CHAPTER 5
I looked up from the boys, and realised Terry had disappeared. Karen caught my eye and nodded towards the exit, and I walked out into the cooler air just as some other reedly-deedly thing started up. It took me a while to find him, as he was tucked behind a small extension to the front bar, sitting on a picnic table. He was crying; his tears reflecting the streetlights on the road by the pub.

“Terry pal, you all right?”

He sniffed a couple of times, and nodded. “Just a bit emotional, girl. It’s…”

He paused, looking off into the distance, and I handed him a tissue from my bag.

“Jill, I love my boy, our boy, Karen loves him as if he were hers, which he is, and I’m not making much sense, am I? Just…now and again he tires me, and I have to pull it all in; when he used to throw things, when he locks himself behind his eyes, yeah, just staring at his hands, I resent him sometimes, and that is wrong. You should never resent your own kid. It’s not his fault he is what he is…”

I sat down beside him and linked arms. “He’s a beautiful boy, Terry”

“That’s obvious”

“No, love, he’s a pretty boy, aye, but you get inside him and he’s beautiful. Just look what he’s done for me, said to me, aye? He’s bright, and he cares. Just, sometimes, he can’t connect”

Terry stared at me, and nodded. “You know what’s odd, Jill? Since he…met you, rather than Rob, he’s better. More…more the boy I love, more often, yeah?”

“Isn’t he always the boy you love, Terry?”

“Oh fucking hell, of course he is, but it’s just nice to be reminded every now and again WHY. There’s all sorts of strange shit goes on in his head, but what comes out is getting more predictable, more…look, I was going to say logical, but that’s the wrong word. More, well, finished is better. Sorry, shouldn’t have left him”

“I rather think he’s in good hands, Terry. That Darren has an awful lot of patience. I think they’ve clicked. Come on; pints to sup, aye? People to heckle”

A weak grin. “And curry to eat?”

“Whey aye! I promised you that one!”

I took his arm, and led him back inside, and the music was banging away nicely, with a seriously sharp guitarist in a silly hat trying to match Ian Anderson’s clone and the mad redhead, and it was a while before my eyes took in what was happening just to their left. Darren had clearly come with a spare drum thingy, bodhran (I looked it up later), and he was sat next to James. They were mirror images, each with their drum and their knobbly wood stick thing, and James was staring intently at Darren’s face. I could read his lips, and they were counting, synchronised with Darren’s: one-two-three, one-two-three. Both were playing, audibly and in time, and with little flourishes that included hitting the wood bits that held the skin, and when the guitarist stuck out his leg in an obvious signal for a finish to their tune I saw Darren raise his drum and drop it back down just like a lead rock guitarist chopping off the end of a track.

And James followed exactly, ending on the beat and with the other instruments, and started to laugh. It was an odd sound at first, then gradually more natural, and he reached out and put his nearer arm around Darren and kissed his cheek. I looked quickly round for Terry, and Karen was busily swapping saliva with him just then, her own tears obvious. Will slipped past me, and approached the two boys, and something was said, and Will came back over to me grinning.

“He just said, you are Will, and you are my friend, and my music makes me thirsty and I will have a coke”

There was a break, just then, as plates of curried stuff were brought out. Darren tapped James on the shoulder, pointing to his parents, and there was a slight fading of the smile. The two young men came up carrying their music dishes, and James walked straight past me to his parents, and when Will handed him a coke, he simply turned to him, smiled, and said “Thank you, Will”, as normally as if he spoke like that every day, every hour. I felt a presence at my shoulder, and it was Annie.

“That’s a canny lad you have there, Annie. I, we will have to say thanks to him. He’s really brought James out of himself”

She smiled. “He has a bit of form for that sort of thing, aye?” she said, and then started to laugh.

“Sorry, Jill, it’s just he has a lot of form for other things, aye, but all in the past. No, he’s a good boy, and I am proud of him. Very proud. ASD or OCD?”

“OCD? Oh, you saw the counting. No, autism. He was a real basket case when I first met him, but just recently he’s come out a bit. We have another mate, like, a bit further along the scale, but…shit, lass, you know, I only realised exactly how badly he’s off when I saw him with the lad”

She grinned. “Life’s like that, girl! Takes somebody else to let you know where you are, aye?”

There was something behind that smile, and I didn’t think it was entirely sweetness and light, but I didn’t want to ask, just in case it might spoil the mood. James was still in as close an approach to normality as I had ever seen him make, and Darren was showing him odd things with his hands while Will and Ms Pink stood and listened, and I had yet another moment of understanding.

The girl, Chantelle, was obviously devoted to Darren, it was as obvious as a fart in chapel, but she was hanging back. She clearly understood what he was trying to do with James, and she was patiently and sympathetically letting him do his self-appointed job. I turned back to Annie.

“What is it here, with you lot? Some odd collection of saints, or what?”

That hint of darkness was there again. “We have all just had a few…issues in the past, aye? Gives you a bit of understanding, empathy, aye? It’s…it’s just that there’s so much shit in this world we sort of decided that we weren’t going to add more to it, do our little bit to ease it, aye? Now, enough of that. You have friends over there; I wouldn’t mind an introduction, especially if I’m going to be working with one of them, aye?”

“But you already know him!”

“Oh, bloody hell, a pedant. You’ll be a bloody accountant, aye?”

Larinda had come to my other shoulder, and the first I knew of her approach was the bray of laughter.

“Bloody taxman, girl, taxwoman, yeah? Anyway, who are you, and what are you doing chatting up my girlfriend?”

Another of those moments, coming so quick, so often, following on the realisation that I had finally abandoned the forced thoughts of myself as ‘he’ and ‘him’. Girlfriend. Annie grinned.

“Trust me, I am firmly on the other bus, not that one, aye? Annie Johnson, sergeant down at the nick your mate has applied to work from, is all. That’s my husband over there with the musicians”

Larinda grinned. “Just checking, my girl. I’m Larinda, this one’s fiancée. Oh, sorry, Jill, didn’t you know? I just thought, as you were making eyes at strange women I better put my marker down properly. Just to be clear, yeah?”

Annie was snorting. “Strange women… oh dear, I shall have to introduce you, but enough is enough for tonight. Moving onto safer ground, aye, what did you think of the music? What’s funny?”

Larinda grinned. “I really, really do not think it’s her sort of thing”

“Oh? And what is?”

My lover put on a shifty expression, looking to each side like some Victorian stage villain, and then loudly whispered “Hawkwind…”

Annie shuddered, and then returned the gesture. “My husband…Eric…he plays the…”

Once more, she looked mock-furtively to each side, before “Banjo!”

I realised a few things, just then, and it was a definite watershed. I was enjoying the evening. I didn’t care for the music, not really, but for what it was, it was pleasant, and well-played to the extreme. I was being accepted in every way as Jill, as a woman. There was healing here; not saints, not angels, but people who had clearly been through the mill, faced their own demons and come out the other side intact. Most of all, though, outshining everything else, was Larinda. Not a lesbian, not like me, but she loved me as I loved her and there, before a stranger, she had just pledged her life to mine.