Much to my relief, she was remarkably calm about it. She said it was a shame, but she’d sensed I wasn’t that into her and hoped we could still be friends. And that was that. It all seemed a bit too easy, and as soon as I’d said it I felt liberated, with a new-found lightness in my step as I skipped back to the boys’ house. I felt like a man who’d been released from jail, and I made the decision that for now I needed to remain single – no more girlfriends. The thing is, lots of boys in the school fancied this girl so, unsurprisingly, by the following week, she’d found a new boyfriend and I was starting to ask myself if I’d been a bit too hasty breaking up with her. I also started to ask myself if there wasn’t perhaps something altogether bigger going on with my fear of relationships with girls.
It was around this time that the idea of being gay started to cross my mind. I hadn’t stopped fancying girls, but for the first time it felt like homosexuality was a road I could explore or go down if I wanted to. Thanks to Mum and Dad’s friends, there have always been gay people in my life, and these fall into two categories. First there are the older ones, who never talk about it, live on their own and don’t seem to have boyfriends. Then again, Alan once told a journalist who’d asked him if he was gay that that was a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara if he’d prefer Perrier or Malvern. Then there’s the other set, who are very open about it; they mostly work with Dad in the theatre and express themselves by being what he calls ‘queeny’, which means a lot of camp humour and a fair amount of bitchiness, which is often very funny.
When I was at Pimlico, the gay thing wasn’t something I ever really thought about. It was never discussed, and if anyone was gay they kept it well hidden. Conrad and I were occasionally accused of being ‘pooftas’, but it turned out the boys who said it thought it meant posh and poncey. At Bedales the situation was altogether different. There were a couple of boys who were completely open about being gay and took a lot of pleasure in camping it up, and no one was bothered either way. One of them frequently turned up to games in a pink Fiorucci jumpsuit and would scream and wave his arms around like a girl every time the football came near him. Another boy persuaded our housemaster, Harry, to rent a film called La Cage aux Folles for the sixth-formers’ Saturday night film club about a gay couple who run a nightclub in Saint-Tropez. The film has all the charm of the south of France mixed with the farcical adventures of the gay couple. It was so popular with everyone that we insisted on watching it again on the Sunday morning. The boy who organised the screening spent the rest of the term copying all the little screams and rolls of the eyes of Albin, the main character in the film. I couldn’t ever have imagined watching this film at Pimlico, where we’d have been lynched by the bullies if we’d been found out.
In my first term at Bedales I actually went on what some people might have called a date. At the time it didn’t cross my mind to call it that, as it was with another boy. It came about after a phone call when I was at home for half-term. ‘I thought he was dead …’ Mum said before handing me the phone and raising an eyebrow, ‘… it’s very strange but I could swear Noël Coward is on the phone for you.’ The voice at the other end did sound very grand, almost from another era, as the caller introduced himself as Matthew.
I’d seen him around school, though I hadn’t met him properly and was curious to know who he was. Matthew Rice is two years older than me and had left Bedales the previous term but often came back to see friends from his year who’d stayed on to do the Oxford and Cambridge entrance exams. Several of them had suggested to both of us that we might get on as our fathers worked in the theatre, so it wasn’t entirely unexpected that I’d get a call from him. We chatted briefly on the phone and decided to meet up at Gloucester Crescent the next day and go to London Zoo.
Tom went to the door when Matthew arrived, and then left him waiting on the front porch while he ran down to the kitchen to get me. ‘It’s Bertie Wooster for William,’ he announced, trying hard not to laugh. ‘I always knew when William went to that school he’d end up being a ponce.’ Ignoring his tiresome attempt to wind me up, I went to the front door to find Matthew, who was dressed like a country squire from the 1920s in a tweed suit with a polka-dot silk tie. Even though it wasn’t raining, he was carrying an old-fashioned black umbrella, which he used like a cane to point out various things as we strolled through the park and on to the zoo.
As we walked, Matthew told me about his parents, who he lived with next to the river in Chiswick, and how he kept chickens in the back garden which he’d bred at school. He talked a lot about his time at Bedales, which he’d loved, and about the teachers who had inspired him. He was passionate about art, art history and architecture, and he had a real skill in bringing everything to life with stories about the terraces designed by Nash on the edge of Regent’s Park, and how in the early 19th century the Prince Regent had bought the park to build a palace for himself, though it had never been built. He seemed so knowledgeable about so many things, and I was surprised when he told me that his A-levels had been a disaster, but it hadn’t held him back in any way. He’d always wanted to do something creative and had ended up following in his father’s footsteps by studying theatre design at art school, which he was hoping to make a career of. He couldn’t believe I didn’t want to follow my father into the theatre, but I explained that Dad was constantly warning me off it. However, hearing about Matthew’s love of the theatre did make me wonder if I was making a mistake.
I found him very easy to talk to as he didn’t lecture me or talk down to me, and I was impressed by how much he knew about many of the things that interested me. But as we explored the zoo and talked, there was this nagging voice at the back of my head questioning what this encounter might really be. Matthew was also wise and perceptive and gave me his thoughts on the girls I liked at school, but I couldn’t tell if he was gay, straight or just very theatrical and eccentric.
We returned to Gloucester Crescent, and I was relieved to find that Tom and Kate had gone out. Mum and Dad were settling down for tea, and as we sat with them Matthew took out of his bag a box of eggs from his chickens and gave them to Mum. I noticed he’d painted flowers and chickens over the whole box, which Mum complimented him on. Dad asked loads of questions about Matthew’s art school and what he was interested in doing. I didn’t feel the usual tension when my friends met Dad; he wasn’t lecturing him, perhaps because Matthew was managing to hold his own and keeping Dad amused in the process.
Matthew Rice
I’d really enjoyed my time with Matthew, but when he left I felt confused by the uncertainty of my feelings – had this been more than just two boys hanging out together? If he was gay, was this how relationships of this kind started? And if it was, could it be what I’d been looking for all this time? Maybe this was why I didn’t have a girlfriend, or why I’d bailed out of the brief relationship with the girl from school.
I pushed these thoughts aside, but they came back on my next visit home, when Mum asked straight out if I thought I might be gay. My immediate response was a perplexed ‘What?’, but she obviously wasn’t going to let it go. ‘Dad and I really liked your friend Matthew,’ she went on, ‘but we did wonder about him. And we wanted you to know that it really would be OK if you liked boys and not girls.’ We looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, as if to see who’d blink first, then she shrugged and said, ‘I’ve always thought it would be rather nice to have a gay son.’ What struck me most about her saying this was that she’d clearly given it a lot of thought since Matthew’s visit and almost certainly discussed it with Dad. I wondered whether my being gay might bring us closer together, and that it might even give me an edge on Tom and Kate. Maybe it would make me more than just a son to her: I could become her confidant in the way that some of her gay friends were. I wasn’t sure what difference it would have made to my relationship with Dad, other than he might have found a certain pride in telling everyone he had a gay son. The truth of the matter was that the idea of my being
gay was something I hadn’t come to any firm conclusion about, but I was enormously grateful that Mum didn’t seem bothered which way I was leaning and that she wanted me to know it was OK. I explained to her that I didn’t think I was gay, but if things changed she would be the first to know. I knew I still fancied quite a few girls at school and that I definitely didn’t fancy any of the boys.
For the rest of that term Matthew carried on coming to Bedales to see his friends, and would occasionally take me for lunch with his parents at the cottage they rented near Chichester. In the holidays he came to Gloucester Crescent for dinner and would bring more eggs or bunches of wild flowers for Mum. As we got to know each other, the nagging voice of doubt disappeared and I became more comfortable with the idea that my friendship with Matthew was no more than that and that I still very much wanted to find a girlfriend.
I more or less forgot about the feelings I’d had until a year later, when Brideshead Revisited came on TV. My friends and I were glued to it every week. I hadn’t read the book, but as the story of Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte’s friendship unfolded I found there was something about it that I could relate to, and which I hadn’t thought about before. When I think back to my first meeting with Matthew, it reminded me of how Charles described going to meet Sebastian in his rooms at Oxford. He said that there was a voice in his head telling him he should hold back, but instead he’d gone out of curiosity, and described searching for a low door in the wall that opened onto an enchanted garden. My first meeting with Matthew and the trip to the zoo had been a little like that, and our friendship had become similar in many ways to the one Charles and Sebastian had.
Some of the boys at school joked about how it was obvious that Brideshead was a gay love story, but I didn’t see it that way – whether it was or it wasn’t didn’t matter because to me it said something else. When I thought about Charles and what he was in search of, I found I was able to make comparisons with the things that had happened to me. Like Charles when he first arrived at Oxford, I was incredibly happy to be at boarding school and Bedales felt like a safe haven after Pimlico, but I wasn’t feeling inspired. I was also looking for something that would open my mind and enthuse me in ways that hadn’t happened to me before.
When Matthew turned up, it was rather similar to the way Sebastian had with Charles. We went on trips to the countryside and visited grand houses and churches. We’d pull over in his car and Matthew would get his sketch pad out and draw while we chatted about art or music or history or architecture. None of these things was new to me as I’d grown up surrounded by extraordinary people who knew everything about these subjects, like Dad, Freddie, the Tomalins and my uncle Karl, but most of the time they only wanted to lecture and there was never a discussion. Matthew turned out to have an incredible knowledge of these things too, but we discussed and debated them as equals, and for the first time I was feeling inspired and wanted to know more. He opened a door to a world that was gentler and more colourful, which I wanted to explore and be part of. This helped me finally to close the door on those brutal years at Pimlico and escape to a place that felt safe and part of another time. I realised I’d been there before with Stella at Stanage, where I’d found a long-lost and romantic version of an England that was so different from Gloucester Crescent or Pimlico and where I was happy and felt secure.
29
THE END OF THE ROAD FOR DR WILLIAM MILLER
I can’t remember the moment I decided that I wanted to be a doctor, but it probably came straight after wanting to be an astronaut, which I was perfectly serious about and would probably have been a better reason for doing sciences at school. None of Mum and Dad’s friends were astronauts, so it would have been my very own thing, and once I’d actually become one everyone would have been incredibly impressed, including Dad. The problem was that whenever I told someone I wanted to be an astronaut they just laughed like they would if I’d said I wanted to be a cowboy or the next James Bond. Being an astronaut was not very Gloucester Crescent. In the end, I knew becoming a doctor would make Dad happy, but I was also attracted to it because it was a job that got a lot of respect, and in Mum and Dad’s eyes it meant you were both clever and giving something back. I would also be carrying on a family tradition, which had started with my great grandfather, followed by my grandfather and then both Mum and Dad. However, there were a few whopping great facts I’d temporarily chosen to ignore: I’ve always been hopeless with other people’s illnesses; I panic at the first sight of blood; and the thought of having to touch an oozing abscess or an open wound made me retch.
The irony is that it’s Tom who should have been the doctor. I’ve always been in awe of his ability to remain calm in life-threatening situations where I would have been a blubbering wreck. He once came home covered in blood, having come across a terrible car crash and a man bleeding to death. Tom climbed into the car, put his hand on the man’s neck to stop the bleeding and stayed with him until the ambulance arrived. The sad thing is that in spite of his cast-iron stomach for gore he never gave a moment’s thought to being a doctor, and Dad never pushed him to consider it in the way he had with me. I think Tom has always been smarter about this than I have: he knew that if he wanted to be a doctor or anything else that Dad took an interest in it was best to keep quiet about it. He also doesn’t have the same unhealthy longing to please Dad all the time, knowing it’s better to keep your ideas to yourself if you don’t want him interfering. As a result, Tom is more or less left to do his own thing without the same pressures I’ve always had from Dad.
Tom’s big passion is photography. Dad can see he’s really good at it, and that makes him an artist, which is something Dad can get his head around. When he told Mum and Dad that he wanted to be a professional photographer, he also said there was little point in his staying on at school to do his A-levels, which, somewhat surprisingly, they supported. They also agreed with him that a summer in New York would be an inspiration for his work and bought him a plane ticket. So he left school, went off to stay with friends in Manhattan, and Keith gave him a job as a waiter in his new restaurant so he could earn a bit of money.
When I first arrived at Bedales, I had so much enthusiasm for being a doctor, but by the second term it was apparent to everyone that I was struggling. Rather than offer extra tuition to help me get up to speed, my teachers decided it might be easier to encourage me to downgrade my career ambitions to meet what they saw as my limited academic abilities. This came as quite a surprise, as I’d thought the main reason for going to a public school was that it would help you fulfil all your wildest dreams – this clearly wasn’t the case. When the first summer term arrived, everyone in my year was asked to start thinking about university applications and it was subtly suggested that I think about applying to do psychology instead of medicine. Then, towards the end of that term I sat mock exams for A-levels and did so badly that at the next parents’ evening my housemaster, Harry, told Mum and Dad that I might want to think about becoming an agricultural scientist. A look of horror came over Dad’s face as he nervously asked Harry, ‘Do you mean a farmer?’ As far as Dad was concerned, farmers lived in the countryside, which we all knew how much he hated, and that in turn meant they probably voted Tory, which in his mind made it all wrong. When he got back in the car, I could see he was trying his best to smile as he looked at me through the open window. Through gritted teeth he told me everything would be fine. I could tell he didn’t really think so and was clearly still worrying about the farmer thing as he drove away.
Just before sitting the A-levels, the following year, my suggested career changed again to something in childcare, which was further downgraded, by Harry, in my school report to ‘nanny’. He later confessed that he’d only made this suggestion because I was the only boy in the school he trusted to babysit his unruly children. I didn’t particularly like his children or feel an affinity with looking after them; I just had a knack of settling them down quickly so I could watch his television in peace and quie
t.
Dad never took this suggestion too seriously, but I knew that if he had he would have probably thought that people in childcare were generally decent people who voted Labour, so, unlike being a farmer, it would have been all right. I was starting to get annoyed with Harry’s career suggestions, and the worse they got, the more I felt the urge to follow in Tom’s footsteps and head to New York. I probably would have done that had I not being enjoying myself so much at school in other ways. It had also started to cross my mind that being at Bedales was now less to do with getting a good education and more about growing up and convalescing from Pimlico.
The summer holiday came as a welcome break from the disappointment of my mock exams, although I felt sad knowing that my first year had gone so fast and that when I returned in September I’d only have three terms left at Bedales. The holidays kicked off with the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, and Conrad and I sat in front of the TV watching Sarah Armstrong-Jones perform her royal duties as a bridesmaid. After our awkward meeting on the dance floor, Sarah and I had become good friends, and I’d promised to watch her on telly walking up the aisle.
A few days later Kate and I boarded a plane to New York with Mum for a trip she’d been planning for some time as the highlight of our summer. The plan was to see Tom, who was finishing off working at Keith’s restaurant, and then drive together to Connecticut to stay with the Aldriches on their farm. There was, however, a more pressing reason for me to be in New York, and that was to see Dee and Hylan. They were temporarily staying in an apartment at the Chelsea Hotel, an enormous 19th-century red-brick building on West 23rd Street. According to Dee, it was perfect. ‘Hylan and I are living the dream on the set of an old horror movie, and we love it,’ she told me over the phone. She rattled off a long list of famous writers, artists and musicians who’d passed through, passed out or passed away in the Chelsea Hotel. This included Andy Warhol, Jane Fonda, Arthur C. Clarke (who’d written 2001: A Space Odyssey while living there), Janis Joplin, Tom Wolfe, Patti Smith and Arthur Miller, who’d lived there for six years after separating from Marilyn Monroe. Freddie’s old friends Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir had stayed there, and Dylan Thomas had drunk himself to death in the hotel. There was Quentin Crisp and Gore Vidal, and more recently Sid Vicious, who woke up to find he’d murdered his girlfriend Nancy Spungen right there in his room. Dee joked that more people had been carried out in coffins than had walked out of the Chelsea Hotel.
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