Other Halves

by Nick Alexander

  “I’d rather stay here then,” Luke said.

  “Can you STOP . . .” Hannah took a deep breath, then continued, “Can you please just go home Luke. I need to talk to your father.”

  “Dad said we could get pizza,” Luke said, flashing me a glance of desperation.

  “Maybe. I said we needed to phone Hannah first,” I explained, thinking on my feet. To Hannah, I added, “I was getting one for me anyway, so . . .”

  Hannah sighed, then fumbled in her purse and pulled out a twenty pound note. “OK. Go get pizzas then. But don’t come back before . . .” she glanced at her watch. “Before seven-thirty.”

  “For all of us? Three pizzas?”

  “No. Just for you and your father.”

  “So what’s so urgent,” I asked, once Luke had been successfully dispatched.

  “Urgent?”

  “Yes. We usually phone before dropping in these days.”

  “Do we?” Hannah asked, looking genuinely confused. Her eyes had a glassy madness about them that somehow reminded me of Tony Blair.

  “We do,” I insisted, studying her features and surprisingly asking myself if I felt any residual desire for her. Though I could see that she was still a good-looking woman, the answer was “no”.

  “These came today,” Hannah said, pulling a clutch of paperwork from a folder. “I ordered them from the Citizen’s Advice because they had run out. So they sent them on.”

  I took the paperwork from her grasp. “Divorce papers,” I said.

  Hannah nodded.

  “And after almost nine months, this is suddenly urgent, because . . . ?”

  “It’s not suddenly urgent,” Hannah said. “But it needs sorting out. I need everything sorted out. I want the divorce filed and the house on the market. I’ve been thinking about that too, and I don’t want half. Half wouldn’t be fair . . .”

  “I told you I’m quite happy with–”

  “But it wouldn’t be fair. I only worked half time, and not at all for the first seven years. I thought a third would be fairer.”

  “Well, I’m hardly going to fight you on that one, am I?” I said. “But are you sure you’re all right? You seem . . . I don’t know . . . Agitated?”

  “I’m not agitated, Cliff,” Hannah said. “I just want all of this done so that we can move on with our lives. I can’t stand it any more.”

  “ ‘It’ being?”

  “This . . . stasis.”

  I nodded and glanced at the paperwork again. Although Hannah did seem particularly agitated that day, I understood that the desire to move on is not one that manifests in a linear, progressive fashion – it comes in fits and starts. “OK. I’ll look at these and get them back to you in a couple of days,” I said.

  “And . . .” Hannah said, looking even more stressed, as though she perhaps might burst.

  “Yes?”

  “I want you to come clean with Luke,” she said, sounding nervous.

  “ ‘Come clean’?”

  “About . . . you know.”

  “No, I’m not sure I’m following you.”

  “I want you to tell him about . . . you know . . . About the reasons we split up.”

  “So you could be with James?”

  “I want you to tell him the other reasons.”

  “I’m really not following you, Hannah,” I said, even though I was, in fact, following her perfectly.

  “If you want Luke to live with you full time, then he needs to know about the rest.”

  “The rest?”

  “I know you’ve been going to gay bars with Tristan.”

  “Jesus!”

  “I don’t think it’s anything to be embarrassed about, Cliff. But I think Luke needs to know.”

  “He’s twelve, Hannah! It’s none of his business. Actually, it’s none of yours either. Tristan needs to keep his mouth shut.”

  “Only I think it is his business. If he’s going to be living with you then he needs to know who he’s living with. It’s only fair. And if you’re going to be bringing men back to the flat—”

  I stared at Hannah, wide-eyed. “I have not been bringing men back,” I spat.

  “Well, I’m sure you will at one point, won’t you? And Luke needs to decide if he can cope with that now, before I’m so far away that I can’t help him.”

  “He copes with you bringing men back,” I said.

  “What?”

  “James is a man. Well, I assume so.”

  “James isn’t men, Cliff. He’s one man. He’s the man I love. And he’s your brother, so he’s hardly a stranger. It’s hardly the same.”

  “The same as what?!” My veneer of steely self-control was slipping away here.

  Hannah pulled a face – goggle-eyed I suppose one might call it. “Look, I don’t know what you get up to, but . . .” she said.

  “I’m not getting up to anything! Jesus!”

  “Well you still need to tell him.”

  “What? Hannah, what do I need to tell him?!”

  “That you’re gay.”

  “I’m not.”

  “So the nights out with Tristan—”

  “I’m bisexual. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Oh . . .” Hannah looked momentarily confused. “Oh, well, then you need to tell him that.”

  “For god’s sake, woman. He’s twelve.”

  “Cliff. I’m not backing down on this one. If you want Luke to stay with you, you have to come clean about who and what you are. I’m not having him trying to deal with this when I’m on the far side of the planet.”

  “No way.”

  “And if you’re too ashamed to tell him, then maybe you need to reconsider if you’re an apt guardian after all.”

  “Hannah, I’m not telling a twelve-year-old boy that his dad’s bisexual. And it’s not because I’m ashamed, it’s because it’s inappropriate.”

  “If you don’t tell him, then I will,” Hannah said.

  And there it was. The ultimatum.

  ELEVEN

  Hannah

  I had awakened feeling edgy that day, it’s true.

  James and I were coming to the end of a three-week visit, a visit that had been blissful. I was horrified at the idea of his leaving the next day for Australia and worried about when he would next be able to return.

  During our weekends, all without Luke, we had gone away on three separate mini-breaks. James had suddenly realised that there were parts of the UK and swathes of Europe that he had never seen, and seemed determined to make the most of his time over. This newfound urgency made me nervous that he wasn’t sure if he would be coming back at all.

  So we had spent two nights in Brighton, staying in a quirky, old-fashioned bed and breakfast with flock wallpaper and a nylon bedspread – we walked along the blowy pier eating dribbling ice creams with chocolate flakes. The second weekend we drove up to the Lake District, where we walked until we could walk no more, much of the time through drizzle, before warming ourselves up with cream teas and mugs of hot chocolate. And then finally, and best of all, we had jumped on the Eurostar and spent a weekend in Paris, wandering around the Marais, drinking rocket-fuel espressos in Notre Dame and generally falling in love all over again. Because that was the result of our three weeks of mini-trips. I felt as if I were in my twenties being wooed all over again, perhaps wooed properly for the first time in my life.

  In Paris, sitting in a colourful brasserie on the Canal St Martin – watched by the seemingly obligatory glowering waiter – James said, “Hannah, I need to ask you something,” and just for a moment, I thought that he might be about to ask me to marry him. I surprised myself by realising that if that were the question, I was going to say “yes”. I really shocked myself in that moment, because that was when I realised that not only had I sworn – without ever acknowledging the fact – never to marry again, but that I was now so in love with James that my never-again-marriage-ban no longer applied.

  Why was I so in love with James? It wa
s difficult for me to put a finger on it. A part of it was that he was just so straightforward. There really didn’t seem to be any hidden agenda with James. Ever. He would tell me exactly what he wanted, and he expected me to do the same. That honesty had the result of removing complexity from things, of demystifying everything, whether it was planning a trip, choosing a restaurant, or having sex. Everything seemed easier, everything, to do with James at least, seemed stress-free.

  I’m sure a psychiatrist would say that my attraction to James’ abrupt honesty was a reaction against the complex nature of my relationship with Cliff. Because, let’s face it, there had been more than a little sleight of hand in that relationship. So James’ up-front nature provided a welcome contrast to Cliff’s years of deceit. But more than the way James behaved himself, I think I fell in love with the way he made me feel about myself, the way he made me be myself.

  I had spent most of my life adapting my desires in an attempt at second guessing what everyone else wanted. Being able – no, being forced – to be who I wanted to be, forced to say what I really felt/wanted/desired was a liberation, a rebirth. And that’s not overstating it.

  Dating James had turned me into a new version of myself, a new Hannah that I was also just a little in love with – a new Hannah who looked back on old Hannah with almost complete incomprehension and not a little disdain.

  The question James had actually wanted to ask me at that brasserie in Paris wasn’t, in the end, about marriage at all. “Are you really going to come to Australia?” he said. “Or are you just going to string things out forever more?”

  “I’m really coming,” I replied, struggling to hide my disappointment. “Why would you even ask me that?”

  “Even if Luke won’t come?”

  “Yes. Even if he won’t come,” I said, unconvinced myself that it was true. “But I haven’t given up on that one yet. You know that.”

  “I think you have to.”

  “There’s one last conversation I need to have with Luke,” I said. “Then we’ll see.”

  “And will you actually start things moving then?” James asked. “Because, not being funny, but the fact that neither of you have sorted the divorce papers yet . . . well, it means what it means.”

  I reached across the table and laid my hand over his. “I will,” I said. “As soon as we get back. I promise.”

  James winked at me. “OK,” he said, allowing himself a hint of a smile.

  The waiter caught my eye and smirked and started to whistle as he wiped the tables. Yes, they’re grumpy as hell in Paris, but unlike the British, who are embarrassed by love, the French like nothing more. And you have to respect them for that.

  When we got back, I went into overdrive, reading about divorce law on the internet, making appointments at the Citizen’s Advice Bureau and cataloguing what, within the house, I would need to take, what would need to be sold and what, hardest of all, would need to be discarded.

  It’s strange what love does to us: I read somewhere that whole chunks of the brain cease to function, and that’s certainly how it felt. Everything that didn’t involve James, whether it was the friends I used to see or the pastimes I had used to fill up the hours, seemed pointless. And this didn’t feel like a temporary malfunctioning of the cerebral cortex, it felt like a revealed reality. It was as if I had been duped all these years into thinking that all this clutter was what life was about, when, in fact, it was really about nothing more than cuddling on the sofa with James.

  My only remaining tie to England seemed to be Luke, and though I suffered constant bouts of soul-racking guilt over it, I was even beginning to imagine leaving him behind. Perhaps I can blame that upon the love drug too? Perhaps it’s not my fault if the part of my brain that linked me to my son had started to malfunction too?

  Of course, I loved Luke. That much was never in doubt. And leaving him behind would be like amputating a limb – this much I knew. But unless I could convince him to come with me, unless I could make him admit the same love, the same need for me that I felt for him, then perhaps, just perhaps, amputation, no matter how painful, really was the answer.

  A part of me doubted I would ever go through with such a thing, sneering at my forms, at my lists, at my plans for a new life, saying, “Huh, there’s no way you can leave Luke behind, and you know it.” But I told that voice to shut up and wait and see. “We’re not there yet,” I said.

  The reasons I wanted Cliff to tell Luke about his sexuality were multiple. Some of these were born of honesty and reason, and some of selfishness and a desire to manipulate. Old habits die hard.

  I really did think that Luke had a right to know. And I still think that this was a reasonable, honest point of view. We were about to force our son to make the decision of a lifetime: to stay with his father or travel to a new country with me. And if we deigned that he was old enough to take such a decision then we had to trust him with the information he needed in order to take it.

  It was, I thought, stunningly unfair for Luke to be expected to choose to live with Cliff if Cliff would not reveal who he really was. That, after all, had been precisely the data that had been missing from my own life, and that lack of information had cost me the last fifteen years.

  I’ll admit too, that, yes, of course, I hoped that Cliff admitting he was gay might sway Luke in my direction. And that wasn’t because I thought he would turn against him because of his sexuality per se. It seemed to me that all of the negatives of choosing to live with Mum had been exposed and no doubt exploited to the full by Cliff. Luke knew that choosing me would involve changing schools, changing countries, leaving his friends behind and living with James. Yet none of the negatives of living with Cliff had been allowed to slip into visibility. Cliff would not, as Luke imagined, remain celibate and one hundred per cent available to his son forever more. So I wanted Luke to imagine a more complex future with his father to match the more complex future he had already imagined with me.

  Morally, Luke was very much of his generation. He was open-minded about most things political and social, and yes, probably sexual. His best friend lived with two women and he was fine with that. This much I knew.

  But I also knew that he used the word “gay” to describe almost anything that he didn’t like. The clothes I tried to buy him were either cool, or they were gay. Anything James suggested was deemed to be “gay”, while anything Cliff said was (ironically) “cool ”. So though I wasn’t counting on it by any means, I did need to know how Luke would react once forced to associate that word with his own father. I wasn’t exactly hoping that Luke would turn against Cliff, but if it was going to happen, well, there couldn’t have been a better moment for it.

  The dark side of my personality – and I’ve come to accept that we all have one – rubbed its hands in glee as I imagined Luke running into my arms, as I imagined magnanimous Hannah saying, “There, there . . . Yes, I know it’s a shock. He had me fooled too. But you’ll get over it just as I have had to.”

  Cliff and I argued for almost half an hour, and whether Cliff came to agree with me, or whether he simply decided that I had him over a barrel, he eventually conceded defeat.

  “OK, I’ll tell him,” he said wearily. “But let me choose the time and the place, OK? Let me tell him myself.”

  I agreed but insisted that I wanted it to happen soon.

  “Luke’s going to be here all this weekend,” Cliff said. “So I’ll tell him then.”

  I went to the bathroom, and by the time I got back, Luke had returned with the pizzas. As he handed me the change, he asked, “So what did you need to talk to Dad about?”

  He was standing next to Cliff, and they were both glaring at me. He looked somehow protective of his father, and in my over-sensitive state, that rankled.

  “Nothing,” I said, even though it cost me to do so. “It was nothing.”

  “It can’t have been nothing,” Luke said.

  And though I had agreed with Cliff that he should be the one to te
ll Luke, and despite my promise that I would not say a word, I heard myself say, “Luke. Your father has something to tell you.”

  Cliff’s mouth fell open. I’m not sure if I had ever actually seen that happen before, but it truly did. I could see his fillings. There’s no going back now, I thought, with a sorry mixture of glee and dismay.

  “Dad?” Luke prompted, turning from me to his father.

  “That’s unfair, Hannah,” Cliff whispered. “That’s not what we agreed.”

  “Please, let’s just get this out of the way,” I said.

  “Not like this.”

  “Dad?” Luke said again.

  “Just tell him, Cliff.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Jesus, you’re a . . .” Cliff told me, and I guessed that the missing word was “bitch”, and I thought that I probably deserved it.

  “Your dad has something to tell you,” I said. “About why we split up.”

  “We split up because you wanted to be with James,” Cliff muttered, his top lip curling.

  “Yes, that’s part of it. I’m happy to take part of the blame. But I’m no longer prepared to take all of it. Because that’s not the whole story, is it, Cliff?”

  “Well it kind of is,” Cliff said, disingenuously. “We actually did split up because you went off with James.”

  “And because you didn’t really want to be with a woman anymore, did you Cliff?”

  “Hannah . . . in god’s name,” Cliff said. “This isn’t right. We shouldn’t be doing this like this. Not in front of Luke.”

  “He has a right to know.”

  “Please, Hannah?” Cliff begged. He looked almost in tears, and if it had been possible to undo the beginning of this conversation, I would have done so, because I saw how brutal I was being and hated myself for it. But it was too late.

  “I’m sorry. But it’s happening now. So let’s just deal with it, OK?” I said.

  “Mum! Dad!” Luke shouted. “I know, OK?”

  Cliff and I frowned at each other, then turned to Luke.

  “I know,” he said again.

  “What do you know?”