Perfectly Ordinary People(107)

But I think Guillaume ended up resenting ‘Aunty’ Ethel a bit, which was unfair on her. He perhaps sensed that she had taken me away from his father, which of course, in a way, she had. Only Christophe wasn’t his father, Ethel wasn’t his aunt, and I wasn’t his mother, either. So really, if he’d known, he could have seen his relationship with Ethel as quite extreme generosity on her part.

But it didn’t cause major ructions. He was living his own life as a newly married man. Patricia got pregnant with Jake quite quickly. He was too busy to spend much time worrying about our living arrangements, especially as our fake divorce hadn’t made anyone unhappy. Quite the contrary, in fact.

You were all happier living this way?

Oh, it was a revelation! I was thirty-eight years old, and it was the first time in my life that my living arrangements had matched who I really was. We all felt the same. It was wonderful! Ethel and I finally lived as a couple – we only ruffled the sheets in the second bedroom if Guillaume or someone else came to visit. And Christophe was able to bring men back to his bedsit as well.

Shortly after that he met Igor and, you know, I’ve always thought that he met Igor at that moment because he was able to. Because they finally had somewhere they could spend time together.

Igor? That’s a pretty unusual name, isn’t it?

Is it? I suppose . . . His parents were originally from Hungary, I think. He inherited their emporium – it was a junk shop really – a wonderful place, piled high with furniture and boxes of knick-knacks and electrical goods and paintings . . . Anything you needed, Igor could find it somewhere. So Christophe went in there one day looking for a paraffin heater, and their eyes met over the top of all that junk . . . And I suppose you could say that Christophe found exactly what he needed.

And what year was this? When Christophe met Igor?

It would have been ’58, I think, or early ’59. Like I said, it was around the time that Guillaume moved out.

Tell me about Igor. What was he like when Christophe first met him?

Oh, he was wonderful – a real character. He was a bit younger than Christophe, maybe four years younger, and he had this wonderful Hungarian accent – not strong, but just enough to make him sound exotic. He looked a bit like Christophe, only darker, and younger. He had a pointy beard and a long moustache he used to twiddle all the time whenever he was thinking or listening to music.

And was he nice? Did you like him?

Yes, I did. Ethel wasn’t so keen at the beginning, and to be honest I’m not really sure why. I think they were maybe too similar to get on straight away, though later they became best friends. But I liked him a lot. He was very funny – he had this very dry, rather dark sense of humour which was very much like Ethel’s.

He was mad about classical music and had a wonderful collection of tapes – you know the old-fashioned reel-to-reel ones you had to thread through the little wheels . . . So he had a whole stack of those tapes and he’d play classical music all day long in the shop, though I only ever remember hearing Rachmaninov. He had a real obsession with Rachmaninov, and even these days I still can’t hear a Rachmaninov piano concerto without instantly thinking about Igor and wondering how he’s doing.

I’m assuming Igor was single?

Which is proof that you should never assume anything!

Oh! He wasn’t?

No, he was married to a woman called . . . I’m sorry, the name escapes me. It was Laura or Gina or something like that. One of those American-sounding names. She always looked ill, really, even when she wasn’t. She always looked pale and thin and unhappy.

Could that have been because she was married to a gay man, do you suppose?

<Laughs> I don’t think it helped. But you know, I always got a gay vibe off her too. I always suspected that, had she not been so devoutly religious, she would have liked to be with a woman. But she always looked shocking, and in fact she probably was already ill by the time I met her, even though we didn’t know it yet. She died of cancer in . . . maybe ’60 or ’61 . . . when Igor was in his mid-thirties.

Oh, that’s sad. How did that affect Christophe and Igor’s relationship?

Well, Igor was terribly upset. Christophe was a bit surprised by that, because he and Igor were very much in love by then. But Igor clearly loved Dana too – that was her name! Dana. It came back to me. I suspect Igor loved her in much the same way I love Christophe. And even if that’s not true love, it is still quite a powerful sort of thing. As for Christophe, I suspect he was secretly relieved when Dana died. That will sound awful, I know, and I don’t think he’d ever admit it. But once Dana was out of the picture he got to see Igor all the time. They ate together pretty much every evening, I think, and on Saturdays Christophe would spend the whole day at Igor’s emporium. On Sundays they’d go off to auctions and classical concerts and things. I think that was when Christophe was happiest – in the sixties. They were both young and full of beans, and suddenly Igor was free . . . It was lovely to see them together.

Did Guillaume meet Igor? Did he know about Christophe’s relationship?

I’m sure he bumped into him a few times, but no, he never knew. As far as Guillaume was concerned, Igor would have been his father’s friend, the same way he believed that Ethel was my cousin.

It must have been hard work hiding all that stuff, wasn’t it?

Not as hard as you’d think. Guillaume was living out in Walthamstow by then with his wife and son. And since my ‘divorce’ from Christophe, he’d been quite distant towards all three of us. This is a bit sad to admit, but because we were all finally living these lives that we’d only dreamed of before – me living with Ethel, and Christophe dating Igor – that distance suited us. I know how selfish that sounds, because Guillaume really was like a son to us, but him popping round every five minutes wouldn’t have suited anyone. It wouldn’t have suited Ethel and me if he’d caught us snuggling on the sofa, for instance, and it wouldn’t have suited Christophe and Igor getting caught in the act, or having breakfast, or whatever else they got up to. I think the drift away from us started when he couldn’t get his head around our divorce – when he couldn’t understand why Christophe had moved out. But at the same time he was being pulled in a different direction, towards his wife’s family – which was pretty tightly knit – and towards his own new family, his own children, as well.