CHAPTER 13
Von was back in Hampshire a couple of days afterwards, so I had to fit in a trip down on the Monday, a day she wasn’t at work and I was able to squeeze a day’s leave in. I walked out of the Harbour station, HMS Warrior bulking beside it, and round to Gunwharf Quay, where I found her sitting in one of the coffee bars.

“I’ll have another cappuccino, love; what you want, Gareth?”

That was her youngest son, along for the day, so no PDA’s, as the Yanks called them, which actually suited me as I could still feel Larinda on me from that morning. She had spent the weekend with me, and for once it had been more than just a semi-clad attack on my body. Quite a bit of the time was spent slumped on the sofa, each of us with our own book, just touching and relaxing. There had been a moment…

“Look, it’s not me being a nosy cow, yeah, but am I right?”

“Well, yeah, I do”

“So why not?”

“Because I never have before, like, and it’s a big step”

“Well, I promise a lot of things, and I mean them, but here’s another: I won’t laugh, yeah, I just want you to know you can relax with me. Well, when I’m not shagging you, of course, that would be rude”

She tugged me back into the bedroom, and opened the wardrobe.

“Skirt and top?”

“Is what I normally wear, aye”

She pulled out a long cotton skirt and a cap-sleeved white blouse.

“Where do you keep your knickers and bras?”

That broke my mood, and I laughed out loud. “What the hell would I want a bra for, pet? And knickers don’t fit unless they are shorts-type ones. I’m not a tranny!”

She cocked her head to one side. “I’ve got it a bit wrong, haven’t I?”

“Slightly. Look, it’s not about dressing up to look like a woman, all false tits and stuff, like, it’s more about relaxing at home, about comfort, and just a little bit of saying to myself that I am a woman. A bra, that sort of thing, it would just make the point that I am not one, not in body. Look, in the drawer, yeah, pairs of tights. No stockings, are there? Tights are for when my legs get cold, not for feeling all sexy and crap like that”

“Yeah, I get it, I think. Come on, change then”

“With you here?”

She almost fell over with laughter. “Jill, considering what we were doing to each other a few minutes ago, you worry about me seeing you with your kit off?”

She was right, of course, but my worry was more in having someone watch me dress. Nevertheless, I stepped into the skirt and buttoned the blouse, hair poking over the top, and Larinda stepped in for a kiss, ruffling my visible chest hair.

“I am going to miss this…”

And there we were, both in skirts, cuddled up on the sofa with our books as rain beat on the window and her music played on the stereo, and suddenly it felt right, and safe.

Carole King and Joni Mitchell were her favourites, as her tastes seemed to run to angsty female singer-songwriters. One day, I had mentioned Alanis Morissette for some reason, and she was almost explosive in her condemnation of her as a jumped up poser.

“For fuck’s sake, at least Carole King never pretended to be anything other than a songwriter. Look how bad my multimillionaire lifestyle is, tosser. Now, try this one…”

‘This one’ had turned out to be country music by some woman called Lucinda Williams, and I nearly used it as a Frisbee out of the window, till she sat me down and said “Shut up and listen to the bloody words!”

She was, of course, right. This woman, who had come from a background where the highest aspirations of the menfolk consisted of fitting plastic mouldings and extra lights to shit cars, this woman was showing me works of art I would never have found on my own. And it was true, I was falling in love.

Gareth had wanted a hot chocolate, that came with marshmallows and a moulded stirrer made of chocolate on a wooden handle, and Siobhan rattled on about her Mam and Bamps, as the lad told me snippets about his cycling and the new dog they were looking to get, and I felt so ashamed of where I stood in life I wanted to cry.

The lad had finished his chocolate, and we strolled out onto a windy quayside, the Spinnaker soaring overhead, as she worked through her checklist of things that she just HAD to buy.

“Oh hell, nearly forgot”

I pulled out the shoes I had been sent for, which were far from my style, and got a kiss thank you.

I loved Von, but we could never have a life together that would work in any way for any length of time. Her passion was family: families lived together, or at least nearby, and family meant her family. She had only moved to Hampshire because her then husband had taken over a business there and moved the new family over. She hated the house, she hated the area, but she had put up with it right up to the point where she had found him discussing his next tryst with a Russian woman met on the internet. Two years after that, we had met, in a bike shop, and at the low ebb and edge of despair I had teetered on, her vivacity had called to me. I asked her out, we clicked, and one traditional thing led to the next, and it took six months before I realised exactly how Chapel her family were, how hidebound her views on Family and one’s role. When my younger brother had suffered a breakdown, Von’s view was that I should drop everything and rush to his side. I tried to explain…

“Look, love, I know him. If I go steaming in, he’ll run away and hide. Mam has him, she’s telling him I care, and eventually he’ll come round, like, but if I charge up there we might never see him again, aye?”

“If it was my family, I would be straight there, and make him see, innit?”

“Aye, love, but we are not your family, and it isn’t like that. He’s just been discharged, he’s got a carer, and everything has to be at arms’ length for a while. We’ll get there”

“Not right, it isn’t, if he were my boy I’d be there showing I love him”

“But he isn’t, and he’s mentally ill, so we have to do what the doctors say and what I know is right, love”

I think that was the moment I started to realise the extent of her blind spots, that even with the affection and common ground we had, there were things she would never, ever be able to understand and accept. I needed to find some way of letting her out of my life without hurting her, or the boys, of whom I had grown fond. One thing was certain: even if I disregarded my gender problem, my life was seriously over-complicated.

We finished our round of the shops with Gareth’s favourite meal out, fajitas at a chain faux-Mexican place, and then I said my goodbyes.

“Off to Mam’s next weekend, love”

“Give her my love, then. Pity I can’t come up, she’d like a woman to fuss about her, wouldn’t she?”

She will have one, love, just not realise it. “Aye, she would, but I’ll do my best”

“I know you will, love. Call me when you’re home, right?”

“OK. I fly Friday. Bye!”

No kiss, not in front of the boy, and a dreary train ride back up from Portsmouth spent daydreaming to the sounds on my MP3, and once more no booze, and no Larinda. Both absences left me edgy.

Friday came, and I jumped the hoops at Gatwick to my seat on the Flybe turboprop sitting like a toy at the departure gate, then waited two hours later for them to finally deliver my backpack at Newcastle Airport before finally slumping into another seat, this one on the Metro. I always smiled at the Geordie accent on the recorded announcements about minding the doors, and my mood lifted as I realised I was actually home. As so many people failed to understand, home isn’t always where you live.

Mam was waiting in her little car at the Heworth interchange, and as I cringed at her driving we made our way to my real home, and a cup of tea that, of course, I had to make, and there was my room, with my bed, and an attic still holding my old school books, next to the blocked off part with the loose bricks I had been able to pull out to hide the few items of clothing I had found as a child and been able to hide till I left for university. I took her tea into the living room, where she sat in Her Chair, sticks propped against the wall.

“So, how’s the hip?”

“Whey, the wound still hurts, like, but I knew that would happen. That awful pain, though, the nagging one, that’s gone, and I’m really pleased about that, pet. How’s Siobhan?”

“Fine, still talking about going back to the Valleys, and that’s not something I can do, is it?”

She plumped herself up a bit. “No, that’s right, but she’s a nice lass, and you need to let her down nicely, aye?”

“Oh, I know that, Mam, trust me there. It’s not easy, like”

She looked hard at me. “What if things were different, Rob? Would you?”

The answer was at the front of my mind, and on my tongue, and out of my mouth before I could pull it back.

“No, I couldn’t”

She was looking at me with eyes that knew so much of my soul, and I couldn’t help it.

“Mam, look, there’s something we really need to talk about”