An Evening of Long Goodbyes

8

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Hello,’ it said.

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

‘You look lost,’ she said playfully.

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

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

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

‘Charles?’

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

‘Follow me to my cubicle,’ she laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Me?’ I said.

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

‘Yes, please, Gemma.’

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

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

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

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

‘Hmm? Sorry?’

‘Why did you choose Sirius Recruitment?’

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

She nodded encouragingly, motioning me to continue.

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

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

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

‘This is what I ask myself,’ I said.

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

‘Yes,’ I said.

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

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

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

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

‘Law, ah, I see. And then…?’

‘Well, then Father died.’

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

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

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

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

‘Okay, good, and then you…?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Okay,’ I agreed.

‘Quark,’ she said.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Word,’ she said. I realized she had begun to read out the list. ‘Excel. PowerPoint…’

It was a long list; every so often she would glance up to see if I was still there. As she went on I felt shame creep up my cheeks. So many languages, so many applications! How was it possible I had failed to master even one? On and on she went ‘VOID. Basic Basic. Advanced Basic Basic’ — and I could do nothing more than sit and listen, as she recited the string of meaningless words like some awful futurist poem!

Finally it ended. Gemma stared at me keenly. I cleared my throat and made an invisible adjustment to my tie. ‘Charles,’ she said, ‘this may be premature of me, but I’m guessing that your multimedia skills are at a more or less equivalent level to your IT?’

I nodded dumbly. I was wondering if now was the time to bring up my can-do spirit.

‘So in short, Charles,’ Gemma stood up rather abruptly to look out at the spice garden, ‘it’s fair to say you’ve never worked for a living, is that right?’

‘Not as such,’ I admitted. It struck me that I had tended to Father’s peacocks for a number of years; but I wasn’t sure how relevant this experience would be, and given that most of the peacocks had actually died in my care I decided it might be better not to mention them at all.

‘Interests?’ Gemma said. ‘Hobbies?’

‘I like watching old films,’ I said. ‘There’s usually something good on in the afternoon, around lunchtime.’

‘Yes.’ Gemma rattled her nails against the slate-grey veneer of the desk. ‘I need something more proactive than that, Charles. You have to help me out a little bit here. What is it, tell me what it is that you want to be.’

‘Be…?’ I had never really wanted to be anything specific — not like Bel, say, who had wanted to be an actress since she was twelve, and before that put considerable preparation towards the day she became Tsarina.

‘Put it this way, where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’

I rested my finger on my bottom lip. It was a compelling question. Five years! I imagined my future self, who had mastered the intricacies of this complex world, and the trappings of my successful life there. I pictured myself in a sumptuous suite, with Art Deco prints and mirrored ceilings and automated windows overlooking the city, where I would sit at my computer effortlessly typing Solutions. I envisioned the fashionable bars where I would drink gimlets with my new friends, and how at the weekend we would go Go-Karting, or to see Cats. I looked rested and content. Everything was provided for; life was good. But then I thought, five years, and I wondered, just out of curiosity, what Amaurot might look like then — and instantly the parallel universe of my successful career dissolved, and I was back walking through the orchard in a smoking-jacket, beating away at nettles with a good stick, while on the lawn Bel paced back and forth with a sheaf of papers, murmuring the lines of the play she was auditioning for, and Mrs P appeared on the doorstep with a jug of lemonade, and so did Mother, and Mirela, and anyone else who wanted to be there, all of us just there and not worrying about how, or why –

‘Charles?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said, disorientated. ‘That’s right. Five years. Well, anywhere, really. That is to say, I’m not particular.’

Gemma sighed. ‘Charles, you see, that’s just no good. How can I place you if you don’t even know where you want to be placed? Today’s employer wants commitment. He wants to know that you share his dreams and ambitions. Because that’s how this boom came about, Charles. It’s not just about US venture capital and drastic cuts in Irish corporate tax. It’s about a group of gifted young people brought together by a dream. A dream, Charles, do you see? It isn’t enough for someone to just wander in off the street looking for their slice of the pie, if they don’t understand what the pie even is, Charles. I mean, do you even want the pie?’

‘Well, I want to eat,’ I said agitatedly, ‘you know, and I’d quite like to sleep in a bed again —’

‘Of course you do!’ Gemma said. ‘Of course you want to live in a nice place and drive a big car. Who doesn’t? But the prospective employer needs more than that. And my concern is that when I fax him this,’ she lifted the application form, ‘what he’s going to see is not the individual of flair and imagination that I know you are, but someone whose life just stopped, three years ago.’

I blanched. Stopped? How could she say that, when so much had happened? Bel’s passage through college, her string of unbroachable men, my efforts to reprise the courtly life of the Renaissance, Mother’s collapse, Mrs P’s collapse, Father’s death and all the screaming at that horrendous funeral –

‘Okay,’ Gemma said brightly, clapping her hands to her thighs. ‘Charles, I want to thank you again for coming in today. And I’m not going to say goodbye, because I know that you’re going to come back in here as soon as you’ve figured out what you want to do.’ On her noticeboard, the photos seemed now to have taken on a melancholy tint, as if somehow they’d turned their backs to me. ‘Because there’s a place out there waiting for you. It’s only a matter of wanting it enough.’

‘What?’ I said dazedly. ‘Oh…’ realizing she’d stretched out her hand. I shook it limply and got to my feet.

‘So see you soon,’ she said, pointing me towards the exit.

‘See you soon,’ I said.

‘See you soon,’ the beautiful receptionist said as I passed back through the lobby; and the fragrance of lilacs accompanied me a little way down the street.

The city seemed quite different now. The sun had gone in and a louring gunmetal sky hung over the streets. All around huge cranes laboured, drills snored, jackhammers juddered. The noise was earsplitting, and with every step it became more unbearable — the din, the hustle, this endless parade of unfamiliar faces, each presenting its own split-second interrogation before merging back into the amorphous throng.

Coming down Clare Street, I saw that a coachload of elderly Americans in space-age rainwear had become snarled up with a mass of pasty-faced native schoolchildren, and thinking to avoid them, I ducked through the Lincoln Place gate into my alma mater. Immediately I wished I hadn’t, because I saw at once that not even Trinity had been spared the ravages of the new era. Sanding machines assailed the Museum building; a veritable Golgotha of a library was being raised to the west. With a sudden fretful pang I sought out the little grove of trees in a secluded corner of the cricket pitch where, one woozy outrageous night, Patsy and I had come closest to consummating our love, or my love anyway. But it had been railed off, and from behind the palings a bulldozer could be heard, devouring. It was depressing. I wondered at these glossy people who didn’t seem to care, who walked blithely through the destruction as if they had been born yesterday.

I was walking through New Square wrapped in sombre thoughts when somebody called my name. I turned to see a flabby office type in a cheap blue suit. He was standing with his hands in his pockets on the ramp leading up to the Arts building, where Trinity’s high society traditionally gathered to snipe and flirt and smoke countless cigarettes: I thought at first he must be a ghost, or a shade stepped out of my memory.

‘It is you,’ he said. ‘I thought I recognized the, ah…’ He tapped at his breast. I looked down and saw that the monogrammed corner of my handkerchief was protruding from my jacket pocket.

‘Hoyland Maffey,’ I said. ‘Well, well.’

‘Been a while,’ Hoyland said.

‘Yes,’ I said. After that, I didn’t know quite what to say; neither did he, obviously, and for a moment we stood there awkwardly, unsure that we wanted to take the conversation any further.

‘Funny I should run into you here,’ he said, gesturing at the trees, the architecture. ‘What are you doing, reminiscing?’

‘Yes, I suppose.’ His spare tyre had inflated noticeably — yet at the same time he looked lessened somehow, not so Hoylandy as he had been. No doubt he was thinking the same thing about me; I could see him glance covertly over my bandaged head, debating whether or not to ask me about it. He didn’t; the silence reached an embarrassing level. ‘Well!’ he said peremptorily.

‘Yes!’ I followed with an uncomfortable laugh, and was making to take my leave when he said again sharply: ‘Charles —’

‘What is it?’

His blue eyes flickered over the rococo structure of the Campanile. ‘I just wondered,’ he said in a tight, strained voice, ‘if you still had those peacocks?’

I flushed, and did not reply right away. And then the old response came into my head, and with it the croquet games, the flaneuring, all the warmth of our past lives. ‘As a matter of fact I do,’ I said. ‘And you — you had seabirds, as I recall? I believe you kept several egrets?’

Hoyland stood a moment, looking off into the distance. ‘Egrets?’ he said. ‘I’ve had a few. But, then again, too few to mention…’

Students glanced disdainfully at us as we exploded into guffaws and then performed the secret handshake; then Hoyland pointed out that it was lunchtime and, having nothing to look forward to but an afternoon in my slum, I agreed to let him buy me a sandwich.

‘Blasted new era,’ Hoyland said through a mouthful of crab salad, gazing dyspeptically down the long ornate hall at the swarming financial types eating gourmet luncheons. We were in one of the new cafés, an airy, wooden-beamed chamber plastered with posters from the 1920s; I had just asked Hoyland why he was wearing that lamentable suit.

‘I shouldn’t be here at all, you know,’ he said. ‘I’d retired from public life. Moved back to the Kingdom, thought I’d work on my fly-fishing for a few months before embarking on any more disastrous — well, you know. Best-laid plans of mice and men, Hythers. Arrived back in Kerry to find a full-scale war going on between the old man and the town council.’

‘A war? I say, you were right about this sandwich…’

‘It’s the mozzarella. They import it directly from the Tyrol, by helicopter.’ He dabbed his mouth with a napkin. ‘Anyway, it seems the council passed some sneaky law when no one was looking allowing them to build holiday homes all over the headland. Place is covered with ’em. Horrific things, sort of like upmarket sardine tins. Idea is they lie empty ten months a year then in July you’re invaded by a horde of ancient Germans Heil Hitlering each other in the village grocery. Now they want to turn the park into a golf course — ah, thank you dear…’ as the waitress dropped down our coffees. ‘Well, naturally the old man’s had kittens. He’s retained about every solicitor in Munster, spends the whole day storming around the house muttering about Dunkirk. “We will fight them on the beaches, Hoyland,” he says. I’ve lost count of how many actions he’s taken. They’re suing us back, of course.’ He picked gloomily at the cheap fabric of his cuffs. ‘In the meantime, no one has two pennies to rub together. And instead of having a little time off to think about, you know, one’s life, one’s direction, the old man’s sent me back up here, to earn money for the War Effort — he calls it the War Effort, Charles. I tell him I can barely make enough up here to keep body and soul together. He doesn’t listen.’ He heaved his shoulders jadedly. ‘Hence this regrettable downturn in my fortunes. What about you?’

Taking a deep breath, I gave him a summarized account of the story, from my selfless bid to save Amaurot to my current state of exile and my ignominious attempts at finding a job.

Hoyland was shocked. ‘A job? You?’

‘’Fraid so.’

‘But what about that Italian thing you were always busy with — what was it, spirulina…?’

‘Sprezzatura.’

‘That’s it, what about that?’

I shrugged. ‘Needs must, old man.’

‘I never thought I’d see the day when you had to get a job,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘What kind of a bally world is it, anyway?’ He looked thoroughly despondent.

I was surprised: I didn’t recall him ever being quite this downbeat before. ‘It could be worse,’ I suggested. ‘At least a man can make a decent living nowadays, I mean I gather they’re having some sort of a boom…’

‘Ha!’ Hoyland said.

‘Ha?’

‘It’s a sham,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing but a blasted sham.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m not denying people are getting rich. But I’ll tell you one thing, Hythers, it’s not the chaps on the ground like you and me. Rudimentary knowledge of theology doesn’t get you far these days. It’s all computers now. We’re just drones, as far as these technology people are concerned. We’re bottom of the heap. Yesterday’s news.’

‘It can’t be that bad,’ I said.

‘It is,’ he said, mopping his plate with a hunk of bread. ‘It’s worse. Look at me, Hythloday. Look at these wrists. I used to have the wrists of one of those twelve-year-old Russian piano prodigies. Now they’re worn away to nothing. I sprained one playing ping-pong the other week, ping-pong, Charles!’

‘I say, you’re spitting, old man…’

‘I don’t care!’ Hoyland cried, pounding the table. ‘You’ll spit too, when you see what it’s like! Spending all day long typing blasted VOID and PowerPoint, going home to your shoebox of an apartment block with electric fences to keep out the locals, never seeing a soul from one day to the next — that’s no way for a man to live! I’ve lived before, I know that that’s not living!’

The office types at the table next to ours had fallen silent and were shooting us wary glances.

Hoyland took a deep breath. ‘Sorry,’ he said. He fiddled out a cigarette from the pack in front of him and lit it. I studied his tortured brow wonderingly. I felt a bit like Dante, chancing upon one of his old acquaintances in the nth circle of hell.

‘So this is the boom, eh?’ I said. ‘Not exactly Scott Fitzgerald, is it?’

‘I’ll tell you what it’s like,’ he said glumly. ‘It’s like being in Caligula’s Rome, and everyone around you’s having an orgy, and you’re the mug stuck looking after the horse.’ He pulled heavily on his cigarette. ‘The whole thing’ll come crashing down,’ he said bleakly, ‘and all anyone’ll have done is eaten a lot of expensive cheese.’

Rain had begun to fall outside. Beside us the office types were jawing noisily about some takeover or other. Hoyland smoked the rest of his cigarette in silence.

‘Seen any of the old crowd?’ he said eventually. ‘Pongo, that lot?’

‘From time to time,’ I replied. ‘Pongo’s in London now.’

‘Lucky blighter,’ he said. He stared a moment into the middle distance, then in a casual voice said, ‘I hear Patsy’s back.’

I made a little horseman of the salt cellar and marched him along the table. ‘Oh yes?’

‘Yes, someone met her working in a café.’

‘Oh,’ I said colourlessly.

‘Christ, Hythloday,’ Hoyland said flatly, ‘we’ve been dopes, do you know that?’

‘What do you mean?’ I said.

‘You know what I mean. Not patching things up. Letting the whole gang drift apart for the sake of a girl.’

I puffed up my cheeks and blew.

‘Well, damn it, what do you think?’

‘Oh hell,’ I said irritably, ‘I don’t know. It didn’t come out of nowhere, did it? Maybe it was meant to happen. Maybe that whole gang was past its sell-by date, and that was just the, you know, the catalyst. I mean, good God, if Patsy Olé was the only thing holding us together, Patsy Olé who has all the loyalty of the ball in a roulette wheel —’

‘So what?’ Hoyland said bitterly. ‘So now for the rest of our lives we just dwindle off into our own little private solitary worlds, is that it?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘We can’t pretend it didn’t happen, can we? How should I know?’

We fell into a fractious silence.

‘Sure, the public got burned in the buyout,’ one of the business types declaimed energetically next to us. ‘But that’s what happens in a revolution. You’ve got to understand that this is a whole new paradigm of management.’

Hoyland fumbled out another cigarette but didn’t light it; then, catching sight of his watch, he swore and started to his feet. ‘I have to get back,’ he said. ‘My masters don’t look kindly on tardiness. But look here, Hythers — I’m glad we met. We should go for a brandy some time. I’m free most evenings.’

I nodded mechanically. Suddenly everyone was leaving: massing round the door, unfurling their umbrellas. Hoyland reached into his wallet and handed me a card. ‘Do call,’ he said. ‘Silly to let everything just go to the wall.’ He hovered there a moment, blankly watching the exiting hordes, the unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. ‘I still think about her, you know,’ he said abstractedly; then he turned up his collar and passed with the others back on to the boulevard. In a few minutes, the café was almost empty.

Damn it, I had forgotten how a fellow couldn’t go twenty yards in this city without running into someone he used to know, wanting to dig up the past. Maybe that was why they were knocking the whole place down. As the waitress moved from table to table with her tray, piling up the dishes, the old faces appeared in front of me out of the rain, like the cast of a play taking its curtain call…

We had all been wild about Patsy, of course; though none of us would ever have claimed he truly knew her, or understood her. She was like the moon moving through the houses of the Zodiac — favouring each of us in turn, yet remaining always remote: her love a mysterious influence you couldn’t quite put your finger on but didn’t dare disbelieve. In retrospect it’s obvious she was quite happy in this orbit of her own, from which she could enjoy the chaotic effect she had, the squalls and storms and other aberrant weather patterns caused by her peculiar magnetism. But each of us had hoped that he would be the one who finally brought her to earth.

My chance had come that spring. She appeared by my side one day, more or less literally, amid a pageant of bluebells and forget-me-nots. I didn’t know how she had got there, exactly, but I didn’t ask questions. I fell instantly under her spell, just like everybody did.

I don’t remember exactly what we did together, or what we said to each other. It’s possible we didn’t do or say anything at all. It was the time itself that seemed enchanted: becoming a single evening that didn’t begin or end, through which we drifted along hand-in-hand as if plunged into a wonderful dream. And if she never quite yielded, if some part of her always seemed to be elsewhere, still I — spending my solitary hours frantically learning off Yeats, searching for the insight, the single line that would deliver her to me — still I assumed that this would only be a matter of time.

The problem was that the part of her that I felt was always somehow elsewhere was usually, more specifically, with Hoyland Maffey Indeed, Hoyland was frequently there with us, helping us to witness the spectacular spring. It seemed to me rather unorthodox for two people who were falling in love to have a third party present for so much of the falling. At last I put this to Patsy.

‘What do you mean?’ she said.

‘I mean, usually it’s just the two people on their own.’

‘But Hoyland’s our friend, Charles. Our bosom friend. It’s not fair leaving him out just because we’re so terribly, terribly in love.’

The way she said bosom would probably have been enough; but when she went on, completely unprompted, to deny that there had ever been anything between her and Hoyland, any doubts I had left were extinguished. At that moment I knew that she was telling Hoyland exactly the same story about me; I knew she knew I knew, and I knew that Hoyland knew it too.

The enchanted spring was quickly poisoned. Every moment was shadowed by mistrust and deception. Time and time again Patsy and I would be alone together in the library — a candle burned low on the ledge as we approached, seemingly inexorably, a moment of ecstatic union — when the doorbell would ring and Patsy would spring up from the billiard table saying, ‘Oh good, that’ll be Hoyland,’ as casually as if we’d just been playing an uninspired round of Scrabble; and there he would be, his mirthless grimace and darting eyes the mirror image of my own: ‘Hello, Hythers, just thought I’d stop by…’

‘Ha ha, always a pleasure, old man, get you a glass of something?’

Before long my love for Patsy had been totally superseded by my hatred for Hoyland. Every hour apart from her I spent in torment, imagining the two of them together. When I was with her I oscillated between desperate bids to impress her and equally desperate attempts to find out her true feelings. Every dainty sniff, every equivocal cough, every half-raised eyebrow, I would pore over for hours seeking to decode. Patsy, of course, had no true feelings; or if she did they had nothing to do with us. But even if I had known this it would have made little difference. What mattered now above all was that I thwart my former friend.

Finally, towards the end of April, things came to a head. Patsy was travelling to Rome for a couple of weeks to do some work for her thesis, something to do with Raphael and his courtesans. I had thrown together a send-off party, and had managed to pip Hoyland’s rival party by hiring Patsy’s favourite local jazz trio for the occasion. It was quite a soirée, or so I am told. The night was sweltering, presided over by a full silver moon; all kinds of carousing took place out on the lawn, including (allegedly) a striptease by Bel’s old schoolmate Bunty Chopin, right down to a couple of peacock feathers.

But Hoyland and I cared nothing for the celebrations. For the entire night we sat staring balefully at each other from armchairs in opposite corners of the recital room, rising only to top up our whiskeys. From time to time Patsy would breeze in from the garden where the trio had set up and drape herself over one of us, with the express intention of infuriating the undraped party in the opposing armchair, which it invariably did.

At four o’clock, both Hoyland and I arrived at the sideboard to find that only a single measure of whiskey remained in the decanter. We looked at each other, and the rest of the party — the conversations, the bragging trumpet, the hoots from the lawn — seemed to fall away. There was only the two of us: deadlocked.

‘Help yourself,’ I said.

‘No no, please,’ he returned.

‘My dear fellow, you’re the guest.’

‘It’s fine, really, I’ve had quite enough.’

‘Oh, you have, have you?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact I have.’

‘Well, so have I, in that case.’

‘Well, “in that case” I’d be interested to hear what you intend to do about it.’

‘I — ah… that is…’ The ball was in my court but I had gone completely blank. The whiskey had turned my brain into a furnace of dry heat. All around me I could hear whispers like the crackle of kindling, and Patsy whistling ‘Sophisticated Lady’ as she drew up the hall — when I saw that as luck would have it someone had left her gloves on the piano. I seized one of them, and threw it down at Hoyland’s feet. A gasp went around the room. ‘I’m challenging you to a duel, that’s what,’ I said.

Hoyland looked surprised. ‘Really?’ he said.

‘Well…’ I said uncertainly. Just then Patsy came in and asked a girl on the periphery what was going on. ‘Charles wanted Hoyland to finish the whiskey, but Hoyland thought Charles ought to have it, so Charles challenged Hoyland to a duel,’ the girl said.

‘Oh,’ Patsy said. She sounded impressed.

‘Yes,’ I said to Hoyland.

‘Good,’ said Hoyland, who had had time to regain his composure and was superciliously buffing his cufflinks. ‘Swords or pistols?’

‘Pistols, obviously,’ I said, adding contemptuously, ‘Swords.’

The arrangements were quickly made. The antique pistols were brought down from the study, where Father had kept them loaded in his desk — a secret Bel and I weren’t supposed to know about. Solemnly, we chose our seconds: Boyd Snooks was mine, and Fluffy Elgin Hoyland’s. After trying vainly to talk us out of it, Pongo agreed to adjudicate. Other than these parties, everybody, including Patsy, was asked to remain inside. At five, we left the house by the back door.

We strode over the long grass to the gazebo, recently vacated by the jazz trio. Above us the sky was tinged with pink and a few early birds chirruped in the branches. Fluffy Elgin couldn’t stop giggling. Hoyland blinked at me from under the apple tree on which he’d hung his blazer. Pongo’s voice, when he spoke, was high and taut and cut into the quiet of the morning. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, summoning us together before the gazebo and requesting that we shake hands, before holding up the mahogany box: ‘Choose your weapons.’

The pistol was heavy and dull with a long barrel. Pongo ushered me into place, standing with my back to Hoyland’s. I realized how cold it was. Every detail of the garden blazed at me.

‘When I give the word, you must take ten paces. Then, at my signal, turn and face one another. When I throw my hat in the air, you may shoot. Understood? Right. Commence pacing. One…’

As I took my paces, stretching out my leg stiff at the knee, dew soaking the cuffs of my trousers, I did wonder what exactly I was doing. But it all made a kind of sense: in fact, a singular kind of sense.

‘Two… three…’

Every element of my life had, at this moment, cohered. If the worst came to the worst, and I died here, it would be in my own garden, surrounded by friends, for the honour of the woman I knew beyond a doubt to be my true and eternal love. As deaths went, this didn’t seem a bad one.

‘Five… Six…’

Bother, I realized I hadn’t said goodbye to Bel. She was away putting up lights for a show. It was probably just as well — she tended to be a wet blanket when it came to parties and I daresay would have frowned on duels too; furthermore she disapproved strongly of Patsy Olé, whom she referred to as the Dalkey Chameleon. I made a mental note to mention her in my dying words.

‘Eight…’ Pongo called. ‘Nine…’

Fluffy Elgin’s giggles had turned into hiccups and she had to sit down.

‘Ten… Oh hell, hang on a second…’

There was a padding sound and then silence. Moments passed. I stood trembling with the muzzle cold against my cheek. I stared into a clump of peonies, emptily taking in the form of the leaf, the gleaming stem, the petals. Fluffy hiccuped dolefully.

‘I say, Boyd,’ I called out, after a little more time had passed.

‘Yes?’ Boyd replied from the log where he was trying to get Fluffy to hold her breath.

‘What’s going on?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Boyd said. ‘Pongo suddenly ran off somewhere.’

‘What?’ Hoyland’s voice wafted over from his position under the larches.

‘I think he had to get something from inside,’ Boyd said. ‘I shouldn’t think he’ll be long.’ He started humming to himself.

‘It’s deuced cold,’ I observed.

‘Can’t we sit down?’ Hoyland wanted to know. ‘Or turn around, at least?’

‘I don’t know,’ Boyd said. ‘You’d have to ask Pongo, he’s the adjudicator.’

We remained where we were. More birds joined in the tweeting. ‘The sun’s shining directly into my eyes,’ Hoyland complained. Somewhere a car raced down the road.

My teeth began to chatter.

‘Raaaaaah!’ Boyd exclaimed suddenly, making us all jump.

‘What on earth —’

‘I was trying to scare Fluffy,’ Boyd apologized.

‘Hiccup — hiccup — hiccup,’ Fluffy hiccuped miserably, twisting a peacock feather limply between her fingers.

‘This is ridiculous,’ I said and turned around, whereupon Hoyland immediately began jumping about shouting that I had forfeited the duel and that he was the winner by default.

‘Don’t be absurd,’ I said. ‘I’m going to find Pongo. This is no way to run a duel.’ I tossed my pistol under the apple trees and set off back towards the house, Hoyland scrambling after me.

Pongo wasn’t in the kitchen, nor was he in the dining room. Hoyland checked the library while I looked in the drawing room, but he wasn’t there either. He wasn’t one of the slumbering bodies in the recital room, nor was he among the mésalliances that had unfolded in the bedrooms.

‘It’s as if he’s disappeared,’ Hoyland said.

‘Very peculiar,’ I said.

‘I thought he’d been doing a very good job up until then,’ Hoyland said.

And then — just as we were about to abandon our search and call it a night — we found him. He was in the cloakroom, standing almost submerged in the layers of coats that hung on the back wall. His face was frozen in a remarkable expression, somewhere between astonishment and rapture. In his hand he held a triumphal-looking brandy. We asked him just what the blazes was going on; and he informed us, in a halting, wispy voice, that he had just been fellated by Patsy Olé.

Behind me, I heard Hoyland’s pistol clatter to the floor.

‘What?’ I whispered.

‘I only came in here to get my hat,’ Pongo reflected.

‘But — but —’ spluttered Hoyland, ‘but where is she now?’

‘Gone,’ Pongo said.

‘Gone?’

‘She flies to Italy in half an hour,’ he said dreamily. ‘Her taxi was waiting outside.’

‘But this is incredible,’ I said, ignoring the toxic contents performing a danse macabre in my stomach. ‘You mean to tell me that — that you were in here simply minding your own business, when she burst in, and…’ I broke off; it was too hideous to contemplate.

‘Yes,’ Pongo said. ‘That’s the long and the short of it. Then she took her coat and she left.’ He took a thoughtful sip from his brandy. ‘That’s some lady,’ he said.

A low moan emerged from Hoyland. The pair of us were hunched up like old men.

‘What about us?’ he managed to croak. ‘Didn’t she say anything about us?’

Pongo considered this. ‘She said,’ he recalled at last, ‘saluté —’ and he raised his glass to both of us.