The Gulf Between Us Read online

  The atmosphere had changed, too. Hawaris never used to talk about politics. Or rather, they talked about politics all the time, just not to us. Now people expressed their opinions much more freely. It’s amazing what a difference it makes when you don’t think you might be taken to an offshore prison and forgotten. All the same, putting things down in writing remained a serious matter. The Ministry of Information monitored the newspapers and, every few years, the editor of the Hawar Daily News was deported for a month for allowing into the paper something ‘insulting to the Hawari people’, which meant one or two of the important ones. What had happened to the Al Jazeera reporters wasn’t surprising or unusual.

  ‘D’you really have to do this Alireza interview?’ I asked Sam over breakfast a week into term.

  ‘He’s the most important opposition leader in Hawar. It’s amazing that he’s given an interview to a high school magazine!’

  ‘No one else will take the risk of doing it. They don’t want to be deported.’

  ‘They won’t deport me. I’m a kid.’

  ‘Sam, they’d love an excuse to deport us that didn’t involve revealing that the crown prince had had a homosexual affair.’

  ‘Well, sorry, but it’s a really big story.’

  ‘Look,’ I said seriously, ‘I’m asking you, please don’t write anything that will get us into trouble. I can’t stop you doing it, and I don’t want to. But I don’t want to be given forty‐eight hours to leave, either.’

  Our house in England was rented out. There was no work anywhere nearby anyway. How would I get a suitable job at short notice, even in London? Sam was well into his IB and there weren’t many schools in England that offered the same courses. Those that did all seemed to be private, and I couldn’t afford them. I reminded him he’d claimed he nearly had a nervous breakdown staying at dad’s for a couple of weeks. How would he survive months?

  He and Faisal set off for their interview with a long list of questions and a tape recorder and came back talking about how charming the internet cleric had been, serving them tea and talking for as long as they wanted, and how much charitable work he was doing. ‘You know he’s set up all these women’s discussion groups?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Would they be to advance the cause of feminism, then?’

  ‘You’re so hostile! This is what happens, you see: you’ve fallen for all the propaganda about Islamic fundamentalism. Actually, Alireza said Hawar is a great place for women to work.’

  ‘OK, OK…’

  ‘The people in power here want you to be frightened, because then western governments will prop up their regime. They used to encourage people to have the same fears about communism.’

  ‘Are you going to put that in your article?’

  ‘I dunno yet.’

  ‘Look, Sam, the Al Majid aren’t all bad. The emir’s advisory council has four women on it and a Jew.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, not one single woman was elected to parliament, though plenty of them were standing. Your Alireza may be as enlightened as you say, but a lot of his constituency are extremely backward looking.’

  ‘Whatever, I’m not sure I can leave the Al Majid out of it. That would be like – you know – colluding. In oppression.’

  ‘So, what, you’re going to criticize them and in the process single‐handedly overthrow the government?’

  But then something happened that drove all thoughts of Alireza and Sam’s school newspaper out of my head. I was at home in the kitchen after school on a Tuesday afternoon when I heard the front door open and someone come into the house. The handle squeaked, the door shushed across the carpet, then I heard it softly click shut. At first, I thought it must be Cheryl, because Matt was still at work and Sam had already phoned from Faisal’s and Maria only ever came through the back door. But Cheryl would have called out or come into the kitchen. And this person walked into the sitting room and stopped.

  All I could hear was the wheezy gush of the air conditioning. And silence. Whoever was there was standing still and listening, and I was suddenly afraid. I thought of Ghafir up the road, of how quickly things could change, how places that had been peaceful could pull apart in fear – Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sudan. People found reasons to resent and hate their neighbours – religious or ethnic – to blame them for feeling out of control, to believe that the only solution is to get rid of them, whatever it takes.

  I walked slowly, softly, on bare feet, into the sitting room.

  It wasn’t a machete‐wielding mob from Ghafir.

  It was Will.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ I asked, my voice snagging with relief and annoyance.

  ‘I’m on my way to Saudi,’ he said, not looking at me. He seemed fascinated by a patch of wall above the telephone and he was staring at it as if he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

  ‘Why didn’t you ring?’

  ‘I…’ he faltered. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’ He was pale, I saw, and there was something stiff about him. Then his shoulders slumped and he began to cry.

  He was ill. I went over to him, but he drew back, flinching.

  ‘I… Something terrible…’

  ‘What?’

  No, someone else was ill! ‘Maddi?’ I gripped his arm and pushed him towards the sofa. It wasn’t difficult; once I had hold of him there was no resistance. He slumped down and I sat beside him. ‘Tell me!’

  ‘It’s not her fault,’ he whispered. ‘I shouldn’t have got married.’

  ‘What?’ She was having an affair? And it wasn’t her fault because of the way he’d been working? Or was he telling me she was clinically depressed? But we half knew this – so what, had she – surely not – tried to kill herself ?… all these thoughts slid through my head and I didn’t fundamentally believe any of them. I just didn’t want to hear that he shouldn’t have got married.

  ‘I shouldn’t have got married,’ he repeated, ‘because I love someone else.’ And that was it. He’d said it. There was no putting it off any more, and everything fell away, even though I couldn’t see how you could get from where we’d been to here in a matter of seconds.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He slumped forward, speaking through his hands. ‘I love someone else.’ He swallowed. ‘Andrew.’

  ‘Andrew?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Since when? How come? What, are you gay, too?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘And Sam?’

  ‘What?’ He looked up, bewildered. ‘What’s it got to do with Sam?’

  ‘No, no…’ I was in free fall. ‘So… why did you get married?’

  He shook his head miserably, as if he couldn’t even begin to talk about that.

  ‘Does Maddi know?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Did she know before you married?’

  ‘Please, mum…’

  I don’t know why he was like that about it. It wasn’t any more absurd than anything else.

  ‘And Andrew?’

  ‘Well, obviously he knows…’

  ‘It’s not obvious at all, Will! You got married five months ago. And you’re saying now that you’ve been having a relationship with Andrew?’

  ‘No. Had. Before.’

  ‘So, what, you decided to take a break to get married?’

  ‘Mum…’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but what did you expect? You only got married in September. You planned it for a year. And now you turn up here and say you’re in love with the vicar?’

  ‘I know. Hang on a minute…’ He got up and went into the kitchen, to get the tissues. He stayed out there for a while and when he came back his whole face looked as though whatever had been holding it together was coming apart, as if something – stitches, muscles, nerves – was dissolving.

  ‘So, when did you – realize this – about Andrew?’ I asked, as if this were something you could discuss, rather than something to which the only rational response was to throw things and weep.

  He sat down
beside me, blowing his nose.

  ‘Soon after we met. When I came back from Oxford last summer.’

  ‘You were already engaged to Maddi?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And you didn’t think of calling it off ?’

  ‘I love Maddi. It’s just… it’s different with Andrew.’

  ‘Right. I see,’ I lied. ‘So you had a relationship? While you were engaged?’

  ‘I know it’s appalling.’

  Appalling was an understatement. It was incomprehensible. Stupid. Cruel. Appalling didn’t even begin to describe it. ‘And had you never found men attractive before?’

  His handsome face was all blotchy, like a six‐year‐old’s. ‘I didn’t think of myself as gay. That’s not me – I mean, I’m not like Matt, flamboyant and … screechy. I’m sporty and so straight.’

  ‘Except you’re not.’

  ‘Being gay just – I don’t know, didn’t seem to be on the list of options.’

  It was 2003. He had a degree in history. He had not grown up among crazed religious fundamentalists.

  ‘How did Maddi find out?’

  ‘I had a picture of him in a drawer.’

  Apart from anything else, it was so insulting. Poor Maddi. No one deserved this, least of all her. I’d seen a lot of Maddi lately. I hadn’t consciously formed this thought until now and would have rejected it at any other moment, but quite a lot of the time recently I had preferred her to Will.

  ‘You must have seen that things weren’t right…’ he said, as if it were somehow my responsibility to have seen it coming.

  ‘I thought you were working too hard…’

  He nodded briefly, knowing it was unbearable.

  ‘Did you come out here to tell me?’

  ‘I was coming to Saudi tomorrow anyway. But I thought I’d better talk to you. Maddi and I can’t go on.’

  ‘And Andrew? Are you going to talk to him?’

  ‘I might, later, but that’s not really the point. Of us splitting up. He wants to… he has a vocation…’

  So he was in love with someone who didn’t want to be with him. It was like Matt all over again, although you could just about see with Shaikh Rashid that Hawar’s need might be greater. You’d have thought, though, that God might be able to manage on his own.

  ‘Please don’t judge him,’ Will said.

  ‘He married you to Maddi.’

  ‘He thought I’d moved on…’

  Moved on, I thought disgustedly. Psychobabbling vicars. ‘He knew that he was gay, presumably?’

  ‘He thinks he can manage it. Keep it under control.’

  ‘Does sleeping with passing bridegrooms count as keeping it under control?’

  ‘No, of course not. He thinks he can live according to the teachings of the Church. I don’t think you should mock him.’

  ‘Funny teachings, that cause such mayhem.’

  ‘Yes, well, I was going to ask if I could stay here tonight, but I don’t have to.’

  ‘Will,’ I touched his arm. ‘You don’t need to ask. Of course you can stay. I’m sorry…’

  ‘No, it’s OK.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘I know it’s awful for you.’

  ‘What about the Franklins?’

  ‘Maddi wants to tell them.’

  ‘But she hasn’t yet?’

  ‘No. She’s thinking how to do it.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, ‘well, I hope she can think of a good way.’

  Fifteen

  I sat staring into space while the air conditioning switched and clicked, purred and whooshed, the soundtrack to our lives. Will and I had sat in this room when Dave died, talking and talking. He’d sat here crying when all his friends went to boarding school and he’d had to stay behind. It was the place where, time and time again, I’d talked to him and he’d talked to me, and I’d treated him as a confidant which I could see now was a terrible mistake because I hadn’t given him space to be foolish and troublesome, to try on attitudes and make mistakes. And when he needed to be a kid, to admit he’d messed up and needed to start again, he didn’t know how.

  I’d treated him as an adult, except when it came to sex, which I hadn’t talked about enough. That was a legacy of my childhood, when sex had been unmentionable, and if you didn’t talk about it you could act as if you didn’t have any embarrassing fluids or desires that would make people cringe if you said them out loud. I hadn’t been as reticent, as fearful as my own parents: I don’t think I’d let the boys think their bodies were always threatening to catch them out or let them down. But I’m not sure I’d been able to shake off the inherited terror of speaking about sex entirely. And Will had a subtle, noticing intelligence. If anyone was going to pick up on my embarrassment, it would be him.

  I’d considered the possibility that Sam might be gay. I’d given that quite a lot of thought. But the idea that Will might be had never once entered my head. He was married.

  Of course, the fact Will was gay didn’t mean Sam wasn’t (it seemed, if anything, to make it more likely) – but whether I had two or three of them, you had to wonder how it had come about. Even if you viewed gay sons as a really good thing, you had to ask what was it about your genes or your childrearing techniques that had brought you to this statistically curious position?

  Will went off to change into his swimming trunks. He’d come straight to the compound from the airport and wanted some exercise. He tried to smile encouragingly at me as he crossed the sitting room on his way to the pool and I – still in the same frozen position in which he’d left me – tried to smile encouragingly back.

  I was furious with him. But I couldn’t separate that out from being furious with myself.

  He came in from his swim after forty minutes. I knew he would have been powering purposefully from one end of the pool to the other the whole time. No slobbing about in the shallows kicking his legs and turning his face up to the sun for Will. I’m not sure the exercise had done him that much good: he was moving gingerly, as if bruised, as if disturbing even the air around him might hurt.

  When he came out of the shower, he told me diffidently that he’d decided he was going to see Andrew after all. In his cotton twill trousers and light blue polo shirt, he looked the part of the off‐duty banker: preppy, keen, clean. It was weird how badly he wanted to fit in. He’d hardly done a rebellious thing in his life. Evidently he’d been saving up all the little rebellions for a really big blowout.

  As soon as he’d gone, I called Maddi, knowing that if I didn’t do it straight away, while I was still in a daze, I might lose my nerve.

  She was at work, and told me to wait while she went outside. I heard the ping of a lift and the clatter of her heels on an echoey surface, then the snarl and rumble of traffic as she pushed out of the air‐conditioned building on to the street.

  ‘He’s told you, then,’ she said flatly.

  I could hear buses swishing through puddles. I wondered if she was having to stand in the rain.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Don’t, Annie. Don’t cry. I should have realized.’

  ‘No, I…’

  ‘He fooled everyone. Including himself.’

  ‘But it’s the twenty‐first century! And he has a gay brother. Why didn’t they talk to each other? I can’t have made it easy enough…’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Annie.’

  ‘How could Andrew have stood there at the wedding and said all that stuff ? If anyone knows any just impediment?’

  ‘It explains why they couldn’t take the rehearsal seriously. All those stupid jokes. They were nearly hysterical. Not surprisingly. Has he seen him yet?’

  ‘No.’ I didn’t want to tell her he was on his way over there now.

  ‘You know, even after he told me, he still seemed to think we could make a go of it,’ she said disbelievingly. ‘And then when I explained we couldn’t, it was as if the clouds had cleared, as if he’d been waiting for someone to
give him permission.’

  My son needed permission to be himself. How was this not my fault? If he’d had therapy, he would have had to characterize me as some monstrous blockage, a tumour stopping up his emotions. On the other hand, therapy might have decided him not to get married, in which case it would have been worth being characterized as a cancer.

  ‘I don’t know how I fell for it for so long,’ Maddi was saying sadly. ‘It’s not like I didn’t know him. I’ve known him all my life. I thought I did, anyway.’

  ‘He does love you.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, like a sister or something. Don’t.’

  ‘No, I… he does. I do, too.’

  ‘Thanks. It’s just a pity I’m surplus to requirements.’

  ‘Maddi…’

  ‘What am I supposed to say, Annie?’ she snapped. ‘My whole life has come crashing down. My marriage is a joke. I’m a joke. I’m sick of it. And whatever I say, it won’t make any difference. Everything’s shit.’

  Sam called at exactly the same moment that Matt came in from work. ‘OK if I stay over at Faisal’s?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I need you back.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Will’s here.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I’d like you to come home, that’s all.’

  ‘But if Will’s there, you surely don’t need me?’

  ‘Sam, I am going to ask you something and I want you to answer honestly: Are you gay?’

  ‘Mum, you asked me this before. And the answer’s still no.’

  ‘Post‐gay?’

  ‘Not this again! Look, I didn’t know what the fuck it was before, and I still don’t.’