CHAPTER 28
We made an odd little group as we rode the train up to Victoria and then by tube to Lambeth North. Larinda had collared John and Alec, as planned, but then added Rachel.

“Well, the boys will have enough for an extra mouth. What else are men good for?”

I watched her face as she said that, and there was only a slight twitch. She whispered to me as we walked to the station.

“Told you, lover, it’s you for me, for always, breakfast or not, yeah? Got your shopping feet on?”

“Why? You have plans?”

Again a little flicker. “Yes, actually. Tell you later”

An odd little group indeed, and the dynamics were interesting. Ian had, of course, gravitated to John Forster as their common ground pulled them together. Alec watched indulgently, secure in his affection, while Von fidgeted, unsure as to how close she should get. I saw Rachel having a quiet word with her, and once again I had to turn away to avoid them seeing the sparkle of a tear in my eye.

It caught me, every now and again: the memory of how I had been flensing my life. Taking steps, indeed, and these people had already been in my life, all of them apart from Larinda. How could I have been so wrong, so stupid? So much of what they had borne in their lives trumped my little problem; the way I now lived showed me that. Apart from my breasts, I was just…well, no. Nye had done some redecoration, so…

Larinda came back to me as I tried to make sense of my thoughts.

“Penny for ‘em?”

“Not much, love. Just, like, how could I have missed seeing how good my friends were?”

She just smiled, and linked an arm through mine. “And did they see who you were, back then? They do now, yeah, so it’s a draw, right”

Once again her quick mind spotted the joke, and through giggles, she muttered something about scoring later, and my mood rose with her laughter. We walked into the museum, full of boy’s toys, to an immediate mutter of ‘Bastards!” from Ian.

He shook his head, staring at some tank or gun thing.

“Why the hell did they have to do that to it?”

John looked hard at him “Do what?”

“Cut the side off like that! That was history!”

He looked rounds at us all. “Look, this is the Jagdpanther that used to be up at Duxford. It was taken out by a Cromwell, dinky little gun, pathetic armour. Crew stalked that monster through a town till they caught it, and put a couple of rounds AP through the flanks. That was history, those holes, and they’ve cut them off so you can see the bloody engine. Bastards!”

Then he looked at us again, registering the slight looks of confusion most of us were giving him. “Look…these days we’ve got the best tanks in the world. I mean, the Septics come close, but only cause we showed them how to make better armour. Back then, back in World War Two, we had shit tanks. The development from what killed this thing became the best in the world, like, same thing Dad used to fettle, but before then they were really crap.

“This kill was a big thing, aye? I read the log, it’s a Regimental thing, David and Goliath, like, and they treat it like this! Not right!”

Bethy grinned at him. “But you are glad you, like came, Daddy dearest?”

His own grin flashed back. Once more I was seeing the little brother of my youth. “Oh bloody hell aye, pet! Howay, let’s see what else they’ve disrespected”

And off we went. There was so much, from the Colditz glider to model ships, from WWI trench weapons to full dress uniforms…

Two moments. The Blitz Experience, where we all trooped into a mock-up of a shelter, and the tape began playing, and some dreadful Mockney actress started asking if anyone wanted a sing-song, apples and pears, pearly king and queen, ‘avabanana, and then suddenly the lights went out and WHAM the whole bloody thing jerked sideways, and Von had to change her knickers in the ladies’.

And the other, in the exhibition on the Holocaust. Two young lads, full of their adolescence, and then presented with a faceful of John.

“Tell you what, lads, I can’t actually see any joke here, and yours don’t make me laugh, so why don’t you both fuck off now while I am still smiling?”

They took in our numbers, and fucked immediately off. I raised an eyebrow to my friend, and he just grimaced.

“Srebrenica, Jill. Other places. Tell you sometime”

Ian’s arm went round his shoulder as Alec took John’s hand. My brother, cuddling a puff, a queer. The day was not exactly full of surprises, just confirmation of how far he had come back to his humanity.

Eventually, we managed to get boys out of toy box and back to the tube, where I did the steering towards Oxford Circus and the short walk to Liberty.

“What’s it like, then, this Liberty place?”

“Nice, Von. All half-timbers and stuff. That right, Jill?”

“Love, I have never been there. Wasn’t exactly my sort of shop most of my life, like”

Rachel leant her chin on my shoulder from behind.

“Von, girl, all you need to know is they have a bloody good caff, and they sell shoooooooooooz!”

John laughed at that. “You want to hear what Annie says about stuff like that”

I put on my best innocent child face. “What, cafes?”

Sod it. We went in, we found the café, and it cost the Earth. Ian winced at the price, but his card came out and so did the clotted cream…

They lost interest twenty minutes after we finished the last scone and drained the teapots. There was a sale on, and Rachel was salivating over some Kurt Geiger items, and, well, the boys clustered round Alec’s very posh mobile phone and came to rapid agreement.

Ian nodded. “How far?”

Alec looked at the screen. “Corner of Carnaby Street. Two minutes”

Ian looked at John, and got a nod in return. “White Horse it is, then. Don’t spend too much, girls”

“Daddy, sweety…”

Ian looked at me, then back to his daughter. “OK. Fifty quid, but I vet it when we come back, aye? And no spoiling my girl, sister dear”

He started to walk off with the others, then turned back to address Von. “Aye, and you an all, pet. I know what she’s like”

And they were gone. Von smiled, slightly dazed.

“I am, well, in front of his daughter, aye? Am I allowed to pass comments about his arse?”

Bethy grinned. “Yeah, Dad’s always been fit and stuff. Not as fit as James, though!”

Rachel snorted. “You lot didn’t spot it, then?”

Larinda frowned. “What?”

“John slap Alec’s arse, yeah? Cause Alec was checking out Ian’s when he thought nobody was looking!”

Once more, I thought back, and remembered how bad the man had been when we first knew each other; threadbare, almost broken, brought back to life by a man who had made my school days hell. It seemed there were fewer certainties in life than I had assumed.

So the day went, as Rachel succumbed to the lure of some very pointy shoes, and Bethany laid claim to a dress that I would never have imagined would take her eye, and, well, Larinda and I bought matching underwear. Properly fitted, measured, comfortable and sinfully expensive. Larinda grinned at me.

“Can you remember, years back, that first time, yeah?”

I did indeed. “Didn’t go very well, did it?”

She kissed me, to the disapproved grunt of at least one sales assistant but also to a definite happy “Aaaaah!” from another.

“I couldn’t see you back then, lover, but I can now. Said it already, but it bears repeating, loadsa times. It’s you I love, yeah? Packaging, it ain’t important. I love YOU”

“Bears repeating, like? Go on then”

“I love you, Jill Carter”

I took her to the changing area; the kiss was a bit long for public consumption. She broke, and rested her forehead against the slope of my breasts.

“That thing we were talking about earlier, yeah? Sort of set a ball rolling, big one, like that temple of doom thing. Made enquiries”

“Hmmm?”

“Had words with Steph, and she had words with what she calls her Immigroid colleagues, and, well, don’t know what the law’s going to be here, yeah? But, now, yeah, we can marry. All legal, traditional, cause you still have a little extra there, even if…”

She tailed off. “No, that was wrong. Told you, it’s you I love. Yeah, it would’ve been simpler if you were a bloke, but you’re not, you never were, and I fell in love with you, so that’s it”

She looked me in the eyes for a long moment, and just for an instant I regretted the little bit of make-up I wore.

“Jill, if we marry like that, the law says we divorce when you, you know, finish things off”

And there was a new slant to how I had been using that phrase, not that long before. She dropped her eyes again.

“After that twat I married, I said, no, it ain’t going to happen again. If I get remarried, it’s for life, so I weren’t going to make a quick decision on anyone, yeah?”

A deep sigh. “And that’s it, yeah? I marry you, it isn’t going away just because some arsehole law says so. And it’s marry, not civil partnership, it’s real, and it’s traditional cause, shit, Jill, I’m just a soppy old tart and I do trad things, yeah?”

Her hands knotted in my blouse. “And when that old fucker did that to you, Von’s dad, and I had to argue before they would let me see you, yeah? That was Alec, pulling strings. Something else happens, something worse, neither of us gets a say”

"What have you done, pet?”

Another sigh, and her head once more on my breast. “Made enquiries, love. Place called Billund, got cheap flights from Gatwick. Steph says the UK accepts things from there as being like a Civil Wotsit, but that’s not what it is out there. It’s a marriage, real, proper, yeah, and it don’t go away when, er, THAT does”

She pulled herself tighter to me. “Thing is, it’s got a theme park, where they make Lego, yeah, so there’s lots of accommodation, and cheap flights…and the bloody Danes don’t care about what’s in your knickers”

I kissed the top of her head. “Thank you, love. There’s more, aye?”

“Er, yeah. Got, well, look. We have the proper bit in Denmark, we are legal, they can all piss off cause for once the law is on our side. Small wedding, just closest with us, witnesses, yeah? And Steph, she has this friend, and he’s a vicar, in Horley… you might remember dancing and shit”

“The rest of it?”

“Sort of booked him for a weekend in April”