Unravelling Oliver(57)
I visited her in the hospital the next day but she never regained consciousness, so now I visit her once or twice a week and I hold her hand and talk to her because in films sometimes that works and you can get a fella back to normal. I tried bringing in old songs she liked and I put headphones on her head, but she never stirred. One day I was chatting away, reminding her of the time we went to Galway and got drunk on the port, and she opened her eyes and I roared for the doctors, but they said it was nothing and that just because she opened her eyes doesn’t mean she’ll get back to normal. I saw a film, a foreign one about a fella who was in a coma like her, but he knew what was going on and you could tell because one of his eyes would follow you round the room. Alice opens her eyes now from time to time, but not like she’s seeing anything, just as if she’s blinking but in reverse, if you know what I mean. She smiles sometimes. I hope she’s remembering happy times.
I don’t think she’s going to get better now, but I still like to go in and chat because you never know.
I started going to see Eugene too. He’s just the same mad fella he always was. Delighted to see me. The other day, didn’t he lift me up in a chair and off we went! I was scared out of my wits and this bossy one screams at him to put me down, but weren’t we only having a bit of a laugh.
Oliver has signed over guardianship of Eugene to me. It was all done through solicitors. It was complicated because Alice is his next of kin, but she’s not dead and Oliver’s her next of kin even though he half killed her. Oliver had the nerve to ask if I’d go and visit him. Apparently, he wants to ‘explain’ himself. Fuck him.
Enough of him. I’m having Eugene come and live with me. There’s social workers and assessments and all sorts involved, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to happen. I’ve cleared out Mam’s room, and I’ve wallpapered it, and I’ve bought loads of books for him. Not those books, obviously, but other ones. I got a CD player too for his room. The fella tried to sell me an MP3 player, but sure what would I want with one of those. I already had to buy all my records on CD after the record player broke and I couldn’t get a replacement. It’ll be the MP3 this week and something else next week. I can’t keep up. I got a new car too. The back seats are high up so that Eugene will be able to see out properly. I’m giving up smoking. It’s really hard, but it wouldn’t be right with himself in the house. Eugene and me will have a grand time.
Every time I visit him, he asks when Alice is coming. I can’t tell him yet. I’ll take my time and think of something. Maybe he won’t be upset to visit her in the state she’s in. I don’t know, but I know when he moves in with me, he’s going to want to run around to his old house and see her. It’s all boarded up now. I’ll have to think of something to tell him.
The papers called it ‘The House of Horror’. It seems to me that if you stub your toe at home these days, they call it ‘The House of Horror’. They are having a field day. In the first month afterwards, I had to go in and out my back door because of what they call the ‘media scrum’. They want my story. My story is that I loved and lost. They won’t get many headlines out of that.
Epilogue
Oliver – Today
Infamy is a lot more interesting than fame, it seems. It is not just the tabloids who think so. An acre of newsprint was used up in documenting the fall from grace of the successful writer who turned out to be a plagiarist and a wife beater. Pundits who might previously have described themselves as close personal friends are now granting interviews in which they claim that they always knew there was something strange about me. They speculate that I was in the habit of beating my wife, despite the lack of evidence at the trial to support the theory, and they relate conversations that never happened that imply I was always violent and that Alice was terrified of me.
One rag published a school essay from over forty years ago to highlight my bad prose and to illustrate my unfocused narrative. The Ph.D. students who once flocked around me like acolytes claim I have destroyed their careers and their credibility. Diddums. Critics claim that somebody who had no children could never have written stories that appealed to them so much. That is not what they said at the time. In fact, they said back then that it was because I did not have the responsibility of children that I hadn’t fully grown up and therefore could more easily access the mind of a child. Fools. They have delved into my past and my background and asked questions about my parentage. They found no more dirt than my father’s early priesthood.
My brother Philip wrote to me six months after the trial. I can only imagine his sanctimonious hand-wringing. I’m sure he agonized over whether writing to me was the ‘right thing to do’. He offered his services as a chaplain or confessor in case I should ever want to ‘unburden’ myself. He assured me that God’s forgiveness is possible and that, if nothing else, he was ‘always there to listen’. Bin.
I miss Alice.
I thought I would not be able to eat the food here, but actually it’s quite good and there’s plenty of it. I have eaten less well in Michelin-starred restaurants, though the presentation could use a little attention.
The building in which I am housed is a decrepit Victorian institution, impressively daunting on the exterior and drab with neglect and stained Formica surfaces on the interior. Men and women are segregated. That suits me fine.