‘Charles,’ Bel pulled at her hair frustratedly, ‘this Hythloday empire you’re always going on about didn’t come from nowhere. It’s built on credit. None of it’s ours, not really. It looks like Father borrowed an absolute fortune, the sums they’re talking about here are just, just astronomical —’ She sat back in her chair, making slits of her eyes. ‘I knew something like this would happen, Mother’s just let everything go to hell since he died, I don’t think she’s even seen the accountant since the funeral…’
‘But…’ we had company, so one didn’t want to be vulgar, ‘but, I mean — we’re still rich, aren’t we? Can’t we just pay them what they want and they’ll leave us alone?’
Bel got up and started throwing her hands around. ‘What goes on in that fucking head of yours? When you’re not drunk, what’s happening in there?’
‘Well don’t swear,’ I pleaded, not feeling very well.
‘Father was a chemist, Charles, a scientist, not an emperor, not fucking Charlemagne. Even very good scientists don’t get paid enough to afford a place like this, haven’t you ever thought of that?’
‘He had his investments,’ for some reason I felt the need to defend Father here, ‘his assets, that sort of thing —’
‘Well, where are they? Where are they, Charles? I mean I just don’t know what he was thinking. Even if he hadn’t died I don’t know how he was intending to repay it all. And since then we’ve had no income proper and this colossal inheritance tax and all these new demands on the finances, Mother’s clinic and your alcoholism and that ridiculous Folly and we seem to be spending a ton on groceries at the moment for some reason —’
I bit my lip. ‘What are you saying, exactly?’
‘There isn’t enough, Charles. There simply isn’t enough to pay them back.’ She rested her head on the back of her chair, as if overcome by fatigue; sunlight streamed through the Chantilly curtains and picked out golden strands in her hair. At that moment my conversation with Laura seemed to be terribly far away. ‘Right now the only thing I can think of to do is sell off some of our shares. I mean that’ll get us some time, at least.’
‘Ah, yes, the shares,’ I said neutrally.
‘Mine’re still all bound up in trust, so we’ll have to use yours,’ she blinked at me with red eyes. ‘We can split the difference later.’
‘Right. Good.’ I decided that now was not the best time to tell her about my run of bad luck at the baccarat table a few months ago. Instead I put on a false smile and told her not to worry. ‘They’re reasonable people, bankers,’ I said. ‘And we’ve given them loads of money over the years. They must have forgotten it’s us, that’s all. I mean I’m sure no one ever lost a house because they’d put the letters in the wrong cubbyhole; that’s absurd. I can go and talk to them today. It’s a storm in a teacup, you’ll see.’
‘Ha,’ remarked Frank, who had been occupying himself with an extensive excavation of his aural cavities.
‘What, “Ha”? What do you mean, “Ha”?’ I rounded on him; the whole thing was his fault, sort of.
‘Me ma was plagued by them fucken banks her whole life,’ he said into his teacup. ‘Never had a penny to her name but they’d be sniffin after it — she used to have this joke, what’s the difference between banks and the Devil?’
Bel and I looked at him.
‘In Hell they won’t cut off your heatin,’ he said.
‘Is that a joke?’ I screeched at last.
He shrugged. ‘It’s about as funny as banks get,’ he said.
‘Well I’ll go and talk to them,’ I said, and left them to their sock-rubbing, which might calm Bel down at least. I didn’t like her to get upset. She might not have looked it, but she was a ferocious worrier: she could tie herself into knots over the most inconsequential matters. She had always been like this, even as a small girl. When other children were busy believing in Santa Claus and Tooth Fairies, she became obsessed with the idea that every time Father and Mother left the house they would never come back. She never said anything to them; but as soon as she saw the car pull out of the driveway, she’d go to her room, sit very still and think Positive Thoughts about them until they had safely returned. That was just one instance of what was even then a broad spectrum of worrying. She also worried about losing things. She worried about things breaking or running out. She worried about robbers and dangerous drivers. She worried about what would happen to her dolls when she died. She had a whole host of worries on behalf of the animal kingdom — what would they eat in the winter, where would they sleep if people kept putting buildings everywhere, whether they would be all right crossing roads by themselves. All these were as nothing, however, compared to the Herculean bout of worrying provoked by the arrival of our one and only household pet, not counting the peacocks, which I didn’t: a springer spaniel, a loving if excitable fellow who in the end wasn’t around long enough even to be given a name.
Almost as soon as it was in the door, Bel diagnosed the anonymous dog, unsuspectingly brought home as a gift for us by Father, as suffering from a dizzying array of existential terrors. It was, in retrospect, a clear case of transference: as if the appearance of the dog had allowed her to open the floodgates, so that all the dread that had accumulated inexplicably within her small soul could come pouring out. For the two weeks it lasted in Amaurot, she devoted herself to acting as mouthpiece for the anguished dog. She stayed up night after night, not sleeping, pacing around the house with the dog trotting amiably at her heel, relating its woes to anyone who would listen. She worried that it was lonely. She worried that it was hungry. She worried that it was being over-exercised, or not exercised enough. She worried that its collar itched. She worried that it might start thinking it was a human but feel bad because it had fur instead of skin. She worried that it was unfulfilled. She worried that it felt naked, missed its parents, was afraid of the dark, fretted about only being able to speak in barks, was ashamed of its fleas, didn’t understand why it had to sleep in the pantry. At school, she continued to voice her fears, which separation from the dog only made worse. Before long, the other children in the class were so upset that the teacher was spending the whole day just trying to reassure them as to the welfare of our pet. Finally, one afternoon, the school principal rang Mother up and suggested in a weary voice that something really ought to be done; before Mother could reply the phone had been passed over to a tearful Bel who asked Mother to put her on to the dog, please — and that’s when Mother snapped. When we came home that day the dog was gone. Mother wouldn’t say where; only that it had been ‘relocated’. She refused to discuss the matter any further.
Strangely enough, Bel received this news quite calmly, and soon she seemed to forget about the dog entirely. Maybe it had served its purpose. Her anxiety had miraculously disappeared; she started attending Speech and Drama classes after school, and immediately that was all she could talk about; she grew, romantic turbulences aside, into a happy teenager. I suppose that for all of us that was a sort of Golden Age. The family prospered, everything seemed secure; I shocked Father by gaining captaincy of the school cricket team, and thanks to the unpopularity of that sport in Ireland we even won a few matches.