CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I was still brooding about my mother’s wedding and how it would affect my living arrangements when Paul walked into the room.
“Oh, you’re back then?” was my brother’s opening gambit on his way to the fridge.
“Don’t worry, I’m no ghost,” I growled without thinking. He visibly winced and the profile turned towards me turned a shade pale. “Sorry,” I muttered, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“No?” came the surly response as he helped himself to a can of coke. I half expected him to flounce out of the room in a huff. Instead, to my surprise, he pulled up a chair and sat opposite me. “I suppose they told you the good news,” he said, voice heavy with sarcasm, before snapping the can open and taking a swig.
“By ‘they’ I take it you mean Mum and Peter?”
“So what do you reckon?” Paul insisted, ignoring my implied criticism.
I shrugged. “It was on the cards they would get married. Good luck to them, I say. They seem happy enough. God knows, life’s too short to let any happiness slip through your fingers.”
“My, aren’t we the little philosopher?” It was my turn to decline the bait. “Is that all you can say? What about Dad?”
“Dad’s dead,” I pointed out not unkindly, “and Mum’s entitled to a life of her own, we all are,” I added gruffly. I hadn’t meant to sound accusing.
“Yeah, well, we all know what kind of a life you want, don’t we?” he muttered and took another swig from the can. Perhaps I was too tired to argue or maybe I was simply past caring, but the jibe at my sexuality didn’t bother me in the least. On the contrary, the thought occurred to me that if Paul had a problem with my being gay, it was his problem, not mine. “You make me sick,” he persisted, “You think you’re so smart, so much better than everyone else. Even in hospital, you couldn’t resist playing the hero and lapping up all the fuss. I can’t think why I bothered to even make an appearance, let alone splash out on bloody grapes.”
“So why did you?” I countered angrily. “If it was such a drag, why didn’t you go for a swim or put in some of your precious training instead?”
“Because…” He reddened, faltered and took refuge again in the can.
“Because..?” I prompted, determined not to let him off the hook. He was plainly spoiling for a fight. Well, he was welcome to one if it would help clear the air between us.
“Because I thought you were dead,” he blurted and tears welled in his eyes, “When I first heard about the fire, I thought…Then, later...Well, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, could I? First Dad, and now you...I couldn’t bear it. You can be a real pain sometimes, but you’re the only brother I have and…I love you, even if you are...one of them.”
“The word you’re looking for is gay,” I said quietly, “G-A-Y, gay. It’s a perfectly respectable word. Look it up in the Oxford dictionary if you don’t believe me.
“Whatever.” He was being surly and crying at the same time.
I surprised myself by saying, “You do know I love you too?”
“Whatever...” He sniffed and took another swig from the can.
“So now we’ve established that we love each other, why can’t we be friends?” I made a wry grimace.
He shrugged, said nothing for a while, and then produced a sheepish expression and offered me the can. I hesitated. He knew I disliked coke. Nor was it with a taste for martyrdom but with genuine relief that I accepted this peace offering at face value. .I drank, and handed it back. Although this mute exchange took only seconds, it spoke volumes for both of us and did much to bridge troubled waters since our father’s death.
“You hate coke!” He spluttered, as if suddenly remembering.
“Needs must as the devil drives,” I replied lightly.
“And I’m the Devil, yeah?” It was said with some heat, but I could see his lips twitching, bursting to break into a grin. I relaxed. We haven’t bantered like this for a long time, I reflected with a heady mix of guilt and pleasure.
“If the cap fits,” I said.
“Yeah, well, it takes one to know one…”
Instinctively, I rose and crossed to his side of the table where he was already on his feet. “Shake on it?”
Solemnly, we shook hands. Suddenly, we were laughing and hugging like old friends who hadn’t seen each other for a long time.
“About your being ‘gay’ and all that, it doesn’t matter. That is, I couldn’t give a toss really. If that’s the way it is, fair enough. I’ve behaved like a complete idiot and, well, I’m sorry.”
“Not half as sorry as you’ll be if you don’t stop standing on my bloody foot!” I pointed out with a mock seriousness that instantly had us convulsed again, the boot crushing my poor toes removed with conscience-stricken alacrity.
“I’ve got things to do,” he mumbled.
“Me too,” I said.
We parted, closer than we had ever been.
Paul left the room and I made a mental note to ask about his exams at the first opportunity. I couldn’t help wondering too how my kid brother would react when I told him I was HIV positive. How would I tell people? Family, friends…How would it change their perception of me? For it would change, surely? People might be living longer with the virus, but its association with AIDS and death was always likely to make those who are virus-free fearful for their own mortality. (Well, wouldn’t it?).
There was only one way to find out.
“First things first,” I told myself. First, I had to find Matthew. But where, how and…what then? I felt like crying and wished I could. But no tears fell. Only a dull ache in my chest spread rapidly through my whole body, weakening every limb until I had to sit down to prevent myself crumbling into a heap on the floor.
Of all the crises tackled at our kitchen table, this had to be the worst. I took deep breaths and gradually my feelings became recognizable. I wasn’t scared now. Well, not of AIDS or dying. I wasn’t even angry any more. It was almost as if I had deposited my worst feelings on a back burner while I contemplated the here and now. Erratic contours of my mind began slowly but surely to shape a resolve to take each day as it comes. At the epicentre, striking every frayed nerve, every nuance of my being, like persistent bolts of lightning, one word continued to flash like a neon sign spelling out M-A-T-T-H-E-W.
When my mother and Short returned, they were bursting with the news that both Crolleys had been arrested and charged with murder. They were plainly surprised at my lack of response. So was I. It barely touched me at all. Muttering some vague excuse, I beat a hasty retreat to my room. Once there, I tried to make sense of how I felt or, rather, how I didn’t feel.
Preoccupied as I was with thoughts of Matthew, I couldn’t ignore the fact that the Crolleys were responsible for several deaths, one of whom had been a close friend, and no inconsiderable injury count. So why this awful numbness as if I were immersed in ice cold water? It wasn’t even that, but a weird detachment. Nothing could excuse what the Crolleys had done, even the fact that their own father had sexually abused both. That had to count for something, though, surely?
I searched for signs of pity but there was too thin a line between pity and forgiveness. I couldn’t cross it. Nor did I wish to. It was enough, for now, that justice would be seen to be done on account of those who died. It would not bring them back though, would it? The dead never came back. Ben, Baz, Liz and Billy…I would never see them again... or my dad. At the same time, I felt a breath of wind like the touch of friendly fingers ruffling my hair and glanced dismissively at the partially open window where flowery curtains hung without stirring.
On impulse, I went to a drawer and retrieved Billy’s diary. I sat on the bed and read it from cover to cover. I actually read it. My eyes did not merely home in on certain words, phrases, passages, but looked for meanings to which I could relate and fit into each other, piece by piece, like an emotional jigsaw puzzle. For the first time, Billy talked to me from the heart. Not least, perhaps, because I was ready to listen.
If I had been obsessed with my own feelings, including my sexuality, I tried to make up for that now. The Billy in these pages, leaping out at me from an untidy scrawl, was and was not the Billy I had known and loved. Neither saint nor sinner, he was, though, someone with whom I could and did lovingly play hide-and-seek among mixed emotions. Nor did passages given over to anguished ruminations about his affair with Nick Crolley affect my overall sentiment. Page after page ‘hearing’ Billy express his love for me more than compensated for any meaningless affair.
One passage said it all: ‘I didn’t know what love was until I met Rob although I don’t think his capacity for love will ever come to fulfilment in me. It doesn’t matter. I just hope that one day he will feel the way I do now. If there is no heaven when we die, that doesn’t matter either because I’ve already been there.’
I bit my lip and felt incredibly humbled even as a surge of gratitude welled in me. Billy Mack had, after all, taught me to listen to my body, learn from it and act on that, unafraid and unashamed. If he had infected me with the HIV virus, and I would never know for sure, I couldn’t blame him for that. It was time to stop playing the blame game. Billy had shown me how to make a start at living my life. The rest was down to me.
A tentative knocking on the door disturbed my reverie. I ignored it. Closing Billy’s diary that I had finished reading some time before, I created a space for it among my books on a shelf beside the bed.
Another knock at the door was a sharp rap that conveyed a sense of urgency.
“Come in!” I called irritably, reluctant to let the outside world undermine this new bond and enhanced understanding that Billy Mack and I had re-established with one another.
t was Peter Short who entered, looking very flustered. This alarmed me somewhat as Peter always struck me as the archetypal librarian, cool, calm, collected, organized… “Look, Rob,” he began uncomfortably, “I know it’s none of my business and your mother doesn’t think I should interfere, but…” He kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other like a man anxious to go to the toilet. In other circumstance, it would have been funny.
“But…?” I prompted.
“But, well, you see…” fidgeting now with buttons on his cardigan, “It’s like this…” he persevered, “On the way home, your mother and I, we…” A button came loose between his fingers.
“For heaven’s sake, man, get on with it!”
“We saw Matthew going into the flat,” he said in a rush, and then, “I thought you should know,” he added lamely. He dropped the button and went down on all fours, groping for it.
I made no move to help him. My initial excitement was quickly replaced by fear. I went weak at the knees and sank down on the edge of the bed. I began to panic. Sweat was pouring from my brow.
“Here.” Peter was on his feet and offering me a handkerchief. “It’s clean,” he added. I accepted gratefully and mopped my face. He sat down beside me. I wished he would go away and leave me alone. At the same time, I found his presence a comfort of sorts. “Do you want to talk about it?” he suggested at last.
“You don’t want to know,” I muttered.
“Try me. I’d like to help if I can.”
“Well you can’t. No one can. If you must know, I’ve shot myself in the foot and now I’m…”
“Hurting like hell, I imagine,” he suggested gently. I could only nod. “In my experience, foot wounds are treatable,” he murmured wryly.
I rounded on him angrily. “How dare you poke fun at me? You know nothing, nothing! It’s all right for you. You’ve got everything going for you. What the fuck would someone like you know about being…”
“Being what...?” It was his turn to prompt, and it felt as though he was sticking a knife in my gut and twisting it.
I bit my lip and drew blood. But the pain would not stop. Before I realized it, I was crying out, “I’m HIV positive!” A long silence followed, broken only by the sound of our breathing, mine in rapid spurts and his remarkably even. Out of nowhere, an immense calmness descended and enveloped me in folds of satin that were at once refreshingly cool and smooth against my skin. “I’m HIV positive,” I repeated.
“I’m sorry,” Short said and laid an arm around my shoulders. I wanted to throw it off but didn’t, perhaps because feeling that I didn’t deserve any comfort made me all the more hungry for it. “Have you told anyone?”
“A couple of friends know.”
“Matthew?” I shook my head. “Don’t you think you should tell him?
"Of course,” I said angrily. “After all, it’s probably me who…” my voice trailed away miserably.
He’s HIV too?” I nodded. “And you think you may be responsible?” I nodded again.
I heard Short catch his breath.
“I didn’t know!” I found myself protesting and pleading at the same time, “But that’s no excuse is it?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “I accused him of infecting me. I said some terrible, terrible, things. I sent him away.”
"And now you want him back.” It was not a question.
“I love him,” I whimpered and was glad of the squeeze at my shoulder.
“Then you have to tell him that, along with everything else. No holding back, Rob. You have to let it all out and let him see how you feel.”
“Suppose he won’t listen? Suppose he sends me away like I did him? Suppose it’s all over between us? I couldn’t face it, I just…couldn’t.”
“Can you face the way things are now?” I shook my head. “Then you have no choice. I hope the pair of you can work things out, I really do. But sometimes there’s just no telling. All we can do is try our damnedest. Nothing ventured…and all that,” he added with a long sigh. It struck me then how there was an awful lot about Peter Short I didn’t know.
“I suppose…” was all I trusted myself to say. Short released his hold on me and got to his feet. I felt absurdly abandoned and began to panic again. Then it hit me how Matthew must have felt when I drove him away and I felt physically sick. Suddenly, an awful thought struck me and I looked up at Short in alarm, “You won’t tell mum? Please, you mustn’t. I’ll tell her, I promise, when I’m ready.”
“I won’t say a word. It has to come from you. And don’t let on you talked to me about it first. Not only because she’d feel so hurt either. I’m just not convinced she’d ever quite forgive either of us.”
“Do you think she’ll forgive me for…this?”
Short smiled and I thought I saw something of what must have attracted my mother to the man in the first place. “If you have the capacity to love, you have the capacity to forgive. But it’s how you use it that counts.”
“That’s pretty profound,” I remarked.
“Even for some dried-up old stick of a librarian?” He chuckled.
“For a stepdad too,” I said with a grin.
He flushed with pleasure before turning to go and then, “Whatever happens, Rob, your mother and I will always be there for you.” He went to the door, turned and flung me a wicked smile. “Go for it, Rob. If the worst comes to the worst, well…” He shrugged, “at least when you’re at rock bottom, the only way to go is up…” Another dry chuckle was still sending ripples across my brain long after he had closed the door firmly behind him.
I reached for my mobile phone and began to tap out Matthew’s number then stopped and switched the damn thing off so I wouldn’t be tempted again. What I have to say to Matthew needs to be said face to face. Besides, he probably would not have answered. Worse, I might have scared him off. I tried to picture him alone in the flat. What was he doing? Was he relaxing in an armchair, pacing up and down, watching TV while drowning his sorrows, packing a suitcase…? It was the latter prospect that finally galvanized me into action. I leapt up and ran to the door. Out of the corner of one eye, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the dressing table mirror. I paused, retraced my steps and confronted the wreck of a face staring back at me as if it were some alien monster.
A shower, shave and change of clothes later found me heading for the flat with a spring in my step.
On arrival, though, my feet remained glued to the pavement for some time before eventually climbing a mere four steps to the communal front door, clammy fingers clinging to the handrail for dear life.
I rang the doorbell. No response. I rang again, but still no response. My heart sunk. Am I too late? I rang again and this time kept my fingers pressed hard against the grubby white plastic.
Without warning, the door was flung open. A complete stranger stood there, smouldering with open hostility. “What’s your game then, eh?”
“I’m looking for Matthew. Is he in?”
“How the hell should I know? Go and see for yourself and make sure you shut the front door behind you,” with which he ran down the steps, grabbed a bicycle leaning against some railings and rode away. I entered the gloomy hallway, shut the door behind me and climbed some stairs. Even as I knocked on Matthew’s door, I was struggling to recall what I had been rehearsing in my head every step of the way. “Matthew, are you there? It’s me, Rob. I need to talk to you. We need to talk, Matthew, please…”
I heard noises within. It seemed ages before the door was opened and left ajar. No familiar presence, welcoming or otherwise, filled the doorway. I was left with no choice but to take up the gauntlet. Seizing upon what little self-confidence I could muster, I let my shaky legs carry me into the room.
