‘This is the question, no? Do we change together or change apart? Do we change with each other or with someone else?’
Danny managed to ask, ‘What’s your answer?’
Luis mused. ‘I’ve spent this time away thinking how much I want to change my life. But the only part I don’t want to change is you.’
Danny had done well so far. He had been stoic and measured but at hearing this he wept. Luis moved his chair around the table, wiping away his tears.
‘Danny, you’ve always been this way. You understand feelings by acting on them. You didn’t ask if I loved you – you asked if I wanted to live with you. You didn’t say that you were unhappy – you suggested a garden. You didn’t point out something is missing from our lives – you proposed.’
At this inopportune moment the waiter returned.
‘I’m sorry for interrupting but the kitchen will be closing soon so I need to take your order.’
Danny didn’t bother hiding his tears. Copying Luis’s method in Spain he said, ‘Why don’t you choose for us? The chef’s best dish?’
To lighten the mood, Luis asked for two glasses of viche. The waiter had never heard of the spirit and so, improvising, Luis suggested light rum as a substitute spirit, mixed with pineapple juice. Once the waiter left, Danny asked, ‘What now?’
Luis made a proposal of his own, as consequential as the one Danny had attempted.
‘How about we try to change together? I don’t know if it’s possible, but I wanted to see if you would be open to theidea. My entire life I’ve been translating myself. Growing up, I was translating myself into a straight man. Respected and respectable. When that fell apart, I moved to London and began translating myself into a career man. I don’t want to be in translation anymore. I’m missing part of myself. And I can’t find it here. I want to go home, Danny. If we had been husband and wife, the chances are we would’ve combined our lives from the beginning, our families and cultures. Instead, we’ve been exiles in London in our different ways. We shared our loneliness and isolation. It’s time we shared everything which is, I believe, what you were asking me to do when you proposed.’
At this point Danny reached into his pocket and took out the First World War compass – Luis’s Christmas present. He wasn’t sure why he had brought it with him to the restaurant or why at this juncture in the conversation he took it from his pocket. He placed it on the centre of the table and the two of them watched the needle find north.
‘I bought it for us. To help us find the way.’
Danny had promised himself that he wouldn’t drink or cry and now having broken both promises he was unable to hold back the tears.
‘Would it be easier to say this is the end? To raise a glass to all the great times we’ve had together, to be thankful for them, to say that I love you, I’ll always love you, and go our separate ways?’
Luis turned the question over.
‘That might be the outcome, yes. But, Danny, I’m suggesting that we build a new life and the only person I’ve ever built a life with is you. Could we do it again? I don’t know.’
Though Danny desperately wanted to say yes, he found himself asking, ‘Tell me, deep down, that this isn’t an elaborate way of breaking up and that after twenty years it’s too painful for either one of us to say it’s over. I ask you to marry me. And you ask me to move to Spain. Maybe we’re both saying the same thing – that it’s over?’
In an unplanned moment, prompted by the gift of the compass, Luis took off his grandfather’s silver necklace and placed it around Danny’s neck. A proposal answered with a proposal. A platinum ring with a silver necklace. And neither of them knew what to say next.
Part FourSpring
Chapter Thirty-FiveA Perfect Man
Luis moved back in, living with Danny in the home they made together while readying it for sale. As a couple, they had contributed different amounts to the initial deposit according to their means. Regardless, Luis suggested they share the profit equally. If they managed to find a path through, they would pool their money into somewhere new. After the garden party last summer, it had been Danny’s idea to sell the apartment and move, longing for a garden of their own. Yet now that the plans were in motion, he was haunted by memories of himself as a homeless young man who once stored his possessions in a left-luggage locker in Victoria Station while he slept on a park bench in Embankment Gardens.
The estate agent appraising their apartment was no olderthan thirty, dressed in a cobalt-blue flannel suit with a silver tie and polished leather shoes. Fifteen years their junior, he addressed them as ‘lads’ as he declared their home would be perfect for a single man trying to impress a lady, or a recently married couple before they bought their first family home. It was strange, listening to the agent rewrite the story of their apartment according to a traditional life-sequence – a bus stop of a home on the road towards a family. Luis and Danny looked at each other. Catching their glances and sensing there were ripples of communication he didn’t understand, the agent hastily added that the place could also work for an older bachelor type. Bringing the conversation to a close Danny asked when they should consider listing. The agent said, ‘This summer will be strong. International buyers are returning. London is red-hot after the Olympics. The recession will be in the rear-view mirror. We’re expecting price rises of eight per cent. Lads, you’ve done a great job. Trust me, we’ll be able to sell it in no time. And considering how long ago you bought it you’re set to make a tidy profit. Where are you guys moving to? Somewhere bigger?’
Their relationship entered an experimental phase with Danny exploring the possibility of emigrating, a man who had never lived abroad or ever seriously given thought to doing so. Considering his partner was Spanish it was a failure of imagination. Luis’s proposal was not to create aSpanish approximation of their London life but to create a new life together – one Danny could neither describe nor envision. The future appeared blank, except for one guiding point – home had never been the apartment; home had always been Luis.
Compared to the emotional complexities of relocating the practicalities were straightforward. Even though they weren’t married, Danny didn’t need to apply for residency or a visa and his skills as a nurse would be in demand. He would require competence in Spanish if he were to be employed in the ‘Sistema Nacional de Salud’ – the public health care system. However, his seniority and pay scale wouldn’t transfer over. He would be starting at a lower rung and confined to the private sector until his language skills improved. When he floated the idea to his colleagues their reactions were mixed. They had been delighted by the news of his wedding. Many were attending. But that wedding now depended on losing a cherished member of the team. He would be giving up years of hard-won progression at a hospital where he was respected, to begin again in a place where he would be unknown. Part of what made him a great nurse was his ability to befriend patients and until his Spanish was fluent, he would struggle to form the same bonds, performing the mechanical tasks of a nurse without the magic of human connections. Luis had not only learned English perfectly, he had also immersed himself in thecultural references, something Danny would need to mirror. Where once there had been books on the monarchy and the Beatles, the bedside table now held books on Goya, Lorca and the Spanish Civil War.
The first test would come in March when they would travel to Spain, to the southern region of Andalucía, spending time in Seville and Cádiz where Luis was born and raised. As a couple they had never visited Andalucía together. Until this winter, Luis had only returned once to attend his grandfather’s funeral. At the time he argued that bringing a boyfriend would be a provocation, upsetting his relatives. It was during the early years of their relationship and Danny accepted his exclusion, accustomed to the fact that there would always be places in the world where they were not welcome together. Yet looking back, it was not society excluding him. It was Luis. He had built a wall around his past.
Danny began taking Spanish lessons. Each evening he and Luis spent an hour or so at the kitchen table with notebooks and verb tables. Not since school had he studied a foreign language, an experience he found excruciating, hating the sound of his own voice, laughed at in class, not only when he mispronounced words in French but when he sounded camp in English, his native tongue sounding foreign – the essence of his voice seeming to be masculinity mispronounced. In contrast, Luis was an excellent teacher, patientand thorough, advising him not to worry about his accent, pointing out that some of the United Nations delegates spoke with a strong accent. Accents were story. Danny’s Spanish accent was the story of a man reshaping his life for love. One evening their Spanish lesson centred on descriptions of a person’s romantic status, the words for ‘married’, ‘husband’, ‘partner’, ‘boyfriend’ and ‘engagement’. Midway through the lesson Luis lost his train of thought. When he regained his composure he said, ‘This is not the first time I’ve been engaged.’
The piece of news was dropped into the lesson as if it was merely a practice sentence for Danny to translate.
Danny wrote down the word – comprometido – pressing the nib of the pen so hard on the paper the letters became grooves. In the adjacent column he wrote the incorrect translation – ‘compromised’. He put the pen down and fetched a glass of water, asking, ‘Who was she?’
Luis described a young woman called Isabella. Even though he didn’t say she was beautiful, Danny pictured her so. Born in Cádiz, she was the same age as Luis and had attended the same school. Her passion was painting. She would paint people at work, such as the butcher, the florist or a man selling lottery tickets. As a couple, they were attractive and popular. Luis was academic, she was creative. For Danny coming out merely confirmed everyone’s suspicions and justified their cruel jokes. But for Luis it had been a fallfrom grace and a loss of status. As Luis spoke about Isabella his voice broke. He had loved this woman, Danny realized.
