by Liz Nugent
On one visit, he took me to a gallery in Nice to select a painting for his daughter, Audrey, who was now marrying a gold-digging tattoo artist in Dallas. He did not approve of the fiancé, and so he was gifting them something neither of them would know the value of.
‘Well, at least her fiancé is an artist,’ I said, trying to mollify Freddie. ‘You know that some people would say that I am a gold-digger too?’ I pointed to the gold bracelet he had presented me with on his arrival.
He looked fierce. ‘You never asked me for anything. You have graciously accepted the things I have offered you. There is a world of difference.’
The gallery we visited was familiar to me, and it was not long before Monsieur Arnaud appeared out of a back office, bowing and scraping to Freddie. Freddie introduced me as his adviser, but Monsieur Arnaud did not look in my direction.
‘Oh, Monsieur Arnaud and I have met before, Freddie,’ I said. ‘He interviewed me for a job here and suggested that I was too old to work as a whore for a Russian oligarch.’
Arnaud looked at me open-mouthed, and then began to laugh nervously.
‘Really?’ Freddie was genuinely shocked.
‘Oh yes, isn’t that right, Monsieur Arnaud?’
‘It was … merely a joke. Perhaps the English lady … does not understand French humour?’
Freddie looked down his nose at Arnaud, whose forehead had begun to sweat. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘you should always assume that you are dealing with class, even if you are unable to recognize it.’ He steered me out of the shop. In the street outside, I had to calm him down.
‘I’ll have him shut down in a month. That oaf!’ he said.
I laughed, and we stopped nearby for a coffee. In the afternoon, Freddie drove us to Cap Ferrat and there, in an isolated spot, Freddie painted me standing in the shade of a dying lemon tree. I looked out into the Mediterranean and imagined that I could see my island.
That week, I accompanied Freddie to a yacht party, the first of many over the years. Most of the people were either rich, beautiful or both. Because I was with Freddie, they assumed I was the former. Although some may have had their suspicions about my relationship with him, most people accepted the truth, that I was a friend. Indeed, Freddie and Marjorie both introduced me to eligible bachelors or divorcees, and I had lovers from time to time, but dropped them as soon as they became too keen or too curious.
I was living the life I had always wanted, and then one day I received a letter, forwarded from my bank.
June 2002
Dear Mam/Delia,
I know this letter will be a surprise to you, but I hope it’s not a bad one. I’m not sure if I should call you Mam or not, because I don’t know how you feel about me, but from what Granny tells me the last time you saw me was the day of the fire twelve years ago. Any time that I asked Dad or Granny about you, they made excuses for not giving me your address, and it’s only now that I have turned eighteen that Granny told me the full circumstances of the fire. I know this doesn’t make me sound like a good person, but I’ve been through Dad’s files (he doesn’t know) and I know he was sending payments to you through your bank.
The thing is, the fire was an accident. I don’t remember it, but chip-pan fires are very common and just because you were drunk doesn’t make it your fault. I hope you haven’t spent the last twelve years feeling guilty about everything. I know that you were burned too. Granny said that one side of your face was damaged. You probably have photos of me as a little kid (or maybe they were all destroyed by the fire?), but I spent a lot of time in hospitals over the years and I know you would never recognize me if I turned up on your doorstep (don’t worry, I won’t!). The operations I’ve had weren’t all successful and I don’t want to put you off by sending you a photograph of what I look like now. I’m not going to be winning any beauty competitions, that’s for sure. My face has been mostly reconstructed and I have new eyelids and a new nose from my most recent operation. They took the skin from my thighs. I won’t go into detail but it was all pretty gross. The fingers on my left hand had to be amputated, but I have the use of my thumb and you’d be surprised how much I can do with it. It’s lucky that I’m right handed.
Did you know that I moved to Westport to live with Granny and Grandad, in 1993? Dad came to visit as often as he could. Grandad died four years ago and shortly after that Dad moved home to Westport and now I live with him. He set up a business here, and so far it’s going well and he just got a government contract recently so there was a party to celebrate in his factory and there was a picture of him on the front page of the Mayo News. I stayed out of the photograph and I suppose you’ll guess why. Dad designs prosthetic limbs for amputees. It’s all done on computers. And then the designs are manufactured in Taiwan. The fake hand I used to have was useless, but Dad has spent years working on this, so the hand I have now is incredibly realistic. If only my face was amputated and he could make me a new one!
Dad won’t talk about you. Uncle Harry says that you were beautiful (I’m sure you still are and I hope your face has mended. From what Granny said, your burns weren’t as bad as mine). Uncle Harry also says you are dangerous, but Dad always says I shouldn’t be talking to him because he’s drunk all the time, and I suppose that’s true. I still haven’t finished school, because I missed so much being in hospital. Only one more year to go! There was a kind of school in hospital for long-term patients where you’re supposed to keep up with your homework, but that’s hard to do when your eyes are bandaged and you’re in a lot of pain. I hope you weren’t in a lot of pain from your burns?
I hate school anyway. I haven’t decided what I want to be yet, or whether I want to go to college. But at least I can type with my good hand. Dad wants me to come and work for him and I guess that’s the safest thing, because the people around here are used to the look of me. The thought of going to a job interview or up to Dublin or Galway to college is quite scary. Although maybe more for other people than for me. Ha ha!
There’s so much I don’t know about you, about where you are from, and if you and Dad met in London? I know you are Irish but either nobody knows or nobody wants to tell me anything about you. It’s really annoying.
If you sent me Christmas cards or birthday presents, I want you to know that I never received them.
Anyway, I just wanted to say hello and see if you wanted to write back to me? I’m not putting in a photo of me with this letter because if you do want to find out about me, I think it’s better that we get to know each other like this first. And we don’t have to do it through your bank so I hope you can email me at [email protected].
Look, maybe you don’t want to be in touch, but I just don’t want you to feel guilty any more. Accidents happen. I remember things about you. I remember you taking me to the zoo and to the cinema and I remember you singing me nursery rhymes and teaching me the alphabet. I know that you’re not a bad person.
Love from your son,
Jimmy
The letter was a shock. This ‘Jimmy’, writing in such a familiar way, was my child. I had caused his terrible injuries and yet he was writing to forgive me. It was clear that he remembered Chiara rather than me, because I didn’t take him on excursions or sing to him. The trauma of the fire must have wiped the memory of his early years. Harry and Peter were still estranged and, no doubt, blamed me.
Should I reply? What could I say? What if he wanted to visit me? I would not be able to hide a disfigured boy in Monaco. And how could I explain myself, to him or to others?
I have never met anyone who wasn’t sentimental about their children, but I simply didn’t feel that way about him. I never had a connection to my son. Even when he was a cute little boy and strangers would smile at him on the street, I always felt a pang of jealousy. Peter had done his best to make a family of us. What Peter had never understood is that I did not want one. I did not want to bond, with James, or him, or anyone.
I knew this wasn’t normal. I knew that I wasn’t no
rmal. I have never needed people, just the comforts they could offer me.
I had not spent years yearning for my son and missing him. And I did not like the obvious neediness in his letter. If I wrote back, there would be another letter and I would be obliged to respond again and he would come to think of me as his mother. I was not heartless enough to write and tell him that I didn’t want anything to do with him. Instead, I did nothing.
30
Later in 2002, I became an unofficial art adviser to Harold and some other of Freddie’s friends. I would never be an expert, I did not have the education, but I knew what was current. I moved from working in the bridal store to a small art gallery tucked away on Rue de la Turbie. Monsieur Arnaud’s business mysteriously came my way, and most of our clientele were art investors rather than art appreciators, so it rarely mattered to them what the painting or sculpture or drawing actually looked like.
My old friend Élise turned up one day in 2003, looking for a job. ‘I heard you had fallen on your feet,’ she said, hugging me as if we were intimate friends. I had not seen her in the five years since I desperately needed a place to stay. I was polite, but distant. I advised my employer against hiring her and ripped her business card into shreds.
Some years passed: long, almost happy years in the Mediterranean sunlight, beside the sea. I found my community in Monaco. One met so few people that were actually born there. We were mostly ex-pats. We did not refer to ourselves as immigrants. The friendships were all on the surface and we knew it. I think a lot of people there had things to hide – offshore accounts, stolen art, all manner of white-collar crime – and so we lived in the moment and did not pry into each other’s backgrounds, although we googled each other furiously to discover the gossip. Harold, I discovered, was named in some financial scandal to do with Gibraltar Savings Association in the late eighties. He had transferred millions into Rania’s accounts.
I was relieved to find that Cordelia Russell did not exist in the online world, apart from some passing mentions as a ‘loyal friend to Freddie and Marjorie Baird’ or, inaccurately, ‘art historian Cordelia Russell’ in local Monaco society notices. Delia Russell existed in newspaper archives in articles relating to the fire, but nobody here knew me as Delia. Freddie must have known I was Delia because I’d had to give him my passport to register as a resident in Monaco, but he never asked me about it.
My son, however, knew my name.
September 2003
Dear Mam/ Delia,
I don’t know whether you got it but I sent you a letter over a year ago, to explain that I am your son James. I was hoping that you’d reply, but then I guessed that maybe you are not allowed to write to me for some legal reason, or maybe you didn’t receive the letter, forwarded from your bank in France. I guess you live there, in Nice?
I told Uncle Harry that I’d written to you last year, and he made me promise never to write to you again, but I guess I’m very disobedient because, well, here I am.
Dad and Uncle Harry have never spoken much to each other, and it’s only last week that I found out why. Uncle Harry was drunk when he told me, and Dad has tried to stop me seeing Harry now, but in a town this size it’s impossible, and anyway, I’m a man now and I can do what I want. I just want to know if it’s true what Harry says? That you got pregnant with me, by my dad, while you were going out with Harry? Granny sort of confirmed it by not denying it. I always thought people were whispering about me because of my burned head and not because my mother was, well, I don’t know a polite word for it, but I’m sure you know what I mean. Uncle Harry says you broke his heart. I am pissed off (excuse the language) with everyone, because even if you did break Harry’s heart twenty years ago, he should have got over it, and Dad and Granny should have told me the truth, and you should have written back to me, because I’m pretty sure you did get that letter I sent, and what harm would there be in writing back to me? Even if it’s just to say hello. I don’t care if it’s a legal thing. You have my email address, [email protected], and nobody has to know except you and me. I know email is hard for some old people, so if you don’t know how to use it I’m sure someone will show you how in an Internet café. If you live in some part of France that doesn’t have Internet, you can write to me at Dad’s factory, Seafort Digital, where I work now, in Westport, Co Mayo. I did well in my exams and I’m being trained in-house. I’m working on eyeballs at the moment. Most of my friends went away to college and it’s a bit lonely here now. Where did you go to school? I’m fed up that I don’t know anything about you, and no one will tell me. Please, please write back to me.
I’m sorry for sounding so cross but my head is wrecked with it all (on the inside as well as the outside now).
Love from your son,
Jimmy
I shouldn’t have read the letters but curiosity got the better of me, and besides, I was glad to hear that the boy had a job and that Peter was looking out for him. James was right about some things. Harry should have moved on. It was ridiculous that he had seemingly continued this feud with his brother. I had been terribly dishonest with both of them, so they had a lot in common. I thought it was best that I was written out of Westport history. It was good for them all that I was not mentioned there. It was good for me. I did not reply.
July 2004
Dear Mam,
I’m not calling you Delia any more, because you are my mam. I have been in touch personally with your bank and they assure me that the letters I sent over the last few years were delivered to your home address. They will not give me your address though, even though I am your next of kin. As far as I have ever been able to find out, I am your only blood relative.
I’ve had a lot more surgery since I last wrote, but the bad news is that no further operations can be done. All of the available skin on my body has already been used for grafting purposes. The damage was so severe that I am not a candidate for any of the pioneering leaps in technical surgery and I must live with the body I have. Some of the surgery that was done in the early days might have been a mistake, it seems. There are very few mirrors in our house. I look like I’m wearing a terrifying Halloween mask, according to a girl I used to fancy. Luckily for her, she never saw the rest of my body.
I’ve never been to France. In fact, I have never left Ireland. You know why? Because I’m afraid that people will be revolted when they see me. I rarely leave Westport. I went to Dublin with some friends last month, but some assholes in a pub there started to wind me up, trying to take sneaky photos on those small digital cameras. But I saw them, so I laid into one of them and broke his nose. They’ll be able to fix his nose, unfortunately. Anyway, I got arrested and Dad had to come to Dublin to bail me out. The guards felt sorry for me apparently, and Dad paid off the wanker with the broken nose. My name was finally on the front page of the Mayo News, but thank God they didn’t use a photo. Granny said she was ashamed of me.
You’re obviously ashamed of me too, or you would have been in touch by now, but I don’t know why. I never did anything bad to you. How could I? I was only six the last time I saw you.
I found a photograph of you on the Internet, from your school days. Delia Walsh, that’s what Harry said your name was. You went to the girls’ school next door to the school I went to, and half this town must have known you, and yet still, twenty years later, nobody wants to talk about you. You are very pretty in the photograph, despite that seventies hairstyle, but I suppose you aren’t now, because of the fire. At least you were good-looking when you were old enough to know it. There are photos of me as a toddler on Granny’s piano, but I don’t recognize myself because there is nothing of that kid left in what I look like now.
Harry says you lived with your aunt and uncle. He showed me the house, but someone else lives there now. Your uncle died and your aunt moved away, but nobody can tell me where. You’re probably still in touch with her, aren’t you?
Maybe you can tell that I’m a bit drunk writing this letter and I’m annoyed too becaus
e for like the tenth time a girl I liked told me today that she just wanted to be my friend, even though we’ve been hanging out for the last few weeks and I’ve been buying her and her friend drinks. I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’m twenty years old and nobody has ever kissed me. You won’t know how that feels. I used to think it was unfair that everyone blamed you for what happened to me. I mean, accidents do happen, right? But maybe you shouldn’t have been drunk when you were supposed to be looking after me?
I haven’t told you this before because I was afraid it would hurt your feelings, but since you won’t answer my letters I can see that you don’t care about mine. Dad got married again seven years ago to a lady called Caroline who works in the factory with him. I have two half-sisters called Chloe (five) and Abigail (six). They are both extremely pretty and everyone makes a fuss of them everywhere they go. Caroline is nice too, I suppose. It took me a while to get used to her. The girls are brilliant though and when they were born it made everything OK. Even when they were babies, they would stare into my eyes and reach out and touch my face. They don’t think I’m a freak. It’s a lovely feeling and they are cute and sweet. They are probably the best thing in my life.
I probably shouldn’t have told you that. When I told Dad that I’d written to you before, he told me I was wasting my time and that I was not to tell you anything about our lives, but you are my mother, like it or not (probably not), so I think you have a right to know.
I just read back over this letter and realized how self-pitying it is. It’s probably the drink talking, but these are things I need to say so I’m going to post it now before I regret it.
Please, please write back. Just a short note, or even a postcard will do.
Love from your son,
Jimmy
So Peter had moved on. I had no strong feelings about that. Perhaps he might set an example to Harry. And Alan was dead. I blame Alan for a lot of things that went wrong in my life. He thought he was doing the right thing, I suppose. But if I’d been able to have that abortion, things would have been so different and I wouldn’t be getting unwanted letters from my son.