I shoved the cheque 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 any more. 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 na?ve of him, to think that a chat and a cheque 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.
21. Moya
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 thought of travelling 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 a gobshite.
Oliver didn’t seem terribly interested when I told him the bare bones of my plan and how it had backfired. He was increasingly distant with me and insisted it would be good for us, Alice and me, to go. I’m not sure how I let him talk me into it. He actually wanted me to be friends with his wife. The few times I had made a disparaging comment about her had been met with a frosty silence on his part, so I kept my thoughts to myself. He said he really did need time on his own to work on his next book. This book, he said, was going to be the most important thing he had ever written. Initially, I was suspicious. Wasn’t this the excuse he gave Alice when we were due an assignation? Was he seeing somebody else? He was certainly interested in getting us both out of the way, and showed no interest in where we were going or what we were doing. If I had been Alice, I’d have just taken the credit card and gone on a spree, but God love her, she was never the brightest.
We travelled to Cuisine de Campagne, an hour from Bordeaux airport. I did the driving (even when she drove on our side of the road, Alice was a terrible driver. Oliver refused to buy her a decent car, as she had accumulated so many scrapes, dings and insurance claims that it was a wonder she was still on the road).
The cookery school was based in a small village. The classes took place in some large modern chalet buildings overshadowed by what must have been a very impressive chateau at one time. One of the wings of the chateau functioned as our lodgings, individual bedrooms opening on to a gallery, below which was a large lounge and communal eating area. Overseen by the elderly but sprightly Madame Véronique, we spent a wonderful two weeks immersed in the culture of French food and wine, with day trips to local bakeries, olive groves and vineyards. The grounds were beautiful. Apparently all the surrounding land had belonged to the chateau until recent years, and we had permission from the local farmers to wander as we pleased. We met other food lovers from Europe, the US and Canada, mostly women our own age, but of course there was inevitably the one handsome single man: Javier, early fifties, handsome, slightly portly. His hair was silver, not that dirty grey you see on Irishmen. Actually silver. He owned a riverboat on the Garonne and was talking of converting it into a floating restaurant.
I admit that the competition from the other ladies was stiff and that I did suffer a tinge of guilt when I thought of Oliver (and none at all when I thought of Con), but Javier was divine. I was very tactical in my approach, at first paying far too much attention to a balding fat Texan and his wife, but then gradually inserting myself into his eye-line as subtly as possible. I am an actress, you see, so I know how to attract attention. I know how to accentuate my attributes. Botox only gets you so far.