CHAPTER 40
Ian was away not that long after his first session of treatment, and that was difficult enough for the girls. Perhaps even harder than seeing him trying to smile through his pain, but he had a living to make, and his pride to uphold. For their part, they had schools to attend, and I gathered some new friends to maintain.

Oddly, they were happy times. Ian rang every night, and there was a tag-team of daughters to hang on his words. He spared some time for me, though, and I felt the warmth each time. Family. So important, and now so real, so clear to me, as clear as Hays’ voice as she took us at our word and sang around the house, free to do so, encouraged to do so, loved at last for her singing and her soul. Steph surprised me one day, sticking her head around the kitchen door one Saturday.

I had, in the end, insisted that certain people were as much family as my blood kin, and family do not wait on a doorbell or a knocker, but enter with a smile and a hug, and that was Steph. Her skinny man was in tow, and as Hayley did sweet justice to some Welsh hymn or other Steph looked at her husband and received a smile and a sharp nod. She turned back to me.

“Pub Monday, Jill?”

Geoff was nodding. “The Sun, over by us, you know it. It’s the monthly session, and we thought Hayley might like to do some singing”

II thought for a second. “Dunno, like. Mam’s due down for the week, cause Ian’s over for his next session, aye?”

“Where are they staying?”

I laughed, and Steph grinned again. “Newlyweds still, yeah? I remember these things”

Geoff laughed, ruefully. “Kid with a new toy…”

That woman can blush. Dear gods, can she blush. She tried to cover it up with bluster, but most of her was still shining.

“So where?”

“Eric and Annie are doing the honours, like, so we still have room for the lad”

“Your Mam up for a bit of live music?”

“Sings with a choir, like, so aye, I would say so”

Geoff was nodding. “Makes sense, all in the family, yeah? Genetics? That was always Kell’s problem, she could never find a boy with the music in him. You heard from Will, by the way?”

“Flying down with them. Von’ll be here, and it makes sense. Grown lad, aye, and she wants his hand held when he travels”

Steph looked a little wistful at that. “Still her baby, yeah?”

“Oh shite aye, that’s Von. Maternal as all hell”

“Just like Annie and Sar. Some women… I never really had that urge, myself. I mean, it would…sod it, cuppa? Ta. It would have been nice, but, well, it was never a CRUCIAL thing, aye? Annie, yes, oh dear me, Sarah, bloody hell, she was made for the job, but me…”

Geoff was laughing. “She says I am enough of a child for her to have to cope with! Sod it, wife, you haven’t stopped being a teenager long enough to get broody!”

Blush.

Geoff gave a triumphant grin, then sobered quickly. “Just a thought, girls, but, well, doesn’t all that say something about, well… girls like you, yeah?”

I rattled some cups, got the milk from the fridge, poured.

“And?”

“Hell, it’s something that should be obvious, if people open their eyes. I got some shit, yeah, and so did Eric, and, where’s your missus?”

“Work”

“How much grief is she getting for being with you? No, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that those of us with an inside track, what we see is people, individuals, women, yeah? Other people, they see queers, trannies, they see cardboard cut-outs, yeah?”

Steph murmured “Or toilet cubicles for extended periods, love”

He snorted. “Point well made, darling. No, I’m going all round the houses here, but just trying to say that people aren’t all the same, and the mainstream see girls… like you, yeah? They see you as that cut-out thing, all the same, and you aren’t. Just like any other woman…shit, just saying that makes it sound as if I’m doing the same. ‘Girls like you’, yeah? I didn’t mean to patronise–“

I put my hand on his arm. “No, pet. You’re not. I understand what you are trying to say, and it’s appreciated, aye? The thing that really put me off trying to be myself was always that fear, that the world would just see me as some oddity to be laughed at, like, and, well…”

Words failed me for a moment, and I just waved my hands around, trying to indicate them as well as Hayley, singing away in the living room.

“Look, I’m home, aye? I have a partner who loves me. I have friends who stand by me, and family that holds fast, as family should. I am treated by everyone that matters as the woman I know I am, aye? And that lets me know… shite, it tells me that the outsiders, well…”

I paused for breath, and to hold the tears. “That night, in the pub, the queerbashers, like. That nearly broke me. This is the odd thing about Ian. You said about Annie, aye, and Sar? Well, this is me being maternal, me having my family, me doing the healing, paying back. This is my validation as a woman”

Geoff nodded. “That’s one of the words she uses”

Steph grunted. “Well, it’s true. We, girls like us, we need that extra recognition, aye? Vulnerable, aren’t we?”

That broke the spell, as Geoff erupted in raucous laughter, interspersed with various attempts to get out the words “Vulnerable? You? I watched you play rugby!”

In the end, we agreed on the pub for the Monday, and Geoff left me with an awful lot of thinking to do. The conversation had come from nowhere, but it had held real depth. In my heart of hearts, I was just another woman. To the ‘straight’ world, I was a cipher, a tranny, a person assumed to fit neatly into a pigeon hole. Geoff was absolutely right, and once more I could see exactly how and why Steph loved him. Pity he was male, and that I was already spoken for, but nobody’s perfect.

The party flew in the following day, and Ralph did his best to crush my ribs with his hug. Will hung back, looking oddly vulnerable.

“Mum here yet?”

“Bringing Ian over Tuesday, pet. What’s up? Oh bugger a hell, I know that look!”

He was blushing to rival Steph. “What do you mean, Jill?”

I fixed him with my best Mam stare. I may not be exactly maternal, but I had had a bloody good teacher, who was doing her best not to giggle as I raised just the one eyebrow, or at least tried my best to.

“Who is he, William?”

Mam was actually giggling, and Ralph was beaming.

“A canny lad, aye? Enough said”

Will looked up through his lashes. “Jill, it’s all a bit sort of a cliché. Someone that knew someone that knew Mark, and, well…”

I gave him my best Aunty-smile. “Happy?”

The answer didn’t involve words, so I just hugged him.

“People, live music tomorrow?”

Mam fixed me with her own Mam stare. “Since when did you ever do live music, Jill, as I assume this is people playing”

“Aye, mam, but it’s the friends who play, like”

My stepfather smiled gently. “Aye, pet, and ye hev friends noo, aye? Not like when ye wes at school an aal”

Thank god for the chat with the Woodruffs the day before. I had those emotions in control just then, so I was able to move along smoothly, nothing to see, thank you.

“I know some musicians, Mam”

“Aye, I know. Me for one”

“You fancy a bit song, like?”

Ralph grinned. “Mair important, like. Whe’s driving te the pub?”

A sigh from Mam. “How, pet, the romance isn’t dead yet, then”

I thought of Geoff’s comments about newly-weds and had to turn away. I did manage to get Will to one side, and I was as direct as I knew I needed to be.

“Want me to talk to your Mam, pet?”

His eyes were hollow. “Could you? I just don’t know if she’ll understand. I mean, she’ll have ideas, you know, about how we are, how things should be. You know how she can be”

Once again, Geoff’s speech earlier was there, the assumptions that ‘people like us’ fitted a pattern, that cardboard figure. Sod that.

“Will, just leave it with me, aye?”

In the end, it was an anti-climax. I took Von to one side when we were in the pub, as Steph and Annie did something complicated, and I simply said “Will has news”

Her face crumpled, and I held her as Larinda’s eyes asked the question that my smile answered.

“Aye, Von, I’ll answer that”

“Mmmfhh?”

“Is he happy? Well, Mam thinks so”

Prejudice, assumption, convention. “Jill…”

“Aye, love?”

“Could you help me, you know, be… be there for him and not be so bloody Dad about it?”

Hayley’s voice rose with Mam’s as I hugged her closer.

“Von, hinny, you are already there”