Unravelling Oliver (21 page)

Infamy is a lot more interesting than fame, it seems. It is not just the tabloids who think so. An acre of newsprint was used up in documenting the fall from grace of the successful writer who turned out to be a plagiarist and a wife beater. Pundits who might previously have described themselves as close personal friends are now granting interviews in which they claim that they always knew there was something strange about me. They speculate that I was in the habit of beating my wife, despite the lack of evidence at the trial to support the theory, and they relate conversations that never happened that imply I was always violent and that Alice was terrified of me.

One rag published a school essay from over forty years ago to highlight my bad prose and to illustrate my unfocused narrative. The Ph.D. students who once flocked around me like acolytes claim I have destroyed their careers and their credibility. Diddums. Critics claim that somebody who had no children could never have written stories that appealed to them so much. That is not what they said at the time. In fact, they said back then that it was because I did not have the responsibility of children that I hadn’t fully grown up and therefore could more easily access the mind of a child. Fools. They have delved into
my past and my background and asked questions about my parentage. They found no more dirt than my father’s early priesthood.

My brother Philip wrote to me six months after the trial. I can only imagine his sanctimonious hand-wringing. I’m sure he agonized over whether writing to me was the ‘right thing to do’. He offered his services as a chaplain or confessor in case I should ever want to ‘unburden’ myself. He assured me that God’s forgiveness is possible and that, if nothing else, he was ‘always there to listen’. Bin.

I miss Alice.

I thought I would not be able to eat the food here, but actually it’s quite good and there’s plenty of it. I have eaten less well in Michelin-starred restaurants, though the presentation could use a little attention.

The building in which I am housed is a decrepit Victorian institution, impressively daunting on the exterior and drab with neglect and stained Formica surfaces on the interior. Men and women are segregated. That suits me fine.

I have my own room, so in a lot of respects it is better than boarding school was, although my housemates are a peculiar bunch of miscreants. I remember years ago, one of my less imaginative colleagues in the civil service had a ‘witty’ sign on his desk that said,
You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps!
It wasn’t even funny at the time.

It is not a
mad
house, however; it is a sad house. Everyone here has committed crimes deemed to result from their insanity. I feel like I am here under false pretences,
but that is nothing new for me. Almost my entire life has been a deception of one kind or another. I am not obliged to mix with the others, and I spend most of my time voluntarily alone.

There is a working farm within the grounds, and even though it has been quite a while since I did any manual labour, I have enjoyed getting my hands dirty. I am no longer a young man, but I am fitter than I have been in decades.

I am a model ‘patient’. They don’t call us prisoners in the nuthouse. ‘It’s political correctness gone mad!’ I hear all the time. I agree. The guards and nurses are decent, and I cause them no trouble. It is generally acknowledged in here that my crime was a ‘one-off’. I ‘snapped’. I am on a low-dosage antidepressant and go placidly amid the noise and haste.

I will have a ‘mental health review’ every six months to decide if I am sane or not, but if I am declared sane, I might be released and that would never do. I have decided to stay here, because even though I am not a danger to society, or myself, I do not want to leave. I plan to fake a suicide attempt if they ever suggest it.

The house has been sold. All proceeds from the sale went towards the continued care of Alice and maintenance payments to Barney Dwyer for Eugene. Alice is in a private facility. The lawyers told me she is in a beautiful room and is receiving the very best of treatment, but she will never know it. It is likely that she will continue in this state for years. Copyright and royalties from the books have been assigned to Madame Véronique and I am denounced internationally, but particularly in France, for
stealing from a war hero, and profiting from his death and that of his grandson. If only they knew that it was worse than that, that I was the one to cause their deaths. I have never told the analysts that part of my story. It would cause such a fuss. Why add arson and murder to the list of my crimes?

Journalists have made several attempts to visit, offering to ghostwrite my story. The insult. I turned down their offensive requests. All but one particular French journalist. At least, I assumed she was a journalist. Her letters to me were more formal than the others, and she was not easily put off. Her name is Annalise Papon. I ignored her first five letters and then finally responded to the sixth, thanking her for her interest but declining an interview, regretting that I would not be putting her on my visitors’ list. There is nobody on my visitors’ list.

A month ago, she wrote back the most startling letter.

She is apparently a lawyer, not a journalist, but she has no interest in my case or the charges against me. She says she has recently become a mother for the first time, and the birth of her precious son has led her on a path of discovery that she almost wishes she never began.

Her birth was registered in the city of Bordeaux, France, as being on the 11th of March 1974 in a small village called Clochamps. Her name at birth was Nora Condell. She was placed for adoption on the 20th of July of the same year. Annalise is hoping that I might be able to help her trace her father. It has been implied to her that her mother named me as her father.

Laura’s baby. My child
.

She admits that she is confused as to how to feel about this, that after two years of searching records she discovers her father could be a violent criminal and a plagiarist.

Laura’s name is on Annalise’s original birth certificate as her mother. She knows from her research that Laura is dead and that it was a suicide. She assumes her birth might have precipitated her mother’s death. She has been able to track down photographs of Laura through her old school’s website, and although the shape and colour of her eyes are similar, in one distinct aspect she is not like Laura at all. She began to do some searching to see if she could find her father instead. The father’s name is not listed on her birth certificate, but Annalise has made contact with the adoption social worker who dealt with Laura. Apparently Laura insisted that the father was an Irish student called Oliver Ryan, but she was not allowed to name me on the birth certificate. Annalise was able to quickly discover that Oliver Ryan was better known as the infamous Vincent Dax. She has studied photographs of me from the covers of my books and has seen film footage of me on YouTube from some television appearances, and she has noted a striking resemblance between us in our mannerisms and way of speaking that cannot be ignored; and yet, she says, ‘something is wrong’ because Annalise is of mixed race and, clearly, ‘you and my mother are white Europeans’.

My hands began to shake again, and I laid the letter on to my desk so that I could stop the words from dancing.

My daughter is nothing if not dogged in her pursuit of truth.

I have recently availed myself of a personal genomic service to have my DNA genetically profiled. It seems that my ethnicity is specifically at least 25 per cent sub-Saharan African, which would indicate that one of my parents is of mixed race, i.e. one of my grandparents is black. I was able to find out that both of Laura’s parents are Irish born, but can find very little information about your parentage. I note that your colouring is darker than the average Irishman, although your features are undoubtedly ‘white
’.

Studies in genomic theory are advancing at a rapid rate thanks to the new data available from DNA mapping, and science now tells us that skin colour is not determined by only one gene. Instead, it is determined by many (polygenic inheritance). Therefore there are many factors that have a role in the skin colour of a person besides the skin colours of their parents. It may still be possible that you are my father if you have any ethnic ancestry
.

She proposed to visit me in order to do a DNA swab test. She assured me it is a simple, non-invasive procedure. She was coming to Dublin and hoped that I would agree to meet her.

Having watched the video footage of you many times, I think it most likely that we are, in fact, related. I do not know if this will be a source of shame to you or what your views of racial harmony might be, but please bear in mind that when I set out to find my parents, I did not for one moment think that I might find one in jail. The wonderful parents that raised me would be horrified if they thought that this might be the case, and I have no wish to tell them. Nor would I want to go public if this turns out to be true
.

I put the letter aside. I left my room and wandered out to the yard. The guard smiled and nodded.

‘And how’s Oliver today? It’s a cold one, eh?’

‘Do you have a cigarette?’

‘Indeed and I do.’

He handed me a cigarette, solicitously lit it for me and tried to engage in some light banter, but I am known as a loner so he soon stepped away to leave me to my customary solitude.

Father Daniel was right about everything. The story about my father and the native girl was true. What became of her and what was she like? I have an image of her in my mind, dressed in tribal clothing, walking away from her village and her life into an African sunset, thinking herself cursed by my birth. I find myself weeping for her at odd moments and, strangely, missing her, and wondering if she ever missed me. I think of my father and imagine his public humiliation when I was born, caught in his lie of denial, and I feel a small degree of pity for him.

Then I think of Laura, and how confused she must have been by her child. Who would have believed that I was the father? Certainly not me. This is why she could not send me a photograph, and why she could never have brought her baby home, not in those days. How could she have explained her baby’s paternity? She must have questioned her own sanity. There was a kind of accepted racism at the time among the Irish middle classes. It went unacknowledged because it never had to be confronted. In Ireland in 1974, I could count on one hand the number of black people I had ever seen. Laura’s child would have created
a scandal for her family. Also, it was one thing to be an unmarried mother, but another thing altogether to be a
single
unmarried mother with a black child she had no way of explaining. I did that to Laura. I made her think she was insane. I killed her.

My daughter Annalise came to visit me today. She is beautiful like her mother and, I suppose, like
my
mother and, in a strange way, like me. It is some kind of genetic accident that I was born white, but this girl is undoubtedly mine. Mine and Laura’s. I still had the slimmest doubts right up until the moment I saw her. She has the same clear blue eyes and the sense of vibrancy and purpose that Laura had when I first met her, but her skin colour comes from my mother, via me.

It was awkward at first, but I used my old charm to put her at her ease until the atmosphere was at least cordial. I made enquiries about her son,
my grandchild
, and she showed me a photograph of a small boy, perhaps two years old, sitting in between her and her husband. He has a mischievous smile on his face and I can tell he is happy. I am glad. I asked her if she was happy, and she grinned quickly and ducked her blue eyes.

She sat opposite me, and I watched as she nervously buttoned and unbuttoned the cuffs of her expensive silk blouse, and I did not want to deny the truth to myself any longer.

I could, however, deny it to her.

I admitted that I knew Laura well, that we had dated in college and that we had spent a summer together in
Bordeaux. I told Annalise that her mother was brave and beautiful and would have desperately wanted to keep her. I denied knowing that Laura was ever pregnant, and could not explain why she might have named me as the father. I said that there were some South African workers at the vineyard in the summer of 1973 and implied that Laura must have had a liaison with one of them. I recalled them as good, strong and cheerful boys but regretted I could not remember their names.

I told her that there would be no point in doing a DNA test. I told her all about my parents, Mary (née Murphy) and Francis Ryan, a priest at the time of my birth. I suspect Annalise must already have known of this detail. I even recalled for her my earliest memory: I am sitting on my father’s knee in a large garden while my laughing parents embrace each other on a bench. We are the only people in my world. My mother has red hair; she wears spectacles and lipstick. My smiling father is in a high-waisted suit. The bench is under a tree. One of the boughs of the tree hangs low and heavy with blossoms over my father’s head. My mother carries me over and puts me into a swing. There is a safety bar across it. She pushes me gently, and I laugh because I like the feeling of the air rushing through my stomach. I want her to push me a little higher, but she is afraid to do so. My father takes over the pushing and she goes back to the bench to sit down. My father pushes me higher and I am thrilled. After a little while, I use my feet as brakes. I feel the gravel and note a cloud of dust rising. I run over to my mum and jump into her lap. She hugs me close to her, and I know that my father is watching with pride. I am warm and safe.

I told Annalise about how my mother left us some years later, and how my father remarried a woman who did not want to raise me. I feigned upset. I said I didn’t like to talk about it. Annalise was sympathetic and did not press for details. I explained about how I was raised in a boarding school.