The Adventures of William Fitts, page 3
“Gran,” I pleaded, frantically wiping the tears out of my eyes. “Gran, I’m here, it’s me!”
For a moment I thought she might have seen me, really seen me, before the curtains were suddenly drawn; the light in her eyes dimmed, her gaze going blank as she sank back into her chair. I don’t think she even knew I was there.
As I was contemplating whether or not to stay for much longer the door swung open, the nurse coming in while holding a tray of tea.
“I brought your tea, Edith,” she explained, placing it on the table nearest me. “Are you having a nice time with your grandson?”
“My grandson?” Gran asked, sitting up as her gaze flitted back and forth. “Is – is he here, have you seen him?”
“He’s right here,” said the nurse kindly, indicating towards me. “I’m sorry, it’s one of her bad days,” she whispered to me. I nodded sympathetically before busying myself with pouring tea, dreading her noticing the inevitable tears that were still falling.
“You know,” my grandmother started, probably not knowing who she was talking to. “I wish my son could see what a wonderful young man he’d raised. They don’t talk anymore, you know, and I wish they could get along.”
“It’s not that simple, Gran,” I breathed, hoping that the words would somehow find their way to her sub conscience. “He – he hates me, Gran, and I can’t change that. I’ve tried, you have to believe me, I tried so hard, but I can’t change his mind.”
I hadn’t even remembered that the nurse was still there until she left quietly, clearly sensing that she perhaps shouldn’t be there for this.
Gran looked at me, puzzled. Eventually she said, “Do you know my grandson?”
“Yes,” I said resignedly; clearly this was the best I could hope for.
“Did he get my birthday card? I was going to give him a present too, but I – I forgot.”
“He did get your card. He liked it a lot, he – put it on his bedside table, in front of all the other cards. He was so happy that you remembered.”
“Of course I remembered,” she laughed, clearly amused at the thought that she might forget someone’s birthday. “I could never forget Annabel’s birthday.”
My heart heavy, I said, “It’s Will now, Gran. Remember?”
“Yes,” she mused, to herself rather than to anyone else. “I – remind me that I must remember that.”
She gazed absently at the wall behind me, where there was a photo of my parents on their wedding day. I roughly opened my backpack, pulling out the wool and knitting needles I’d bought in my lunch break. Recognition flickered in her eyes as she saw them, and she slowly reached across the armchair and onto the table next to her, where two knitting needles were stuck in a ball of wall, an impossibly long scarf trailing across the floor.
“Gran, how do I knit?” I asked, leaning forwards to she could point to my fingers as the wool tangled around them. She seemed to give every instruction either three times or not at all, so I opened an online tutorial on my phone and followed that along with her directions. I did terribly, constantly having to redo every stitch, or whatever they’re called in knitting, but after a few minutes Gran went back to working on her scarf, happily knitting absent-mindedly while I struggled with what felt like miles of wool. She’d knitted ten rows by the time I’d figured out one, but it was nice to do something that wasn’t just sitting in silence. She would ask me the same question or tell the same story several times, but it was obvious that she was much happier once she had knitting needles in her hands.
“How’s your young lady doing?” she asked, interrupting her own story about how her mother had started working in the kitchen at the home.
“Sorry to break it to you, but I don’t have a young lady!” I replied, frantically tugging at a knot of wool that had appeared around my right wrist.
“But what about that foreign girl, you know, the Asian?”
“Gran,” I chided, but there was no point in attempting to correct her. “Darcy’s my friend.”
“In my day, young gentlemen didn’t live with unmarried women,” she said firmly. “Very improper. People talk. Do you remember my friend Gladys? She moved in with her young man in sixty-two, and they weren’t married. It took her mother a month to recover from the shock. You remember that, don’t you? You remember?”
I didn’t say anything, unsure of how to tell them that my parents hadn’t been born then, let alone me.
“You should make an honest woman of her.” Gran continued to reproach me, completely absorbed in her knitting. “It’s only right.”
It continually amazed me how open she was to the idea of me being trans, yet she couldn’t comprehend the idea of me living with a woman without being married to her. At least it proved that she thought of me as a man.
“Actually, Darcy has a girlfriend,” I mentioned as casually as I could, watching carefully for her reaction.
“Oh, she’s a lesbian.” She took it completely in her stride. “Your Aunt Fiona was one of those.”
I had no idea who my Aunt Fiona was, but I was too busy being amazed by the mixed moral messages I was receiving to worry about.
“As long as they’re not living together,” Gran added. “At least not until they’re married.”
Glad that’s cleared up, then. It doesn’t matter who you sleep with, as long as you marry them first.
Chapter 4
When you lived with Darcy, you got very used to her phone going off at all hours. She’d never been the best when it came to a work-life balance, and being the manger and owner of a rapidly expanding company made it even harder. Even so, she always made an effort – especially when Lizzy was around – to not let business calls intrude on anything we might be doing around the flat. She very rarely received personal calls, with the majority of her friends living in the same building as her, so a cursory check that the call wasn’t urgent was usually all that happened.
When Darcy’s phone rang during our Thursday night film and takeaway, then, none of us thought anything of it, until she froze as she saw the caller ID. Pausing the film, she slowly answered the phone, both me and Lizzy watching her with confusion.
“Hello, Aunt Catherine,” said Darcy quietly, and I caught Lizzy’s eye. Darcy’s aunt, Catherine de Bourgh, was me and Lizzy’s former boss, who’d had no reservations about publicly disapproving of Lizzy’s relationship with Darcy. Her relationship with her niece, which had never been particularly strong, had therefore wavered a lot in the past year, resulting in many loud and extensive arguments. A phone call couldn’t mean anything good. The last time Catherine had called it was because she’d found some young men she deemed suitable and wished Darcy to meet, which had gone down about as well as you’d expect.
Darcy looked like she was about to slip off and have the conversation in another room, but Lizzy’s firm grip on her hand kept her where she was.
“Mm-hmm,” she said stiffly. “No, I – no, Aunt Catherine, I wasn’t grunting. That sounds wonderful. No, really, thank you for inviting us, it was – Saturday, you said? Yes, we’ll – we’ll be there.” There was a pause. “Really?” Another pause. “No, I – I didn’t mean – that’s very kind of you. Yes, I think she’s free. Oh, well, I’ll ask but I don’t think Jordan will be able to come down at such short notice, he’ll have chapel on Sunday morning and it’s too late to get someone to cover for him. Okay. Well, thank you very much for the invitation. Yes. See – see you on Saturday, then.”
She hung up, dropping her phone onto her lap and looking baffled.
“What did the Iceberg want?” I asked.
“Aunt Catherine’s having a dinner party on Saturday,” said Darcy slowly, not bothering to correct the nickname I’d given her aunt when working under her, “and she wants us all to come.”
It had been a few months since I’d been summoned to a dinner party with Darcy’s Aunt Catherine, and they were certainly a unique experience. Nothing was quite so intimidating as being grilled by a formidable business woman about every facet of your life in front of people who, as she had already established, were far superior to you in every way.
“Wait a second,” said Lizzy, her eyes wide. “When she says all of us…”
“All three of us,” clarified Darcy. “I suppose that’s good? It means she’s starting to come round to, well, you.”
“About time,” I said. “I suppose we don’t have a choice, not really. She’s not the sort you turn down.”
My words fell on deaf ears, however, as Lizzy looked more and more panic-stricken.
“Lizzy, darling, it will be fine,” said Darcy, taking Lizzy’s hands in hers. “I’ve met your family, and that went really well. I’m sure it will be fine.”
“Really?” snapped Lizzy. “You think your aunt – my former boss, who openly asked me to never enter into a relationship with you because I’m a woman – is going to welcome me with open arms?”
“If she’s inviting you it means she wants to get to know you.”
“Or ridicule me!”
“I would never let her, you know that.”
There was a long silence as Lizzy glared at Darcy before turning to me.
“What do you think, Will?”
Darcy looked at me pleadingly, and I gaped for a few moments before finding an answer.
“I think you should go,” I stammered out. “I mean, what’s the worst that can happen? She’s already proven herself to be terrible and bitchy and homophobic. She might prove all that right, or she might surprise you. You may as well go, and like Darcy said, we’ve got your back. If it’s too awful, we’ll just leave.”
***
“You look nice,” Lizzy commented as I came into the kitchen early on Friday evening, buttoning up the nicest casual shirt I owned. “What’s the occasion?”
“Going for a night out with Jay,” I explained. “Dinner at that tapas place we went to for Jordan’s birthday and then we go to the bars! Don’t worry, I’ll be quiet coming back.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it.” Lizzy waved a hand dismissively. “You kids have fun! Stay safe, don’t do drugs.”
“I’m three years older than you,” I reminded her, checking my pockets for my wallet and ID. Despite the beard, I was constantly asked to prove my age.
Even though I couldn’t see her face I knew she was rolling her eyes. “Well, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Got it. No men.”
I deserved the oven glove that I had thrown at me.
As arranged, Jay was waiting for me at the Tube station by the restaurant. It was easy to spot their blue hair through the crowd, head bent down over their phone, so I ran up as quietly as I could and tackled them from behind, lifting them up.
“Jesus Christ!” They exclaimed, laughing and slapping at my hand. “That had better be you, Will, or I swear to God!”
“Don’t worry, it’s me,” I laughed.
“You been working out or something?” they said, sounding impressed. “I’m not exactly light.”
I flexed my arms, showing off barely-there muscles. “A bit, with some help from the magic that is T. Good week?”
“Not bad,” they said as we made our way out of the station and towards the restaurant. “I got bitten by a particularly vicious rabbit on Wednesday, but I’ll cope. Yourself?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, not bad. Walked in on my flatmates doing all sorts of things in all sorts of places which was scarring, but I’ll recover.”
“As happy as I am for your flatmate, I wouldn’t want to meet anyone who’s a match for her because she is terrifying.”
I snorted. “Oh, remember that time that you crashed over one night and--”
“Don’t remind me! I’ll never be able to look at her in the same way again. Plus she was super mean about it.”
“That’s Darcy for you. To be fair, you had just barfed all over her--”
“I do not need to be reminded, thank you very much!”
Jay was one of those people who seemed to appear in every entertaining story I had from university. If anything vaguely interesting ever happened, Jay was guaranteed to be there, from drinking games in lectures to the epic Eurovision parties they threw every year. And yes, we did subscribe to the traditional British method of drinking our way through our degrees.
The restaurant was small, and not too expensive by London standards. The waitress looked on, amused as we ordered far too much food, Jay proclaiming “We’ve got to line those stomachs!” as our fourth potato dish came out.
Even though it had been less than two years since we graduated it felt like a lifetime ago. Everyone had moved on so quickly and in different directions, that it sometimes felt like it had all been a strangely vivid dream. It was far too soon to start reliving the glory days, but there was some nostalgia attached to things that happened barely eighteen months ago.
“How’s life as a vet going, then?” I asked over our final dishes.
“Not bad,” said Jay. “The pay’s good, but you spend your day getting shat on. Literally and figuratively, pet owners are the worst. I spend my life yelling, ‘I don’t care what pedigree you’ve got, it’s terrorising that poor hamster over there’! And then they try to tell you there’s no way their rabbit can be that overweight when it’s practically spherical. At least the cats don’t piss everywhere, but they do their best to destroy everything. You’ve picked the right job, you have, sitting at a desk all day on Facebook.”
“There’s a bit more to online journalism than that,” I laugh, my cheeks pink from the bottle of wine we shared. “I spend most of my day answering angry emails. At least it’s not face to face.”
Jay laughed. “Maybe we should try virtual vet appointments? Although if anyone’s spying on my webcam they might get concerned at how many cat’s arses I have to look at every day.”
We were in a fairly classy restaurant and we were rapidly becoming tipsy and loud, so it was no surprise when the bill was pushed in front of us without any prompting.
“I have a favour to ask,” I said as we handed our cards over, Jay’s eyes widening with excitement.
“A favour? From the humble Jay Goodwin? Why, what could it be?”
“Shut up you idiot! Anyway – favour – you know how you made me promise that if I ever got a tattoo, you would be there with me? To – and I quote – ‘hold my hand and watch another shred of my innocence whirl down the drain’?”
“I’m a fucking poet,” they interrupted. “But does this – does this mean you’re getting a tattoo? Jesus, that’s bloody amazing!”
“Shhh!” I somehow managed to hush even louder than they were shouting, causing even more eyes from surrounding tables to turn to look at us. “We should, we should go to a bar. But yes. I, William Fitts, am getting a tattoo.”
“Yes!” Jay fist-pumped the air. “I’ve got you drunk, and I’ll be there for your first tat. Got any piercings?”
“No.”
“Smoked weed?”
“No.”
“Still a virgin?”
“Shhhh, Jay!”
They grinned smugly. “So that’s a yes. Well, I’m honoured to be present at all of your most important first experiences.”
I grinned. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. Except there is no way you’re going to be there when I lose my virginity.”
“Whatever you say,” they said. “What do you say we pay the bill that the waiter is trying to oh-so-subtly force upon us, go to the nearest gay bar and get completely smashed?”
I grinned stupidly, head already fuzzy from the wine. “Always, my friend. Always.”
Chapter 5
I woke up with a pounding headache. The few chinks of light shining through the curtains had a piercing brightness. I rolled over to turn away from it, only to collide with something warm and solid. For a moment panic shot through me, until I saw that it was only Jay, passed out and drooling onto the other pillow. I let out a sigh of relief. Thank God I hadn’t brought a stranger home.
A laboured glance to my bedside table told me that someone had left two bottles of water and a pack of paracetamol there the previous night. Mentally thanking whoever it was – it was probably Lizzy – I opened one of the bottles, downing half of it in one go and throwing back a couple of the painkillers.
The last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed, but nature’s call was demanding otherwise. I dragged myself to the bathroom, taking a few seconds before leaving to study my face in the mirror. My hair was sticking up at all angles, my skin unusually pale, except for –
Except for the large red bruise on my neck.
Shit.
As I made my way back from the bathroom I could hear low conversation in the kitchen, accompanied by the smell of coffee and toast. I had to face the others at some point, I supposed. May as well be right now.
Both Lizzy and Darcy turned to look at me as I came into the kitchen, taking the plate of toast that Lizzy offered me wordlessly and nodding my thanks.
“Rough night?” Lizzy asked, barely hiding the amusement in her voice.
“Shut up,” I croaked, happily taking the offered coffee.
Darcy was sitting opposite me, glaring at me with her best look of disappointment.
“I expect you don’t remember much of what happened last night?” she said icily, causing Lizzy to grin a little bit more in her laughter.
I eyed her with annoyance, saying through a mouthful of toast, “No. And don’t feel like you have to tell me.”
“You rang,” said Darcy as if I hadn’t said anything. “You rang me at three o’clock in the morning, panicking because you’d lost your wallet and your oyster card and you had no way of getting home.”
“Shit, Darcy, I’m sorry--”
“Technically you rang me,” Lizzy added, her smile not leaving her face even when Darcy shot her a look. “You rang my phone, but I slept through it, and Darcy answered.”
That made more sense. Glad to know that even when I was drunk, I wasn’t stupid enough to ring Darcy in the middle of the night asking her to pick me up from God knows where.
