CHAPTER 40
That took me full circle, back to those articles about April Ashley, and I felt an odd sense of calm as I spoke.

“Tessa has been good enough to give you some idea of how it feels to be mismatched as we are, but those of you who know my story also know what was done to me, and that I wasn’t born to be like this. In a way, you could say I am worse off than my friend, because I can actually remember having my body as it should have been, and then watching as it was stolen from me. Tessa herself has said how she, whilst understanding it is wrong, is still jealous of me.

“What we have worked for here is to try and get some recognition that who you are is just as important as who you love. Neither of them is voluntary, nor arbitrary, and neither of them should become a stick to be beaten with. I have a friend, a gay man, who was given ‘treatment’ to try and ‘cure’ him, and all it did was drive him near to death. Tess has told you how she tried that, and I did much the same, and I want nobody else to be faced with that choice.

“Look at us now, look at her smile, look at my beautiful bride to be, and try and do as I was advised to do. This world is full of small minds, and they will close themselves to people like us. Neither Tess nor myself would have been included here only a year ago, but people learn and times change. No, the opinions of the mean-spirited are only relevant when you have to deal with them.

“What I was asked by a very wise person was this: do these people matter to you? Do the opinions of such people have any value? No? Then fuck them. Fuck the world, and be who you need to be, love who you have to love, and smile at those who are too cramped in their souls to understand”

There was applause, and then Em shouted “Oy, Jones, I’m the one who’s supposed to be studying literature, get back to your dead white men and stop stealing my thunder!”

When the laughter died down she called “But I still love you!”

That was actually, when I look back at it, a formative moment. It was my first overt speech, and it gave me a taste of how it felt trying to move an audience, persuade a crowd, and it was also a crux in my life. I could so easily have moved over into politics, sold my soul to the thrill of rhetoric and approval, but Em kept me grounded.

She would ask me “Do you want to talk to real people, as a real person, or talk at a crowd as a fictional character?”

How could every boy she met before me have missed the sheer beauty and depth of her? Each day I was realising, utterly and profoundly, that she was indeed the love of my life. I had adored my flaming goddess of the bookshelves, and still did, but it was Emily Kerr I loved more than that same life.

The following weekend we had arranged some visitors, and taken some rooms in three Capel Curig hotels for them. This was going to be the celebration of our engagement, and I wanted, we wanted, every important person in our lives to be there to celebrate, and while we would be having a meal together, the rest of the evening was open for our college friends.

What a list… my brother, his adoptive parents, my adoptive parents, Nana, Em’s parents, Sid, Tom and Sally, Arthur and Meg, Dave and Aidan, Tessa and the Toffs, and Miss Graham, who was Emily’s suggestion and as soon as she said the name I just knew how right she was. To my delight, not one of them cried off, and the Ty’n y Coed did a splendid meal. I had to make another speech, they said, but I reminded Em of her complaint at the TGL meeting and she had to do the standing up thing, her cheeks pink with wine and embarrassment, and I know that I wept, as did Nana, and just about every other woman in the room, as strong men found little things to pick out of their eyes, not tears, no.

The evening was polarised a little as it went on, for like calls to like, and Arthur was soon in deep conversation with the landlord about beer pricing or cellar depth or something, and Iain was bending Brian’s ear about leather balls and funny boots or something, and Tessa was stuck into Karen and Sally about some girly thing or other, and the boys were talking sensible subjects with me as we pondered the new routes only just starting to be pushed out on slate. I detested the very idea at first, the lack of friction and strange post-industrial surroundings, but in later years I came to love the sharpness of the holds and the purity of the climbing. Though I had to pick my climbs to allow for my lack of upper body strength, I was already leading E2 consistently and that was news that put a little sparkle into Roger’s eyes.

“Stephen, darling, at some point we will just have to take you to the Alps and teach you about real mountaineering.”

Nana was listening in to that exchange, and she just grinned at him. “Ah, a lad that knows better than picking at scabs! A mountain has a soul, a personality tha has to find, and tha only get to know it by being there in all weathers”

That was something we could all drink to, and so we did, and somewhere in the evening, as is traditional, another proposal was elicited by a very smug Sally, and I saw Miss Graham get very emotional indeed. It was poor Aidan that had my sympathy, as Tessa went ubergirly on him, and Simon and I remarked what a monster we had unleashed. It was another evening in my life that marked a high point, a time of joy.

We adjourned afterwards to the climbers’ bar in Ty’n y Cobden’s up the road, which is built out of the back of the hotel up against a rock face, and what seemed like half the college was there to help us celebrate, and the next day I had the worst hangover of my life and Tessa the biggest smile. Poor Aidan, he hadn’t had a snowball’s chance in Hell.

Em and I joined our hotel’s party for breakfast, and as I slowly woke from my beer dream, the boys insisted we have a gentle day at Tryfan fach with the whole party and a picnic, so cars were loaded, sandwiches and other supplies garnered and a convoy led off down the A5 to Little Willy’s, or Gwern y Gof Uchaf, and we walked and splashed the little bit of hillside to the crag. It was a silly day, only the two really girly girls refusing to have a go (Karen and Tessa) as it would do something to their fingernails. I mean, the damned things just grow back, don’t they? Even people like Meg and Miss Graham (“Call me Hilda”) found themselves at the end of a rope, giggling as they were lowered back down, but Kaz and Tess simply found a slab of rock opposite the crag and did a synchronised and clearly rehearsed strip down to incredibly skimpy bathing suits before rubbing each other with sun cream and stretching out on beach towels.

I mean, she’s my adoptive mother, but I’m just an ordinary man, for god’s sake, and it nearly made me fall off. Aidan still looked either badly hung over or drained of all vitality, and kept giving Tessa little glances. I caught his eye at one point and raised an eyebrow. He muttered under his breath.

“No way that was ever a bloke. Just don’t let her at me tonight, she’ll bleed me dry”

“You complaining?”

He grinned, ruefully. “Not exactly, mate, but….I couldn’t keep up with her long term, I’d be dead in a month”

I understood her all too well. Just like me, she had been locked up for years, and now she was doing the best she could to make up for lost time. I had run and run, and she…well, she was doing her own thing.

Nana loved the crag, bouncing all over it unroped just for the joy of it, and we four male climbers were busy shepherding a variety of stooges up the easiest of rock. There was laughter, and shrieks of mock terror, and I realised that the two in the bikinis were actually doing synchronised sunbathing for a while, turning over and cocking a leg at the same time as each other, with that sneering expression of ‘you can look but…’ firmly in place. Eventually, of course, they caught my Paddington stare and it was Tessa who corpsed first, and then the two of them were hugging, laughing like idiots.

There was one person I was watching, though, apart from my beloved, and that was Sid. He was more animated than I had ever seen him before, even when discussing the latest Bob Shaw or Niven book. Something was stirring him, taking away the weight of past years that had always pressed on his shoulders and hung behind his eyes. I made time to talk to him, and let him know what I had noticed.

“Ah, Stevie, my dear friend, what else can I be but happy? You are my proxy, son, my proof that the fuckers don’t always win. They broke me, but I look at you, and Emily, and all this beauty, and I know that there is hope for the world. That sounds really over the top, doesn’t it?”

I hugged him. “Sid, love, if you can still see all that, you were never broken”