Page 8 of Maybe
A few years dragged by before I realised every boy who aspired to go to art college dressed like that. After Ezra left for good, I persuaded myself my feelings were nothing more than rampant hormones and a childish crush.
So why did they linger, even now? Why did I glance up at the heavy oak chapel doors every few minutes? And why did my heart sink lower and lower when he didn’t appear? He was my fucking brother, for Christ’s sake! Surely once I found someone else triggering the same desire, he’d be reduced to a vague, slightly cringing memory?
For years, I’d convinced myself of the latter, until Ezra sauntered into David Trethowan’s office and folded his long body into the seat next to mine. His clothing style hadn’t changed much; those skinny grey jeans and moody countenance brought back every single agony of lust and teenage frustration as freshly as if they’d been dropped into my skull only yesterday.
Given the choice, I wouldn’t be gay. I didn’t have the bottle to be different. I wasn’t made like Alaric, for instance, with his sassy walk and his fluttery eyelashes and his sexily crossed legs. I wanted to blend in, an ordinary man married to an ordinary woman, living in an ordinary house and raising two ordinary children. Instead, I inhabited a weird no-man’s-land; one foot out of the closet and the other wedging the door open, still reluctant to slam it behind me for good. The kind of gay who, when asked if I had a girlfriend, answered in the negative and left it at that, then shrunk to the size of a button mushroom. Internalised homophobia, alive and kicking, but only directed at myself.
I wasn’t even truly out at work, despite being fully aware we lived in the twenty-first century and the NHS was, by and large, an LGBTQ friendly employer. Not like Alaric, sashaying around the Emergency Department, swinging his rainbow lanyard like a lasso. Not like Damon either, nor Paul, two or our nurse practitioners, bemoaning the tedium of finger-prick HIV testing as if discussing blood glucose checks for diabetes. Occasionally, Dr Shah, a senior consultant from the respiratory unit, would wander to the department to review a patient, a row of metalpride badges pinned to his shirt. He’d chat about his marriage to Mark, the adoption process, his recent holiday to Portugal with Mark’s extended family. I found myself fantasising about trading places with him, even though I’d never met bloody Mark.
Nonetheless, neither was Inotout. On direct questioning, I wouldn’t deny it. I’d even registered with the hospital’s sexual health team, blushing terribly while filling in the forms. I answered their intrusive questions as reluctantly as if admitting a criminal record or winning an award for pike fishing.
The congregation rose to its collective feet, bringing me back to the present. Hymnals rustled as pages turned. Throats were cleared. I joined in a half-hearted rendition ofHow Great Thou Art. From wherever my father was currently looking down on us, he no doubt imagined it as homage to himself. And then I pictured Ezra singing next to me, his low, sweet voice dancing over the sober melody as easily as his long fingers danced over a fretboard.
After an interminable hour, I escaped the chapel, but only as far as the drinks reception. Though the chapel was considered modest by Oxford standards, the splendour of Balliol’s Long Room more than made up for it. More dark wooden panelling and stained-glass windows, interspersed with solemn portraits of dead clever people, now simply dead. Every one of them white, male, bespectacled, and privileged.
Christ, it was going to be a long, grim afternoon.
To a background thrum of glasses chinking and posh, braying little laughs that had my smoked trout canapés sticking in my craw, the hours rolled drearily on. I’d driven down from London and had an early shift tomorrow morning, so I stuck to orange juice. My mother mixed hers with gin.
When I glanced around, the clientele and atmosphere weren’t much different from the many drinks parties my parents used to host at home. My father would often be unexpectedlyabsent from those, too.Fêtes worth than death, my mother called them, before dolling herself up to stand at Sir Henry’s side and perform the dutiful adoring wife thing.
As my parents' friends, colleagues, and a few vaguely showbiz people lined up to offer their own private anecdotes, I trod the delicate path between nodding at tipsy accounts of the dead man’s lifesaving heroics and quizzes on the progress of my own surgical career. Yes, I was thrilled to be emulating him, and yes, they were big shoes to fill. And yes, it would require a lot of hard work. The next person who told me how proud he’d be risked me screaming at the top of my lungs.
Having circled the room thrice and shaken more clammy hands than a Tory politician running for re-election, I deemed it late enough in the afternoon to edge towards the door. Under the pretence of a trip to the gents, I'd fuck off back to the sanctity of my car. Too slow. Yet another of Sir Henry’s esteemed colleagues, jowls flushed and weak chin quivering—Michael—tapped his signet ring loudly against solid crystal, demanding everyone’s attention. Michael was another venerated cardiac surgeon and man of forthright opinions; I was surprised he’d kept quiet for this long. Mustard Trousers Michael, Saffron used to call him.
“Quiet, please, quiet please. A toast, if you will.”
Instantly, a hush settled over the room, and Mustard Michael treated us to the satisfied smile of a man used to having his inbred voice heard. Seemed he’d elected himself master of ceremonies; I wasn’t complaining.
“The sun has set on an amazing life,” he declared to appreciative murmurs ofhear, hear. “An amazing life. We stand here today as dwarves on the shoulders of a giant, Sir Henry Fitz-Henry. Our esteemed friend, father, husband, and brilliant colleague was taken too soon. Taken too soon.”
If gravitas had a name, it would be Michael. Somewhere on the shelves ofWaterstonesmust be a book on eulogies, advising the speaker to repeat certain words twice for effect. He shook his head, then bit his lip, as if struggling to go on. “Before the afternoon draws to a close, I would like to propose a final toast to Sir Henry, a dear, dear man. And, as we raise our glasses to this beloved colossus who has gone before us, let us take a quiet moment of silence to remember the many, many ways he improved not only our lives, but the lives of his countless patients. To Henry!”
“To Henry,” came the answering cry, champagne flutes aloft. And then all assembled, including myself, obediently dropped our heads to contemplate, contemplate the great, great man.
I wasn’t typically short on self-discipline, especially for a mere sixty-second burst. Yet, out of the blue, I was suddenly struck by an overwhelming desire to giggle. Maybe it was the many manys and the dear, dears for our great, great Henry Fitz-Henry. Or simply the end of a very tiring week of disjointed shifts and the awful news my colleague, Luke, had attempted for a second time to take his own life. All that piled on top of revision for surgical exams I wasn’t confident of passing, even though my whole existence had been geared towards them, as my father’s friends had reminded me the entire afternoon.
Or perhaps it was none of those, but the culmination of three months of a strange sort of bereavement. The man we silently pondered had been a selfish, self-centred, harsh bugger, but he’d fed, watered, educated, and clothed me. Handsomely. Occasionally, he’d even taken me fishing. And, despite myself, I grieved his loss.
Thirty seconds in, and the burgeoning giggles had not receded. In desperation, I chewed the inside of my cheek, channelling grim thoughts of death and dying, of worms and decay. It couldn’t last much longer, surely. Then I’d escape andgiggle to my heart’s content in the car. Or burst into tears. Those two emotions felt awfully close to each other these days.
The stranger next to me shifted his feet. The minute’s quiet reflection must be in single figures by now. Any moment, Mustard Michael would issue a pious little cough to signal…
“Cheers, big ears!”
Like a gunshot, a raucous shout sliced through the silence. Punctuated by the sharppssftof a ring pull, followed by the unmistakeable glug-glug of fizzy drink meeting back of throat. And, in case we’d somehow missed this coarse intrusion, a loud, satisfying belch.
“Bugger, was this a bad time? Soz, everyone. My bad.”
In horror, the assembled cast of my father’s well-heeled friends turned to the back of the long gallery, me amongst them. My heart clenched. Oh shit. Oh fucking, pissing shit. Guzzling a can of lager, dressed in grubby grey jeans and a fucking Hawaiian shirt, was the prodigal son. Ezra Fitz-fucking-Henry. Swaying drunkenly against a stone pillar.
He slapped his head in mock anguish. “Am I too late? Shit! Don’t say I missed the crab vol-au-vents!”
Several things happened at once. For starters, someone at the back actually fucking screamed. At the same time, a young woman to my left dropped a glass, sending a slash of red wine flying across her pale jacket. Frozen to the spot, Mustard Michael made an anguished, blustering sort of noise. Then his ruddy face turned a ghastly shade of beetroot, as if any second he’d keel over to join my father in the great, great operating theatre in the sky. An image flashed before my eyes: me, crouching over him, performing mouth to mouth resuscitation on his fleshy, rubbery, wet lips.
And amidst the chaos, stood the catalyst of it all. Ezra, my stupid fucking devil of a brother, drunk as a skunk and about as welcome as a wasp at a picnic. Slouching there in his bloodyHawaiian shirt and laughing his fucking gorgeous head off. A riot of colour, a riot of sound. A joker. An aberration. A messed-up circle in a room full of squares.
“Seeing as Mustard Michael isn’t going to do the honours, I’m Ezra,” he yelled on the off chance the folk in the fucking college next door hadn’t heard the uproar. “Salve,comrades!”
