mates

Mates by Tom Wakefield (Gay Men’s Press, 1983)

An interesting and engaging novel that chronicles the “marriage” of two gay men in England.  Cyril and Len meet one another at a basic training camp while performing their National Service in 1954.  They exchange “conspiratorial smiles” and quickly fall in love, and begin a relationship that lasts until Cyril’s sudden death (of heart attack) in 1981.

The novel is artfully composed of eleven chapters that read like stories; each chapter jumps forward in time from two to five years.  This episodic yet detailed and intimate portrait allows the men and their relationship to realistically and interestingly evolve over time.  They split up at one point and pursue other loves, but reunite a short while later, both realizing that they are happier together than apart.

Cyril and Len suffer the indignities, inconveniences, and persecution of being gay in postwar England, but nevertheless manage to lead a conventional and happy domestic life together.  Neither of the men is particularly interesting and the book is mostly focused on the drudgery of everyday life, but this lack of sensation gives the men a genuine humanity, and their relationship, which is considered so abnormal and a such a threat to polite society, is as ordinary and natural as their love.