Otherhood

by William Sutcliffe

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’ said Paul. ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Oh, it was just a spur of the moment thing. I was in the area . . .’

  ‘What were you doing round here?’

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t that close. I was just in town, and . . . it occurred to me that I could pop by.’

  ‘But why didn’t you give me a ring?’ Paul asked, though he knew the answer. The visit was an ambush. She had come to see who he lived with, and had deliberately arrived before he got home from work to see what she could discover. Poor Andre had unwittingly walked into the trap and had told her everything.

  ‘No reason,’ said Helen, a little guiltily, as she stepped forwards and enfolded him in a deep, lingering hug. In the stiffness of his back and the reluctance of his arms to return her embrace, she could feel the imbalance in their love, but she didn’t care. He was her boy, and she adored him. She thought about him every day, and those rare, few days when she actually saw him, when she touched him, were days of fulfilment and joy.

  As he felt his mother pull him into her koala clutch, Paul’s shock at her unexpected arrival was suddenly overwhelmed by the amazed realisation that, after years of lies and evasions, his big secret, at long last, was out. He wanted to be angry about the underhand manner with which Helen had set about breaching his firewall of privacy, but instead of the righteous indignation he felt was his due, he found himself filled instead with simple relief.

  With this thought, he felt his back yield, and his arms rose up to embrace her. He was, it appeared, off the hook. The main reason Paul had never come out to his mother was that he didn’t want the attention. He had always been reasonably confident that she wouldn’t react badly, but he never liked his mother knowing much about him. Just the fact that she wanted to know everything made him want to withhold as much information as he could. His father, who was more or less indifferent to Paul’s emotional life, and who had a tendency to forget or misunderstand key details, was the parent Paul had chosen as a confidant.

  On the evening, many years ago, when Paul had come out to Larry, twenty minutes later they’d been discussing Wimbledon. With Larry, nothing was difficult or unnecessarily emotional. With Helen, the tiniest, most unexpected comment could blow up in your face, requiring hours or even weeks of backtracking before you convinced her that some unintended subtext had not been a barbed criticism, or that your tone of voice had not been mocking or dismissive.

  He had almost told her several times, but at any given moment, faced with the choice between breaking the news and talking about something else, he’d always found the latter a more appealing prospect.

  Paul, in short, was afraid of her. Not afraid that she would upset him, or wound him, or even bully him; he was afraid of the hassle, of the time that stood to be wasted putting things right when they had gone wrong. And now, without warning, the unexploded bomb that had been sitting for years in the middle of their relationship appeared to have quietly and harmlessly gone off, without any injuries. For years, he’d been trying to screw up the courage to crawl towards it on his hands and knees, armed with a magnifying glass and a tiny screwdriver, knowing that the tiniest slip could blow his head off; now the job had been done without him even having to watch.

  She had been devious and manipulative; she had tricked his boyfriend, and he ought to be angry with her, but he wasn’t and he knew he couldn’t fake it. Better just to hug, smile and move on.

  ‘Well, it’s nice to see you,’ he said, drawing the embrace to a close. Wordlessly, with an apologetic glance towards Paul, Andre slipped out of the room.

  ‘And you,’ said Helen, scrutinising Paul’s face like a shopkeeper with a suspicious fifty-pound note.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ said Paul.

  ‘A glass of wine would be wonderful.’

  ‘I’ll see what we’ve got,’ he said, opening the fridge. ‘White?’

  ‘Perfect. Why don’t I cook you dinner. You must be tired,’ said Helen.

  Paul, like many men, lacked the ability to read and hear at the same time. At that moment, he was concentrating on the wine label.

  ‘Sorry?’ he said.

  ‘Why don’t I cook you dinner?’

  Paul stared at her, baffled. This woman, who doesn’t visit him for months on end, suddenly comes round while he’s out at work, grills his boyfriend for personal information, then, as if it is he who had popped in unexpectedly on her, offers to cook a meal. There was no etiquette Paul knew of for dealing with behaviour of this sort.

  It was, however, a mealtime. He was hungry, and she had just arrived. They now had to spend some time together, so there were three options. Either he invited her out for a meal, or she cooked, or he cooked. From this range of choices, her bizarre offer seemed the least unpleasant. Then he remembered what day it was.

  ‘I’m supposed to be cooking for the whole house,’ he said. ‘We take turns on Monday nights.’

  ‘Well, I can do it for you. It would be my pleasure. We could do it together. How many people are there?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Plus me is six,’ said Helen.

  ‘OK,’ said Paul. ‘Six.’ If he had to eat with Helen, five people to help dilute her could only be a good thing. They’d understand. He knew them all too well for the inevitable embarrassment to be a serious problem. He’d moaned about his mother to them for so long, they’d all be interested to meet her. There was little doubt that she’d put on a good show.

  ‘Do you want a hand?’ he said, trying (not very hard) to conceal the reluctance in his voice.

  ‘No, no. You put your feet up. I’m sure you’ve had a hard day. There’ll be plenty of time to talk later in the week.’

  This sounded distinctly ominous, but since nothing she could say really registered for ominousness up against the vast über-ominousness of her being there at all, he decided to let it slide. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘If you say so. I’ll get some glasses.’

  A shot of alcohol and a period of calm were, they both knew, exactly what was needed to prepare them for whatever was ahead.

  Helen hated cooking. She was amazed that Paul had seemingly forgotten how bad she was at it. But the opportunity to have an hour or so alone in the house, to gather her thoughts and plot her next move, was priceless. There had already been so much to absorb.

  As she stared vacantly into the fridge, at a loss as to what she could make, suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of tiredness, she reminded herself that the hardest bit was over. She knew she might have come across as devious or senile or both, but she was in. She had achieved what she set out to achieve. And though the situation was still a little ambiguous, it seemed to have been accepted that she was staying.

  what do you just want?

  ‘PAUL! DINNER!’

  The feeling of those words coming out of her mouth, shouted up a staircase, took her back twenty years. She fleetingly imagined that he might walk in as a tousled, hungry teenager, followed by Larry. She had already lost count of her Larry thoughts for the day. Today was a bad one. She really, really had to cut down.

  Andre and Paul arrived together, bringing with them one of those conspiratorial silences that comes off couples when they walk into a room containing the person they’ve just been discussing. Not far behind them was a man who introduced himself as Miles, who was neither fashionable nor young, nor thin, all of which Helen thought might be obligatory to qualify you for entrance to a gay commune. (If that’s what this place was.)

  ‘This is very civilised,’ he said, pronouncing the word with distaste, as if he was saying the precise opposite.

  ‘This is Miles,’ said Paul.

  ‘I’m the éminence grise of this establishment,’ he said.

  ‘That means landlord,’ said Andre.

  It was as if there was a pendulum in Helen’s head that with every new piece of information swung from ‘this is sordid’ to ‘this is actually rather normal’ and back again. She tried to compose her f
ace in such a way that it wouldn’t give away the latest swing of the pendulum back to maximum sordidness. So this was how it worked. Middle-aged gay man in large house rents out spare rooms to young gay men in return for what, precisely? Or was it prejudiced even to think that some currency other than money might be in use here? Surely her son, her precious, adorable son, would not be party to such a thing.

  Quite how the five men in this house interrelated was a mystery to Helen, and the more she found out, the less she understood. With straight people, you always knew who was who, and how they fitted together. If you didn’t, you could ask. Here she just had to flounder, trying to piece things together from conversational scraps. It felt like swimming in heavy clothing.

  Muscle Midget, who was introduced as Calvin, appeared in the room, immediately followed by another thirty-ish guy, Luke, also in expensively ill-fitting clothes. Everyone, Helen sensed, had been briefed. She had no idea what had been said, but as they all took their places there was something in the quality of the silence that had the air of a rowdy and intimate group hushed by a thin veneer of social restraint. Whether this restraint was the product of politeness, loathing or simple social tension, Helen couldn’t tell.

  There ought to be a word, she thought, for paranoia, but without the connotations of delusion. In a situation like this, you’d have to be delusional not to feel paranoid.

  ‘Well, isn’t this nice?’ she said, wondering, even as the words came out of her mouth, what it was that had made her say the opposite of what she was thinking. ‘What are you all doing here, and who’s screwing who?’ would have been more honest.

  As if sensing her confusion, Paul said, ‘We eat together on Mondays. It’s a tradition.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Helen.

  ‘It was me and Andre’s turn to cook, but since you offered . . .’

  ‘I just hope it’s up to scratch,’ said Helen, suddenly struck by the fear that gay men were all epicurean aesthetes who’d be snobbishly unimpressed by her pasta bake. As she plonked her bubbling, slightly burnt offering on to the table, she felt like a hairy, stinking old dinner lady faced with a class of precocious pretty-boys holding in their smirks at her vulgarity and incompetence.

  ‘Oooh, pasta bake!’ said Miles. ‘I haven’t had one of those for years.’

  Despite the superficial enthusiasm of his tone, this somehow didn’t come across as a compliment.

  ‘Don’t be such a fucking snob,’ said Andre. ‘I’d rather have a pasta bake than your venison curry any day.’

  ‘Pearls before swine. I’m wasted on you.’

  ‘If anyone here’s the swine, it’s you, old man,’ said Calvin.

  ‘Have you seen what I have to put up with?’ said Miles, directing his comment at Helen, in her capacity as the only other old person in the room, she assumed. Helen jumped at the invitation to join in the banter, even though her first choice would have been to go and hide in a cupboard. ‘The young are ungrateful,’ she said. ‘It’s the first thing you learn as a mother.’

  In her head, this had sounded like friendly mockery, but it came out rather more bitter and heartfelt than she had intended. An awkward silence followed, everyone avoiding her eyes.

  ‘Well, I’d like to welcome you,’ said Miles, ‘as the first mother to join our little Monday night soirées. And I’d like to thank Paul for inviting you. It’s a lovely idea, and I hope the rest of you will do the same.’

  An audible groan went round the table, as if Miles had just asked who was going to clean the oven.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Helen.

  ‘Perhaps we should make it a tradition. Spice things up a bit,’ continued Miles, who seemed to be warming to his theme, so much so that Helen began to wonder if he was mocking her. ‘I’d invite my own mother next week, except that I don’t think she’d appreciate being dug up. A toast! To mothers!’

  ‘To mothers!’ said Helen, enthusiastically.

  ‘To mothers,’ grunted Paul, Andre, Luke and Calvin, reluctantly.

  ‘Not a day goes by that I don’t think of my mother,’ said Miles, addressing his comment only to Helen. ‘I’ve never been the same since she died.’

  ‘That’s a very sweet sentiment,’ said Helen. ‘I’m sure she loved you very much, too.’

  ‘And Paul will be the same,’ said Miles. ‘When you’re gone. Whether he knows it now or not.’

  ‘Miles, will you shut up,’ said Paul.

  ‘Paul!’ said Helen.

  ‘It’s all right, dear,’ said Miles. ‘I’ve had far worse.’

  ‘Do you mind me asking?’ said Helen. ‘You said you were very close to your mother. I was wondering when you came out to her.’

  ‘Oh, never. It would have killed her.’

  ‘It did kill her,’ said Luke. ‘He bumped her off by showing her a picture of him being fis–’

  ‘Luke!’ snapped Miles. ‘Shut that filthy mouth of yours.’

  ‘I’m joking,’ said Luke, to Helen.

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘Me?’ said Luke.

  ‘You have told her, haven’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘When? I mean, at what age?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘If you don’t mind. I just want to know how it usually works.’

  ‘I came out at university, then one weekend I came home for my dad’s fiftieth birthday. He was having a big party, with lots of family and friends coming over, and I thought I’d tell them that weekend, the day after. But I got a bit excited and I couldn’t hold it in, and I ended up saying it on the day, about five minutes before the first guests arrived. Which made for a strange party. I didn’t mean to. It just came out.’

  ‘And did they make a fuss?’ said Helen.

  ‘They couldn’t. They had thirty guests in the house.’

  ‘I mean after that.’

  ‘It took them a while to get used to it, but they were fine in the end. Good, actually.’

  ‘So it’s normal to tell your parents quite soon?’

  ‘Who gives a shit what’s normal?’ said Calvin. ‘Who wants to be normal?’

  Helen took a gulp of wine. ‘It’s just that Paul’s never come out to me. I’m still waiting.’

  Paul’s face fell. This meal had been a terrible idea. The opportunity to escape from the cooking rota had fatally clouded his judgement.

  ‘Oh, Paul!’ said Miles. ‘I’m very disappointed in you.’

  ‘No time like the present,’ said Luke.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Come on,’ said Miles. ‘Tell your mother about your sordid little habits.’

  ‘What is all this crap about coming out, anyway?’ said Paul. ‘I mean, it’s not as if straight people have to gather their parents round the kitchen table when they’re eighteen and find a way of carefully breaking it to them that they’ve decided they’re heterosexual. Why should it be any different for us? Why can’t they just be expected to see what they see and figure it out for themselves? It’s not a sin. It’s not something I have to confess. It’s just one of the things that makes me what I am, and that if you’ve got any sense you’ll figure out for yourself.’

  ‘It would just be nice,’ said Helen, ‘to have a bit of openness. I can’t be accepting and loving if you won’t be open.’

  ‘Do it!’ said Luke. ‘Do it now.’

  ‘What a lovely idea,’ said Miles. ‘Come on, Paul. Spit it out.’

  Gradually, the momentum behind this suggestion built until everyone round the table was jeering at Paul to come out to Helen, laughing and brandishing wine glasses. Eventually, Paul lifted his glass. Somehow, the impending declaration had been turned into a toast.

  ‘Waitwaitwait,’ said Miles, topping up everyone’s glasses. ‘OK.’

  ‘Mum,’ said Paul. ‘I’m queer.’

  A huge cheer went up round the table.

  ‘Thank you, and I would never want you to be anything other than how you want to b
e,’ said Helen, a line she had been pondering, honing and rehearsing for almost a decade.

  ‘Give her a kiss!’ said Luke.

  Paul stood and gave Helen a kiss, which turned into a hug. When the excitement subsided, and they were back in their seats, Helen said, ‘Well, that’s fabulous. I’m very pleased. All you have to do now is tell your father.’ The idea of it filled her with a warm glow of schadenfreude. The discovery that his one and only son was gay would drive Larry crazy. He’d take it as a personal affront to his own machismo. It would puncture his ego in a way that Helen, through all their years of arguing, had never once managed.

  ‘I told him ages ago,’ said Paul, without thinking.

  Helen’s face didn’t just fall, it plummeted. It was as if he had turned round and slapped her.

  ‘When?’ said Helen, her voice faltering, seemingly on the brink of tears.

  Paul suddenly felt as if his legs had filled with lead. This was one of those moments with his mother where the wrong thing slips out of your mouth, and suddenly the ground falls away beneath you. What was a pleasant and friendly conversation suddenly becomes a tense and deathly stand-off. If he could only unsay it, take back this tiny, unimportant piece of information that he had successfully concealed for several years; if only he had been a little more alert and hadn’t allowed himself, buoyed up by all the laughter, to relax his guard.

  ‘Oh . . . a while ago.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know. A few years.’

  ‘A few years?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘How many years?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘How many years?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘How many? Two? Five? Ten?’

  ‘Mum, why does it make any difference?’

  ‘HOW MANY?’

  ‘I think maybe we’ll leave you two to catch up in private,’ said Miles, standing and walking to the stairs with his plate. Within seconds, Helen and Paul were alone in the room.

  ‘I don’t know. Three-ish.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why did you tell him and not me?’