When the end finally came, all the people Jake had ever loved gathered together in the tiny terraced cottage he owned in Clapham. His mother and sister flew over from North Carolina. The friends came who had become closer to him than his family had ever been.
And then it was over. Jake was, finally, at peace, and Si, after cocooning himself away for months, gradually came out of his shell, and started to live in the real world again.
And since Jake, since reading the books, watching his friend die, Si has become the ‘condom queen’ of North London. (His expression, not mine.) AIDS, he has always subsequently said (an expression he picked up from someone else), is one hundred per cent fatal but one hundred per cent preventable.
And sure, he’s had one-night-stands, brief encounters, but the one thing I was always absolutely certain of was that he had never, ever, practised unsafe sex. Not Si. So why is he sitting on my sofa crying, not answering my question?
I am about to ask again, when the doorbell goes. Oh Christ. James. Si looks at me questioningly and I whisper that I’ll be back in a second. I go to the front door, feeling ridiculous for having to cancel again, but knowing that there’s no way on earth I will leave Si like this.
And James can see immediately that there’s something wrong.
‘I don’t bloody believe it,’ he sighs, visibly annoyed. ‘You’re cancelling me again, aren’t you?’ he says flatly, and I can see that this time he really is pissed off.
‘I’m so sorry, James, something has come up. I can’t explain now. I’ll have to explain later. Can I call you tomorrow?’
‘You know what, Cath?’ he says, and his voice is hard, and although I’d like to tell him why, I can’t, and I know that he’s upset, and this hardness is his way of covering it up, but if he gives me a second chance I will make certain he understands that it’s not him, that I am not trying to avoid him. I start to speak but he turns to go.
‘Just forget it. Let’s just forget it.’
‘James?’ I plead softly as he looks at the floor. ‘I am so, so sorry. I was so looking forward to this evening, and if there were any way I could go out with you, I would, but it’s going to have to wait. I’m not cancelling, James, I’m just postponing.’
‘How long,’ he finally sighs, looking up at me and forcing a smile, ‘do you suppose I will wait? Because I have to tell you, Cath, my patience has pretty much run out.’
‘I promise I’ll call you tomorrow,’ I say, and this time he does turn to leave, and I shut the door and go back into the living room, to Si.
Chapter twenty-five
I know this isn’t the time for recriminations, and I know that Si, above all else, needs support and understanding, but I’m in shock. I still can’t understand how Si, the Condom Queen, could have risked everything for Will. Especially because we’ve always laughed in the past when Si’s been told that people are fine – as Si has always said, ‘He would say that, wouldn’t he?’, and it has never stopped Si from practising safe sex.
‘I don’t understand,’ I keep saying. ‘How? Why?’ But having a test a year ago means that a year ago Will was negative, and evidently a lot can change in a year.
After a while Si calms down and starts to breathe normally, and soon he even makes a joke or two. I make tea, and I can see the warmth flow slowly back into his veins, and suddenly I think that we are being ridiculous. We are being overdramatic, we don’t know anything for sure, and surely we should not be making these assumptions. Not yet. Not when this life feels so normal.
And I feel the maternal Cath kick in. The Cath that wants to make everything better, the Cath who will right wrongs and soothe the furrowed brow. And it might be inappropriate, what I’m trying to say, but I so want this to be some horrible nightmare. I just want to wake up and for everything to be fine.
‘Si,’ I start, ‘I know this might sound crazy, but you couldn’t possibly have it. You’re as healthy as an ox, for starters, and so you slept with Will a handful of times without using anything, it doesn’t mean you’ve got it.
‘I remember reading an article about HIV,’ I continue, my words tripping over themselves in their hurry to be heard, ‘which said that it really isn’t that easy to catch. In fact, there was some study taken about partners of people with HIV who hadn’t known about it and were having unprotected sex, and all of them were fine.’
‘Cath,’ he says slowly, ‘I have no idea whether you’ll be able to understand this, but I’ve got it. I
know
I’m HIV positive.’
‘Si, that’s ridiculous. That’s you being overdramatic. You can’t possibly know that…’ And I tail off because of course there is then only one question left for me to ask. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you going to get tested?’
Si looks into his mug for a long time, and then looks back at me. ’Cath, this is something that I’ve thought about for years. All the time that Jake was ill I kept thinking about his courage and his bravery, and wondering what I would do if I were in the same position.
‘What would I do if my glands swelled up for no apparent reason and then refused to go down. What would I do if a cold refused to go away, sticking around until it got worse and worse. And I always thought that unless I absolutely had to, unless I had absolutely no other choice, I would live in blissful ignorance because I never thought I’d be able to handle the results.’
‘And now? How do you feel now?’ My voice is gentle, but I’m still trying to take this in.
‘Jake must have changed my attitudes far more than I had thought.’ He looks up at me and shrugs. ‘How could I
not
know? If I
am
positive, then the best thing I can do is to know now, to deal with it now, to take whatever drugs I might need. But you know what the worst thing is?’
I shake my head.
‘I’ve got to have the test, but there’s an incubation period of three months, and the last time we slept together was the beginning of October, only a month ago, so it might not even show. Then again, I suppose we did meet in July, so who knows, I might get lucky.’
‘Oh God, Si.’ I can feel my own tears welling up. ‘You can’t have it. Please say you haven’t got it.’
‘Cath,’ and he tries to smile. ‘It’s only a virus, for God’s sake. I’m going to go tomorrow.’
‘Can I come with you?’
‘That’s what I was going to ask. The only thing I’m pretty certain of right now is that I couldn’t handle getting the results on my own. I want you to come.’
‘Where will you go?’
He mentions the name of a GUM clinic at a local hospital. A clinic that specializes in testing for sexually transmitted diseases. A clinic that gives you the results within an hour, where you can remain anonymous, where even your GP doesn’t have to be told.
‘And you’re sure you can handle the results?’ I’m amazed that, once Si had got over the initial shakes and tears at the prospect of a positive result, he is now so calm. I keep waiting for something to happen, for the histrionics to start, because this is not the Si I know and love, this is an altogether calmer version, and I’m not entirely sure how to play him.
‘You know,’ Si says, looking up at me with a smile, a genuine smile, ‘I can’t believe how well I’m handling this.’
‘Jesus. Neither can I.’
‘You know, Cath, it doesn’t mean AIDS. Not necessarily. Not yet. People can go for years and years being absolutely fine. Now, with all these new drugs, these cocktails and combination therapies, they’re talking about twenty years, no problem, and who knows, by then they’ll probably have found a cure.’
‘Si.’ I shiver. ‘You’re spooking me. Stop talking as if you already have it.’
All of a sudden he looks lost again, like a little boy, and I put my arm around his shoulders and give him a squeeze.
‘I’m scared, Cath,’ he says. ‘I’m really, really scared, but if I have it, then we’ll just have to deal with it.’
We sit in silence for a while, and eventually I ask, ‘Have you made an appointment?’
‘I have to phone first thing in the morning. I’m just praying they’ll see me first thing, because the one thing I don’t think I can cope with is the wait. Once I know, then I can just get on with my life, but I have to know.’
‘Do you want to stay here tonight?’
‘I don’t know,’ he sighs. ‘I’m not sure whether I can handle being on my own, but on the other hand part of me wants to go back home, to climb into bed with the duvet over my head. I just don’t know.’
In the event Si doesn’t stay the night. He stays until midnight and we talk softly about the implications of being HIV positive, about what he might do, how he might tell people, how it will affect his life. And of course we talk about Jake, which is something we haven’t really talked about before now.
When Jake died, Si, as always, shut down, and even when he came out of hibernation he still found it difficult to talk about him. We’d all learned to leave the subject alone unless Si brought it up, which he rarely did.
But tonight it’s as if the floodgates have opened. Si talks about how much he loved Jake, and then, later, sheds more tears as he remembers his illness, his pain, and sobs in my arms as he cries that he does not want to go through this.
There is nothing I can say. I am still numbed by the horror of it all, because, out of all of us, Si is, or I should say, was, the most careful. He was the one who would shout at me on the rare occasions I got carried away by the moment, forgetting the condom in the heat of passion.
When Si eventually leaves, I sit for a very long time on my sofa, and I do something I have not done for years. I pray. I, who have not believed in God since I was a little girl, who do not believe in religion, sit there with my eyes clenched tightly shut, and I pray that if there is someone out there, then he must make Si be negative.
I pray and I pray, and I offer a few disjointed lines from the Lord’s Prayer, half remembered from school assembly all those years ago, in the hope that this will appease any God that may be up there. I even offer myself up for sacrifice.
‘I will do anything,’ I pray, ‘anything you want, as long as you make Si well.’
After a while there is nothing more to be said, and I climb under the covers in bed, closing my eyes and praying for a quick and dreamless sleep, but nobody hears that particular prayer, and I lie wide awake for hours, thinking about Si and wondering how I’m going to cope.
The phone rings at eight o’clock the next morning. Si tells me to get my skates on, as he’ll be picking me up in fifteen minutes to go to the clinic. I ring the bookshop and leave a message on the answer phone, telling Lucy I’m going to be in late as I’m not feeling well and am off to the doctors, but that I’ll call her later. I figure that after the test, when the results come back negative, I can always explain my late start away with a stomach bug.
Si sounded suspiciously cheerful when he phoned, and when he eventually arrives I look at him with concern, my head slightly cocked to one side, and I ask gently, ‘How
are
you?’
‘Oh God,’ he moans, raising his eyes to the heavens. ‘Don’t you start already.’
‘What? What have I done?’
‘That sympathetic look. The cocked head. “How
are
you?” ’ He imitates cruelly, accurately, and I apologize and laugh.
And all the way to the clinic Si seems in great spirits. If I didn’t know better, I would think we were going out for breakfast, or for a walk in the park, and we talk about everything but the main event until we actually arrive.
Even then, looking for a meter, driving around until Si spots someone leaving and nips in to steal their space, even then we both avoid talking about it. It’s only as we reach the building, as we climb slowly up the steps to the entrance and ring on the doorbell, because it’s so early, only then does my breath catch in my throat, does the colour drain from Si’s face.
We are shown into a front-facing waiting room. Slightly shabby, rather gloomy. I note that piled on a coffee table are old, faded copies of
Hello!, OK!
, various glossy magazines, and I wonder whether it helps people take their mind off the results, to read these magazines, or whether they are far too frightened to pick them up in the first place.
A nurse comes in. Australian. She is bustling, matter-of-fact, smiling, and I think that whoever employed her is a wise person indeed, for she is exactly the sort to make you feel comfortable. Despite her youth she clucks like a mother hen, even while handing Si a form on a clipboard to fill in.
He picks up the pen to complete the form and I see that he is shaking. Normally, knowing how much Si loves forms, I would giggle with him over the questions. Many’s the time Si has saved junk mail, only because it contains a questionnaire, and for years he would make me save the surveys in the glossy magazines, because he just loves answering those questions.
But this form is different. And now is not the time to comment, to make a joke, to say anything at all. He ticks the boxes silently, chewing on his lower lip slightly, which surprises me, as I have never seen him do this before. When he is done, he stands up and hands it to the nurse just outside the door.
‘The doctor won’t be a moment, love,’ she says. ‘He’ll come out and get you in a second.’
And less than a minute later a door at the other end of the waiting room opens, and a young, dark-haired man in a white coat comes out, clutching the clipboard and looking at Si with a smile. The doctor.
‘Please come in.’ Si stands up and just as he turns to go he holds my gaze and I nod because there is still nothing to say, and he walks to the door, which shuts behind him.
Now I understand why they have copies of the magazines. I flick through
Hello!
, glancing at the photographs but barely taking them in, tapping my right foot quickly on the floor, a nervous habit that hasn’t plagued me for ten years.
The door of the clinic opens again, and a girl comes in, young, pretty, trendy, and the nurse hands her the clipboard and she sits opposite me, head down, deep in concentration, and she looks so calm, so together, I wonder what circumstances might have brought someone like her here.
But of course, I mentally kick myself. AIDS, HIV, does not necessarily choose its victims because of their sex or their sexuality. I am reminded of a story I heard a long time ago, when we had just left university, when everyone laughed at the government campaign, the warnings of a worldwide epidemic. Not us, we thought. Never us.
A student from our university who had had two lovers. One, a long-term relationship of two years, and then, just after they broke up, a summer fling with a boy a couple of years older.
And then, a year or so later, she started to feel ill. Nothing serious, just tiredness, a few headaches, swollen glands. The doctor offered her an HIV test, just so they could rule out the possibility, he said with a smile, just so they could firmly discount it, and she laughed, because how on earth could she possibly have HIV?
The test came back positive. It seems the summer fling had unknowingly contracted it from someone who had slept with someone who had caught it from who knows where.
I don’t remember the girl’s name. I remember she was a friend of a friend, not someone I actually knew, but someone I could well have known. Someone who would have been at the same balls, the same parties, walked down the corridors of the same halls of residence.
Someone, in fact, much like me. And mostly I remember being shocked that someone like me could contract HIV, because of course that wasn’t supposed to happen.
But we now know it does happen. I sneak furtive peeks at this girl, this girl scribbling on the clipboard, and I know that she is just as susceptible as Si. And then I check my watch.
Twenty minutes. Why is this taking so long? And, just as I think that, the door opens and Si walks back into the waiting room.
‘Well?’ I try to gauge the result from his expression, but there is no result, not for another hour or so.
Si shrugs, and we huddle together for privacy, as the door has now opened again and the waiting room no longer feels quite so safe. ‘He was lovely,’ he says, almost in a whisper. ‘Not at all what I expected. He’s worked with people with HIV and AIDS for five years, and was very calm, very matter-of-fact. I almost feel normal.’
‘What did he tell you?’
Si glances at the girl still filling in her form, then back at me. ‘Look, shall we go for a walk? He said at least forty minutes, and I can’t talk in here, I need some air.’
‘Good idea.’ I grab my coat and we walk out into the cold crisp air.
‘So?’ I say, taking Si’s arm and falling into step.