Unraveling Oliver

by Liz Nugent

  Alice often suggested that I should engage a secretary. “You have no time to deal with all that!” she said.

  After lunch, I would read for an hour or two, the classics mostly, although latterly I had taken an interest in the Old Testament of the Bible. I now have an extensive library. I once overheard Alice say to Moya, “I don’t know where he gets the time to read all of those books!” Where did I find the time, indeed?

  At one stage, out of boredom, I had some gym equipment installed there to keep myself in shape. “You’re so right,” Alice said, “you need to have some distraction during the day!”

  At 4 p.m., I would begin the actual work: one word at a time, using several different dictionaries and thesauri, laying out the sentences again and again, reworking each section several times until I came up with just the right construction. I allowed myself just one hour a day at this work. I had to make it last.

  “You must be shattered!” Alice would say when I emerged from my laboratory, and I would agree and smile indulgently at her. Alice worked damn hard at her illustrations, and so I would sometimes cook for her and she would be grateful.

  I don’t mean to sneer at Alice. She made everything possible. Alice was always loyal. It is a wonderful quality in a wife.

  13

  * * *

  MOYA

  I was shocked to my core when I heard what Oliver did to Alice. Everyone is talking about it. I mean, he was never the violent type as far as I knew, and if anyone should know, it’s me. If it had happened before, Alice would undoubtedly have told me. I am so glad that I’m not around for the trial. Not all publicity is good publicity. Oliver certainly never raised a hand to me. I have seen him irritable all right, the man could be cranky for sure, and occasionally, toward the end of our relationship, he was downright rude to me, but in the early days he was very different.

  I always thought Oliver could have done better than Alice. She just wasn’t his type. That probably sounds ridiculous when you think how long they’ve been married, but anyone who met the pair of them together would have said the same thing. Well, they mightn’t have said it, but they’d definitely have been thinking it. Anyway, he and Alice were not seen together out and about at openings and social functions that often, so I guess Oliver agreed with me. He said it was because she was shy. If I was her, I wouldn’t have let him out of my sight.

  I first met the Ryans when we moved into the house next door to them; it must be nearly twenty years ago now. Kate and Gerry were only toddlers at the time. It’s strange to think that their house was Alice’s family home, because it always seemed to me to be very much Oliver’s territory.

  I took the opportunity to introduce myself at their earliest convenience. At the time, I only knew Oliver as Vincent Dax. Con was reluctant to come with me; he’s so backward about coming forward sometimes. But I insisted. Oliver himself opened the door to us. I nearly swooned. He really is such a handsome man. Dark and smoldering. Oliver really looked after himself over the years. We have so much in common.

  I am sure there was an instant attraction between Oliver and me. Con was completely unaware of it at the time, as he is unaware of most things, I am sorry to say. I used to think that if only life were fair, Con would have ended up with Alice, and Oliver with me, and we all could have lived happily ever after. God knows I did my best to shove Con and Alice together over the years, but, alas, Con doesn’t have the imagination to recognize an opportunity when he sees one. He’d probably bore her to death, but she was always so obliging that I’m sure she wouldn’t have minded. It would have made it so easy for us. For Oliver and me.

  Alice, despite being an artist, didn’t look arty at all. She was frumpy, actually, and a bit on the heavy side. She wore dowdy clothes and had a collection of the most hideous cardigans I’ve ever seen, but she adored Oliver. You could see that a mile off. You could hardly blame her.

  Con and I share nothing but Sunday lunch. Con likes to eat. In his defense, I can tell you that he has always been complimentary about my cooking. By the end of my first year of marriage to Con, I knew it was a mistake. I should have left him, but by then I was pregnant with Kate, and Gerry was born two years later. Con is a great dad, I’ll give him that. He has always been patient with the children, and I really don’t think I could have raised them on my own. He is dull, which is fine, if you like that sort of thing. Some women would be delighted to be married to him. He is a dentist. He earns a lot of money. He spends his working life looking into small, enclosed spaces filled with rot and decay. It genuinely interests him. That and gardening. When other dentists began to branch out a few years ago into cosmetic dentistry and Botox injections and derma fillers, could I persuade Con to get involved? No, I bloody couldn’t. Like I said, no imagination. He could have saved me a fortune.

  I really shouldn’t be mean about my husband. I hate to be uncharitable. To me, he’s like an unwanted pet. You don’t want him around and yet you don’t really want to hurt him or for him to come to any harm. He loves me, I suppose, and that is the cross I have to bear.

  Oliver was just different in every way, but he was off-limits. That is what made it all so exciting. I knew he admired me. I had caught him watching me from the window of his study often enough. I knew it would not take much to seduce him. Sometimes, you just know.

  It was sometime in the mid-1990s and I was starring as the Queen in the stage musical adaptation of Oliver’s first book, The Prince of Solarand. Oliver sometimes appeared at rehearsals to see how things were going or to consult on suggested changes to the text. Another writer, Graham, had been hired to write the libretto. Oliver was way too busy. Graham was delighted with how easygoing Oliver was about the script. Normally writers are unbelievably precious about changes or edits, but Oliver was fine about everything; even when quite substantial changes were made to some characters or plot points, Oliver was more than happy to go along with them.

  After our first Saturday-morning rehearsal, Oliver took a few of us to lunch in L’Étoile Bleue, a regular haunt of the acting community run by Michael and Dermot, who were Ireland’s most famous gay couple. Oliver was generous. I had an easy familiarity with him by then, as we were neighbors, so it wasn’t difficult for me to be able to monopolize him at the lunch. After the meal, it was only natural that Oliver would offer me a ride home. A little wine at lunchtime had loosened my self-control, and as we approached the Avenue, I found myself telling Oliver how attractive he was. I knew I was taking a risk. I was supposed to be a friend of Alice’s, and he hadn’t actually given me any reason to think he felt anything for me. So I was rather pleased to say the least when he put his hand on my thigh.

  “Would you like to go for a spin?”

  I can’t claim that I didn’t know what he meant. We continued to have the occasional “spin” on a regular basis over the next two decades. In the early days, it was wildly exciting. It was my first affair—well, the first that actually meant something. I fell badly for Oliver and fantasized endlessly about how our life would be if we could be together.

  In 1996, the announcement was made that The Prince of Solarand was going to transfer to Broadway after successful runs in Dublin and London and that Oliver was to be with us for the first few weeks. I really thought that this was my big opportunity. The initial run was to be six months with an option to extend if we proved successful. I was bound to get movie offers, and Oliver and I would leave our spouses and eventually move to LA and become Hollywood A-listers. Like Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe (if they’d lived happily ever after).

  Oliver was being put up in the New York Plaza by his American publishers, who were schmoozing him and his agent about film rights while I and some of the other cast members were accommodated in rather shabby apartments in the East Village. Con wanted to come, of course. We had never been to New York. I told him there would be no point and that I would simply be way too busy to spend any time with him, rehearsing for the first week or two, and then in previews for another few w
eeks, and then eight shows a week after press night. I knew that Alice wasn’t coming. She never accompanied Oliver on his publicity tours. Quite the homebody.

  Despite its getting rave reviews in Dublin and London, the Broadway producers/investors wanted some changes to the show. Big changes. Only five of us from the original Irish production were to reprise our roles. The chorus was to be all American. We would be working with a new American director, Tug Blomenfeld. Aisling, our Irish director, was furious but had little or no say in the matter and was forced to take a backseat while Tug set about reblocking scenes and demanding totally unnecessary changes to somehow justify his enormous fee. Right from the start, Tug and I did not hit it off, particularly because the first time I met him, I mistook him for a wardrobe assistant at my costume fitting and handed him my tights to deposit in the laundry hamper. He was affronted and refused to laugh it off like a normal person. Our relationship went from bad to worse. He attempted to cut a lot of my lines and had me hidden upstage half the time behind pieces of furniture or large props so that the audience wouldn’t see me. He tried to get me to sing the finale song in a different key, which did not suit my voice. In front of the entire cast, he told me to stop “hamming it up.” The shit.

  I suppose it was whispered within the company that I might be seeing Oliver, not that anybody ever said it to my face, but there were a few heavy hints and awkward silences when we would arrive together at the theater or the rehearsal room. I complained bitterly to Oliver about the changes that Tug was making, but Oliver insisted that he had no influence and there was nothing he could do.

  The rehearsal period was intense, but we did manage to snatch a few hours off together now and then. They were wonderful afternoons and we had rather a good time doing the usual touristy things: the Empire State, the Rockefeller Plaza, the Guggenheim, the Met, the Frick, a horse and carriage around Central Park. One night we had dinner in Sardi’s. Oliver just automatically knew how to bribe the maître d’ to get us a good table. I was very impressed. Then I spotted Al Pacino at the table behind us. I wanted to go and introduce myself, but Oliver insisted we leave him alone. He did, however, swap places with me so that I was facing Al. I tried to catch his eye a few times, but to no avail. I went to the ladies’ room a few times so I could walk past him, but I’ll have to assume that he didn’t know who I was, despite the fact that my face was plastered on a life-size poster just two blocks away. Oliver found all this very amusing. At the end of the meal, as we were exiting the restaurant, the maître d’ passed me a note. When I opened it up, it said, “Good to see you, kid. Best of luck with the show—Al”! I just about died and was all prepared to run back in to thank Mr. Pacino, but Oliver point-blank refused and much later admitted that he’d paid the maître d’ to write the note. I felt a bit silly and was initially disappointed, but I have to admit that it was a kind thing to do. That’s the sort of man I thought Oliver was. Charming and thoughtful.

  Oliver was exceptionally good company. He is very well-read and knows about everything, so that an otherwise dull trip to an art gallery was turned into an endlessly interesting history of the artists’ lives or a social commentary upon the time in which the work was created. He had a quirky sense of humor too, and he just looked like a celebrity. Doormen and waiters always deferred to him. He has an air of authority unusual in Irish men. Confidence.

  New York is so buzzy, so full of life at its best and worst and weirdest. It could have been a bit more romantic, I suppose, if Oliver had held my hand or something, but he was never the touchy-feely type and displays of affection were kept behind the bedroom door. I tried to get to really know him in depth on our days out, asking about his childhood or his family, but he would change the subject or get distracted and I got the distinct impression that he didn’t like talking of his past. To my annoyance, he talked rather a lot about Alice—how skillful her illustrations were, how much of an effort she was making to improve her culinary skills, or how she respected him and always consulted him before making a large purchase. It was infuriating, actually, how easily he could sing her praises and kiss me hungrily all in the same minute. I’d never met somebody before who could compartmentalize his life in such an unfeeling manner. And yet it was so bloody attractive. I bit my tongue and agreed about what a little treasure Alice was as I draped my leg around his neck.

  At work, as we approached our first public performances, things became more difficult. After the first preview, all but one of my scenes in the first act were cut, as was my big solo number after the interval. Marcus, who was playing Grimace, got an entirely new song, and the first act was now going to end with the special effects’ stunt flying-chair sequence instead of my big entrance with the chorus behind me. I was incandescent. The Irish producers avoided me and refused to make themselves available for meetings. The Americans were putting up the money and could do what they liked. After the tenth call back home, even my agent began to make excuses not to talk to me. Oliver had flown out to LA for another series of meetings and wasn’t due back until opening night. The other actors, seeing I was out of favor with Tug, kept their distance from me, for fear that my unpopularity was contagious, and I realized that I was very much alone. After a few gins one evening, I even rang Con and cried down the phone at the unfairness of it all.

  On the day of the opening night, I was called to the theater at 8 a.m., a ridiculous time to call an actor. I grew suspicious when I realized that everyone else’s call time was eleven. I badgered the stage manager and demanded to know what was going on. She claimed not to know.

  When I arrived at the theater, I was ushered into a meeting room that contained nearly all of the senior producers of the show, amid whom sat Tug. Smug Tug.

  “We’ve decided to recast the role of the Queen,” said Tug.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Aisling was sitting beside him, her head down, fiddling with her notes and looking uncomfortable, as well she might.

  “We’d like to thank you for your work and dedication, but I know I speak for us all when I say that we need a queen with a little more . . .” Tug was at a loss for words.

  “Energy!” said one of the Americans helpfully.

  Tug was encouraged. “Yes,” he said, “we feel that this role is just too much for someone of your . . .” He looked me straight in the eye and relished the word. “Age.”

  I don’t fully recall everything I said to the assembled bunch of assholes, but I did leave the room screaming, “Fucking amateurs, the lot of you!”

  Aisling hustled me into a cab and said she’d deal with it. My agent thankfully managed to stop the story from going public, but only on the condition that I did not sue Tug or any of the producers. They put out the usual story about exhaustion coupled with a recurring throat infection; I had “graciously stepped down from the role and wished Shelley Radner (twenty-three), former member of the chorus, every success with her Broadway debut.”

  Aisling and the Irish producers tried to apologize, ducking the blame. As with everything showbiz, it was all about the “biz” and not about the “show.” Tug wanted me out, and he had more control over the wallet than any of my own team. I was sure he was sleeping with Shelley.

  I went back to my apartment and drank what was left of everybody’s duty-free. I tried calling Oliver at the Plaza, but he wasn’t there. I even tried calling Con in Dublin again, but there was no answer. I passed out but woke up at 10 p.m. with a splitting headache and a need for revenge.

  I headed out again toward the theater. The show had just come down and the audience were streaming out past the hastily reworked posters in which my head had been replaced by Shelley’s (twenty-three). They were smiling and humming the finale song. The show was going to be a hit. The musicians were standing smoking outside the stage door, and I faltered a moment, wondering if this time I was the punchline of their never-ending innuendo. At that moment the stage door opened and Shelley emerged, followed by Oliver, whose arm was casually squeezing her shoul
der in an obvious gesture of familiar intimacy as she buried her face in his neck. I was about to physically attack both of them when I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to find a jet-lagged and bewildered-looking Con clutching a large bunch of red roses.

  “Surprise!” he said.

  I vomited.

  Con and I left New York together the next day. He was very kind about everything in his annoying way, assuring me that Broadway was all about money and not about art, that Broadway wouldn’t know talent if it bit it in the ass.

  “Sure, what do we want New York for? Haven’t we got Gerry and Kate and each other and the garden?”

  I hid away for a few days, aghast at the double betrayal. My profession and my lover. Yes, yes, I was cheating on Con, Oliver was cheating on Alice, but I thought we were cheating exclusively, and that we meant something to each other. Alice stopped by the house a few times, bearing casseroles, as if someone had died. It was somewhat appropriate. I certainly thought my career had expired and I was going to murder Oliver the next time I saw him.

  It practically kills me that Shelley got to play the Queen when they made the big-screen version, the only one of the Broadway cast to reprise their role on film. She was nominated for a fucking Oscar for it, but Meryl got it again that year, God bless her.

  • • •

  Oliver arrived home just three weeks after me. Alice went happily to collect him from the airport and I watched as he got out of the car and went up the steps to his front door, seemingly without a care in the world. I waited three days for him to call or stop by the house. There was absolutely no way I was going to beg for his attention again.

  On the fourth day, I could bear it no longer. Con was at work and I saw Alice driving out the front gate, as usual almost taking the gatepost with her. I knew he was alone in the house.