About Oona O'Fallon and Me

 

 

 

 

I've been up in the attic again.

     I seldom go there anymore, but Oona was out for the morning and I was in 'one of my moods'.      "You know how pathetic this is? Don't you?" I muttered, as, key in hand, I climbed those steep stairs.

Pausing on the landing, my breath heavy with the dread of impending bereavement, I was

 afraid to open the door for fear they'd be gone - as Oona vows they will be one day ... Gone!

     Then, as my eyes adjusted to the half-light, I sighed with relief. There they were! Leaning seductively against the sloping walls. Waiting ... waiting for me.

     From the abundance of loveliness I selected my favourite and carried her to the window for better light. Brushed away the dust and sticky spider-webs and, with a clean handkerchief, gently wiped her lovely face. I know it sounds ridiculous but I think she liked it.

 She always had the most beautiful smile.

 

Holding her close, I looked down into the garden. The pink rhododendron was in bloom and, in a flicker of memory, I skipped seamlessly over forty years. Back to the magic times, when we were little kids and Oona O'Fallon was my best friend. 

    We're still friends of course, but somehow it's not the same anymore. Not since Oona's parents, died, or as my mother would have delicately put it, 'passed over'.

 

ooo0ooo

 

One bleak mid-winter's afternoon - when we were just nine years old - Oona O'Fallon found a rather large fairy hiding in her garden.  Of course we'd both seen fairies on other occasions but they were always tiny creatures - hardly distinguishable from butterflies at a distance. So this time Oona knew immediately something was not quite right. Alas I was not present on this momentous occasion - my mother had escorted me, protesting mightily to a dental appointment, but - as always, my best friend Oona faithfully reported every detail.

    As it later turned out, the situation was way outside any nine year olds's terms of reference. As I said the fairy in question was big - like about five feet- and it was naked!

      "Except for a see-through sort of thing", Oona told me.

      "Hello," said Oona. "Who are you?"

       "Who do you bloody-well think I am?" snarled the creature. "A fucking fairy?"

       Oona didn't understand that other word, but she did know something about fairies.

       "If you are fairy, then where are your wings?" she challenged

        "At the fffucking drycleaners," hissed the fairy through chattering teeth.

.       There was that word again.

   

                                                                                                                                     ooo0ooo        

 

Thus the scene was set for yet another O'Fallon drama. One of epic proportions. And, at that absolutely crucial moment I was miles away. Trapped in Mr Kirkpatrick's slipper, pump-up dentist''s chair; looking up Mr Kirkpatrick's hairy nose and missing all the fun. 

 

ooo0ooo

Perhaps , before I go any further I should say a bit about Oona and me and our respective families..

      The O'Fallons lived next door to us, at St Kilda, in a grand, old, falling-down house, with green shutters, dusty antique furniture and Fergus, who had once eaten a postman's left leg.

         "Right up to the knee!" insisted Mr O'Fallon. How his blue eyes twinkled.

     Fergus was an enormous Irish wolfhound who, when he wasn't devouring postmen's legs,  could usually be found excavating the O'Fallon garden. There were craters everywhere and one was very deep indeed.

         "Deep enough to bury that pest of a postman," said my friend Oona one day when we were digging for worms.

         Peering into the hole I shivered at the very thought.

       

Next door to the O'Fallons, in stark and desperate contrast, our red brick bungalow crouched behind a poisonous oleander bush.       

      Mum, when she wasn't cleaning things, spent much of her time worrying I would, for some reason best known to myself, eat but a single toxic oleander leaf and consequently die a horrible death.  Oona once brewed me a special tea from a handful of leaves but, coward that I was, I declined to even take a single sip. I've often wondered why my parents kept that oleander. It was much better suited to a tropical climate. 

      Dad shaved our parched grass with a push mower every Saturday, whether it needed mowing or not.

Oona's mother played bridge and grew peonies in a little greenhouse.

 

ooo0ooo         

 

 Oona's parents were rather more liberated than their contemporaries and worlds, even light years, apart from my own parents' rather narrow existence. For starters, my father was an accountant and Mr O'Fallon an artist.

        "Chalk and cheese, " Mum would say. "Chalk and cheese."

 

ooo0ooo

 

Until she married, my mother had stayed at home. "Waiting for Mr Right."

      Poor Mum. I used to think she must have been dreadfully disappointed when she got Dad instead of Mr Right, but she never said so and for as long as I can remember, busied herself around the house with an eager, often frenzied, efficiency. 

 

      Before Mr O'Fallon 'swept her off her feet' Mrs O'Fallon was a soprano with the opera. After travelling the world and leading a rather pampered life with her wealthy, doting parents, she'd seen no reason whatsoever to change the status quo when she wed.        

        Domesticity, she insisted, was quite beyond her.

    "My dear wife, "Mr O'Fallon would often declare in a proud but wry voice, "has not a single domestic bone in her beautiful body."

     And he was right. Mrs O'Fallon never dusted. She never swept and she certainly never cooked.  So, Mr O'Fallon, who was rather fond of his food, paid for a succession of dailies and cooks. Some were good but most were indifferent. It would not be unfair to say the O'Fallon household stumbled along in a permanent state of delicious, decadent crisis.

ooo0ooo

 

Mum always maintained she'd found me under a pumpkin vine, where I'd been thoughtfully deposited by a passing stork. This bewildering information only served to provide me with a whole new slant on bird poo.

 

Oona's mother told Oona she'd been 'conceived under the moon, in Venice,' but since neither of us knew exactly what conceived meant, that seemed about as likely as the stork story.

 

Fiercely protective, Oona adored her eccentric, feckless parents but she worried about them too. Beyond that she refused to elaborate.

                                                                                                           

My parents were a continual source of embarrassment to me. Mother always washed on Mondays - unless it rained. A rainy Monday was a major domestic disaster.  Routine was very important to my mother.

 

The O'Fallons sent their household linen to Mr Woo's laundry.

 

I thought the O'Fallons were the most exotic people in the whole world and Oona the luckiest little girl ever. I'd come to this conclusion for many reasons, but mostly because her mother always smelled of violets and, no matter how incompetent their cook, boiled cabbage never featured on the O'Fallon menu.

 

ooo0ooo

 

 

The O'Fallons seemed to go through cooks at an alarming rate. The most exotic was a fierce Mexican lady called Lola.

      'Just off the boat,' equipped with a particularly nasty temper, flashing eyes and long dark hair, Lola could neither speak, nor understand, English. Somehow at interview Mrs O'Fallon completely missed that last rather important point and Mr O'Fallon, while seemingly most appreciative of Lola's Latin, looks hated her cuisine and said so in no uncertain terms.

      "But darling," I heard her explaining to Mr O'Fallon some days later. "I really thought she was simply being so very agreeable. Saying "Si Senora" to every question I asked and of course it seemed only polite for me to say "Si Lola" in reply. And she had all these marvellous references. But they were in Mexican or Spanish."

      "Well now you'll have to do something about it," huffed Mr O'Fallon. "I can't eat that dreadful stuff she cooks. It burns my mouth and everything's got beans and hair in it."

      Mrs O'Fallon reluctantly agreed that Lola's fiery cuisine was totally inedible, finally had the references translated by a friend who'd once lived in Majorca and all was revealed! The references were Lola's own handwritten recipes, of which she was inordinately proud, and each precious dish required at least half a bushel of red hot chillies!

      Now sacking Lola proved to be more than a little difficult. So, for a couple of days Lola crashed around the kitchen, gesticulating, tossing her wild hair and shouting a lot in Spanish. She was closely followed by Mrs O'Fallon and Fergus. Mrs O'Fallon wringing her hands and repeating 'Si' at regular intervals and Fergus playfully nipping at Lola's left leg. Oona and I watched this drama from behind the safety of the pantry door.  When Mr O'Fallon came into the room Lola flung her arms wide and appealed to him.

         "Senor," she pleaded." Senor"

         Mr O'Fallon made himself scarce.

 

The Spanish-speaking friend eventually found Lola a job in an Indian restaurant - as not a single Mexican establishment could be found in Melbourne at that time.

       "It was simply the very best we could do for her," I heard Oona's mother telling mine. "And I do believe some Indian cuisine requires the occasional use of chilli".

      My mother, who found boiling our Christmas ham in the laundry copper a serious culinary adventure, just shook her head.

 

      ooo0ooo

 

Yes, one could definitely say Mrs O'Fallon was domestically challenged. However, this total lack of housewifely expertise was balanced by the fact she was as charming and kind, as she was witty and beautiful. And to top everything off she sang like a bird and played a wicked game of bridge.

 

ooo0ooo

 

One day I heard Mum refer to the O'Fallons as 'those awful Irish bohemians'.

          I couldn't wait to tell Oona, who promptly relayed this dreadful insult to her parents.

      "My Daddy," announced Oona when next she visited. "Says that no O'Fallon has never even been to Bohemia."

            My mother shot me an angry look.

      " My great-grandfather was a hero, continued Oona. "He was a rebel soldier from Ireland."

        Poor Mum - probably expecting a mob of drunken Fenians to materialise instantly in the street - rushed to draw the blinds.

     

ooo0ooo

     

Of course, all that bridge-playing meant Mrs O'Fallon was out of the house quite often and Mr O'Fallon and his roving eye must have been rather lonely. Even though he did have Fergus for company and a gramophone he played whilst working.

     Sometimes, for wicked diversion, he'd direct the music through the open window towards our house. My mother nearly fainted the first time "The Wearin' of the Green" blared out. 

 

Oona's father painted portraits of the rich and famous, but, his real love, his secret love, was the nude. The female nude! Since few, if any, of his wealthy and distinguished clientele had the desire, or the figures for that matter, to be preserved on canvas sans clothing, he usually paid a model so he might indulge his passion.

     On occasions, one thing led to another and other indulgences occurred.

 

 ooo0ooo

 

Much to the disgust of her mother's bridge-playing friends, Oona had made a worm farm in an old fish tank. She kept it the conservatory. Her parents thought it a most interesting and innovative hobby.

       You can see why I was always ducking into the O'Fallon's can't you? And why I made Oona tell me absolutely everything.

 

But back to Oona and the fairy. It happened this particular day Mrs O'Fallon had come home early from bridge and the current 'model' Mr O'Fallon had been painting had nowhere to go but down the back stairs, then to hide at the bottom of the garden and be sprung by Oona who, enthusiastically assisted by Fergus, was digging for more worms.

 

ooo0ooo

 

 

So, what did Oona do when she found the big fairy?

    She did exactly what you'd expect any little kid would do. She rushed inside and told her mother.

    "Come quick Mum," shrieked little Oona on top note. "There's a fucking, big fairy in the garden. She's got no clothes on and her wings are at the drycleaners. Hurry. Hurry."

    Is there a mother alive who could resist such an invitation? Mrs O'Fallon was outside like a shot. 

   The fairy was still there - shivering under the pink rhododendron - and needed little or no persuasion to come inside. Oona's mother - who was also noted for her good manners and hospitality - wrapped the fairy in a red tartan rug, lit the fire and produced a bottle of whisky.

       The fairy warmed up in no time at all.

 

By then Mr O'Fallon must have thought the coast was clear. He'd cleaned his brushes and put away the half-finished painting.  Lord only knows where he thought the poor girl had got to, stark naked, except for a wisp of gauze, and in a closely settled suburb too. But we must remember, he was an artist and not particularly practical. He probably simply hoped she'd gone. Somewhere. Anywhere. Just gone.

    It must then have been a bit of a shock when he came downstairs and found Oona, his wife and the fairy - the latter modestly clutching the tartan rug - all investigating the worm farm. I suppose it was a fairly neutral sort of thing to do ...  for a while.

    "But now," announced Mrs O'Fallon firmly. "There is a matter of great importance to be dealt with."

      The fairy kicked off - no doubt helped along by the two whiskies she'd tossed down in rapid succession. Oona said the fairy was definitely not at all pleased with her father - and nor for that matter was her mother!  For the first time ever, she detected more than a hint of steel in that gentle voice.

     Mrs O'Fallon, with one eye on little Oona, said the fairy would be lucky if she didn't catch double pneumonia and if she did, then she would have Mr O'Fallon to thank for it.

     The fairy concurred with a fair degree of profanity. Oona told me she distinctly remembered references to brass monkeys and various appendages freezing off.

    Finally, with a disdainful flick of the tartan rug, the fairy disappeared upstairs to retrieve her clothing. When she returned she graciously accepted yet another whisky and a large bowl of tomato soup. The latter provided by a tight-lipped cook who also tendered her immediate resignation and flounced out of the house muttering that she refused to work in an immoral establishment.

        Oona said her mother looked rather sad and thoughtful as she closed the door.

 

ooo0ooo

 

My dental nightmare over, we were getting off the bus, just as  a dishevelled young woman - whom I later came to know as the big fairy -  was scrambling into a taxi.

    In a slurred voice she was thanking Mrs O'Fallon, over and over again for her 'hoshpitality' and Fergus was peeing on a near-side wheel.

 

We stopped and stared. I was totally devastated. I knew I'd something very significant. Probably more dramatic than Lola. Or even more gory than Fergus an the postman. 

    Then, as the taxi, the fairy confirmed it all. Levelling a parting shot through an open window, she told Mr O'Fallon, in no uncertain terms, just where he could put his easel.    

    Mum clapped her hands over my ears and tried to drag me inside. She really hurt my throbbing jaw and I started yelling blue murder.

       Mum clapped her hands over my ears and dragged me inside. I yelled blue murder.

       The O'Fallon's hardly noticed..

    Fergus was barking and loping along beside the cab. Then he stuck his head in the window and licked the fairy. She screamed and the frightened driver sped off.

     "Now then," I heard Oona's mother say. "Oona! Fergus! Come inside at once." She turned to Mr O'Fallon. "I must say Cook's resignation concerns me greatly."

 

ooo0ooo

 

Next day Oona told me her father's expression of relief was short-lived, because the cook's resignation was not the first item on her mother's agenda. Once inside, Mrs O'Fallon immediately delivered more than a few terse words regarding the fairy and marital fidelity. They seemed to forget all about little Oona, so she kept very quiet and pretended to play with the worms. Oona said her mother raised her voice only once - when she mentioned Lola's name. That was a bit of a surprise because Lola had been gone for more than six months. Then, Oona said, her father actually swore.

            "He swore an Oath," reported Oona in a hushed voice.

       "I swear there will be no more big fairies," said Mr O'Fallon, with one eyebrow cocked towards young Oona, so she reckoned he must have known all along she was listening. 

     Mrs O'Fallon always found it almost impossible to stay angry for long and soon Oona heard her say that if the nude painting thing was really important, perhaps they could come to some arrangement.

      "After all," she reasoned, "I've a good figure, plenty of spare time and I only play bridge three days a week. It comes down to this. We simply cannot afford to lose another cook. To keep this family functioning and together we simply must have no more disturbances."

         That very day, behind the tankstand, and in my goggle-eyed presence, Oona cut her index finger, spat in the blood and swore an oath too. She swore she too would keep her family together and that there would be no more disturbances.

 

ooo0ooo

 

They are quite wonderful those paintings of Oona's mother. So many of them and the beautiful, young Mrs O'Fallon is naked in every single one. Quite erotic. But in spite of that I knew Mr O'Fallon would often visit a certain Indian restaurant when Mrs O'Fallon was playing bridge.

       "He just can't help himself," confided Oona at the time.

    

ooo0ooo

 

Then early one morning, Lola turned up, pregnant and dead. When we found her she was all curled over on the O'Fallon's lawn; half-in and half-out of Fergus' deepest crater. So my friend Oona pushed her right in. I stared slack-jawed in fascinated horror as she filled in the hole. Fergus made his own frenzied contribution. Then Oona made me swallow Lola's suicide note. I gagged and almost choked on the dry paper. I was washing it down with a glass of milk as the senior O'Fallons came down to breakfast.

       "It's better this way, Oona insisted later. "She has no family here. No-one will ever miss her".

       And no-one did.

 

ooo0ooo

 

The O'Fallons died some years ago and those paintings must be worth a small fortune today. But Oona won't display them and she won't sell them either. I think they embarrass her. You see, as sometimes happens with children of eccentric parents, Oona grew be a very conventional and rather prudish person.

       Why, for many years, we two may be the only people to have laid eyes on those lovely things!

         She doesn't even like the painting of the fairy!

         I love it! It's my favourite and I know it was Mr O'Fallon's too..

     He posed her so beautifully. Perched on a mossy rock under the pink rhododendron, her slender body is half turned and just below the delicate shoulder blades you can see the most wonderful gossamer wings unfolding in the pale, winter sunshine. 

    A small, secret smile hovers on her soft mouth and she doesn't look cold at all. The young Mrs O'Fallon looks very warm and pink and happy.

 

ooo0ooo

 

Whenever I go to the attic and study the painting of the fairy, I know I am searching for some resemblance. But sadly, little of her mother's grace and beauty has passed to Oona. I always come downstairs a little disappointed and, somehow, a little guilty. Perhaps after all those years I am still a little in love.

 

    I shouldn't complain, for I've always known there was never anything  fairy-like about Oona. She can't sing a note, nor can she paint and she loathes bridge. But, she's an excellent cook, a fastidious housekeeper and fiercely protective of her family. I never forget that last bit.

 

Oona is also a particularly astute businesswoman and for that she must thank her unconventional childhood. Mind you, her success has nothing to do with fairies or paintings.

      "I've had quite enough of all that," my wife says very firmly, whenever I mention the old days.