An Evening of Long Goodbyes

by Paul Murray

  We cheered on An Evening of Long Goodbyes as best we could, but I doubted he could have heard us. Within seconds, Celtic Tiger was out on its own, prancing along taking the salutes of the crowd, while the other dogs remained behind at a respectful distance. It was like some kind of canine Nuremberg rally.

  ‘This is a fiasco!’ I cried. ‘Those other dogs aren’t even trying! What’s the point having a race if they’re too afraid to overtake him?’

  Just as I said it, a ripple of consternation ran through the stands. All of a sudden one of the dogs had broken away from the pack and was quickly making up ground – which wasn’t hard, considering Celtic Tiger had all the zip of a Panzer tank.

  ‘That’s a brave dog,’ one of the punters next to us said grudgingly.

  ‘It’s not so much it’s brave,’ his companion said. ‘It’s more like it’s forgotten what it’s supposed to be doing.’

  ‘It’s him!’ Frank whispered to me.

  I quickly apprehended what had happened. A chap in the front row of the far stand had unwrapped a sandwich, and An Evening of Long Goodbyes had caught sight of it. The spectators could boo and curse him all they wanted now. I knew that all he was thinking about was that sandwich, and he would not be diverted, not by them, nor by the finishing line which loomed up ahead, nor by those intimidating looks the larger dog was giving him as he drew up alongside it –

  ‘That’s it!’ I pounded encouragingly on the glass, attracting glowers from the punters around me. ‘That’s the stuff!’

  – and abandoning all pretence of sportsmanship, Celtic Tiger burst its muzzle as if it were paper and fastened its jaws around its rival’s throat.

  ‘What!’ howled Frank. ‘Referee!’

  It was carnage. At first, some of the more bloodthirsty punters cheered it on: but quickly even they turned pale and went quiet, and the whole stadium was silent except for the yelps of An Evening of Long Goodbyes and the murderous snarls, snaps and tearing noises produced by Celtic Tiger. ‘Why doesn’t somebody do something?’ I appealed. But no one did anything. Celtic Tiger wasn’t even running any more, it was being dragged by the smaller dog, who struggled gamely on towards his sandwich even with Celtic Tiger latched around his neck. The other dogs had backed up into a small uncertain huddle some distance down the track; some lay down or rolled over, their dolorous baying segueing into the groans of Frank and the small minority of unwise men who had bet against the favourite – as An Evening of Long Goodbyes, drenched in blood, froth dripping from his mouth, uttered a long-drawn-out moan and toppled over on his side.

  The silence seemed to deepen; the punters buried themselves guiltily in their pints. I couldn’t take any more. I staggered away to the bar, squeezed in beside a silver-haired gent, and with the small sum of money that was now all we had left, ordered myself a triple whiskey. So much for destiny, I thought bitterly; so much for giving all the heart. The world had made suckers of us again. Cousin Benny’s words kept circling through my head: we were cunts, we would always be cunts.

  A gasp went up at the window for some fresh outrage on the track. I took a slug from the glass without looking round, wincing pleasurably at the sour familiar kick. To hell with the damned race. I had enough whiskey here to get stinking drunk. At least when I was drunk I knew where I stood: and I didn’t need anybody’s directions to get there. To hell with Frank, and the lousy dinner party; to hell with Bel too. Let her leave if she wanted to leave, let her write off the one person who actually cared about her, who didn’t think of her as an eternal outpatient with impossible dreams…

  The punters roared in anguish.

  ‘Sounds like someone’s taking a beating,’ the silver-haired gent beside me remarked.

  ‘Someone’s always taking a beating,’ I muttered without looking up.

  ‘I suppose that’s true,’ the gent agreed.

  I turned around. The smoke was making it hard to see, and the room kept spinning, but when I squinted I could make out a well-cut if somewhat vieux jeu worsted suit and a pair of wire-frame spectacles. I wondered what he was doing here with this rabble. He motioned the bargirl to refill our glasses and, as if in answer to my question, said: ‘Still, one has to take one’s chances, doesn’t one?’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ I said, clinking my ice cubes.

  ‘Come on, Charles,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘You know why.’

  The room seemed to lurch, and a sweltering buzz rose up from my toes to engulf me. At that moment the crowd roared again and the punters at the bar rushed over to the window. I found myself thrown forward: standing on tiptoes, I peered blearily over the mass of heads.

  It appeared that Celtic Tiger, having vanquished his foe, had not gone on and finished the race like a sensible dog, but instead had turned his attentions on the dogs grouped miserably together a hundred yards behind.

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ the crowd were crying, clutching their heads as the cowardly dogs turned tail and fled with Celtic Tiger now in hot pursuit. ‘The other way, you prick! Run the other way!’

  ‘Too much PCP,’ a whiskery geezer with defeated eyes observed beside me.

  But that was not all. At the other end of the track – far away from where the stewards were trying to fend off Celtic Tiger with a steel pole – An Evening of Long Goodbyes was beginning to stir. At first no one noticed – everyone was too busy trying to convince the renegade favourite to rejoin the race – but then a lone voice cried out, ‘Hey! That thick dog’s not dead yet!’

  There was a pause and then a collective rustling, as people checked the number in the programme: and then, sporadically, from one or two points in the crowd, the shouts came: ‘An Evening of Long Goodbyes! An Evening of Long Goodbyes!’

  The dog’s tail thumped once, twice against the ground.

  Seeing this, more voices joined in. The shouts grew louder. ‘An Evening of Long Goodbyes! An Evening of Long Goodbyes!’

  And slowly, painfully slowly, the dog picked himself up, until, on legs as frail and ungainly as a newborn calf’s, rain pasting his fur to his bony head, he stood there blinking at us in wonderment.

  The clamour was deafening. Men shouted and pummelled the glass and stamped their feet. ‘That’s it!’ they bellowed. ‘Go on, you cunt! Go on, Goodbyes!’ Everyone was of one voice, as if the only reason any of us were there was to cheer on this chewed and rather mangy-looking dog, which seemed to feed on these waves of furious noise and energy and – as the cheering grew to a roar, as Celtic Tiger was ushered into a cage by two men with cattle prods – now wagged his tail, and began to trot towards the finishing line.

  ‘Sprezzatura,’ a voice in my ear said; and I looked round to see, in the midst of the churning punters and the pillars of smoke, a familiar grey emanation. ‘What?’ I said faintly. He smiled hermetically, and pointed out the window; and turning, I saw the rainy stadium filled with men in top hats and tails, with black dicky bows and carnations in their buttonholes, cheering on the dog they’d bet against as the voice behind me mused, ‘What was it Oscar used to say? In a good democracy, every man should be an aristocrat.’

  I spun round – there was so much I wanted to ask him, there were so many things I didn’t understand. ‘Wait!’ I cried. ‘Come back!’ But he was already halfway to the door, hoisting on to his head, as he melted into the throng, what appeared to be a giant sombrero… And now, after a series of dramatic collapses, An Evening of Long Goodbyes finally hauled his carcass over the line, and the place went crazy. It was as if we had just won a war. People whooped and sang; they tore up their losing stubs and threw them in the air like confetti. Frank appeared, laughing, and caught me in a bear hug. ‘We done it, Charlie!’ he exclaimed. ‘We done it!’

  Someone must have overheard him, because before I could correct his grammar, we were picked up and borne along on a sea of strangers’ hands to the betting hatch, where, with the crowd amassed behind us, the clerk hastily agreed that it would be poor form to declare the race forfeit, and paid out our winnings
on the spot. Everybody in the bar applauded; Frank asked if anybody wanted a drink, and it turned out that most people did; and everything was so breathless and euphoric that it took me a while to pinpoint that irritating bleeping noise. Finally I realized it was Bel’s phone. I had brought it along to give back to her tonight. It appeared to be having some kind of an episode. I pressed some buttons to make it stop and it started talking to me – a girl’s voice, someone looking for Bel.

  ‘She’s not here,’ I shouted, putting a finger in one ear. ‘She’s at home.’

  ‘I can’t get through to her at home,’ the girl said.

  ‘They’re having a dinner thing,’ I said.

  ‘Oh. Well, can you pass on a message?’ The girl had a husky, rasping voice, as if she made a regular thing of smoking too many cigarettes. ‘Will you tell her Jessica wants her to –’

  ‘Wait, you’re Jessica?’ I interjected.

  ‘Why, does my fame precede me?’

  ‘It most certainly does,’ I averred. ‘I’d like to know what you mean, running off with my sister.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware I was running off with anyone,’ the girl said. ‘Who is this, anyway?’

  ‘It’s Charles,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Bel told me about you,’ she added, rather pointedly.

  ‘That’s neither here nor there,’ I said. ‘The fact is, Bel is clearly not fit for – what did you mean by that last remark? What did she say about me?’

  ‘All sorts of things,’ Jessica said light-headedly, as if she had never until now believed they could be true.

  ‘Well, be that as it may,’ I muttered uncomfortably. ‘The thing about Bel is –’

  ‘Aren’t you going to this dinner?’ she interrupted. ‘Or have you been blacklisted?’

  ‘Yes, I am going,’ I snapped. ‘Look, just give me your damned message, will you?’

  ‘Certainly,’ she said primly. She told me that their flight was at seven, so would Bel get a taxi for four, and pick her up on the way? I said I would pass this on; there was a pause, and just as I was about to look for the off button, the voice came again: ‘Charles?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t think Bel means those things she says about you, you know.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said ambiguously.

  ‘And Charles?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I promise I’ll take good care of her in Russia.’

  ‘Oh.’ I was rather touched. Possibly she was making fun of me, but somehow I didn’t think so; there was a warmth in her voice that was really quite appealing. ‘Well, thank you.’

  ‘You’d better get to your dinner before everyone’s gone to bed,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said; and then, ‘You know, when you get back perhaps we ought to go for a drink or something. I’ve written a play and there’s a part you might be interested in…’

  She laughed, and said she’d see. ‘But our paths will cross again, Charles, somehow I’m sure of that…’

  I tucked the phone away, beaming to myself. That old Hythloday magic! I was back in business!

  It was now quite late. I went to find Frank and told him I was getting a taxi back to Amaurot. However he insisted on driving me over himself. This struck me as a damned decent gesture, and as we left I had another of my ideas: ‘You know, why don’t – ow!’

  ‘You all right, Charlie?’

  ‘Obviously I’m not all right, who put all those stairs there?’

  ‘I think they were there on the way in too.’

  ‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ I admitted. ‘I wish… I wish they hadn’t opened that second bottle of champagne, might have gone to my head a little…’ as he hoisted me up off the tarmac and closer to a ring of prettily spinning cartoon stars. ‘B’ what I was saying was, why don’t you come along to dinner too? I mean, you’re not in black tie, but…’

  ‘Van’s over here, Charlie.’

  ‘But don’ you worry about that,’ I dismissed these concerns with a wave of the hand; I was feeling magnanimous and iconoclastic and suddenly no obstacle seemed insurmountable. ‘I’ll explain about all that. Mother’s an absolute, an absolute pussycat if you know how to handle her – and anyway, I’ll just tell her that you’re my guest, and a, a damn fine fellow…’

  ‘Thanks very much, Charlie.’

  ‘Not at all, not at all – I say, look at that. Someone’s left behind their astrakhan jacket.’

  The van’s headlights had illuminated an especially desolate section of the car park, where in a patch of weeds lay a discarded heap of clothing. It appeared to be emitting sounds of distress. I couldn’t remember if jackets typically did this or not.

  ‘Just a second –’ I got out and weaved my way over the unsteady gravel to the heap.

  ‘What is it?’ Frank called from the van

  ‘Hmm…’ The astrakhan jacket looked up at me with a pair of hopeful brown eyes. A long pink tongue tentatively licked my hand. ‘It seems to be An Evening of Long Goodbyes.’

  ‘They must have dumped it,’ Frank said, coming over.

  ‘Dumped it? Don’t be absurd. How could they have dumped it? Why, that dog’s a hero – a hero!’

  ‘Don’t think it’s goin to win many more races, though, Charlie.’ He was right. The dog’s flanks were streaked with blood. One of his legs was badly chewed, and his eyes and snout bore the gouge-marks of Celtic Tiger’s teeth. He laid his head back on the ground, panting rapidly.

  ‘But that’s – I mean to say, of all the…’ I scratched the back of my neck and lapsed into a confounded silence. ‘What are we going to do? I mean we can’t just leave it here.’

  ‘Ah Jay, Charlie, I thought we were in a hurry.’

  I held up a finger for silence. My mind was clamouring at me to make a connection: something to do with the greyhound and the reflection of the moon in this long, kidney-shaped puddle –

  ‘Aha!’ I fumbled about in my pocket until I’d found what I was looking for: the pale disc of metal Bel had become so enamoured of; now I knew what it was.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a dog-tag, old sport.’

  ‘What, like a soldier has?’

  ‘No, like a dog has…’ It was the same one Bel had bought with her pocket money years and years ago, along with a red-leather collar and leash. It had been meant for the spaniel we hadn’t been let keep, the one she’d worried over so; she’d been going to get its name engraved on it, if we’d ever got so far as to give it a name. Someone must have unearthed it in the attic.

  ‘What would Bel be doin carryin that around, though, Charlie?’

  ‘Shh,’ I said, blinking back the haze of alcohol that ringed my brain, trying to puzzle it out. I didn’t know why Bel was carrying it around. It had to mean something. Was it that she’d never got over losing that spaniel? Had she been pining for it all this time? Or was it something more complicated? Did it have something to do with Mother? Or me? I frowned, swaying on the tarmac. Bel’s understanding of the world was byzantine at the best of times, and often there were complex movements involved, such as things being signs, or standing for other things that to a normal person they had obviously nothing to do with. But the fact was that here was a dog being offered to us on a plate: not a spaniel, admittedly, and possibly requiring some minor surgery – still, given the fateful quality of the night so far, it seemed remiss to simply ignore it.

  ‘Charlie – ah, Charlie, what’re you doin?’

  There was blatantly not time to explain this to Frank.

  ‘Ah here, you’re not puttin that wet thing in my fuckin van –’

  ‘Talisman,’ I huffed, ‘lucky – symbolical – might bite Harry –’

  ‘Bark!’ barked An Evening of Long Goodbyes.

  ‘Bark, that’s right, good boy, we’re going for a ride in Frank’s van, aren’t we? Yes we are!’

  ‘For fuck’s sake –’ as he unlocked the loading doors and I stowed the dog in the back, where he curled up pacific
ally in a nest of altar cloths and priests’ vestments Frank had taken from a church that was being turned into a shoe shop. ‘Charlie, are you thinkin if you give her a dog Bel’ll forgive you for boffin that one-legged bird?’

  ‘I wish you’d stop saying I boffed her, it really is a most disagreeable turn of phrase.’

  ‘Well, for ridin her then.’

  I thought about it. ‘Yes,’ I said. I studied the dog through the doors. He panted amicably at us. ‘Although,’ as Frank closed the doors up, ‘you know, An Evening of Long Goodbyes is such a cumbersome name. We ought to give him a new one.’

  ‘Yeah, like I was thinkin maybe that’s why it ran so slow, cos like it was draggin round all them words after it.’

  ‘Yes, quite, anyway, what I’m thinking is – Ozymandias.’

  ‘Oz-y-mandias?’

  ‘You know, the poem. Ozymandias, king of kings, look on my works, ye mighty, something something, I forget the rest – has a kind of a grandeur to it, don’t you think? Kind of a presence?’

  ‘I dunno, Charlie, it sounds a bit gay.’

  ‘A bit gay?’

  ‘A bit, yeah.’

  ‘Well what do you suggest?’

  ‘How about Paul?’

  ‘Paul? You can’t call a dog Paul. Why would you want to call it Paul?’

  ‘I had a mate once called Paul.’

  ‘So did I,’ I remembered; and we both reflected for a moment. ‘I suppose he does have a sort of a paulish quality. Well, maybe we should leave it for the time being. Bel might have her own ideas.’