We had ruined the dinner party so thoroughly, so unequivocally, that even after the furore had died down and the paramedics had gone, the wisest course of action had still seemed to be one of ignominious retreat. I wasn’t at all sure that Mother had been joking about pressing charges, so with Mrs P’s help I had smuggled Frank up here, and here the two of us had stayed. Only now, as I sat at the windowsill, did it occur to me that this was the end: that our parts were, at last, played out. Tomorrow was already today. Bel would leave for Yalta and Amaurot would be reborn as the Telsinor Hythloday Centre for the Arts. Our contributions had made, when it came to it, not the slightest bit of difference.
I had been utterly defeated on every front; I should, at that moment of all moments, have been steeped in despair. And yet, as I sat at the window, I did not find myself despairing. For out of the gloom, the hopelessness, the humiliation of the day, certain images kept defiantly floating up: Frank with Droyd in his arms, lurching out of the stinking basement; Frank thumping the Plexiglas, cheering on the dogs; the glorious moment of Frank, tongue tucked between his teeth, crisply punching Harry on the nose. I didn’t ask for them; they didn’t appear to change anything; yet there they were, floating up out of the darkness before my eyes, over and over again, and with them now something Yeats had said once: ‘Friendship is all the house I have.’
I frowned out through my ghostly reflection at the swaying trees, the rain.
Friendship is all the house I have
. It wasn’t a line I’d given much thought to before. Still, you could see what he meant, given all the problems one encountered with actual houses – heating bills and mortgages and wayward domestics, rack-renting landlords, actors moving in, all that. What kind of house would my friendship make? The day’s events paraded palely by again, like the tapestry of a long-ago battle. On the evidence it seemed that, for all my aspirations to the courtly life, I hadn’t provided much protection from the elements. Bel, Amaurot, Droyd and the Latvians… the closer you looked the more it appeared that, in terms of houses, it was your Charles Hythlodays who were the seedy overpriced flats with wobbling walls and dubious plumbing; while it was the Franks of this world – even if they thought a French press was some sort of ungentlemanly wrestling move, even if they were under the impression that Stockhausen was a Swedish furniture shop, even if one had heard them with one’s own ears telling Droyd when he asked that Donatella Versace was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle – it was the Franks who were the grand old mansions overlooking the sea. And it struck me that the last time we all of us had been happy – really happy, even if we hadn’t been aware of it – was when Frank and Bel were still together.
‘I say…’
No response.
‘Frank?’
‘Whhnnnhhh?’
‘You know, I’ve been thinking. Bel’s only going for six months. It’s not such a long time really…’
‘…’
‘I was just thinking that if – if you ever wanted to, you know, give it another shot with her…’
‘Yes, Charlie?’
‘Well, I might be able to put in a word, that’s all.’
I had never dreamed I would be saying this; and yet suddenly I could picture it so clearly – me restored to my room, the theatre disassembled and scattered to the four winds, Bel and I laughing gaily as Frank attended to any heavy lifting work that needed to be done around the house, as all the flurrying elements of our lives drifted back down into place, like the flakes in one of those little snow globes…
‘Cheers, Charlie,’ Frank said. ‘You’re a sound man.’
‘Well, it’s the least I could do. I mean I should have mentioned it earlier.’
‘Yeah,’ he scratched his nose thoughtfully. ‘’Member, though, how you were sayin that about plenty of fish in the sea?’
‘Yes?’
‘Yeah, cos like, eh, me and Laura, we’ve been, eh, you know…’
‘You’ve been what?’
‘Well like, you prob’ly noticed she’s been around a good bit lately…’
‘I thought she just liked DIY,’ I said in a small voice.
‘You don’t mind, do you? I wuz worried you might have a bit of a boner for her yourself.’
‘Not at all,’ I said; as the restored Amaurot receded over the horizon into the Land of Might-Have-Been, and with it the bounteous Laura, her grabulous melons… ‘I’m delighted, old chap. Delighted.’
‘Yeah, cheers Charlie. I’ll give her one for you, ha ha.’
‘Yes,’ I said faintly.
Mercifully his breathing deepened into snores; and after I had listened to the snores for an hour or so, I decided that maybe what I really wanted was a drink; so I rose again and went downstairs.
The caterers had gone home hours ago. Everything was tidied away. The long table had been stripped of its trappings, the chairs ordered with geometrical precision around it; the blood-splashes from Harry’s nose had been mopped up, the dishes washed and dried and stacked in the cupboard. Father waited, waited, in his frame in the hallway. Without knowing why, especially, I began to go from room to room, picking things up and putting them down again. In the vague blue darkness, everything seemed to tingle; I felt a little like the Prince in Sleeping Beauty, creeping through the slumbering castle, observing the secret life the objects led while everyone lay in their enchanted sleep. Then I found myself beside the drinks cabinet, and thought that seeing as I was in the neighbourhood, I might as well make myself a gimlet. After a moment’s thought, I decided that it ought really to be a double. Then I took the bottle and put it in my pocket.
Bel was in the drawing room on her own, staring out the window with the lights off.
‘Didn’t think I’d find you still up and about…’ I attempted a jolly avuncular tone.
‘The taxi’s coming at four. There hardly seemed much point going to bed.’
‘Interest you in a…?’ I held up my glass and jingled the ice cubes. She looked round.
‘How can you still be drinking?’ she said affectlessly, returning to her vigil.
‘Years of practice, I suppose…’ I took a seat on the chaise longue. A pink vinyl suitcase rested at one end. Outside thunder groaned and the sky lit up silver. ‘Lord, what an awful night. Don’t know if your plane’ll fly if it keeps up like that.’
‘It’ll fly,’ Bel said.
‘Aha,’ I returned emptily. I shunted myself forward, attempting to balance my drink on my knee. ‘Glad I caught you, as a matter of fact. Didn’t get much of a chance to say goodbye earlier on, what with all the fuss and all those paramedics swarming around. Cripes, you’d think even a haemophiliac would be able to deal with a bloody nose, ha ha…’ She didn’t appear to have an opinion on this. I rubbed my hands together miserably. ‘Wanted to ask you how you felt about the Harry and Mirela thing too. Must have been a bit of a shock for you, after all.’
The slender shoulders shrugged indifferently. ‘She’s marrying him for citizenship. If he doesn’t know that now, he soon will.’
‘Ah. Well, that’s good, then.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Dinner seemed to go fairly painlessly otherwise, didn’t it, apart from the, the fighting I mean… The statue, for example, I thought that was a nice touch.’
This at least evoked a response. ‘A
statue
,’ she murmured, staring out at the night. ‘A
statue
…’
I took a good draught of my gimlet. ‘Look here,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to beat around the bush. Maybe you want to hear this and maybe you don’t, but you ought to know that what happened between Mirela and me, it was a mistake. I had – that is, I didn’t…’ I broke off, trying and failing to untangle the words that were coiling up in my brain like Silly String.
‘What happened between you and Mirela is entirely your own business,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ I said unhappily. ‘Good. Because I thought, you know, I was worried you might be going to Russia because of
me
, ha ha.’
She shook her head, came away from her curtain and plucked an azalea from an enormous bunch on the table. ‘Think of Russia as a last hurrah,’ she said. ‘A whistle-stop tour of my childhood dreams, before I settle down and marry money.’ She clasped the stem between her two hands and waved the flower at me. ‘It’s late, Charles. You should go to bed.’
‘Right, right,’ I agreed, clambering off the chaise longue. ‘Well, bon voyage,’ I said, then, impulsively, went over to hug her. It was awkward and stiff; I felt her body pulling back. ‘Right,’ I said again, and backed falteringly out of the room.
‘Oh, Charles?’ She stopped me as I reached the door. ‘That tag, do you have it?’
‘What? Oh… yes.’ I fumbled about in my pockets. ‘I have your phone too, if you want it.’
She told me that she wouldn’t need that. ‘I would like the tag though. Just as a memento. Silly, I suppose.’
‘No, no…’ I found the dog tag, and flipped it in the air like a coin; as I caught it I laughed. ‘When I think about how you used to
worry
about that dog, night and day. You always were such a worrier. It was as if you thought your worrying was all that held the world together, and if you stopped for a split second the whole thing would just fly apart. I never did understand it, those were such happy days…’ Bel had picked up several more flowers now and held them in a fan across her face. ‘Do you remember,’ I chuckled, ‘how we used to pretend your mattress was a raft, and the stairs were a river, and we were sailing away escaping from the Serfs? And how we’d act out scenes from
Eugene Onegin
, and you’d get cross because you didn’t think I was sad enough when you told me you didn’t love me?’ The fan nodded infinitesimally swayed by the lightest of breezes. I rubbed my chin excitably. ‘Remember how we used to help Father inventing make-up? He’d give us poster-paints, you’d get yourself up as Tinkerbell, and I’d be Bela Lugosi. I was absolutely
convinced
there was a fortune to be made from this untapped market for Bela Lugosi make-up – what is it?’
Bel had lowered her fan, and was looking at me with a kind of impatience. ‘It wasn’t always happy days,’ she said. ‘There were things to forget, too.’
‘How do you mean?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s late, that’s all. You should go to bed.’ Then, pretending not to notice me stare, she held out her hand. ‘The tag?’
I closed my fist around it and lowered it slowly down by my side.
‘Don’t be childish, Charles, just give it to me.’
‘First tell me what you meant.’
‘Nothing, I didn’t mean anything…’ She had turned an angry beetroot colour.
‘It wasn’t nothing, if it was nothing you wouldn’t have said it, and what do you want this old thing for anyway, it hasn’t even got a name on it…’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, just
keep
it then!’ she wheeled away exasperated. Immediately I felt sorry and lunkish and I was just about to apologize and hand it over when she spun round, catching me unawares –
‘Ow – what are you
doing?
’
‘Give me it, Charles –’ digging her nails in my hand to try and get me to release it. I pushed her away: she pressed her elbow into my chest for leverage, and we tussled for another minute before I twisted her arm to disempower her, but did it too hard so she was thrown back on to the drawing-room floor.
‘Oh hell…’
‘Get off me –’
‘I didn’t mean it, I was just –’
‘You were just
drunk
, you’re
always
drunk…’ She wriggled away from my outstretched hand to lean against one leg of the chaise longue.
‘Sorry,’ I said again. ‘It’s not broken, is it?’ She didn’t reply, just sat folded-up by her suitcase, nursing her wrist.
‘It wasn’t deliberate,’ I said, feeling guilty. ‘It’s just, I don’t see why you always have to run things down…’
‘Oh Lord – just leave me alone, will you?’
‘You do, Bel. I mean maybe you don’t notice, but –’
She looked up with tears of pain in her eyes. ‘Why do you keep
doing
this to me?’
‘Doing what?’
‘Why do you keep making me have the same conversation again and again and again?’
‘I don’t.’
‘You
do
, with your happy memories and weren’t-we-blessed, you make it seem like this the whole time I’ve been living in a totally different
life
to you, you have no idea how it makes me
feel
…’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The way you talk about
us
, the way all your stories are about when we were little children, like nothing ever happened after we were ten years old, and everything bad you can just paint over and forget –’
‘I’m not painting over anything.’
‘Me in the hospital, why don’t you ever talk about that? Didn’t that happen? It was you who called the ambulance, wasn’t it? Or did I imagine it?’ The embers from the fire cast a deep-red livid glow over her face: she rubbed her wrist agitatedly, brushed her nose with her sleeve.
‘It was a painful period in our lives,’ I said. ‘Just because I don’t talk about something doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten it, or
painted over
it…’
‘You do!’ She struggled to her feet, the injured wrist held in one hand giving her a martyred aspect. ‘Even tonight when I’m
going
you come home with some stray dog you found half-dead because you don’t want me to remember the first one, because you think you can just erase the memory when the whole point is we shouldn’t be trying to forget it, we should be remembering it and what a rotten thing it was for Mother to take a little puppy and –’
‘It was just a bon voyage gift,’ I protested. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be some kind of existential –’
‘It was, Charles, it always is, and then you start in on me with remember this remember that and everything you don’t want to remember either just disappears or else you twist it around to make it fit this
illusion
you live in, just like the rest of them with their
statues
and their
tradition
and perpetuating Father’s
legacy
– but it’s worse when it’s you, because you were here, you know it’s not true.’
It was late, and I should have known to leave her be. In a very short period of time she had worked herself into quite a state. But I was a little the worse the wear myself by this point, and suddenly I had had enough of her put-downs; so I told her rather harshly that I hadn’t the faintest clue what she was talking about.