Unravelling Oliver(3)

Returning to the house on the night Alice pushed me too far, I fumbled with the key in the door. I stepped into the dining room. She wasn’t on the floor, thank God. She was sitting in the kitchen, nursing a mug of tea. Her hand rubbed at her face. She looked at me without affection. I noticed that her jaw was quite red on the right-hand side. No bruise. Yet. I looked at her. Smiled.

The wooden box in which I had locked away my darkest secrets lay open on the table in the hall, its lid agape, lock smashed, contents violated.

‘Liar!’ she said, her voice breaking.

It was clear that she intended to ruin me.

The second time I hit Alice, I just couldn’t stop. I am very sorry about that indeed. I have been in control of my life since I was eighteen years old, and to lose control is a failing. Needless to say, I am not allowed to visit her in hospital. It is silly really. It is February 2012, so it’s been three months now. In her condition, she wouldn’t know if I was there or not.

It turns out that I am a violent man after all. It comes as a shock to me. I have been psychologically assessed. I decided to tell them almost everything. Apparently, I have been harbouring bitterness, resentment and frustration since my childhood. Now, there’s a surprise.

What will the neighbours think? What will anybody think?

I really couldn’t care less.





2. Barney


Alice O’Reilly was Avenue and we were Villas. That made all the difference in our neighbourhood. It still does. The houses on the Avenue are four times the size of ours, and their back gardens run along the gable wall of our terrace. Villas is a stupid name for our houses, as if we were somewhere foreign in the sunshine with beaches on our doorstep, when they’re really only pebble-dashed council houses.

The Poshies (as we used to call them) from the Avenue didn’t mix much with us. They went to different schools and hung out in different gangs, but Alice’s family were different from the rest. They weren’t snobby at all and didn’t look down their noses like the rest of them on the Avenue. My little sister Susan used to be invited to tea in the O’Reillys’, and my ma would boast about it to the other mams. I didn’t pay much attention when we were nippers, but I kind of knew it was a big deal when Alice came round our house because my ma would make us polish our shoes. It used to annoy me, to be honest. As if Alice was ever going to be inspecting our shoes. She was quiet, not especially pretty and seemed sort of ordinary, if you ask me.

The mother, Breda, was quite religious and Alice wasn’t allowed out that much. She was never at any of the dances or social occasions in the neighbourhood, not at ours and not at the posh tennis club ones either, so I heard. And that was probably because of Eugene. If you ask me, I’d say it was the age of the mother that caused Eugene to be the way he was. Alice’s ma was the oldest of all the mothers around. She was probably forty when Alice was born, and Eugene was born four or five years after that. We didn’t notice much until he got a bit older. He was about seven by the time he’d learned to walk, and his speech was strange too. I’d say that’s probably why the other posh ones in the Avenue didn’t want to be associating with the O’Reillys – in case poor old Eugene dribbled on their furniture. I don’t remember exactly when the da died, but it wasn’t long after Eugene was born. I certainly don’t remember ever seeing him. The da was a civil servant of some kind, I think. High up, like. I think he was in the Land Registry office, on good money too, I’d say.

Some of the fellas in our gang used to tease Eugene and make fun of him, but Alice was always there to defend him, and somehow no one ever wanted to upset Alice. She was a strange one herself, shy and mannerly; never said boo to a goose. She seemed to spend a lot of time with her head in a book. We all thought she’d end up in the convent; there was so many nuns visiting that house that we thought the mother had plans in that direction. Susan reported that their house was full of holy pictures. Most of them had been painted by Alice. Susan had dinner there a few times; she said Alice had to spoon-feed Eugene like a baby. The food was awful, she said, everything boiled to blandness and mush. We were surprised. We thought them on the Avenue would be having cucumber sandwiches on silver plates and all. Looking at it now, I’d say the plain food was for Eugene’s sake. He would never tolerate anything out of the ordinary, unless it was a biscuit or a fancy cake, but sure you’d only have them at Christmas, or if it was a birthday. Breda probably thought it was a great Catholic sacrifice for them all to make. I distinctly remember that on the rare occasion when Alice came to ours for dinner, she ate all round her and always complimented my mother on the food. Mam was delighted.

Susan and Alice were in the same class but different schools, so the odd time they’d be doing their homework together out of the same books and all. Alice definitely wasn’t as smart as Susan, not going by her reports anyway. Susan was the cleverest in our family, showing me up with her As and Bs. Alice would be getting steady Cs with an A or a B in Art. If you ask me, it wasn’t a lack of intelligence. She never had any time to be doing homework because looking after Eugene was a full-time job. The ma had arthritis, which got worse as she got older, but I think she realized that it wasn’t fair to Alice to have her minding Eugene for the rest of her life, so she made Alice pick something to do in college. Once Alice told us that, I was pretty sure we wouldn’t see much of her again. No one in the Villas ever went to college. I was kind of sorry for Susan because she was going to be losing a good pal.