On the evening before they crossed over to Enlli the whole family had lingered at the supper table. Eilir had unfolded the saga of the last days of the fungus on the kitchen wall and Seifion had told them stories about New York – the unbearable August heat, the congestion and pollution caused by too many cars, the crumbling health care system – about which he’d been doing a piece for his newspaper…. Then Eilir had talked about her AIDS patient; Ann had wanted to know if they were using the new combination therapy in Liverpool, the one she’d read about in the BMJ. Seifion told the grim details of a visit to an under-funded AIDS hospice, run by a group of nuns in Queens, where people died in their own filth…. Eilir couldn’t speak highly enough about the loyalty and care her AIDS patient’s partner had shown and how impressed she’d been with the faithfulness of her patient’s gay friends. ‘Gwrywgydwyr ydy’r grwp sydd mewn perygl o hyd ta – Homosexuals are still the highest risk group then,’ Ann had said. Both Eilir and Seifion tried to say something about how it was behaviours that were risky, and that the notion of risk shouldn’t be pinned onto groups of people like a badge, but their words were lost as the talk shifted from health care to homosexuality. Llŷr didn’t believe that God was punishing homosexuals through this disease, but that the disease was a consequence of their sinfulness and the biggest lesson to humanity from the whole AIDS crisis was that if we chose to flout God’s law some pretty catastrophic things would happen. Seifion talked about two gay friends, one from university days and the other a journalist; coming to know these two men had made Seifion re-think his position – the position he’d grown up with – Llŷr’s position. Seifion didn’t think, any longer, that being gay was sinful… and wasn’t all the work with the human genome project going to reveal that sexual orientation was genetically predisposed? If that was true, then gay people were an intended part of God’s creation. Llŷr had said that even if science did reveal the genetic basis of sexual orientation, that didn’t make homosexual acts any less sinful; the Bible was clear that sexual intercourse between a man and a woman in marriage was what had been ordained; celibacy was the only acceptable lifestyle for homosexuals, as it was for all unmarried people.

Perhaps Gethin imagined that both his brother and sister had blushed on hearing this; he knew that he’d blushed as soon as they’d started talking about homosexuality. He’d thought that he might clear the table while they talked, to hide his anxiety and embarrassment, and yet, the things which Eilir and Seifion had said had been interesting and positive. Before falling asleep, he decided that he’d talk with Seifion in the morning when they drove together to Porth Meudwy at the tip of the Llŷn.

Waiting on the pebble beach for the two rowing boats to carry everyone and everything bound for the island across the bay to the larger boat in the anchorage, Gethin considered his disappointment. Who was he most disappointed in, himself or his brother? Seifion had said it was a phase that he’d pass through; he’d even shared with Gethin that he and two other boys, when they were about thirteen, had ‘played’ with themselves and had competitions to see who could do it quickest and shoot highest. When Gethin hadn’t seemed convinced, Seifion talked about a sexual experience with a French boy during a language exchange when he was about Gethin’s age; they’d shared the same room for the whole of Seifion’s stay and done things in bed together; none of it had meant that he was gay. Gethin hadn’t tried to explain what he knew to be true; but then – he didn’t have the words to give it any shape, and alongside Seifion’s experiences Gethin had nothing to share – just an intuitive knowing, without form or outline – without a voice.