Unravelling Oliver(51)
The elderly owner of Chateau d’Aigse befriended me early on. I translated for the others. My spoken and written French were good, and he was genuinely interested in me and wanted to know what I was studying, how I intended to use my degree, my plans for the future. After two weeks, Monsieur asked if I would be interested in doing some transcribing work for him. I readily agreed, thinking that the office work would involve typing invoices or some kind of record keeping. That is what he led his daughter to believe. He asked for my discretion and overpaid me. He introduced me to his grandson, Jean-Luc, the most beautiful and charming child I will ever know.
On the first day I reported for duty in the library, Jean-Luc was there also and Monsieur asked me to take a seat while he read his grandson a story. I was intrigued. Jean-Luc formally stepped forward and shook my hand. I knelt down to his eye level and returned his greeting with a little bow. He laughed and looked up at his grandfather and, pointing at me, he called me ‘Frown’.
As Monsieur began to tell the story, I watched the boy’s face as he perched on his papi’s knee. He was transfixed by the tale of a happy young prince of a fantastical land and would exclaim in the middle of the telling, would hide his eyes at the arrival of the bad witch, and clap his hands in excitement at our hero’s escape in the end. I realized that Frown was a character who protected the Prince, and that the Prince was clearly modelled on Jean-Luc. I, too, thought the story was wonderful and said so to Monsieur d’Aigse. He was very happy to be complimented and explained that he had written a series of these stories on and off over the last decades, but that they consisted of handwritten notes. He wasn’t even sure how many stories there were. He had developed a palsy in his right hand and could no longer trust his own penmanship. My task, he said, was to type up all these stories to be pasted into some expensive leather-bound books he had bought for the purpose. It was to be our secret. He thought his daughter would disapprove that I was not being used for estate work, but I think she very quickly guessed what I had been employed to do. She did not interfere, however.
As I heard his stories, I thought they were good enough to send to a publisher, but Monsieur insisted that they were written solely for his family and that when Jean-Luc was older, he could decide what to do with them.
Laura began to complain bitterly that I was not spending enough time with her. She was right. I was enjoying myself with my two companions, and on several occasions I was invited to dine with the family. Madame Véronique was a little more distant than her father and son, but I loved being there with them and was reluctant to leave when the working day was done.
I tried to humour Laura, promising that I would devote the next night to her, but I rarely kept those promises. The old man treated me like a son. He thought I was a good man. A family was more seductive than anything she could offer me, although I continued to sleep with her because, after all, a man has needs.
As I set about typing these stories and then laboriously pasting them into the leather-bound books, I found myself growing closer to the old man and the little boy. I was included in their secret world, and they accepted me without question. I could not get enough of their company, and it suddenly seemed to me as if I had somehow been wasting my time with Laura, as if no mere romantic relationship could be worth more than this platonic one between three menfolk who might, in some realm of possibility, have been three generations of the same family. I lost almost total interest in her affection and her vibrancy, and by now used her only for sex. All of the things in which I had previously delighted were now meaningless, as if the spell of the enchantress were broken. This new connection felt somehow purer.
For the first time in my life, I felt able to confide my private thoughts. I told Monsieur of my father’s lack of interest in me. He was clearly appalled and he shook his head in wonder, as if to say, ‘How could a man not be proud of this boy?’ and I loved him for it. He suggested that there was enough transcribing work to keep me busy for more than one summer, and I agreed enthusiastically to return the following year.
The truth is that I did not want to leave. There wasn’t that much time left. The idea of returning to my drab and lonely bedsit filled me with revulsion, and even thoughts of Laura’s affection failed to quell my growing anxiety about the future.
At this time, I was worried about my prospects. I did not have the family support that most of my fellow students had, and my existence in Dublin was hand to mouth. I hid it well, bought good second-hand clothing, borrowed books, stole stationery, and when in private survived on tea, bread and whatever fruit I could scrounge from the market. I let my friends think my parents lived in the countryside somewhere, and never allowed any visitors to my bedsit. I stayed in their homes and met their families and got more insight into how the other half lived. I desperately wanted what they had, but there seemed to be no way for me to achieve it. I was jealous of their lifestyle and their lack of anxiety about what lay ahead. I was headed for the lowest rung of the civil service, without the all-important contacts that everybody else seemed to have, or the financial backing to set them up in business. When I borrowed the fare to France, Father Daniel very gently informed me that he could not continue to fund my life beyond college. We were both mortified. I was grateful for everything he had done for me. He again suggested that I could come back to the school and teach, but that was now out of the question. I had finally escaped boarding school and there was no way I was going back. I was getting plenty of female attention, but I foresaw that when it came to marrying time, no family of good standing would allow their daughter to hitch herself to a penniless nobody. I needed a plan.