A Son Called Gabriel

by Damian McNicholl

  “There’s more of us around.” Richie pointed to his left, where a group of short-haired men sat at a table with a group of women. “Your lot would blow my head off if I showed up at one of your dance halls.” He laughed. “Even if I’m also a Catholic.”

  When I didn’t reply, he looked around the disco. The silence lengthened and made me feel awkward.

  “Thanks for the beer,” I said, and started to leave.

  “Why don’t we go out to the foyer for a minute?” he asked.

  Again, my heart reared and started racing. I looked beyond a group of people to the dance floor and could see Fiona and Caroline still dancing. I agreed.

  A long line of people waited to check their bags and coats into the cloakroom when we reached the foyer. The place roared with conversation and laughter. I followed Richie to the top of the room, where we stood near an oversized window.

  “Why’d you become a soldier?” I asked.

  “Long story,” he said, and winked. “You got all night?”

  Unsure how to respond, I didn’t speak.

  “My old man and I didn’t get along,” he said, “so I signed up three years ago.” Richie looked at me. “It was a big mistake. I found out too late that it’s us and them in the army.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s the officers and there’s the cannon fodder.” He took a sip of beer. “One more year and I’m out.”

  Pounding rhythms from the disco punctuated our silence. Our eyes met and lingered. My body sizzled with electricity. I looked away. My hand trembled so much as I lifted the glass to my mouth that the beer fizzed up.

  “I’m going out on a limb here.” Richie waited until I looked at him. “Has anybody ever told you that you’re an attractive bloke?”

  People milling about the place turned fuzzy and the room became wavy. The din sounded hollow, protracted. I stared out the black windows until everything returned to normal.

  “So are you,” I said.

  The air between us grew ferociously charged. I could scarcely breathe.

  “A mate of mine’s got a holiday rental nearby,” said Richie. “You want to see it?”

  Looking about the foyer, I thought I saw Connor exiting from the men’s lavatories and hastened toward the exit door before he saw me.

  A silver moon gleamed as I followed Richie across the parking lot toward a caravan park. In the distance, the sea shimmered. Frothy waves crashed soundlessly against rugged black cliffs. We entered the park and walked along a narrow path flanked on either side by caravans resting on top of concrete blocks. Halfway along, Richie tugged me toward the entrance door of one of them. A pure white seagull was perched at one end of its roof. My breaths shortened. As if in a dream, I watched him insert the key in the lock and open the door.

  The interior smelled of the sea and was bathed in yellowish light from a weak lamp in one corner. Richie’s hands reached out and I felt my body pulled gently toward him. Our chests and bellies pressed together. His lips touched mine. They felt soft and mobile. It felt no different than when Fiona and I kissed. And yet it was—very. He was a man and I was a man and men’s lips were never supposed to touch like this.

  I pushed him away and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

  “You liked it,” Richie said. He put his arms around my waist and his face loomed closer and closer. I trembled so violently I thought I’d faint.

  “You’ve never kissed a man before, have you?”

  I shook my head.

  He stroked my back for a moment and then kissed me again. A dam burst inside me and I was flooded with sensations and needs I’d never experienced before. We embraced tighter and tighter, our tongues exploring every gap in our teeth and fold in the lining of our mouths. Richie unbuttoned my shirt and his hot tongue explored my nipples. They were on fire. The tip of his tongue skimmed over my chest next. His was defined, like men I’d seen in cowboy films on the television, and covered in wiry brown hair. His body had a nutty, masculine smell. My cock was rigid, so rigid I thought it would bust through my fly. His hand passed over it, squeezing, prodding.

  He steered me toward the bedroom at the back of the caravan and we fell on the rumpled bed. We got naked. Every part of his body was rock hard and beautiful. We kissed passionately as we writhed on the bed. He inserted his tongue in my ear and I experienced hot and cold pleasure as he wiggled and thrust it about. Then his head moved down and down until his mouth found my cock. He sucked me and I had to stop him very quickly, because I was close.

  “Do you prefer to top or bottom?” he said softly, at the end of a long French kiss. “I’m easy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He guided me on top of him.

  A minute later, when I climaxed, I thought I was dying. Never had I experienced such intensity. It didn’t seem possible to recover from such an enveloping sensation. We lay on the bed, drenched in sweat, Richie running his fingers through my hair.

  “How’d you know I was homosexual and that I’d come here with you?” I asked.

  Richie’s fingers stopped massaging my scalp. “It’s nicer to say ‘gay,’ Gabriel. Homosexual is harsh. Clinical.” He looked at me earnestly. “My sixth sense told me.” He chuckled and added, “You need it in the army. They hate gays.”

  I thought about this for a moment and then rose. Though I’d been here just fifteen minutes, it felt like I’d been away from Fiona for hours. Richie sat up and watched me dress.

  “I’m off duty again in three weeks,” he said.

  I stopped buttoning up my shirt. “You’re a British soldier. I can’t.”

  “Nobody knows us around here.”

  I zipped my fly.

  “We like each other.” Richie stroked my arm. “I liked you the moment I saw you.”

  I finished buttoning my shirt and kissed him. “I’ve got to go.”

  The seagull resting on the caravan’s roof lifted into the night air when I got outside, its sharply sculpted wings flashing white in the streetlight as it rose. I sprinted out of the caravan park and slowed to a brisk walk as I neared the hotel entrance.

  “Where’ve you been?” Connor asked, stepping out from behind a sycamore tree.

  “Getting fresh air. It’s smoky inside.”

  His eyes lowered to my chest. “What’s up with your shirt?”

  Looking down, I saw it was lopsided.

  “Buttoned it wrong at home.” I walked quickly away and redid the buttons before entering the hotel.

  I found Fiona standing in front of the bar and told her the same lie I’d told Connor, but added that I’d felt nauseous. She bought it. Later, as I drove home, I relived my experience with Richie and became so distracted I almost smacked into a car in front of me that stopped for a changing traffic light.

  “I’m so happy to be out with you tonight,” I said, laying my hand on Fiona’s knee.

  “Even though you almost killed us just now,” she said.

  “Yes, watch where you’re going,” Caroline said, from the back.

  “It’s wonderful to be together,” I said, not caring if my sister overheard. “Don’t you think?”

  “It is. I’m just surprised you pick this moment to say so.”

  Three weeks later, I lied to Fiona for a second time and made an excuse not to see her. I met Richie instead. He and I met outside the disco but couldn’t go to the caravan as his friend, the owner, was entertaining his girlfriend. We walked along the deserted beach hand-in-hand, stopping frequently to kiss. It was so romantic, so right. Before leaving, we went into the nearest dunes. Despite my open shirt and pants bunched at my shoes, I didn’t feel the early fall chill blowing in from the water.

  More lies to Fiona followed as Richie and I met again, including twice at the caravan, where we made love, and once at a bar in another town, where he informed me the manager was gay and allowed people like us to drink there, provided we behaved discreetly. Discretion means different things to different people, apparentl
y, and the effeminate behavior exhibited by some of these men disgusted me, the way they limply drooped their hands or touched one another when they talked. Richie didn’t like it, either.

  During this period, I also met with Fiona, but things had changed. I thought only of Richie when I kissed her.

  I entered the London School of Economics as my first choice of university on my application form and Queens University in Belfast became my safety school, the choice made for no other reason than Richie came from there and I held a secret hope we might continue to see each other when he left the army. I hadn’t even spoken to him about this, though, for fear he’d think I was clingy and dump me.

  On one of our walks along the beach, I told him that I didn’t want to hear about his work in the army. It made me uncomfortable to listen to his stories about what he and the other soldiers did. I also felt guilty—entirely for dating a British soldier and not for being gay. Quite frankly, I’d used up all my reserves of guilt on this supposed sin and, intellectually, I figured God had made me this way. How could something that felt right be sinful in His eyes? The one thing Richie and I agreed on was that if I ever drove up to a checkpoint and saw him, I was to ignore him. I wasn’t even to smile, as soldiers were on high alert at those stops and noticed everything.

  Unable to reconcile my happiness and lying to Fiona, I arranged to meet her at the café near Saint Malachy’s where Pani and I drank cappuccinos. I arrived early and secured a booth at the end of the room where we could have privacy. I watched from the window as she parked her car on the street. She fixed her bangs in the rearview mirror and adjusted her slate-gray skirt and navy school blazer after exiting her car.

  Her smile when she came up the stairs made me feel even shittier.

  “So, what’s so important, you needed to see me on a school day?” Fiona asked, after the waitress set a mug of coffee and chocolate éclair in front of her. “Not that I mind.”

  “I picked the LSE as my first choice.”

  “That’s fantastic, Gabriel.” She put her hand on top of mine. “Both of us over in England. Wow.”

  She’d applied to Cambridge, and University College London was her safety school.

  “I . . . I . . . we need to slow down things between us, Fiona. Final exams are around the corner and—”

  “They’re six months away.” She whipped her hand away. “What are you talking about?”

  I wanted to tell her the real reason, but she’d never understand. Anyway, it would be impossible to tell her the truth. I couldn’t bear to think of her seeing me as a queer. Better she hated me than that.

  “My parents told me I have to stop seeing you. They’re afraid we’re getting too serious and it could affect my studying.” I leaned across the table. “They’re not allowing me to borrow the car anymore.”

  “I’ll fetch you.”

  “We’re too young to be serious. They’ve got a point.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. The natural red of her face deepened. I shifted in my seat.

  “You want to end us?”

  I stared out the window, watching a woman and her child enter a pharmacy across the street.

  “Is there someone else? Is that why? Have you found a Catholic girl and you’re dumping me?”

  I turned back to her. “There’s no other girl.”

  We sat in silence, me staring at her untouched éclair and Fiona dabbing her tears with a tissue. Upper sixth Saint Malachy’s students laughed gruffly in the other booths. The cappuccino machine hissed violently as the waitress prepared another coffee, steam rising from it in eddied puffs.

  Fiona let out a sudden cry and rose. Students in the next booth looked over their shoulders as she rushed out of the café. I’m not proud of it, but I’d figured Fiona wouldn’t make a scene when surrounded by other students, and I was right.

  “You did the right thing,” Richie said. “It always best to be honest, even when it’s hard. Fiona’ll get over it.”

  We stood inside the Mussenden Temple, a circular structure made of Roman columns about fifteen feet in diameter. It was part of the Downhill demesne built by Frederick, Fourth Earl of Bristol, in the early eighteenth century. The estate was now a ruin, but the temple was still intact and stood on a cliff looking down on a beautiful sandy cove.

  “We have to meet in secret,” I said. “We sneak around. What’s honest about us?”

  He took his hand off a pillar and pulled me to him.

  “It’s how things are for gay people.”

  “Forever?”

  “Not in London. We have a future now that you’ll study there.” He squeezed me tightly. “You and Fiona had no future.”

  Blood pumped furiously through my body and made me lightheaded.

  “Only if I get the grades the LSE want,” I reminded him.

  “You’d better.”

  A middle-aged couple entered the temple and Richie and I parted. We weren’t fast enough. The disgust on the man’s face shocked me. I felt dirty.

  Thirty

  I found my mother hanging laundry in the small lawn behind our house. She stood with three clothes pegs in her mouth as she stretched a bedsheet over the line. A spring breeze ruffled her hair, blowing strands away from her ears.

  “I thought you were studying,” she said, as she pegged the sheet.

  I watched her for a moment, the only sound coming from the transistor radio in her laundry basket. She enjoyed listening to political discussions on Radio Ulster and BBC Northern Ireland.

  “I have to tell you something,” I said, after she tossed another sheet on the clothesline. I cleared my throat. “I’m gay.”

  “If you help me, I’ll be gay, too.”

  “I’m a homosexual, Mammy. I can’t handle keeping it a secret anymore.”

  The muscles in Mammy’s face stretched and slackened as she fought to regain her composure.

  “What makes you think you’re like that?”

  “I am.”

  She dropped the pegs on the grass and came over to me. “Homosexuality isn’t normal, Gabriel.”

  “It’s normal for me . . . and other people who are.”

  Mammy laughed sharply. A part of me felt sorry for her. First, she’d hoped I’d become a priest, but had stopped pushing after Uncle Brendan quit his vocation. Now, I was telling her I liked men.

  “I wasn’t attracted to Fiona,” I pressed. “That’s a sign.”

  “That just means she wasn’t the right one.” She rubbed her neck. “Try courting a dark-haired girl and you’ll see.”

  “God created me gay, Mammy. Uncle Brendan said it’s okay.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “I struggled to accept myself and couldn’t talk to you or Daddy.”

  “He said it’s acceptable to be with other men?” She shivered, like a wind passed through her. “He shouldn’t have said that. It’s a mortal sin.”

  “I’ll have to live with that, won’t I?”

  “You can’t receive Holy Communion.”

  I shrugged.

  “You’re confused. I’ve heard about this. It’s a phase. Some sensitive boys go through a period like that. It’ll pass.”

  She laid her hand on my forearm. I could feel the vibrations of her desperation.

  “Let’s talk to the doctor. He’ll explain that it’s a phase.”

  I met her gaze. “If you love me, I need you to accept me.”

  “How . . . what must . . . I . . .” Mammy regarded the limp bedsheets, tears sparkling in her eyes. Finally, she looked back at me.

  A car rattled over the cattle grid at the entrance to the driveway.

  “Jesus Christ, your daddy’s home.”

  “I’m telling him.”

  She clamped her hand over her mouth and looked at me with bulging eyes.

  I recalled what Richie had said about honesty, words I’d pondered for weeks now. He’d also said people like us had to be careful in public and I remembered the disgust on the man’s face when he’
d seen Richie and I kissing at Mussenden Temple. But being honest with the people you loved, with the people who were your flesh and blood, was very important.

  “He needs to know, Mammy”

  She grabbed my arm. “It’s best I tell him.”

  Feeling I owed her that small favor, I nodded my consent.

  As we ate dinner, Mammy kept looking over the kitchen table at me, hoping perhaps I’d changed my mind and would give her some kind of signal.

  “Mammy, why do you keep staring at Gabriel?” Caroline asked.

  Father glanced at Mammy and then at me.

  “I’m not staring at him.” Mammy took her plate of uneaten food and scraped it into the trash.

  Setting the utensils down nosily on the plate, Daddy rubbed his belly as he rose. Instead of heading into the living room like he always did after eating, he walked to the back door.

  “Where are you going?” Mammy asked, shooting me a glance.

  “One of the lorries sprung an oil leak and I need to fix it for tomorrow.”

  He left.

  Ordering James and my sisters to their bedrooms to start their homework, Mammy approached the window by the kitchen sink. I joined her. Light raindrops trickled down the pane and distorted Father’s body as he crossed the yard and went into the huge shed he’d built for truck repairs. Mammy washed a dish and handed it to me to dry. She sighed heavily and shook her head when our eyes met. When we were done, she dried her soapy hands and went outside. I watched her cross the yard. After she went inside the shed, I counted sixty seconds and followed.

  Parked about twenty feet inside the entrance to the shed, I could hear Father tinkering with something metallic inside the hood of the truck. John Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Roads” played on the dump truck’s radio. Father loved country music, a passion he shared with James. I found the lyrics sappy. Cans of engine oil and black grease lay on the floor. I still couldn’t see my parents as I crept closer.

  “He can’t help being that way, Harry. This is normal for him.”

  “Normal. Do you hear yourself?”