Unravelling Oliver (12 page)

‘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 lost 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 arseholes, 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 going public, but only on 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 towards the theatre. The show had just come down and the audience were streaming out past the hastily reworked posters in which my head had been replaced by Shelley’s (twenty-three).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 shoulder 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.

‘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 called in to 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 ring or call to 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.

I wanted to look my best for this showdown and prepared myself carefully, buffing, tweezing, and dressing in my most alluring garb.

Oliver answered the door and whistled admiringly as he took in the view.

‘Darling, how have you been? I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to call.’

‘Shelley?’ I spat, unable to control my anger. ‘You were fucking Shelley?’

Oliver flinched. He hated bad language, but he also looked puzzled.

‘Shelley …’ he said, as if trying to recall who she was. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Don’t lie to me, Oliver! I saw you with her coming out the stage door.’

‘Oh,
that
? Don’t you see? I was just trying to make sure Con wouldn’t suspect you and me!’

I was confused for a moment.

‘Con told me he was coming to New York to surprise you. I tried to put him off but he insisted, and I was worried he suspected something was going on between us, so I thought it would be better if he thought that I was seeing someone else. It was all such a mess. I didn’t get a chance to tell him you’d been fired because he was in the middle of the Atlantic at the time. I knew he was going to be waiting for you at the stage door after the show, so I made sure to come out with some dolly bird on my arm and Shelley was closest.’

I was not entirely sure whether to believe him or not – after all, he lied with such ease to Alice – but he took my hand and raised it to his lips and kissed the tips of my fingers. I realized that it didn’t entirely matter whether it was true or not. I was not going to give him up. A wave of tension washed out of my head.

‘Oh, Oliver,’ I said. He kissed me then and led me upstairs, and I thought that maybe everything was going to be all right.

Our affair picked up where it had left off. In fact, it improved to the extent that I was emboldened after a few months to suggest that we might one day leave our respective spouses and set up home together.

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ he said.

He made it clear that he would never leave Alice. He said that it wouldn’t be fair to her. In the beginning I tried
to make him see that he would be happier with me, that I would be good for him, that I would be a more suitable partner for somebody of his stature, but these pleas were met by silences that could last months and eventually I learned that if I wanted any part of him, I would have to do things his way.

My career picked up too, after a while. I was selected to be a team leader on a TV game show and I picked up a lot of voice-over work for commercials and radio dramas.

I know I said earlier that I was supposed to be a friend of Alice’s. The truth is that I couldn’t stand her. Not because of anything she did to me, but because she was in my way. I just wished she would disappear.

And now, in a sense, she has. I’m not proud of the way I felt towards her.

I don’t think I have betrayed Alice. I would have in the past if Oliver had agreed to leave her. I would have betrayed her and not given it a thought.

She was useful though. I don’t mind admitting that she was extremely helpful with my two children. When I was working long days in studio or in theatre rehearsals and Con was stuck in the clinic, Alice would often come over to be there when they got home from school. She said that Oliver needed absolute concentration to write his wonderful books; there was no question of the kids going over there, children were too much of a distraction. Alice was like an unofficial nanny for Gerry and Kate, actually. Sometimes when I got home she’d have a three-course meal prepared. It seems she got very interested in food after she was first married. Oliver told me that she grew up with a retarded brother who could only eat rice pudding and
potatoes, and apparently she hardly knew what food was supposed to taste like until Oliver packed her off to a cookery school the week after they married. I confess that this stimulated my own interest in cooking. I can hardly believe that I felt forced to compete with bloody Alice. On the rare occasions when Con was away and I could entertain Oliver at home, I liked to be able to feed him in the manner to which he was accustomed.

You would think that Alice and I might have had more in common. After all, we were both in love with the same man. We were thrown together in all sorts of ways. I initiated the ‘friendship’, actually; it seemed the easiest way to get close to Oliver. But, my God, she drove me mad with her slow, dreamy ways and her nonsensical conversation. I dreaded the occasional afternoons that I would have to spend in her company. I always tried to come up with an activity that would keep her busy, would negate the need for much conversation: cinema, shopping, theatre.

Of course, I feel bad about it all now. The last time I saw Alice was in Bordeaux airport last November, just a few days before Oliver lost it with her. She was really upset. At the time, I thought she was upset about Javier and me. No doubt we’ll find out the whole truth during the trial.

Maybe I should have been nicer to Alice and maybe I shouldn’t have slept with her husband for nearly twenty years, but a small part of me wishes that the fight was about me. I wonder if he ever truly cared about me. Or her.

When I was young, very young, before that summer in France, I tried hard to be a good person. I spent most of my life trying to impress a man who more or less refused to acknowledge my existence. My birth certificate names my mother as ‘Mary Murphy (maiden surname)’, probably one of the most ubiquitous names for a Dublin female at the time. It states that my parents were unmarried. Over the years, private research has yielded absolutely nothing about her, and I could only speculate that this was not her real name. My father is listed as ‘Francis Ryan’. Under ‘Rank or Profession of Father’, it says ‘priest’. I realize that it must have been a scandal in 1953, or would have been, if it hadn’t been hushed up in some way.

My place of birth on the certificate is ‘Dublin’, although I do not appear in any register of births for maternity hospitals or nursing homes in the city, and because of that I can’t be sure that my date of birth is accurate. Two Mary Murphys gave birth on that date in the city. I have gone to great lengths to find them and their offspring and rule out any possible relationship to me.

I wonder how there could be no trace of her. I know it was a different time, but how could this document have been approved? The church’s stranglehold on the state was certainly strong in those days, but this was deliberate obfuscation. I once had the courage to ask my father about
my mother and the circumstances of my birth. ‘She was a whore,’ he wrote, in reply to my letter, as if that was all the explanation that was needed. It wasn’t too long before I got to hear a most bizarre version of the circumstances of my birth, but my father had to die before that tale could be spun.

One day, in March 2001, I was casually reading Saturday’s
Irish Times
and came across my father’s death notice in the paper.

‘…
deeply regretted by his loving wife, Judith, and son, Philip
…’

I was not sure how to feel about this news. I was not sad, certainly; maybe a little relieved. I had long ago accepted that he did not want me in his life, but the slimmest hope was always there that he might one day find it in his heart to forgive me for whatever he thought I had done, that he might take pride in my success and claim me as his own. Now that the hope was gone, perhaps I could relax.

The wording of the notice hurt me unexpectedly though. I was also his son, but did not merit a mention.

The Funeral Mass was the following Monday morning. My curiosity got the better of me. I told Alice that I had a meeting in town and went to Haddington Road church. I lurked at the back, avoiding the glances of parishioners who might recognize me. Now was not the time for autograph hunters. There was a substantial turnout, a flurry of priests, a bench of bishops and a cardinal. Judith was elegant and dignified, but grey, and Philip was ageing badly, unlike his mother, but wore a priest’s collar, to my surprise. Ironically, I remember thinking that the family line would die with him.

When the time came, I shuffled forward with the herd to convey my condolences to the bereaved. Judith took my proffered hand wetly.

‘Oliver!’ she said, reddening and turning to Philip. ‘Don’t you remember Oliver … from school?’

Philip looked up, and I saw that his eyes were filled with tears and misery, and I wondered how he could feel that way. I could tell that he was confused by my attendance.

‘Of course, yes, thank you for coming. I heard you are an author now?’

‘A writer, yes,’ I said. ‘Children’s books.’

‘Yes.’

The line of mourners was building behind me and I knew that I must move on.

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I managed to say.

Father Daniel from St Finian’s was smoking a pipe outside the church. He greeted me warmly and thanked me for the annual donation I made to the school.

‘I’d say that was hard for you …’ he said.

‘Judith and Philip … do they even know that I am his son?’ I tried to keep the tremor from my voice.

‘I think Judith knows.’ He shook his head. ‘The death notice … that was your father’s wish. I’m sorry. He didn’t want any reference to you.’

Father Daniel offered his condolences to me, and it was kind of him, but I did not need them.

‘I wasn’t sure if you’d be here. I was going to ring you. Come and see me next week. There’s something I need to explain to you. About your father.’