CHAPTER 11
That holiday finally came to an end, after a few trips out in the car to see what Mr Edwards called his ‘Specials’, which were a trio of castles ranging from a really picturesque coastal ruin via a huge, square and intact monster of a place to the real destination, a tiny little thing perched on an outcrop on the island with the tidal road, where Alys and I roamed the dunes on the north coast as huge white birds plunged into the sea, wings folded back, and she photographed every flower she couldn’t name. Once again, I was content in her presence, not needing anything more from my life in those moments, but she was keen to talk in between each little burst of nature-naming.

“What are you doing when we get back, Enfys?”

“Helping Dad out till school starts again. It’s what I would be doing if I wasn’t here”

“And school?”

“Got my choices in, so no real change”

She stopped walking and turned to me, a slight frown crinkling her eyes.

“Not talking about that side of school. I mean people like Ifor and that”

“He’s just a knob. Ignore him”

“Yeah, and Mrs Preece and the others? It’s like I said when I got back from the doctor’s: if they find out I… you… Remember what Sali told us, about that lecturer? If they… they’ll just end up saying I’m just a boy who likes dresses, and the doctors won’t believe me, and all sorts of things, and then I’ll end up stuck as a boy, or looking like one, and… It’s not you!”

I found my throat locking up, words difficult to get past a painful lump.

“But you said..”

She put a finger to my lips.

“I know what I said, and I meant it. I meant it because it feels right, and being with you, that feels right, and I know that I am not feeling like a boy would, because how could I? I am not a boy, I don’t understand them, so how could I ever think like one? This, this right for me, and I think, I hope, it’s right for you, but people outside, they won’t get it. If we can get through…”

She looked out to sea again, watching as a flight of gannets plummeted, one after the other, in search of fish. When she spoke again, her voice was almost dreamy.

“It’s a long time, Enfys. Four years till I can tell them to get stuffed, but Mam says that if I am lucky, if I can keep jumping through their hoops, then I might be able to get hormones when I’m sixteen. I can’t face not getting them, love. Can you handle me…”

She drew a long, deep breath, then huffed it out, shaking her head, before turning back to me with new determination in her eyes.

“Being in the closet, Enfys. I can wait, because I have to. Can you keep a secret for a couple of years?”

“But people already know it”

“Which people?”

“Our parents, and the Woodruffs”

“Ah, parents aren’t people! And I think Stephanie understands”

She smiled, finally.

“You’re not the only one she has spoken to, you know. We had quite a long chat”

“About me?”

“Partly. About me, mostly, but she also talked about friends she’s got. Other les… lesbians”

That word, out in the open at last, was a better one than others, like the ‘queer’ regularly shouted at Alys when she had first appeared at our school, but it still felt an awkward fit. I didn’t feel that I was a member of some demarcated class of people, some nebulous group whose rules I was yet to learn, but simply comfortable where I was, as right in my skin as Alys needed to be.

I didn’t care what box people wanted to put me in; I simply felt that being with this girl was utterly right for me. I reached out once more for her hand, and she let me take it, lacing her fingers in mine as I sought the right words rather than clever ones.

“Um, Alys?”

A brighter smile.

“That’s my name”

“Er, if I can’t wait two years, or four, or whatever, then I wouldn’t be right for you. Just our parents, then”

A wider smile., followed by one of her incredibly gentle kisses.

“Thank you”

We turned to make our way back to her parents, and she chuckled.

“Oh! Forgot to mention. As payment for taking you on holiday, I’ll be helping you out in the bunkhouse when we get back”

“Eh? Why are YOU paying for taking ME on holiday?”

Happy laughter.

“I told you parents aren’t people. And who said anything had to make sense?”

The drive home went via a place called Skipton, which was pretty, and might just have included stops at Durham City, Barnard Castle and Richmond for some reason or other, with a last night in the tent at a campsite by the canal that joined Leeds to Manchester, just west of Skipton itself. Mr and Mrs Edwards had stopped at a big supermarket, where they bought a disposable barbecue and a lot of stuff to cook on it, or rather Mr Edwards had dropped three of us off at Tesco’s while he drove off on a solo errand. Apparently, Skipton has a castle.

We had a silly evening, the Edwards sharing some wine with Alys and myself, and then settled down. My last night beside her, I realised.

The end of the next morning saw us finally emerging from industrial England and driving steadily along the Expressway, Alys teasing her father as we passed Abergele and Gwrych Castle.

“Not a real one, love. It would be like you claiming to have seen some rare bird after visiting a zoo. Anyway, nearly there. Before you ask, we’ll not be stopping at Conwy. You can wave as we pass the castle”

They dropped me off first, and I felt my legs almost creak as I straightened up after so many hours in the back of their car. Mam was waiting, kettle warm, as I had phoned her when we left the Expressway for the A5, and when I dumped my bags and slumped on the settee, she chivvied me to get my things upstairs and pull out anything that needed washing. I did as ordered, dragging the dirty stuff down for the machine to swallow, and only then did she supply me with tea and a slice of cake as I settled once more on the settee, this time with her beside me.

“How did it go, love?”

I looked at her over my mug.

“Seriously? A set-up!”

She laughed happily.

“Geoff gave us a ring, love: ‘Target acquired’. Did you like the gritstone?”

“Oh, Mam, it’s amazing rock!”

I was sidetracked immediately, gushing about which routes we had climbed and how exposed some of them had been, but eventually I ran down. She waited patiently, before asking the obvious question.

“And Alys?”

I was lost for words for a moment, but I could still blush, and of course my mother saw it.

“Oh, love! Scary stuff at your age”

Suddenly, she was chuckling, which surprised me, but her next words answered that.

“Not exactly easy at any bloody age, to be honest. Took me ages to ask your Dad out”

“You asked him?”

“Of course! He’s too soft to take a hint. Half his charm, that is”

“That and his tight shorts?”

“That and the shorts, yes. Are you able to tell me what I need to know about Alys, love?”

I tried to choose my words as carefully as Alys had, clinging to her comment that parents aren’t people. This was my mother, and that was always the first and main thing about her for me. I stumbled slightly, but the words came out in the end.

“We love each other, Mam”

“I know, Enfys. How do we handle it?”

“Sorry?”

She settled closer to me, an arm over my shoulder.

“Finished with that plate? Ta”

Once it was on the coffee table, she settled back once more.

“I told you Nansi and I talk, love. We talked about Alys before she ever came out. Out to anyone but her parents, that is”

Another long sigh, of the sort that was becoming all too familiar.

“Going to mess this up, I am. More fashionable these days, but we tried with you, when you were little. Things change, though. I told you about your Dad’s old job. It was all blokes, even the women. All dominance games. Keith, your Dad, and me, we decided we’d let you be whoever you were, boy or girl or something else, and we got a girl”

“I am a girl, Mam”

“Yes, but we wanted you to know that before we told you. Not explaining things that well, am I? Anyway, Vic and Nansi, they had a boy, and Vic was happy, because Vic is just an ordinary man, and he’s now got a little one to play with”

“But Alys---”

“I know, love. So did her parents, quite quickly. It’s a funny thing, gender. Settle back, and some boring stuff is on the way, but you need to know a bit of it. When a baby is born, you have forty two days to register it, and it’s only boy or girl allowed, and that is based on one thing, usually: is there a willy?”

“But that’s not always right!”

“They call it ‘assigned sex’. Love, or ‘recorded’. Or ‘observed’, if you’re a bigot. Met a few of those, have Vic and Nansi. Anyway, that’s a bit of paper, and it’s got to be done, but we did that bit, because we had to, and then, because we’re, well, we live in Gerlan!”

She chuckled again.

“Hippies, they call us. Anyway, we gave you a name we liked, not a traditional boy-girl one, and we waited to find out who you were. We were lucky”

“You didn’t want a boy, then?”

“Not what I meant, love. By ‘we’, I meant all three of us. You knew who you were, and there was no conflict, so we let you be. Nansi and Vic did it differently, so it was all little boy stuff. I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject, and by god it’s handy having access to a proper academic library! The literature says most kids have their gender established by the age of five, but I think they use that age because it is when the kid is old enough to communicate what they already know. Oh, and when I say ‘gender’, I mean the sense of who you are, boy or girl, not necessarily what your knicker contents tell you”

She shook her head.

“Found one account, trans woman in her sixties she was, who said she always knew, but only realised she had a problem when she saw her younger brother’s bits, in the bath. She was two years old. That was Vic’s problem. Alys got through infants’ school, and that was sort of okay, but once she’s seven, she’s off to junior school, and that’s when the real trouble came along, and Alys… Enfys, she had a different name, you know that, but it’s what they call a deadname, so I am not going to use it, or say ‘he’, okay? Anyway, so she’s getting picked on a lot, and she’s asking her Mam why she has to sit with the boys all the time, and when Nansi says ‘Because you’re a boy’, Alys says ‘No I’m not’. Persistent, consistent, clearly expressed”

“Sorry?”

“Diagnostic criteria for being trans, love. And that was Alys, so clear in her own sense of self. So Nansi talks to me, and I do the reading, and there’s a couple of charities who know these things inside out. One called Mermaids was the key. Alys must have been nine or ten by then, and she was still with us. God alone knows where she gets her strength from. This charity, then: they’re a family thing, and they have weekends away, families together, families with kids who might be transgender, and that was the start. Load up the car, head over to England somewhere, and let her loose”

Another squeeze from my mother.

“She didn’t have any girl clothes or anything, nothing like that, just shorts and a T-shirt, but Nansi says as soon as she realised what sort of weekend it was, she was away. Vic said it best, you know. He says that as soon as she relaxed, as soon as she was running around with the other girls, even with the language thing, Vic says ‘I needed Nansi to give me a boot up the arse for being blind’. He’s a good man, Enfys. Alys is a lucky girl, and in yet another way, I’m a lucky woman”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I got a daughter who also knows who she is, and I got a daughter who is able to love. What more could I ever want?”