St Finian’s wasn’t a bad school by the standards of the day. I don’t ever remember there being reports of sexual abuse or anything like that. The priests were, by and large, quite kind. There was the token sadist, naturally enough, but I reckon having only one on staff in an entire school in the 1960s was a pretty good ratio.
When I arrived in Oliver’s class, he had already been in St Finian’s for eight years. It seems really shocking now; the thought of sending my own little fella away when he was only six sends shivers down my spine, but it really wasn’t that unusual at the time. Oliver was pretty quiet, most notable for the fact that his clothes were almost threadbare. Because of this and because of his dark complexion, he was an obvious target for general slagging. Academically, he was pretty average, better at French than anything else though still not outstanding. For the first year, before I really got to know him, I assumed he was a scholarship child because he seemed so, well … poor. We knew he had no mother and assumed that she was dead. It was rumoured that Oliver’s dad hadn’t been married to Oliver’s mother or that she might have died in childbirth. He never spoke of her and it was just one of those things that was understood; it would be inappropriate to ask, like the fact that we all knew Simon Wallace was adopted but no one ever mentioned it.
Oliver spoke of his father though, often, and with reverence and pride. I can’t remember exactly what it was he did, something to do with the church, senior adviser to the Archbishop of Dublin, something like that. It was surprising to me that Oliver’s dad would be someone of importance because his general neglect of, and lack of interest in, his own son was staggering. What shocked me even more was the fact that Oliver had a sibling, a pale-eyed blond-haired half-brother, Philip, about seven years younger than him, who lived at home and went to the primary school attached to our school. I never saw them speak to each other in intimate terms. It was as if they were completely unrelated. But the most awful thing was that Oliver’s home was less than a mile from the school and he seemed to be forbidden from entering it. At Christmas time and during school holidays, Oliver stayed with the priests. From the window of the corridor beside the science laboratory on the top floor of the school, you could see Oliver’s house. Many, many times, I found him perched on the windowsill, often with my pair of binoculars, watching his family come and go. Somehow, it seems much more tragic now. In the macho world of an all-boys’ boarding school, there was no room for sentimentality or sympathy. If we were wounded, we learned to hide it well.
Oliver and I became friends in my second year at the school in a passive kind of way. We didn’t exactly choose each other. It was just because everyone else had friends and we were the two oddities with whom no one else wanted to hang out. My disfigurement and Oliver’s manifest neglect marked us as outsiders. He named us ‘The Weirdos’. We didn’t belong in the hip crowd and we didn’t belong in what we called the ‘mumsy’ crowd, and as we weren’t part of any particular gang, we buffeted along between all the various groups, falling out of favour with one and moving on to the next. I believe we trusted each other. Oliver dominated the friendship, which really suited me fine. I pretty much went along with anything he said, but he wasn’t much of a rule-breaker or risk-taker so I was never led into jeopardy. He never mentioned my eye and I never mentioned his mother. That was the basis of a firm friendship in those days.
He was curious about my family, constantly asking me to retell stories and anecdotes from my holidays at home. Not having a mother, he wanted to know about mine.
Oliver’s father visited maybe once every year or eighteen months. Oliver would be in a knot of anxiety for weeks leading up to a visit, trying his best to raise his grades and keep out of any hint of trouble. He looked forward to it and dreaded it in equal measure, I think. When my mother or other parents visited, they always brought gifts for their children, usually a tuck box of some description or, if you had particularly cool parents, a set of darts, water pistols or other weapons of minor destruction.
A boy would always be very popular in the wake of a parental visit as he would be expected to share the swag. Some suggested that Oliver was keeping it for himself and simply refused to share, but I know that wasn’t the case. His father never brought him anything, except a book of psalms once.
Approaching summer holidays towards the end of my second year there, my mother suggested that I invite Oliver to join us on the farm for a few weeks. I wasn’t sure about this plan, if I’m honest. It was one thing to be hanging out in school, whittling catapults out of branches and spying on the school nurse and her boyfriend, Father James, but school and home were very different environments. My home was a particularly feminine one, with a widowed mother and three girls, while Oliver was growing up in a school surrounded almost exclusively by men, except for the aforementioned nurse and a few of the jolly cleaners. I remember being worried by his reaction to my family and vice versa, but I needn’t have. All the women in my family fell in love with him. My mother would have adopted him if she could, and it was the most painful embarrassment to watch all my sisters going through the various stages of romantic attraction to him. Una, the youngest, was nine and spent as much time as possible climbing on to him for piggybacks or asking him to read to her. Michelle, thirteen, feigned a sudden curiosity in anything that Oliver had an interest in and spent her time baking new delicacies with which to charm him. Aoife, at sixteen, one year older than us, tried a different tack, pretending that she didn’t notice him, but always seemed to be in some state of undress when we walked in from the barn and developed a way of draping herself over our furniture that could only be described as louche.
Oliver took it in his stride. I’m sure he was somewhat discomfited, but he must have been flattered all the same. That was probably the first time he’d been around women of his own age. At first he was shy and overly polite, but he gradually relaxed until he almost became accepted as one of the clan. The plan was that he would stay three weeks. His father had apparently stipulated that Oliver must earn his keep and be put to work on the farm, but we were all used to working our summers on the farm anyway, so Oliver blended in quite well. Oliver proudly sent his first postcard to his father, telling him how much he was enjoying his time and assuring him that he was working hard nonetheless. Two days later, my mother received a phone call from Mr Ryan instructing her to return Oliver to the school immediately. He should have had another eight days with us, but Oliver’s father would brook no argument and offered no reason for the change of plan. My mother was very upset, I recall, and bought Oliver a whole new set of clothing before we put him on the train back to Dublin. Oliver bade us farewell stoically. He didn’t question his father’s decision or express resentment. He didn’t seem angry about it, but I clearly remember the shine of tears in his eyes as we waved him goodbye from the station platform, my three sisters blowing him kisses, my mother as heartbroken as they were.