Unravelling Oliver(23)
Oliver was a nervous wreck and immediately I recognized why. He was waiting for his father. The fearful boy so desperate to impress that I recalled from schooldays hadn’t completely disappeared yet. All evening, as people congratulated him and he read passages from the book, Oliver’s eyes swivelled backwards and forwards to the door. I asked him eventually if his father was expected. He gave me a look that said it was none of my business and not up for discussion. Later we had a few drinks in Neary’s and he relaxed a bit. I asked him why he had used a pseudonym. He grew embarrassed, and I guessed that perhaps his father had insisted upon it.
Since then, I have only seen Oliver a handful of times, but I noticed that when I met him, he seemed increasingly casual and breezy in conversation and almost dismissive of our shared childhood. Finally, he stopped returning my calls and didn’t respond to invitations.
He popped up on TV sometimes on the review programme or as a pundit on the radio, but it is years since we really knew each other socially.
When I grew up and met Sheila and we had our little boy Charlie, I often thought about what fatherhood should be. My own father had killed himself with work and was barely a presence in our lives; Sheila’s father was the local GP in Inistioge and by all accounts cared more for his community than his family. Other fathers may be violent alcoholics or too idle to provide for their own. None of us are perfect. I did my best with Charlie, and he is now a fine young man who makes me proud every day. Some men, though, they shouldn’t be fathers; they are not cut out for it.
10. Oliver
My earliest memories are confused. A dark room in a Gothic house. I was alone for most of the day, but sometimes an old lady gave me food and was kind. Her name, I think, was Fleur, or perhaps that is just a name I gave her. I remember being told that I must keep myself tidy because my father was coming up to see me, but I accidentally spilled some red juice on my shirt and I wasn’t allowed to see him as a result. Fleur was French, and I think I may have spoken French before I spoke English. She taught me to read a little in both languages. She hugged me sometimes, and called me her pauvre petit c?ur. I recall my father came to my room one time and Fleur was nervous. He stared at me and then roughly pulled at me, examining my hair, my teeth. What was he looking for? I cried then, and he shouted at the woman and left the room, slamming the door behind him.
Fleur told me that my father was getting married to a lady called Judith. I saw her once from the top of the stairs. She was beautiful and very fair. I remember wishing that I could be blond like her. She did not see me and I never spoke to her. I was not allowed to attend the wedding.
My next memory is of Fleur packing a suitcase for me, and she was pretending to be happy but her eyes were wet. She told me that I was going on a great adventure and that I would have lots of playmates. I was excited, but at the gates of the boarding school I realized that she was not coming with me, and I grabbed her legs and begged her not to leave me there, but a gentle priest lifted me in his arms and distracted me with a toy truck, and when I turned to show it to Fleur, she was gone.
I was one of the youngest boys in the school, but I settled in well. I was not used to much attention and was mesmerized by the constant bustle of activity. I was not so homesick as the other boys, because, as I now know, one is not sick for home, but for the people in it. I pined a little for Fleur, but not too much. I was not the most popular boy and I was not at the top of the class, but I tried my hardest. I heard from other boys about living with mothers and fathers and siblings, and I came to understand that fathers were often stern and that the only way to appease them was to get good report cards.
But regardless of how hard I studied and how good my report card was, I failed to win my father’s approval.
I was not permitted to go home during the holidays and rattled around with the priests for the summer months. Every other year, my father would visit and the priests and I would scrub up in preparation. They were as in awe of him as I was, because it was a diocesan school and my father was in control of the finances. The school depended upon his decisions for funding. I would sit on one side of the headmaster’s desk, and my father would stand behind me, refusing to sit or take tea. I would be as still as I could, but could not stop my hands from buttoning and unbuttoning my shirt cuffs. Father Daniel would tell him that I was doing well, even when I wasn’t. My father would ask to inspect my report cards and enquire about my general health and then he would leave, without touching me or looking in my direction. Father Daniel was embarrassed for me and would try to make a joke of my father’s distance.
‘Isn’t he a busy fella, your dad? Eh?’
It was Father Daniel who told me that I had a younger brother, Philip, born a year after my father and Judith wed. He is blond like his mother. He joined the primary school as a day pupil when I was in the senior boarding school. I watched him grow up in a way, because I could see my father’s house from a window on the top corridor and I had an almost permanent loan of Stanley’s binoculars, with which I spied on my father’s new family. I watched my brother come and go from my father’s house; watched Judith pottering in the garden; watched them all out in the driveway, admiring my father’s new car together. I envied Judith and Philip.
School sports days were a particular kind of torture. In the first few years, when I thought my father might actually turn up, I tried my hardest in the weeks leading up to the event, rising early and doing extra training. If my father would not acknowledge my academic achievement, I thought perhaps he might be impressed by my athletic prowess. In the early days I won medals and trophies every year, but my father never appeared.