We applauded dutifully.
‘It is also an opportunity for us to say thank you — to Telsinor Ireland, and more particularly to Mr Niall O’Boyle, whose personal vision and sense of social commitment, so rare in today’s business world, have played such a part in creating this unique partnership.’ As Niall O’Boyle basked like a basilisk on a rock, Mother asked us to reflect for a moment on the meaning the partnership — cemented tomorrow morning when the papers were signed — would have for the house. She outlined the plans to renovate the old west wing, expand the theatre, begin the long-promised instruction of children from underprivileged parts of the city; she explained how, on a more personal level, the signing of the papers would at last secure the house financially, something that her late husband, for all his years of work, was never conclusively able to do –
‘Charles, stop twitching.’
‘It’s Geoffrey, he keeps staring at me. He looks like he’s suppressing the urge to bless himself.’
‘It’s your face, Charles,’ Bel whispered back. ‘Haven’t you seen it? You look exactly like — oh —’
Mother had moved on to the goodbyes part of the speech and was calling on Bel to stand up and take a bow. ‘Our loss is Russia’s gain,’ Mother was saying. ‘Bel’s devotion to the theatre has never been in question. I can’t think of any other girl who would come to her own going-away party dressed like Hamlet…’
Everyone laughed obligingly and clapped again. Frank leaned over to Mirela, who had left most of her food uneaten, and asked if she was planning to finish it. Niall O’Boyle rose and thanked Mother and began to read from flashcards handed him by his PA to the effect that Amaurot was more than just a house, it was a symbol, the symbol of an ideal, and how inspiring he personally found it to see this ideal being perpetuated by modern technology in the form of the Telsinor Hythloday Centre for the Arts, and so on and so forth; I drifted away. There was a fresh sally of rain against the window. To my left Bel fidgeted with a doily. The tubby stage manager was rubbing his foot up and down the girl with barrettes’ ankle and trying to make her laugh.
‘… a central part of our project of renewal, who really embodied these values we’ve been talking about, and more importantly used them and shared those qualities with others in order to make the world a better place, a permanent monument to him.’
Noisy applause here. ‘What did he say?’ I whispered to Bel.
‘They want to put up a statue of Father,’ Bel said, absently twisting her doily into a garrotte.
With this announcement, the speeches came to a close, and the table fragmented into a happy babel of conversation. But Bel retreated further into herself, watching the proceedings as if they were occurring on the other end of a microscope. It didn’t matter what I asked her about — Yalta, Ramp, Olivier’s legal travails — she would answer politely in as few words as were humanly possible, and then withdraw into silence. It was like being seated next to a vacant lot.
I decided it was time to bring out the big guns. When Mrs P came in to ask about coffee (Frank was right, she did look rather out of sorts), I had a word in her ear. A few minutes later, An Evening of Long Goodbyes nosed into the room, bandaged up and looking much improved.
‘Well!’ I said. ‘Look who it is!’
‘Who is it?’ Bel barely lifted an eyebrow.
‘Don’t you recognize him?’ I said, seeking to disengage the dog’s head from its reproductive organs momentarily so she could see him properly. ‘It’s that dog you bet on at the races that time, remember? An Evening of Long Goodbyes. You thought it was romantic.’
‘What’s it doing here?’ Bel said.
I stifled my exasperation. ‘Well, it’s for you, obviously. I mean it’s a bon voyage gift.’
‘We robbed it from the car park,’ Frank chipped in unhelpfully.
‘We didn’t rob it,’ I said. I explained about the race and the dog’s heroics earlier that evening. Bel still didn’t seem to understand how this related to her; she nodded neutrally, patting the smooth area between the dog’s ears, and made some remark about not knowing if Aeroflot allowed dogs on as hand luggage.
‘You’re coming back, aren’t you?’ I said, beginning to feel a little browned off. ‘I just thought it would be nice to have a dog about the place again. I remembered how you used to dote on that spaniel…’ This I felt sure would elicit a response, but her face remained blank as the silver tag nestled in my pocket. I thought about producing the tag as evidence of her obsession, thereby proving that the dog was a good present, Aeroflot’s luggage policy notwithstanding; but I checked myself. I had done my best to make amends. If she was going to be infantile, that was her business. She returned to her reverie. I fell into a grumpy silence of my own. From the other side of the table, Frank resumed his muttering, mingling it with superstitious glances at Bel of the kind that a savage might throw at a bicycle. Oh yes, we made quite a party.
‘You know,’ Niall O’Boyle was telling Mother, tilting his chair back from the table, ‘I’ve always fancied one of these big houses. A man could get some thinking done in a place like this.’
‘Oh, these old piles are far more trouble than they’re worth,’ Mother laughed. ‘Don’t be fooled. So much work just to keep them going, and it’s only on nights like this that they truly come into their own.’ But even as she said it, her eyes roved over the lavish appointments, and sparkled with approval.
‘It’s those Slavic cheekbones,’ the lavender-jacketed PA said, stroking her wine glass and gazing at Mirela. ‘They photograph so beautifully…’
‘I’m calling it The Rusting Tractor,’ Harry said to Geoffrey. ‘It’s about a young woman moving from the city to an isolated village in Connemara, one of those places that’s totally stuck in the past, you know, no Internet access, two TV channels — anyway, she gets in a fight with the locals because she wants to put a mobile-phone mast up on her land, because I don’t know if you’ve been to the west but the coverage is really appalling out there, but to them this is a kind of sacrilege, because, you know, the “land”, capital L —’
‘Charlie!’ a hoarse voice called from across the table. ‘What’s he talkin about?’
‘I think he’s talking about mobile phones,’ I said.
‘… so what develops is a conflict between the quote-unquote “new” Ireland, the Ireland of technology and communication and gender equality, and the “old” Ireland of repression and superstition and resistance to change, which is represented by the rusting tractor…’
‘Why does he keep doin that thing with his fingers?’
‘Oh, it’s a sort of inverted commas,’ I whispered. ‘Just ignore him. It’s patent nonsense anyway. Mobile phones, the very idea is absurd. People don’t want to be bothered with phones when they’re out and about, that’s the whole reason they leave their houses.’
‘It’s like a strobe light goin off in me brain,’ Frank said through clenched teeth, holding his head with his hands.
‘What?’ I looked over at him. Sweat stood out on his forehead, and his eyes were doing this alarming trick of rolling back in his head. He was definitely behaving more sociopathically than usual. That blow earlier must have dislodged something. ‘Look at all these bastards,’ he said, gazing saturninely up and down the table.
‘Eat your truffles,’ I said hurriedly, pointing to his plate. ‘And maybe you shouldn’t drink any more.’ I poured his glass into mine.