Unravelling Oliver (11 page)

My study is a high-ceilinged room at the rear corner on the left-hand side of the house. When Alice’s father was alive, he might have used it as an office or a den, but when we moved in, it was a kind of playroom for Eugene. Full of soft toys, picture books and an old record player, it was grubby and disorganized. In the centre of the room, on an old, foul-smelling rug, there was a chair that might have been more suited to the kitchen – Shaker-style, with spokes emanating from the seat to a bar across a low back, and arm rests. It had been painted many times over the years, and several layers of blue, red and yellow paint flaked under the general grime. This apparently was Eugene’s ‘flying chair’. I suppose I should have been flattered that my first book inspired the flying chair, but it certainly was not what I had in mind.

The room was bright and airy, however, with two tall sash windows dominating the two exterior walls, one looking out to the back lawn, the other on to the side path of the house. The two interior walls were decorated in floral wallpaper, punctuated here and there with Disney posters, Duran Duran wall charts and Michael Jackson album covers.

It was the only room in the house with a sturdy brass lock on the door, and I insisted that this was the only room in which I would be able to write. Alice was at first reluctant,
but I persuaded her that we could fit out a room upstairs for Eugene – in what would have been her old bedroom (we had moved into her parents’ bedroom). One day, when she and Eugene went out for the afternoon, I stripped the room bare, gutting it, and dragged all the detritus on to a bonfire at the end of the garden. The fuss that ensued was unwarranted, in my opinion. Eugene was most upset about the damn chair. As if the house were not full of chairs, all of them better than that particular specimen. He sobbed like a baby, and I realized quickly that I could not live with this kind of disturbance.

I redecorated the room to my own taste. A gentleman’s room, with teak panelling and bookcases lining the interior walls, and heavy velvet curtains framing the windows. I had the long-disused fireplace opened up, and I placed my antique mahogany partner’s desk at an angle facing the two windows. At an auction, I later purchased a leather upholstered library chair, a standard lamp to be placed behind my chair, and also a desk lamp with a green glass shade. Subtle lighting is very important. From a company in the UK, I purchased a leather-bound desk blotter, and, from a vintage bookseller, a few select first editions with which to fill my bookcases. Within a few short weeks, the room looked like a writer’s room, and indeed, on the few occasions when I have granted interviews at home, the interrogator has in every instance remarked on how atmospheric the room is, exactly how they imagined the study of an award-winning author. As if, just by getting the look right, the words would flow.

Alice knew that I must not be disturbed. It pleases me that she thought my genius required isolation and silence.
I used it to good effect when that little moron Eugene wanted to know what was in the green wooden box. Alice never showed much curiosity, but Eugene would not give up. He was obsessed by it. On the few occasions that I allowed Eugene and Alice into the room, he would waddle over to the bookcase and look up to the top shelf, where I had placed it.

‘What’s in the box, Oliver? What’s in the box? Is there a monster in the box, Oliver? What’s in the box?’

‘Nothing,’ I would insist, ‘just boring birth certificates, passports and insurance documents. Nothing to interest you.’

‘Show me! Show me! I want to see what’s in the box! Show me what’s in the box!’, stamping his foot for emphasis, and I would call Alice and complain that he was disturbing me, and demand that she remove him from my presence. He would often hover outside the door, waiting for me to come out, and as soon as I opened it, he would dart in on top of me. ‘What’s in the box, Oliver?’

Eventually I informed Alice that I could no longer write while Eugene lived under our roof. She agreed finally to his moving out when I found an obliging care home willing to take him. It was not cheap, a fact that Alice seemed not to appreciate. She accused me of ‘hating’ him. She overestimated my feelings for her brother: I simply did not want him around.

Alice continued to whinge for years, used to bring him out to the house at Christmas time for the first couple of years, but every single time it reopened the arguments and I felt it was in everybody’s best interests just to put a stop to it. The last Christmas that he came, I got him
alone in the kitchen and told him a very special story in words that he could understand, and made it very clear that he would be unwise ever to visit again. Afterwards, he just walked up and down the hall with his coat on, backwards and forwards, muttering to himself. Alice was beside herself with worry and kept asking him what was wrong, but thankfully he had understood my little story and kept his stupid drooling mouth shut. Then he started to cry, and Alice took him back to the home. Later, when I pointed out the wisdom of my decision not to accommodate an overgrown baby who was clearly disturbed, she walked out of the house and didn’t come back for three days. Her first act of rebellion. I knew she would be back though. I never doubted it. She loved me too much. I never had to see the buffoon again, though Alice persisted in visiting him.

Once Eugene was out of the way, I settled down into a routine, although in 1993 this was disturbed by Moya, who had moved in next door. She and her dull husband befriended us straight away. I flatter myself that Moya was impressed by my celebrity. She was apparently something of a celebrity herself, having appeared in a television soap opera, but I had no idea who she was.

From very early on she flirted openly. There I would be at my desk in my study on a winter afternoon, painstakingly parsing every sentence, honing it to perfection. I would look up momentarily and Moya would be out in her garden, putting washing on the line, wearing nothing but a pink diaphanous gown and a pair of high heels. She must have been frozen. She would catch me looking, and scurry
inside, feigning embarrassment, but Moya is a truly awful actress and it was painfully obvious that she intended to seduce me. I’m not terribly surprised. Her husband was such a nondescript nonentity that I cannot think of a single interesting thing he ever said or did. Occasionally I would see him in the garden, gardening.

In the summer months, Moya made an almighty display of herself, sunbathing nude on an extended sunlounger positioned perfectly to face my rear window. The view was rather nice, I admit it.

When we began our affair, she would write messages on large pieces of paper for me, and hold them up to her side window for me to see in a kind of semaphoric billet-doux. I was rather touched at the time. It seemed very sweet. We even managed to continue our arrangement while working abroad, most notably in New York, when she was to be in the Broadway version of
Solarand
. That ended in a huge bloody mess when Moya was fired and then almost caught me in the arms of the cute little actress who replaced her. You would swear that Moya was the wronged wife the way she went on about it, but I managed to talk her down and, after a while, we resumed our liaison.

Towards the end, the whole affair became stale and I redecorated the study again, reappointing the furniture so that my desk faced away from the windows. She was not happy about that. But I had my wife to consider, and I did not want Alice to be unnecessarily hurt.

At the very start I used a typewriter, but Alice often remarked on how little ‘clacking’ she could hear, so when word processors came on stream I used those, and now I
have a turbo-charged state-of-the-art computer that allows me to work silently and stealthily. Of course, there is now a world of available distraction on the Internet and one could spend days on end looking at curiosities such as Victorian pornography or titanium drill bits, if one was so inclined. There is social networking too, Facebook and Twitter, which must be a curse to other writers, but suited me perfectly when I had time to waste.

However, when I was creating the
Prince of Solarand
series, the Internet the way we know it now had not been introduced, and there were far fewer distractions with which to fill my day. I would disappear into the study at 9.30 a.m., after breakfast, locking the door behind me. Peace and quiet and solitude. I would take up my
Irish Times
and begin with the Simplex crossword, moving on to the Crosaire. Then I would read the news, devouring every inch of the
Irish Times
, the
Guardian
and the
Telegraph
. I kept myself politically informed of the machinations of both the left and right wing, which gave me a rounded picture of what was going on, useful for punditry. (I am afraid that, as informed as I was, I did not see the economic crash coming. I lost at least a hundred thousand euro in poor investments – stupid bloody accountant – and I’m sure the Bulgarian properties are worth nothing, but I risked very little comparatively speaking.)

I would emerge at 11 a.m. for tea and biscuits and listen to the current affairs show on the radio for about half an hour. Then I returned to the study and attended to correspondence. Usually requests for media interviews and public readings; invites to literary festivals; letters from Ph.D. students using my opus as a basis for their theses:

Dear Mr Dax
,

I have found a great deal of allegorical evidence in your work which would suggest that your children’s stories are loosely based on the Nazi persecution of the Jews prior to and during the Second World War and wondered if I might trouble you for an interview
…

I, and my complete works, have been the subject of no less than eighteen academic theses, and several publications have sought to deconstruct the stories. I have been deliberately unhelpful to these students, but they have persisted in finding all sorts of hidden codes and meanings in my work.

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 do not mean to sneer at Alice. She made everything possible. Alice was always loyal. It is a wonderful quality in a wife.

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, towards 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 were 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 smouldering. 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 mumsy 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 shared nothing but Sunday lunch. Con likes to eat. In his defence, I can tell you that he was always 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 him. I hate to be uncharitable. To me, he was 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 easy-going 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 neighbours, 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 lift 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 grotty 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 weeks, 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 home bird.

Despite 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 back seat 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 theatre 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, but to no avail. I went to the Ladies 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 potted history of the artists’ lives or a social commentary upon the time in which the work was created. He had a quirky sense of humour 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 skilful 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 favour 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 theatre at 8 a.m., a ridiculous time to call an actor. I grew suspicious when I realized that everyone else’s call time was 11. I badgered the stage manager and demanded to know what was going on. She claimed not to know.

When I arrived at the theatre, 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.