CHAPTER 12
In the end we took up one corner of the bar at the Sun, as James made his way directly to Darren. Some connection had clearly formed between them, and James seemed to bloom each time they met. What was important, though, was that some of the openness clung to him afterwards. I rarely saw him now in lockdown, hardly ever saw his hands shutting off the world beyond his face.

What I had begun thinking of as the usual suspects were there, including the two whatever-the-female-Italian-word-for two-maestros was. Flute and fiddle; two instruments the Hawks had used so well on the Warrior album, but not in the same way as the two nutters. Along with the Woodruff pair and the Johnson trio I saw Annie’s mad dyke friend, wife and daughter, and a very, very relaxed Alec sitting with John Forster.

Rachel gave me a nudge. “Not got my boy, but hey, it’s a good crowd. John says we’ll have Sal and Stewie later, so your liver better be in good nick”

“I have the advantage of regular checks on it, cause of the hormones, like. So I know where I stand better than you!”

“Na, I always say the liver is evil, and must be punished! What’s Von doing?”

“Dunno. I think she plans to take Will home, after she’s met some of his friends”

Rachel slumped slightly. “You do take the fun out of a girl’s evening. I was looking forward to some real paint-stripping, slap the bitch up, yeah? And she’s just a sad old cow, really”

I gave her a sharp look, and she held both hands up. “No, didn’t mean it like that, Jill! Just, well, we’ve none of us sort of covered our lives with glory, have we?”

I saw her point. She had been wound up to lash out at a pantomime villain who, in the end, had turned out to be just like the rest of us, saddled with the realities of her life and the effects of her upbringing, and hurting terribly from the loss of her son.

“You calling me a sad old cow too, Wiseman?”

She grinned. “Neither of us is sad now, right? I mean, I miss him, most of the time, but no, sad’s not me. Not any more. Dunno about the old cow bit, though. Shit, you lucky bitch, I didn’t think of that!”

“What?”

“Here I am, tits getting saggy, and you’re older than me, but cause yours are brand new you’ll still be perky when I’m touching my knees, you cow!”

Larinda had been listening, and just smiled. “We should form a club, a sort of not-so-secret society. Sort of ex-saddos, yeah?”

I was watching Von as Will spoke to what she must already have accepted were simply the other gay men there. Larinda stepped in closer and put her arm around my waist.

“I really don’t know yet, lover, if she is learning or if she’s just doing her best to hang onto her baby”

“Pet, it’s a mother thing, I’m sure. I think…I hope she’s got to a stage where she sees that she has to back down a bit, accommodate, like. If not, this will just get shittier”

She squeezed me. “Well, let’s just give her some room, then. But keep an eye on John. I think he might be planning an out-of-body experience. He’s on vodka and orange”

“Oh arse!”

By halfway through the evening, we had managed to sneakily switch his intake to orange juices without. James was almost welded to his seat next to Darren, so that was one less thing to worry about, and I was therefore allowed actually and finally to relax. It was odd in the extreme, but once the two less conventionally inhibitioned people were taken care of, and I had followed my woman’s injunction to step back from Von, I felt myself physically relax. It was in the shoulders and in the jaw; I had been holding myself like someone in a bad coat on a cold day, and it was almost painful as the tension slipped away. The arrival of Sally and her husband helped, of course. Safe…

“She don’t like shirtlifters, does she?”

It was Annie’s friend, the in-your-face with the scarlet hair.

“No, Ginny, not at all. Bit of the wrong crowd for her here, aye?”

“Bollocks is it”

There was a touch of venom in there, but her voice was only just loud enough to carry over whatever rumpty-tump the house band was producing.

“It’s exactly the right crowd for a bit of education of the sad fucker, yeah? Like she gets to see Sal’s mate there, see him smile for the first fucking time in years, then look at her kid and understand why he never did, that’s what!”

I peered at her. “You don’t know Will, though, not really”

She snorted. “And we ain’t been there, me and my girly, and every other girl like us, and boy, yeah? Growing up, thinking you’re sick, listening to what everyone at school says? Anyway, nuff of that. She’ll learn, or she’ll lose. How’s the empty sack?”

I chuckled at that, and she grinned, the venom gone and the insanity back. “What? Nasty horrible things, making you all butch and not-girly, and you is a girl and on the right bus with me and Katie, yeah?”

Another set of tendons creaked as even more tension leached out of me, and she saw. “I can give you a workout, woman, but we would need to see to your diet. You cannot haz cheezburgers or drinkahol if you take me up! Worked for Annie, she was a fat fucker too”

Once more, an arm slipped around me. “Yebbut, she’s my fat fucker, Ginny!”

Another flicker in the mad kaleidoscope of her personality. “That James, he’s coming along, yeah?”

Larinda slipped round in front, so that I was holding her back to me by her hips. There was just a little bump there, a hint of a grind, and a quiet murmur from part of me as well. Oh dear. Calmly, she spoke to the mad woman about autism and connection, about obsession and revelation, and all the time she made little movements against me that produced a tension utterly different from that I had been feeling before. Ginny didn’t seem to notice, at one point turning to point out Darren’s girlfriend, her daughter, as she laughed with the two boys during a break in the music.

“See that? Those two, they had shit, and they are about as normal as normal can be. Even when one of them lives with a banjo player”

I bit my tongue at the obvious reply, and Ginny just grinned. “Yeah, I know! Laters, got straight people to outrage and I wants a snog with my girly and that should do it! Got any reaction out of her yet?”

And she was gone, as Larinda broke down in giggles. She turned back round to me for a kiss.

“You know, lover, this was exactly the right place to come, but we better make sure we have aspirin in the house. John’s on his way, but Terry’s coming up on the rails”

The evening wound down at eleven. It would never be my sort of music, but I couldn’t deny the life that it set free in people, the effect it clearly had on James, as well as the effect it had, via rather a lot of Fursty Ferret, on Terry. I left Larinda to work out the logistics of the inebriated while I went to see how Will was getting on, giving a smiling Alec a kiss as I passed. Von was pensive, so I took her for a short walk in the car park.

“Now you see what we are about, lass”

“Yes”

It was very flat, almost toneless. “That couple, those two men…they are the same as my boy, aye? I mean, my boy, he’s the same as them. I…”

Her voice trailed off. “You hate me, don’t you?”

I hesitated for a second, but it had to be done, and I took her in my arms. “No, Von, I could never hate you. All I did, it was to protect you, aye? You mean a lot to me, you, and Will, and the others, even that old bastard that hit me. You exasperate me, depress me, hurt me, but I still love you all”

“I am sorry…Jill, but, you, like this…”

I laughed as gently as I could. “Not to worry, pet, that boat sailed a long time ago. I am more than happy where I am, and I do not really think that you are ready for comfortable shoes”

She stiffened. “That red woman, and the other one, In public…”

“Two like me then. But look at their daughter, aye? She happy, all over Darren like a powder-pink rash? That’s the point, Von. We are not infectious. We just ARE, aye?”

“But you…you aren’t queer. I see now, what I should have seen, a fucking woman, aye? I have no doubts now. More I see you, more it…more it makes sense, and Dad, he, well, he talks a lot of cobblers, but he’s, Will, he’s my baby”

“Von, how many have you had?”

“One or two”

“There’s no way you can drive him back tonight. We’re a bit crowded, but if we squeeze…”

There was a cough behind me. “When you two have done your canoodling”

Von laughed. “Aye, she’s yours now. That’s something else that makes sense, aye? Could you come here, please?”

There was almost a calm in her voice, but when she pulled Larinda into a three-way embrace all that came out with the tears was “Sorry!”

Eventually she was back in control, and actually laughed when the tissues were produced from MY handbag, but she didn’t let go of either of us.

“Lover?”

“Aye?”

“Had a word with John, Fossy, cause he was watching how many she---how many you had, Von. You have an offer of a bed, beds. The Johnsons are staying round the corner, next door to Steph’s gaff. Darren’s grandparents, yeah? They got beds”

Von was puzzled. “But they don’t know me”

“They know Will, and that’s enough. Come on, girls, we need to get people home, and I would rather not have to undress the other John, and Terry’s out of it, which means the only other bloke in the house is James, and, well…”

Von was still staring. “All this, you just take it as it is? How?”

Larinda pulled me to her, and kissed me, with just a little pressure of her thigh to remind me of what she wanted, and then turned back to Von.

“By being able to see what is right in front of me, girl, and by making sure I don’t let the good bits escape. You got any sense, do that with your boy. He loves you. You love him. Get over being a fuckwit and you might keep him”

Still the bristle, the little simmer of mistrust, but the woman I loved most was showing me why I did, allowances made even if boundaries remained defended. I lay with her in the darkness later, as Terry’s snoring came through the wall from the next room, and a thought struck me. At no point had anyone told her about Steph or Annie.