The Gulf Between Us

by Geraldine Bedell

  ‘Sam, that’s not necessary!’

  ‘Nor is this. I’ve got a girlfriend, OK? She’s called Holly.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘D’you want to know if we’ve had sex?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Exactly. Now can I stay at Faisal’s? We’re finishing off the newspaper.’

  ‘I suppose. Just this once.’

  I put down the phone and turned to Matt, who was looking perplexed. ‘Will’s here?’ he repeated. ‘Were we expecting that? And what was all that stuff about Sam being gay? He’s got a girlfriend, you know. They have sex in his room when you’re at work.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I muttered, sniffing.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s bad news: Will and Maddi are splitting up.’

  ‘Oh, mum, don’t cry!’

  ‘No, I’m not. He’s in love with Andrew.’

  ‘Andrew? What, Andrew the vicar?’

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘Bloody hell! Of course not. You think I’d have been able to keep that to myself ?’

  ‘No, well, it’s a pity, because it would’ve helped if you’d talked to each other.’

  ‘And is Andrew in love with Will?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  Matt looked baffled, which you would.

  ‘They had a relationship. In the summer,’ I said wearily, blowing my nose. ‘Then Will apparently decided to stop being gay and get married. Now he’s changed his mind again. Andrew never wanted to be gay and still doesn’t.’

  ‘I did wonder about Andrew. I thought it was all repressed, though.’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘Does Maddi know?’

  I told him what Will had told me, and that I’d spoken to Maddi.

  ‘How did we miss that?’ Matt asked. ‘I mean, if Will is, anyone could be. There could be loads more of us, all over the place.’

  ‘Yes, well, your granddad thinks it’s something to do with plastic bags.’ I looked at him seriously. ‘I think he may need your help.’

  ‘Mine?’ He was used to being the second‐in‐command, the slave, the minion or junior pirate, and he was bemused by the idea of having to take the lead, and perhaps a little bit pleased. It must have been quite annoying having Will diligently excelling up ahead of him his whole life.

  ‘He hasn’t had much practice at getting things wrong,’ I said. ‘And now he’s made a catastrophic mess of the most important thing of all.’

  ‘But I’m what he didn’t want to be…’

  ‘Yeah, and what he is.’

  In the kitchen, Maria said quietly, ‘Will, madam? He is OK?’

  He still wasn’t back from Andrew’s. But she knew he’d been here, and, in her osmotic way, she probably knew that he was not in fact OK. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth, to say that he was leaving Maddi and in love with Andrew. She would eventually find out, certainly about Maddi and probably about Andrew. Her life was tied to his by a million moments of love and duty. She’d held him when he was a day old, his tiny pale pink body in her dark arms. She’d padded round the house with him on sturdy bare feet when he was whimpering with tiredness and at once his breathing had been easier. But I couldn’t do it. She was a Catholic and I had no idea about her attitude to homosexuality. It was almost inconceivable that she didn’t know about Matt’s relationship with the crown prince, but she’d said nothing. Perhaps she didn’t want to confront it. If she had to acknowledge it, perhaps she would have to disapprove. Perhaps she’d even have to leave.

  Neither of us would have wanted that, so I hadn’t told her Matt was gay and now I didn’t tell her Will was gay. It was a betrayal – of them, of myself, of her devotion – but I was frightened for all of us.

  Will called from Andrew’s to say they were talking and he wouldn’t be back until later, so we should go ahead and have supper.

  ‘Is that encouraging?’ I asked Matt.

  ‘I dunno, mum; I don’t really want to go there.’

  We ate at the kitchen table, or rather Matt ate while I pushed my food round my plate. He did his best to distract me by describing a spa that one of Shaikh Jasim’s companies was building in the desert and that he’d visited for the magazine this morning. I half‐listened to his description of the hydrotherapy circuit, the buckets and the seven different types of shower, trying to keep my mind away from Will and Andrew, or Maddi, miles away in London, hating her job, her marriage over, everything shit.

  Matt insisted on opening a bottle of wine and sitting and drinking it with me until he went to bed at eleven o’clock. I said I’d sit up for a while: I was hoping to see Will, if he came back, which I was also hoping he wouldn’t. In fact, he arrived about forty minutes later. He didn’t look good. He was an odd, greyish colour: distempered, dried‐out, like salt cod.

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘He was surprised. He thought it would be OK with Maddi.’

  ‘Did he?’ Another one with the emotional sense of a slug. ‘So, he thought repressing the part of yourself most likely to give your life meaning would make you happy?’

  ‘Mum…’

  ‘I’m sorry, Will, but how you could think…’

  ‘Anyway, he’s praying.’ Will got a glass of water from the cooler in the kitchen and headed for his old room.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘What it means.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, though I didn’t.

  Will got up early the following morning, had a shower and ate some labneh and honey standing up in the kitchen. When I tried to talk to him, he pretended to be preoccupied about where he’d put his tickets and how long it would take him to get out to the airport. Maria came in and he had a brief conversation with her, throughout which he pretended he was still with Maddi, that she was less depressed now, and that they were settling in nicely to their flat. I thought if I were Maria, I would never forgive him.

  His taxi arrived and I stood at the front door with my mug of tea waving him off, feeling more forlorn than I had on his first day of school or when he went to university. As he left, he turned to me and said: ‘Please don’t tell anyone. Not yet. I don’t want the Franklins to find out except from Maddi. And I don’t want people to know about Andrew. Tell Matt, too? Promise?’

  ‘You’re being very considerate of Andrew. Under the circumstances.’

  ‘I love Andrew,’ he said, turning away.

  ‘So he’s waiting for God to speak?’ Matt asked, when he got up and I told him Andrew was praying, and we couldn’t say anything about him and Will. ‘He hasn’t been that reliable in the past, has he?’

  ‘Andrew?’

  ‘God. Like, he could’ve stopped the wedding. Sent a thunderbolt or something. He’s not been very keen on gays, either, come to that.’

  I had no idea what Andrew’s prayers were supposed to achieve. If they were a way of communing with his conscience, it seemed to me the process could take ages.

  Matt went off to work and I drove into school, feeling groggy from having slept so badly. I was parking my car outside the British Primary when my mobile rang.

  ‘Annie, can I see you?’ The voice belonged to pretty much the last person I wanted to hear from.

  ‘Andrew, I can’t help you.’

  ‘I know you’re angry…’

  ‘Actually, that doesn’t begin to describe it.’

  ‘But I have to talk. And you’re the only person who knows.’

  Oh, great. He didn’t want to talk to me because I was wise or full of insights or anything. I was the only one available.

  ‘Are you free at lunchtime?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said ungraciously, wondering how many more humiliations my children were going to heap on me. We agreed to meet at Indochine, a noodle restaurant near the Gulf Hotel, at two o’clock. I finished parking the car and shut the windows, thinking if God wasn’t capable of sorting out Andrew’s head, I didn’t see how I could. I wasn’t interested in the theological pinhead da
ncing that had let him go ahead with the wedding, or made it OK to be having sex with one of his parishioners in the first place. It was wrong, all of it, nothing could excuse it, and I felt I would have been happy never to see him again.

  An hour later, I was struggling with the peripatetic music teachers’ timetable, and specifically, whether moving the year five violins to Friday would clash with anyone’s saxophone lesson, when someone came into the office. At first I kept my head down, but then some ambiguity in the atmosphere made me look up.

  When I realized it wasn’t a parent or a teacher, but Nezar Al Maraj, I was so flustered I dropped my pencil.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I said in a rush, straightening up, my face flushed from bending down, and from having Al Maraj in my office. ‘I was probably rude to you in London. And I’ve been stupid. You were very kind to Matthew and I don’t want you to think…’

  He smiled, in a way that changed my breathing: in breath, OK, out breath, all over the place. Then he said: ‘I want to take you to lunch. But I’m leaving again this evening, so it’ll have to be today.’

  ‘Oh, no! I can’t!’

  He looked confused. He hadn’t expected to be turned down. Not again. Not on a Wednesday lunchtime in January.

  I considered for a moment saying yes and then ringing Andrew and telling him that after all, today was impossible, that something more important had come up. I couldn’t do it, though. In the end, lunch with Al Maraj wasn’t more important than Will’s happiness, or even than Andrew’s wanting to speak to me because his whole life had been undermined in the last twenty‐four hours and he had no one else.

  ‘Oh. Right. OK,’ Al Maraj said. He didn’t quite know where to put himself. He half‐turned to go.

  ‘No, it’s that… I have to meet Andrew…’

  ‘The chaplain?’ He frowned. ‘You can’t put him off ?’

  ‘No…’ I gazed at him speechlessly, as if by looking really hard I could get across to him the whole story: that Will was in love with Andrew (despite being recently married, and to a person of another gender – married, indeed, in a ceremony conducted by Andrew) and that I had to find out whether Andrew loved Will, if there was any chance… But of course, it was too unbelievable for someone to work out simply from a look. And too farcical. Somehow I didn’t think that farce was Al Maraj’s natural milieu. If I had managed to convey the truth through intense expressions, he’d have thought our family was madder and more irresponsible and out of control than he already did… But in any case, I’d promised Will that I wouldn’t tell anyone yet.

  Al Maraj had done so much for us, and now he must have thought I couldn’t be bothered to postpone lunch with Andrew, even though Andrew was here all the time and he wasn’t. Worse still, I hadn’t even tried to come up with a convincing excuse, because if I really had been having lunch with Andrew, obviously I could have cancelled.

  I hadn’t wanted to have dinner with him, and now I didn’t even want to have lunch, and it was pretty clear what I thought of him, even after everything he’d done… He was at the door, leaving.

  ‘Some other time?’ I suggested desperately.

  He was tempted to sweep out, I could tell, but he hesitated and came back. He took out a business card and scribbled a number on the back. ‘That’s my mobile,’ he said shortly. ‘Call me.’ He handed it over and finally smiled. ‘Any time.’

  And then he was gone and I was left holding his card. I wanted to call out after him, to ask why we couldn’t make a date now, or when he’d be here next, but it was already too late. I seemed to find it hard not to be rude to him, even when I didn’t want to be. Presumably there’s a limit to what even people who find you quite attractive will put up with. Especially a person like Al Maraj, who has a lot of dignity.

  I wouldn’t have thought I could have felt any more antagonistic to Andrew than I already did. But now I was disappointed as well as furious. I set off for lunch in a mood of steaming despair.

  He was already waiting at a corner table when I arrived at Indochine, looking handsome but washed out, his big body baggy, lumbering. He got up as I came over and perhaps would have kissed me, but I sat down straight away, as if I hadn’t noticed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly.

  I nodded and picked up the menu, as if I wasn’t interested in what he had to say. I knew I wasn’t being very helpful, but the whole thing was excruciating.

  ‘Have you spoken to Maddi?’ he asked with concern.

  I said incredulously, ‘You’re not pretending now to care about Maddi?’

  ‘I know how it looks, but that’s not how it was…’

  I don’t think he’d slept: his eyes were bloodshot and redrimmed. ‘Oh, what, so it was a good idea before? The sort of thing a vicar should be doing?’

  ‘Will was fine till he met me.’ Andrew rubbed at a dark speck on the paper tablecloth. ‘He’d been happy, until… If we hadn’t met… I thought if I got out of the way… I wanted to let them get back to normal.’

  ‘And how exactly were they supposed to do that? What would normal be for someone who’s been having gay sex with the vicar?’

  To Andrew’s credit, he didn’t rise to my flippancy. ‘He does love Maddi, you know,’ he said quietly.

  ‘So much he had an affair with you while you were planning the wedding!’

  For Christ’s sake, what did they teach them at theological college? Had he missed out the module on basic ethics?

  ‘Anyway,’ I said wearily, ‘all that’s in the past. They’ve split up now.’

  Andrew still needed to talk about what had gone on before. ‘He didn’t think of himself as gay…’

  ‘So what? If you’d been a woman, it would have been the same’ – though if he’d been a woman he might have had more sense – ‘the point is, he wanted someone else at a time when he shouldn’t have been able to think about anyone except Maddi.’

  ‘I thought if I could just get out of the way…’

  I’d never heard anything so egocentric, and I live with teenagers. ‘You were thinking about yourself. You wanted to make some big renunciation.’

  ‘Excuse me, madam, have you decided?’ The waiter was hovering, waiting to take our order.

  ‘What? Oh…’ Despite having been holding the menu since I arrived, I had no idea what was on it. I looked down vaguely, ordered the first thing I could read, and handed back the card in its plastic folder. Andrew did the same.

  ‘They’d been happy before…’

  I ran out of patience. ‘You’re gay and you can’t face it.’

  ‘The Church tests me. I know you don’t have much time for religion…’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with what I think. The point is, the Church hasn’t exactly helped you, or Will, or Maddi.’

  ‘The Church has the idea that – well, that homosexuality leads people away from marriage,’ Andrew said stiffly, ‘that the marriageable population, if you like, includes many people who may, at some time, have same‐sex inclinations…’

  ‘And your job is to get as many of them married off as possible? What for? D’you get some kind of bonus for delivering your quota? What is it, a form of crowd control?’

  I was being unhelpful. Sarcasm wasn’t going to make it better. Andrew was unhappy and didn’t know where to turn and all I could do was be horrible.

  The noodles arrived, glutinous and sloppy.

  ‘You know what I think?’ I went on, ‘you’re so neurotic about homosexuality that you’re incapable of thinking. If Will had been seeing another woman, you’d have known what to say. But because it was a man – never mind even that it was you for a moment – you panicked.’ He tried to interrupt, but I held up my hand. ‘He loves you, Andrew… I know you’re going to say he loves Maddi too, and maybe he does, but he loves you with the sort of passion that can see you through, that makes the bad things hurt less and the good things better.’

  He stared at me. I thought he was going to cry.

  ‘If you
don’t love Will, you should tell him so clearly. If you do – well, that’s good, isn’t it? You could be a family. I thought you were supposed to approve of that?’

  ‘You haven’t seen my family.’

  That was true: I knew very little about him. Once or twice when he’d been at our house he’d mentioned parents and an older sister, but I didn’t have a clear picture of where he came from, beyond the fact that it was in Kent. I knew he’d been to a minor public school and Cambridge. So either he’d been reticent or I hadn’t been curious enough. Certainly, something about his position had seemed to deflect personal inquiries. He was the chaplain, and that was enough. I knew less about his family, I now realized, than I did about Shaikh Rashid’s, whose antecedents were celebrated at every turn and whose free ways with congratulatory telegrams were constantly reminding us about his illustrious connections.

  So I softened a bit and asked him what he meant by that, and he told me that his father was a solicitor and his mother ran their large Victorian house and was active in the local Conservative Association and they didn’t know he was gay. ‘They wouldn’t be able to cope. My father thinks multiculturalism has gone too far, not that there is any in Tenterden. He wouldn’t actually know what it looked like if he saw it…’ He shook his head. ‘And it’s the same with being gay. They wouldn’t understand how it was possible. They’d be terribly distressed.’

  ‘So you’ve lied to everyone, all this time?’

  ‘It wasn’t that hard. It didn’t even feel like lying. I didn’t look gay or act gay: at my boarding school I played rugby for the first XV: front row. It was easy enough for me to hide it. And it seemed to me that the message I was getting from all directions was that that’s what I should do. A cross I had to bear.’ He smiled ironically at the image: he’d genuinely believed he was behaving in a way that was Christian, saintly even.

  ‘And you haven’t told anyone in the Church?’

  ‘One or two, once I was ordained, but they advised me to keep quiet. Even the gay ones. It’s how the Church copes.’

  ‘It isn’t coping.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ he acknowledged. ‘But it still seems worth working at it from the inside…’