The Gulf Between Us Read online

  ‘I don’t think living next door to Matthew will have made Kyle gay. I don’t think that’s quite how it works.’

  ‘No, no, course not… well, I never! Is he,’ she lowered her voice, giggled, ‘d’you know?’ she whispered: ‘an on top or an underneath?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Giver or taker? You know!’

  It was Karen all over again. Cheryl felt she had permission to talk about Matthew as if he were a non‐person whose sexual preferences were an acceptable subject for general speculation. She wouldn’t have dreamt of asking me if I preferred having sex on top.

  Over the years, I’d managed to persuade people in Hawar that my sons weren’t suspect and delinquent on account of not having a father and I wasn’t a nymphomaniac slyly stealing husbands because I didn’t have one of my own. But now, suddenly, we seemed to be exposed in ways I couldn’t control.

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said coldly. ‘I haven’t asked.’

  Perhaps Cheryl realized she’d gone too far then, because she made moves to leave, still making sympathetic but scandalized noises. I let her go, wondering what gay people could possibly do sexually that everyone else didn’t, or couldn’t imagine. Surely, not that much? – so it was a mystery why gay sex was so endlessly fascinating, as if it must be more titillating and wicked than any other kind: unimaginably, thrillingly dreadful.

  Sticking up for Matthew evidently wasn’t going to be entirely straightforward. It had seemed easy enough to tell Cheryl – I hadn’t had to screw myself up to get the words out – but as soon as she knew, Matt became for her simply one of those people who did that. His Matthewness was obscured by whatever ideas she had about homosexuals: misfits, freaks, moral failures, sexual perverts, whatever – and she no longer felt any need to be polite. So while it hadn’t been difficult getting the words out, I could see that dealing with people’s reactions could become quite wearing. (My own reactions had been a bit intemperate initially, I know, but I was his mother and entitled to be disturbed. Besides, I was getting past all that now.)

  It seemed farcical that Karen thought he needed psychiatric help and Cheryl couldn’t focus on anything except whether he liked penises inserted into him or preferred doing the inserting. Especially when you considered that this was Matthew – sweet, inoffensive Matthew – who, when he was a toddler, used to creep into the bed in the middle of the night between me and Dave, padding through the house into our bedroom, clambering up and slipping silently into the space between us. And then, when I woke, there he’d be: unnoticed as I slept, getting exactly what he wanted. Soft breath on my cheek, one arm hooked around my neck. If he could find the space without disturbing us, he preferred to sleep in a ball, as if he’d clambered back into the womb, relieved to have abandoned yesterday’s stretching and straightening and testing his strength and to have gone back to being a tiny, protected infant. I remembered how softly his skin would lie against mine, a buttery curl of a baby, hot life coming out of his mouth: vulnerable and trusting, relying on me to make everything right. And even though now he was six foot two and powerfully built and having gay sex, quite a lot of that was still there between us.

  Over the next few days I persisted with my new policy of including Matt’s gayness in any conversation I could, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. By now quite a few people already knew – Antonia, for instance, who called to find out if I’d seen James Hartley again yet and if I was ready to bring him round to dinner at her house. ‘By the way, darling,’ she said when I explained that I hadn’t seen him and didn’t know anything about his plans, ‘I heard about Matthew’s big coming out… what a hoot. I suppose you couldn’t tell us on Al‐Hidd, with your family there? – I imagine they could be tricky…’

  Not everyone was as efficiently networked as Antonia, however, and, most of the time, I didn’t know if people knew or not. So when I bumped into Siobhan Armstrong, the mother of a girl who’d been in Will’s class, in the jam aisle at Al Jazira and she asked how the kids were doing, what was I supposed to say? ‘Well, Will got married – I expect you heard? – and he and Maddi are on honeymoon, but moving to London next week, and Sam’s back at school working on his IB, and Matt’s gay’?

  This would definitely have been a good tactic if Siobhan already knew about Matt’s sexuality and was uncertain whether to raise the topic herself. In that case, if I hadn’t said anything, she might have thought I was in denial. So I did mention it, but in a passing kind of way, at the same time as saying he was working at Palm Publishing and going travelling next year and starting his English and drama degree at Manchester in October.

  Immediately, I realized that Siobhan not only hadn’t known, but would much rather not have done so – or, at least, not have been told by me, because she had no idea how to respond. It was way too much information; I could see from her sympathetic but alarmed expression that she thought I must be terribly distressed to be blurting it out like this without invitation at near‐strangers in the supermarket. It wasn’t the kind of thing you said in passing, to mere acquaintances; it put them in an awkward position, because they didn’t know if you wanted commiseration, or praise for your insouciance. She thought it had induced a mad Tourette’s‐style compulsion in me.

  The one person I was not remotely tempted to tell was Anwar, who came into school on Tuesday, parking his Hummer across the entrance in the place where it said ‘No Parking’, then loitering in my office.

  ‘I have been listening to a tape of Mohammed Alireza,’ he announced, leaning against the filing cabinet. ‘It is a pity you don’t speak Arabic. You should hear it. The west wishes to destroy our values.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said, not really concentrating.

  ‘For example, the Americans want to nuke Mecca.’

  ‘Hang on a minute, Anwar, I don’t think so.’

  ‘No. It is true, it was on a website.’

  ‘If that’s true, it’s just one person. Mad person.’

  ‘And in a magazine the Americans have written that this is no time to be precious about individuals – that to stop the so‐called terrorists they should invade our countries, kill our leaders and convert us to Christianity.’

  ‘That’s probably one person too. There’s no control over the press in the United States. And you can write anything on the internet. People who say things like that are crazy. Everyone thinks so.’

  ‘There are many crazies in America. They shoot each other in high schools. And they think they are the good guys!’

  ‘Anwar, there are loads of things you love about American culture…’

  ‘Alireza says if things are going wrong in the Arab world, it cannot be the fault of Islam.’

  ‘No, well, I don’t suppose it is…’

  ‘So either we are not praying enough, or it is the fault of outside influences. Or both. Perhaps Islam and kufr will never mix under any circumstances.’

  It was difficult to know where to start. Why are people always trying to make you join in with their prejudices? It would be OK if they were just bigoted in a quiet personal way. But they will insist on turning them into demands on you.

  I felt irritated by Anwar until late in the afternoon, when James rang and said – and as if he really meant it – how lovely it had been to see me on Sunday.

  ‘You too,’ I answered, and then realized that this was silly, because obviously it was lovely seeing him. The whole point of him was that he was lovely to see, which is why he had a manicurist and a masseur and a personal trainer.

  Dealing with James, I could see, might require some adroitness. He was in a whole other key.

  We eventually settled on dinner at the Al A’ali House on Sunday – which, what with dad, Chris, Karen and Andrea’s stopover on the way back from Dubai, and Will and Maddi’s on the way back from the Maldives, plus his filming schedule, was the soonest we could manage.

  I had no idea what this impending dinner date amounted to or what he wanted from it. He talked to me
with a kind of flirtatious intensity that seemed a bit strong if he saw me simply as an old friend and wanted to catch up. There was a kind of sexiness which – even though I only had a hazy memory of the last time I’d had sex – I was sure was directed quite deliberately at me.

  There hadn’t been a vast quantity of passion in my recent past. I’d had plenty of offers, but what had actually taken place had proved rather desultory: a couple of short affairs with divorced men who’d been in Hawar earning money to pay for ex‐wives and keep children in private education, and whose emotional focus, it turned out, had really been elsewhere; a brief fling with a married man who’d complained phonily, tactically, about the state of his marriage, and whom I’d ended up disliking rather a lot; a one‐night stand with a bloke who’d never married and I felt afterwards I could sort of see why.

  I could have been much busier; could even, if I’d wanted, have been married. More than one man who failed to get my clothes off had suggested a lifetime of cohabitation instead. (How was that going to work? Men can be quite thick.) Single women over the age of thirty are in short supply in Hawar, and there was an assumption among the single men (and an alarming number of the married ones) that I must be available. I was a bit like Everest, demanding to be conquered because I was there. But the men involved had rarely seemed worth the hassle of an affair – which is not to say I didn’t often feel quite wretchedly sexed‐up. Sometimes I thought the reason I was targeted for quite so much flirting was that unsatisfied sexiness was sort of spilling out of me wherever I went. I continued to go around being a school secretary and mother of three as if nothing was happening, imagining the sexiness was entirely invisible. You couldn’t see, hear or even smell it; but, unfortunately, you could obviously pick it up in some other way, which led to an embarrassment of propositions. On occasion – and this was more difficult to deal with – I also developed crushes on people, but they were mostly married to other people, women I knew, and I am not completely stupid. Plus, they were only crushes, directly traceable to not having been held by anyone for months on end. Desire swilled around me, looking for an object, and settled on whatever was about. Which I knew, deep down, wasn’t enough. Not even, under the gossipy village circumstances in which we found ourselves, for a fling. To justify lying to the boys, potentially upsetting their lives, the possible exposure, I would have had to meet a man in whom I believed utterly. And that would have changed everything. In some ways it was easier that there was so little chance of its happening here.

  The best you could say for me and sex was that I’d had just about enough to remember the order in which things usually happened. I certainly wasn’t unused to attention from men, but they were most definitely not men like James Hartley. When he fixed his lighthouse‐beam of sexiness on me, it was unexpected and unlooked‐for and quite delightful and, right now, I couldn’t actually have cared less what it amounted to. A man had arrived in Hawar who would also have been hugely attractive to women who were already having a normal amount of sex. And he was interested in me. All I could do was enjoy it while it lasted.

  Six

  Chris bothered to call from Dubai, even though, as he pointed out, hotels slapped a sodding great surcharge on the phone bill. He didn’t bother with a preamble – no nice beaches, how are you? having a great time – just started straight in: ‘You have to tell dad about Matthew. I can’t keep it secret any longer. It’s embarrassing. I’ll be on the point of saying something about it to Karen and I’ll realize he’s standing there.’

  ‘Can’t you find an alternative topic of conversation?’

  ‘It’s not me who wants to talk about it. Dad’s the one who keeps saying how nice Matthew is…’

  ‘Well, that’s true.’

  ‘… And what a lovely girl Jodie is and do I think she’s his girlfriend? What am I supposed to say to that?… Ann?’

  Now they were back, with a few hours to spare before their flight on to London. Chris and Karen were lying round the pool at the Sheraton, Andrea had gone down to the beach, and I’d brought dad inside the hotel.

  ‘Can I get you something?’ I offered. ‘Beer?’

  Dad looked at me in alarm, thoughts of Happy Valley expats mad with boredom sliding across his face. ‘It’s the afternoon!’

  ‘Yes. Sorry.’ What was I thinking? Dad’s need for alcohol had always been satisfied by the odd sherry at parties and a couple of snowballs at Christmas.

  I indicated a low table and chairs. ‘Tea, then?’

  ‘OK,’ he said, still puzzled as to what all this was about. ‘Not the perfumed one, though.’

  Narrow‐hipped Thai, Filipina and Indian girls in long colourful tubes of skirt drifted noiselessly between the tables. I caught the attention of one of them and ordered a pot of tea.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you…’

  ‘Have you heard from Will?’

  ‘No, but they’ll be back on Wednesday. It’s about…’

  ‘Where are the boys, then?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Why was he looking round the atrium? Did he think they might be lurking in the foliage? ‘They’ll be here later. Actually, it’s about Matthew – what I wanted to say.’

  ‘I’ll try not to fuss too much, when he comes. I understand they don’t always have proper mealtimes.’

  ‘Yes, it’s not that, exactly…’

  ‘Oh, thank you, dear,’ he interrupted, as the whippety Thai girl silently delivered tea cups.

  ‘The thing is,’ I took a deep breath, ‘you should know before he comes to stay – not that it… but, of course, you should know anyway… So, anyway, last week, Matthew told us he was gay.’

  I finished in a rush: told us he was gay. Not is gay. As if it might just be one of those crazy things kids say.

  Even under the subdued lighting, I could see too much of dad’s face. The skin seemed to be stretching apart around the pores, opening up a sieve of pockmarks. That must be why grey bristle seemed to be crusting on his chin, because it was out of character for him not to shave. All the elasticity was going from his flesh, as if his body couldn’t make the effort any more.

  I felt terribly sorry for him. I reached over and touched his hand. ‘It’s a shock.’

  Dad stared past me. ‘It must be a mistake,’ he mumbled.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘But he’s so normal.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s not a phase?’

  ‘It might be,’ I allowed, ‘but it’s the phase he’s in.’ I didn’t want to sound flippant, but still – ‘and has been, as far as I can make out, since he was five.’

  ‘What happened to him? Did someone do this?’ He curled his hands into fists on his knees, so that the veins on the backs protruded raggedly. ‘Who?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Who’s got to him? Is that what they do here? Is it some Arab?’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Well, who, then?’

  ‘It’s not like that…’

  ‘Is it because Dave died?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Why didn’t people just come out and say: ‘You did this, you mad selfish lone parent, staying here, keeping him from his family, instead of settling down with someone else’?

  ‘He says he felt it when Dave was alive.’

  ‘How can he? Even think of it?’

  ‘It’s not a choice. He can’t not think of it.’

  ‘What about Aids?’

  I rubbed at my temples and forehead, pushing at the skin with my fingers. Sweat had dried on my face in the ferocious air conditioning: the fine sandy dust from outside had set like cement in my pores. ‘They’ve had Aids education since they were eleven or twelve. Anyway, HIV isn’t a gay infection: it affects far more heterosexuals than gay people.’

  ‘In Africa!’ dad said scathingly. ‘Why have so many of them died of it, then? Because of what they do!’

  ‘Only at the beginning, when they didn’t know what was going on.’ I was sure it was
politically incorrect even to be having this conversation. ‘Gay men talk about their HIV status now,’ I said, piously repeating some internet factoid I’d managed to pick up. ‘The ones who are most at risk are those who are married, or forbidden by their culture or whatever – who are behaving furtively, no questions asked. Happily, that won’t be Matthew.’

  I hoped this was right. Actually, I hadn’t asked Matthew whether he’d taken risks in the past or might in the future. He’d only lie. And it was bad enough not having been able to say, ‘Oh, how lovely, a gay son: just what I’ve always wanted!’ without compounding the failing by suggesting that his sexuality was the equivalent of a fatal disease.

  I felt guilty about this. You should, presumably, be capable of pointing out life‐threatening hazards to your children whether they want to hear about them or not.

  ‘What is it about us, that we’re so unlucky?’ dad complained. ‘First your mother, then Dave, now this…’

  ‘Matt’s not dead, dad.’

  ‘I’m supposed to have him to stay? He’s still intending to come?’

  ‘As far as I know. We haven’t talked about it recently, but…’ He had some unpaid work lined up as an ASM with a theatre company in London for six weeks in March and April, before flying off to Costa Rica. ‘Obviously, if you’ve changed your mind…’

  If you’re such a selfish homophobe, I did not say.

  He rubbed his hands together in his lap: a kind of aimless, repetitive chafing. He stared past his tea and the glass coffee table, past the carpet, into nothingness. If I’d reached across, I could easily have pushed him off his chair: there wouldn’t have been any resistance. I experienced a senseless, unpleasant urge to do it.

  ‘What about Will and Maddi’s children?’ he mumbled eventually.

  ‘What?’ Who?

  ‘What will they think? How will they be told? How are we going to manage all that? It’s not much of an example, is it?’

  I’d been thinking about having this conversation ever since Matt came out. I’d spent quite a lot of time worrying about the emotions it might unleash and exactly what my dad might say. But even with all the planning, I hadn’t factored in the possibility that we’d end up discussing the responses of people who were, as yet, hypothetical.