It was time I phoned Kirsty. I’d sent some books, a few small things around New Year. I was never going to make the Christmas Airmail deadline. I was burning the late lamp oil, doing a bit of research, so the time difference wasn’t a problem – minus five hours.
Quite civilised. She was off shiftwork now.
It rang and soon there was a person on the end of it. Her twang seemed more pronounced. Not much Lewis in it.
‘Ici ton frere,’ I said but that was about my limit. Even without the accent and the lack of hand and lip movements. Her voice slipped back a bit.
‘Now I’d know you’re an Islander,’ I said.
‘Yes, a Montreal islander,’ she said. ‘West side though, so there’s a lot of English spoken. Suppose I should have settled down the coast in Long Island. Hardly a change of address then.’
There was a bit of a pause, nothing awkward. Kirsty said, ‘Is everything OK? I mean, it’s good to hear from you but…’
‘Aye, no worries, Anna’s fine. I know, you’re expecting something wrong. It’s not like we talk every day. And yourself?’
‘Back to routine.’
‘Yes, Gabriele’s OK – well, physically anyway – we know a bit about that now, the last parent passing. She’s never really got back on track. But that’s kind of why I’m calling.’
‘You’re no longer living with Gabriele?’
‘That was quick off the mark.’
‘Well done,’ Kirsty said.
‘What?’
‘Well done. Nothing against Gabriele but…’
‘Most people said they were surprised.’
‘You made too good a job of putting on a show.’
‘You saw that?’
‘I saw you were under a lot of strain. You can only do that so long. Part of my job is to see that, remember. Doesn’t give you immunity, though.’
‘And how are you doing? Really.’
‘Well, strange thing is, brother, I’ve been thinking of giving you a ring.’
‘Everything OK?’
‘A bit better than that.’
‘So what’s your news?’
‘An invitation.’
‘Not a head to wet?’
‘Hell no – a bit late for that. A ceremony. A civil ceremony. A marriage in the law.’
I don’t think I said anything.
‘You’re shocked?’
‘No, just didn’t see it.’
‘Well I could have been more up-front earlier. Suppose it was that religious stage. First it was the Bahá’í list of beliefs. I remember the exact phrase, does not condone homosexuality. Then it was the hardcore Christianity.’
I went quiet.
I was back there, in the students’ union building. They did a decent, cheap liver and onions. People were always giving out leaflets.
A gay activist challenged me head-on. Very reasonable arguments. He said, ‘This may not be directly relevant but please take a look.’ I said, ‘I’ll read anybody’s viewpoint of anything.’ He said, ‘Thanks a lot.’ I knew the tone in my voice had come out all wrong because really I couldn’t claim to be open to his viewpoint. He’d clocked that. I ducked and dived.
My sister’s voice came through again. ‘So you weren’t at one with the party line when you were still going to the Free Church? You told me you were there for the psalms and the stories. I remember tackling you on the letters in the Gazette. The whore that is Rome. The plague of homosexuality. But that was pretty much the official line. You dodged that, too. That’s a lot of strain.’
‘I always kept the L-plates on. Never even tried to go forward to take the test on dogma.’
‘No wonder you were such a tight bastard. Do you remember when Free Kirk councillors were lobbying to cut the grant to the film society because they showed My Beautiful Launderette? The hardcore wanted to refuse them the lecture theatre in the school. I was home then and so were you. You were talking about histories of oppressive regimes but it was me who wrote the letter in reply. How the film was not about homosexuality. It was a political film about values in Thatcherite Britain. The correspondent had just proved the absolute need to show such films. And by the way, I thought the boys were quite funny and cute. But you must have wondered at my own lack of boyfriends?’
‘Suppose I thought it was career. You knew what you wanted to do. Nursing, then the District, then the Community. Then Policy. Sharp cookie dot com – the Canadian sister. The two languages. But…’
‘And you never guessed from my letter to the Gazette?’
‘I think I was too bound up in the values of Thatcherite Britain. Who was it said her legacy was that greed was now legitimate? I was arguing against it all while I was developing the property. But I could see it, at work. You saw it in the detail.’
‘Give me a for instance.’
‘For instance, I got a mooring transferred to a colleague with a boat. Free, gratis. In the firm. He got a shift back to the mainland as soon as he’d done his three years and the boat had never been on it. I knew someone else looking for a spot so I said, will we just pass the mooring on? And he says, well he can have it for a bottle of grouse or two. He’d never even seen the bloody mooring.’
‘That would be a cove from away, then. See, I can still remember the lingo.’
‘I’ll give you one more. Another guy lends out the garage he isn’t using so we can fix up a boat. Very decent. We give him and his wife a bottle of champagne, real McCoy, rather than breaking glass on the bow. A new lobster creel falls off a lorry outside his house. He traps it and asks us what it’s worth to us.’
‘That’s a for instance. Should be one word. Maybe it is in Stornoway.’
‘Tell me about your lady.’
‘About time you asked that.’
‘Please.’
‘OK. Denise was born in Paris. Algerian father. Toured Québec with a dance company. Stayed.’
‘So how long…?’
‘Have we known each other or been living together?’
‘Been an item?’
‘Fifteen years.’
‘What?’
‘Poor line, is it? No, but there’s been ups and downs. Time out. That year, looking after the old girl. That was for me too. Working things out. Remember Canada’s a federal set-up. Québec has had civil ceremonies since ’92. I proposed right away. Denise wasn’t ready. I thought I’d lost her.’
‘So poor old Mary was more stable than her carers?’
‘I think she might have been.’
‘Hell.’
‘So are you coming over?’
‘It’s a fucking long way in the Peace and Plenty. Need a tanker behind us.’
‘Remember the Wright brothers?’
‘Just bought a house, with the settlement. A daughter still at Uni. There’s nothing in the kitty. I’ve a slate roof over me, roughcast walls round me and nothing else.’
‘All you need.’
‘Aye. Trying to build up the work. I’m on the pans these days. Sous chef. Relief chef. But getting a wee bit of a name in the town. Got to keep it going. I really fancy getting over though.’
‘I’ll book you the flights. My treat.’
‘Look, really glad you asked me. Call you back on that one, OK?’
‘OK. Don’t leave it too long.’
‘And Peter?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I like you in skeptical mode. Don’t let it go.’
I went for the pouch when the phone was back in the dock. Crossed to the window and let a bit of night air in.
Shit, I was supposed to be looking at past human experience because something might be gained. The idea was to compare what’s happened in different places at different times. When I was studying interpretations of events, I was suppressing my own powers of interpretation. I wasn’t the only believer who ignored the awkward bits. How many good Christians in the Third Reich reluctantly abided by the State restrictions rather than face the show-down? And there are the good Communists who noticed the shadows of their comrades as they disappeared. But kept quiet. They couldn’t have swum against that tide. What good would one more death do?
The lessons of history? You’re not the only one. And hindsight does indeed help. Now for our homework question. At what date did sodomy cease to be a crime in the United Kingdom? It’s easy to forget that too.
Not soon enough for Alan Turing. He was a main player in the battle of the Atlantic. He was largely responsible for designing the computers which led to reading transmissions encoded by Enigma machines, when enough clues were provided. It takes time, even for mathematical geniuses. The breakthrough, from a captured codebook, happened late in 1942 but it was midway through 1943 before the numbers of lost ships fell again as the moves of the wolf-packs were anticipated.
On the 7th of June 1954 my sister was already out in the light and I was a twinkle in the olman’s eye. Alan Turing died from cyanide poisoning. The verdict was suicide. He was facing prosecution for homosexuality. It took until Gordon Brown’s leadership for Her Majesty’s Government to apologise for that treatment of a man who had put his mind into the fight against fascism.