Unravelling Oliver(55)

Gradually, it dawned on me that these stories could be my escape route. If they had not died, if I had become somehow part of their family, would these stories not also have become mine? I was the only one that the old man had trusted to transcribe them. Why? Why a strange Irish boy he did not know? Why not a local scholar? Why did he choose me? If Jean-Luc was no longer around to benefit from these stories, well then, why not me? The fire was just the result of a minor deception that went awry, I told myself, desperate to justify my plagiarism, and once I had made the decision, it was easy. I only needed to rewrite them in English, change any identifiable details and publish them under a pseudonym, just to be sure. If I were to publish a couple of thousand copies in an Irish print run, I might be able to secure a future for myself.

The first publisher I approached expressed interest, and that expression of interest allowed me to engage an agent who quickly negotiated a rather quick and unprecedentedly lucrative deal on the strength of the fact that I could pitch at least ten sequels on the spot. I immediately bought a good linen suit and a sports car on hire purchase from the proceeds of the advance.

A month later, I met Alice, who was to be my illustrator, at the launch of another book whose author my agent also represented. I could not believe my eyes when I saw her first drawings of Prince Felix. Without any guidance, she had captured the essence of a small French boy, nine years dead.

I invited Alice to come away with a small group of us to Paros on holidays. I planned my seduction terribly well and it was surprisingly easy, made easier by the clown that was Barney, who not only permitted his girlfriend to come travelling with me, but also arranged with her mother to look after Eugene in Alice’s absence. It wouldn’t have made a difference in the end. She was predisposed to love me because, as she later confessed, she was in awe of my stories.

By the time the first one was published, I already believed that I’d written it. The advance blurb was so positive that I immediately thought my father might change his attitude towards me if I was successful, if he had something to be proud of, so I invited him to the launch. He did not come. I made no further attempt to contact him after that.

Alice and I got married and I lived happyishly ever after. Alice was happy enough too, I suppose, once she’d resigned herself to being childless and got used to the idea of the imbecile being in a home, although my liaisons upset her from time to time, when I was careless enough to be caught, usually when Alice had done something to irritate me. But I was never careless with my darkest secret and kept it locked away in its wooden box.

It turned out that my meek and mild-mannered wife was more sly and devious than I could have imagined. Three months ago, she returned from her little cookery trip without Moya. Moya had finally got the courage to leave her husband for a Frenchman she’d met at the school. I had long ago come to the conclusion that Moya was a pain in the arse and had been in the process of dropping her, though God knows she did not take the hint easily. Now that Moya had left Con for another man that wasn’t me, I felt nothing but relief, though admittedly my pride was a little wounded.

I noticed that Alice was particularly quiet, and Moya’s early-morning phone call from France a few days previously had put me on edge. With nothing to lose, had Moya spitefully told Alice of our affair? When Alice had caught me out before, it usually led to weeping and stony silences for days and recriminations and stomping off to the spare room for a month until I promised to give up the floozie and never do it again. But I knew that this one would hurt more deeply. Alice had always thought of Moya as a friend, and it had been going on for years, not just one of my ten-weekers. When I broached the subject of Moya with her, she only said how devastated Con must be and that she hoped Moya would find happiness, but Alice’s mood was odd. She had a sudden confidence that I didn’t quite trust. I thought maybe she knew about my affair with Moya but was relieved that Moya was now out of the picture. I rationalized that either Moya’s absence made her more secure or she felt finally superior to Moya. I was quite wrong.

Four days after her return, on that chilly November evening, Alice prepared this terrific meal and said nothing at all until the raspberry roulade.

‘Did you get the recipe for this on the cooking trip?’ I said, trying to be breezy.

‘It’s funny that you should mention that. I had a very interesting time. You never asked exactly where we went. Let me show you the brochure.’

I saw the word ‘Clochamps’ before I saw the picture of the chateau and was instantly shocked into speechlessness.

‘Madame Véronique remembers you very well.’

I still could not say anything. She stood up, took the fork out of my hand and lowered her face to mine.

‘You are a fraud, a liar and a thief!’

So I punched her. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

The really ironic thing is that by the time Alice discovered my true deceit, I was actually working on my own book. The first truly authored by me. It wasn’t a children’s book at all. It was a very dark tale about neglect, abandonment, grief and lost children. It was loosely based on the story of Cain and Abel. I wonder where I got the idea?

My God, writing is boring. Starting was the worst part, and it has taken me almost five years to write sixty pages. All I had been doing for the previous twenty-four years was reading, parsing, translating, and then using my trusty thesaurus to change the words around to take the Frenchness out of them. That was hard work too and took a great deal of skill. Though, as it turns out, writing does not come naturally to me. Under the guise of Vincent Dax, I regularly gave interviews to the media, exclaiming that the Prince of Solarand books pretty much wrote themselves. It was my little insider joke. Now that I have attempted to write, I can understand why other authors were so infuriated by my statement. Well, I continue to be baffled by theirs.