And it was true. It was confirmed by the women’s shared awkward silence that it was Dan’s future being woven and crafted, his future.
Clyde turned to him. ‘Do you want to be a father, Dan?’
Demet confirmed it again by using his old name. She reached for his hand and said, ‘Danny, please say yes. We’d so love you to be the father.’
He could see her, his young daughter, he could conjure her up: Regan’s placid good nature, her desire to please. She would have Demet’s almond-shaped dark caramel eyes, with a sparkle in them that would come from Dan’s mother. But he couldn’t answer Clyde because he didn’t know what Clyde wanted and he couldn’t say anything if he didn’t know what Clyde wanted.
It was then Margarita said, ‘We’ve talked about it so much, we’re ready to be parents.’ She couldn’t mask her delight, her pride: she too was seeing their future, it was spread out in front of her, as vivid and clear and compelling as the moon above. He wanted to say yes. But there was Clyde, stiff and unbending and forbidding beside him.
There was the longest silence, behind which was thumping music from the shore, the breaking waves, the clanking of plates and cutlery being collected by the waiters, the good cheer and murmured conversation from the remaining customers: there was noise everywhere but over it was their cheerless silence. The three of them were waiting for Dan to speak.
Clyde finally clicked his tongue in exasperation. He refilled his glass and, deliberately avoiding Dan’s gaze, said, ‘I’m not sure I will even stay in Australia. I can’t be part of this.’
A convulsion snapped at Dan’s spine, a disquieting surge of dizziness flooded through him. Was it fear? Was it relief?
Margarita shook her head. ‘We don’t expect either of you to put any of your plans on hold. Please believe us, this won’t stop you and Dan heading off to Europe to live if that is what you want to do.’
The men couldn’t look at each other. Clyde unfolded his arms and dropped them to his sides. ‘I appreciate being asked, I really do, thank you, but being a father has never been part of my plans.’
Dan was looking down at the soiled tablecloth, at the streaks of lurid pink taramasalata smeared on the cloth. He sensed that Margarita had blanched at Clyde’s words; he looked up to see that Demet’s face had darkened. ‘That’s bullshit, Clyde. I don’t believe you’ve never thought of being a father.’
Clyde was tapping his pouch of tobacco. When he replied his tone was mockingly effete. ‘Aye, I did once, sweetheart, you’re right. It was back in 1999, peaking on a pill. I think it lasted all of ten minutes.’
Demet snapped, ‘That’s right, make a joke of everything. Why don’t you just say exactly what you mean? Why don’t you just be upfront and say that you’re not interested in having a baby with us?’
‘Baby, please.’ Margarita placed a warning hand on her lover’s arm.
But Demet wouldn’t be pacified. This was the old Dem, thought Dan, the furious wild Demet from his past, the Demet who was convinced she was right about everything. He wished he could tell her that in this case she was wrong. Clyde had no fear of saying what he thought — Clyde had never talked to him about having children. It wasn’t Clyde’s future. But it could have been Dan’s, it could have been his.
Clyde was taking deep, frustrated breaths. Dan sneaked a look at his partner. Could it be that Clyde was lost for words?
‘It’s OK, guys. The last thing Demet and I wanted was to put any pressure on you. We don’t have to talk about it anymore.’
Margarita’s tone was measured. She was making peace. She turned to Demet. ‘It’s OK, mate, we said that there was no need for anyone to make a decision tonight.’
But Demet couldn’t let it go. ‘Exactly what is your problem with having children?’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Clyde started rolling a cigarette. ‘I’m not interested in the middle-class fantasy of being superpoof. I don’t want to get married, I don’t want the responsibility that comes with being a father. It’s fine if that’s what you and Margarita want — no bother. Good luck to you. It’s just not for me.’
The drying pink crusts of dip were fascinating and repulsive to Dan. There was a pressure in his belly, in his bladder. He wanted to say yes to the women, but he didn’t want to say the wrong thing to Clyde. He wouldn’t look up. He was sure they would be glaring at him: his lover, his best friend, her girlfriend. They wanted him to speak.
‘We have to grow up, Clyde.’ Demet’s tone was bruising, callous in its disdain. ‘Being queer doesn’t mean being bloody Peter Pan forever. Wanting to have some responsibility is not middle class.’
‘No? Moralism isn’t middle class?’ Clyde’s tone was equally scornful. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are preaching to me about responsibility and growing up? Don’t think you’re excused because you are some self-declared working-class hero. Having parents who are immigrants doesn’t make you working class, not where I come from. I should take you to Glasgow — I should drop you in the middle of fucken Easterhouse and see how much working-class solidarity they extend to you there.’
He paused to lick the cigarette closed. The slide of his tongue across the paper conveyed his disgust. ‘How long are you going to be dining out on your folks’ experience, appropriating it as your own? You went to university, pal, you’re an academic. What the fuck are you if you’re not middle class?’
Dan shut his eyes. She would fly at Clyde now, she would fling herself at him and strip away his flesh. She would retaliate with all that she was, all of her pride in who she was. She would tear him apart.
Nothing. Dan opened his eyes. Demet’s features had slumped; she was staring at Clyde, slack-jawed, red-faced, punch drunk. He recognised the shame, he read her confusion. And for the first time he got it, how university had shaped and moulded her, how for Demet, university was her own Cunts College.
Clyde couldn’t understand what that loss, that realisation, would have meant to her. Everything he’d said had been true, he had laid her bare: Demet had confidence, vocabulary, manners — she had all that came from opportunity and knowledge. She now lived in a different world: Shelley and Boz and Mia and Yianni, those friendships, that past, that world had gone. She was middle class, and so was Dan. But what Clyde didn’t understand was what Dan and Demet both knew in their bones. Clyde was the son of a pharmacist and a teacher, he’d excelled at a selective comprehensive school, he’d grown up in a part of Glasgow that Dan’s granddad had never visited—‘They didn’t allow our kind there,’ Bill had teased Clyde when the two had first been introduced — he was a cosmopolitan with the freedom of an EU passport, but what Clyde could never understand, because he could never conceive of such a thing, never concede the thought, was that for all Dan and Demet had gained, they both shared the same fear: that middle class wasn’t worth it.
Couldn’t she just look at him? He was desperate for her to look at him. He knew that there would be light between them, a light that they shared. A past from before university and Cunts College.
But Demet was cowed, her bottom lip was quivering. Margarita was about to speak, to allay the tension, to bring their table back to equilibrium. Dan couldn’t let her; Margarita didn’t understand that for all her talk of social justice and human rights — she was still the child of a successful lawyer and a father who was a top public servant — it couldn’t be Margarita who defended Demet, it had to be Dan. It had always been Dan.