Perfectly Ordinary People(109)

You’re right. They totally have, thank God. But it’s rather like I said before: when is the right time to tell your child that he’s a) not really yours and b) your marriage is fake, and c) your surname isn’t really Solomas, and d) that his family died in the gas chambers, and . . . where are we up to? e)?

Yes, e). You just did d).

And e) that you’ve spent his whole life pretending to be heterosexual.

Yes, I can see that, but—

Plus, you have to remember that for much of his life, until Guillaume was almost thirty, it was illegal for Christophe to be who he really was. Men got thrown into prison. Just think about that: in prison! And even when the law changed in . . . I think it might have been ’67 or ’68 . . . But even after that it took another fifteen years before attitudes changed, and even then, even now, there are still plenty of homophobes around. So by the time it felt possible to tell him, it seemed like it was just too late, I suppose. At least, that’s how Christophe has always felt about it.

Would you have been more inclined to tell him the truth, do you think, if it hadn’t been for Christophe?

Perhaps, I’m not sure. Out of the four of us, I’d say Ethel and Igor were always most in favour, and that makes sense really. After all, they didn’t look after him almost from birth. They’re not the ones who would lose him if it went wrong, are they? They’re not responsible for all the lies, either. I’ve always thought that he needs to know about his real mother at some point, but I’ve never found the right moment. Finding the right time – finding the perfect moment to drop a bombshell like that . . . bombshells plural . . . well . . . I’ve just never managed it. Plus, Christophe has always been dead against, and I could never take that decision on my own.

And you must remember – and please make sure this comes out in your article – you must remember just how much difficulty Christophe faced over the course of his lifetime because of his sexuality. Rejection from his family, from the state, from lawmakers . . . Rejection and pain. Actual physical danger, too. He was tortured because of it, remember; his friends, his first true love, were all slaughtered because of their sexuality, so we’re talking huge, very real trauma. Even now, I think it would be reasonable to say that it’s still an incredibly difficult subject for him. He’s probably lived with some form of post-traumatic stress disorder his whole life. I think we all have, if you get down to it. So it’s pretty understandable he’s never wanted to risk ruining his relationship with his son.

OK, I understand. I get it.

But you know, I may still tell him. One day, I may just write that letter, or arrange a meeting. I still think about it sometimes. Perhaps I’ll send him a copy of your tapes. I’m always full of surprises, me!

And will you tell Christophe about this interview?

I’m not sure. Do you need to speak to him, do you think?

No, not really. I don’t think I can use any more. I already have way too much for a magazine piece.

Perhaps not, then. I still haven’t decided. I’ll probably wait until I see the edited-down result so that I can judge how we all come out of it . . . How flattering, or otherwise, it looks!

I’ll make you look like heroes, I promise. Because that’s how I see you; that’s what you are. You’re the heroes of your own lives. So, I promise, I’m going to make you look great.

Well, you’d better, dear. You’d better!





Ruth. Part Seven.

The minute I got home, I connected to the internet, and by the time I’d finished grilling cheese on toast, cassette #6 was sitting in my inbox waiting to be read, and that felt like a miracle of technology.

I settled on the sofa with my comfort food, my cat and the computer, and began to read, and for fifteen minutes I was lost inside Genevieve’s story.

When finally I finished, I closed the lid of my laptop delicately, as if jolting it might disturb the ghosts within.

I sat staring at my reflection on the TV screen for a while and it crossed my mind that I looked older, or perhaps felt older, as if being supplied with a comprehensive back-story had finally made an adult of me. It was a strange thought, but in that moment it seemed real.

So Grandpa Chris had found love after all, had he? That bit of news had brought tears to my eyes. And Igor, the famous Igor, who my grandfather had been living with all these years in France – the same man my father had met at the hospital – he’d been my grandfather’s life-partner, and in a way, my dad’s stepfather? And he was alive. There was still time to know him, at least.

The distance, that inexplicable sense of void between my father and his parents, between Jake and me and our grandparents – finally it made the tiniest bit of sense. Because they’d been living a lie, hadn’t they? Everything they’d shown the outside world had been fake. But the thing that had surprised me the most had been coming across my own name there in the text. To discover that Jake and I had been written into Genevieve’s life story had shocked me, and I wasn’t quite sure why. Perhaps because it made their story definitively our story. Or maybe it was simply the final detail needed to lay to rest any remaining doubt.

Oh, I hadn’t ever really believed it was all fiction, of course I hadn’t. But I had still been carrying a remote, lingering fear around with me, a sense of terror at the idea of telling my father something this radical only to discover that I was mistaken in the way I was interpreting it all.