserted as many aphrodisiacs into the menu as Mrs P would allow, and why I had gathered up the family valuables from their various niches around the house and transferred them en masse into the dining room for the evening (though I had an ulterior motive for the latter action which would remain secret until much later). Bel was probably right, it probably was ostentatious, but it was the last chance I would have to blind anyone with fabulous displays of wealth, and I thought I should make the most of it. Furthermore, the pragmatist in me was urging me to do my romancing while I had access to the necessary hardware, viz., a bed; one didn’t want to rush these things, but at the same time I didn’t know where I’d be two days from now, and Casanova himself might have been at a loss if after all his hard work he had to invite his paramours back to a nice patch of grass, or behind a skip.

‘I meant to ask — yuck, Charles, where did you find this?’

‘That’s called shunga, it’s a very old and beautiful Japanese art form…’ propping it up beside a Victorian cameo brooch.

‘What’s he doing to her? Does he have two penises? — I meant to ask you about Mrs P, didn’t you give her the week off?’

‘Yes, but —’

‘Because she’s been slaving in there all day.’

‘Yes, but I could hardly cook dinner myself, could I? Not after last time, I mean I don’t want to poison the girl —’

‘The thing is — the topaz would be nice beside the chryselephantine, no the little ivory thing — I’m beginning to think you were right about her being a bit, you know… because you mightn’t have heard, but these last few nights she’s been sort of screaming…’

‘Screaming?’

‘Well, maybe not exactly screaming, but calling out for someone.’

‘You’re sure it’s not the peacocks?’ Since their infestation, the peacocks had been making a horrendous racket, the noise made my blood run cold –

‘No, it’s definitely her. Every night at three or four a.m. It’s frightening. I asked her today wasn’t she sleeping well and she didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.’

‘Her cooking doesn’t seem to be affected, though.’

‘But she shouldn’t be working, Charles. She’s worn out. Have I told you my theory about her? I’ve developed a theory about her.’

‘Hmmm?’ descending the ladder and pacing backwards to view the display from the far end of the dining table.

‘I think it’s what happened in Kosovo. You know she used to watch all those news reports. She was practically addicted. I think it must have upset her more than she let on.’

‘Mmm.’ I squinted at the dresser through a frame of thumbs and forefingers. ‘Isn’t all that over now, though? Didn’t NATO win?’ I seemed to remember the builders giving out recently about NATO winning some war by dropping bombs on people somewhere else.

‘Well, maybe it’s a delayed reaction, like, now that it’s over and the Kosovans are returning home, now it’s hitting her. Maybe the same thing happened to her when the Serbs invaded Bosnia or Croatia or wherever she’s from… God, Charles, can you imagine what it was like, all those unfortunate people in those miserable camps just waiting and listening to horror stories about the ones who didn’t escape — no wonder she has nightmares…’

‘After tonight, she can have a nice long rest,’ I said. The hoard seemed to produce a light of its own, a very old light that pulsated and whispered through it –

‘After next week she’ll be out of a job,’ Bel muttered, and looked at her watch. ‘Are you finished? I should get going.’

‘Oh, okay, thanks for helping,’ scrambling over to take her arm, ‘and you’ll be back for tonight, won’t you?’

‘Yes, probably — why are you looking at me like that?’

‘No reason, I just think it would be, you know, nice to see you…’

She arched her eyebrows sceptically. ‘All right, I’ll try. But I have to go.’ Outside the van crunched up the driveway. ‘Shit!’ She span off upstairs. I listened to her clatter back down and grab her coat from the closet, greeting Frank at the door and disappearing in a happy rush of conversation; and for a moment longer I stood rocking on my heels as if I’d been hit over the head. Tonight, I told myself, taking a breath: there would be time to talk tonight. Now, with an hour or two yet remaining, I returned to my lonely wandering through the house, from room to empty room, with butterflies in my stomach and the light blurring and gleaming along the edges of everything I looked upon as if calling out to me goodbye, goodbye –

The telephone was ringing downstairs. ‘Eh, hello, is that… C?’

‘Oh blast it, MacGillycuddy, what is it this time?’

‘I just called to make sure we had it all clear for tonight.’

‘We’ve been over it a hundred times, of course it’s all clear.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘So you’re positive you want to do it this way?’

‘Yes, I’m positive — look, MacGillycuddy, can’t you just accept that this is how I’m doing it, and stop trying to change my mind? One doesn’t just wander into these things, you know —’

‘Right,’ he said again.

‘I’ve given it considerable thought, and symbolically speaking this seems by far the best way of tying everything up.’

‘Grand. And that’s your final decision?’

‘Yes.’

There was a ruminative pause. ‘I mean, you’re sure you don’t want to drown, for instance?’

‘Drowning — what, I’m just going to fall into the sea, am I? What’s that going to make me look like?’

‘Well, put it this way, it’s late, you’ve had a few drinks — no inconsistencies there, if you’ll allow me — you announce you’re going for a quick stroll around the clifftops to clear your head. Cliffs now, for the death-faker they really are a godsend, you should be aware of that. Anyway you don’t come back, and the next morning we discover your pocket-watch on an overhanging branch —’

‘M,’ switching the phone testily from one hand to the other, ‘it’s my death, all right, and if you think I’m going to have everybody I know saying, Oh, poor Charles, pissed again, what a shame — it’s important to get the tone right, do you see?’ The man had simply no idea about tone. ‘It has to be poignant. This is a death that has to give people pause, to make them reflect, reconsider their values, realize that I was right and they were wrong. In terms of—’

‘Symbolism, yes, yes,’ MacGillycuddy interrupted, ‘certainly, yes, you do have to be concerned about that. But another thing you have to be sure about is whether it’s realistic, y’see the police —’

‘Realism?!’ I repeated incredulously. ‘When will you people let up with your damnable realism? Isn’t a man even allowed to die, without having to worry about whether it’s realistic or not?’

‘Follies don’t just explode, though.’

‘Of course they do, things are always exploding.’

‘Yes, but usually for a reason and not just because —’

‘There’ll be a reason,’ did he take me for a fool, some limp-wristed fop with no clue as to how the world worked and why things exploded?

The idea had come to me only a few days before, as the builders were explaining their latest strike — something to do with the government inveigling the country into NATO while the Dail was closed for summer holidays: ‘The whole thing’s a fuckin disgrace, Mr H, specially after what’s just been happening. Partnership for fuckin Peace me hole, we’ll be keeping missiles in our back gardens and learnin how to bomb hospitals I s’pose —’

‘Yes, I, um…’

‘Well, see you later. Oh, by the way, we haven’t finished hooking up the gas yet, so don’t start any fires in there or anything, ha ha! Bye.’

I explained all of this to MacGillycuddy. ‘So you see, it’s quite plausible: it’s late, I go out to the Folly to have a quick look at it before going to bed, I unwittingly start a fire of some kind, and then boom! I’m blown to smithereens. As far as anyone knows it’s a gas leak. It’s perfectly convincing. It probably happens every day, that sort of thing. I don’t see what you’re so worried about.’

‘All right,’ MacGillycuddy said heavily, ‘all right. I’ll make the preparations.’ And he named the time at which I, Charles, should be in the Folly should I wish to be exploded with it.

‘What about the other matter?’ I went on. ‘The Frank Trap, you know what you have to do?’

‘Yes, be outside the drawing room at —’

‘Not the drawing room, damn it, the dining room! Everything’s in the dining room, there’s nothing in the drawing room, what’s the point of filming that?’

‘Okay,’ he said slowly, ‘so I’m outside the dining room from eleven o’clock, and if he takes anything —’

‘Oh, he’s bound to take something, the man’s got all the restraint of a Thessalonica streetwalker —’

‘— and then I give the film to your sister, is that right?’

‘Yes, anonymously, she can’t know who made it. This way I’m simply presenting the facts, I’m not breaking the pact — we have this pact, you see.’

‘Ah right…’ Outside, dusk was settling; it wouldn’t be long now till Laura arrived. We went briskly over the remaining details, relatively minor matters — he’d procured some cash for me, and booked the plane ticket under an alias. ‘Why Chile, anyway?’ he asked.

‘The wine, obviously.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s not without its teething problems, a certain youthful rashness, but it shows all the signs of coming into a resplendent adulthood.’

‘Oh,’ he said again, and then, after a pause: ‘Look, if I don’t see you, all the best, all right? Seriously.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, rather touched; and the receiver clicked dead in my ear.

Once again I felt that icy hand grip my stomach. There was no going back now; that click had sounded the end of my salad days. My exile from Amaurot had effectively begun. For an instant I panicked: where would I go? What would I do? Did they have croissants in Chile? But it was only an instant. MacGillycuddy was right, one had to be positive; and in a way it was exhilarating, having one’s life so full of machination and subterfuge. Perhaps this was how all those people felt, filing off to their offices and their jar factories every morning. To them, every day was a new adventure. And soon, of course, I would be taking my place among them; soon I would be far, far away from here, set free of all my cares, and nothing that happened would matter to me any more… Although in spite of my best efforts, a part of me was already nurturing a dream of the day in the misty future when I would return: creeping across the lawn in Fidel Castro beard and combat fatigues to peep in through the curtains of the drawing room, where Bel and Mother — older, silver-haired — paused at their needlework and wistfully recalled the noble son and brother for whom a place was still kept at the fireside; and then took up their cloths again, safe and secure in the grand illusion I had bequeathed them…

The clock struck for seven. I mixed myself a last, calmative gimlet and hastened to my room. I attached my collars and tied my tie; I clipped my cufflinks and buffed my shoes. From under the bed poked the small satchel of belongings I had allowed myself to bring away with me: a Latin American phrasebook; a parsimonious sum of money in dollars and pesos; an equally Spartan selection of socks and underwear; a photograph of the family; a plastic tiara that Bel had favoured during her days as a princess, years and years ago, in lieu of a picture of her; Father’s first edition of the collected poems of W. B. Yeats; an 8 × 10 of Gene from early in her career — when they’d called her the GET girl, for Gene Eliza Tierney, because she got what she wanted; or at least that was how it looked from the outside.

Laura’s yearbook photos were laid out chronologically on the coverlet from when I had been studying them earlier in the evening. As my eye fell over them now, it struck me that arranged like that they almost resembled a film reel: each year inscribed in a single frame, which if you projected them in sequence would show her coming — jerkily, fuzzily — to life before your very eyes; passing from wide-eyed childhood into full matinée-idol luminescence in a matter of seconds, appearing out of the ether like a djinn of the celluloid… And now, unbidden, my mind began to play the missing final reel: the scene where the doorbell rings and, giving my hair one last peremptory swipe, I run for the staircase, arriving at the midpoint just as Mrs P ushers in a slender young woman with long honey-coloured hair, who shrugs back her winter coat to reveal bare white shoulders and a dress black and sinuous as a flame; on the staircase, unseen, I observe her breathlessly — until suddenly our eyes meet, and at that moment we are transported into another world: a world where passions run simple and deep and come out in wisecracks and bold deeds, with room sometimes for an emotional monologue at the end; where everything is in its rightful place and there are no third parties waiting in the wings to change the dialogue, or close the scene for auction.

Now outside the first stars were emerging and beneath the orange-and-purple light everything cast strange teasing shadows. I turned my eyes to the tower, and had for an instant one of my visions, of capering satyrs and the angel peeping from the top; I blinked and they disappeared and all that was left was the decidedly unhallucinatory figure of Mrs P, returning from one of the aimless pilgrimages she had grown so fond of. Who would she cook for now, I thought, sipping at my gimlet; who would look out from this window and count stars…

And then the doorbell rang. Giving my hair one last peremptory swipe I made a dash for the stairs, coming to a stop midway and waiting there for Mrs P to hurry in from the garden and puff over to the door, clutching the handrail as it swung open and she ushered in an unmistakable form…

Nothing could have prepared me for this moment, I realized that straight away. It was overwhelming, even disquieting. She was beautiful, of course, intensely so; at the same time, seeing her moving around in three dimensions was rather a shock. To my overheated mind, the physicality of her seemed brazen, almost grotesque — less like a djinn than a statue come to life and colorized and standing in one’s hallway. Also, I couldn’t help noticing one or two departures from the dream-version of her arrival. The lustrous hair, for instance, was tied back into a functional ponytail. Then there appeared to be some confusion as to whether Mrs P was to be allowed to take her coat; and when in the end she did relinquish it, she revealed not a strapless evening gown but a mannish trouser-suit of anonymous high-street design. Watching from the stairs I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake: but then she lifted her eyes to me, and all the fear and dread that had enveloped me was erased.

How to describe them, those impossible planets, without lapsing into cliché? I will say only that in them I saw my own glittering afterlife, a blessed and fecund next world where milk and honey would be the order of the day; and a song awoke in my heart. ‘You’re Charles, I bet,’ she said.

‘Quite,’ I replied awkwardly, borne down the remaining stairs on a little cloud.

‘Somehow I knew you’d be tall,’ she said, cocking her head. ‘I just kind of knew.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, flushing, ‘although I wouldn’t say tall exactly, really I’m just upper-medium —’

‘I suppose I thought because Bel’s tall,’ she mused, ‘for a girl, you know.’

‘Yes, yes,’ I agreed without hearing — for it was clear already that words would be superfluous to us, that her true meaning was to be divined from the flutter of her hands, the glow of her skin.

‘So where’s these vases?’ she asked.

‘This way,’ I said, taking her by the hand and leading her eagerly into the reconfigured dining room. ‘There’s a few other bits and pieces…’

‘Wow…’ Her cheeks flushed as she took in the shimmering array. ‘Is it just the vases you wanted insured, or…?’ A delicious avarice caught in her voice.

‘Oh, everything, I suppose,’ I said carelessly.

‘Wow,’ she said again.

‘I thought you’d like it,’ I began to babble. ‘Most of the time it’s just sitting in boxes, I’ve been waiting so long for someone to come and make sense of it all…’

‘Index it,’ she murmured.

‘Index…’ I echoed, sighingly.

‘Appraise it,’ her lovely eyes drifted and lingered.

‘Yes, yes…’

‘I wonder what coverage’d be most suitable… it must be worth so much.’

‘Oh, well, I’ll leave that up to you. To me they’re just trinkets, really, playthings… there’s more to life than money, after all.’

‘You shouldn’t ever say that, Charles,’ she said sternly, turning to look at me. ‘No one likes to think about fire and theft, but, like, they happen every day. It’s your responsibility to take care of your valuables, because if you don’t, who else is going to?’

‘Quite so,’ I said, gazing at her tenderly, ‘you’re absolutely right.’ In certain modes, from certain angles, her pulchritude was positively breathtaking; looking at her I found I could almost forget about what lay ahead for me. My initial disorientation had quite passed now: I was glad I had her here, an accomplice for this last hallucinatory night, helping me turn these heavy moments, these woebegone lost riches, into a private carousel of light and gaiety and pleasure. ‘But that’s all ahead of us. Why don’t we eat first, get acquainted.’ I went to the door and dimmed the lights. ‘It’s important to have an understanding, a rapport, in these matters… Please, have a seat. Can I offer you a drink?’

‘I don’t know if I should…’ Her eyes flashed wickedly. ‘Okay so, do you have any Le Piat d’Or?’

‘I’m almost certain we’ve just run out — but perhaps you’ll join me in a gimlet? Vodka and lime juice, really quite delicious…’ and I rang the bell for the entrées.

Mrs P had outdone herself: the food was magnificent, heady, rhapsodic. Each course was a seduction, each flavour a Salome’s veil floating down to the palate. However, other than getting an oyster stuck in her throat, Laura appeared unmoved. She ate perfunctorily, without seeming to notice what was on the plate; throughout starters and the main course she betrayed nothing of the graceful, photographic Laura I’d fallen in love with. Conversationally, too, she was proving an elusive quarry. Far from our two souls melting into one, I found talking to her rather like climbing a mountain; a mountain of glass.

For one thing, no matter how much I dimmed the lights, some knick-knack or other kept catching her eye and she would get up to look at it. ‘Wow,’ she’d say, tossing one of those silly Fabergé eggs from palm to palm, ‘this must be really old.’

‘It is,’ I’d say. ‘Anyway, there’s Pongo McGurks and I, policeman’s helmet in my —’

‘It’s so old.’

‘ — hotly pursued by the local cricket team —’

‘And this, God, this must be really, really old…’

It’s difficult to steer a conversation when one’s interlocutor is constantly bouncing up and leaving one’s field of vision; though having said that, even when she sat still nothing I said to her appeared to have any effect. Blue-chip anecdotes, the ones I reserved for occasions such as this, met with the same implacable indifference as the food: ‘… and then the morning she passed away — I remember it quite clearly, though I couldn’t have been more than five or so — Father came out with a terrible, ashen face. He didn’t speak; he just handed me a little shaving-mirror. Granny’d had the nurse bring it to her especially so she could give it to me, even though the doctors said she didn’t recognize anyone any more —’

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

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

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

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

‘Oh right.’

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

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

This proved to be disastrous.

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

‘You do,’ I said. ‘You really do.’

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

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

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

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

‘Who doesn’t?’ I said.

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

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

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

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

‘You look like you are tired.’

‘Me? Not at all, raring to go.’

‘But you are rubbing the eyes…’

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

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

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

‘Five years?’

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

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

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

‘Loads of what?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Corinth?’ I gasped weakly. ‘Minos?’

‘What?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘All right?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They threw back their heads and guffawed.

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

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

‘Ahem, Bel —’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Sorry to interrupt, would anyone like some, ah, Rigbert’s? It’s made from genuine loganberries…’

‘Weren’t you scared?’ Laura gushed.

‘Nah, we go straight in, dujj, bop — it was over in a few minutes.’ He sat back, sipped at his Rigbert’s, and with a Napoleonic air sniffed, ‘I don’t think we’ll be hearing from that particular cunt again.’

‘Aren’t you amazing,’ Bel teased, tickling his elbow. Frank looked annoyed.

‘But what if he comes after you?’ it suddenly occurred to Laura, bringing a fearful hand to her mouth.

‘He wouldn’t dare,’ Frank snorted, ‘cos if he did, he knows I’d just kick his head in again, only even worse.’

Laura responded with a long-drawn-out ‘Wow…’ as if she were melting. It was quite erotic in spite of her and I experienced a brief flash of jealousy.

‘Livin with his Granny,’ he remarked contemptuously, ‘what a cunt.’

‘Charles, where on earth did you get this?’ Bel’s face scrunched up in disgust. ‘It’s absolutely repulsive.’

‘It was down in the cellar. I think it was a gift from that poisonous maiden aunt of Mother’s, the one who lives in a boathouse.’

‘Something about it tastes horribly wrong.’

‘I’d imagine that’s the “dash of wild rhubarb”. I thought it might be a change — anyway, these two’ll hardly notice.’ I nodded at our guests, who were talking intently, foreheads nearly touching. ‘Doesn’t it bother you?’

Bel laughed scornfully. ‘It would be like being jealous,’ she said, ‘of a sack of polystyrene chips.’

‘Mmm.’ I folded my hands and cast a wistful glance at the sack of polystyrene chips I had so failed to bring to life. ‘So where were you this evening? Did you help firebomb that unfortunate’s house?’

‘Charles,’ she waved her hand impatiently, ‘I wish you’d just stop exaggerating everything like that —’

‘Well he said…’

‘Oh, he’s as bad as you, he’s only trying to impress that nitwit. He makes half of it up, it’s just a silly boys’ game that sooner or later they’ll get bored with and forget about.’

‘The thing about Titanic,’ Laura said, ‘is that it has something for everyone.’

Bel withdrew her arm from Frank and, with a woeful pretence at sisterly concern, shuffled her chair over to me. ‘So,’ she whispered, ‘is she everything you hoped she’d be?’

‘Don’t, Bel, I’ve suffered enough for one evening.’

‘Has it been that bad?’ Bel asked, attempting to conceal her amusement.

‘It’s been catastrophic. I mean, at least he is colourful in a delinquent sort of way. She’s like a valium overdose.’

‘Is she what you’d call a Golem, then?’

‘She’s a Golem Team Leader,’ I said sorrowfully.

‘She does seem to’ve gotten worse since I last saw her,’ Bel mused. ‘All the same, Charles, you did bring this on yourself. I mean this is what happens when you pick your girlfriends out of school annuals.’

‘She really did photograph well…’

‘That’s exactly why — thanks, Mrs P,’ as Mrs P bussed in, stacked up the dishes in one hand and left again in one swift motion, ‘but that’s exactly why you need to get out into the real world and see people, do things —’

I made an indistinct mumble, picturing myself wandering the desert scrubs of Chile with a plastic tiara and an Improving Book –

‘Seriously, because Charles it just won’t work out, falling in love with people simply because they’re good-looking, or because they’re named after Gene Tierney movies.’

‘It’s as good a reason as any,’ I objected, suddenly feeling emotional. ‘Anyway, what if for some people the real world just doesn’t feel right, and they know it won’t ever feel right, surely it’s better for everybody if those people just stay out of the way, and, and…’

I realized I was perspiring, and that I must have been talking loudly. Frank was drawing some kind of a map for Laura, which they seemed too engrossed in to have overheard; but Bel regarded me thoughtfully, a little like she had the night we found out about the bank. My head swam. I downed the rest of my Rigbert’s, embarrassed.

‘… join a monastery?’ she finished my sentence for me.

‘Presumably there’s some kind of Michelin guide for monasteries…’

‘There’s Baker’s Corner,’ Frank pointed to the salt cellar, ‘and here’s Kill Lane, this sauce bottle, right? So Ziggy’s is here, up next to the Texaco. Last time we were there me and this bloke Droyd, right, he had fourteen yokes and I had eleven —’

‘My boyfriend was going to run that Texaco,’ Laura said sadly.

The long hand of the clock inched towards twelve again. I heard Mrs P going up to bed. By now MacGillycuddy would be installed outside with his camera; outside where I could just make out through the room’s reflection on the glass the shadowy edges of trees.

‘Charles, what happened with you and that Patsy girl?’ Bel drew invisible diagrams with her finger on the tabletop. ‘You really liked her for a while, didn’t you?’

‘Oh, her…’

‘And then you stopped seeing your friends — what happened? Did something happen?’

‘A fling, that’s all that was. Why, you think I should be settling down, do you? Find an heir for my vanished fortune?’

‘Well, you can’t fling for ever, can you? I mean, Charles, it won’t be much fun here on your own…’

As she said it, I could sense a sudden discomfort. She didn’t look up, but her finger moved more quickly over the wood.

I reached for a bottle with an elephant on the label. ‘You never did tell me where you went with Frank today.’

‘If you must know,’ she said coolly, ‘we spent the afternoon looking at flats.’

‘Flats?’ The oysters performed a somersault in my stomach.

‘Yes, we’re going to move in together.’ With an aloof expression she took a sip of the new liqueur, and gagged — ‘what is this?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said faintly. ‘Possibly something to do with elephants.’ Inside my mind everything was whirling like a carousel spun out of control.

‘It’s worse than the other stuff, it’s undrinkable…’ She drank a little more, the fingers of her free hand quivering slightly. ‘Anyhow there’s no point you overreacting. It doesn’t have to be permanent, it’s not like we’re getting married or anything. I have to get out of here and I don’t have any money, so it’s the logical decision.’

‘But… but what…’ I knew there was no point saying this, but I couldn’t stop myself: ‘Bel, what can you possibly see in him?’

She darkened. ‘Look, whatever I say you’ll persist in seeing him as a monster. But he’s not. He’s a person, he’s sweet and he’s kind and he doesn’t pretend to be anything he isn’t, and furthermore he has nothing to do with this place, or with Holy Child or Trinity or with Mother or Father or any of their friends —’

Words and feeling welled up in me: I ached to tell her everything — not just about the stolen chair and the menorah and what had happened to the cellar, but about Chile and MacGillycuddy and the Folly and Patsy Olé — but I knew no matter what I said, it wouldn’t change her mind. Bel’s attitude to my advice was to consider it carefully in order to work out the exact opposite course of action and then do it.

‘It’s got a sunroof,’ Laura was saying, ‘but some day I’d love to get one of those jeeps, you know, like a Mitsubishi Pajero.’

‘It’s just that you have your whole life, and —’

Bel beat her hand on the table. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ she cried. ‘All you’re doing is trying to sound like you think Father would have sounded if he’d ever bothered to speak to me!’ I flinched. Frank looked round momentarily. ‘It’s different,’ she said, more quietly. ‘It’s like being in another world where you don’t always know what’s going to happen, what time dinner is served. It makes me feel like I’m alive.’

‘You couldn’t possibly be romanticizing it just a little, could you?’

‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand,’ she said coldly.

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that; she was right, probably. She shunted her chair back up towards Frank, and I had the curious, surprisingly painful sensation that even though I was going to Chile, still it was she who was leaving me.

We had put quite a dent in the liqueurs; Laura was gabbing away with a new pink glow in her cheek and a woozy, alcoholic sparkle in her eye. She intermingled talk with giggles and playful slaps. Bel smiled mirthlessly and wouldn’t look at me.

‘You see?’ Laura had pulled back the collar of her blouse and was showing Frank her bra strap. ‘Magenta.’

‘Just looks red to me,’ Frank leered over her bone-white throat.

‘They have special names,’ Laura said. ‘Like cerulean, that’s a kind of blue. Christabel’s eyes are that colour. In school I was always really jealous of your eyes — I never told you, Bel.’

‘Really?’ The lights were low but I could tell from the way she bowed her head that Bel was blushing.

‘I didn’t know what it was called, like I just thought it was blue? But then I was looking at eyeshadow in Boots and there was one just that colour, cerulean… I wondered if Charles’s eyes would be that colour too and they are!’ She beamed at me. I may have blushed a little too.

‘So do you always wear knickers the same colour as your bra?’ Frank inquired with an anthropological expression.

I kicked Bel under the table. She started laughing.

‘I do sort of understand,’ I said.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Give me some more of that horrific elephant concoction, would you?’

I poured her a glass, and yawned absently. ‘Ought to be pushing on soon, though…’

‘What, do you two want to be alone?’

‘I want to go to bed, illuminating as this underwear conversation undoubtedly is. Anyway, didn’t I tell you? She’s had a boyfriend for the last five years.’

‘Surely not!’ Bel said in mock disgust. ‘What, instead of waiting for you, the man she’s never met?’

‘No, but… I mean all that time I spent pining over her and writing her songs and so forth —’

‘You only wrote one song, Charles.’

‘Well, all right, but still I always thought — you know, when things went wrong with the girls one actually knew — that she was somehow there.’ I shook my head. ‘Five years. With a petrol attendant called, called Dec!’

‘Because I could not stop for Dec, he kindly stopped for me —’

‘Yes, very funny — oh.’ Without a sound, the lights had gone out.

Laura shrieked. There was a tinkle of glass. ‘What happened?’ she said with a quaver.

‘The lights have gone out,’ Bel’s voice came acidly.

‘Prob’ly a fuse,’ Frank said with an air of professional indifference.

‘I’ll call Mrs P,’ I said, getting up and fumbling about for the bell rope. The blackness had a dizzying effect. Knick-knacks tumbled to the floor around me.

‘Oh, let her sleep, Charles, for heaven’s sake, surely we can manage to change a fuse…’

‘It’s awful dark…’

‘Could be a power cut, o’course.’

‘God — you don’t think they’ve — Charles, do you remember seeing an electricity bill in among the others? I’m pretty sure we pay direct debit, but —’

‘I don’t really remember, there were so many…’

‘Oh my God,’ she said despairingly.

‘Ah, don’t worry… here…’

‘Do the other houses still have their lights on?’

‘You can’t see any other houses from here,’ I said, quickly interposing myself between Laura and the window.

There was a scratching noise and Frank’s face appeared in the flame of a cigarette lighter; Laura halted on the way back to her seat, seeing Bel had repositioned herself in his lap. ‘Is there any candles?’ Frank said.

‘Mrs P has some in the kitchen,’ Bel said, without getting up. Frank was taking advantage of the darkness to give her inappropriate squeezes.

‘It’s so dark,’ Laura said sadly, holding her arms tight to her body and wheeling about to moon at the window.

‘Well, I’ll get them, shall I,’ I said irritably.

‘I got such a fright,’ Laura said almost to herself — and then froze: ‘Oh my God! There’s someone out there!’

‘What?’ Bel said, half-rising –

‘Don’t be silly! Frank, give me your lighter and I’ll get these —’

‘There is, there’s someone like standing out there —’

‘Look, it’s, it’s probably just a tree or something,’ taking her firmly by the shoulder and turning her away from the window, ‘why don’t you come with me and find these candles?’

‘Okay…’ she followed obediently out and down the hall. ‘Oh — Charles, is that your hand?’

‘Oh yes, sorry —’ evidently she wasn’t in the market for squeezes –

We went into the empty kitchen. Laura leaned herself against the table as I rifled through innumerable drawers. ‘So how long are Christabel and Frank going out?’

‘I don’t know — can you hold this lighter for me, be careful it’s hot — a month or so, maybe?’

‘And is it serious?’

‘Well, apparently they’re moving in together.’

‘Oh,’ she said thoughtfully.

I moved on my hunkers to the cupboard beneath the sink, pawing in the uneven light through Brillo pads, oddly shaped brushes, stern plastic bottles of bleach and detergent, letters postmarked France, Germany, Slovenia, maps — wait, letters? maps? — but here were the candles, no time to pursue this now: ‘Here, you take this one,’ lighting mine from her wick and hastening back out towards the dining room. I was thinking that this power cut could be a blessing in disguise. There was no way Laura could insure anything else, so surely she would go home; and the darkness would be an extra incentive for Frank to strike, which was why we needed to install these and get the room cleared ASAP — ‘so… Charles, do you have a job or…?’ her face bobbing politely towards me in the candlelight.

‘What?’

‘It must be really interesting, living in a house like this?’

‘Oh…’ Was I imagining it, or did I detect a change in her tone — an attentiveness that hadn’t been there a moment ago? ‘Oh, yes, well, it’s interesting, you know, but it can be taxing too —’

‘Oh, sorry —’ as her swinging hand brushed mine –

‘That’s quite all right — I say, this is rather like that scene in La Dolce Vita, isn’t it?’

‘Mmm, yeah, I was just thinking that…’

As if on cue, a low moan emanated from above. Laura gripped my arm.

‘Who is there?’ a cracked voice called. ‘Who is walking down there?’

‘Just us,’ I called back, as Laura pressed herself up to me. ‘That is, me and Laura.’

‘Who is it?’ Laura whispered. I could smell her breath, fecund with wine and Rigbert’s.

‘It’s Mrs P…’ The stairs groaned slowly. Mrs P rounded the banisters in a long white shift dimly visible through the gloom.

‘There’s been a power cut,’ I said. ‘We’ve got some candles, there’s no need for you to come down.’ The stairs continued to groan one by one. Laura’s fingers tightened around my arm. ‘Tell you what,’ I told her, ‘why don’t you go ahead to the dining room and I’ll be in as soon as I get her to go back to bed.’

After a moment’s delay, staring at the white shape, Laura relinquished me and flew off into the darkness. ‘Now then,’ I addressed Mrs P, ‘we happen to be entertaining, as you know, and I’m not sure it’s appropriate for you to be wandering about in your nightgown —’

‘What’s happening?’ she said. ‘What’s happening to our house?’

‘A power cut, I just told you,’ she was starting to unnerve me, ‘so if you want a candle, fine, and if you don’t then I think you ought to go back to bed, because frankly you’re being a little, ah, frightening.’ Her hair was undone and hung loosely down her back; her shift was old-fashioned, with buttons at the cuffs and the neck. She was close enough now for me to make out her glazed expression. ‘Now, Mrs P —’

She moved down the last few steps with one hand on the rail. She muttered to herself, then looked sternly at me. ‘They are coming, they are coming back. This is how it starts.’

‘How what starts? Where are you going?’

She reached the foot of the stairs and walked right past me, making a sharp right and calling, ‘Mirela, where are you? We must hurry…’

‘I say,’ I cleared my throat officiously at her receding form. ‘I say, now look, Mrs P — ow!’ A gobbet of hot wax had rolled down the shaft of the candle on to the back of my hand. ‘I — blast — look, I just have to go and put this down, you wait here —’ hastening to the dining room as Mrs P ambled away in the opposite direction, a mooching white square growing dim and small.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ Laura asked as I searched for a candlestick.

‘Nothing, just a bit — where’s Bel and Frank?’ She was in the room alone, arranged languorously against a rosewood cabinet. I must say candlelight became her.

‘Dunno,’ she said, with a sort of allusive shrug — as if to suggest that this wasn’t necessarily a negative development. ‘Must have gone to bed.’

It seemed to me that she had placed an infinitesimal stress on the last word; but I couldn’t be sure. I thrust the candle into a holder. Now I could look at her properly. She was directing her gaze innocently towards the fireplace, as if reflecting: but some kind of transformation had definitely taken place. Even her stance was different. She leaned against the cabinet with her hips thrust brazenly forward, hands in her pockets; a button of her blouse had come undone and locks of hair hung in erotic disarray across her forehead.

‘It is getting late,’ I said ambiguously, making my way around the room installing candles in candelabra. With a barely perceptible sway she followed my movements, bestowing on me what seemed like singularly amorous smiles.

‘I suppose I should call a taxi.’ Her voice had dropped in pitch to something smoky and dry that called to a secret part of me.

‘I suppose,’ I said. She did not move. I continued with my candles. With each successive flame my vision blurred and my desire inched higher; until it seemed I was surrounded by a bacchanalian fire, through which Laura’s face danced up and down like the needle in a compass. I felt like Nero, leading Rome through her last waltz. ‘Must have been fun, though, catching up with old Frank like that,’ I said casually.

‘I wish work was always this much fun,’ she said absently. The Rigbert’s had left a carmine sheen on her upper lip. She rolled her head back, splaying her fingers and running them over the bevelled doors of the cabinet. ‘Though if I was this rich, I’d never do a day’s work again.’

My heart skipped a beat. For a long, strange moment, as she smiled at me, her form seemed to take on an extra lustre from somewhere that made the candles seem dim by comparison; and I was afraid to move in case I should disturb it. Had I misjudged her, after all? Was this the real Laura, shaking off the dust of the quotidian world? I glanced at the clock. It was midnight: there was still time enough for us to find out.

‘Then again,’ she added carelessly, ‘I might get bored, being rich on my own.’

I brought the last wick to life and extinguished the taper.

‘What do you do,’ she said, ‘when you get bored?’

‘I don’t know.’ I took a sauntering step towards her. ‘Have things insured.’

She brought her head down and stared directly at me. ‘Are you insured?’

I drew back sharply. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘I mean,’ she giggled, ‘maybe I should have a look at you… while I’m here, like. Just to be complete.’

I took her hand. Candlelight chased back and forth across her face. ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ I said. Our arms curled around each other’s waist, her blouse lifting to expose a cool, silvery swatch of stomach. Under the lintel she stopped and looked up at me. ‘Are you just going to leave all those candles lit?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘It’s a fire hazard,’ she said indistinctly. ‘Forty-four per cent of fires are caused by naked… naked…’ She sank her head on my chest. ‘God, Charles, I’m so drunk.’

‘Nonsense,’ I urged her. ‘You’re quite sober. Just all that heavy food.’

We reached the stairs. I tried to balance her on one hand and a candle in the other. She was increasingly unsteady: I realized suddenly that there was a real danger she would fall asleep before we could get around to doing anything. ‘Tell me about Titanic,’ I suggested as we negotiated the third and fourth steps; she had seemed quite exercised about it earlier on.

‘So sad,’ she sighed, ‘so sad… all those people… they’re all on this boat, the Ti —, the Ti —… I’ve seen it six times at least ’n’ I always cry…’

‘Oh yes?’ I gasped. She was getting heavier, too.

‘Leonardo DiCaprio in his tuxedo, such a babe… and Kate Winslet so pretty, even if she’s a tiny bit fat, so what?’ Her feet clunked against the steps. ‘But Kate’s Winslet’s fiancé, right, ’s a fucking, a fucking bastard… thinks he can control her, doesn’t even care she loves someone else… hate people like that think they’re better than you…’ Her brow clouded. ‘Like Bel thinks she’s so special cos she’s an actress — don’t get me wrong, Charles,’ whirling around to place a finger on my lips and nearly hurling us both down the stairs, ‘don’t get me wrong, I love her to bits — but even in school she was thinking she’s like this great actress and everyone else’s too boring t’talk to… but she’s no fun, he’ll see that sooner or later. Never even come out for a drink with us, stuck in her own little world, made herself miserable ’n’ doing all that weird stuff to herself, that’s her business if she wants to go —’

She stopped abruptly, and pulled back to study my face. Perspiration glistened above her lip and soaked my shirt. She had grown pale, and the candlelight had turned against her, giving her hollows, making her gaunt. ‘Charles, don’t get me wrong,’ slurring the words slightly, ‘I mean like she’s great and I love her to bits… and it’s so nice to finally meet you, she always talked about you in school, you all sounded so grand, like kings and queens…’

She trailed off. We looked sadly at each other.

‘I think,’ I said gently, ‘we ought to call you that taxi now.’

‘Charles,’ she said tearfully, biting her lip.

‘Yes?’

‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

‘Oh. Oh well, quick, this way…’ I led her sniffling up the remaining stairs and down the corridor to the bathroom. I handed her the candle at the door. ‘Do you want me to hang on for you out here?’ She was about to reply, but then her eyes bulged and she put her hand over her mouth and rushed in.

‘I’ll just wait in my room then,’ I called. ‘Come and get me when you’re finished. Down and to the right, the second door.’

A series of evacuatory noises ensued. I shrugged and walked down the dark corridor to sit on my bed and toy morbidly with my cufflinks. I remembered putting them on that evening, so full of nerves and hope. It felt like a week ago. I stretched back on the mattress, staring up at the invisible ceiling. I was beginning to feel thoroughly depressed. It wasn’t Laura’s fault she was beautiful, nor that I found her boring; it was mine. If I had got her so utterly wrong, what did that mean for the rest of my plans? Were they just as misconceived? Perhaps Bel was right — perhaps, after all, there was nothing to preserve here; perhaps Amaurot had outlived its time, and now it was better to let the world take it, pull it under the waves.

The clock ticked. I took the 8 × 10 of Gene from under the bed and held it up beside the window. There was an undeniable resemblance: the cold marble contour of her brow, the shapely swoop of her cheek, the beguiling naivety that dallied so enticingly with her beauty. And the name, Laura: its noirish elegance. Names were important, if only one could work out what they meant. I closed my eyes, replayed the famous scene in the movie — Laura, I mean — where the detective spends the night in her apartment — reading her letters and diary, smelling her perfume, going through her wardrobe, drinking her Scotch: always watched by, always circling back to, the portrait of her on the wall. She’s dead before the movie begins, of course, shot with both barrels right in the face: it’s the portrait the detective falls in love with. Tierney was equivocal about her role in the film — ‘who wants to play a painting?’ she’d say — but audiences fell in love with Laura too, and it made her a star. And despite what she said, it seemed the perfect role for her: this fabulous shadow that could lift like smoke above the intrigues and obsessions of her lovers — that existed among the rafters, so to speak, the interstices between life and death; even as offscreen her marriage and sanity crumbled. The GET girl, who’d come back from boarding school in Switzerland aged sixteen to find the family home repossessed; who’d stand on a fourteenth-storey window-ledge in New York in 1958, realize through a fog of unreason that the apartment opposite belonged to Arthur Miller and his new wife Marilyn Monroe, worry at the last minute about leaving an unpretty corpse…

At least five minutes had gone by, and of my Laura, the real-life Laura, there was still no sign. I went to the door and looked down the pitch-black corridor. I couldn’t make out a single thing. Was she still in the bathroom? Had she passed out somewhere? Or — I remembered the way she’d been hanging off Frank earlier. Had she slipped off into a corner with him? I began to panic: imagining her in the back of his rusty white van, rocking back and forth on the way to his mantelpiece –

I hurried sightlessly in the direction of the stairs — but then from a doorway a hand reached out and grabbed my wrist, and before I had a chance to tell her we were in the wrong room, she was kissing me. It wasn’t the sort of kiss one cared to interrupt; in fact, as soon as her lips met mine, everything — everything — went out of my head. It was a kiss that surrounded one, delicate and bewildering as a flurry of snowflakes; and as they fell so gaily around me, they seemed to be telling me that no matter what happened tonight, I should not despair; that there would always be old stone houses and long reverberant kisses, things that existed eternally alongside the mutable world; things in which I belonged.

‘Laura,’ I crooned the word into her cheek, ‘Laura…’

Immediately I said it, something palpably changed. At the same moment our hands stopped moving; we stood there frozen in a tense silence that seemed to go on for far too long…

‘Charles?’

‘Great Scott!’

‘Get off me!’ Bel cried, pushing my hand from her thigh and recoiling with such vigour that I stumbled backward and whacked my head on the door-jamb. ‘Oh my God, are you all right?’ She stretched a hand towards me before being overcome with horror and recoiling again. ‘Oh my God, oh my God…’

‘Ow…’ I picked myself up off the floor, massaging my bump, and tried to get my bearings. ‘Ow…’

‘Oh my God — Charles, this is… this is extremely bad —’

‘I think I’m having an aneurysm,’ I gasped. ‘Bel, call an ambulance —’

‘Charles, get out of here!’ She pulled her hair, stamped her foot. ‘Would you please get out, please?’ Her voice hovered on the verge of tears. ‘Don’t you get that this is really, really bad?’

‘Well, don’t blame me,’ I said, beginning to feel somewhat offended. ‘You were the one who dragged me in here, I mean you practically manhandled me —’

‘It’s my room, Charles, I thought you were Frank, obviously.’

‘How could you possibly mistake me for Frank?’ I tucked in my shirt tails. ‘Frank’s wrists are like fire extinguishers. And he has that sort of characteristic smell…’

‘Fire extinguishers?’ She sounded quite agitated now. ‘Charles, what’s the matter with you? Where is Frank?’

‘Well, I thought he was with you.’ Although it was obvious where he must be: downstairs swiping the family heirlooms. Laura was probably helping him, she’d drooled over them enough –

‘Don’t move for a second.’ Bel edged cautiously past me into the hallway. ‘Charles, I… I don’t want you to touch me, ever again.’

‘Yes, yes,’ I said as the indistinct outline of her backed away towards the stairs, ‘but look, there’s no point blowing this out of proportion, you have to take it in the spirit in which it was meant, which is a simple crossed wire —’

‘Just don’t, don’t move,’ she warned from further away — and then took off at speed down the stairs, calling for Frank.

Without quite knowing how, I found myself in Father’s study. I staggered over to the window, raised the sash and collapsed on to the sill, grinding my fists in my eyes. Alcohol beat through my head like a tropical storm. My mind kept taunting me with sensory details: the taste of her lipstick, the gentle bump of her teeth — ugh, ugh, ugh! I breathed in the night air, vigorously shook my head, but a kind of hideous retroactive process had been set in motion, and now the events of the evening reappeared before me like a ghastly carnival: the hepatic glow of a bronze Buddha on the dresser, Bel’s disembodied arm around Frank, glutinous oysters sitting lifelessly in their shells — my fingertips sweated on the windowsill and I wondered if I was taking leave of my senses.

‘Coo-ee!’ a voice sailed up out of the night.

What now? I looked, but couldn’t see anyone.

‘Coo-ee!’ it repeated. ‘Charlie! Down here!’

I leaned out. Frank was standing in the shadows directly underneath my window.

‘All right?’ he said.

‘Ah, ha ha, yes, there you are,’ I revolved my hand weakly like an ailing monarch.

‘You look a bit rough, Charlie, were you pukin?’

‘No, no, quite all right, just a little… a little over-tired, I imagine…’ What was he doing out there? Shouldn’t he be inside, finishing his larceny?

‘I heard a noise so I came out to check it. Look who I found in the bushes!’ A satellite appeared by the moon of his upturned face: Mrs P, still looking decidedly somnambulant. I had entirely forgotten about her in the course of my doomed pursuit of Laura. ‘Oh yes,’ I said sheepishly. ‘She did, ah, wander off earlier on, now that I think of it.’

‘She was runnin around in the bushes like a mad thing, I don’t think she knows what she’s doin at all.’

‘Well, bring her in, would you, there’s a good chap —’

Mrs P made a contribution that was not audible from the second storey.

‘She keeps sayin that, who’s Mirela, Charlie?’

‘I don’t know, look, can’t you just —’

‘Hang on —’ A door opened and a tremble of light fell on the grass.

‘Hi Frank,’ said a new voice.

‘All right?’ Frank said. ‘What are you doin out here?’

‘I was looking for the bathroom,’ Laura said.

‘Maybe Charles knows where it is,’ he pointed up to me.

‘Hi Charles!’ she waved.

‘Hello, yes,’ I replied rather curtly, wondering how long this pantomime was going to go on for. ‘I think you were actually in the bathroom already, if you —’

‘It’s actually quite nice out, isn’t it?’ She had returned her attention to Frank. ‘Like sort of refreshing, is that why you came out?’

‘Look at all them stars…’ Frank reflected unconvincingly, craning his head back.

‘I say, Mrs P’s going to catch cold if you stand there much longer,’ I called down. ‘And Bel’s looking for you, by the way.’

‘Right you be, Charlie, right you be.’ He held the door open for Mrs P and Laura and followed them inside. I turned from the window and sat down at Father’s desk. On a sheet of paper was a row of faces, scribbled on with coloured pencils; it took a moment to see that it was the same girl in each picture. Beneath it were notes on the respective effects, his zigzags and hatching expressed as fiendish bracketed equations, strings of letters and indices that represented the colour, density and reactivity of the compounds in question. To most people, it was alchemy and nothing less; I confess it didn’t make much more sense to me. His portrait looked down on me from the wall. Why couldn’t you have a normal mortgage? I reproached him silently. Why did you leave us alone with this mess? He gazed back at me expressionlessly.

I composed myself, and considered the tattered remnants of my grand plan to save Amaurot. There was no question that the opportunity to leave behind any kind of inspirational message, or even a good impression, had by this point been lost. Death or no death, there no longer seemed much chance of Bel revising her opinion of me, coming to see me as noble, a good sport, etc. All I had managed to do was confirm her idea of Amaurot as some kind of South Dublin House of Usher. It was no wonder Frank seemed like a safe, responsible alternative. I had practically driven her into his arms. The whole thing had been a debacle from start to finish, and it struck me that if one tenth of this had happened to Christ during his last supper, it was debatable whether he would have bothered coming back from the dead.

Still, I supposed I had better get it over with. I got to my feet. As I did so, the painting caught my eye again. On the spur of the moment I decided I wasn’t going to leave it for thieves to take, or to be auctioned off. I seized the letter-opener from the desk and set to work cutting the canvas where it met the frame. From outside there came a guttural, otherworldly dialogue: I imagined wolves gathering, or some inverted horror film where a mob of irate monsters takes the torch to Frankenstein’s castle. The canvas came free: I rolled it up, folded it, and tucked it under the waistband of my trousers. Then, feeling marginally better, I fetched the bag of possessions from my room and made my way downstairs, planning to say goodnight to the others and then wait for death outside, where there was less chance of further embarrassment.

Voices were coming from the kitchen: but my first port of call was the dining room, where I picked up a candelabrum and saw to my satisfaction that the dresser, the cabinet, the nested tables had been stripped. Nodding to myself, I left the room.

‘Those Budweiser ads are hilarious — Oh, hi Charles.’

‘Well, well, isn’t this cosy?’

Frank, Laura, Bel and Mrs P were sitting around the table, illuminated by a single candle, cups of tea before them. Bel muttered something uncomplimentary as I came in.

‘Nice and cosy,’ I repeated, circling the table with my hands behind my back and staring meaningfully at Frank.

‘All right?’ Frank said. I smiled benignly. Let him pretend innocence for now; by this time tomorrow, his jig would be up.

‘Do you want some tea, Charles?’ Laura said. ‘We thought we should give your housekeeper some tea, like to warm her up, and then Frank said, why don’t we all have some?’

‘Found some Jaffa Cakes as well,’ Frank said, proffering the box.

‘Your hair is so shiny,’ Laura said to Mrs P, who looked positively catatonic and had not touched her tea.

‘As a matter of fact I was just on my way to bed,’ I said with a yawn. ‘But then I remembered I had something important I wanted to tell Bel.’

Bel made no response to this, other than adjusting her chair to face away from me.

‘.. em, Bel?’ I ventured again, attempting to sidestep in front of her.

‘Charles, please, I don’t want to talk to you right now —’

‘Yes, but just a quick — I say, can’t you stop moving your chair around?’

‘ — or look at you. I’m sorry, but I can’t.’

‘It’s just that the thing is —’ gripping the back of the chair and sort of leaning across her –

‘Oh, what then?’ she exclaimed. ‘What is it?’

‘Um…’ Caught on the hop, I couldn’t remember what I wanted to say. I straightened up, tapped my foot, trying to think of something fitting. ‘Well, goodnight, I suppose, for a start —’

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Goodnight.’ She crossed her arms and returned to glowering into her teacup.

‘Well,’ I said uncertainly, ‘that’s it, then.’

‘Yeah, g’night, Charlie.’

‘Goodnight, Charles, thanks for a lovely dinner.’

‘Right.’ I moved numbly over to the back door, feet heavy as lead.

‘Charles, where are you going, exactly?’ Bel said irritably.

‘Me? Oh, just popping over to the Folly for a minute.’

‘At this hour? What for?’

‘No reason,’ I said vaguely, my hand resting on the handle. ‘Just thought I might, ah, pop over…’

‘Fine.’ She turned away again, sounding exasperated.

‘Well, goodnight everyone.’ I opened the door. ‘And if for some reason I don’t see you again, then, ah… well, try to love one another, you know.’ I began to back out of the room. ‘Work for a better tomorrow, so forth. Though of course, I will see you. So it’s just, just something to bear in mind, give it the old college try —’ Overcome by emotion, I hurried out and closed the door.

The garden was cool and fresh. I leaned against the masonry and brushed my eyes. Frank was right: the sky was packed with stars. I stayed there a moment looking at them: candles in a grand celestial house, through which the gods bumped and argued, apologized and said goodbye.

I found MacGillycuddy behind an acacia tree, hands folded peacefully in his lap. Above him the video camera lay nestled in the fork of two branches, pointing at the dining-room window. I took it down and fiddled with the buttons until it rewound to the beginning, then brought the viewfinder to my eye. I fast-forwarded through dinner with Laura. Even at high speed it looked insufferably boring. Ignominious matchsticks wolfed food and wine, heads snapped back and forth like birds. Bel and Frank arrived. The matchsticks zipped about the room. Then the power cut: after a period of darkness, Laura came back with her candle. I saw Bel and Frank leaving and me returning, lighting the other candles; Laura’s and my brief moment of electricity by the cabinet, a split-second of insignificance.

Shortly afterwards we made our exit. I slowed the recording to normal speed. Some minutes passed and then a ghostly white figure appeared: Mrs P, making her somnambulant rounds. But then she was joined by others. The candlelight and the poor picture made it impossible to discern faces; all I could see were shadows — terrifying, overgrown shadows, moving slowly behind her like a witch’s familiars. In their black paws things glinted and disappeared. A freezing sweat sprang up across my back. I nudged MacGillycuddy. ‘MacGillycuddy! I say, MacGillycuddy, wake up!’

‘What, what?’ he mumbled, half-opening his so-called all-seeing eyes. ‘I was awake already.’

‘No you weren’t, you were fast asleep.’

With a groan he heaved himself up from the ground. ‘Aren’t you dead yet?’

‘No — blast it, MacGillycuddy, couldn’t you watch for one hour?’

‘The video worked, didn’t it?’ he replied grouchily, pulling twiglets off his back.

‘Well, it filmed something,’ I said. ‘But it doesn’t make very much sense. According to this Frank is entirely innocent and it’s actually Mrs P who’s been behind everything, with the help of some sort of beings, possibly supernatural beings.’ I thrust the camera into his hands. ‘See for yourself.’

He replayed the tape. ‘How about that,’ he said when it was finished.

‘Well, what am I going to do? You don’t think Mrs P’s been associating with beings, do you?’

‘It’s hard to tell…’ MacGillycuddy scratched his head noncommittally.

‘Damn it, didn’t you see anything? I’m paying you to monitor, aren’t I? Why weren’t you monitoring?’

‘I can’t monitor in candlelight, can I? I’m not Brother Cadfael.’

‘What?’ I said.

Anyway, he continued sourly, if supernatural beings were behind the furniture theft, I would be better off with a priest. He added that I might have some difficulty finding a priest willing to accept my bouncing cheques. I replied to the effect that if lack of funds was his problem, there were bound to be some children having birthdays tomorrow whose cards he could intercept. He responded with an unsavoury remark about inbreeding. I punched him on the ear. He retaliated with a dig in the kidneys, and before I knew where I was we were tussling on the twigs and dirt of the shrubbery. MacGillycuddy was one of those wiry types and had a ruthless streak; it might have gone badly for me had I not espied, from beneath his armpit, two burly shadows — the same shadows that had guest-starred on the video, I was sure of it — shuffling across the lawn with the piano. ‘Look!’ I wheezed.

‘Oh, the old “look” trick,’ MacGillycuddy snarled. ‘I’ll teach you how to look —’

‘For the love of God!’ I howled as MacGillycuddy’s fingers delved into my eye-sockets. ‘The thieves! They’re behind you!’

MacGillycuddy by this point was winning the fight by such a margin that he could afford to snatch a glance backwards. ‘Holy fuck!’ he whispered, relinquishing my neck.

‘Well, come on!’ I staggered to my feet. ‘After them!’

The shadows were moving in the direction of the Folly, at a fair clip considering their heavy load. I was hampered by my ankle, which MacGillycuddy had stamped on, and he seemed reluctant to run on after them himself; nevertheless we were gaining ground when a third party stepped into our path. He was smaller and squatter than the others, with a knobbly, richly bruised face.

‘Evenin’,’ he said.

‘Look here,’ I gasped, massaging my throat, ‘I don’t mind about the ottoman, or… or the ramekins, but the piano — I don’t know if you’re a musical man yourself, but there’s a sort of a bond between a man and —’

‘I don’t know nuttin about ramekins,’ the new arrival interrupted. ‘I was just wantin to have a word wi’ Frank.’

‘With Frank…?’ Suddenly my eyeballs returned to their customary location and I realized who this fellow was. It was the cunt from the pub. A look of deadly intent seared from his eyes. He was here for vengeance.

‘Now if you could just go in,’ the cunt said quietly, ‘and ask Frank if he’d pop out for a minute…’

We were trapped in a gang war! Could things get any more downmarket? I looked at MacGillycuddy. MacGillycuddy looked at me.

‘Run!’ said MacGillycuddy.

The door slammed behind us just as more cunt-like presences appeared out of the trees. We burst panting into the kitchen, where Laura was still prattling to Frank and Bel was trying to coax Mrs P out of her chair. Bel rose, startled.

‘I thought you’d gone to bed. What’s going on? Who’s this?’

‘MacGillycuddy’s the name, Ignatius MacGillycuddy.’

‘Aren’t you the postman?’

‘We haven’t time for this,’ I cut in. ‘The fact is —’ The doorbell began to ring and did not stop.

‘Ooh, that must be my taxi.’ Laura swung her little bag over her shoulder and scampered over to the door, forcing me to lunge after her and grab her by the arm.

‘If everyone could just listen. The fact is, the house is under attack, by the cunt and his friends —’

‘That fella’s a glutton for punishment,’ Frank remarked.

‘Yes, well, be that as it may, I don’t care for the girls to get mixed up in this, so Bel, if you take Laura and Mrs P down to the cellar, then Frank and MacGillycuddy and I can try and — where is MacGillycuddy?’

‘He was here a minute ago.’

‘Oh, hell… All right, Frank, it looks like —’

‘Charles,’ Bel’s cheeks blazed every time she looked at me, ‘if you think I’m going down to that horrible smelly cellar just because of an odious little man —’

‘It’s not one odious little man, there’s about twenty of them.’

‘Well still, and anyway, what about Mrs P?’ By her left side her fist clenched and unclenched repeatedly. ‘Do you really think she’s in any condition to be sitting in a cold, dingy —’

‘She’s not really fit for a punch-up either, though, Bel —’ I broke off and listened. The ringing had stopped and an ominous thudding had taken its place, beating against the front door like a jungle drum, making the cupboards and fixtures buzz in sympathy.

‘Maybe they don’t want a fight,’ Laura said. ‘Maybe they just want to use the phone, or like borrow something.’

The candle guttered violently in the bottle, pitching our shadows this way and that.

‘Blast it, Frank, they’re your enemies, can’t you go and reason with them?’

‘I s’pose I’d better, you wouldn’t happen to have a few lengths of plywood knockin around, would you Charlie? Or one of them nailguns?’

Bel stood up. ‘This is ridiculous. I’m calling the police.’

‘No, Bel —’ following her into the hall, where down the stairs the front door could be seen to pulse, heart-like, with each blow, the frame beginning to splinter and the hinges to give. Outside the malevolent voices bubbled up; Bel stopped, swallowed, then, affecting not to notice, continued her progress towards the wicker table where the phone rested, a few steps up from the convulsing door: ‘Hello? That’s odd — hello?’

And then — just as I sprang to stand quivering between her and the door, and Frank lurched out of the kitchen bearing Mrs P’s heaviest waffle iron — the noise ceased, and there was a silence like a vacuum, in which we stood and blinked at each other like awakened sleepers. There came a squeal from outside; and then another; and then a groan and a painful-sounding crunch. We raced to the drawing-room window. On the lawn five men in polyester tracksuits were being tossed about in the air by the same two huge shadowy forms that MacGillycuddy and I had been pursuing moments ago.

‘Wow…’

It was mesmerizing to watch, balletic even. With perhaps fifteen feet of grass between them, they threw the cunts effortlessly from one to the other — the exchange perfectly synchronized so that at all times somebody was in mid-air — caught them, and set them gently on the ground. The cunts swore and yowled; in flight their faces became cartoonish, divested of threat. (‘They’re not really hurtin them,’ Frank said, forlornly raising his waffle iron.) Every so often one of the cunts would pick himself up and hurl himself at a shadow: every time — though we couldn’t quite make out how — he would be repulsed without making so much as a dent. For five minutes the colossal figures passed the invaders back and forth, voices ringing sonorously together — ‘they’re singing’ — like jugglers swapping skittles in the Russian Circus.

‘Who are they?’ Bel breathed.

‘Beings,’ I said huskily.

‘What do you mean, beings?’

‘Well, you know, supernatural beings.’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Charles.’

‘I know it sounds crazy, but Bel if you’d seen them earlier on, running about with the piano — running, mark you —’ I was about to tell her about my visions too, how I’d glimpse them from my bedroom window at the dead of night, when Laura cried sadly, ‘They’re going!’

Sure enough, the cunts — who to be fair had struggled pluckily, if vainly, against the two behemoths — were turning tail and scrambling down the driveway. Our rescuers, their work concluded, dusted themselves off and loped away in the opposite direction, to an enthusiastic round of applause from the contingent at the window, with the exception of Frank, who was mumbling that it wasn’t that hard to throw someone if you just knew how to hold them.

‘D’you really think they’re like supernatural?’

‘There’s no question. No human being could possibly be that large.’

‘Don’t be absurd,’ Bel snapped. ‘Don’t listen to him, Laura.’

‘Look, have you ever tried to lift a Steinway?’

‘Hey!’ Laura pressed her nose to the glass. ‘Isn’t that your housekeeper?’

Mrs P, clearly discernible in her white shift, was bustling across the lawn to the spot to which our helpmeets had retreated. At first I thought she must be sleepwalking again, but she appeared quite awake; in fact she seemed to be scolding them, wagging her finger and addressing them sharply in words I could not quite make out.

‘This is preposterous,’ Bel said, turning on her heel and marching out the door. ‘I’m going to find out what’s going on.’

‘I see what you mean,’ Laura said to me.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Like, about the house being interesting.’

‘Never a dull moment,’ Frank clapped me heartily on the shoulder, ‘with me and Charlie on the piss, isn’t that right Charlie?’

‘Ah, yes, quite, quite right…’ distracted by a scuffling noise overhead and remembering that MacGillycuddy was still at large somewhere in the house; then realizing that I’d forgotten about the bomb, which would be going off shortly. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d engineer my exit in the midst of all this activity. The surfeit of events was making me groggy and a little nauseous; I felt like I had eaten too much cake. But there was still more to come. Feet were clattering on the steps and now, with a rather triumphal flush, Bel re-entered the room with the two shadows behind her.

‘Everyone,’ she announced, ‘I would like you to meet Vuk and… what did you say he was called?’

‘Zoran.’ Mrs P brought up the rear, shaking her head.

‘Hello,’ one of them said experimentally, as Bel guided him to an armchair. His cohort propped himself on the armrest. ‘We speak no English,’ he declared after a moment’s deliberation.

‘As you can see, there’s nothing remotely supernatural about them.’

It was true: close-up the new arrivals did appear to be human, and on top of that quite amiable, although they were disturbingly tall. Both were muscular with swarthy complexions and thick, arching eyebrows. One of them (Vuk?) was conspicuously handsome, with tousled hair and long, very white teeth; the other (possibly Zoran) had a round head and a mild, uncomplaining demeanour. They sat looking quite at their ease, glancing round disinterestedly at their surroundings. Mrs P, on the other hand, was staring abjectly at her feet, like a schoolgirl caught cheating on a maths test.

‘Well, this is very nice,’ I said after a moment, ‘but I’m still somewhat fuzzy as to who, ah, exactly they are…’

‘They are my sons,’ Mrs P said, fumbling despondently with the cuffs of her shift.

‘Your sons?’

‘Wow…’

‘Yes. For three months now, they have been living hidden in the Folly.’

‘The Folly?’

‘Charles, stop repeating everything she says.’

‘Sorry.’ I sat back heavily on the window-ledge; I dimly heard Laura asking if anyone wanted tea. Then, for some moments, the room withdrew from me. Mrs P’s sons! Living in the Folly! A lot of things were suddenly making sense — the apparitions, the mysterious breakfasts, the underpants and the phenomenal grocery bills, the pilgrimages, the letters under the sink, the disappearing household items and now several thousand pounds’ worth of missing gemstones and artworks. ‘Mrs P,’ I returned to the fray, adopting a severe tone, ‘I’d like to know what you mean by having your children living in the Folly.’

Mrs P trudged over to the fireplace, where she stirred up a couple of embers among the ashes of the fire she’d stoked that afternoon.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘Don’t bully her, Charles.’

‘Master Charles is right,’ she said fatalistically. ‘My sons are foolish, they want to help, so you find out and now I must tell you.’

‘Let’s start with what exactly they were doing with my piano.’

‘Please, Master Charles. Now you find out, perhaps I lose my job and you send me away. This is your choice. Still I am happy, that the four of us are together. But please, you must listen to the story from the very beginning.’ She sighed, as if she had come to the end of a long and difficult journey and knew that she would never embark on another.

‘When the war begins,’ she said, as Laura came in with a tray and made a circuit of the room, offering ‘Tea?’ in a deafening stage whisper, ‘my family is already separated. The boys in Belgrade, we are in Krajina. Then, with the war —’ She opened her hands to show something let fall to the floor. ‘Everything is the chaos. Friends, families, everyone is split up in a thousand different places. The men our leaders run away. It becomes very dangerous and we must run away too. My children I don’t know where they are. Alive or dead, I don’t know.’ In one motion her hands rose and then fell to her sides.

‘Why didn’t you tell us any of this?’ Bel said, stroking her arm. ‘We might have been able to help you, Mother knows people…’

‘Because it doesn’t end.’ Mrs P passed an agonized hand over her eyes. ‘It was not over. Not to know becomes like the hard knot inside me, it is something I must hold tight to. I come here, I find a job, I wait. Only if I stay quiet do I keep the connection to that time. If I speak I think I let go, I am saying, now, that was then, that life is over. But in silence, only praying to myself so I know, something may still change. I wait, write letters, I hear things from people who were lost and then like miracles appear, but with nothing but stories, terrible stories.’

She fell into a pensive silence. Vuk and Zoran grinned uncomprehendingly from their armchair. Frank swore as his Jaffa Cake fell into his tea.

‘At last,’ she resumed, ‘we find each other, scattered in different countries. I send money so they can come here. Everything is secret, if they are found they will be sent back. But we are lucky. The builders are kind men, they help us with food and papers, they make the Folly warm, they don’t tell you of what we do. I am not proud, to steal from you, to lie to you. But I am thinking, can they understand? Other things are not like this, they begin, they end. But when a home is gone, and they rub it from the map, then —’

‘Hang on —’ obviously this was an emotional moment, and I didn’t like to interrupt, but I had done the arithmetic on my fingers several times now and it still wasn’t coming out right, ‘how many of you did you say there were?’

‘Mirela, my daughter, is asleep. She is sick, she needs rest.’

‘Oh.’ I rose slowly to my feet. ‘Asleep in the, ah…?’

‘The Folly,’ Mrs P nodded.

‘Right, right…’

‘What were you saying, Mrs P?’ Bel encouraged her. ‘About when your home is gone?’

‘Yes, that there is no end, because the ground is taken away that you walk on, so you must fall and fall —’

‘Excuse me a moment, would you…?’ No one paid any attention to me as I sidled out the door. Once out of their sight, I galloped down the steps and on to the wet grass. A livid roiling in the east signalled a storm coming in from the sea. The Folly emerged, stern and tenebrous, out of the night.

The bomb was just where MacGillycuddy had said, a deceptively homemade-looking bundle of wadding and tape wedged between two of the foundation stones. Thirteen minutes remained on the clock face: time enough if I hurried to get this blasted daughter out of the building and make myself scarce before it went up.

The doorway was a hole in the wall, braced by poles in plastic wrapping that whipped and rattled in the wind. Sweating feverishly, jabbed by iron prongs protruding from the stonework, I climbed the narrow stairs. Here and there little squares of yellow paper were pasted to the wooden skeleton, bearing inscrutable messages — builders’ reminders to themselves, I imagined, of tasks that now would never be completed. Halfway up the tower I came upon the piano, jammed immovably between stairs and ceiling. I squeezed past it, pushed up on the trapdoor at the top and poked my head into the room.

A solitary flame bounced about in the wind that stole in under the tarpaulin ceiling. In this gothic light, the belongings that confronted me on every side had a displaced, almost uncanny look about them; it was like walking into a fairground tent and discovering the museum of your own life. The ottoman, the teapot, the menorah; countless things I hadn’t even missed: a paperweight, beach towel, radio. Near the hatch was a foot-massager that Bel and I had gone dutch on as a Christmas present for Mother years ago, which I don’t think she’d ever even taken out of the box; beside it, a familiar table with familiar chairs, then familiar sleeping bags with familiar blankets and an old teddy bear that had fallen out of favour with me as I reached my teens. On the other side of the trapdoor, which was just off-centre of the circular room, were the valuables, piled up indiscriminately into a great mound like a dragon’s hoard. The coins, the pistols, the crystalware and silver, the gold and agate and ermine — all of it shored up in a corner with a literalism I found rather disarming: someone’s idea of a fortune, and what a fortune was able to do.

I should have mentioned earlier that in the sleeping bag nearest the wall was a girl, sitting up reading a dog-eared copy of the collected plays of Tennessee Williams. She was either pretending not to have noticed me, or else thoroughly absorbed in her book; either way, I found myself delivering a prefatory cough: ‘Ahem.’

‘Ah, there you are,’ the girl said.

‘Yes,’ I said, feeling somewhat trumped.

‘Come in, won’t you?’ she said politely, laying her book to one side.

‘Thank you.’ Without moving, she watched me haul myself through the hatch. ‘I knew you’d come sooner or later,’ she said. ‘What happened?’

‘Oh, bit of a dispute over at the house. Your, ah, your brothers were kind enough to step in…’

Even in the uncertain light I could appreciate that she was a striking girl, with the same fine black hair as her brothers and bold, imposing features. Her eyes were an intense, electrical blue, and didn’t so much meet as violently earth themselves in one’s own. It was something of a relief when she blinked.

‘It’s probably for the best,’ she pronounced lightly, in the same moderate, ambiguous tone; and then nodded, as if agreeing with herself. Her accent was softer than her mother’s and gave her voice a velvety, hypnotic quality. I suddenly felt in no hurry to leave. In her sleeping bag she began to hum to herself, winding a tress around her finger; then she stopped abruptly, as if something had occurred to her. ‘Do you want a drink? We seem to have acquired a large selection of wine all of a sudden.’

‘No,’ I said reluctantly, scuffing one shoe against the other. ‘Look — this isn’t entirely a social call. I came to tell you that the building’s about to explode.’

‘Plus ça change,’ she said, with a little smile.

‘I’m serious,’ I said. ‘You have to get out of here.’

‘How long do we have?’

‘I don’t know. Not long.’

She looked about the room as if seeing everything for the first time. ‘Such a shame,’ she said, with a kind of dispassionate regret. ‘Turn around, will you? I’ll have to put on some clothes.’

‘Certainly.’ I gallantly took myself off to the far side of the room and, ignoring a curious tapping noise from behind, looked through Mrs P’s purloined treasure trove. A plastic miniature of the Eiffel Tower had found its way in there: a memento from a childhood trip to France, mostly spent in hotel rooms waiting for Father to return from interminable conferences. He and Mother had fought like cat and dog. I wondered who had kept it. ‘I must say, I admire your sang-froid…’ I called over my shoulder.

‘I guess a girl picks things up on the road,’ she returned. ‘It’s all right, you can look now.’ I turned in time to see a bare arm plunge itself into a burgundy sleeve. She re-emerged and gave me a Lauren Bacall wink. Her skirt was pale and narrow and reached nearly to the floor. ‘Well? Am I presentable?’

‘Eminently.’

‘What about…?’ She gestured generally, taking in the Folly and its contents.

I hesitated. There wasn’t much hope for my plan now. Even if I could still carry off the death-faking part, which was looking increasingly unlikely, there was little chance of getting the insurance to cough up for all these obliterated valuables. Any gains made from my death would therefore be totally cancelled out; I would be exiled to Chile for nothing. My next thought was that the best thing to do at this stage would be to abandon the plan and limit the damage by grabbing what I could of the valuables and bringing them outside to safety. But then I realized that anything I saved would only be put up for auction. None of this was mine any more. It wasn’t anybody’s: at least not anybody with a face and a name, who might have come up here with a martini and a half-bag of truffles of an evening to look out at the people walking their dogs on the strand. Perhaps it was something to do with this girl and the strange spell she cast, but it seemed to me suddenly that I would almost rather have our fortune blown up than see the bank sell it off to the highest bidder. If we were going to be destitute, we might as well do it in style. ‘Forget it,’ I shrugged. ‘We’ll always have Paris.’

She laughed, and took a step towards the hatch. Impulsively I took her arm. ‘This is absurd, I know,’ I said, ‘but in a few minutes this place’ll go up and after that I don’t know that I’ll ever see you again. So if you don’t mind — won’t you tell me why I feel we’ve met before?’

‘We have to hurry,’ she began automatically, and then stopped. ‘If you climb up on the bookcase,’ she gestured back towards the sleeping bags, ‘you can unfasten the tarp and lean yourself out from the top of the Folly. It’s a bit like flying, especially on a windy night.’

‘Why… you’re the angel!’ I exclaimed. ‘You used to wave to me!’

‘You thought I was an angel?’

‘Well… I mean I was never quite sure…’

‘I think you were usually drunk.’

‘Well, yes…’

‘You always looked so confused,’ she laughed again, and then it was her turn to take my arm. ‘Charles, what will happen to us? Will your mother give us over to the police?’

‘Of course not,’ I said earnestly. ‘She wouldn’t dream of it. We’ll talk to her, don’t worry. We’ll work something out.’

She seemed satisfied with this; she nodded and withdrew her hand. She looked me in the eye, and said gently, ‘Charles, what have you got in your trousers?’

I had forgotten all about Father’s portrait, and I confess that I was somewhat thrown by this remark; our momentum might have been fatally compromised had a reddened, anxious face not at that instant popped up through the trapdoor.

‘Well, well,’ I snapped back to life, ‘if it isn’t the rat come back for one last look at the sinking ship.’

‘Are you mad?’ MacGillycuddy shrieked. ‘There’s a bomb! What are you doing standing around talking?’

‘All right, all right.’ He disappeared again and I ushered the girl ahead of me — and there it was again, that tapping sound –

‘Do you have mice up here? Very large mice?’

She paused at the edge of the hatch, as if debating a point with herself. ‘It’s not mice,’ she said.

‘What is it then?’

She half-turned towards me, the cobalt eyes burying themselves in mine, and hitched up her skirt. I thought at first she was going to curtsey; then I saw that while her right leg was bronzed and strong, the left ended just below the knee: strapped around the stump were rough steel bands that attached it to a clumsy looking wooden prosthesis.

‘Oh…’

‘Something else I picked up on the road,’ she said. ‘A bomb. Or a mine. I don’t remember. I woke up and this was there instead.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said weakly — but she was already hastening down the steps. I hurried after her, clambering over the piano, for some reason passing Frank at the door –

‘All right?’ Frank said.

‘Over here! Come on!’ MacGillycuddy waved at us from behind a brake of shrubs and saplings. All the fear and urgency that until now had been dormant sprang up in us both: we dashed across the lawn, the girl clinging to my arm for balance. Above us the sky had darkened and the wind risen: it threw her hair about and grabbed at my cheeks like some huge, amorphous infant. We crashed down beside MacGillycuddy.

‘You think we’ll be safe here?’ Her breast rose and fell steeply as she caught her breath.

‘Don’t worry, running away is one thing that MacGillycuddy really does well, don’t you, MacGillycuddy?’

He pretended not to hear me, addressing himself instead to the girl. ‘Hope I didn’t alarm you, shouting like that,’ he said in an obsequious voice. ‘I was a bit surprised to find you still there. I thought you’d be long gone.’

‘Wait,’ her eyes flashed, ‘how long did you know about this bomb?’

‘Well, I planted it, you see — didn’t you get my note?’

‘It was you? You planted a bomb in the Folly?’ Her voice grew shrill and she rounded on him with quite frightening ferocity. ‘Weren’t you going to tell me?’

‘I did tell you,’ MacGillycuddy protested, shrinking back as she loomed up over him. ‘I left Post-its everywhere, they were quite specific, “Get out, bomb,” they said, “Flee, explosion at 2 a.m.” I don’t see how you could have missed them —’

‘Post-its?’ The blazing eyes looked to me.

‘They’re a sort of self-adhesive notepaper,’ I began — ‘but look here, MacGillycuddy, you know this girl?’

‘Not intimately,’ MacGillycuddy blustered.

‘But, I mean to say, you knew that Mrs P had her children in the Folly?’

‘He brought my mother letters,’ the girl looked ready to rend him limb from limb, ‘from us, in secret. Then when we came here he arranged false papers for my brothers, for a price —’

‘So yes, in answer to your question —’

‘Well — blast it —’ the realization of his duplicity was building like steam between my ears, ‘I mean — when I came to you, and told you someone was stealing my furniture —’

MacGillycuddy had a decidedly besieged look about him. ‘I wonder how Frank’s getting on,’ he said hurriedly, standing up and peering into the darkness.

‘Don’t change the subject — though what is Frank doing there, exactly?’

‘He thinks he might be able to defuse it,’ he said. ‘I had to tell them about it, Charlie. I didn’t know what’d happened to you.’

‘That’s because you were upstairs hiding under the bed,’ I said. ‘Anyway, why aren’t you defusing it, seeing as it was your idea to ruin my plan, and it was your blasted bomb in the first place —’

MacGillycuddy waggled a little finger in his ear. ‘It’s one thing to make ’em,’ he said, scrutinizing the results, ‘and another thing entirely to switch ’em off.’ He cupped his hand to his mouth and bellowed: ‘Isn’t that so, Francy?’

Frank, a dim smudge at the base of the Folly, stopped what he was doing. ‘What?’ he called back.

‘I say, how’s that bomb going?’

Frank looked down between his knees. ‘Ah, there’s a good two minutes left,’ he shouted, ‘though you might want to keep clear of the windows.’

‘He’s going to be killed!’ The girl dragged slender white fingers down over her face.

‘Not at all. Sure he was in the UN. He’s done this loads of times.’ He put his hand to his mouth again: ‘Am I right, Francy?’

‘What?’ Frank stopped again and turned his head in our direction.

‘I was just telling Charles, you’ve done this loads of times.’

‘Just defuse the bomb!’ I cried.

‘I’d say it’s like riding a bike, is it? Once you learn, you never forget.’

Frank paused to consider this with what looked like a piece of wiring in his teeth.

‘Actually,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘it’s more like takin off a bra — like, you know how it works, and you’ve done it millions of times before, but still when you’ve got the girl there in front of you in the back of your van —’

‘For — would you stop distracting him!’

‘Get down, Charles!’ The girl grabbed my leg and pulled me down beside her.

MacGillycuddy looked at his watch. ‘Should be about eight seconds left,’ he said. ‘Five… four…’

We threw ourselves into the dirt.

A cloud drifted over the moon.

‘There,’ said Frank.

‘See?’ said MacGillycuddy.

Slowly we got to our feet.

The Folly was intact.

The girl and I looked at each other and laughed a foolish, happy laugh. Frank was laughing too, getting up and walking over to meet us. Without a sound, the power came on in the house behind us, and the windows streamed light onto the grass, making everything, after the hours of gloom, ecstatic and Disney-bright; the four of us gathered on the lawn, laughing and clapping Frank on the shoulder. ‘You did it!’ MacGillycuddy said.

‘You owe me a pint,’ Frank replied, his crooked teeth showing as he smiled; and though there seemed to be something not quite right about this exchange, I put it to the back of my mind and joined in the congratulations as, like troops returned victorious from a long and bloody war, we headed back for the house. Through the drawing-room window I saw Bel gazing out, sleepless and pale, by Mrs P’s side; I caught her eye, but she looked away before I could give her the thumbs-up. Never mind, I told myself; because even though not a single thing had gone according to plan tonight, it seemed nevertheless to have worked out for the best. The Folly was still standing, in spite of everything; surely this meant that we too would prevail, not only over the forces ranged against us, but over our own misguided desires, our own best intentions. Whether she liked it or not, Bel was part of the family: wherever life took us, I couldn’t lose her for long.

This was what I was thinking when, just in front of me, Frank stopped and pointed up into the sky. ‘Look at that funny bird,’ he said absently.

‘Oh yes,’ I said, squinting at it as it soared by us; but before I could tell him that on second thoughts it didn’t look like a bird so much as a piece of rock or something, we were enveloped in a deafening roar; and I just had time to turn and see that for some reason the Folly wasn’t where we’d left it –