Unravelling Oliver

by Liz Nugent

  The funeral was devastating. Oliver sent us his regrets in a beautifully written card but could not attend. I was mildly angry about that, amid all the other anger and sorrow I felt. I thought it was discourteous to my parents and me, and to Laura’s memory. What could be so important that he would stay away?

  With the help of the guards, we had managed to stop the broadcast of the photograph, and kept it out of all but one of the newspapers. The funeral was private, and afterwards condolence cards started to arrive slowly, over many months. Suicide was not discussed then, and people didn’t know exactly how to sympathize with our loss, so we dealt with it on our own mostly so as not to embarrass our friends. I don’t think attitudes to suicide have changed since then. When somebody dies of cancer, the course of the illness is openly charted and the stages of deterioration catalogued afterwards, but with suicide there is no public discussion and nowhere to bring your grief. It is just the dirty little secret of the bereaved family.

  I knew that Laura’s decline had started before we left France, and I wondered if Oliver held the key to the mystery of Laura’s depression. After all, he was the person who knew her most intimately. I even considered that she might have been pregnant when we left her there, but I know Laura and I can’t imagine she would have had an abortion, or given up a baby, regardless of the disgrace it might have brought in those times. The only other theory was that she might have been pregnant and miscarried. I floated the notion to Oliver, but he was stricken by the suggestion. It had not occurred to him. I was sorry I suggested it then, because it must have seemed like I was trying to blame him.

  Years later, Oliver named a particularly heroic character in one of his story books after Laura. I appreciated that. He only got in touch again sometime in the early eighties to ask delicately if we could host his wedding reception in L’Étoile.

  By that time, Dermot had joined me as maître d’ while I cheffed. Despite the awkwardness of our first meeting, it turned out that in fact Dermot was very good with people, remembering their names, their birthdays and their favourite tipples. He was also a super organizer and managed to poach the best waiters from all over town. People returned to the restaurant as much for the superb service and attention to detail they received from Dermot and his team as for the food.

  The restaurant was housed in a mews building, and I lived comfortably in the flat on the floor above the dining area. I specialized – naturellement – in rustic French cuisine, referred to pejoratively as ‘peasant food’ by one particularly nasty critic, but quite sophisticated for Dublin at the time, and because we had a liquor licence and took late bookings we quickly became popular with the theatrical crowd; a mixed blessing really – they drank like fish and added some glamour to the place, but often couldn’t pay the bill or had to be put to bed in the lounge area at closing time. The stories I could tell of backstage antics in Dublin would put gossip columnists out of business, but we pride ourselves on discretion and Dermot drives me mad sometimes because he won’t even tell me who’s sleeping with whom.

  I was happy to hear from Oliver after so long and glad to organize his wedding reception. Also, I wanted to show him that I, too, was successful and in a committed relationship, and that I wasn’t a freak.

  I was surprised by his choice of bride. Alice. She was pretty, I suppose, but Oliver was known for the beauties he dated and Alice just did not measure up to the usual criteria. She was no Laura. Poor Alice. Whatever happened later on, she was very happy that day. Oliver had no family at his wedding reception. I had long suspected that the hints he dropped about his wealthy parents were a cover. I thought he was probably an orphan, and the lack of family at his wedding confirmed it for me.

  I haven’t seen Oliver for years now, apart from his occasional TV appearances. I don’t think he’s been in the restaurant for a long time. When he became a successful writer, I was very pleased for him. Not having children of my own, I read only one or two of the books, and I’m aware that I’m not the target market for them, but I could see how special they are. There have been film adaptations with big-name Hollywood stars, so I’ve seen more than I have read. His name cropped up regularly in the media, and I could never think of him without thinking firstly, with acute embarrassment, of my self-ejection from the closet, and secondly, with acute sorrow, of my beautiful sister Laura.

  Now that the truth about Oliver’s character has been revealed, I have been forced to consider if somehow Oliver caused Laura’s breakdown. It was over a year after our visit to France when she died, but I can’t help feeling more certain than ever that something awful happened between Laura and Oliver that summer, something so terrible that she walked into the sea with rocks in her pockets.

  19. Véronique

  Michael did his best to persuade Laura to leave Chateau d’Aigse with him, but she refused. She was determined to stay in Clochamps to have her secret baby. She used my tragic situation, claiming that she could take a year out to help me and that she could not simply abandon me, the grief-stricken, childless orphan. Her brother was surprised by her sudden devotion to me. He came to ask me if I was sure that Laura could be of assistance.

  I did not tell him the truth of Laura’s predicament. I needed help though. My hands were still bandaged, and while my neighbours were generous and kind, I was on my own. Michael insisted that he and his friends would take no payment for their work. It was gracious of him. They were truly sympathique. He and Laura were good, good people.

  I witnessed Oliver’s leave-taking of Laura from my bedroom window. I was afraid that she would make herself pathetic, but she took his hand and whispered earnestly into his ear. She surreptitiously pressed his hand to her belly, but he snatched it away, and never once during this encounter did he meet her eyes. He stood at a distance, fidgeting with his wrists. I thought then how cold he was, how insensitive and uncaring, and I wondered how my father and my son could have loved him. As he followed the others into the truck that was to take him to the city, Laura began to weep and Michael, knowing nothing of the baby, must have thought her tears were marking the end of her affair with Oliver. He hugged her quickly and gave her his handkerchief. I could see he was trying to persuade her to change her mind about staying, but she was shaking her head. They hugged again, and he got on the truck, and it drove away. She waved as it motored up to the gates, and when it was out of sight she looked towards the spot on the horizon where it had been, and then she looked down and said some silent words to her belly. Even within my grief, I felt sympathy for the girl.

  I got to know Laura then. Without the other English speakers around, her French improved rapidly. She was a brave and determined young lady. By the time the others left, she was in her third month of pregnancy, barely showing, but she was more settled now that she had made a plan. When the baby was born the following March, she would give it up for adoption at the Sacred Heart convent in Bordeaux and then return home and go back to her normal life. She had been educated by Sacred Heart nuns in Ireland and trusted they would be kind. I very much doubted that she had any idea what a mother might feel for her newborn baby, but, like I say, I was too preoccupied with trying to inhale and exhale to put much thought into it.

  Laura was enormously helpful to me, although it took me time to realize it. At first, it irked me that she would insist on saying prayers for me and with me, lighting candles and blessing herself as she passed the ruin of the east wing. As if any God would allow a child and a war hero to burn to death, but gradually I began to see that there was some comfort in the ritual and that it kept the darkness at bay. Laura’s faith assured her that there was a purpose, a reason, and that, while it may never be revealed to us, it was for the ultimate good of mankind. To this day, I cannot say that I subscribe to such a theory.

  Laura asked permission to move into the house as the residential workers were mostly gone by November and the bunk-houses were not suitable for the winter. My rule about the house being only for family made no sense now that there was
no family. Over the winter months we slowly became friends and confidantes, Laura and I, as she nursed me, fed me, cared for me. How shocked she was when I told her about Jean-Luc’s paternity, and utterly aghast that my father had encouraged it. She had assumed I was a widow, and insisted that being a single mother would never be acceptable in Ireland, that in her country it was a shameful thing. It was the same in France, I told her, only I had an exceptional father. She insisted that it was not too late for me to fall in love, to marry, to have other children. I was just thirty-nine then, twice her age, but I was sure that I did not want love. It was not worth the risk of losing it. She nodded sagely, but did not dare to compare her loss of Oliver to my loss, although I knew that was what she was thinking. After just a month, she no longer spoke of Oliver. He did not reply to her letters or take her phone calls. She accepted that it was not possible to make somebody love you and, knowing that, she just got on with her life and with nurturing the one inside her.

  I think that towards the end of the pregnancy, Laura was beginning to think of taking the baby home and risking the opprobrium of her family. She used me as an example of how one could lead a perfectly normal life. She was sure that her parents would be horrified at first, but that they would not ultimately turn her away. Her family were wealthy enough to support her, and even if they would not support her, there was an aunt who lived in a remote part of the country where she might live as a ‘widow’. I encouraged this, believing that in most circumstances a mother and child ought never to be separated, and encouraged her to write to her family to tell them the truth. She insisted she would wait until the baby was born before making her final decision to bring her child home.

  I was very disappointed when I realized that Laura had lied to me and to Oliver. I can understand why she lied to Oliver, of course I can, but there was no reason not to tell me the truth. Even after the evidence was staring us in the face, she persisted with the lie, and I think living that lie ultimately unhinged her mind. Oliver’s refusal to meet her eye when he left, and indeed his distancing himself from her, began to make sense when the truth of the baby’s conception became clear.

  Laura went into labour in the second week of March, a little early, but safely so. Anne-Marie was back by then. We did not call for the doctor. There was no need. Anne- Marie, as well as being our family’s retainer, was an excellent midwife. She had no qualifications as such, but she had delivered me, Jean-Luc and half the village. She was always the first person called when waters broke. A quick examination in her bedroom, and Anne-Marie correctly predicted that the labour would be no more than four hours and that, given Laura’s health and age, it would not be difficult. I paced outside as Anne-Marie and Laura laboured together, and then I heard a cry, first Anne-Marie’s cry of shock and then, within a moment, the baby’s cry. I entered the room as Anne-Marie handed the bundle to a red-faced Laura, but smothered my own cry of surprise when I saw the baby. Anne-Marie left the room with her hands in the air and a shrug. The baby was unambiguously métisse, mixed race. She was a beautiful child, with Laura’s clear blue eyes, but the undeniably dark curls and facial features of an ethnic African infant. Laura had obviously been unfaithful to Oliver with one of the South African boys. I was shocked. This child was an enormous surprise.

  Laura’s reaction to the birth was extraordinary. She did not appear to notice at first the baby’s colouring, just clasped the child to her, holding on, as if to life.

  Once again, I did not know what to say to her. She is black, I said finally, and at first she did not realize what I was saying. Then she looked into the baby’s face and suddenly sat up, held the child out from her and stared. She said I was wrong. I told her she must have known this was possible. I gently asked her who the father was. ‘Oliver,’ she insisted over and over again, until I realized that she must have convinced herself that it was true.

  My relationship with Laura changed then. I admit that I tried to keep my distance from the child. I was still raw from losing my own child and was afraid to get close. Laura must have known I did not believe her, and while I did not care if she slept with a black man or a green one, it annoyed me that she continued to pretend. She suggested that the baby’s colour might fade after a few days … a week … two weeks … and that her true Caucasian nature would appear soon. Did she really think I could be fooled? That the baby’s facial features could change? As I suspected, she bonded with the baby, who she named Nora after her mother, but every day she played the charade of waiting for the dark skin to fade, directing earnest prayers to the Lord Almighty to speed the process. I decided to ignore the race issue, but wondered if Laura might be losing her mind. I was concerned about her.

  After some weeks, I gently suggested that it might be time for her to make contact with her family and go home. Laura was extremely anxious now, more than before; bringing a child home to Ireland as an unmarried mother may have been brave, but bringing a black child home would cause a major scandal. France was fairly multicultural even back in 1974 because of the colonies, although more so in the bigger cities, but from what I could gather there was virtually no ethnic immigration into Ireland in those days. I suggested that a mixed-race child might be isolated growing up in Ireland. Again, she insisted that Nora was not mixed race and, exasperated, I let it go.

  Another two months passed, and Laura had made no decision; it seemed as if she was actually waiting for the baby to turn white. Eventually, I had to ask her to leave. It may seem cold of me, but I had my own issues of grief to deal with and, to be honest, having a beautiful child in the house again unnerved me. I was jealous and bitter. I gave her the address of the Sacred Heart convent in Bordeaux and found a social worker who might deal with her case. Laura became more desperate and even suggested that I could adopt her baby and that she could come back every summer to visit. I was adamant that this was out of the question and angry with her for being so insensitive, and our friendship cooled significantly.

  Nevertheless, I was sad to see her go in the end and she wept a little as I drove us to the station with little Nora in her arms. At the station I kissed them both and wished her well, but even then I was not certain what she would do. I asked her to keep in touch and let me know where she was, and promised that I would never reveal her circumstances to anybody. That was the last I heard of her until I received the devastating letter from her brother Michael before Christmas that same year.

  Laura was dead, and clearly it was a suicide. It was obvious from the letter that the family knew nothing of the baby. Michael wrote to me looking for answers, wondering if Laura had been acting strangely, if I knew of any particular trauma that might have happened to her, whether I knew of any reason why she might have wanted to take her life. Among his many tortured theories, he speculated whether Laura could have been pregnant and miscarried.

  I gave my reply much consideration, and thought that maybe the family had a right to the truth, but what good would it have done them? I had learned from my friend in Bordeaux that the baby had been handed over for adoption, but Laura had not kept in touch in the intervening months. Even if Laura’s family knew, even if they wanted the child, it would have been too late. I wrote a letter telling some truth but withholding the bigger truth: I was shocked to hear the news; I knew nothing of a miscarriage; Laura was a wonderful person who was deeply missed by all at Chateau d’Aigse; she was a fantastic help to me personally in getting over my own loss. I told them to be proud of such a brave and beautiful girl. I sent my condolences to the family and passed on my best wishes to Oliver too.

  My father visited me in a dream the night I posted the letter. In the dream, we both knew he was dead and yet it was peaceful and natural for us to be chatting as we used to. He told me to start again and not to allow the past to destroy my future. I must begin to live once more, and not permit the tragedies of the previous fifteen months to blight my chance of happiness. He touched my cheek the way he did when I was a child and kissed the top of my head twice, one kis
s from him and one from Jean-Luc.

  To try to rebuild Chateau d’Aigse or to sell up and move away? There seemed no way for me to start again on my own. The vineyard, the orchard, the olive grove had not been tended since the fire, but I had neither the inclination nor the energy. The money and the kindness of our neighbours could not be relied on indefinitely either. They felt they owed a debt to my father, but that generation was ageing now and the younger ones owed us nothing, although I knew I would not be refused help if I asked for it.

  I eventually decided to sell up, and planned to move to a town my cousin lived in, perhaps forty kilometres from Clochamps, but the day after the estate agent posted the notice in the paper, I had a visitor.

  I had not seen Pierre since the week that Jean-Luc was conceived. I had made myself forget about him as best I could. Up until now, he had kept his word and stayed away, but news had filtered through to him in Limoges from his uncle that a minor scandal had followed roughly nine months after Pierre’s visit. His uncle had warned him to stay away and not to get involved for fear of disgracing his own family. They knew that I had raised this child with my father until the fire killed Papa and my boy, and that now I was on my own. Pierre and his uncle guessed he must be Jean-Luc’s father, and Pierre very much regretted that he’d had no part in his life. He had sought a divorce from his wife, who, he was sure, was having an affair with a local magistrate and had left him, taking their twin girls with her. He had never stopped thinking of me, had written several times over the years and then torn up the letters, still loved me with all his heart, he said, and that I was his first love.

  I was astonished that a long-held fantasy could come true, and when this sweet and gentle man offered to care for me, and adore me, I could not resist because love and care were the things I now craved, and to get them from the man who I had not dared to think about for seven years was the answer to a dream. He was shocked and disturbed when I admitted I had chosen him as a father, and wept bitter tears that he never got to meet his son, and what could I do but apologize for my deceit. Gradually, as I related the stories and anecdotes from the brief life of our son, I began to heal and Pierre got a sense of who his boy had been. I assured Pierre that Jean-Luc was as beautiful as his daddy.