CHAPTER 41
Three years we had at Bangor, three years of growth mental and physical, and although I know I am biased my Emily became daily more beautiful.

We kept pushing with the TLG group, which was quite an introduction to pettiness and pink politics.

One of the givens of student life is that all students know everything from the day of their arrival, and are often happy to share that view with anyone whose ear they can catch. They are also the first to come up with any particular insight, and the first ever to have suffered from any specific problem. That led to a few personality collisions, as so many of our fellow ‘pinks’ were as narrow in their thinking as the ‘straights’ they so often derided for their narrowness of viewpoint.

We had lesbians who wanted all men exterminated, even gay men, for the simple fact that they weren’t women. We had gay men whose attitude to women was best summed up by “Why?” Both types had real issues with Tessa, the ultra-feminists of the time taking their lead from people like Germaine Greer, and deriding her as a surgically mutilated man, while the more over-the-top gay men called her a coward.

She snapped back at one of the latter during a visit to us.

“So I’m a coward who is pretending not to be gay? A coward? No balls, then?”

She pretended to rummage in her knickers. “Nope, no balls there. Just the way I like it!”

Emily got a lot of grief from some of the harder-edged dykes, who pointed out that she was clearly in denial, having a boyfriend who looked so much like a girl. Mostly she just replied along the lines of having had better chat-up lines from more attractive people, but I will always remember the first time I heard her tell somebody to fuck off and die. Tessa and I may have lost our balls, but Emily had enough to spare.
As for me, I was just in limbo. Neither fish nor fowl, the good thing was that I existed largely in my own world, shared with Emily and Tom, and regular visitors from the real world outside. I have referred to the abusive people as men and women but, in reality, so many of them were really still children, and this was their chance to try and become who they felt they were, and live. It was exactly what Tessa had been trying to do when she ended up bleeding to death in some kitchen alley in London.

That sounds nasty, as if all the students were queuing up to have a go, like a return to Bowness, but it wasn’t like that. The vast majority of students were either neutral, as they were strangers to us, or supportive. I refined my FTW philosophy to add the rider that when the small-minded spoke, they were to be invited to speak elsewhere.

My running kept me well-known, though, and I even managed to put up a handful of new Extremes on the slate I was learning to enjoy. Three years….

Iain had started at Loughborough on a sports science and education course, and Tessa was by all accounts (mostly hers, in lurid detail) making up for her lost years in a huge way. Every visit saw her more confident, more upright in her stance, and the times she slapped down some of the harder-edged bra-burners were joys to behold.

I never understood that bit, the braless fashion. I mean, if ever a man had an insight into female anatomy it was me, and the thought of doing anything energetic without a bra, that didn’t involve being naked with my bride-to-be, was unthinkable. Ouch!”

The mood swings of my youth had passed, but oddly I found myself synchronising little periods of irritability with Em’s PMT, as women who live together tend to do, and that confused me. I talked it through with her.

“Love, I have options still, I just don’t know what to do about them”

“You’re doing the ‘manly’ thing again, aren’t you? Cut ‘em off, grow a beard, that sort of thing”

“Well….yes”

“What would you get out of it, love? Short arse bloke with a set of hips, a flat chest and a wisp of hair on the chin?”

“Well, perhaps I would be more me than I am now”

“Would you? And what would it change? “

“Self respect? I don’t know. I just feel I’ve got too used to this body, and that’s not right”

“Self respect, you say? With your strength, you know better than that. Love, I just want you to be happy, and I don’t think you would be any happier by letting them cut you up again. Besides…..I’m used to this body too”

She did something very nice with her lips and tongue at that point, and that sort of stopped me talking. She brought her head back up to kiss me.

“And I rather like this body, and love its owner to bits”

Which ended that train of thought. She was right, though. I could never be a man again, not really, and as I have said I could still glance down and see the proof of my real gender, if I looked past my tits. That was a moment when I felt really confused. They were mine, even though I hadn’t wanted them, but Emily clearly did want them. She did things to them that were amazing, and although I know it is a dreadful pun, they were growing on me. It made no real sense to me at all at the time, but I was seeing myself through her eyes now as well as my own, and it was easier.

How I would have coped without her balance, her love, I do not know. I had visions of the figure she described, a travesty of a man, and knew that she was managing to bring me to compromise, if not actual acceptance.

I still wanted Mitchell dead, though. That would never, ever change.

Finals came along, and we did all the usual cramming and sleepless panic, followed by an excess of alcohol. Tom drove us back to Cumbria in a Luton van, all our belongings piled up in the back and Bangor left behind. It was odd, because unlike so many of the other climbers, I was leaving university merely to move somewhere else with easy access to the hills. Our first stop was home, as I now knew my parents’ place, and a round of hugs from Brian and Karen. Tom ran Emily home, and I suddenly felt lost. For three years we had lived, effectively, as man and wife, and suddenly she wasn’t there. I knew there was a need for her to see her own family, but a little bit of jealousy stepped in. She was mine, now…I got through the first night, in a bed too big for one, and the next day I was distracted from my pining and my book by Karen’s shout.

“Stevie! Visitor!”

It turned out to be Miss Graham, of all people. Yet another hug, and the tea was poured, and she came straight to the point.

“What are your plans now you have your degree?”

“I don’t yet, we still have to wait for the results”

“Don’t be silly, we both know you’ve passed. No, what are you looking to do as a career?”

I really hadn’t thought about that, and said so. My aim had been, all along, to study something I loved and prove myself to others with that bit of paper.

“Stephen, I have a suggestion, and I think it is worth consideration. You could teach. I have heard you speak, and to be honest you could go into politics, but I suspect you would find that just a little bit distasteful. Or, you could take the necessary training courses and use your gifts to open the eyes of children. I would have you, you know, at Netherhall. You not only have the skills, but you have the ethos. And I feel you have the passion to get it across. Will you think about it?”

That was another turning point. She was right; I had seen no further ahead than my exams, and now there was a new target, and if t worked each year would bring a steady flow of fresh-faced challenges. I rang Em, and to no surprise at all she confirmed that Hilda had already been to see her with a similar offer. She giggled down the phone.

“Lover, that leaves us just one question. Do I teach as Miss Kerr or Mrs Jones?”

I laughed. “I think, from what Kaz says, that either way you’ll be teaching next to Mrs Skinner!”

A few days later we were in Em’s mother’s car, as Em drove us down to Eskdale for a few days in Boot. Nana was there, of course, to welcome us, and Arthur and Meg had a cake, and then the Toffs and Tessa turned up with the usual bottles of fizzy. A few days of running with Nana while the girls hit the beach, of climbing with the boys (we finally did CB) while she ran up the back with a new (gas) stove to have tea waiting for us, sunshine and rain, laughter and love.

And Emily and I decided it would be as Mrs Jones, and the date was set, the vicar at St Catherine’s being more than happy to set a May day aside for our celebration. I took Sid to one side a few days after we got back, and he cried as he agreed to be my best man, and I toyed with the idea of sending the Cunninghams a souvenir photo.

It was all so wonderful, but somewhere, somewhere, Mitchell lay hidden.