The Gulf Between Us Read online

  ‘I hope not bad?’

  No, fine, I wanted to say. Good news, in fact. Perfectly OK. I looked around for Matthew.

  But I couldn’t in all honesty say it was good news, and I couldn’t see Matt, and anything else seemed unimportant. Al Maraj was frowning at me. I suppose they wouldn’t have been used to talking to people who looked over their shoulders, past them, casting around for someone else.

  I tried to focus, because I knew I must seem rude, but all the details about our lives that I was used to repeating, about gap years and International Baccalauréats and Will’s investment banking job and Maddi’s in management consultancy – the stuff I used to think portrayed my family – seemed suddenly nonsensical, like a pointillist painting in which you can only see a lot of meaningless dots. The details about exams and jobs didn’t cohere into anything. Matthew was gay and that obscured everything else: it was a spreading stain on the story I’d told of our lives.

  ‘D’you want to talk about it?’ James asked.

  ‘No, not right now… I’m sorry… d’you mind? I need to find my son…’

  ‘This is so like you,’ he said with amusement. ‘I spend twenty‐five years looking for you and then when I track you down, I get less than five minutes.’

  ‘I know. I promise next time you can have at least ten.’

  ‘Thanks. Only have I got to wait another twenty‐five years? Because I could easily be dead.’

  This was better; there was a thread here of something remembered, something we could perhaps pick up another time.

  Fiona said, ‘James, we’ve arrived terribly late and the party’s clearly almost over.’

  ‘If I could just introduce you to my wife and daughter before you leave…?’ Peter said tentatively.

  ‘We have got rather a lot to sort out,’ Al Maraj said. ‘We only intended to look in and say hello.’

  James saw Peter’s disappointment. ‘But obviously,’ he told the others, ‘we can’t leave without meeting the bride…’

  ‘It’s you they want to see,’ Al Maraj said. ‘I’ll wait upstairs.’

  James leant over. ‘Go and find your son. I hope it works out.’ He waved me away affectionately. ‘Annie, you’re hopeless.’

  I looked out over the sea of heads on the lawn. Everyone seemed to have come out of the marquee into the garden, where they were pretending that they were absorbed in conversation and not staring at James Hartley.

  By tomorrow, all those people would be talking about us. They’d have heard Matt was gay and they’d be gossiping. It would be big news in a place where not much happened, where sex wasn’t on the surface and no one was openly homosexual – ‘Matt Lester came out at his brother’s wedding, can you imagine? What a time to choose! And fancy Annie not knowing… Of course, you could see it years ago. He’s going to study drama at university. Well. Quite. Yes, always useless at sport. Not like his brothers.’ So they’d be talking about us here, and they’d be talking about us in other places because Hawar is an entrepot for misfits, for nomads who mass and disperse, still gossiping about each other. – ‘You know that wedding at the weekend? In Hawar? The groom’s brother came out. Yes, gay. I know, appalling timing. His poor mother had no idea. Unlike everyone else, of course…’

  I looked around for Matt, but saw only Sam, talking to Faisal and his brother Abdullah, and hurried towards them.

  ‘Were you hugging James Hartley?’ Faisal asked, impressed.

  ‘He’s an old friend.’

  ‘It looked like he didn’t want to let you go!’

  ‘Have you seen Matt?’

  ‘No, don’t think so. What did he say?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing.’

  ‘Why was he staring at you like that?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know… all keen.’

  ‘We haven’t seen each other for ages.’

  ‘Are you going to see him again?’

  ‘Maybe… I don’t know… I’m way out of his league. Are you sure you haven’t seen Matt?’

  Abdullah thought he might possibly have caught sight of him near the shrubbery at the back of the garden.

  I set off, walking purposefully and avoiding making eye contact with anyone, because they’d only want to ask me about James Hartley.

  I could remember walking with Matt in the Ladies’ Garden when he was no more than two or three and him telling me he was dreaming the world, which is quite a sophisticated philosophical position for a three‐year‐old. He always had a tremendous sense of his own power and indomitability: it was typical of him to think he might be capable of bringing the whole world into existence through the sheer exuberance of his imagination.

  But you can’t make up your own world. Other people do exist. You have to fit round them. It’s one of the things you have to learn.

  Eventually, I found him sitting on a bench hidden in the bushes, kicking up gravel like a child. If he’d been seven, I’d have told him to stop. It would ruin his shoes.

  I sat down beside him on the stone bench. We were out of sight of everyone else, screened by thick‐stemmed, fleshy shrubs, dark green in the stuttering torchlight.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Don’t…’

  ‘Not for being gay. I ought to have found a better way of telling you. A better time.’

  ‘I should have realized.’

  ‘It just came out. I was so angry with Chris.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Have you seen Will?’

  ‘No, I got dragged off to meet James Hartley.’

  ‘Oh, how was he?’

  ‘OK. I was a bit distracted. He had a horrible bloke with him who… Anyway, I really only wanted to get away, so I wasn’t concentrating.’

  ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. It’s not important.’

  ‘Will’s furious.’

  ‘What for? Didn’t he know?’

  Matt shook his head. ‘He thinks I shouldn’t have come out at his wedding. He’s right about that, as it happens.’

  ‘Did Sam know?’

  ‘No.’ Matt wasn’t interested in Sam; he was still worrying about Will: ‘He thinks it’s ruined everything: he said, “whenever mum thinks about it, she’ll think about this.”’

  I frowned. ‘He’s not getting married for my benefit.’

  ‘He thinks I’ve upstaged him and Maddi.’

  ‘Matt, I suppose you are sure?’

  ‘Yes.’ He scuffed the gravel. ‘Parents always say that, apparently.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry to be so predictable. Stupid. How long have you known?’

  ‘Since I was about eight, I think – but it was all mixed up with dad dying. I couldn’t work it out in my head. But then when I hit adolescence… I did try with girls,’ he added, as though I might think he hadn’t made enough effort. ‘The thing is – when you kiss a boy… it’s completely different. Then you know.’

  ‘Right. Have you – are you… in a relationship?’

  He hesitated. ‘No.’

  ‘But you have been?’

  ‘It’s not all in my head, mum.’

  ‘No.’ I paused. There was clearly a limit to what I could ask him about sex. Or, in fact, wanted to know. ‘When you say it’s all mixed up with dad…’

  ‘I don’t mean that that’s made me gay.’

  Dominant mothers, wasn’t that what people said? How the hell was I supposed to have been anything else, when their father was dead?

  The sound of clapping drifted over to us through the night air. I looked up. ‘Oh, no, Will and Maddi must be leaving! We must see them off.’

  I took his hand and tried to pull him to his feet. He shook his head. ‘I’ll stay here, if that’s OK. I don’t want to upset Will any more. You go on.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem right…’

  ‘Please.’

  I tried to persuade him, but he was determined to stay where he was and I wanted to wave goodbye to Will and Maddi
. So I kissed the top of his head. ‘I love you.’ And I did, I did, and always would, but I was afraid that he was going somewhere I couldn’t follow, somewhere I wouldn’t be able to understand, into a place of furtiveness and promiscuity and hysteria and disappointment. ‘It’s not your whole identity,’ I said, hoping that was true.

  ‘No. I think you’re supposed to think of it as like being left‐handed.’

  I nodded, although I was actually thinking that he’d managed to keep me in the dark, all these years, and now he was receding into the darkness himself.

  ‘I didn’t choose this, mum,’ he said. ‘It chose me.’

  Four

  I lay awake all night, or that was how it felt, going over and over it. Matthew’s gay. I hadn’t realized. Yesterday he’d been one thing. Now he was another. Something had taken him out of reach into another place, of beardy kisses. You know when you kiss a boy and it’s different. Scratchy, square‐jawed, fierce. I thought of things I’d heard – of back rooms in dark bars where men assaulted each other in arcane rituals of self‐disgust, men who had to take drugs just to be there, to work up the courage to participate, to cancel the pain. I saw them in my phosphorescent imaginings, the sort of men he’d be mixing with now, brutalized and self‐hating men who wouldn’t realize how much he was loved, how valuable he was. They’d want to corrupt him, would think he was corrupt already. That life wouldn’t suit him, surely, all that bitchiness and queeniness and flouncing?

  I was still awake when the muezzin called at dawn, a wail of protest on the quiet air. I turned my pillow over for the hundredth time. Would he ever find someone to love? Someone who’d love him? It’s hard enough – it turns out – if you’re heterosexual. And what proportion of the population is gay?

  The sun was already beating against the blackout lining of the curtains when I finally dozed off, only to be woken again, apparently minutes later, by the noise of the television blaring from the sitting room. I looked at my watch on the bedside table. My head was fuzzy and my body felt more tired than when I’d gone to bed. But it was nine o’clock already and we were due to be out of the house by ten.

  Sam was sitting in front of the news, half‐dressed in long shorts and an old T‐shirt. On the screen there were pictures of fractured masonry, steel reinforcing rods sticking pathetically into the air, a litter of rubble on a beach, bars that were an unrecognizable chaos of overturned tables, fallen ceilings and crumbled concrete. A hollow‐eyed Indonesian was gesticulating; urgent commentary filled the room.

  ‘Oh God…’ I sank on to the sofa.

  ‘Awful.’

  I squeezed Sam’s hand, which he removed.

  Two hundred people believed dead, the reporter said. Many more injured. Mostly young holidaymakers. The hospitals couldn’t cope and they were flying people to Australia.

  The images blurred in front of me.

  ‘You all right, mum?’

  ‘This is terrible.’

  ‘I know. But otherwise?’

  I nodded. ‘Is Matthew up?’

  ‘Not yet…’ He flicked the remote and the television screen went blank. ‘Will was weird last night, wasn’t he?’

  ‘I didn’t see him properly – afterwards, I mean. Did you really not know about Matt? Either of you?’

  ‘I thought it was possible. When he has a headache it’s like anyone else’s raging migraine.’

  ‘You didn’t say.’

  ‘No, well, it’s not a big deal, is it?’

  Not a big deal, as if Matt were the same person he’d been yesterday. But yesterday, he’d been a hundred things; today he was only one thing. At nineteen, at a time when his life should have been opening up to possibilities, he was reduced to this single overwhelming… thing.

  And it was a thing I didn’t understand. Yesterday, I’d known him.

  He emerged blearily from his bedroom in a pair of shorts, pulling on a T‐shirt, ambled across, picked up the remote and stared for a moment at the television pictures of sunshiny debris on a distant beach before flicking them off again and shaking his head. Then he put a hand on my shoulder and went to the kitchen. I watched him covertly, to see if he’d do anything gay.

  He put two slices of bread in the toaster, peered in the teapot, and put the kettle on.

  How long would I have gone on inventing relationships with girls, thinking he had a thing for Maya, that his sense of drama and love of gossip were just Matthew? I tried to think of what I should ask him about it. But the phone was ringing.

  ‘We still on for today?’ Chris asked when I returned to the sitting room and picked it up.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Matthew coming?’

  ‘Of course.’ The important thing was not to let Chris – or anyone, come to that – see how much this had affected me. Had to stick up for Matthew.

  ‘So, what are you intending to do about dad?’

  ‘Do?’

  ‘He’ll have to know, if Matt’s going to stay with him next year. Ann – are you still there? He might not like the thought of it under his roof. And what if Matt wanted to bring a friend home?’

  ‘Chris, we can talk about this later.’

  In reality, I’d been thinking about dad half the night. If this was difficult for me, how would it be for him? He came from a time when those sort of people (that was how he’d think of them, as if they were unnameable) didn’t live among you, or if they did, they had the decency to pretend to be normal.

  ‘Why he wants to shove it in our faces anyway, I don’t know,’ Chris complained before ringing off.

  The phone went again only moments later: it was Peter, this time, to report that Maddi and Will had called from the airport, where they were about to board their plane for the Maldives. I felt a twinge of jealousy that they’d rung the Franklins and not us, mixed with irritation at Will for not having called to commiserate with me about Matt or, rather, to reassure me that commiseration was unnecessary.

  Peter appeared not to have heard about that – at least, he didn’t mention it. ‘I don’t suppose anyone will ever forget that a man who gets paid large sums of money to pretend to be someone else once came to a wedding in Hawar,’ he said, affecting boredom. ‘He seemed annoyingly pleasant, too – I think he would have been happy to stay longer if his friends hadn’t been so keen to get him away.’

  ‘That Al Maraj bloke, looking down his nose.’

  ‘James, as I suppose we can now call him, told me you hadn’t changed a bit.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ I said, ‘right.’

  Fifteen minutes before we were due to leave, Matt came out of his bedroom, where he’d been playing Motown very loudly, and announced that he didn’t think he wanted to come.

  I paused, midway through chopping mint for the potato salad, knife in the air. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I don’t think I can face another day with Uncle Chris.’

  ‘But it’s organized. Everyone’s expecting you. And it would be like running away.’

  ‘He’s awful. He’s homophobic. You know he is.’

  ‘He won’t say anything.’

  ‘It depends how much he’s had to drink…’

  ‘He won’t, though – not with granddad there… And, Matt, not going would be giving in, don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t see…’

  ‘And how am I going to explain it?’

  ‘You could say I’m ill.’

  ‘But you’re not. I’m not sure we should start lying.’

  He shook his head at me, as if I didn’t get it. I wished now that I’d never agreed to this day out. I’d wanted to give the family a good time before they left for Dubai, and the best thing about living in Hawar is getting out on the water. Since I don’t own a boat – it’s expensive, Dave was never interested, and, afterwards, whenever I considered it, I was convinced I’d end up running out of fuel, floating in the tanker lanes in the dark, adrift and alone with several parched children, while shipping powered up and down the Gulf around us – I had no o
ption but to go with other people. It would have been easier, though, if on this occasion they’d been other other people.

  ‘They won’t get on,’ I’d insisted to Diane, when she’d first suggested it. ‘Antonia and David will hate my brother and sister‐in‐law and my dad will feel uncomfortable.’

  ‘They don’t hate you. Why should they hate your family?’

  It was difficult to explain without insulting someone. Diane was Australian and impervious to the small snobberies that eddied remorselessly through Hawari expat society. She breezed along regardless, and if people tried to insult or patronize her it didn’t work because she simply didn’t notice.

  ‘I suppose everyone will be gossiping already,’ Matt said gloomily as we drove along the Corniche. ‘That’s why I didn’t come out sooner. It’ll be the most exciting thing that’s happened in Hawar for about three decades.’

  ‘You flatter yourself,’ I said, swinging the Jeep through the gates of the Marina Club. Dad was standing outside the clubhouse on the shimmering tarmac, wiping his face on one of the handkerchiefs my mum used to hang on the tree for him at Christmas, now washed so many times they’d gone a murky grey colour. I felt upset that he hadn’t gone inside, into the chilled air – but he would have been worried that the Marina Club was for members only, that someone would challenge him.

  How was he going to get his head around Matthew? He thought life was threatening enough, what with muggers and binge drinkers and kids who carried knives and swore at their teachers. But he’d only read about those things; he didn’t actually know any kids who were muggers or binge drinkers who carried knives.

  There hadn’t been any gay people when he was young. There couldn’t have been, because there hadn’t really been any when I was young. Kenneth Williams in the Carry On films: that was about it. Or those two on the radio, Julian and Sandy (had that, in fact, been Kenneth Williams too? Was there only one person taking all the gay parts in mid‐twentieth‐century entertainment?): they were on Round The Horne, a programme I assumed, as a child, that everyone was too full of Sunday dinner to get up and turn off, because it was impossible that anyone would actually choose to listen to it… And that seemed to be all there was by way of homosexuality, a camp joke I didn’t get and wondered if anyone got, because those men didn’t sound happy, sending themselves up, titillating a nation Brillo‐ing meat slurry off its roasting pans. Had there been any space beneath the performance for those actors to feel that they weren’t essentially silly and misbegotten? Any part of them that hadn’t felt marginal, and seeping self‐disgust?