Liz Nugent - Unraveling Oliver

About four months after my father’s death in 2001, I received a letter from Philip. My brother. His mother had told him of our fraternal relationship and he regretted not knowing of it earlier. He wanted to meet. I deliberated for days over whether to do so or not. What could he have to offer me? How could we possibly have anything to say to each other? Curiosity, however, got the better of me and we arranged to meet privately in a city-center hotel.

He was extremely nervous. I was not. In appearance, he is not like my father at all. His blond hair is receding. He has not aged as well as I have. In fact, I look younger than he does.

When I arrived, he was seated in a winged armchair in a discreet corner of the lobby. He stood awkwardly and we shook hands. He had ordered sandwiches and a pot of tea. He proffered a cup and saucer. I declined and knew my refusal made him uncomfortable. To be obtuse, I asked the waiter to bring me a large Jameson before I sat to join Philip.

“It’s good to finally meet you properly,” he began. “I haven’t seen you since the funeral… I didn’t know then…”

I was direct. “What did you know?”

“He told me you were a distant cousin. Mum told me the truth afterward.”

A cousin. Interesting.

“Did he ever mention my mother?” I couldn’t help wanting to know.

“He said…” Philip hesitated. “He said she was a woman of ill repute.”

He said it apologetically, and it sounded ridiculous, such an old-fashioned term—biblical, one might say.

“Mum thought she might have been a nurse,” he continued. “She never knew. He didn’t talk about it. Ever.”

A nurse? It was certainly more plausible than Father Daniel’s version of events.

“An Irish nurse?”

“I suppose so. I really don’t know. They were different times. I am so sorry. So sorry that he abandoned you like that.”

I interrupted him. I can’t bear sentimentality.

“You are a priest?” I wanted to know why.

“Yes, indeed, I always, well, I guess, I always wanted to be a priest. Since I was about fourteen years old.”

“To be like him?” I sneered. “Or to get away from him?”

He looked confused.

“You did know he was a priest? Before… me?”

“Yes, yes, I knew that, but I did not want ‘to get away from him’!”

“You didn’t want to get away from a cold and callous bastard like him?”

I could feel my temper flaring a little.

“He wasn’t like that at all,” said my brother. “He was a wonderful father, caring and generous and affectionate. He loved us.”

It was at this point that the waiter delivered my Jameson. The timing was good because I needed to compose myself. My father, affectionate ? Caring? I had assumed that he treated his wife and his son in a similarly pitiless manner to the way he had treated me. I had expected that Philip had been raised in an atmosphere of dread and that Judith had feared her husband.

I drained my Jameson and ordered another.

“I’m sorry,” said Philip. He apologized for his happy childhood. He fumbled inside the breast pocket of his jacket and handed me an envelope.

“You should have had this,” he said.

My fingers started to twitch. Finally, a letter. Something to explain everything. Perhaps an apology? Perhaps the truth about my mother? There was nothing written on the front. I was embarrassed by my trembling hands as I took it.

I tore it open and saw that it contained a check signed by Philip. I didn’t even register the amount.

“We should have shared everything,” Philip stammered. “But I’d like to… I’d like… if it’s not too late…”

I shoved the check back into its envelope and gave it back to him. I was shocked by my own anger. I wanted to hurt something, to bite something. If I thought my hopes of my father’s forgiveness had been buried with his corpse, I was mistaken. I felt suddenly anchorless, weightless, like something very dangerous might happen. Heat rushed to my face. I felt rejected all over again. I was cheated. Why him? Why Philip and not me? Philip’s open, honest, innocent face seemed to invite a punch.

“In his entire life, he never gave me anything beyond what he was legally obliged to provide.” I tried to keep my voice low and calm. “ I made my life a success. Me. Alone. I don’t need money. What makes you think your bastard brother needs your guilt money now?” I stood up.

“Please, please sit down, I’m not giving it to you because you need it, don’t you see? It’s not charity; you should have had it before. It is rightfully yours.” My mind slipped away to thoughts of the lengths I had gone to out of poverty and desperation all those years ago. An awful and dreadful deed that I would not have even considered if I’d had my father’s financial support at the time.

“It’s too late.”

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to be crass. It was just a gesture really. I wanted you to see that I am willing to share anything. My mother wants it too.”

“Your mother knew he abandoned me, and she did nothing about it.”

He had no reply to that, but, dogged, he tried another tack.

“I know we can’t make up for… what happened, but we could try… I could help you… to move on? We don’t have to be strangers anymore. My mother wants us to be friends. You’re my brother, for God’s sake!”

I could see how anxious he was, how rattled he was. How naïve of him, to think that a chat and a check over a cup of tea could fix anything. What kind of fantasy world did he live in? I knew it wouldn’t take much to push perfect Philip over the edge.

“For God’s sake? Really, Philip? You think your God would allow something like this to happen? There is no God.”

I had found his Achilles’ heel. I had questioned his God.

“What’s wrong with you?!” he cried. “I’m just trying to do the right thing here. If I’d known years ago… I was told you were bad news!”

“You never questioned it, you never wondered? About ‘your cousin’?”

“Why would I? I had no reason! I still have no idea why he hated you—” Philip stopped himself, but it was too late and the words could not be unspoken. I walked away. Philip never tried to contact me again. I bet he’s glad now that we did not establish a fraternal bond. After all, he was told I was bad news. He was told the truth. Ask my wife.

Con started talking about retiring. He was only sixty-two. Nothing scared me more. At least when he was working full-time, I could pretty much do what I wanted, go where I wanted, and carry on little liaisons here and there without much need for explanation. The thought of Con’s bland, empty face mooning around me 24/7 gave me the heebie-jeebies.

My long affair with Oliver was fast losing its gloss. I’m not stupid. He was turning down more invitations than he was accepting. He didn’t even bother to come up with an excuse, just gave me a curt “no.” I fretted for months, booked myself in for a bit of lipo around the stomach and upper thighs. That seemed to rejuvenate our relations temporarily, but by October of last year I was pretty fed up with being ignored or dismissed and taken for granted, and I plotted a way for us to get time by ourselves. The answer seemed to lie in a two-week residential gourmet cuisine school in the French countryside. Not for us, obviously. For Alice. It changed all our lives. Mostly for the worse.

Dermot from L’Étoile Bleue put the idea in my head. I was dining with some actor friends there one evening, and when he graciously presented the bill, a flyer for this French cooking school was attached. An idea began to form. I suggested to Alice that she would really enjoy it. She was immediately enthusiastic about the idea but didn’t like the idea of traveling on her own. Con, who must have been hovering somewhere while this discussion was going on, decided for the first time in his life to buy me a decent birthday present: a two-week residential gourmet cuisine course in France. With Alice. He is such an idiot.