‘You asked her to live your lie?’
Luis was back in that moment again, hearing her reply, remembering the anguish of begging, the loss of dignity.
‘She refused. If I wanted to be blind that was my decision. But she was an artist. The most important sensibility in an artist is honesty. She was hopelessly idealistic, I told her. About art. About love. But she would not budge. She was sure that the foundation of any marriage is truth. She spoke about the sadness she had seen in me. The loneliness even when we were together. If we married, if she overlooked the truth, she would be forever wondering what was in my mind. So, it ended. The town found out. I was called names as I walked down the street.’
Listening to Luis, a question occurred to Danny.
‘Who told Isabella?’
Luis stood up, leaving the table and standing in the darkness.
‘My father.’
At this mention of his father Luis’s voice changed. There was fury in it, new to Danny’s ear. Luis put a hand on the windowpane.
‘My dad was a drunk, charming in the evenings with a glass of wine in his hand, savage in the morning when the wine wore off. If he thought he could impress you he put on a show. If you doubted him, he was vicious. It always surprised me when I was learning English that people associate the word “vicious” with gay men. In my life no one was more vicious than my father. If challenged about why he needed to borrow money or why he didn’t come home last night he would attack you as though you were questioning his existence, which you were, because he lived inside his lies. To strangers he would perform, playing the role of a man on the cusp of achieving great things, fame and riches were always one sunrise away. With my mother and me, he would bully and belittle us because we knew the truth, that he was a small man. Looking back, I think he enjoyed his affairs less for the sex and more for the audience of women who didn’t know him. During those one-night stands he could be anyone. When he returned home he was a failure and he hated us for seeing the real him.’
In all their time together Luis had never spoken with such contempt for anyone. That he and his father were estranged,Danny knew. However, it was hard to fathom that his father, a man preoccupied with masculinity, had outed his own son.
‘Why would he out you?’
Luis moved out of the darkness, returning to the table. It took an effort for Danny not to recoil from his passions.
‘He was a fraud. It was hell to him that I knew it. When he had the chance to tell everyone that I was the worse fraud, he took it. It made him seem less of one. He was a real man. I was the fake one. Everyone had thought he was the bad man but now he seemed wholesome in comparison. He ruined me in the eyes of many in the town, in the eyes of my grandfather and in the eyes of the priest set to marry me.’
As fast as it had been summoned, Luis’s anger dissipated, replaced with sadness. He sat down.
‘And my mother? She said that she would rather I had died so that she could remember the boy I had been. In a way I did die. My life as I knew it ended.’
Danny considered.
‘Did you confront your dad?’
Luis nodded.
‘It was the last time we spoke. I told him that he wasn’t my father. He told me I wasn’t his son. We agreed on that much at least.’
That night neither of them slept. Marriage for Danny had been an idyllic pasture he had intended to walk througharm in arm with Luis. But to Luis, marriage was a battleground filled with the wreckage of betrayals, a place he had vowed never to return to. In the morning Danny suggested a walk. The pair of them meandered through the gardens of the Imperial War Museum without purpose or direction. Rhododendrons and camellias were beginning to bloom and crocuses were breaking through the grass. Eventually Danny asked why Luis had never told him the truth.
‘It was too demeaning. We never spoke about marriage when we met. It wasn’t a possibility, so it never came up until the laws around civil partnership were brought in. At that point, it felt so long ago. I didn’t know how you’d react.’
Danny said, ‘You did know. That’s why you never mentioned it. Because it’s so obviously the life you wanted. You didn’t give it up, Luis. It was stolen from you. And you’ve never got over it. Part of your heart is still on that beach.’
Luis agreed.
‘That’s why we need to go back. I accepted the truth at that time. Marriage was never meant for people like me.’
Danny adjusted the phrase.
‘For people like us.’
At the museum café Luis and Danny sat in the corner. Though they had bought breakfast rolls, neither of them touched their food. Sipping his bitter black coffee, Danny said, ‘I’ve spent our entire relationship wondering if I wasgood enough for you. The truth is that’s all I was – good enough.’
Upset, Luis turned the point around.
‘No, I’ve never thought of you in those terms. But I did think of myself that way. And as I sit here, all I’m wondering is whether I’m good enough for you.’
Chapter Thirty-SixMatthew Roche & Christopher Cramp
