CHAPTER 40
I had a stream of visitors over the next few days, including Alice-in-drag, and Pat and Janet. That got me thinking, as it seemed to me that I had never seen one without the other since New Year except at school.

No, I wasn’t thinking they were doing the dirty, but I got the impression that a couple of souls may just have clicked. Both were fiercely moralistic, and ferociously intelligent. By that I don’t mean full of facts and certificates, I mean driven to pick things apart, argue philosophy, really try and get to the roots of a concept. When they got talking, I got lost.

Perhaps that was it. She had hidden away for so many years, and only now had she found someone who could talk to her, challenge her, at her own level. I asked them directly, and Pat looked almost embarrassed.

“You are just about right there, girl. My conversations are usually a bit limited, what with the typical parishioner on the one hand, wanting to know if fancying their daughter’s friends is taking them to hell, and the other lads who have nothing beyond what the Pope said and Football. If I’m really lucky, it’s rugby, and if not it’s golf.”

I laughed a little, till it hurt, at a mental picture of a man in a cassock driving off the tee, remembering an old joke. Pat read my mind.

“Fuck it, missed! That old one?”

I just nodded. Janet smiled. “He has read so much, and not just read it, thought about it. I have never been able to have a proper chat about things like Spinoza, Kant, Aquinas, till now”

“Ach, you still can’t, you haven’t read St Thomas in the original, so you miss some of the subtlety”

“And ach back to you, you old bugger, I give you Voltaire, Kant and Nietzche, which I HAVE read in their originals, unlike you!”

“Yes, well Nietzche was a fucking arsehole, so he’s better filtered”

After a couple of minutes they remembered I was in the bed. Janet just smiled.

“See what I mean? I have found a friend who challenges me, for the first time in decades, and it would be just my luck he’s a bloke in a dress. And, Pat, you will make no nasty cutting remarks about Sarah and me, OK?”

“You told him, Janet?”

“I played the old confessional trick on him, but yes, I told him. The lot”

Pat grunted. “You realise, Janet, that as neither one of my communicants, nor a Catholic, nor even, as far as I can see, a Christian, I may not be bound by that sacrament.”

“But as a friend…?”

“Ach, of course. That’s another sacrament in itself.”

There was real affection between them, I saw, not the old-married-couple double act that was Alice and Enid, or the deep symbiotic love that I saw between Steve and Arris, or Elaine and Siá¢n, but two people who obviously cared deeply for each other. They didn’t know how to express it safely though, dancing around issues and emotions that they thought might frighten the other away. Gently, Sarah, gently; leave them to waltz on their own.

Tony drove me home once the rather snooty surgeon and his mates were finished. I was getting ready to smack him by then, as he seemed to have forgotten that the peculiar fleshy lumps hanging off his work were a woman and not a display cabinet for how good he was. Twat. He was good, though, I will give him that.

Jim had taken the day off school and decorated the house with ‘welcome home’ posters, and when I got in he was bursting to tell me something. Tony had found the puppy he wanted, a dog-sized, dog-shaped breed, at a local vet. One of their customers, not a puppy farmer, had a litter that needed good homes, and the vet could vouch for them. They were Border collies, an ancient breed from Northumberland. Fiercely intelligent, adaptable, tractable, and loyal. A bit lively for an invalid, but, hey, Jim’s enthusiasm was wonderful.

I healed, and I did the nasty thing with the sex toys when Jim was out, and I walked as much as I could rather than sit on my arse and risk thrombosis. Alice was filling my analgesia scrip, and each day it was getting a little easier. And dressing….

Finally, finally I could stand before a mirror naked and not want to cover up. I mean, I still did want to cover up a bit, as my tits were getting a bit saggy, but you know what I mean. My mother came in behind me as I stood there naked one morning, and simply kissed my cheek before handing me my dressing gown.

“You are more like your Aunty Gwen than me, love, but definitely a Lloyd woman. Breakfast, now, vanity later”

A few days later, Tony turned up with a crate, and in it was a bundle of fur that I fell in love with on sight. The extension was already laid out with a dog bed and a LOT of newspaper, a collar and lead chosen by Jim hanging on the wall, and a cupboard full of puppy food. Tony, being a man, had bought several books on dogs, training, care, spiritual development for all I knew, and Jim had already hung up one of those picture calendars in the kitchen, the ones devoted to a single breed.

Our puppy was black and white, of course, and Jim had already chosen his name, after the horse in National Velvet: Pie. He was trying to climb out, climb on to us, tongue licking away, clearly ecstatic to be with people. Tony let him out into the back garden, where he ran about widdling with excitement.

“He’s had all of his shots and things, Sar, so Jim can get straight to training him.

Fat little puppy-bum, waddling around as he tried to sniff absolutely everything he could. Oh yes, I was in love, three times over. Jim exploded when Mam brought him from school, and I had to warn him about getting Pie overexcited, a lesson Jim finally learned when he picked Pie up to tickle him, and he pissed all down his school shirt.

Then, suddenly, it was all over for my little holiday. Mam and Dad were heading back, as was Enid, and I was returning to work, my promise to Margaret all those years ago finally kept. Not as I had imagined it, though; she had sent me a note restoring my holiday entitlement and pointing out the company policy on unlimited leave of absence for such surgery. What a woman.

Alice ran me in rather than my bouncing my new fanny on and off a bike saddle, and I was mobbed by the two girls. It always felt odd, as Anne was always so sweet and open, and yet I knew there were things behind her eyes that revolted me. Andy waited patiently, and then gave me his own hug.

“Welcome back. I hope that has sorted the problems out, it’s not the same when you are away”

If you only knew how my problems were indeed sorted. Never mind, we had Alice’s life to bring on now.

That first day was an easy one, so many of the post-holiday blues and injuries sorted or forgotten, and we were back to the winter routine of cold cures, cough linctus and anti-seasickness pills for the daytrippers from France. Thankfully, there were no coaches full of schoolkids, or “shoplifter specials” as they are called in Canterbury. Lunchtime came, and Anne was off out for her mortification session, and I wondered how she was actually going to react when Alice joined her at work. Or church.

I was musing on this, not really with it as I got a few aches from my new bits, when I realised I had a customer n front of me.

“Hello, how can I help?”

“Is Andy Watson about?”

She was about 35, 5’4”, pleasantly plump, with a real mass of dark curls , and that odd pale freckled complexion that you sometimes find on dark-haired Irish people. Glasses in front of hazel eyes, no make up visible, in a fleece and jeans and, as I noticed later, training shoes. Not even remotely Andy’s type. Suzy passed at that point.

“Hiya, Bev! Looking for himself?”

“Hi, Suze, yeah, I was going to take him to look for something better than that horrible 4.3”

I must have made my puzzled face, because Bev just laughed. “You must be Sarah, Andy told me about you. A Carlton 4.3 is a badminton racquet. They are usually painted a horrible greeny-blue, they weigh a ton, and all the sports centres hire them out because they are unbreakable, but they weigh a ton. So, we’re going to see if we can get him a better one. Hiya Andy!”

He had come out of the dispensing room behind me.

“Sarah, Bev, Bev, Sar. Do you mind if I slip out for a bit? “

“Bev’s told me what you are up to. She also told me that you have told her about me. What exactly have you told her?”

“Only that you are a very nice boss who won’t mind if I take a bit of time off to expand my social skills! Tell you what, I’ll get some coffees in on the way back. What do people want?”

We gave him our orders, and as the two of them hit the crowded pavement I saw her link arms with him. Suzy caught my gaze.

“When you get him away from the bars, and the bimbos, and he stops trying to be anything more than just the nice bloke he is inside, he’s a revelation. Bev likes him, but he’s terrified she’ll think he just wants a shag, so no jokes, OK, Sar? Let him do this one on his own”

He was back half an hour later, with a new racquet and a cardboard carrier full of coffees. I let Bev into our rest room, and she gave me the new dirt on him, which included rather a lot of technical stuff about badminton that went straight past me. As far as I could work out, Andy was fit, and fast, and strong, but lacking n subtlety, so in that sense there were no surprises. There were two surprises, though. Bev was a solicitor by profession, which didn’t fit with the dress sense.

“I only get the slapper stuff out for court and that, Sar, I can’t be bothered with all that palaver just for an ordinary office day.”

I remembered my first day at work, in those heels, and started to laugh. I explained the joke, and the others joined me. Andy smiled.

“Trust me, Bev, when Sarah decides to get glammed up she is quite something. Her other half would carry a stick to beat blokes off with, but I suspect he wouldn’t actually need one, big ox that he is”

The second surprise was that Suzy and Andy had told her about Alice.