Liz Nugent - Unraveling Oliver

We rented a spacious flat in Merrion Square for a few years. I insisted on a big place because I needed privacy to write. I can only write behind a locked door.

Those were good times. We made a bit of money when nobody else did. It made financial sense that we would collaborate on what was becoming quite a successful series. During the day we would retreat to our separate corners to work. Me, producing my books. She, cleverly matching pictures to my words. She was good at it too. Her work flattered mine appropriately.

I became quite well-known as a critic and occasional scribe for the weekend newspapers and for an infrequent guest spot on televised talk shows. In those days, everyone was more discreet and low-key about their achievements, their successes. Not like current times—I can’t tell you how often in the last decade I was approached about partaking in a “reality” show. Heaven forbid. Alice avoided all of that, which suited me really. She didn’t like the limelight, and she underestimated her own contribution to the success of my books, insisting that my work was more important, that she was just a doodler. She was timid and didn’t even want it known that we were a husband-and-wife team in case she would be “forced onto television.” Rather sweet, and it meant that for a lot of the time I could continue my life as a seemingly single man. It had its rewards. Truthfully, she couldn’t have been a better partner.

Alice’s mother died suddenly in 1986, at the end of our fourth year of marriage. Thanks be to God. I can’t stand old people. Can’t stand it even more now that I am getting to be one.

I used to make excuses to avoid visiting her and her doily-draped furniture. Used to pretend to be too busy to eat with them when she came to visit us. It was never pleasant to witness her struggling with her dentures, the half-wit dribbling by her side. Her death was a mixed blessing. We got the house. But we also got Alice’s imbecilic brother. The house is quite a pile on Pembroke Avenue. The brother goes by the name of Eugene.

Alice begged me to let her keep him. Until now, that was the biggest upset in our marriage. Bad enough to have a child, but this was a twenty-seven-year-old, two-hundred-pound dolt we were talking about. Eventually I had him accommodated in a home for the “mentally handicapped,” or “special needs,” or whatever they are calling them this year, at considerable personal expense.

When we got engaged, I made it very clear that children were not on the agenda. Well, I said I didn’t want children, and she agreed. I should have got that in writing. She must have been extraordinarily besotted with me to sacrifice something so fundamental to her in order to marry me. Maybe she thought I would change my mind, because it seems that lots of men do. Or maybe she knew that if I didn’t marry her, I’d marry the next quiet one that came along.

Of course, five years into our marriage, Alice began to whine and grew more shrill with each passing month. I reminded her of our agreement. She claimed that at the time, that was what she had wanted too, but now she desperately wanted a child. I am nothing if not a man of my word.

I couldn’t depend on her to protect herself, so I took control. I made a ritual of bedtime cocoa with a little crushed pill as an added extra. Alice thought that was so romantic.

I haven’t exactly been a saint within our marriage. Women, by and large, are attracted to me, and I do not like to disappoint them. Women you would never expect. Even Moya, for God’s sake. I eventually resent the ones who try to cling.

In later years, I had begun to satisfy myself with some tarts that operated near the canal. I never objected to them, even before I became a client. They were objects of curiosity. They were cheaper and more desperate, mostly addicts with raddled bodies and ropey veins but perfectly adequate for my needs. I would order them into a shower before any congress was allowed and I always provided a new toothbrush. Some of them took it for a gift. Pathetic. They are usually too emaciated to be good-looking. One would think that they might make an effort to make themselves attractive. Alas, they were only selling their various orifices; the packaging was immaterial. But still, they held a fascination for me. After all, my mother was one, or so my father said.

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 the 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 harboring bitterness, resentment, and frustration since my childhood. Now, there’s a surprise.

What will the neighbors think? What will anybody think?

I really couldn’t care less.

Alice O’Reilly was Avenue and we were Villas. That made all the difference in our neighborhood. 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 was 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 at the O’Reillys, and my ma would boast about it to the other mams. I didn’t pay much attention when we were children, but I kind of knew it was a big deal when Alice came over 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.

Her 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 neighborhood, 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.