CHAPTER 68
The floods weren’t bad that winter, but as usual customer numbers collapsed for a couple of months. We kept ourselves afloat by doing that for others, with a steady succession of boats to hoist out and check for damage, fouling, caulking and the rest. Trevor and Ricky knew what they were doing with that, and it let Darren push ahead with his studies. If things went well, he would get his certificates in time for the school holiday period, just when they would be needed most.

We paid our respects on the 14th, as a family of four, and then Valerie surprised us, taking her daughter off to Tenerife for a fortnight, just as February was getting into its worst days of grey, wet misery, and once again I had to rattle around on my own. That was in the house, of course, but otherwise I had no lack of company. Andy was punctilious in making sure I had everything I needed, and when I got really suspicious I asked him outright.

He simply grinned, and took a folded slip of paper from his wallet.

“Lass gave us a full list of what she says you need, Mr Barker!”

“Gerald, son”

“Don’t seem quite right, like, to other half’s Dad. That’s what she calls you, you know, when you can’t hear her. I mean, no offence, you’re a lot older than her Dad would be, but, well; fits right proper”

He looked down at his hands before speaking again, a little hesitantly.

“She told us about your little girl. One of the things on list, go round and make sure it’s all tidy down, well, you know where. I’ve mulched the tops of those pots to stop them drying out”

Pete was absent for about a week as well, and insisted on taking us all out for a Sunday lunch at the Blacksmith’s in Naburn when he returned. By ‘us’, I meant the two girls and Andy, and I could see their point—it did feel more and more like a family, especially after we had stood on Valentine’s Day and I had introduced Andy to my first one.

Pete was pensive, but there was an undercurrent there, a sense of tomcat and cream.

“Andy, you OK putting the orders in? I’ll have the gammon. Val?”

We gave him our choices, and he ambled off to the bar. Pete rubbed his face with both hands.

“I’ve been down to see the lad, folks. And I saw a lot more than I bargained for”

Val sniffed. “Way you’re going on, it weren’t just lad you saw!”

He suddenly grinned, and decades fell off his face.

“You read me like a book, Valerie Lockwood!”

“Not that hard, this time. Your girl’s back, isn’t she?”

He looked shocked, just for an instant, then looked hard at Susie. Val sniffed again.

“I’m one you’re talking to, Pete, not the lass, so just realise mothers and daughters share things”

Her own face softened, as she looked over at Susie, who was beaming.

“Aye. Taken me a while longer than it should have done, just to see what’s what, but there you go. We all make mistakes. Don’t forget, you dropped enough hints, and none of us is stupid. Not anymore. Now, talk to us, all of us. Lad’s family an all, so you don’t have to pack him off so you can whisper”

He spent a while looking at his hands before raising his eyes and looking at us one by one, Andy included. Once more, a deep sigh.

“I was down there for a little while and, yes, the girl is back. There’s more to it, though. Gerald mate, how did you think Pete was when he left to go down there? Same as he was when he left to go to Afghanistan?”

“Good Lord, no. I was right worried about him”

Susie murmured “Typical!” and when I looked at her threw up her hands.

“Just saying, like! Spend all your time worrying about other folk and you let yourself get into a state instead. Pete, your boy were cracking up. We all saw it. I mean he had a sense of humour again, but it were all off, all gallows stuff. There’s ways of poking fun at yourself, and then there are other ways, not good ones. That were your boy”

Pete was nodding rapidly, “That’s it. That’s exactly it. I mean, we all make jokes about ourselves, and we should do, but there’s supposed to be a smile in there”

Susie’s face had fallen at that, and suddenly she was in tears, Val sliding across to comfort her, and getting there just before Andy. He looked at me, and looked hard, before saying, gently, “I know how you two met, Gerald. And I think I know what’s set her off”

He took her hand, interlacing their fingers. “Die young, was it?”

She nodded, just the once, and he turned back to Pete.

“I know you’ll not say owt, because you’re a decent bloke, but obviously this is between us and us alone. It were when Susie were down by Ouse, that February. Self-deprecation, that’s the posh words, but it can be self-hatred, too easily. Am I right, love?”

Once more that sharp nod. He spat the words out, “Live tranny, die young, leave a bloody ugly corpse. That were what she thought of herself. And I think that’s what Gerald were seeing in your son. Am I right, my friend?”

He had indeed hit the nail firmly and squarely on the head. “Aye, that were it. It wasn’t the jokes he were making, it was the way he were making them. What’s changed, Pete? I mean, I think, way you’re talking, way you were laughing…”

He shrugged, raising his eyebrows before saying the one word “Laura”

Val tilted her head a little to one side. “Laura? That’ll be the girl that, the, the one that’s like my girl?”

He nodded. “She’s back. Memory’s all screwed up, still a lot to sort out, but I think she’s pulling through. Looks like my boy triggered something, and, well, it’s gone both ways. I get grins from him now, not grimaces. And of course her mother’s been superb”

Val snorted her orange juice all over the table with laughter, and fought to get her breathing back to normal after the resultant coughing fit.

“I bet she bloody has, you randy old sod! I damned well KNEW it! Who’s been giving the tender loving whatsits to whom?”

She turned to me. “What did I say to you when we first met this lad? Pining, I said. Someone he’s missing, I said!”

Pete muttered something, fumbling in his rucksack. Old age was definitely stripping my faculties away.

“Sorry, Pete? Come again?”

“I said I’ve got some pictures. Downloaded them from the camera last night, got them on my laptop here. Thought it would be better than trying to look at a camera screen. Oh, hang on: food’s coming. Eat first, OK?”

Val didn’t stop digging all the way through the meal, but Pete simply deflected each question, right up to the showstopper.

“So, she moving up here or you down there?”

His face fell. “I don’t know. I mean, I spent so long without facing up to things, and then there’s the business”

“Aye, but you are stuck on lass, aren’t you?”

He said nothing, pushing a bit of carrot round his plate, but then, just like Susie, gave a single sharp nod.

“Val, the trouble is what I just said. This is something I should have faced up to years ago. Faced, and sorted. Sod it, I’ve done with this”

He called over to the bar. “Hal, can I use the plug here for my laptop? Yeah? Ta!”

Fitting cables together, he smiled. “My appetite’s not up to pudding, so I’ll show you what I’m on about”

Once the thing was warmed up he set it where we could all see the screen.

“Right… hang on…OK. That’s our old house, down in Hardway. And… that one’s Elspeth’s old shop. Er, Pete’s mum, my late wife”

“What happened, mate? I mean, if it’s not too hard a subject”

“Oh, Gerald. Dodgy heater; carbon monoxide”

I thought of Bob, seemingly asleep in his chair. “Next one?”

“Yeah… just some shots around Pompey—Portsmouth. Still and West, on Spice Island… Gun Wharf… HNS Warrior, yeah with the Victory’s masts there, see them?”

Val was very dry. “Not tourist stuff, Peter. You know what we are after seeing”

“All right… that’s their house, Lucy’s place”

Andy looked puzzled. “Thought it were Laura”

“Yeah, it is. Lucy’s her mum. Hang on…”

He flicked through a number of images, and then showed us a very well-presented woman of a certain age, make-up and hair flawless, elegant in the way few women manage without it looking anything other than natural and easy.

“Lucy”

Val’s voice was suddenly without an edge. “She’s lovely, Pete. What I said earlier, you know, randy old sod, I’m sorry. You’ve caught her right well in that shot. You are a lucky man, love”

“Thanks, Val. Really thanks. Now… now this is Laura”

Andy muttered ‘bloody hell’ while Susie said something about nothing being fair, before turning the laptop slightly for a better look.

“This is a lad in a dress?”

“I really thought you’d know better than that, girl”

She was shaking her head and twisting her mouth, something she usually did when she couldn’t find exactly the right words for something really important that she just had to say right there and then.

“No, Pete, not what I meant. I’m asking: is that someone who’s not been on hormones, not had any bloody treatment of any kind? Because if it is, they are very, very lucky”

She was in some sort of silky blouse, which she was filling in what looked like a natural way, and he had caught her as she smiled at someone or something. Tousled blonde hair, collar length or so, little obvious make-up and clearly her mother’s daughter, her eyes were twinkling with life.

“Hang on… now, this is rude. I wouldn’t do this normally, but—Susie? What is it you call it when someone calls you by your old name?”

“Deadnaming”

For some reason, she stared at her mother, who blushed slightly.

Pete nodded. “Deadnaming. Right. Please forget that I showed you this. The boy has problems every now and again, drifting off, back to things out in the Far East. So when he went to this lecture he had his own computer with him, recording”

Susie sat up straighter. “You’ve got Laura in drab, haven’t you? Sorry. Crossdresser term, meaning dressed as a man”

“Yes. I wouldn’t do this, not normally, but you really have to see it to understand what my boy meant”

Tinny sound, a lecture theatre or classroom, a slight blonde figure in a jacket and tie delivering a lesson in a droning monotone. No life. No animation. No inflection or emotion of any kind, and yet I could still see, all of us could, that it was Laura.

Val started to cry, joined by Susie in short order, and the older woman reached out and closed the lid of the little computer.

“I don’t know what the fucking hell happened to her, and I don’t want to, if I’m honest. But, well, I think your boy’s happened to her now, him and you, Peter Hall. So, you take that recording and you delete it, now. And you get back down there and finish making things right. Oh, and don’t think I missed that picture you flicked past”

“Which one?”

“That one with Lucy sat in your lap”