Chapter Sixteen

Colin

The exams are finished – Adam seems really happy about how he did. Me too. It’s odd, but we seem to know where we’re at, and both of us feel we are making the right choices. If Adam passes all his, which he will do, he’s going to start at Dad’s firm as a Junior Management Trainee. I thought he wanted uni, but he doesn’t want to be away from home and he says he’ll have to start earning his keep. The boss’s son, eh? He’ll do ok.

The Jewel said her first words. She called me Mum, and when I told Adam, he looked at her and said, “Dad?” and as clear as a bell, she echoed him. We were all dancing round and laughing, and she mum-daded in the middle of us. She can stand up if you hold her hands, and sits up and plays with her toys. When she is on her belly, she is always stretching out in front. Won’t be long until she’s crawling.

We took her to my exhibition. Mum’s boss came up trumps, gave me space for a mini-exhibition and offered me a holiday job. Hugely Small let me choose what to put up, and helped hang them all. I knew Mum was worried, but I couldn’t work out why.

On the opening night, Dad looked as proud as punch. He spent a lot of time over the photos of The Jewel. Adam had given me the ultrasound picture, which we’d re-photographed and blown up, and the tatty, bent Polaroid from the day she was born, and then the ones I’d taken. The early ones were a bit out of focus, a bit immature, but there again, so was she. Once I got a decent camera, the pictures got really good.

There was one of Adam, just wearing jeans, and holding her stark naked. A bit corny in a way, he was looking at her so tenderly and she was staring straight into the camera. It gave you shivers down your spine. Dad hadn’t seen one of himself, asleep on the sofa with her nestled against him. He looked vulnerable, old, his specs in their habitual place on the top of his head. Her face was all squashed up against his cardi. He spent a lot of time looking at the sequence of Mum that I’d taken on the beach, and laughed out loud at the self portrait. I’d set it up in the bath, tons of Mum’s bubbles (expensive variety, last she had since his foreign trips stopped), and I was wearing her bath cap and reading The Times.

He hadn’t seen most of the shots before, so it made an even bigger impact. But I wasn’t ready for his reaction to the one of Hugely Small. We’d gone to Aviemore, and taken a lot of pictures of rock formations and erratics, and valleys. There was one shot I was really proud of, of an air force bomber skidding down through the valley on a training flight … you could almost hear it as you looked, and it looked evil, as if it had the eyes of a monstrous insect.

Then there was the one of Hugely Small, lolling against a boulder on a small beach at Loch Avon. It had been hot, so we’d all stripped off and gone in, and just about died when the cold water hit our goolies. We’d all been yelling and screaming, but there’d been nothing in it, and we’d lain around in the sun drying off before dressing again. Someone had a joint, ready-rolled for such a magic moment, and Hugely had smiled tolerantly, even taken a puff. His eyes were closed, but he’d heard me approach, and opened one eye and smiled. I thought he just looked good, and I knew how much I liked him. Sometimes when we developed photos, we’d bump against each other and not move apart, but we were enjoying the making of the photos and the fact we saw things the same way. That’s all.

But Dad went white, grabbed Mum and hissed at her. She shook her head and he tried to take the photo down himself. Mum’s boss came over and tactfully made a loud performance about the first sale! And we left, Mum humiliated, me embarrassed, Adam not knowing what the fuss was about.

“Now I know. Now I know,” he’d fumed. “All those weekends away. You knew, Doria, didn’t you?”

Knew what? What did Mum know?

“There’s no harm in it. Colin is who he is. If I thought for a minute there was any danger, I’d never have let him go. All this fuss over a photo. How can I go back to work now? Tell me that?”

“But you let him go on those bloody trips. You knew and you let him go?”

“I knew he was safe. Safe and happy. There was always a mixed group, always a female teacher with them. Why don’t you accuse her of anything? You’re not so vestal pure yourself!”

A photo. A photo of a teacher stark naked that didn’t even show anything, smoking a joint, taken, as it happens, on a day when Miss Barton had taken the girls ice-skating. But there’d been four of us there. There’d never been any funny business. I wish there had been.

I left the angry voices and went through to the kitchen and dialled his number. Then I went outside and minutes later he drove by and picked me up. We went to Easthorn and parked, looking over the dark water. The moon cast a strange glow over it.

“It’s not the hash, Colin. He could use that as the reason if he wanted to. Your dad saw something else. I’ve known since I was your age, but you have to make choices. I chose the easy route. I married, had kids. We’re reasonably happy, but it won’t ever be right. Her parents guessed, so they don’t like me.” He looked at me, and smiled, “Thing is, Colin, you have to be what you are, and I’m busy being someone I’m not. But that’s the route I chose and I’ll stick by it. I knew that photo might cause ructions, but it is a bloody good one. You’ll go far, and this exhibition is just the start.”

I felt happy in his company, and safe. And I think I knew that it would have to be Dad making choices. I knew what I intended to do with my life. I’d be what I was. If Dad didn’t like me for what that was, then it would be his choice.

Hugely came back to the house. Brave, I thought. He told Dad he was dead right, he was gay, but that he’d never dream of doing anything wrong, that he took his job seriously, and his marriage and if Dad wanted to wreck it all, he could.

Then he left.

Dad looked embarrassed, Mum looked drained, Adam curious at the fuss. He’s known since I was a kid. Dad had denied it since I was a kid. I’d not really been sure until now, and certainly had never done anything.

But I knew that even the chance I might be was the end of the world for him. Nothing could be worse in his eyes. Or so I thought.