Unraveling Oliver

⁶ MICHAEL

By the time we were in France, I was terrified of my homosexuality but had convinced myself that it was a phase I could grow out of. Even though I had never envisioned my future as a happily married father, I had always assumed that I would get married, father some children, and do what was expected of me. But that summer, it became impossible to keep my true desires buried. I wanted Oliver. But I couldn’t tell him. Homosexuality in Ireland wasn’t decriminalized until 1993.

My bunk was next to his in the dorm. I knew when he was sneaking out to meet my sister in the night. To my shame, I once followed them and watched as the moonlight glanced off the contours of their graceless humping. Not at all what I had expected. I had read Lady Chatterley’s Lover twice. Well, some of it. I had gleaned that sex was an earthy kind of thing, but somehow in my mind I expected it to be balletic. In reality, it looked base and animalistic. Definitely more Joyce (I had read bits of that too) than Lawrence. I felt like quite the pervert; firstly feeling lust for a man, and secondly watching my sister in the act. Shame on me.

It seems obvious, looking back now, that they must have known I was gay. I wasn’t particularly camp in my behavior, but my obvious lack of interest in the local damsels might have aroused some suspicion. On a stifling night toward the end of July, after several jugs of the local wine and a few puffs of a sweet-smelling cigarette from one of the locals, I could contain myself no longer. We were playing an old innocent childish game of Truth or Dare, although we had rechristened the game “Truth or Drink.” When asked a direct personal question, one had to either answer honestly or drink two fingers of wine from the jug. It was once again my turn, and one of the girls asked which of them I would like to kiss. I think now it might have been a leading question. There was an expectant hush as they awaited my response. Around the brazier, in front of all gathered, I threw my arms around Oliver with abandon (gay) and wildly declared to the assembly, “I am in love with Oliver!”

Laura smacked me in the face. Oliver laughed. His laughter hurt me more than the slap. Laura pulled me out of the tent, cursing my drunkenness. She was absolutely furious with me, insisting that I was making an utter fool of myself. I couldn’t be a gay. Dad would kill me. It was immoral. Father Ignatius would be scandalized. What was Oliver going to think? Et cetera, et cetera.

I don’t remember going to bed that night, but the next morning I woke in my bunk early with a sense of horror, fear, and shame. I turned toward Oliver. He was lying on his back, hands behind his head, facing me.

“Don’t be a queer,” he said. “I dislike queers, filthy bastards.”

I turned away in misery and blinked furiously to keep the tears at bay.

“You just haven’t found the right woman yet. You need the ride. That’s all that’s wrong with you. Bloody virgin. Leave it to me. I’ll get you fixed up.”

He bounded out of bed, reached over and tousled my hair, and flicked his towel toward my ass underneath my sweat-drenched sheet. If he was trying to turn me off him, he was doing a spectacularly bad job. I decided to go along with the charade, however. After all, Oliver disliked queers.

Oliver pointed out that Madame Véronique was a widow. Widows, he said, were notoriously “sex-mad.” Plus, she was French, and therefore sexy. He didn’t think that the fact she was twice my age should be an impediment. Oliver encouraged me to get closer to her. Offer to help out in the kitchen at mealtimes, compliment her on her clothing, her hair, etc. Ludicrous, I know, but it meant I could confide in Oliver, spend time with him.

Unsurprisingly, Madame was utterly baffled by my attentions. But what a marvelous woman! She taught me everything I know. In the kitchen.

She aroused my palate if nothing else. Ireland in those days was a gastronomic wilderness. Parsley sauce was considered the height of sophistication. Here, I learned that boiling was not the only way to treat a vegetable; that pastry was an artist’s medium; that meat could be smoked, cured, grilled, and braised; that herbs and spices added flavor; and that garlic existed.

My culinary education started by accident. Literally. When I presented myself at the kitchen door offering assistance that first morning, I witnessed the very event that was to shape my future. Ann Marie, the elderly kitchen helper, tripped and fell on her way to the sink while carrying a large tray of freshly made brioche, breaking her right arm in the process. It wasn’t a terribly bad break—there were no bones piercing skin or anything like that—but it was obviously painful. She yelped in agony and an enormous fuss ensued. The doctor from the village was sent for. Ann Marie was brought to the local hospital and we didn’t see her again for the duration of our stay. As I was already on the scene, and the show had to go on, Madame demonstrated what needed to be done with the brioche (sprinkle with water and pop into the oven), and assigned me to kitchen duties for the rest of the week. What bliss. I was a quick learner, and by the end of that day I had prepared my first vinaigrette, steamed six fresh trout (steamed!), roasted a sack of carrots, and sautéed some zucchini. Of course, it was some time before I could whip up a sauce velouté or produce my own peach barquettes, but I took to it like a canard à l’eau. Madame was an excellent teacher, but, if I may say so, I was an excellent student. Besides, I was indoors doing work I actually enjoyed, and though the heat could be monstrous with two ovens going, it was still better than sweating it out in the fields.

When I came back to the dorm that night, I was glowing with excitement. Oliver assumed that Madame had piqued my interest, but in fact I had completely forgotten that my mission was to seduce her.

Of course, Laura was furious: her brother was living it up in the kitchen; her boyfriend was leading an even more refined life in the library; and there she was, a mere paysanne. I tried to pacify her by telling her how well she looked. The physical work was toning her nicely, and once she had got past the broiled-face thing, she had developed quite a tan and was beginning to resemble a diminutive Amazonian warrior. She didn’t accept the compliment graciously, but complained continually of feeling tired and excluded. To my eternal regret, I paid little attention to her plight.

I made a few pathetic attempts to flirt with Madame, but she remained as unconvinced as I was. The language barrier made it that bit more awkward (as if it wasn’t futile enough), but I was determined not to disappoint Oliver. He gave me a few tips and I had my instructions.

At the end of one particularly hot and sweaty day, I brushed Madame’s hair out of her face and asked if I might comb it for her. Oliver insisted it was a guaranteed winner of a move. She was a little taken aback, but assented. Oliver was right. Women love their hair to be handled. As I was combing her hair, I had a marvelous idea. Madame’s hair was quite long. I took a thick strand in one hand and began to weave it into another strand so that it was sort of knotted on the top of her head. Tr è s chic. I had just invented a hairstyle. How stereotypical of me. It was actually a “chignon,” a typical French style popular in Paris in the forties, but how were we to know? I had never played with a woman’s hair before, and Madame may have known her bain-marie from her sabayon, but she was bloody hopeless in the style department. Still, she was no fool.

“Tu es homosexuel?” she said.

Luckily, the word translated very easily.

“Oui,” I said. And then I cried for an hour.

Madame was terribly sweet about it all. I haven’t a damn clue what she was saying, but there was much miming of finger to lips to reassure me that she would keep my secret. She wasn’t at all perturbed by the news—didn’t have me thrown out, didn’t laugh at me, wasn’t horrified. It all fell into place for her. A mystery was solved. Via sign language, I admitted that I was in love with Oliver, and that scandalized her a bit all right. She knew, as everyone did, that Oliver and my sister Laura were an item. She gave me a maternal hug and said a lot of stuff in French while gesticulating up the hill. I think she meant that I should go for a walk. I did. It didn’t help.

That night, back in the dorm, Oliver was eager to know how the seduction was going.

“Grand,” I said.

The daily struggle continued. Madame would catch me watching Oliver at the center of his new family with Monsieur and the boy. Bad enough to have my own sister as competition, but now I had Madame Véronique’s family too. I wondered if she was also jealous of the time her father and son spent with Oliver. She would smile sympathetically but then thrust her comb into my hands. I suppressed my jealousy, buried myself in my new role, and learned as much as I could in the kitchen.

A couple of days later, Madame introduced me to Maurice, a burly odd-looking vegetable producer who owned a farm at the top of the hill. Maurice’s English was better than Madame’s. He intimated that Madame had told him I was un homo. He said he was also gay and that he could bring me to a nightclub in Bordeaux where I could meet other gay men. I was puce with embarrassment, but he laughed heartily and took me away to be deflowered by the divine Thierry—a cross-dressing pig farmer from Saint-Émilion. The scales fell from my eyes that night. I realized that I belonged to this strange community. I fitted into this world. I still have dreams about waking up beside Thierry.

I arrived late the next morning for my kitchen duties. Madame winked and grinned and made some obscene gestures with her hands. What a truly wonderful woman! Of course, Oliver was full of questions about where I’d been. I made up something, but he knew that I hadn’t been with Madame, and I could feel his disappointment in me. Yet his disapproval of my homosexuality, which had previously so bothered me, now mattered not a jot. My feelings for Oliver had changed overnight. My sexual interest in him would never be reciprocated; what would be the point, after all? He figured out where I’d been and moved his bunk to the other side of the dorm. Still, nothing was said. Laura was more accepting now that I had taken my eye off Oliver. In fact, she went out of her way to help me with my assignations, arranging rides to the city for me and introducing me to other men she suspected of being gay. My summer took off in a completely hedonistic way, which now seems horribly inappropriate in light of the tragedy that was to come.

By mid-August, Laura was still complaining of exhaustion, much to the annoyance of the other workers. Everybody had complained in the beginning, but by now they were all used to it. Laura must have been quite isolated, in retrospect, her brother and her boyfriend working in the house while she labored in the fields. There were others in our group, of course, but she was closer to us than to anybody else. I was now far too busy with my new life to notice much about my little sister, though it was clear that her relationship with Oliver was fizzling out. He was spending less and less time with her and more time with the old man and the boy. Then, one day, she was carried into the kitchen in a state of collapse and the doctor was called for. Madame, as usual, took control. Oliver and I were worried, but Madame later explained to Oliver that Laura had a gastric complaint, that she would be right as rain after a week’s rest. She was installed in a turret room of the château, up two floors via a rickety wooden staircase. I looked in on her a few times a day. She was uncommunicative and tearful. I guessed that her relationship with Oliver wasn’t going well, but honestly I couldn’t blame him if he’d begun to lose interest. Her constant complaining had begun to grate on everyone’s nerves. I tried to gently broach the subject, but she didn’t want to know, saying that I “just wouldn’t understand.” She was right. I still don’t.

I tried to talk to Oliver. He maintained that Laura was simply jealous of our working conditions compared to hers. He admitted that he had tried to finish their relationship but said that Laura found it hard to accept that it was over. He claimed his work for Monsieur simply took up too much time and that Laura resented it.

It seemed clear to me that while Oliver might have loved Laura once, his love for his new “family” overshadowed that completely. Oliver chose to spend time with them rather than with her. I raised this carefully with Laura and suggested that she just give Oliver some time. It wasn’t as if he was going to stay with them forever. We would all be returning to Ireland soon enough, and although it was a strange infatuation, could she not see that it was just temporary?

Laura declared it was over, that she had no choice but to accept Oliver’s rejection of her, but refused to discuss it further. I thought there was more to it than that, but I didn’t push the issue. And then circumstances overwhelmed us to such a degree that Laura’s erratic moods were pushed to the back of my mind.

Three weeks later, the day after the harvest had started in earnest, we were all fast asleep in our dorms. Everybody was particularly exhausted, as all hands were on deck that day. My kitchen duties and Oliver’s admin ones were suspended, as there was a short enough window in which to pick the first harvest of grapes at their best. In a shattered state, I collapsed onto my bunk that night but woke some hours later in a state of disorientation. There were raised voices coming from outside. Oliver and Laura were shouting at each other; though, to be truthful, Laura was the one doing the shouting. Others stirred, and some went out to see what was going on. I had really had enough of Laura’s mood swings. She was just humiliating herself, and Oliver, and me. When I got outside, he was physically trying to remove her arms from around his neck. “You do love me! You have to!” she was sobbing, refusing to let go.

“Laura!” I called out to her sharply. She let him go then and turned to glare at me.

“Go to bed, Laura,” I whispered fiercely, “you’re making a show of yourself.”

Oliver turned, as if to walk away from me, but I stopped him. “Oliver, we need to have a conversation.” He looked uncertain but followed me back into the bunkhouse, and gradually everybody settled down again. In whispers, I began to apologize for Laura’s behavior.

“She’s not normally like this. I don’t really know what’s got into her… Maybe it’s the new environment. Maybe the work is just too hard for her.” I asked him to try to be a bit more patient with her. I understood he no longer wanted a relationship with her but asked him just to pay her a bit of attention so that she wouldn’t feel ignored. He refused to meet my eyes and kept fiddling with his watch strap. I was mortified at finding myself in this position, so soon after declaring my own feelings for him.

It was a few moments before I noticed a strange something in the air. I couldn’t place it, but instinct pushed me out of bed again and I rose carefully, unwilling to disturb the others. Oliver followed. We went out into the open air. The night was warm, but there was a distinct smell out here, and in my confusion I thought at first that someone must still be up smoking the herbal stuff. Oliver pointed toward the house. Unusually, there was little moonlight, so it was only possible to make out the bare outline of the château against the night sky, and then I heard a kind of crackling sound and suddenly I was running up the steps and I knew the smell was fire and the air was thick with it, and when I neared the top of the steps I could feel the scorching heat on my face and see that the ground floor of one wing was engulfed in flames. Oliver went to wake everyone.

If I had been more alert, if I had moved faster, if I hadn’t been so tired that day, if I had known, if I had thought about it, if I had… Jesus, I could fill the void with ifs. I started to shout, but my voice drifted meekly into the night, and I remembered that the acoustics of the place were such that I had to be actually on the terrace in front of the building to be heard.

One of my duties had been to summon the workers to lunch by ringing the bell in the tower of the disused chapel in one corner of the courtyard, and through the smoke I could see that side was unaffected by flames, so, roaring for help, I shouldered my way through the heavy wooden door and began heaving on the ancient rope until the bell was clanging frantically without rhythm in the chapel tower. The noise of the fire was loud now, cracking, spitting, groaning. I worried that there might be bedrooms directly above the salon, which was by now being consumed by a fierce and angry blaze. People began to appear out of the smoke, and all I could glimpse was a scene of chaos, confusion, and horror. I found Laura quickly, crying and clinging to an ashen-faced Oliver. I got a few of the lads to drag up the irrigation hoses from the field, but it took ages, and when they had unfurled them, it became clear they were fixed in position and didn’t stretch within ten yards of the fire. Several of the workers to my left were shouting and gesturing, trying to prize open the ancient stone lid of the disused well at the bottom of the terrace steps. Others were dragging a long-abandoned garden hose from the cave-like cellars underneath. Still others stood around, staring in shock. Then a creature appeared out of the flames, almost unrecognizable as human, but above the noise of the fire and the roars of instructions, I could hear a high-pitched woman’s voice screaming, not in the cut-glass, clean sound one hears from the archetypal heroine on TV, but an ugly, ugly shriek of yearning. I had never heard a sound like that before, and the thought of ever hearing it again fills me with dread. It was the sound of Madame’s loss, grief, and despair. Her entire body and whatever slight garment she was wearing were blackened, most of her long hair had burned away, and her head was smoldering. I grabbed her and held on tight as she tried to escape me and run into the gaping maw of the inferno, hoarsely screaming all the time, “Papa! Jean-Luc!” until she could scream no longer.

The entire east wing of the house was engulfed in flames which licked and grabbed at falling timbers, tiles, and masonry. Later I was to find out that the boy Jean-Luc often used to sleep in a cot bed in his grandad’s room on the second floor of that wing. I imagine it was an hour before the fire tenders came from the town, but time means little in the face of the elements; it’s an artificial construct that means nothing to the four winds. They pay no heed to ticking clocks. The firemen forced us back and finally took control. They were organized, and I admit that my reaction to their arrival was one of relief, although hope had been long vanquished by the flames.

There was nothing left of the east wing at the end of that night, bar the exterior walls. Through the flame-filled windows, I could see only the night sky and some collapsed roof beams. There was no hope for either of them. Poor Madame—her past and her future utterly wiped out in the unkindest way possible.

It was only after I had deposited Madame into the ambulance, completely broken and still convulsed by silent sobs, that I noticed Oliver was standing behind me, still, silent, his face a mask, his hands shaking as if independent of his wrists. He was in a state of shock.