There was a silence, which Nicholas broke.
‘It’s the AIDS ward.’
‘Yes, it’s the AIDS ward. But don’t worry, you are not at risk.’
‘I’m not worried about being at risk,’ Nicholas snapped. ‘You’ve been sick for a long time.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me? All those times you didn’t show up, you were in here getting treatment.’
‘I was getting tested. Prodded and probed. And treated for infections, yes.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I couldn’t tell you.’
‘Why couldn’t you tell me?’
‘Because it would have meant telling you other stuff, too, that maybe you wouldn’t have wanted to know.’
‘You mean about you being gay?’
Now Ray was silent.
‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘You knew? How did you know?’
‘I don’t know. I just knew. You’re my dad.’
‘I wish I’d known,’ he said.
‘That I knew?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I wish you’d felt you could talk to me about it,’ said Nicholas.
‘I didn’t know what you would think. And I kind of thought it would be disloyal to your grandparents, in a funny way. Better to maintain the illusion.’
‘Better to tell a lie?’
‘A white lie.’
‘Is that how you got sick?’
‘Probably. Yes. Definitely. I mean, almost certainly.’ Ray sighed. ‘For a long time they didn’t have a clue what was going on. With me and with lots of others. They’ve got more of an idea now.’
Ray explained about HTLV3 and HIV and AIDS.
‘They’re calling it a Gay Plague,’ he said.
He explained about the haemophiliacs, about the worries over blood.
Nicholas said he’d seen the tombstone adverts and he’d read James Anderton’s double-page rant in the Daily Mail, which had done the rounds at the NUS when he’d been there.
He took hold of his father’s hand, which he was pleased to feel grip his tightly.
‘Do you have AIDS?’ he asked.
‘No, I have HIV.’
‘So why do you have to be in here? Will you get to leave?’
‘I had a bad turn. My T-cell count went down, but it’s already back up. I’ll be out of here in no time. I may have to come back in, but then I’ll get out again. That’s how it’s going to be.’
There was another silence.
‘I wish you’d told me.’
‘I wish I had, too.’
And that was how it was. Ray was in and out of Broderip Ward for years. Nicholas got to recognise many of the regulars on his visits. Sometimes Ray was sicker than at other times. He talked to Nicholas about his work, about poems he was struggling with. He would show him drafts and ask his advice and Nicholas would protest that his advice was worthless, but he liked being asked and he offered his opinions. Eventually, Ray started planning a third collection, working title The Sniper. The title poem, over several pages, was set in a holiday resort on the Mediterranean. People having fun sailing, canoeing, swimming in the sea, doing laps of the pool. Playing tennis, water polo, beach volleyball. Socialising at the bar, making new friends, eating together in the open-air buffet-restaurant where they would queue for eggs in the morning made by a spatula-wielding Greek chef called George with a hat as tall as he was. And all the while, a sniper moves from one rooftop to another, from hotel to beach bar, trattoria to taverna, picking off victims one at a time with a high-velocity rifle. Efforts are made to find and eliminate the killer, but he always seems to be one step ahead. The holidaymakers, meanwhile, instead of deserting the resort or cowering in their rooms, carry on as before, intent on having a good time, just hoping it won’t be them next. They take time out to attend the funerals of the dead, but life must go on.
Life for Nicholas and Liz turned a dark corner when Liz fell pregnant and while they were both happy about this, and started looking for a flat for just the two of them, the pregnancy did not proceed in a normal manner. After six weeks Liz developed an infection and had to be rushed into the Whittington Hospital. Not only did she lose the baby, but the infection left her sterile without hope of ever conceiving again. Before the pregnancy, babies had been a subject they had raised only rarely, but they had both known it was something they very much wanted for the future, once Liz was qualified and Nicholas was earning, too.
Dark times. Ray, feeling well and keen to do something to cheer up his son and his partner, threw a party in their honour at his flat in Camden. He invited his friends and theirs. Nicholas recognised one or two faces from Broderip Ward. His father introduced him to Oscar Moore, whose novel A Matter of Life and Sex, he had just read, in floods of tears for the most part, and to David — just ‘David’, no surname — an architect in his late sixties. Watching his father with David — the ease and familiarity with which they negotiated each other’s company and anticipated each other’s needs — Nicholas wondered if they were long-term partners.
Nicholas got a job at Time Out and he and Liz did move out of the flatshare into a rented flat of their own, so to speak, in Finsbury Park. Over bowls of black pepper soup at the Jai Krishna on Stroud Green Road, Nicholas asked Liz to marry him and she said nothing would make her happier. When they met up with Ray for dinner in Islington and told him the news, Nicholas asked Ray to be his best man and Ray burst into tears. He said it would be the proudest day of his life. He then joked that they’d better not hang about, though. Nicholas found those jokes, to which Ray had become partial, rather difficult to take, but he assured his father that they were not planning a lengthy engagement.
They married at Marylebone Town Hall on Euston Road and took over one of the cheap Indian restaurants on Drummond Street for the reception. Nicholas’ grandparents came down from Hyde, their first visit to the capital for longer than anyone could remember, including them. In a bid to keep costs down, Nicholas and Liz had not engaged a professional photographer, but had asked a friend of theirs, Simon, to do the honours. Nicholas asked Simon to make sure he got a shot of the family group on the Town Hall steps: Ray and his parents with the bride and groom. Liz’s parents had emigrated to Australia and separated. She had lost touch with her father and the wedding was arranged too quickly for Liz’s mother to be able to come. Nicholas remarked that he had never seen his father in a collar and tie before; wiping sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief, Ray agreed that it was the first time since he’d appeared in court that he had worn such attire. Ray gave a short speech that contained a couple of jokes and a handful of personal remarks that had many guests in tears for different reasons. As the evening wore on, Ray unbuttoned his collar and removed his tie. As he leaned across the table towards Nicholas to say something, a rust-coloured sore or scab could be seen on the side of his neck. Nicholas tried to ignore it and Ray pretended he didn’t know that Nicholas had seen it.
Late in the evening, Simon the photographer entered the Gents to find Nicholas and his father in an embrace. Ray was clasping his son’s head against his chest while Nicholas’ shoulders rose and fell as sobs tore through his body.
Two weeks after the wedding, Ray was back on Broderip Ward. He told Nicholas he thought it could be a long stay this time. Nicholas gathered up an armful of unwanted review copies from the box under the books editor’s desk at Time Out and walked over to the Middlesex.
He waved to a couple of faces on entering the ward. His father was occupying the same bed as he had the first time Nicholas had visited him. He smiled as Nicholas started unloading the books. A bound proof from Faber, This Is the Life by Joseph O’Neill; a collection of stories by Mark Richard, The Ice at the Bottom of the World; Adam Lively’s The Snail. A handful of crime novels — a new blah blah mystery, an Inspector So-and-so novel — and one or two unknown quantities, first novels from new names put out by small presses, the sort of thing published more in hope than expectation and chucked straight in the charity boxes at books editors’ desks across London.