Page 84 of The Best of Times
Aron sighed. “I’m really not sure. I don’t think I want to be in the same city as him. It’ll be awkward.”
“That’s putting it mildly. You are going to have to find a way to co-exist in some way. After today, we’ll all be family.”
Family? That was a joke.
“I’ve not had much luck on that score. Except for you.”
“Now that’s nonsense. You have two siblings and a father who all love you.”
“But not a mother.”
This time Granny exhaled. Sadness clouding over her face.
“My darling, gay people have had to contend what you had to for centuries. It doesn’t make it any easier, I know. Believe me, I’ve spoken to your mother until I’m blue in the face.”
Aron frowned. “Don’t you believe she wants to make thing right?”
“I would love to think that, but I know her. She has passed up so many opportunities, I can’t understand what has changed. I’ve seen mothers turn their backs on children when they are dying. It makes me so angry.”
“Are you thinking of Terry?”
Granny went pale. She always did when his name was mentioned. Aron had never got to the bottom of what had happened. For a woman who prided herself on being an open book, this was one chapter that had never been fully explored. All Aron knew was Terry was no longer alive.
She got up and went over to the sideboard. A faded photograph in a frame was all that remained of the young man she had taken in. It had happened just before Aron was born. Even his father refused to talk about Terry. He explained to Aron that some things were just too painful to go over time and again.
Granny brought the photo frame over and laid it carefully on the table in front of them.
“I miss him every day. None more so than today,” she said. “He would have loved all this. And you. My goodness, you would have been firm friends. I often think how he could have helped you with growing up.”
“Tell me his story. Please.”
“Very well. I suppose it’s time,” she replied, swallowing hard. “Years before you were born, I had a silly column in a newspaper where I answered people’s problems.”
“You were an agony aunt?”
She frowned. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“Not at all,” he said. “You’d be perfect.”
“I don’t know about that. Anyway, before it all ended, I began corresponding with Terry. At the time he lived in Nottingham. He had told his parents that he was gay and, as most people did in those days, they threw him out. Poor Terry was left with nothing and no one. All he could think about was moving to London. He thought this city would be the answer to all of his problems.”
Aron knew how that felt. At least he’d had his grandparents to run to.
“So, after talking it over with your grandfather, we did the decent thing and let him live here. There was such an innocence about poor Terry. I was terrified that he would be chewed up and spat out without my intervention,” she continued. “He enrolled in a local college. He wanted to be an accountant. Terry loved being in London. He was always out, dancing and having a good time. I never stopped writing to his mother. I refused to believe that she wasn’t worrying. Not that I ever got a response.”
“What happened?”
“Three years later he began to feel unwell,” she said. “I’d told him time and again to be careful. I used to buy him and your father boxes of condoms. AIDS would not happen on my watch. Alas, I couldn’t be with them every minute of every day.”
She reached for a tissue and dabbed her eyes.
“It was the worst news possible,” she explained. “He died in the summer of nineteen eighty-seven. I was so devastated that your grandfather came to live here full-time. We had a reconciliation of sorts. I think it prompted your father to propose to your mother too. We were all grasping at life in Terry’s honour.”
Aron was speechless.
“Do you think that’s why Mum rejected me?”
“Pah,” she said. “If she dared to use that as an excuse, I’d slap her face. She watched a young man die without his parents. She, of all people, should have known better.”
