CHAPTER 70
He grinned to take the edge of the old joke, and I realised as his eyes went over my shoulder that the old joke was more for the benefit of Steph than me. I felt her hand come down on my shoulder, and I put mine over it.

“Why are you here, Dave?”

He looked up at Steph again. “Well, partly because it’s really through myself and Tony that these two women know each other. That’s for starters, I suppose. I think, though, the main reason was to have someone normal here”

As I bristled once more, I realised, somewhere at the back of my mind, that I was getting quite touchy over the concept of ‘normality, but Dave continued.

“No, not like that, Annie. Look, ignoring the children, and the neighbours, everyone here is either on your side of the church or sitting in the relatives’ seats, apart from me. I’m not just someone to get Tony out of the way so you three can talk, I’m the man with the wife who started out as a girl, I’m the normal one, I’m the example of the bloke in the street who in the end doesn’t give a shit. I am the seal of approval here”

“Bloody walrus more like, mate” said Steph from my shoulder. He grinned.

“Look at her, as girly as a pink unicorn with a rainbow tail, and she’s still the person I worked with as Steve. Everything she was, she still is, just better explained. I hear you had a wake for your old self, and I can understand it, but I hope you can remember that the person you said so long to is still there in you”

I nodded. “Just better explained, aye?”

“Fuck, Sar, she does talk like your bloody uncle. Yeah, Annie. I thought I was going to lose my best mate, instead I got a better one. You will have folk who feel exactly the same, you will have some who need to think a bit, and you will have one or two wankers. Did Steph tell you about her coming out?”

I laughed. “Yeah, her and Sarah both, in tandem”

“Well, they left early, and most people were OK, but we still had one or two twats there, and I had to Have Words in private”

I thought of Costello, and Steph came round to sit on the arm of my chair, just as Eric took my hand. She looked sharply at Dave.

“You never told me that, Dave”

“Need to know, Officer Woodruff, need to know. Speak to Little John some day for the full S.P. No, Annie, the whole point of this is that there will be people with attitudes more Daily Mail than rational, but those attitudes, well, they have to collide with the person they find standing in front of them. Easy for them to be arseholes when you are just passing through, but a lot harder for them to do it when they have to see you day in, day out. You are like the facial scar, or that chap with the Thalidomide hands we sometimes work with, after a few minutes it drops to the level of importance of the colour of your eyes”

Steph looked a little doubtful at that one, and Dave caught it. “Yeah, mate, I know, but there are ways and means for those too thick to see what the safe course of action is”

Eric squeezed my hand. “There will always be those who give lip service to it”

Dave was nodding. “Oh, don’t I know it. But unless you are having to listen to them or deal with them every day, where’s the problem? They are just a passing distraction. Steph, what do you think of my missus?”

“Sorry? Lovely woman, good cook, sense of humour even sicker than yours, what do you want me to say?”

“So she’s not some nigger, then?”

“Dave, mate…”

“I’m a race traitor, Annie, polluting the Aryan blood of the nation by consorting with a monkey. I’m a white bwoi who needs shanking, cause I stole one of the sisters from her people, yeah? My wife’s from Trinidad originally. I got, we got, a load of shit, conscious and unconscious, when we started out. We still get it, but as people know us she stops being ‘that black girl’ and becomes ‘Mrs Dave’. People adapt, love.”

He drew a deep breath. “I was only supposed to come here to distract Tony, and to be the token normal, and here I am lecturing you, and you are the one with the hill to climb. Sorry, Annie”

“Not at all, Dave. You give me things to think about, make me realise I have it a lot easier than many, aye? Always nice to get some perspective. I just didn’t realise the racism was still so, I don’t know, overt, aye?”

“Oh yeah, from all sides, mate. Eric, how often are you getting called a queer?”

I looked round at him, and caught his eye as he tried to look away.

“More than enough times, Dave”

I laced my fingers through his. “Why didn’t you tell me, love?”

“Look, it took all those tricks, all that dancing around, before I realised where I belonged. It just takes time, as Dave says”

“Aye, love, but not by yourself, not alone. If you have the strength to come through for me, what can I not do for you? Partners, aye?”

He actually blushed. “Yeah, partners…look, can we have a word, just the two of us?”

We went out to the conservatory again, and chased out two boys trying to make coherent sounds from a couple of stringed instruments, and Eric turned me to face him.

“Partners, love? I have put a huge amount of thought into things since August. Not really been that long, has it?”

Where was this going? “No, not really”

“Think about what Dave was saying, about knowing Steph for so long before she was Steph, and then putting the two together. That’s what my mind is doing, yeah? I have known you so many years, so no, it hasn’t been just since August, if you see what I mean. It’s been years and years. I realised that once we started looking for a house together. You are just the same person you always were, you just have a rather fuller bathroom cabinet, all that odd shampoo stuff and that, you are still my mate, my old mate. So I sort of suspect that I really am here for the long term.”

I kissed him, as seemed timely, and asked “And?”

“Well, you are now down as my next of kin, for old and new jobs, but I was going to propose a joint account for paying the mortgage, at least. Would you be up for that? Two living as cheaply as one, sort of thing?

“Makes sense, love”

“Annie, I have a whole raft of issues with you, with all this, you know that, but I have no cold feet about you. I love you, simple as that, and it gets easier dealing with the fallout from the other stuff, easier every day. I am not gay, not like some people say. That should tell you what I think of you. But now and again, I get a little twitch, so if I do something that hurts you, please remember that I love you and it is never intentional. OK?”

“Eric, how could I ask for, or expect more? You know how I feel about you”

“Tell me”

“I love you. I can’t imagine you not being in my bed, or my shower, or demanding I bring you a cuppa when I get in from work. I was going to ask you about the next of kin thing, but you sort of gazumped me there, so I’ll take that as read, and do it when I get in, aye? Now, kiss me again…and one thing I want to ask you mmmmmmffh”

“You called me your mate, aye?”

“Yeah…”

“When we get home, mate, can we please do some serious mating?”

“Oh god, when you put it like that….”

I got another snog, and then we had to sort of sit down to cover our reactions, and he picked up one of the stringed things and started to mess with it, and that brought the boys back in, and in the end Geoff was giving Darren and Jim basic lessons on two mandolins, and it was good, so good, and I was so deeply in love it hurt. My poor, shy, abused man.

Sarah joined me as I watched the fumbling and twanging. “We are really lucky, aren’t we?”

I nodded. “So hard to see, sometimes, and then you realise they have their own problems, that they have their own holes to climb out of”

She grinned. “Comfort in misery shared, iawn?”

I grinned back, and looked round the room, where two boys twanged and jangled as a variety of adults laughed and joked, and gave advice, some of it serious.

“Who is bloody miserable, girl?”