When Love Comes to Town (12 page)

“Oh the usual, Gary and Tom and Yvonne and … Oh I can’t remember the rest.” His mum retreated toward the door. “You’ll have to get a private secretary to take your messages for you,” she added, and then her attention turned to the music. “That’s nice singing, who is it?”

“Sinead O’Connor.”

“Oh.” His mum rolled her eyes up toward the ceiling and clicked her tongue. “It’s a pity she doesn’t stick to the singing,” she sighed, leaving the room.

Neil examined the entrance slip to Shaft. No mention of what type of nightclub it was. Relief. He’d have to warn Jackie, though, just in case. He lay down on his bed, curled up on his side, and fell asleep.

At lunchtime, Kate came over with Danny and Annie. Marian Finucane was doing an item on her radio show about gay people in Ireland. It was on in the background as they ate their lunch. Neil pretended to be engrossed in the newspaper.

“You’d feel sorry for them,” Kate said after a gay man had phoned in and talked about the loneliness he experienced growing up in a country town during the seventies and how he went to England after his secret became known.

“They bring a lot of it upon themselves,” his mum replied.

Neil crossed the kitchen and picked Annie up, he didn’t want Kate or his mum to see his bright crimson face.

“Ah, that’s unfair, Mum,” Kate replied.

“No, I mean, we’ve always had homosexuals, and they’ve been fine people, contributing to the art and what-have-you. But they didn’t make such a big fuss out of it like they do these days,” his mum said.

Neil felt the volcano inside him rumbling. Little Annie gave him a funny look when she saw him contort his face in exasperation. She was imitating him, thinking that it was a game.

“Annie-moo,” he said, tickling the girl, much to her delight.

“No, Annie-moo,” came her squealed reply.

“Don’t be annoying Uncle Neil now,” Kate instructed.

“She’s fine,” Neil said, keeping his back turned on Kate and his mum.

“Where’s Danny?” Kate asked, leaning down to take a look under the kitchen table.

“In the living room,” Neil told her. “He wanted to watch the cartoons.”

“Anything for some peace,” Kate sighed.

Another caller came on the radio, an elderly man. He opened by saying that he was sick of homosexuals hijacking the airwaves, glamorizing their lifestyle for young, impressionable people. It was an unnatural way of life, he insisted, and active gay people like the earlier caller were deservedly discriminated against. Marian Finucane argued with little success. The elderly man finished by saying that he didn’t believe that anyone was born homosexual, that they just acquired those tendencies as a result of evil propaganda.

“Oh, I’m tired of listening to all that stuff,” his mum sighed, switching the radio off.

“I better check that Danny isn’t wrecking the living room,” Neil said, leaving the kitchen. He went straight upstairs to his parents’ room and phoned the radio hotline.

The girl who answered the phone told him they were flooded with calls and that it was unlikely that they’d be able to put him on air. But as soon as Neil said he was gay, she changed her tune. He felt his heart pounding while he waited to go on the air. His palms were sticky, his armpits were soaking, and his anger was abating slightly now as the realization that he was going to be talking on national radio began to sink in.
They’re going to put distortion on your voice
, he told himself.
There’s no need to worry
. But he still couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. Marian Finucane introduced him as a young gay person living in south Dublin, who didn’t want to be identified for obvious reasons. When the presenter gave him his cue, Neil kept his audience waiting for a couple of seconds before he found his voice.

“I just want to say, in reply to that last caller, that I’ve…eh, that I’ve known my sexual orientation since I was ten or eleven.” Neil coughed to clear his throat. “I didn’t even know what being gay meant then, but I do know that I’ve always found boys more attractive than girls…So all his talk about evil propaganda is just rubbish…People like him will just have to accept that there are other human beings who are different. And I can assure him that it’s not a glamorous lifestyle. In fact it’s quite the opposite. It’s a very lonely existence…” Neil stopped. His voice had begun to waver slightly. The presenter coaxed him along gently. Neil knew that every listener would be glued to their radios now; this was high-quality radio.

“I mean, so many people in this country purport to follow Christ’s teachings…But the thing to remember is that Christ surrounded himself with the social outcasts of his time…And anyway, if this is supposed to be a Christian country, then why have I thought of killing myself so many times, simply because I’m…I’m…”

Neil was too choked with emotion to finish. All the years of pain seemed to swell inside his throat, blocking his words. He sat on the edge of his parents’ bed and stared at the phone in his hand, with Marian Finucane’s voice inquiring if he was still on the line. He wanted to empty his mum’s jar of headache tablets, swallow the lot of them, and announce it on the airwaves. Now see what you’ve done to me. Then the program went into a commercial break.

Neil went into his own bedroom, switched on his radio, and listened to the flood of callers expressing their support for him. One elderly female caller said she wished he was her son. Another lady from Longford said the whole country should hang its head in shame, that we were supposed to be a nation who cherished its children, but in her experience, there was nothing further from the truth when it came to gay people. “My own son died of AIDS,” she then announced in a hushed tone, struggling to retain her composure. “He was a lovely, gentle boy…”

Again Marian Finucane had to use all her skill to coax the story from the caller, a story the caller so obviously wanted to tell.

“When he was nineteen, he went to a dance in the town…And he came home with blood all over his face…”

There was another delay as the lady struggled to control her heartbroken voice. She continued her story bravely, her sentences punctuated with sobs.

“He told me that he had just got into a fight, that it was nothing to worry about…But soon after that he went to live in San Francisco. He took twenty years of my life with him that day he left, Marian. It broke my heart. You see he was my only child, and his father had died a few years before. Anyway, for five years, he phoned me every Sunday night without fail. I can’t tell you how much I looked forward to those phone calls. He sounded so happy there. Until October two years ago, I’ll never forget it. I hadn’t heard from him for a month and I was worried stiff. You see, he didn’t have a phone where I could call him. But this windy October night, he phoned and I knew immediately that something was wrong. His voice sounded different. He told me that he was coming home. Of course I was delighted. But then he said those words that I’ll take to the grave with me. ‘Mum,’ he says, ‘Mum, I’m dying…’”

The sobs began in earnest and a record was put on. Neil felt the teardrops trickling down past his chin and dripping onto his pillow. By the time the music had finished the lady caller had recovered her composure.

“After he died, a fellow who was in school with him told me of all the jeering and torment my son had suffered at school and around the town. And I never knew about it. All those years he had kept it hidden. But the saddest thing of all was that I never even knew that he was gay until he came back from San Francisco. He was my only child, but still he felt he couldn’t tell me. And he was such a lovely, gentle boy. He wouldn’t have harmed a flea. I loved him so much. But they crucified him, Marian, they crucified him…”

She broke down for the final time. Neil covered his face with his hands. He felt dizzy. If that story didn’t change people’s attitudes, nothing would. He tried to visualize the lady’s face, but he kept seeing his mother’s. Would his mum have gone on the radio and told the same story about him? She probably would, that was the thing. After he was dead and gone, when she realized that it wasn’t such a big deal after all. Maybe Jackie was right, maybe he should tell his parents before it was too late.

The rest of the show was a blur. Suddenly the whole country seemed to support the gay cause. Each one of them in turn stated their disgust at the treatment of the Longford caller’s son. But their liberal professions made Neil skeptical. He couldn’t help wondering how many of them had been a party to a similar lynch mob in their day. How many of them would be so liberal if it were their own son or daughter who was gay? Very few, most likely. He tried to think how he would react himself if he was heterosexual and one of his own children told him that he or she was gay. But it was an impossible situation to imagine.

That night Neil went over to Andrea’s house to watch a movie. Gary, of course, had heard the Marian Finucane Show, and when he began to tell them all about it, it was a relief to Neil that the room was dimly lit. He felt like he could’ve lit a cigarette off his face. The fact that Gary had heard the show didn’t surprise Neil. His pal seemed to have a built-in radar for detecting shows with a gay theme. Films like
Sebastiane
and
Edward II
had fascinated him, and many were the breaks in school he had held court, elaborating to his school pals about how much the films had disgusted him. “Two men kissing! Ah, it’s fuckin’ disgusting!” He would spit the words out, and of course all his classmates, including Neil, would voice their agreement. When Neil had told Becky about Gary’s fascination, she had insisted that he was more than likely a closet case. But, as he had done during those breaks, Neil remained silent and pretended that he hadn’t heard the radio show that day.

“I feel so sorry for that mother,” Trish said after Gary had told them about the caller from Longford.

“The problem is,” Gary shook his head knowledgeably, “all homosexuals are promiscuous.”

The volcano inside Neil rumbled into life again. He had trouble lighting up his cigarette, his hands were trembling so much.

“It’s true, they are,” Gary insisted, looking over at Neil. Neil shrugged. Why did he always have to maintain this calm exterior? Why was Gary looking at him?

“You should know, Gary,” Andrea said, and the others laughed.

Gary ignored the comment. “I mean, when you think of it, a man’s sex drive is higher than a woman’s.”

This brought a volley of protest from the girls. But Gary was undaunted. “So if you put two men together for sex…” He whistled as he shook his head. “You’re talking Richter scale.”

The others laughed loudly.

“I mean, let’s face it, that bloke from Longford didn’t catch AIDS from knitting handbags.”

Again, the others whooped with laughter.

Neil bit his tongue and waited for Gary to tell them all about the caller who had distortion put on his voice. Gary didn’t disappoint him. He told them that he didn’t believe that anyone could know that they were gay at ten years of age.

“I think that old fella had a point though; a lot of it is caused by propaganda,” Gary continued, draping his arm around Trish’s shoulder as though to prove his manhood. “And there’s nothing worse than all those bloody intellectual queers, making it all sound so natural.”

Neil wanted to cry out loud. His insides were shuddering with helplessness.

“Jesus, Gary, you’re a bigger bigot than I thought you were,” Andrea said with a laugh. Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to contain himself much longer, Neil excused himself and went upstairs to the bathroom. He stood over the hand basin and splashed cold water onto his face. Gary’s comments had hurt him, but still he couldn’t say anything. He looked at himself in the mirror and started to cry.

After he had washed his face again, Neil went downstairs and told the others that he wasn’t feeling well.

“He’s lovesick,” Gary teased.

Yeah, I am
, Neil thought as he grinned at his pal.
And I’m now going to walk my promiscuous way home past my loved one’s house. Jealous, are you?

“Aren’t you going to stay for the movie?” Andrea asked.

“Nah, I’ll pass,” Neil replied, holding his stomach.
Fuck the lot of you
, he thought. S
itting here passing judgment on something you know nothing about. Someday I’ll shake you out of your smugness
…
Someday.

Neil caught a bus into town. Soft drizzling rain drifted through the narrow cobblestoned lanes. None of the first night nerves bothered him now; he was feeling too empty inside to care. Tears of self-pity welled up in his eyes. Why was he so lonely? He stood at the end of the gloomy road and watched the pub door across the road for a while. Strangers desperate for love, filing in singly and in pairs. Arriving late under cover of darkness. Lost souls.

Go home and go to bed, Neil
, the voice in his head told him.
Everything will be all right in the morning. Even if the guy in the white T-shirt is in there you’d be terrible company tonight. Better you don’t meet him.

A couple, their arms draped around each other’s shoulders, looked at him as they passed, and Neil met their stares defiantly.

Lights on Capel Street bridge were red. Headlights blurred in the drizzle. Snarling engines waiting. Cross now? Maybe wait for the rush of traffic, then step off the pavement. The screech of brakes. A scream. A hollow thud, followed by deafening silence. Blood on the road. Report on the news, maybe. An appreciation of the late Neil Byrne in the
Blackrock Annual
written by his closest pal, Gary Kelly.
Oh God, spare me. Cross now while it’s safe. Pull the baseball cap down over your face. I don’t care if anyone sees me. Oh yes, you do.
Inside now. Upstairs. No sign of White T-Shirt. No sign of Redser and his pals. Rain has kept everyone at home. Not even a video playing.

“Pint of Budweiser please.”

You should know my order by now, Poncehead. Imagine if you said that aloud. Barred from a gay bar. Marvelous. Oh fuck, here comes Uncle Sugar.

“How’re you, Neil?”

Return the cheery smile. God, the state of the hair!