Sisters 31

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CHAPTER 31
The drive over to the Channel coast was getting familiar now, but this time we had our parents with us. Our parents, not Siân’s, as that would have been a step so excessive I’d have lost control. I would never forgive her for what she had said and done, but I had agreed with my wife that we had to come to some sort of understanding. Our Mam and Dad, though, needed no such adjustment. Somewhere near Swindon, Dad turned round to face me.

“What’s the lad like, then?”

“Side of a house, Dad. Big, he is. I think Sar likes her beefcake”

Mam laughed. “Growing up with the men in our family might have shaped her tastes a bit, Twmi”

He smiled. “Nothing wrong with looking like a man, if that’s what you are, aye? It is only now I can see clearly how she never was one. We have been blessed, both of us, in our daughters”

He said no more on that, until we were finally parked on one of the side streets in Dover. As we left the car, he turned to me and took my shoulders in his broad hands.

“We will do our best, Elaine, but if we do this wrongly you must tell us, and tell us immediately”

I smiled at him, the love almost bringing me to tears. “Never, Dad. Never have you done it wrong. Now, I want tea. I sent the text, so it should be ready”

I gave the door a good knock, and there she was, looking as much at home in her domesticity as any other woman, a smile glowing on her face.

“Mam, Dad, welcome! Come in! Siân, how’ve you been? Tea’s in the pot, Lainey!”

“You got the text, then?”

“Indeed, but I delegated. Jim’s made it”

She led us into the living room, where Tony was standing ready to face his examination, Jim beside him. That must be his mother, I thought, and, ah yes. A wig, beard shadow. Put those thoughts away, girl, and play nicely. Sarah made the introductions, and Dad shook Tony’s hand.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, son. Both of my daughters have sung your praises, so I am glad to finally meet the lad who has brought the smiles back.”

I caught Sarah preening at that, and then Mam went one further by sitting down with the two other older ladies and making her own introductions, all as if Alice wasn’t so clearly a man in a dress and wig. My sister and wife shot off to the kitchen to gather the tea, while Jim showed Dad where he was sleeping, which rather oddly was under the stairs in a cupboard. Harry Potter clearly had a lot to answer for.

It was all so normal, even allowing for the cupboard camping, and within ten minutes Dad was “Granddad” and Mam “Nana Sioned” as the little bundle of energy launched into a garbled account of their rather amazing trip to Australia. Sarah, of course, had the pictures, and after a while proved her domestic goddess status in the best way, with food, wine and beer for the boys. I had some very ungenerous thoughts about my mother-in-law just then, and then Mam brought out her little present for Jim.

It was a chocolate selection box, and he received such a stern lecture from my sister that I nearly choked trying not to laugh. It was uncanny: she was not only acting exactly like Mam, she even sounded like her. When Dad started laughing, I lost it, and she turned round to us with a puzzled expression.

“What?”

I looked at Mam, who was also losing her battle with the giggles.

“Chwaer, you sounded so much like Mam just then!”

That did it, and with my parents I let the laughter out till my sides hurt. I had been so worried about this, for while it is one thing to accept that your son has always been your daughter it is another step entirely to see her so completely and clearly a woman. I had been nervous about Alice, too, but Mam was clearly finding her wavelength. This was going to work. The result was sealed when Sarah put the little boy to bed, and then returned to ask if “His Granddad” could do the story for him. To my horror, when Dad returned from that duty he was crying. He closed the living room door behind him, and held a hand up for silence, as Siân turned the telly off. Mam reached out for his hand as he started to speak.

“I need to say something, here and now. Years ago our lives took a blow I thought we would never recover from. My daughter came home, and told me she was a homosexual. That hurt me, but it hurt Sioned more. She couldn’t see where she had gone wrong, that her daughter had turned out queer. Yes, that was our word. What had Sioned done? She obviously hadn’t been enough of a mother, enough of a woman, for our daughter.

“Then Elaine brought our son to us, in a dress, and it was my turn to feel what she did. How could I have been a good father if he wasn’t just turning his back on acting as a man should but on the actual fact of BEING a man? It was Elaine that banged our heads together, and I remember what I said that evening.

“I have two pretty daughters, I said, and Sioned and I decided that we would do our best to be proud of them. They were, they are, our flesh. Then that bastard nearly destroyed our pretty little girl”

I was watching Tony at that point, and there was something that passed between the two men, something black. Dad paused, staring at him.

“Someone did the world a service a little while later, didn’t they?”

Tony looked down at his feet, but I could see his knuckles whiten. Dad nodded.

“There has remained, however, one sadness in our lives. Elaine and her lovely wife seem to have decided not to go down that path, and obviously my little girl cannot”

Mam passed him a hanky, and I felt my wife’s hand clench a little. Dad wiped his eyes, and continued. “Tonight, however, it seems we have become grandparents, assuming your approval, Tony.”

Sarah’s man looked up, and gave his own gentle, loving smile.

“Of course, Twm. It’s what we would want, and Jim seems happy”

Tony stood, then, and suddenly he and Dad were hugging each other. Fortunately, Mam had more tissues, for we all needed them.

The next morning, it was Tony who knocked on our door to let us know he had tea for us. Siân gave him her puzzled face.

“What the hell are you doing up this early on Christmas Day, Tone?”

He grinned. “Small boys and cold knees in the back, love. He’s down with Sar opening his presents. You two are going to have to work for your keep, though. We’re not made of tea!”

“And what do our duties consist of?”

“Giving me a hand with the breakfast”

Siân looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “Can we do that?”

Tony laughed. “When I said we’re not made of tea, I was going to add that we WILL be made of sausages, bacon, beans….”

I laughed. “When you put it like that, big man!”

“Yeah, well, Sar’s got a lot to do. She’s doing her first ever full Chrimbo experience for dinner, or so she tells me. She’s really been fretting about this”

Siân gave my hand a squeeze. “Being a real woman, aye?”

He nodded. “Always there with her, that bit of doubt. We going to make this a good one?”

I nodded back. “Absolutely. Now, leave us to drink up, and we’ll see you in kitchen hell in ten, aye?”

The day was indeed a delight. We had a little trip out along the coast, Jim all wrapped up in new cycling kit, and a dinner that was surely everything Sarah had hoped for. Tony’s own mother Enid seemed to have clicked with Mam, and between the two of them they lifted Alice up into older lady status. I caught Sarah chuckling at one point, and to my own enquiring look she merely said “Three old ladies in search of a lavatory”.

On Boxing Day, we went out to Canterbury, to see where Sarah worked, and that produced a very quiet argument between her and Alice, which Alice won. I was more than a little worried, for I could see what lay behind the façade, and if I could, so could others. I kept my best copper head on, and got Tony to use his own experience to watch the blind side. The moment came in some play park, where the other women were all sat on benches as my wife and I watched Jim run around with some other lads he had encountered. Tony and Dad had gone for coffees when a stranger came and sat right next to my sister. Stranger to me, that is, for she clearly knew him, and from their glances the conversation was all about Alice. I checked round us for any other men, thinking of what I was dealing with back home, and then relaxed as I saw that three old ladies approach the bench. Introductions made, and a peck on the cheek for each of them, Alice included. I kept a little distance so as not to put any more pressure on things, and had to hold myself back as a few of their very quiet exchanges grew a little more heated, which was when Alice stepped up to him and took him in her arms. I could see Mam’s face clearly, and her expression was terrifying. Stay back, Lainey. Give them room.

Dad and Tony came back, and I decided that was the right moment to approach. Sarah introduced the man as Andy, a colleague, and that said all I needed to know. I mouthed “You OK?” to Sarah’s friend, and got back a sharp little nod. We ended up in a burger bar, with Andy and his two nephews, who were the ones Jim had been playing with, and by then I was sure it was all safe. Which allowed two of us to hit the Monsoon shop across the way where the magic word ‘Sale’ was casting its spell.

It was later that evening, a sober one as we were due back the next day, that I got the fuller story.

“Before I was there, Lainey. Andy’s got the reputation, aye? Shagger, ladies’ man, all that sort of thing, and he turns some woman down and she does the rape accusation bit. Nearly goes down for it as well, but Alice has the alibi, even bloody security camera footage, so he gets out and she gets sacked”

There was fear mixed in with her anger, and I understood how close this felt to what that bastard Joe Evans had done to her, how the police had treated her.

“He safe, chwaer?”

“Safe? I think, I really think, he’d die for her. People can surprise you, aye? And I wish you didn’t have to go back so soon. This has been my first real family Christmas. It shouldn’t be over this soon. Mam and Dad could have stayed on”

I hugged her. “Dad’s already said his piece, chwaer. He wants his favourite grandson to visit him at home. Let’s give your men the rest of their family, aye?”

I thought hard, but in the end it had to be said.

“And I think that family includes Alice now”

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Comments

These Different Perspectives

joannebarbarella's picture

I totally agree with Fey. It is wonderful getting these additional views of the "Sussex Saga" stories, even if most of this chapter took place in Kent! And the series encompasses Wales too!

Hey, no tissue warning?

Podracer's picture

Don't they come as standard with C's words? I know, no tragedy on the page, but still....

"Reach for the sun."