Between every phrase he made eye contact with a different person round the table, drawing out a thread of sympathetic attention.
‘Anyway, Dad didn’t know what to say or do. So what he said and did was to yawn in an exaggerated way, and to say he was tired and was going straight to bed.’
By now we were all nodding our endorsement of his story, making little encouraging noises at regular intervals.
‘He wanted to end the conversation, but he didn’t want to reject me. He didn’t throw me out of the house. He didn’t stalk out of the house himself either, slamming the door behind him. He managed to find somewhere else to go, even if it was only his bedroom, and he shut the door very gently behind him. He needed to give himself some breathing space. The only thing was … the funny thing was that we’d been to an afternoon showing, and it was still only about five … He’d come over all Spanish all of a sudden, and taken an emergency siesta. He went to bed in the middle of the afternoon just to get a little breathing space …’
There was a silence. I wasn’t altogether sure whether I’d been trusted with a traumatic experience or entertained with a droll anecdote. I wanted to say, ‘So what happened next? Did you talk about it the next day? Is everything all talked out now? What about your Mum?’, but as a new arrival I thought I’d better wait to see how every one else responded.
I think my instinct was sound. There was a concealed sort of etiquette in operation. The person who seemed to be in charge of the meeting was an upright man in a houndstooth jacket, in his late twenties perhaps. He thanked the speaker and said he was delighted to see a few new faces at the meeting. He brought a tray with mugs of tea on it over to where I was sitting next to George, and introduced himself as Tony. Addressing himself to George, he asked if he’d like to say something himself. George swallowed hard and said he’d rather just listen if that was all right. ‘Of course, of course — get your bearings,’ said Tony and went back to the kitchen side of the room, where a man in a yellow T-shirt was sitting. This man reached up inside Tony’s jacket and stroked him softly on the belly. Granny was always stressing the importance for men of leaving the bottom button of their jackets undone, but I’d never seen the point till now.
George had taken two cups of tea, one on my behalf, and was looking around for somewhere to put them. He whispered, ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you. I was so nervous coming here that I hardly even saw you out in the street. I’m so sorry. I’d decided I would go through that door if it was the last thing I ever did. Then when I got inside and found I was still alive, I realised I’d left you out there. I went out again saying I’d be back in a moment, but I think our host thought I’d lost my nerve. I wonder how long he’d have waited before sending out a rescue party?’
Another voice spoke up from the group round the table. ‘I’ll tell you what happened to me,’ it said. The new speaker had a much more confident delivery, an almost actorly confidence. George put both mugs down on the floor at our feet.
‘I’d given myself a deadline to tell my mother I was gay. This was a few years ago. I wasn’t living at home, but I was staying with her for a few days. I’d decided that this was going to be it. Time for revelation. Zero hour. I had no reason to think she was prejudiced. She had a couple of friends who were in the theatre, and as if that wasn’t enough they worked for an antique dealer when they were between acting jobs. She was always saying how terribly amusing they were, what great fun, and I thought that was probably a good sign. It’s just … with her own little boy — the little prince — it might not be quite so much fun.’
As if to emphasise the difference between himself and the previous speaker, he kept his gaze fixed on the mug in his hands, not looking up at any of us, confident of his ability to hold us without the assistance of eye contact. It was like an audition piece. And he meant to get the part.
‘I get terrible fits of cowardice, you know, but I was determined to see this through to the end. To make sure that I didn’t back out, I’d written my mother a letter and sent it, so I knew I would have to speak out before it arrived. I couldn’t just go on putting things off. I’d decided that to leave myself no escape hatch I would send it by recorded delivery. That was the only sensible thing to do. Otherwise I’d be tempted to hang around the front door and pounce on the letter, and then I’d have put everything off again, which I was beginning to find unbearable. I was getting so tired of not being able to respect myself.
‘The morning arrived for the letter to be delivered. I’d been awake since the early hours. I could hear Mother move around the kitchen, and still I couldn’t get up. I felt as if I was paralysed. I’d been doing a bit of drinking, and I was hungover, but there was more to it than that. There was a weight on my chest and I couldn’t stir from the bed. Mum was doing some ironing, for some reason, and I felt as if her iron was going back and forth on my chest, and scalding me with the knowledge of my own worthlessness. And Mother was singing as she did the ironing. Singing! She was cheerful, innocently happy, on a day that I was going to turn into blackness for her. Total eclipse. The light of her life was going to go out. And what was she singing, I ask you? She was singing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”, that’s what …
‘I forced myself to rise from the horizontal. I swear it took as much effort as actually levitating. I forced myself up from the bed, by raw willpower, making myself confront my doom. To cast the shadow that would blight her happy song.’
By this time he had started swirling his coffee mug, gently at first and then more decisively, so that the brown liquid in it began to rise up in a slurring tongue, coming just to the lip of the mug. Theatrical tour de force. If his control of his movements lapsed, even for a moment, then coffee would slop onto the table and perhaps the floor. We were all spellbound, host Tony’s hand tightening anxiously on a dishcloth.
In trousers and also in tears
‘And then the doorbell rang. I shouted out “I’ll get that,” and started across the floor of my bedroom. But exactly at that moment I was laid low by a violent access of diarrhœa. Imperative diarrhœa — the runs at their most runny. I’m not exaggerating when I say that if I’d gone to answer the door I would have shat myself, and that is really not how you want to start an intense family conversation.
‘So I had an ignominious session on the lav, where all the tension I’d been forcing myself not to feel expressed itself in the most rudimentary terms. And then I stumbled into the kitchen, where Mum was frowning as she took a piece of paper out of its envelope…
‘What I’d planned to send her was the baldest possible statement. Fifteen words. IF YOU’RE READING THIS THEN YOUR SON IS A COWARD AS WELL AS A BUGGER. But then I thought that was a little crude, really. Dear Noël would have winced a bit, wouldn’t he? It wouldn’t do any harm if I took a little trouble over expressing myself elegantly, though the whole idea was that she would never have to read it. It wouldn’t make any difference, but it would be good for my self-respect. The plan was that I’d speak out like a man before the letter was delivered, and sign for the recorded-delivery packet with a virile and unshaking hand while Mother screamed the place down in the middle distance. I would exchange a glance with the postman, that glance that all men use to mean Women … how can we hope to understand them when they don’t understand themselves?