Stories Written on Lined Paper - 11. Those Moments of Silence

He looked out of train’s window as it crawled through the city’s outskirts. It was row upon row of squat red brick terraced houses. They all seemed the same, those little terraced houses, with rectangle extensions sticking out from the back of them, their tiny walled in gardens, with all their woodwork painted in the same bright white paint. He didn’t dislike these houses, in general he didn’t have any opinion about them, but seeing them out of the train’s window meant he was only a handful of minutes away from his destination. He turned away from the window and looked down at the book, lying forgotten in his lap.

It was his twice yearly visit to them, his twice yearly visit to show them he was alive and healthy and his chance to hear all their latest stories, stories about people and things he’d long since lost interest in. It was his duty, as he saw it, but no more. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing them, he couldn’t describe himself as happy to see them, it was just his duty.

His parents would be waiting for him at their home. His mother would be cooking all the food he no longer ate. His father would be reading the local newspaper ready to tell him all the latest football news even though he’d lost interest in the game years ago. They no longer met him at the station, waiting the other side of the ticket barrier like two store detectives, waiting to caught their latest shoplifter.

The line of houses disappeared as the train entered the tunnel, the last stage of his journey and only a few minutes before he arrived. The view was now of the dirty black bricks of the tunnel wall.

Everything had changed, ten years ago now, before that life had been ordinary if not dull, but at least he had communicated with them. They had talked about the usual things parents and children did. True, he did not tell them the most intimate workings of his life but he did communicate with them more than just at the superficial level he did now.

Scott had encouraged him to carry on making these visits, not to simply let all contact with them quietly slip away. Scott maintained that keeping contact with them would help the healing process, which would slowly begin to re-build bridges between them. He never saw any of this with any of his visits. He remained at arm’s length away from them each time he saw them, the gap remained and nothing helped ease it. He knew the reasoning behind Scott’s opinion. Scott’s parents had been killed when he was a teenager and now, as an adult, Scott deeply missed them from his life. His parents were still alive and it gave Scott comfort that he was still in contact with them.

The train slowed down almost to a crawl as it pulled out of the tunnel and into the iron and glass station, bright light streamed through the glass roofed canopy that covered the whole station. As a child this station had been dark and dirty, the light there coloured dull brown by the dirt coating the glass roof. Sometime after he moved away it had been renovated, the dirt and grime washed away, but it did not make the place any more appealing to him. Not rushing himself, there was barely a handful of people in his carriage, he slowly pushed his ignored book into his satchel, then standing up and pulling down his coat and holdall from the luggage rack above his head. As the train stopped next to the wide tarmac platform he was already at his carriage’s door. As soon as it was stationary, he pulled the door open and stepped down onto the platform.

With his holdall gripped in his left hand and his satchel slung over his right shoulder, he marched across the station’s concourse and out towards the taxi rank, hidden away at the back of the station. He always caught a taxi to his parents’ home, these taxi’s were far cheaper than the one’s Scott and him paid out for back home, long ago he had turned his back upon the city’s unreliable bus service.

The queue waiting at the taxi rank was short, only three other people ahead of him, so he did not have to stand for long before he was able to broad a taxi for himself.

He was twenty-two and had been living in London for only six months when he made that first visit back to his parents. He had moved down to London to take a job at a small radio station, a long way away from the microphone. In those six months his life had almost completely turned around. In his new life he had found a whole group of new friends, people like himself with whom he didn’t have to pretend simply to fit in. He had found a job that he actually enjoyed, rather than merely as a source of income. Most importantly of all he had meet his first boyfriend, the smiling Greg, with whom he was wrapped up in a very satisfying emotional and physical relationship. He was happy, real happiness for the first time he could remember, not merely marking time and waiting for “something better” to happen.

He had wanted to tell his parents about all of this, he was sure he must have radiated the joy and changes in his life without him needing to say a word.

The Sunday afternoon, of that weekend, as the three of them had been sat together in his parents’ sitting room, watching an old film repeated on the television. He had taken a deep breath, pushed his courage and happiness to the front, and said:

“Mum, dad, there’s something I need to tell you... I’m gay and I’m really happy.”

For a moment, a long and very uncomfortable moment, there was only silence in the room. His mother stared at him, her eyes full upon him and her face fallen into an expression of shock. His father was open-mouthed, as if something rude or vulgar had interrupted his clean thoughts.

Then his father pulled himself forward in his chair, his face creasing into a stern expression.

“How do you know?” His father said.

“What?” He replied.

“What makes you think you’re this way?” His father demanded.

“I know I am, I’ve always known it,” he said, trying to keep his voice level and calm.

“You don’t ‘just know it’!” His father’s face was twisted up in red anger.

“I’ve got a boyfriend.”

“So you’re some sort of pervert because some old pervert corrupted you! This isn’t what I wanted for my son,” his father’s anger made him want to draw back from it.

“Greg’s the same age as me!”

“We never had any of this nonsense before you moved down there to that London.”

“But I’ve always been this way.”

“No you haven’t! You’re too young to know your own mind on something as serious as this. You’re throwing your life away. You won’t be happy and you won’t have any children. You’ll be lonely and miserable all your life.”

“I’m happy, really happy,” he protested.

“Nonsense. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“But dad, I’m happy and I’m happy being gay.”

“Stop it! Stop it!” His mother suddenly shouted, coming alive with distress and overflowing emotions. “You’re my son, I nursed you and I know you’re not that way. You’re a normal young man. You don’t do dirty things like that, you don’t and I know you don’t! We’ll have no more talk about this stuff. You’re only going through a phrase and that’s all!”

The room fell silent, a nervous and uncomfortable silence. Neither of them were making eye contact, he simply sat there on the edge of the armchair and just stared down at his hands clenched in his lap. He felt unbelievably awkward, the sudden villain of the piece. All he wanted to do was to be honest with them, to show them how happy he was. He hadn’t wanted to hurt them, to anger them and cause them such obvious pain – but unwittingly he had done just that.

The rest of the day was spent in that awkward silence, conversation only at a bare minimum. The next day, though still subdued, the atmosphere was not as tense and awkward. As he left for home, his parents made no reference to the events of the previous day.

As time passed and days turned into months and then years, his parents made no reference to his sexuality. It was as if he had never told them, as if that Sunday afternoon had never happened. When he would telephone them, each week, his mother would chatter away with all her local gossip, stories of people he had long since forgotten about, and his father relayed the latest news of his beloved football team. They never asked him questions that were anything but superficial.

The taxi ride to his parents’ home was the same it had always been. The buildings were changing, one or two new buildings appearing along the route each time he visited, but he hardly paid any attention to the view out of the taxi’s window. He would simply sit there on the taxi’s back seat and let his mind wonder wherever it chose. Tonight, when he’d retired to bed in the spare bedroom, the room that had once been his own bedroom, he will take his phone out and call Scott at home. Simply to hear Scott’s voice, to hear Scott telling him about his own day, to hear Scott’s voice to remind him of his real life.

Part of him, a very small part of him, felt he should have challenged his parents’ reaction, ignore their silence and carried on telling them about his life but that soon died away. Their wall of silence had been too great, looming in front of him, and what resolve he had had vanished. They simply did not want to know so he did not tell them. When his relationship with Greg fell apart, he didn’t tell his parents, he turned to his friends for support. When he met Scott, it was his friends he shared his joy with, not his parents who he did not bother to tell. When he and Scott brought a house together, he did not bother to enlighten his parents on the exact nature of their living arrangements, they had shown no interest in visiting his new home.

His parents’ silence drove a wedge between him and them, a wedge that pushed a wider and wider gap between him and them. They were ignoring a large part of his life and cutting themselves off from so much of his life. It was not just his sex life, not just what he did behind closed bedroom doors, it was the most important relationship in his life. They had no interest in Scott, in what Scott meant to him, in his relationship with Scott. They had cut themselves off from the most important part of his life, the most important relationship in his life. They had pushed themselves far away from him and now, after all those years of silence, he did not know how to bridge that gap – he did not know whether or not he even wanted to do so.

The taxi dropped him off at the curb side in front of his parents’ house. After paying for the taxi, he turned and walked up the short pathway to the house’s front door. There were different flowers growing in the house’s window boxes, the box hedge had been trimmed very short but otherwise the house was as he had always remembered it, no change here.

The door was opened, in answer to his knock, by his mother, dressed in a pale blue house coat. Behind her, walking up the hallway in woollen cardigan and corduroy trousers, was his father. They looked as they always had, as they always did. Now though they were merely bystanders on his life. They were not influential or valued in the scheme of his life, simply two people who were called his parents.

Just two days, he told himself, just two days before he could return home to his real life.

He pushed his mouth up into a smile of greeting.