I’ve had quite a few one-night stands, but I’m not somebody who was made to have boyfriends. I’ve had boyfriends along the way, but Jimmy was the one and only. I even went round Borneo in a cargo ship once. If I could tell you all the places I’ve visited: Jerusalem, Israel, Bangkok, Hong Kong. After that, I travelled, and that took the place of marriage. I always knew I would join the army myself – I served for 22 years. You have to meet someone else.” But nobody ever came up to his standard and it’s been like that all my life. Eventually, his mother wrote and said to me, “You must stop grieving, you can’t go on for ever. Then one day I got a letter from his mother telling me that he was missing – his plane had been shot down. He used to write every day and tell me where he’d been on his missions. The man I was going to marry was killed on a bombing mission during the war. It does compound the feeling of loneliness. They have the joint mortgage, the going out to antique shops and buying lovely things, dinner parties and the biggest, campest wedding you ever dreamed of, and you think, “I really have missed the boat here. That’s why our parents were so sad when we came out as gay, because it wasn’t an option. I had no choice when I was growing up – we wouldn’t have dreamed of getting married or having children. Then, all of a sudden, the goalposts move. So you think, “OK, that’s it then – I’m just going to have to be the slightly eccentric outsider who everyone loves and who sits in his flat eating tinned salmon. It’s like you’re fighting a competition with foetuses in tight little T-shirts and you don’t stand a chance. I think it’s harder at my age, as a gay man, to find love. I came to London when I was 30, thinking I’d have a better chance of meeting someone. I don’t scare horses in the street, but I don’t think other gay people get me. I’ve never been in a long-term relationship. It’s companionship more than anything as you get older. You’ve got over that heady lust thing, which gets in the way. It doesn’t have to be LOVE in capital letters. When I lie in bed on a Sunday morning having a cup of tea, I think, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone next to you, someone to chat to about the day.’ I’d like to travel again and I’d like someone to do it with. But you don’t usually think like that when you’re young. She knew he’d be a good husband and father in the long term, and he was all of those things. I remember saying to her, “Oh, you were lucky when you married Bruce”, and she said, “No, it wasn’t luck.” She meant she’d thought about it. One of my oldest friends got married at 21 and is still happily married. I’ve got so used to being on my own, I barely think about it. Did you watch The Killing on BBC4? It turns out that the killer was the fortysomething single bloke. The one thing I do not like about being single is that you’re always viewed with suspicion. This concept of love that we’re exposed to by the media is all fake. They may lie and say they’re happy, but I’m a therapist: I see people who have been in loveless marriages for 25 years and they are riddled with stress and disease because they’re constantly unhappy. There are times when I wonder if I’ve made the right decision – Christmas is painful on your own – but you’re not telling me that people in relationships don’t feel the same thing. I think this is just my life card I’ve never had to consider anyone else and I don’t think I’d be capable of it now.
I have days when I’d like someone to be around, but about 90% of the time it doesn’t even occur. After that, I went berserk and I’ve not settled down since. In my 20s, I lived for several years with a girl who wanted to settle down, but I hadn’t got the wild streak out of my system. I do have a young gay friend – he’s only 28, but he’s been a wonderful friend. It would be nice to have someone to go out with, but men are not terribly interested in older women. I haven’t had a relationship for a long time, so it’s a bit difficult to think about it. Why does one like some people and not others? I don’t know if it’s something you can put your finger on.
Our relationship ruined my life, because no one else came up to what he meant to me. We carried on together for 11 years, and by the time it ended, it was too late. When we got back to England, I discovered that he was married, but I was hooked by then. I became lovers with a sophisticated lawyer I met on a skiing holiday. We used the phrase “becoming lovers” back in the 1950s – to become someone’s lover was a big step, whereas it isn’t now.
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