Unravelling Oliver(39)

Laura had a brother called Michael, who turned up one morning out of the blue at the kitchen door to offer assistance with bread making. It was a serendipitous moment for all concerned, except for Anne-Marie, who was startled to see a big, pasty-faced Irishman in the kitchen, and got such a fright that she fell over and broke her arm. Anne-Marie was my Girl Friday in the kitchen, if one can justifiably describe a 77?-year-old as a girl. She had been employed by the family since the first war, and I had asked for her help in the kitchens the previous summer, and we worked well together. She related to me the stories of my mother’s legendary beauty and her generosity. I am constantly aware of how much I have to live up to with the legacy of my parents’ goodness. On that day in 1973, Anne-Marie was finally persuaded for the first time to take a leave of absence while her arm healed. A 77?-year-old bone, however, does not heal easily and I knew I must do without her for some months.

Michael, oblivious to the fact that he was the cause of the accident, was quickly enlisted, as lunch was to be served for thirty people at twelve o’clock, while poor Anne-Marie was taken off to the hospital. Luckily, Michael was clever, and as cookery is about demonstration and repetition, the language problem did not become an issue. However, I was astounded by how little he knew about food, how few ingredients he even recognized. Maybe it was true what they said about the Irish, that they ate only potatoes. Michael learned quickly and, what is more, he enjoyed it and was flamboyantly enthusiastic about every aspect of the process. I could not be certain that there was not some other agenda though, and one or two times I caught him looking at me as if I were a kind of unknown ingredient that he was not sure whether to peel, boil or plant.

One day, he flicked my hair out of my eyes rather clumsily, and it came to me suddenly that perhaps he had some kind of inclination to be a hairdresser, so I allowed him to play with my hair for a while. How stereotypical, I thought, a gay hairdresser. He was, quite obviously, gay.

His French was still quite halting, but when I precociously asked him about his sexuality, he had no problem understanding and crumbled instantly, weeping copiously. I realize now that this was his ‘coming out’ and that my words opened a floodgate of guilt, repression and confused identity. I ascertained that he was in lust with his friend Oliver, who was dating his sister Laura. Catastrophe. I assured him that I would tell nobody, and arranged for him to meet with Maurice, our neighbour, who was openly gay and spoke some English. I hoped that Maurice would be able to counsel Michael, so I was quite cross with him when it soon became apparent that he had taken Michael to a gay nightclub. I thought that might be rushing things, but what business was it of mine? They were adults, after all.

So now I knew Oliver and Michael well enough. Laura was the person who connected them, and soon she made her presence felt in my life too. She was a lovely girl, perhaps a little spoiled, but she hated the fact that Oliver and Michael were in the house and that she only saw them in the evenings, while all day long she was left with the others in the orchards, so when she collapsed one day and was stretchered up to the house, I was suspicious to put it mildly, thinking that this was a ploy to get into the house and attract some attention. But she was pale and sick. I was right to be suspicious, but not in the way that I thought. I took her to the doctor in the village, and with her consent he told me that Laura was pregnant. I was initially annoyed. This was my first year taking migrant workers, and first there was the trouble with the Africans and now this. These employees were my responsibility, and clearly her thoughtless behaviour meant there had already been trouble. There have always been ways to avoid pregnancy, and I am not talking about abstention. I tried to be calm when I spoke to her. She was very tearful and afraid that I would ask her to leave the estate. I was not sure what to do. She begged me not to tell Oliver, fearful that this would spell the end of their relationship, although it was apparent to me that the relationship was practically over anyway. He had fallen in love with my family instead. I did not know what advice to offer Laura, so I offered none. She was from a strict Irish Catholic family. Despite the family chapel on our estate, Papa had raised me without a faith and without a need for the guilt in which other Catholics seemed to like to indulge. The options that might have been open to a faithless Frenchwoman would have been unthinkable to an Irish teenager. Laura was only nineteen years old, but she had to make her own decisions. Her brother Michael was concerned. She lied to him, telling him that she had some gastric flu. I allowed her to stay in the chateau for a few days, but then sent her back to the fields. I left it to her to make her choices. Just a few weeks later, I no longer cared. Not just about Laura, but about anything.

During the war, Papa ordered 100 gallons of paraffin for the lamps in the wine cellar so that the Jewish families who stayed there would not have to spend their waking hours in complete darkness. It was delivered at night by a friend in the Resistance who had good contacts in Paris. I know my father sold my mother’s jewellery to pay for it, as gold was the only reliable currency at the time. When the house was raided in 1944, the Germans at first thought it was petrol and tried to fuel their trucks with it, but of all that they had destroyed in the house, the only things they left behind were the cans of paraffin, discarded in a lean-to shed adjacent to the library in the east wing of the chateau. Papa’s bedroom was directly above the library. By 1973, the entire building had long since been wired for electricity. It had crossed my mind at some time to dispose of the oil, but my father, who had lived through two wars and was more conscious of rationing than me, insisted that we hang on to the oil, in case of another war or a simple breakdown of electricity, which he still did not entirely trust. It was a particularly dry and dusty summer. On the 9th of September 1973, it had not rained for eighty-four days, and temperatures were well above average for the time of year.