Something to Declare by Cyclist

Chapter 45

Of course, as I have said so many times, life isn’t like a story.

Many years ago, I had broken that finger, and the little lump of knitted bone stopped the ring from sliding up. We would have to get it re-sized. For the moment, I slipped it onto the chain that held my locket.
My answer to Geoff? Do I REALLY have to tell you that? Anyone that needs me to spell out my feelings has not been listening to anything I have said, but I did have to laugh. There was Raj, talking of my fiancé, and there was Kelly, talking about….

Hang on. She must have known beforehand; was she trying to push the issue in her own devious way?

“You knew, didn’t you?”

Her head dropped, and she looked away, miming a nonchalant whistle.

“You little vixen. You will suffer, you know. Maybe not now, but some time in the future, when you think it’s all forgotten…”

I looked at the other two.

“You all knew, didn’t you? This family’s like the mafia!”

Jan hugged me, followed by Bill, who kissed me gently on the lips.

“Welcome to our crazy little band”

We were interrupted by a fanfare from the band. The caller stepped up to the mike.

“Ladies and gentlemen, my spies inform me that we have just had a proposal of marriage in here! I think we should all be told what the answer is!”

I took Geoff’s hand and led him out into the middle of the dance floor.

“For the benefit of the single lades here, as well as any who would like to be single again, hands off! This lovely man is now officially all mine!”

I kissed him hard, and he kissed me back, and the crowd applauded and cheered, and the band slipped into a waltz just for us, and…..I had thought playing together had been living, but this was so much more. When we sat down again, when my feet touched the floor again, I started the phone calls.

“Sally. Want to be a bridesmaid?”

“Naomi, can you ask Albert if he would like to give me away?”

“Sue, I need some help planning a hen night”

In the end I had to use the dance as an excuse to cut short the calls. I was at a ceilidh, after all, with my man, and I intended to shake my stuff in style. I rather think we did, even though every new set involved a round of congratulations.

One life, recovered, all thanks to one man, one open-hearted, open-minded, lovely man. One who was all mine.

I collared him later. That brings up a number of images, one of which is that I let him get any distance away from me, but I wanted to know how and why such an endearingly shy man had made such a public proclamation.

“Steph, this is our anniversary, isn’t it? If I did it, I had to do it here”

“Yes, love, but why so public? Did the others push you into it?”

“They were involved, yes, but there was no pushing. I honestly, in my heart, knew you would say yes, but I didn’t know if I could do it. I asked Kelly to sound you out…”

“I know that!”

“No, it was all me, I just couldn’t see myself ever getting the balls to just ask, I had to put myself in a sort of script, a little situation that would make me go through with it. So, Jan spoke to the caller, and if I hadn’t got round to it they would have announced that I was going to ask you. You know how lousy I am at thismmmmmff”

That was when I kissed him to shut him up. My man, worried that he wasn’t brave enough when he risked a French prison to protect me. That was all it was, a man so damaged and painfully shy that he needed to be frogmarched to do what we both wanted. I put on my best Mum-voice.

“Geoff Woodruff, just to let you know where you stand, if you had NOT asked me this weekend I was going to ask you!”

He looked up, and suddenly the smile was back, that wonderful smile that I first saw a year ago. I continued in a softer tone, stroking his cheek.

“My love, I can no longer imagine life without you beside me. We both have huge problems, but it seems that we work through them so well when we do it together. I’ve cried on you, thrown up on you, got your hand broken, had Dave threaten you, how could I not love you?”

That smile. Those eyes. How could anyone not love him.

And so we danced; the water bottles were emptied, and therefore we had to go to the beer tent where we played, and drank beer, and went back to the tents and there, once more, I will leave you overnight.

A full breakfast. It would have been nice in bed, but Geoff was back on song, his fracture stable enough to let him ride, and the sod kicked me out of bed with a shout of “Up and at ‘em, fiancée!”, into the lycra and out for a thirty mile “livener” before I was allowed anywhere near more than a cup of tea. The posh showers people were back, and after sitting down to feed in our cycling kit I wandered over for a wash. So different from last year, when I needed Kelly’s support for almost everything that now seemed so natural. I had come so far in such a short time I was almost dizzy with the speed, but I had absolutely no doubts any more.

You know, it isn’t fair? We sat down to breakfast, on a lovely August morning, and Geoff was able to pull off his shirt and roll down his shoulder straps while I had to keep it all on! Tits, who’d have’em?

Well, me of course. I smiled to myself; and Geoff, by proxy. He still went to sleep with one hand cupping me, which is nice beyond words.

Showered, dressed in a cornflower blue summer dress and some flat sandals, I returned to the tents and pulled out one of the rugs we had brought. As Geoff read the Saturday paper, I lay on my back with my head in his lap and dozed in the sun. A skylark was shouting its joy to the world, and various tuning-up noises were coming from the main concert area. I lay in the warmth and for the first time I could ever remember I felt totally at peace. Bottle this day, keep it for sipping in later years, this was all that I needed. . In a half hour or so we would wander back over to the beer tent for a session, supposedly of Irish tunes, and then drift around the various stages until tea time and then do it all over again. For now, though, I was more than content just to lie back on a warm man and catch some rays..

The cold shock to my nose brought me bolt upright. Kelly had sneaked up to me and dropped a blob of sun cream there, and was now standing smirking.

“You being a ginge should use this more!” she giggled. I thought to myself: what the hell.

“You two, stay there!”

I stood up and dropped the shoulder straps of my dress, pushing the bodice down so that I was only clad above the waist in my bra. I lay down on my front on the rug.

“Cream me up, Scotty!”

Having the sunscreen rubbed into my bare back by Geoff was delightful. Having a large and cold dollop dropped onto me by Kelly wasn’t. Her time will come.

And the weekend carried on like that, with music, and love and laughter. The weather stayed mostly fine, the sharp showers blowing through almost as soon as they arrived. We got to see Lisa Knapp with her fey vocals and quirky fiddle, and Jimmy as a formal act with a small supporting band. His jokes were the same, though, and when the audience started joining in with the punch lines he just grinned, walked to the edge of the stage and held out his violin and bow.

“How, if ye knaa the jokes se well, hoo’s aboot coming up here te de the playin’ while Ah gan fer a pint?”

He had a new album out, with the obligatory signing session at the music stall, and we wandered round to say hello. I was wearing my locket with the ring outside my dress, and he spotted the diamond right away, his face lighting up. He said a few things, and kissed and hugged me, and I managed to decode his Geordie enough to understand that I apparently know how to make old men happy. Then he looked at Geoff’s grin and added “Aye, an’ young’uns tee!”

He held up a hand to silence the crowd.

“Hoo many o yez are ganna be here Monda’ neet? Cause Ah’m playin’ a supportin’ gig, fer this bonny lass here, so Ah’ll see yez aal in the session!”

Even more music, more dancing, good beer and the company of my family worked a rare treat on me: work vanished from my mind. My job is so involved, so consuming and often intense, that it takes over lives. For the first time I could remember, I went two days without a thought of it. We just had so much to do, even if large parts of it involved lying almost topless and topping up my freckles. I resolved to get a decent (‘indecent’?) two-piece swimming costume at some point, as I seemed to have stabilised in the lumpy-jumper area, and sun on bare skin was something I had almost forgotten due to my changing and changed shape. Kelly had said that I should undo my strap and lie face down to avoid tan lines. I pointed out that I already had rather prominent tan lines as a cyclist, but didn’t mention that I was actually hoping for some more, those of a “bikini top”

Women’s tan lines. Does that sound odd, or silly? I don’t think so; just another affirmation of my gender. I still wasn’t slathering myself in make up, and extreme girliness would never be my thing, but the quiet, simple trappings of femininity still held that little touch of delight, of confirmation of self, that I had been unable to find for most of my life. Many years ago, I saw a documentary about deafness in which a cochlear implant or some such medical device let a deaf person hear for the very first time; their delight at what we take for granted was immense , and that was how I felt.

There are such walls between the sexes in this world, unconscious divisions that most people don’t register unless they are caught like I was on the wrong side. If I had been cursed the other way, a ‘girl’ who was struggling to be male, I might have found joy in something as trivial as being able to fart in public. Being as I am, I took simple delight in the pattern of my suntan.

I would leave the farting to Geoff.