CHAPTER 33
I looked at him, the puzzlement plain on his face. Every minute I spent with James was a surprise. At times, he came across as mentally damaged, in the sense of speaking like a small child or someone of profoundly limited intelligence. Other times it took the appearance of OCD, especially in his persistent need to number things, or to say everybody’s name as a greeting. And then…and then there would be a break in his walls, usually when his sense of threat had faded, and there would be a bright, clever boy who very simply couldn’t get past his own mouth. Those were the times when I could see why his current Mum loved him.

What a hell of a life, in this wonderful world, where terms like geek are applied to ordinary, sane people by those who have no idea of what the word really, originally meant. And I was sure that James got far, far worse, and could only hope that when he did he was in one of his less aware phases. This was not one of those.

“Sometimes people call their friends by different names, son, like when you give new ones to the birds”

“No. That isn’t right. You are Rob and you are Jill, and one is a man and one is a girl. A man can’t be a girl and a girl can’t be a man”

“That’s right, James”

He carried on talking, as if I hadn’t spoken, his hands together in front of his chin, looking past me into the green of the reedbed.

“But a girl can be man camouflaged. Two skins. Can’t take skin off. It hurts. I took some skin off once. That hurt a lot. But if you have more skin underneath does it hurt? How many skins make Jill?”

I couldn’t decide how lucid he was, but everything he was coming out with made perfect sense.

“James, how do you know this?”

He looked at me, then, and the bright boy was there, shining an instant of life at me.

“Jill. It is Jill, isn’t it? Hiding in Robskin…will it hurt when you take it off and just be Jill?”

I felt tears start, and realised that the others had been as caught up in his words as I was. Larinda put her arms around me from behind, and Rachel and Karen took a hand each, as Terry laid his own arm across his son’s shoulders.

“James, it is already hurting her. I know you remember everything I say to you, so please remember not to hurt Jill by telling everyone, yeah?”

“I don’t hurt Rob, I don’t hurt Jill. How do we help her?”

Terry hugged his son to him. “By being there when we are needed and not when she needs space, James. That’s how you help anyone”

“Is she going to take off her skin?”

Terry looked at me, just then. “She’s already loosening it up ready, son”

Karen squeezed my hand. “Shall we walk on? What’s left to see, Gillian?”

James was nodding. “Rob is Jill is Gillian. That’s like the Cetti’s warbler. Two names, one of them to keep quiet from other people who aren’t us”

Terry looked at James as he fitted pieces together. “Can you do that, son?”

Once more a bright flash. “I ‘m odd, Dad, not stupid. Three names. Rob has three names”

There an instant, and gone. I realised how lucky I truly was, just then, right there. I had my problems, but I could talk them through with people as long as I was lucky enough to choose an audience as loving as the one I had. With James the communication wasn’t an option. I didn’t know a lot about the details of his ‘oddness’, but I wondered: was he in there, screaming to get out, as his mouth made the lists and his hands joined before his face? Or was the scar deeper, cutting right through his self? I remembered a girl I had worked with years before, a woman with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and she had spoken to me about it, about how she watched her hands line everything up on her desk, how a missing object brought panic even as she KNEW it was a delusion.

I had it so, so easy. James looked at me, his hands together again.

“Rob’s my friend. Is Jill my friend? Gillian?”

Karen smiled at him, then looked at me.

“Of course, love. Jill is Rob, and Rob is your friend”

“No. Rob wasn’t my friend because Rob wasn’t real and Jill is. Jill is my real friend. I have one friend”

I turned my head at a soft whisper of sound, and realised that Rachel was crying.

“No, James, you have three friends here, and they are all girls. James has three girlfriends”

Larinda had tissues, of course. We moved on through the wild part of the reserve, as the wind soughed through the reeds and James recited a bird list, and I realised that all my careful planning had been wasted. All the time spent working out how to leave the world that had hurt me so badly had been time lost from my life. How could I begin to compare my problems with someone so broken, so fundamentally ruined from birth? Larinda took my arm.

“That the look of someone realising they aren’t so shittily off after all?”

I sighed. “Guilty. At least I can now see myself doing something about it, like. Hope, sort of. Normally…normally, when I get that sort of delusion it’s just before the big crash, aye? False dawn? And don’t you dare say owt about darkest before the dawn, because that’s bollocks. You OK, Rach?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I will be, just thinking about how much pain this world seems to donate free and for gratis. Terry…”

She waved him back from his family. “Terry, how many actual friends has he got?”

He shook his head, sadly. “His mother used to leave him in his room most of the time. Easier to deal with the hard stuff by not doing any dealing at all. When we were together, he got invited to a few kids’ parties, but I realised…”

He drew a long breath. “I went to pick him up from one, and it was abundantly clear that the only reason he had been invited was as the entertainment. He’s not been to anything like that since. It’s taken a long time to get him to where he is now; little nudges, patience…so much patience. I went off the rails a little when he was in hospital once or twice…”

Rachel pressed the point. “Hospital?”

“Accidents. He broke a cheekbone walking into a tree once, and it was years before we could trust him with a hot drink. He’s HFA most of the time, but he drifts a little”

“HFA?”

“High-functioning autism, Rachel. Means he can sort of get by in society, but always will be odd, as he put it. Sometimes, though, when he’s tired, or frightened, he just shuts down. Meeting people does that”

“What did you mean by off the rails, Terry?”

He actually had the grace to look ashamed. “Screwed around a lot. I’m what the gay folk call ‘greedy’, and…Jill, you hated me, didn’t you?”

Bastard, catching me right in the soft bits. “You want the truth?”

“Oh, I know the truth. You knew what I’d been doing, and you wanted Karen spared from that, and you fancied her yourself. Look, sorry, you mind, you know, with these two around?”

“Clear the air, aye?”

“Aye. Yes. You never, ever made a move on her, and I stood there and watched as she dropped hint after hint, and thought, bugger it, if he’s not going to take the bait…shit. You didn’t want to hurt her, did you? What? Being, you know, or taking your exit?”

Nail firmly struck. “Aye, Terry, I saw what you’d done, and I thought, I love this girl, but…Look, she chose you, she married you”

He was nodding. “And because you are such a soft, loving girl you took me along in your caring, yeah? You even came to our wedding”

“I don’t take friendships lightly, Terry”

He looked over at Larinda. “Do not let this one escape. I know very few humans with that level of honesty, of loving-kindness, to quote the god-botherers. She hates me, and yet, well, here she is”

I looked him in the eye, trying to keep my expression neutral. “But I don’t hate you, do I?”

He let a little smile creep in. “No, not any more. I do grow on people. Took Kaz a while, but she got there”

I gave him a smile, but before I could answer Rachel butted in. “Crap, Terry. It’s not your charm, it’s James. How could anyone not love him? Anyone who doesn’t must be some sort of fuckwit. Look, Jill, Tel, yeah? Do I take this as being some sort of truce?”

His smile was broader now. “No, I don’t think so. I think this is better than that”

Suddenly, he stepped forward, and I had a man’s arms around me, and for a second I froze, only slowly letting my own arms come up to return the hug. His voice was soft, but clear.

“Thank you for being so very, very loyal to my wife. Thank you for being such a wonderful inspiration to my son. Thank you for allowing me such opportunities to show you that I am doing all I can to become worthy of Karen”

And then he kissed my cheek. We stood for a few seconds, till it suddenly became awkward, and then, wrapped up by my two women again we caught up with Karen and James, who was staring at a peacock butterfly as it sunned itself on the path.

“Jill…can I use a name that has already been used?”

“What name is that, son?”

“This is an eye-eye-fly. That’s my name. But there is an aye-aye that’s a lemur and they are primates in Madagascar and this is a butterfly which is not a primate but an insect”

I looked at him, and smiled. Rachel was right: how could anybody not love him? The butterfly started away in a swirl of black underwings and brilliant topcoat, as a shadow fell on it, and there stood MAC.