by Liz Nugent
• • •
My father visited me in a dream the night I mailed 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 eighteen 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 kiss from him and one from Jean-Luc.
To try to rebuild Château 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 neighbors could not be relied on indefinitely either. They felt they owed a debt to my father, but that generation was aging 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 twenty-five miles 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 perfect 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.
This time, with nothing to prove and nothing to lose, I allowed Pierre into my life as I could share my grief and return his love, and we have grown older and closer to the point that he is now my life. We were not blessed with another child of our own—it was too late for me—but I have a wonderful relationship with Pierre’s two girls, who come every summer now and bring their own children and help with the culinary school.
Pierre and I married quickly. We reasoned we had spent enough time apart. We decided to take the château off the market. Pierre had learned well from his butcher uncle in those early years, and now owned a thriving meat-processing plant in Limoges, which he was able to relocate to our little village, bringing the life and employment to our region that Château d’Aigse could no longer provide. We sold the vineyard, the orchard, and the olive grove, keeping ten acres of our own, with the proviso that it would remain zoned as agricultural and would not be developed.
We had begun the restoration of the east wing, but my heart was not in it. For me, it was filled with ghosts and unhappy memories. I wondered if there was wisdom in rebuilding this part of the château. Who would live in the bedrooms, and who was there to read in the library? It had been destroyed once by Nazis and again by fire, and I could not be enthusiastic about this project. Once the debris had been cleared and the main staircase rebuilt, I decided to shut off the eastern wing indefinitely. It was not a question of money, though we certainly could not be extravagant, but Pierre convinced me that we were a team and that when the time was right, we would know what to do.
The Irish boy Michael and I kept up a sporadic correspondence after my initial response to the news of Laura’s death. He told me he had opened a restaurant, which surprised me—not that he wasn’t instinctively good at cooking, but I thought that he’d been interested in hairdressing. He credited me for introducing him to new tastes and culinary experiences and insisted that he would never have taken such an interest in food were it not for having such an excellent teacher. He would write sometimes from exotic locations, describing the new recipes or ingredients he had discovered, and I would suggest ways to alter or improve upon them. He invited me and my new husband several times to come and stay in Dublin and visit his restaurant, but I never did. The truth is that we would inevitably talk about Laura, and I was afraid that I would not be able to keep up the pretense that she had left Château d’Aigse in a happy and healthy state of mind. I allowed the correspondence to lapse eventually. It seemed there was little point in maintaining it.
Michael inspired my project, however. I knew about food, the sourcing, preparation, cooking, and presenting of it, and I knew I had taught him well. I began to form a plan, and when I asked Pierre’s advice, he caught my excitement and together we consulted architects and drew up a business plan.
Instead of restoring the east wing, we would create a purpose-built residential culinary school with lodgings above. We were insistent that the new building would be architecturally sympathetic to the original house and that it could be built within the existing walls so as not to destroy the aesthetic. It made complete sense. With a little help, I was already entirely capable of feeding groups of thirty twice a day on a daily basis. How much easier would it be if the thirty were to do the cooking themselves? Actually, we soon realized that we could take groups of no more than fifteen at a time, as it was not possible to house and instruct any more than this. Structurally, the interior would be very different from the original building and naturally fireproofed from top to bottom.
We have built the business since we opened our doors in 1978, and though I still supervise every aspect, we employ a full-time staff of at least seven, depending on the demand, and I can take a backseat when I want to. We now have an international reputation for excellence, several awards, and visitors from all over the world. I even reestablished contact with Michael to spread the word of our venture to Ireland, and he has sent us many new students. Pierre and I have traveled and studied several languages. Fifteen years ago, Pierre sold the meat plant and joined me in Cuisine de Campagne. We use our ten acres to grow fruit, herbs, and vegetables and source our meat and cheeses locally. We have good years and bad years, but there is usually a waiting list for the school. It is only because we opened it that we have finally discovered something else that happened in the summer of 1973, a long-kept secret of theft, deceit, and cruel betrayal. Oliver Ryan is a monster.
20
* * *
OLIVER
About four months after my father’s death in 2001, I received a letter from Philip. My brother. His mother had told him of our fraternal relationship and he regretted not knowing of it earlier. He wanted to meet. I deliberated for days over whether to do so or not. What could he have to offer me? How could we possibly have anything to say to each other? Curiosity, however, got the better of me and we arranged to meet privately in a city-center hotel.
He was extremely nervous. I was not. In appearance, he is not like my father at all. His blond hair is receding. He has not aged as well as I have. In fact, I look younger than he does.
When I arrived, he was seated in a winged armchair in a discreet corner of the lobby. He stood awkwardly and we shook hands. He had ordered sandwiches and a pot of tea. He proffered a cup and saucer. I
declined and knew my refusal made him uncomfortable. To be obtuse, I asked the waiter to bring me a large Jameson before I sat to join Philip.
“It’s good to finally meet you properly,” he began. “I haven’t seen you since the funeral . . . I didn’t know then . . .”
I was direct. “What did you know?”
“He told me you were a distant cousin. Mum told me the truth afterward.”
A cousin. Interesting.
“Did he ever mention my mother?” I couldn’t help wanting to know.
“He said . . .” Philip hesitated. “He said she was a woman of ill repute.”
He said it apologetically, and it sounded ridiculous, such an old-fashioned term—biblical, one might say.
“Mum thought she might have been a nurse,” he continued. “She never knew. He didn’t talk about it. Ever.”
A nurse? It was certainly more plausible than Father Daniel’s version of events.
“An Irish nurse?”
“I suppose so. I really don’t know. They were different times. I am so sorry. So sorry that he abandoned you like that.”
I interrupted him. I can’t bear sentimentality.
“You are a priest?” I wanted to know why.
“Yes, indeed, I always, well, I guess, I always wanted to be a priest. Since I was about fourteen years old.”
“To be like him?” I sneered. “Or to get away from him?”
He looked confused.
“You did know he was a priest? Before . . . me?”
“Yes, yes, I knew that, but I did not want ‘to get away from him’!”
“You didn’t want to get away from a cold and callous bastard like him?”
I could feel my temper flaring a little.
“He wasn’t like that at all,” said my brother. “He was a wonderful father, caring and generous and affectionate. He loved us.”
It was at this point that the waiter delivered my Jameson. The timing was good because I needed to compose myself. My father, affectionate ? Caring? I had assumed that he treated his wife and his son in a similarly pitiless manner to the way he had treated me. I had expected that Philip had been raised in an atmosphere of dread and that Judith had feared her husband.
I drained my Jameson and ordered another.
“I’m sorry,” said Philip. He apologized for his happy childhood. He fumbled inside the breast pocket of his jacket and handed me an envelope.
“You should have had this,” he said.
My fingers started to twitch. Finally, a letter. Something to explain everything. Perhaps an apology? Perhaps the truth about my mother? There was nothing written on the front. I was embarrassed by my trembling hands as I took it.
I tore it open and saw that it contained a check signed by Philip. I didn’t even register the amount.
“We should have shared everything,” Philip stammered. “But I’d like to . . . I’d like . . . if it’s not too late . . .”
I shoved the check back into its envelope and gave it back to him. I was shocked by my own anger. I wanted to hurt something, to bite something. If I thought my hopes of my father’s forgiveness had been buried with his corpse, I was mistaken. I felt suddenly anchorless, weightless, like something very dangerous might happen. Heat rushed to my face. I felt rejected all over again. I was cheated. Why him? Why Philip and not me? Philip’s open, honest, innocent face seemed to invite a punch.
“In his entire life, he never gave me anything beyond what he was legally obliged to provide.” I tried to keep my voice low and calm. “I made my life a success. Me. Alone. I don’t need money. What makes you think your bastard brother needs your guilt money now?” I stood up.
“Please, please sit down, I’m not giving it to you because you need it, don’t you see? It’s not charity; you should have had it before. It is rightfully yours.” My mind slipped away to thoughts of the lengths I had gone to out of poverty and desperation all those years ago. An awful and dreadful deed that I would not have even considered if I’d had my father’s financial support at the time.
“It’s too late.”
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to be crass. It was just a gesture really. I wanted you to see that I am willing to share anything. My mother wants it too.”
“Your mother knew he abandoned me, and she did nothing about it.”
He had no reply to that, but, dogged, he tried another tack.
“I know we can’t make up for . . . what happened, but we could try . . . I could help you . . . to move on? We don’t have to be strangers anymore. My mother wants us to be friends. You’re my brother, for God’s sake!”
I could see how anxious he was, how rattled he was. How naïve of him, to think that a chat and a check over a cup of tea could fix anything. What kind of fantasy world did he live in? I knew it wouldn’t take much to push perfect Philip over the edge.
“For God’s sake? Really, Philip? You think your God would allow something like this to happen? There is no God.”
I had found his Achilles’ heel. I had questioned his God.
“What’s wrong with you?!” he cried. “I’m just trying to do the right thing here. If I’d known years ago . . . I was told you were bad news!”
“You never questioned it, you never wondered? About ‘your cousin’?”
“Why would I? I had no reason! I still have no idea why he hated you—” Philip stopped himself, but it was too late and the words could not be unspoken. I walked away. Philip never tried to contact me again. I bet he’s glad now that we did not establish a fraternal bond. After all, he was told I was bad news. He was told the truth. Ask my wife.
21
* * *
MOYA
Con started talking about retiring. He was only sixty-two. Nothing scared me more. At least when he was working full-time, I could pretty much do what I wanted, go where I wanted, and carry on little liaisons here and there without much need for explanation. The thought of Con’s bland, empty face mooning around me 24/7 gave me the heebie-jeebies.
My long affair with Oliver was fast losing its gloss. I’m not stupid. He was turning down more invitations than he was accepting. He didn’t even bother to come up with an excuse, just gave me a curt “no.” I fretted for months, booked myself in for a bit of lipo around the stomach and upper thighs. That seemed to rejuvenate our relations temporarily, but by October of last year I was pretty fed up with being ignored or dismissed and taken for granted, and I plotted a way for us to get time by ourselves. The answer seemed to lie in a two-week residential gourmet cuisine school in the French countryside. Not for us, obviously. For Alice. It changed all our lives. Mostly for the worse.
Dermot from L’Étoile Bleue put the idea in my head. I was dining with some actor friends there one evening, and when he graciously presented the bill, a flyer for this French cooking school was attached. An idea began to form. I suggested to Alice that she would really enjoy it. She was immediately enthusiastic about the idea but didn’t like the idea of traveling on her own. Con, who must have been hovering somewhere while this discussion was going on, decided for the first time in his life to buy me a decent birthday present: a two-week residential gourmet cuisine course in France. With Alice. He is such an idiot.
Oliver didn’t seem terribly interested when I told him the bare bones of my plan and how it had backfired. He was increasingly distant with me and insisted it would be good for us, Alice and me, to go. I’m not sure how I let him talk me into it. He actually wanted me to be friends with his wife. The few times I had made a disparaging comment about her had been met with a frosty silence on his part, so I kept my thoughts to myself. He said he really did need time on his own to work on his next book. This book, he said, was going to be the most important thing he had ever written. Initially, I was suspicious. Wasn’t this the excuse he gave Alice when we were due a tryst? Was he seeing somebody else? He was certainly interested in getting us both out of the way and showed no interest in where we were going or what we were doing. I
f I had been Alice, I’d have just taken the credit card and gone on a spree, but God love her, she was never the brightest.
We traveled to Cuisine de Campagne, an hour from Bordeaux Airport. I did the driving (even when she drives on our side of the road, Alice is a terrible driver. Oliver refuses to buy her a decent car, as she accumulates so many scrapes, dings, and insurance claims that it’s a wonder she’s still on the road).
The culinary school was based in a small village. The classes took place in some large modern chalet buildings overshadowed by what must have been a very impressive château at one time. One of the wings of the château functioned as our lodgings, individual bedrooms opening on to a gallery, below which was a large lounge and communal eating area. Overseen by the elderly but sprightly Madame Véronique, we spent a wonderful two weeks immersed in the culture of French food and wine, with day trips to local bakeries, olive groves, and vineyards. The grounds were beautiful. Apparently all the surrounding land had belonged to the château until recent years, and we had permission from the local farmers to wander as we pleased. We met other food lovers from Europe, the United States, and Canada, mostly women our own age, but of course there was inevitably the one handsome single man: Javier, early fifties, handsome, slightly portly. His hair was silver, not that dirty gray you see on Irishmen. Actually silver. He owned a riverboat on the Garonne and was talking of converting it into a floating restaurant.
I admit that the competition from the other ladies was stiff and that I did suffer a tinge of guilt when I thought of Oliver (and none at all when I thought of Con), but Javier was divine. I was very tactical in my approach, at first paying far too much attention to a balding fat Texan and his wife, but then gradually inserting myself into his line of sight as subtly as possible. I am an actress, you see, so I know how to attract attention. I know how to accentuate my attributes. Botox only gets you so far.