CHAPTER 15
We sat for a while, talking. That sounds banal, but it wasn’t, not at all. This wasn’t passing the time, but rather the first time I had ever been able to tell my mother who I was, a moment I had fretted and worried over, and at the same time dreamt of. She got straight to the point.

“What are we having for tea?”

“Pardon?”

“Aye, I’m thinking of my stomach. Jill, life goes on, aye? I’ve just told you that, so while you have just turned everything upside down…”

“I’m sorry, Mam”

“No, no saying sorry. We are going to be as normal as we can, like, and that means we carry on, we eat, it’ll be fish on Fridays, ham and pease puddin’ Friday tea, and I’ll do us a roast on Sundays, just as usual, unless you want to go out to the Bowes or somewhere”

“Mam, I live in Surrey, remember?”

“Aye, but if you are having something so…serious done to you, you’ll want somewhere safe to recover, like”

“Mam, I already said I was probably going abroad, like”

“Well, then, you’ll want someone to hold your hand over there for a bit, pet. Anyway, when are we talking about?”

“Ach, I’ve no idea. I have to speak to counsellors first, then possibly a shrink, then…then I have to live, you know, as a woman for at least a year, I think”

She looked at me hard, yet again. “It’s not going to be easy for you, is it?”

“Mam, it’s never been easy for me. Girls like me, well, there is no ‘easy’ anywhere, any time. I mean, I haven’t even decided how far I want to take this, aye?”

Once more the level stare. “Like shite you haven’t. Your decision was made long before you decided to tell me, wasn’t it?”

She was right, and she knew it. My decision, I realised, had already been made when I first came out to Karen, and it had been to do or to die.

“Now, haddaway down to the Chinese, aye? The one at the bottom of the hill, not that one in the High Street. He does me a special chicken fried rice with extra pineapple, and I like that, so tell him it’s for me. That other one’s too greasy, and they put that seaweed powder in it, keeps us awake, like. And you might as well stop off in the Neville for a scotch. I know you and your beer, and you won’t have had any down there, will you?”

I felt all of twelve years old as she did the maternal ritual of getting money from her handbag for the food, sending me on an errand as if I had never grown and left home, and the warmth nearly brought me to tears again. I grabbed a jacket and headed for the door.

“Divvent be too long in that pub, like, I want me tea early enough I’m not sleeping on a full stomach, you hear?”

“Aye, Mam”

I headed for the door.

“Jill…”

“Aye?”

“I love you. I always will”

“I know, Mam, I really know”

I got the waterworks under control as I headed down the hill, and over the road to the Neville Arms. It was now around seven o’clock, and the heavy drinkers were still milking every drop from Happy Hour in the chain pub up the road. I found a space at the bar, and the huge lad who served me was an old schoolmate. Small town, narrow compass.

“How, Rob, hoo lang’re ye back for?”

“Hiya Jim, just a few days, seeing to me Mam, like. Hip replacement, aye?”

“Aye, ah hord. Thy brother’s been in, the puff one, aye? Telt us aboot it. Scotch?”

“Aye, please”

No need to ask if I wanted a pint; only women and puffs drink halves. Even Neil drank pints; the women already in the pub were drinking two halves at once, their intake matching that of their men, just from twice as many glasses. He pulled me a pint of the dark beer, and I took my first sip for nearly a year. Home.

“Hoo’s it gannin’ in cockney land?”

“Ah, not so bad. Got a cunt for a boss, like, but he’s due early retirement, so we’re gan’ te throw a party, a going away do, when he does, like”

“How, if he’s such a twat, whey’re ye giving him a party?”

I laughed. “Ach, Jim, the man isn’t invited, like, it’s for the rest of us”

Jim laughed, which shook some of the bottles behind the bar.

“I alwez loved thy sense of humour”

“Na, not my idea, it was a lass I work with, Rachel”

“She bonny?”

“Aye, Jim, very much so. The twat caught us having a hug one day, and he let the tyres down on me bike”

“Ye’re givin’ her one?”

“Na, just mates, like”

“Ye still seeing that sheepshagger lass, what’s her name?”

“Siobhan. Aye, at the minute, like, but it’s sort of dying, but, well, got another lass now, so it’s a wee bit complicated”

He laughed again. “If ye’re seeing two lasses, I bet the other’un’s a dorty piece!”

“Now, lad, I can’t say about stuff like that, can I now?”

My grin gave him the answer, though. Larinda was indeed ‘a dirty piece’, in that she knew what she liked and set out to get and enjoy it. I also realised, just then, how much I missed her. My life was changing so quickly, in so many ways, and she was becoming my storm anchor as well as lover.

“Bar’s starting to fill up, Jim, I’ll grab a table, Just having a couple, aye? Getting a Chinky for tea”

“Well, Ah’ll see thee before ye gan back, aye? Gan for an Indywoo?”

“I don’t know, Jim, see how Mam is, aye?”

“Aal reet. Let us knaa, like, afore ye gan back”

“Will do”

I turned away from the bar, just in time to catch the question another customer asked him.

“How, is that the one with the fuckin’ puff for a brother? Hoo can ye sorve cunts like that?”

I stood, back turned, as Jim answered before I could.

“Whey, marra, ah torns the tap an’ hurlds a glass belaa it, like. Piss easy. Cunts like ye, George, ye fuck off oot the door and divvent come back. Ever, Cause ye’re barred. Shut it as ye gan”

“Fuck ye an aal, ye cunt”

The door slammed just too softly to break any of the glass in it, and I turned back round to Jim, who winked.

“Watch hoo ye gan at the Chinky, Rob. George has aalwez been an arsehole, and he might try an’ be a bit lively, like”

“Thanks anyway, Jim. I’ve had worse from him”

Years of beatings in and out of school, to be precise, that only stopped when I left for college. Fifty three years of age, and my school bully was still haunting me. I finished a second pint, thought of a third, and then thought of Mam, at home alone.

“Night, Jim!”

“Gan canny, Rob”

The young girl in the Jade Palace knew exactly who my mother was, and smiled delightfully as she added some hieroglyphs that seemed to mean ‘extra fruit’, but it was spoiled ten seconds later by the shove from behind.

“Thy kid’s a puff, Carter”

I turned, and George Bell was there, head shaved to disguise his hair loss, belly hanging over his belt and fingers yellow with nicotine. When he opened his mouth to speak, there were gaps inside. Purple veins spread across his cheeks and all over his nose. I found myself laughing.

“What’s funny, puff?”

“Ah, George, we always used to joke about it, but now I can say it: fuck off, red nose”

“Ye think ye’re a big man, noo, coz ye’re livin’ in that London? Ah say ye’re a puff, just like thy kid”

There was an inevitability building in this confrontation. Fifty three, and the arsehole who had tormented me for so many years was still trying to treat whatever demons lived in his soul by visiting them on others. The shopgirl’s father was there now.

“Mr Bell, you go now, or I call Police”

“Caal the fuckin’ polliss, Ah divvent give a shit”

He reached out to take a handful of my shirtfront, and that did it. Fifty three years, that number that was so important to me, fifty three years of shit, and pain, and all those school years of beatings, and my mother’s unconditional love, and this, this piece of filth…

I stepped forward as he tugged, and before he could cock his head for the butt I drove my right knee as hard as I could, just where it hurt the most. He gave a strangled sort of scream, and fell to the ground whimpering.

“You pathetic little loser, did it ever occur to you that I’m a lot bigger than when you used to beat the shit out of me? You come near me again, and you get the same, aye?”

I bent down a little, and dropped my voice.

“You ever go near Neil, and I cut them off. Got me?”

As the chef and owner pulled him to his feet, and bundled him out of the door, he glared at me.

“Ye fight like a fuckin’ lass, ye!”

Funny, that.

“Bye, George, missing you already!”

I made my way up the hill with a bag of Chinese food, and then spent an hour being rocked by Mam till we were able to face eating. Microwaves are handy things.