CHAPTER 84
I span on the bench, and the old monster was there behind me, just coming through the gate, Hywel at his shoulder.

Once again, I was reminded how closely father and son worked, how deep their relationship. A rush of odd thoughts went through my head, as happens when bombshells drop. If I had been Sam, would I have had a similar link with my father? More sadly, if I had not run away, would I have had a chance at a similar deep connection to my mother? I would never know.

“Sh’mae, boys”

“Shw mae, Sar. Wyt ti wedi bod yn siarad i’r hen wraig’ma, aye?”

“Yn wir, Arwel, yn wir. A beth wyt ti’n meddwl? Ffrind’ma mewn bedd?”

He changed to English, for Alice’s benefit, and that fucked my chances to have a real go at him.

“No, Sar, I do not want to see this woman in her grave, but if you keep pushing you might just tip her into it. Look, get this straight, aye? You may be the first she spoke to, but you are not the only one”

“Yes, but what has she told you she wants?”

Alice stepped in sharply. “Sarah, enough. My life, my story, my revelations. Not yours!”

Her voice softened. ”Look, I know you mean well, but sometimes you have to let go, let people make their own choices without someone holding their hand. So, just for now, please, let go. I have to do this by myself”

I gave Arwel a nasty look, which was wrong of me, but she had me wound so tightly I wanted to scream. “OK, Alice, talk your talk and I’ll stay quiet.”

She paused to gather her thoughts, as Hywel went off to get the drinks.

“Look, Arwel, I was telling Sar about the possibility of us moving in together, but there is more to it now”

She worked through our meeting with Dr Oliver, in detail, and Arwel just sat and listened impassively, though I did spot a slight twitch when she mentioned the risks.

“So…let me get this right, aye? You either get them to do it here, with the risks, or you bugger off to ladyboy land and get it done there?”

“Essentially, yes, that’s right”

“And you have the savings for that then?”

“No, not really, but Doc Oliver didn’t need to know that”

Arwel took a sip of the pint Hywel had brought for him, and thought for a few seconds. “Do you need money?”

I stared at him. “You would put up money for her to die in some foreign hospital?”

“I’d put up money to make her happy, lass”

“At the risk of her dying?”

He put his pint down, and reached out to take her hand. “At the risk of her being so fucked up over this that she does something even more stupid”

He took my hand as well. “Sar, I have tried to get something across to you, and I know this old trout has done the same. Life isn’t just about shagging, especially at our age, aye? We clicked that first day we met. It’s the communication thing, girl. A woman doesn’t have to like beer and rugby to talk well with a man. And a man doesn’t have to need to shag a woman to want her company”

Alice was looking happily smug. “See what I mean? Life is richer than most people can see, if they would only widen their ambitions a little. We can happily share a house, because we mesh well together. The fact that he is absolutely a man, and I am most definitely a woman, is another thing entirely. We work well together”

That grin was back. “And the small fact that I happen to love this old bastard deeply does us no harm at all”

I was still twitching. ”So with all that, why bother taking such a risk? Why not just go on as you are, safely?”

Alice set her jaw. “Because it comes between us, that’s why, and don’t try and get out of that by making a bad joke. It is something that stops either of us being natural with each other, as well as being something I have never wanted there. Look, love, I told you that accident cleared my mind. Call it fatalism, call it intimations of mortality, but I know that life doesn’t just carry on, safely. Ten, twenty, forty years time if miracles happen, and I’ll be gone. Less time for this lump, as he hardly has the healthiest of lifestyles. I want to live that last bit without feeling a fraud”

That last phrase bit me. How to explain that I still felt the same without destroying her hopes? Arwel just grunted.

“That’s the down side of moving in, Sar, she’s already trying to do a bloody makeover on me, telling me to cut down on the chips and beer and all. Fair puts me off, it does”

He still had her hand. I looked at Hywel. “What do you think, then? Are these two sane?”

He took a slow breath. “My opinion? Dad’s a lot calmer than he ever was after Mam went. This one grows on you, like a wart. Irritating as all hell, but you can’t just scrape it off”

He paused, to grin at her. “Look, they work together. She’s got the brakes put on him at last, and that sits well by me. Dad likes to think he’s still one of the lads, but he isn’t, not any more”

Arwel snorted. “I can still drink you under the table, boy!”

“Aye, Dad, but how long does it take you to get rid of the hangover? Look, Sar, I will be hooking up with Suzy some day, and we have to decide where we’re going to live. That means one of us really needs to move out of the old place, so it’s him or me.”

“Aye, son, or we both move down this way”

I went back a step. “So are you setting a date then, Hywel?”

“Aye, probably next Summer. We got a few things straightened out that day, remember? I think my arm will just about be healed by then”

Alice leant forward, clutching Arwel’s hand. “You see, Sar, that’s the other aspect. If I don’t have the surgery, I can’t get my status changed. If I can’t do that, we can’t make any partnership official without one of those civil things”

“Aye, and they’re for poofs”

“Oh shut up, Arwel. You see what I mean, Sar? He will only accept something meant for red-blooded men hung like Welsh ponies”

“You’ve been peeking again, aye?”

“Quiet. Sarah, if we can’t get that legality, then when this old sod keels over from a heart attack, or his liver gives out, I have no say in what happens to him. He will only accept ‘normality’ so I have no real choice”

She paused. “I suppose I have had no real choice since I was born. I just put it off for far too long. But then….but then, I probably wouldn’t have met you and your family if things had been different. You are lucky in them, Sarah, luckier than you ever admit to them. It’s time you trusted them”

Oh, she knew how to slap me with the moral blackmail, all right, and I wondered for just one spiteful instant whether this really was a world view changed as a result of that accident, or if she was actually brain-damaged. No, the docs would have mentioned something, and she wasn’t actually drooling for any reason other than the man she was clinging on to. I took the plunge.

“OK, I understand it really isn’t any of my business any more, it’s between you two, so I will support your decision as best I can, whichever one it is. Just, please, both of you, get all the facts before you go in headfirst”

Alice just smiled. “Already have, Sarah dear, already have. I’ve been getting those ‘well woman’…well, ‘well freak of nature godless pervert abomination’…checks for the last three weeks, just to get a ground level of where my fitness for surgery lies. The Doc didn’t realise why I was doing it, he just assumed I wanted to keep track after the nastiness.”

Well, Doc Oliver had certainly been told now. So had I.