CHAPTER 53
I spent a long while taking all of that apart, for while I had no doubts at all, Elen’s revelations had rippled that millpond of certainty.

In some ways, I suppose, our time living as a couple had raised a few issues. For starters, we didn’t always agree, whether it be on meal plans or which film we might choose for an evening out. My dreams as a girl had been pretty conventional, where a person of unspecified gender would arrive, white horses, happily ever after, et cetera, that gender clarifying in my mind as I moved from fairy stories to puberty.

Hindsight was crystal clear for me: I had watched all of the usual ‘princess’ films, with their relentlessly heterosexual depiction of what a relationship should be, and I had cheered on the various princes, like almost any other little girl, even though I had arrived after the typical cast had become slightly less pallid in their average complexion. I suppose it was a but like marzipan: I could cheer on the character getting the wedding cake while ignoring the fact that all of that splendid icing would have been laid over a surface of the horrible almond-based paste. I could appreciate the drinking of champagne in their banquets, despite never having tasted it.

There were set forms. Girl is really a princess, and is beautiful; man is most definitely a prince, usually with a short back and sides and wearing tight trousers for some reason, probably a grown-up thing. And princesses always wore long dresses that looked utterly silly. Living where I did, my little mind was forever wondering what they did when it rained.

Puberty clarified everything while simultaneously confusing the hell out of me. I realised that there would never be a prince in my life, and that I never wanted one, and then there was the corollary: why? Why did I see things so differently?

My parents were profoundly different to those of other children, something I only realised in my teens, when I started to pick up on their language. Welsh, at least the variety around Bethesda, is far from well-equipped for gender-neutral concepts. Every word is gendered, and there are only two, masculine and feminine. They got round it by using ‘nhw’ (they) with an auxiliary verb like ‘bod’, rather than inflect the verb-noun stems as in Latin. In my innocence, I put the frequent conflict between that plural pronoun and singular concepts as being down to my language being a foreign one for my parents, learned in later life. It was a long time before I worked out that they had simply been doing their best not to programme me with conventionality and conformity.

Ifor, of eternal distasteful memory, had been dead right about them when he had shouted “Gerlan hippies”. I had collared Mam about it one day, not that long after Alys had first appeared as herself, asking her directly why she did what she did with her words. As was usual, she had sat me down with a hot drink, snuggling up to me on the sofa.

“Long story, love, but I think you are ready for it. Old enough to understand”

“I know you spoke English before I was born, Mam”

“Not that at all. Well, not primarily. You saw that Alys has come back after the holidays. What do you think about them?”

“About HER, Mam. She says she’s really a girl”

“What do you think she is?”

“I don’t know, but isn’t it better to be nice to people?”

“Excellent answer, Enfys. You knew her before, when she was supposed to be a boy”

“Yes, but she was never a real boy. We could all see that”

“You mean she never fitted in with boys?”

“Well… She looked like one, but she was never, she didn’t… Mam?”

“Yes, love?”

“How awful that must have been for her!”

“That’s exactly it. That’s why her parents are helping her now. And it’s why Dad and me have done our best to let you tell us who you are, rather than us doing that telling. Alys and her parents have had a really hard time; this is the first time things have started to look better for them. Can you answer a question for me?”

“Of course”

“Are you a boy or a girl or something else?”

“Oh, Mam! Thought that was going to be a hard one! A girl, of course”

“How do you know? We have done our best not to tell you that answer, to let you tell us, as I just said. So how do you know?”

“I just know, Mam!”

“Yes. It’s the same with Alys, even though everyone kept telling her she was really a boy. That’s why Dad and me have tried so hard to give you the room to think”

“Mam?”

“Yes, love?”

“Would you have liked a boy better? You and Dad?”

“How could we know? We didn’t get one, as my daughter has just confirmed. But, well, a child is a child, and a child of ours would still be just that. So, probably, no. We wouldn’t. Anyway, we have you, so we’ll just have to make do”

She had waited a couple of seconds for my jaw to drop, before grinning and hugging me.

“And no, my love, we are not ‘making do’, me and Dad. Fancy doing some baking, daughter of ours?”

That was another aspect I found myself pondering in the weeks after Elen’s declaration of why she had taken so strongly, in the end, to Warren. The likes of Ifor had always shouted out about sex, about legs or arses or breasts, and from what little Alys had told us, the girls with Ifor had been the same. That cow whose main concern hadn’t been the imminent rape of my lover, but rather the cleanliness of Ifor’s penis for her own bit of fun afterwards.

No; Elen’s views about her fiancé were far clearer even than mine had been, even with her revelation about the size of his own male bit when he was being cooled down. It fitted in so well with that full story of Mam walking out on Dad rather than see his soul eroded, corroded in the toxic atmosphere of a shit workplace in a shitty town. Could Alys and I ever live up to that, to those standards?

The only answer I could really offer myself was a promise that I would do my level best, because that was what Alys deserved.

Once again, though, Summer was heading towards an end, Dad doing his best to play sneaky conspirator by ordering two Shrewsbury tickets without telling me, but as I had recognised the envelope when it had dropped through the letter box back in the Spring, I had already booked the train tickets for the two of us as far ahead as I had been able to manage, so when he had done the ‘abracadabra’ thing with the festival tickets, I simply showed him the print-out of the Trainline reservation e-mail. I mean: I had already told Matt where I was going! Mam almost collapsed onto the sofa, she was laughing so hard.

“Monster, Keith! We have produced a monster! Check her room for death rays and a Seekrit Bunker!”

“Ah, but Pinky”

Mam had snapped back in mock anger, “Brain!”

“Penny for them!”

“That’s thoughts, Keith, not brains! Why am I Pinky and not The Brain?”

“Doesn’t matter. Because this one thinks she’s been The Brain, mwahaha, and she hasn’t!”

He turned serious.

“Enfys?”

“Yes?”

“Those tickets refundable?”

“I think so. Why?”

“Because Nansi is lending Alys her car. You’ll be able to fit your harp in. Not so clever after all, dearest daughter ours!”

I had a lot to learn, it seemed.

In the end, the festival wasn’t quite itself, as we were missing two particular people, away on the other side of the world, which left an awful lot of festivalgoers we didn’t actually know coming up to ask us why we were without a certain ‘woman fiddler with red hair’, which got a little wearying after a while. At least I had one superb present from Dad, a little wheeled frame that he had made for me on which to trundle my harp around. We played in sessions with Annie, Jan and the rest of the crew, we threw ourselves into the ceilidhs as well as in the ‘mosh pit’, as Kelly called the standing space immediately in front of the stage, and my love and I made exactly that in our own little tent.

The festival was almost becoming routine, I thought several times but each time I did so, I would catch sight of Annie grinning at her husband, or Ginny swapping surreal banter with Shan, or simply the utter relaxation of Bill and Jan as they lay together on a rug one afternoon, and that deep contentment would swallow me whole. I knew who I was, I knew who I loved, and that was all that would ever matter.

Just a few more days, and we were back in our own little house with Tref and Lee, ready for Round Two of our studies. First, however, I needed to ask Tref about his black eye.