by Liz Nugent
Noreen McNally
Executive Director of St Catherine’s Residential Care Facility
My mammy loved me and Alice loved me and Barney loved me and God loved me I said my prayers every night every night I still say my prayers and I ask God to bless Mammy in heaven and Alice and my friend Barney but sometimes I forget sometimes I forget. I remember I remember Barney is my friend he used to take me for a drive in his car his ears stick out like a clown hahaha he makes me laugh and tickles me and tells me stories and brings me flying he is Grimace and I am Prince Sparkle and he helps me battle with the evil Queen who does wee-wees in her knickers hahaha.
Oliver? No nonononono. Oliver is the baddy man he stealed Alice from me and Mammy and Barney where is Mammy I want Mammy Oliver hurted me he pinched my arm and squeezed and squeezed I had a big purple bruise Alice is coming she brings me cakes and reads stories she says Oliver made Prince Sparkle she says Oliver writed it down but I know he didn’t he didn’t he didn’t Oliver is the bad Queen dressed up as a man.
Where is Barney? I miss Barney where is my Mammy I remember now she’s dead in a box in the mud she doesn’t like it to be dirty I don’t want to be dead why are all the dead people in the mud my daddy is in the mud too but I seed him in photos and Alice telled me he was a great man.
I forget lots of things all the time but I remember being in my house with Mammy and Alice and Barney visiting and telling me stories. Barney telled me he was going to marry Alice and I could live with them but it’s a secret and I’m not telling anyone I wish he would hurry up because Oliver the baddy man already married Alice and it’s Barney’s turn now. Alice went away when Oliver married her and they lived in a flat I visited two times but I was only allowed in Alice’s corner and Oliver has a locked-up green box for his writing and me and Alice are not allowed to see in the box. I want to know what’s in the box but Alice says it’s Oliver’s private business. One time I was looking at the box and Oliver shouted at me just for looking I think there’s a monster in the box. I wasn’t allowed to visit Alice after that and I was sad but Barney came and read me stories and we went in his car I’m not allowed in the front seat because I can’t stop beeping the horn Barney thinks it’s funny but the baddy men in the other cars are very cross very cross and I have to sit in the back. Mammy got sick and was in the hospital. Mammy is dead. After Mammy went in the mud Alice came home to live and that was nice I miss Mammy where is Mammy oh yes dead in the mud. Oliver came to live in our house too he is mean and calls me bad names and it’s my house and Alice’s house not Oliver’s house. I hate Oliver he punched me when Alice wasn’t looking and then he telled a lie he calls me a big fat pig I am big and fat but a man he is a pig stealing Alice and Mammy’s house he said I had to have my dinner in the kitchen and it’s his house now and he’s the boss of me but I like the kitchen and I like Mammy’s and Alice’s and my house but not when Oliver is the boss. Oliver took my flying chair and goned it somewhere I don’t know Barney doesn’t come and do flying any more now he can’t no chair. Oliver fell over in the garden one time and I laughed and laughed it was funny. He went to the hospital and when Alice came home, Oliver telled her that I hurted him his tail is as long as a telephone wire but he locked me in my room and I shouted all night until Alice let me out she was crying and it wasn’t funny any more and I was sorry for laughing when Oliver hurted himself. Then another time I was sitting at Alice’s dressing table brushing my hair with her silver hairbrush that was Mammy’s she’s in the mud and Oliver came in and smashed the mirror and turned the dressing table upside down. I was frightened and Alice came running and the big fat liar says I done it but I didn’t for cross my heart and hope to die and then it’s my birthday and I have a cake with birthday candles and I blow them out and wish that Oliver isn’t here but Oliver is nice to me on my birthday and lets me play with his lighter that is shaped like an aeroplane in the shed in the garden but there is an accident and I am very bad boy because I started a fire and help! help! like in Jane Eyre one of Alice’s favourite books. Oliver says he is scared of me and doesn’t want to be in the house with me hurrah this makes me happy and dancing because Oliver is going away but he isn’t going away I am going away and I hate him.
Oliver said I had to come and live here in St Catherine’s I don’t know what St Catherine’s is I think it’s where a saint lives and I said yes if Alice comes too. He lied and said Alice was coming too Alice telled a big fat lie and then she is crying crying and it’s me making her sad and Oliver says it’s me making her sad I have to go to St Catherine’s on my own. No Mammy.
I was frightened here in the start where is Saint Catherine not here no saints here just some mad people I know I’m a bit mad Barney told me I’m a bit mad in a good way but the people who live here are really mad in a mad way much more mad than me and some of them shouting but not in words just in noises I don’t like shouting and some of them like dead people strapped in wheelchairs and fed like babies with bibs and televisions on everywhere loud louder.
And the boss is a lady Miss Noreen who is all smiley and laughing when she rings Oliver to tell him I’ve been a bad boy I can hear her through the wall in the nurses’ station but here no smiles laughs chats but Lord Snooty face and ignoring everyone only shouting at the nurses where is Mammy I remember now in the mud where is Alice she used to come on Tuesdays with cakes and we play games only now she doesn’t come any more either. In the start I was really scared and want to go home to my own room and my own bed with my record player that Barney gave me but Alice says I live with twelve friends some of them don’t like me and some of them love me Nurse Marion is my favourite I don’t like Miss Noreen makes me sit with my hands under my legs Christy is very old he dribbles like I used to Mammy said that was bad manners and I told Christy but he was shouting and Miss Noreen said go to your room it’s not my room it’s all of our room there’s Christy, Billy, Malachy, Conal and I forget the others we share a big room and no talking when lights are out and no stories at bedtime and no jam sandwiches in bed I remember Barney jam sandwiches and stories with the Selfish Giant and the one about Alice going down the hole with the rabbit but I’m in a story with Grimace and I am the Prince so that’s my favourite one Christy went in the mud yesterday no more dribbling thank God.
He was dead in his bed and I told him look after Mammy in the mud Nurse Marion is my favourite one she’s here in the daytime and gives me sweets our secret Alice didn’t come yesterday, or last week, or lots of weeks. I seed Miss Noreen and Nurse Marion fighting. Miss Noreen made Nurse Marion cry Nurse Marion asked me about Barney and where he lives I telled Nurse Marion that Barney is my friend and she ringed him up and now he is visiting me every day he telled me that Alice is in Happyland drawing pictures and flying around in a chair. She is not in the mud. He sweared me that and Barney always telled the truth. Barney says we can visit Alice when I am growed up, but I think I am a growed-up. Barney says I must be growed up more.
12. Oliver
My study is a high-ceilinged room at the rear corner on the left-hand side of the house. When Alice’s father was alive, he might have used it as an office or a den, but when we moved in, it was a kind of playroom for Eugene. Full of soft toys, picture books and an old record player, it was grubby and disorganized. In the centre of the room, on an old, foul-smelling rug, there was a chair that might have been more suited to the kitchen – Shaker-style, with spokes emanating from the seat to a bar across a low back, and arm rests. It had been painted many times over the years, and several layers of blue, red and yellow paint flaked under the general grime. This apparently was Eugene’s ‘flying chair’. I suppose I should have been flattered that my first book inspired the flying chair, but it certainly was not what I had in mind.
The room was bright and airy, however, with two tall sash windows dominating the two exterior walls, one looking out to the back lawn, the other on to the side path of the house. The two interior walls were decorated in floral wallpaper, punctuated her
e and there with Disney posters, Duran Duran wall charts and Michael Jackson album covers.
It was the only room in the house with a sturdy brass lock on the door, and I insisted that this was the only room in which I would be able to write. Alice was at first reluctant, but I persuaded her that we could fit out a room upstairs for Eugene – in what would have been her old bedroom (we had moved into her parents’ bedroom). One day, when she and Eugene went out for the afternoon, I stripped the room bare, gutting it, and dragged all the detritus on to a bonfire at the end of the garden. The fuss that ensued was unwarranted, in my opinion. Eugene was most upset about the damn chair. As if the house were not full of chairs, all of them better than that particular specimen. He sobbed like a baby, and I realized quickly that I could not live with this kind of disturbance.
I redecorated the room to my own taste. A gentleman’s room, with teak panelling and bookcases lining the interior walls, and heavy velvet curtains framing the windows. I had the long-disused fireplace opened up, and I placed my antique mahogany partner’s desk at an angle facing the two windows. At an auction, I later purchased a leather upholstered library chair, a standard lamp to be placed behind my chair, and also a desk lamp with a green glass shade. Subtle lighting is very important. From a company in the UK, I purchased a leather-bound desk blotter, and, from a vintage bookseller, a few select first editions with which to fill my bookcases. Within a few short weeks, the room looked like a writer’s room, and indeed, on the few occasions when I have granted interviews at home, the interrogator has in every instance remarked on how atmospheric the room is, exactly how they imagined the study of an award-winning author. As if, just by getting the look right, the words would flow.
Alice knew that I must not be disturbed. It pleases me that she thought my genius required isolation and silence. I used it to good effect when that little moron Eugene wanted to know what was in the green wooden box. Alice never showed much curiosity, but Eugene would not give up. He was obsessed by it. On the few occasions that I allowed Eugene and Alice into the room, he would waddle over to the bookcase and look up to the top shelf, where I had placed it.
‘What’s in the box, Oliver? What’s in the box? Is there a monster in the box, Oliver? What’s in the box?’
‘Nothing,’ I would insist, ‘just boring birth certificates, passports and insurance documents. Nothing to interest you.’
‘Show me! Show me! I want to see what’s in the box! Show me what’s in the box!’, stamping his foot for emphasis, and I would call Alice and complain that he was disturbing me, and demand that she remove him from my presence. He would often hover outside the door, waiting for me to come out, and as soon as I opened it, he would dart in on top of me. ‘What’s in the box, Oliver?’
Eventually I informed Alice that I could no longer write while Eugene lived under our roof. She agreed finally to his moving out when I found an obliging care home willing to take him. It was not cheap, a fact that Alice seemed not to appreciate. She accused me of ‘hating’ him. She overestimated my feelings for her brother: I simply did not want him around.
Alice continued to whinge for years, used to bring him out to the house at Christmas time for the first couple of years, but every single time it reopened the arguments and I felt it was in everybody’s best interests just to put a stop to it. The last Christmas that he came, I got him alone in the kitchen and told him a very special story in words that he could understand, and made it very clear that he would be unwise ever to visit again. Afterwards, he just walked up and down the hall with his coat on, backwards and forwards, muttering to himself. Alice was beside herself with worry and kept asking him what was wrong, but thankfully he had understood my little story and kept his stupid drooling mouth shut. Then he started to cry, and Alice took him back to the home. Later, when I pointed out the wisdom of my decision not to accommodate an overgrown baby who was clearly disturbed, she walked out of the house and didn’t come back for three days. Her first act of rebellion. I knew she would be back though. I never doubted it. She loved me too much. I never had to see the buffoon again, though Alice persisted in visiting him.
Once Eugene was out of the way, I settled down into a routine, although in 1993 this was disturbed by Moya, who had moved in next door. She and her dull husband befriended us straight away. I flatter myself that Moya was impressed by my celebrity. She was apparently something of a celebrity herself, having appeared in a television soap opera, but I had no idea who she was.
From very early on she flirted openly. There I would be at my desk in my study on a winter afternoon, painstakingly parsing every sentence, honing it to perfection. I would look up momentarily and Moya would be out in her garden, putting washing on the line, wearing nothing but a pink diaphanous gown and a pair of high heels. She must have been frozen. She would catch me looking, and scurry inside, feigning embarrassment, but Moya is a truly awful actress and it was painfully obvious that she intended to seduce me. I’m not terribly surprised. Her husband was such a nondescript nonentity that I cannot think of a single interesting thing he ever said or did. Occasionally I would see him in the garden, gardening.
In the summer months, Moya made an almighty display of herself, sunbathing nude on an extended sunlounger positioned perfectly to face my rear window. The view was rather nice, I admit it.
When we began our affair, she would write messages on large pieces of paper for me, and hold them up to her side window for me to see in a kind of semaphoric billet-doux. I was rather touched at the time. It seemed very sweet. We even managed to continue our arrangement while working abroad, most notably in New York, when she was to be in the Broadway version of Solarand. That ended in a huge bloody mess when Moya was fired and then almost caught me in the arms of the cute little actress who replaced her. You would swear that Moya was the wronged wife the way she went on about it, but I managed to talk her down and, after a while, we resumed our liaison.
Towards the end, the whole affair became stale and I redecorated the study again, reappointing the furniture so that my desk faced away from the windows. She was not happy about that. But I had my wife to consider, and I did not want Alice to be unnecessarily hurt.
At the very start I used a typewriter, but Alice often remarked on how little ‘clacking’ she could hear, so when word processors came on stream I used those, and now I have a turbo-charged state-of-the-art computer that allows me to work silently and stealthily. Of course, there is now a world of available distraction on the Internet and one could spend days on end looking at curiosities such as Victorian pornography or titanium drill bits, if one was so inclined. There is social networking too, Facebook and Twitter, which must be a curse to other writers, but suited me perfectly when I had time to waste.
However, when I was creating the Prince of Solarand series, the Internet the way we know it now had not been introduced, and there were far fewer distractions with which to fill my day. I would disappear into the study at 9.30 a.m., after breakfast, locking the door behind me. Peace and quiet and solitude. I would take up my Irish Times and begin with the Simplex crossword, moving on to the Crosaire. Then I would read the news, devouring every inch of the Irish Times, the Guardian and the Telegraph. I kept myself politically informed of the machinations of both the left and right wing, which gave me a rounded picture of what was going on, useful for punditry. (I am afraid that, as informed as I was, I did not see the economic crash coming. I lost at least a hundred thousand euro in poor investments – stupid bloody accountant – and I’m sure the Bulgarian properties are worth nothing, but I risked very little comparatively speaking.)
I would emerge at 11 a.m. for tea and biscuits and listen to the current affairs show on the radio for about half an hour. Then I returned to the study and attended to correspondence. Usually requests for media interviews and public readings; invites to literary festivals; letters from Ph.D. students using my opus as a basis for their theses:
Dear Mr Dax,
I have found a gre
at deal of allegorical evidence in your work which would suggest that your children’s stories are loosely based on the Nazi persecution of the Jews prior to and during the Second World War and wondered if I might trouble you for an interview …
I, and my complete works, have been the subject of no less than eighteen academic theses, and several publications have sought to deconstruct the stories. I have been deliberately unhelpful to these students, but they have persisted in finding all sorts of hidden codes and meanings in my work.
Alice often suggested that I should engage a secretary. ‘You have no time to deal with all that!’ she said.
After lunch, I would read for an hour or two, the classics mostly, although latterly I had taken an interest in the Old Testament of the Bible. I now have an extensive library. I once overheard Alice say to Moya, ‘I don’t know where he gets the time to read all of those books!’ Where did I find the time, indeed?
At one stage, out of boredom, I had some gym equipment installed there to keep myself in shape. ‘You’re so right,’ Alice said, ‘you need to have some distraction during the day!’
At 4 p.m., I would begin the actual work: one word at a time, using several different dictionaries and thesauri, laying out the sentences again and again, reworking each section several times until I came up with just the right construction. I allowed myself just one hour a day at this work. I had to make it last.
‘You must be shattered!’ Alice would say when I emerged from my laboratory, and I would agree and smile indulgently at her. Alice worked damn hard at her illustrations, and so I would sometimes cook for her and she would be grateful.
I do not mean to sneer at Alice. She made everything possible. Alice was always loyal. It is a wonderful quality in a wife.
