CHAPTER 15
I was feeling just a little shell-shocked on arrival. Rachel was away with her own distractions, Mam was eying up Von, Neil was trying to tease Fossy, James was closing down again and I was trying to remember who the hell was who. I looked over our little army, and there was John, his face showing that he felt just like me. I waved him over.

“Felling a bit out of it, mate?”

“Oh, Jill, so many new ones, and they speak so oddly”

“It’s what I grew up with, like, so it’s not that big a problem for me, but aye, these two suddenly appearing, it’s a bit, whoa, can we slow down a bit? Look, you did well with James on the flight”

“It was a bit of focus, Jill. I was told once that if you feel sea-sick the best thing to do is to look out at the horizon, find a fixed point to watch”

“I didn’t see you as a sailor, John”

“Me? Oh no. The land moves in a way I can normally predict. Water…I am a man of routines, Jill. I realise that far more since…”

He trailed off, looking around, then turned back to me, head cocked. “This is something I am not well versed in, Jill. Friendship. At work, it was like being on terra firma. I could act and react, and the rules were there, they were clear. It was like machine code in a computer: write these letters, and the machine will do such and such; write others, and a different result ensues. This…this is like being at sea. Things move, yes? They move when they want to, and one has to react to that, and I do not do reaction particularly well”

As ever, my lover was at my shoulder. “Bollocks you don’t, John. Remember what her mum said to you?”

“Yes, but…”

She slipped an arm around his waist. “It’s friends, isn’t it? Never really had them, have you?”

“No, but…”

I took his hand. “Look at me, John. This young lad here, and the girl bouncing round Will, they are friends. I didn’t know who the hell they were, like, until Mark here explained, but hey, you adapt, say hello, and get on with the introductions, aye? You ever go swimming?”

He looked at me, and there was a hollowness there. “A rather obvious answer to that one, yes?”

“Sorry. I was just thinking, I took Mam off on holiday once, down to Mallorca for a treat, aye, and she gets in the sea, and she’s lost about forty years in age, and I calls over to her so she can’t see the wave behind her, and splash, she’s soaked, and she’s laughing, and that’s friends, aye? They sneak up on you, and they surprise you, and all the time they keep you afloat”

“Yes, but I do not know how to do this, Jill”

She kissed his cheek, and he blushed. “John, you’re already doing it. All friendship demands is to be returned, yeah? You do that already. I mean, look what you did for James on the plane!”

“Yes, but he was lost, and he needed---“

Together, in unison, the two of us all but shouted “Exactly!” and Larinda started to laugh.

“Sod lecturing the poor old sod, Jill, I am parched and your Mam possesses a kettle, yeah? Show on road?”

Mark was now chuckling. “Bugger a hell, you fit right in with Kell’s lot. I should have expected it. Where are we off to?”

“Washington, marra. Want directions or do you know the way?”

He grinned. “Driven Granda round enough to his gigs, like, or rather from them when he his bit beer. I’ll gie yez a hand with the bags”

“Mostly Will’s stuff, for college, like. Howay then”

He called across to his girl. “Put the lad down, Kell, you’re spoken for!”

Larinda laughed out loud. “Wrong bus, Mark”

“Aye, Annie said, but I need something to blackmail her for every now and again. Let’s get moving”

The house was overfull, but the weather was kind and so we sat out on the lawn and the patio, tea in hand and Rachel in Jim’s. I was watching Von in particular, as her eyes flickered backwards and forwards between Alec and Fossy’s comfortable position, hand on knee and arm around shoulder, Rachel and Kelly in their similar cuddles with their men, my mother’s brazen and disgraceful display of canoodling with some aged Lothario, and her boy. We had naturally separated into couples of various kinds, John talking quietly with an unlocking James and Neil with Will, and I wondered where her mind was taking her. Would she be able to fit the older men’s display into context with the other lovers’, or would she be seeing nothing but perversion and my brother as a waiting predator?

Tea first, suspicions later. She still had her standards, though, and collected the cups for washing. I followed her to the kitchen sink.

“And?”

“And what, Jill?”

“What are your thoughts? Your boy, his safety, all that?”

She shook her head, as if to dislodge a fly. “I still can’t see it as right, innit? I mean, those men, they are….they are acting like they were normal, like it was all normal, aye? And the rest of you, even your Mam, she , you, you just pretend it’s OK”

I took her shoulders. “Von, Von, for god’s sake, we are not pretending here, it IS bloody normal! Shit, woman, look at me. What do you see? Who am I?”

She stared at me, mind clearly working for once. “I see Jill Carter. Rob was never there, was he?”

“Bloody hell, she has it. Now, what do you see when you look at Rachel?”

She smiled. “I see someone who is so lucky, so in love, and he’s a good man, isn’t he?”

“So you don’t see a punch bag?”

“Pardon?”

“She has false teeth, Von, that’s how normal she is. Look at her now, aye? And Alec, there’s a widower, just like Jim is. Both of them, lost and hurting, aye? Look at them now! Ah shite, I just spent ages explaining the concept of friendship to someone with learning difficulties, and you are normal, so why should I have to explain fucking love to you? Just look at Alec and John, then at Rachel and Jim, and you tell me if there is any difference there!”

“But…”

“Von, I saw you checking out Alec, and Neil, and Will, and it was in your eyes, aye? All that time you never watched Kelly and Mark, or Mam and Raafie, or Karen or Terry, or, bugger a hell, me and Larinda! How perverse is that?”

“But you and Larinda…you, you are still…”

“Ach shite, Von, we’ve done that bit. I’m as gay as Alec, or Neil, or Will, aye?”

Her voice was quieter. “And what about Larinda?”

I had to search for the words. “Larinda is just special. More special than I could ever say. She is not gay, is all I can say, but she accepts, she adapts, she rides the waves, aye?”

“What waves?”

“Just something I was saying to John, like. Look, just watch Alec, watch the two of them, and you tell me if there is anything different there”

“But they are both men”

“I KNOW! DOES IT FUCKING MATTER?”

She flinched, and then looked out of the window for several slow seconds.

“No. It doesn’t, does it? It doesn’t fucking matter”

I took her in my arms. “Von, love, I know he is your baby, and I know you love him. You have done more, moved more than I could have expected and it’s just the last bit, the last step. Love him, love him properly, love him for what he is and not what you think he should be, aye?”

Mam was behind me this time, with the tissues, and a muttered comment about sensible women. A few minutes later, once Von was tidier, Mam muttered to me.

“Back to the garden, lass. Raafie wants to say something”

I led Von out to the sun and greenery, and rejoined my lover, who raised an eyebrow in greeting. I nodded, and she took my hand to kiss the palm before cuddling into me. Raafie coughed for attention.

“Now, Ah am going to try and speak so that aal of ye can follow what I say, because this is important. It woulda been nice if thy Ian were here as well, but ah weel, we have most of ye. Now, Norma and mesel have a sort of announcement for ye, and Ah am guessing from the looks on one or two fyeces that…well, Ah’ve asked her, and she sez yes, so it’ll be before Christmas, like”

Mam was grinning, and they kissed properly as Jim started to laugh. Rachel slapped his arm, and the grin got broader as he drew a small box from his pocket and held it out to her, and of course her answer was yes, and Jim just laughed again.

“Ah’ll be open in an hour, and Ah got a relief barman in, so Ah think…Mark, thoo and Kelly want a spare bed?”

The hangover the next morning was a beast.