CHAPTER 9
I could see exactly what she meant, for it had made up so much of her debate with Maria: if things went wrong, each could lose a friend. I had never seen anything really nasty in Maria, apart from a certain blinkered aspect when she saw something she wanted. Like Alwen.

“Got to go, love, for the quiz. Chat after?”

“Please. It’s, well, I know you see things clearly. Might help me do so”

“Later, then. Promise”

I took my drinks back to our table, as Marlene made yet another astonishingly filthy joke out of a perfectly innocuous quiz question, something about Hungary, gussets and the word ‘moist’. Tom welcomed me back, taking a quick look over his shoulder at no less than three tables of Bakers and the duo of Pobol.

“Did you catch that, Jen? ‘Biggest spot of moistness in Hungary’? What’s that mean?”

Connie suddenly started laughing.

“Just got it. Lake Balaton!”

Tom was scribbling, as she spelled out the word, then chuckling as she got the other joke.

“Wakey wakey, hands on snakey. That lake is full of snakes, swimming ones”

Amina and I looked at each other, but Con was shaking her head.

“No, girls. Grass snakes. Harmless”

My wife shuddered.

“I’ll take your word for it, but no. Just no. I’ll stick to warm seas and nice beaches, thank you very much. What’s up with Alwen, Jen?”

“Stuff, love. She’ll tell us what she feels she can, but I suspect we need a careful-treading approach. Going to join us when she finishes, she says. Oh: that one’s Albany”

We came fifth in the end, behind Pobol and all three sets of bakers, so we were without winnings, but Scott and Omar, as ever, brought their third place spoils to our table to share. We topped them up as appropriate, and then Lil was pushing the younger woman out from behind the bar as she started the last-orders ritual. Marlene sitting down with the Prossers.

Alwen pulled up a spare chair, setting down a pinky-peach coloured long drink while waving away Omar’s offer of some Italian fizz.

“Riding home tonight, thanks. Need as clear a head as I can manage. Jen?”

“Haven’t said anything, girl. That’s your call”

“Yeah. Thanks. Got to… Start from scratch. You all know I have family in Swansea, right?”

A round of nods from us all, and she winced.

“You also know I don’t go home, and why. My parents keep pushing for it, though, and well, family? Well, I had a weekend free for once, deliberately. I caved in, thought, well, how bad could it be? So I went”

She waved a hand down her front.

“Ever since that day, with Marlene, yeah? Little black dress and New Year’s Eve? This has been me ever since. Got used to being this way, same in college. Got so many friends there, though, it’s not exactly typical”

Connie put a hand on the girl’s.

“You pass, though, love. Nobody would know unless, well, they knew, aye?”

Alwen nodded,

“Yeah, yeah. I’m lucky that way, unlike a lot of girls. Not the point, really. I mean, my family know, but I sort of hadn’t realised how little they really knew. I mean, I didn’t wear a dress”

Omar shuffled round to hug her.

“I’m hearing all sorts there, love. What did you put on?”

“Oh, just a T-shirt, fleece, pair of slacks”

She waved at her chest.

“Trouble is, well, HRT is working”

There was an almost unanimous “Ah!” from around the table, and she continued, holding up her other hand.

“Girly watch, pink trainers, and my comfiest bra. Mum got very pushy. Dad got shouty. I had an open return on the train, so I just walked out before he got past shouty to punchy. Got back over here, weekend is a complete wash-out. Gave Harry a shout, and he had the Saturday and Sunday available at the Clifton, so I thought, well… Better than sitting in my room and getting pissed, as well as cheaper”

She took a long sip from her pink/peach thing, then waved it at us.

“Lemon, lime and bitters. Picked it up from Ish and his family. Technically it’s alcoholic, but it’s just about zero. And yes, I’m doing the hesitation, delay thing”

A long, deep breath.

“Alicia and some of the other girls were in, including that joined-at-the-hip pair, Rachel and Emma. They’re odd; don’t think they’re gay, but they seem to work as a couple. Anyway, ‘Licia had some lad called Clive in tow, and he had a couple of friends. This was the Saturday night, yeah? And the friends, there were four of them, they were obviously looking to pull, but there’s Rachel and Emma, completely inwards sort of thing, but one of the lads, he’s staying back, just watching, and it turns out he’s called Matthew. He’s polite, not pushy, has a bit of chat over the bar, but that’s it, till they all clear off to the Happy Wok”

Amina couldn’t keep quiet, of course.

“And? There’s more, we can tell”

Alwen just nodded slowly, then shook her head.

“Yes, there’s more and no, I don’t know what I’m doing, and, well, get this bit out of the way first. I came back in for the Sunday shift, and there were ‘Licia and Clive again, just having a quiet sit and natter. I think it’s the House rules, you know? Somewhere nearby that doesn’t close as early as Kim’s place, where they can do the ordinary boy-girl stuff”

Amina waved her on, as impatient as ever.

“Yeah, they had Matthew along with them, so he’s the gooseberry. Just him, yeah? Not the others. And gooseberry is as gooseberry does, or is that the other way round? Anyway, he ends up sitting at the bar, and the place is quiet, Sunday evening trade, so we talk. And he asks me out. So… I do the full disclosure thing, hi, I’m the freak, you know the score, and he just shrugged. ‘Clive’s happy’, he says, ‘so are Seb and Jake’. And… This is the thing, yeah? I had just had all that shit from my own sodding family, and I wasn’t even in a bloody skirt, just for them, and here was a lad being so polite, and I said ‘Yeah, okay’, and was it just because of how Mam and Dad were?”

Connie reached across to hold a finger to my wife’s lips, still holding Alwen’s hand.

“There’s more, isn’t there?”

More nodding from the girl.

“Yeah, there is, and it’s something I’ve read a lot. Stories, autobiographies, yeah? I met up with him on the Monday evening, and we went to that Indian street food place off St Mary’s, then got the bus down to the Waterfront. No booze, none at all.no groping, no snogging, no pushiness, just a hug and a peck on the cheek and goodnight. There’s me assuming it was just a box-tick, and then he rang me the following evening. Folk club on the Thursday night: did I want to go? Yeah, I say, okay, but then, well, we sort of agree to a lunchtime coffee before my shift here on the Tuesday, and I’m realising he’s not just ticked the ‘have a date with a tranny’ box, so we have a toasty and an Americano at Costa’s, and I can’t remember who said what, but he laughed at something, then just grinned at me, and it was, shit: he’s actually not bad-looking, and that’s, you know… So I go to work, after another cheek-peck, and all I can think about is his grin, and that thing I’ve read”

Connie was still solicitous, and I blessed my wife’s restraint in holding back her own questions as Tom’s wife asked, “Which is?”

“Oh, nothing amazing, just, well, there are so many people like me that talk about wasted years, and that’s me. Stuck in a rut until Marlene and the rest lifted me out of it. And then there’s when I watch women. Easy to get things mixed up. Maria, well, she talks about watching girls and fancying them, and at the same time envying them, and I thought, all that baggage from my parents, was I over-rationalising things?”

Another hug from Omar, who asked, “So that Thursday was a goer?”

“It was a no-brainer, love. I needed to know who I was. Matt had his Mam’s car for the evening, so he picked me up, and, well, I thought ‘folk club’, so I did the flouncy skirt and gypsy blouse thing, and he only looked down my top five or six times that I caught, and the club was all in Welsh, which suited me. The Prossers were there as well, so I got a sideways look from Nana Deb, but no problems. So we sat down. And his arm ended up across my shoulders and… my hand ended up on his knee, and that was it, till the end, and Frank asks if we want to come down to a chip shop they like”

She took another, longer pull from her drink, and I noticed the tremor in her hand.

“So we had chips and stuff, and ate them standing out by the Taff, and Debbie and frank are no sooner finished than they are into a simple snog and cuddle, and I gathered that place means something to them, so I look up at Matt, and, well, it worked for me, and I think it worked for him. And we’re both back in college the next week, so, well, there’s more PDA stuff, and I know Maria’s not happy, but there’s still that question: am I doing this just to spite my parents?”

A quiet word from behind me.

“Can we have a word, Alwen?”

Debbie, with her husband. Omar waved at the bottles.

“None left, Deb”

“Ah, you can have ours. Baking in the morning, ah? Now, girl, you seem to have shared it all with these folk; mind if we add a bit more?”

Alwen was a little hesitant.

“Go ahead”

“Right. Alicia has been on your case, and so has Seb. Very switched on, that lad. And I have had words with Maria”

“Oh, please don’t!”

“Done. She just needed a reminder of personal boundaries, and given her history, well, it sort of struck home. Why do you think we took you for those chips?”

“Ah. Scoping out?”

“Absolutely. I was watching his eyes, where he was looking”

“Down my top, a lot of the time”

“Aye, I’ll give you that, but that’s men. He wasn’t like the coppers, checking everyone else out, he was just watching you, or the musicians, and… Frank understands. I had… I knew a man a lot of years ago, long gone now, and…”

Her husband cuddled into her, kissing her cheek.

“Deb talks of how all she could se of him were his eyes, on hers, and we did a little memorial thing to him and other friends---“

Debbie interrupted.

“Not so little”

“Call it select, then. No jokes, but size isn’t everything. We had enough of the right people there to make it all we needed. Anyway, if he’s watching your eyes, even with the occasional look downwards, that’s a good sign. And our spies tell us he’s a sound lad”

Debbie settled back into her husband’s arms.

“And you don’t get to waste as many bloody decades as I did”