Boy Made the Difference

Matt Bishop

Description

Rex, a husband and father, makes an unintentional error. Will Rex get away with his terrible, taboo-bustingmistake?This opening premise is the starting gun to a rollicking ride through London of the late 1980s and early1990s, in a literary novel that focuses on human frailty, love, marriage, family bonds, gay sex, betrayal,alcoholism, illness and death. Although aspects of the novel are richly ironic and even comedic, it alsodeals with challenging themes, not least HIV/AIDS.Matt Bishop wrote The Boy Made the Difference because very few (if any) literary novels are set againstthe narrative backdrop of the HIV/AIDS crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which had a profoundand lasting impact on the gay community. All of the proceeds from the book sales will be donated tohis late mother's charity - the Bernardine Bishop Appeal (part of CLIC Sargent - a charity that helpschildren, young people and their families who are suffering the effects of cancer).

Sujets

• Central London

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 11 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838596460
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2020 Matt Bishop

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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ISBN 9781838596460

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To the braves of the Lighthouse and the Broderip
Contents
Author’s Note

PART 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12

PART 2
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23

PART 3
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Author’s Note
Is The Boy Made the Difference a gay novel? No, in 2020 there is no such thing as a gay novel, or a straight novel for that matter, nor should there be. Rather, it is a novel in which some of the characters are gay and therefore sometimes do gay things.
But The Boy Made the Difference is set not in 2020 but thirty years ago, when life for gay men was terrifyingly dominated by HIV/AIDS, which cruel disease was wiping out part of a whole generation of us. HIV/AIDS exists in our midst still, of course it does, especially in the developing world, but it is rarely now a rapidly terminal disease in the developed world thanks to the invention of anti-retroviral meds in the mid-’90s. Almost no one in the developed world under the age of about forty-five therefore has first-hand experience of what it was like before their invention.
It was like the First World War. Young men were dying in hospital beds as young soldiers had died in trenches three-quarters of a century before. But, as a wife and mother observes in one of the later chapters of The Boy Made the Difference , unlike the heroes of the Somme and Ypres, who were rightly revered and decorated, the boys and men who died of HIV/AIDS only thirty-odd years ago often faced their deaths despised and rejected, and sometimes entirely alone.
Over the past ten or fifteen years very few (if any) new novels have been set against that narrative backdrop, and increasingly I found myself wanting to read one. Specifically, having worked thirty-odd years ago as a home support volunteer (aka “buddy”) for London Lighthouse, at the time the world’s largest HIV/AIDS centre, and having helped too many men and boys cope with the ravages of their destructive and disfiguring disease, often breathing their last breaths in the Broderip Ward of the Middlesex Hospital (now closed), I wanted to read a celebration of their magnificent courage, woven into a moving, gripping, entertaining and sometimes rollicking story of everyday familial stoicism. Eventually, I decided to try to write one myself. The Boy Made the Difference is my attempt.
I should make clear, however, that The Boy Made the Difference is a work of fiction. Yes, I drew on experience when writing it, as all novelists do, but none of the characters is based on anyone I have ever met and none of the events depicted ever took place.
There are many people I must acknowledge. First and foremost, I want to thank my mother, Bernardine Bishop, the author of five critically acclaimed novels, a phrase-maker nonpareil when speaking as well as writing, who taught me to love reading. I will donate any proceeds from sales of The Boy Made the Difference to the Bernardine Bishop Appeal (part of the wonderful cancer charity CLIC Sargent), which was set up in her honour after she died of cancer in 2013.
I was born into a very literary family. My mother’s mother, Barbara Lucas, was a novelist, as was her aunt, Viola Meynell. My great-great-grandmother, Alice Meynell, was a poet – and a suffragist, too. Her husband, Wilfrid Meynell, my great-great-grandfather, was a writer and editor. So I am very far from being the first published author in my family, but in my teens I became the first person in my family to come out as gay. Wilfrid Meynell’s cousin, my cousin four times removed therefore, was the painter Henry Scott Tuke. He was not out. He would not have known what “out” meant. But he was manifestly gay, as just one glance at any of his beautiful paintings will tell you.
Finally, I would like to thank my husband, the incomparable Angel Bautista, and also John Allert, Lauren Bailey, Lucy Bergonzi, Catherine Bond Muir, Josh Brandon, Rachel Burnett, Fern Bushnell, Caryl Churchill, Stuart Codling, Steve Cooper, Joe Downes, Kate Gray, Cass Green, Rainbow Haddad, Penny Harrison, Sharon Hendry, Moira Hunter, Philippa Iliffe, Emma Jacobs, Fabio Marcolini, Gina Miller, Sophie Missing, John Olliver, Martin Ouvry, Josephine Parnas, Natalie Pinkham, Michelle Pugh, Sathnam Sanghera, Carrie Stammers, Steven Tee, Jeremy Thompson, Desmond Tumulty, Jack Wedgbury, James Wharton and John Woods, who encouraged me or advised me or cajoled me or helped me in any number of other ways.

PART 1
SATURDAY 22 APRIL 1989
Chapter 1
An index finger beckoning rhythmically and persistently
Rex fancied Jill rather enjoyed arguing with him. Ever since they had been married, he had always thought that she was, if not quite spoiling for a fight, then too often too eager to make conspicuous the virtue of her efforts to tolerate his many apparent idiocies. Yet she found it easy to treat others with patience.
He found her irritating, too. He conceded that she was intelligent in her way, and he remembered that she had once been rather beautiful, yet he could see neither quality in her now. But she ran the domestic aspects of their life well, she was a good mother, and, by and large, she had learned to mind her own business where his work and play were concerned. Yet, when they were alone together, her face sometimes tended to take on a testy scowl, in which configuration her features appeared to settle gratefully, and there was no word other than “fat” to describe the shape of the once lissom girl he had married nineteen years before.
She was cross today because he had stayed on the phone for too long after she had shouted, “Lunch is ready.” Had Danny been eating with them, instead of being out playing football, she would not have been so liverish. Indeed, by the same token, had Danny been with them, Rex might well have rung off earlier. But Jill had heated up the remains of last night’s Chinese takeaway for herself and Rex, and he had thought it would not matter much if he were to begin to eat his half of it a couple of minutes after she had begun to eat hers.
In fact the interval had been longer than that, albeit not much longer, and, by the time he had entered the living room and had sat down, she was sitting sullenly in front of an empty plate.
“Yours must be cold by now. I’ve finished mine,” she said.
“I’m sure it’s fine. Thanks for heating it up for me.”
A silence developed, which was broken by Jill.
“Why can’t you just come when meals are ready, like normal people? Why d’you always have to delay? Shall I put it in the microwave again for you?”
“No, of course not. I’m eating it, aren’t I? It’s fine. It was only a couple of minutes, and I…”
“It was six minutes. You took six whole minutes to ring off. I’d finished mine before you’d so much as deigned to appear. To whom were you speaking anyway?”
Ah, it was going to be one of those conversations, thought Rex. Jill’s use of the word “deigned” confirmed it. “To whom” was discouraging, too.
There was another pause. Rex took a mouthful of lukewarm chicken chow mein.
“Well, it’s very nice,” he ventured.
“It was very nice,” Jill replied. She scooped up her plate, knife and fork, and disappeared into the kitchen.
“For fuck’s sake,” muttered Rex.
“What did you say?” said Jill, hurrying back into the living room.
“Nothing,” replied Rex.
“You did. You said something. I heard you.”
“Well, if you fucking heard me, why the fuck did you ask me what I fucking said then?”
“Oh, lovely. Swearing like a trooper. Beautiful. I cook your lunch, you don’t bother eating it ’til it suits you so to do, then you thank me by effing and blinding at me.”
“I doubt that the quality of this debate will improve with longevity, so I’m going out,” said Rex, who stood up, strode briskly out of the living room, grabbed his bomber jacket from the hallway coat hooks, and walked out of the house, slamming the door behind him. Jill neither followed him nor attempted to prevent his departure.
He was not sure where he would go. He looked at his watch. It was 12.55pm. He did not fancy going to a pub, an obvious bolthole, because he and Danny had agreed to play snooker later and he