Clapham omnibus

It was only a month or two ago that I told my mother I was gay, although I am 45. She now lives in Portugal, her native country, but she was staying with me in London. She had just revealed to me that although her huge seaside villa would remain mine after her death, as it must under Portuguese law, she had given a lifelong tenancy of the upstairs flat to her much younger live-in lover. When I heard this, I went berserk for two days.

She didn't react much when I broke my unwelcome news about being gay, but returned to the subject several times in a way which seemed clever to her (she's going slightly funny). She said once, "What would you think if I told you I was a fressureira?"

"If I knew what that meant, I might be able to answer."



"What do you think it means?"

"Isn't it an ember or something?"

"An ember? What's that?" she said.

"Something you put on a fire."

"That's nothing to do with it. I'll tell you what it means. It means a woman who likes other women."

"Oh, that's interesting. I'll look it up in the dictionary."

"Never mind the dictionary," she said. "What would you say if I told you I was a fressureira?"

"Are you one?"

"Of course not!"

"Well, what on earth are you talking about then?" I said, leaving her abruptly, as I did very often over the course of her three-week stay.

Oddly enough, this piece is my first mention to anyone that I have finally told my mother I am gay. This is not because it is any big deal to me. Really, I almost forgot to mention it. After all, it's absolutely ages since I've had sex. For all the practical difference that being gay makes to me, I might as well be an Eskimo.

All the same, it was strange and thrilling to hear the word "gay" in my mother's mouth several times. I had never thought that this woman, born deep into the Portuguese peasantry, would use it in connection with me. She'd known for a long time apparently, because my father had told her 20 years ago that he was pretty sure that I was. That didn't prevent her from being deeply shocked now.

Her visit was exhausting and intensely disturbing, but after two days of madness, during which I endlessly walked and rode the streets of London before returning to hurl insults at her, and once actually to attack her, we were able to establish an uneasy peace. On the third morning, a kind and sophisticated woman friend whom I know through my church invited us to a drive in Richmond Park, followed by lunch, and treated us as if we were royalty. This helped us both profoundly, and my mother mentioned it several times afterwards with gratitude.

When I saw The Seagull, I was struck by how similar the relationship between Madame Arkadina and her son Konstantin was to ours. How clearly I recognised the strategy of alternate smother-love and disparagement, deliberate frustration. I didn't want to share Konstantin's fate, so a decade ago I began to kill the exaggerated love that my mother had sown in me. Now, of course, she has retaliated in her own way.

Her only consolation was to return to her lover, who now doubles up as son. I gain my comfort in different ways. On the first night of her visit, I met a friend on a night bus and went back to his flat to share the situation in full. Many of my other "friends" have no time for me, and the extended working-class family who live on the estate, with whom I've been friendly for 20 years, now pass me by with the curtest of words, after they discovered that I had attacked my mother.

But there was the comfort of strangers. I went to Waterstone's on Piccadilly late on one of my berserk evenings and in the bar saw a young man I know vaguely, who works at a publisher's. He was with his wife, out for the evening while someone else took care of their baby. I didn't dare interrupt them for long, but their friendliness was nice as far as it went, and I took pleasure in their young professional calm.

On the Sunday before my mother left, I went for a long walk across Wandsworth and Clapham Commons, and stopped for a drink at a wine bar I sometimes frequent. My life seemed to begin again at that moment. I particularly love the area around Wandsworth Common, with its strange pre-1914 air. This is the area of London where I would like to own a house.

When she left me at Gatwick airport, my mother had to have a special escort to take her to her seat in the plane, because she could no longer follow the indicator boards. She didn't look back as she went, and seemed utterly confused about where she was.

I was overjoyed to see her leave. But her visit hadn't been all bad. Once I burst out crying in the street and then laughed. And I couldn't help admiring her when, outside my front door, she taught the little girls who play in the square to dance the cha-cha-cha. I had to join in, although I didn't do it well. They haven't forgotten her, just as I haven't forgotten how she used to move and amaze me, long ago.