Lucy, a young lesbian, is going to university soon and wants to learn all about how to fight for queer rights, just as her Uncle Mike and his husband Baz did, being radical activists for many years. Mike literally wrote the book about it, a book Lucy considers her inspiration. Now she’s going to spend the summer with Mike and Baz at the rambling old farmhouse they have restored and learn all she can from them.
But Mike and Baz seem so domestic now. So settled into the lives of the quiet village where they live. They spend their time organising church fetes or doing volunteer shifts in the village shop rather than organising protests and picket lines. Lucy can’t see how giving old ladies rides to hospital appointments helps to smash the patriarchy. Have the two former radicals sold out and given up the fight?
She wandered through the other rooms, refamiliarising herself with them. She loved the big living room, with its one stone wall and the others more normal plastered ones. It had large windows on three sides, as the room went right through to the back of the house. The back of the room held a big dining table. Three large sofas dominated the rest of the room, with a couple of coffee tables and rugs in front of them. Low bookshelves ran around most of the walls.
The wall spaces between the windows were covered in framed pictures, some art, some of them family and friends. Lucy grimaced at pictures of herself at various ages, though she had to smile at the one from Mike and Baz’s wedding, where she’d been chief flower girl. She hadn’t much liked the title flower girl. At other weddings she’d attended, the flower girls were very small girls who were too young to be bridesmaids and she’d been eight at the time, so far too old to be a flower girl. But as Mum had pointed out, you can’t be a bridesmaid if there isn’t a bride.
There were many pictures of Mike and Baz as young men, at the height of their activism. Baz skinny and dark-haired, Mike, rugby-player bulky, sandy blonde, looking like the posh boy he was, very much gone bad. People had thought the working-class boy from Leeds was the bad influence on the posh boy from Surrey, but Mike’s memoir made it clear he’d already been primed and ready by the time they met, when they were both sixteen, at a protest march in Manchester, in 1988. Like, practically the stone age! Mike was in town with a school trip, and had sneaked away to attend the march, where he’d met a punk, who had travelled over from Leeds. They talked for so long, Baz had missed his train home and Mike was nearly reported missing by his teachers.
They’d kept in touch for the next two years, by letter and landline. Baz even had to use the phonebox! No email even! Somehow they’d arranged that they’d both apply to university in London. Baz had done a nursing degree -- which seemed like nothing now, but for a boy to choose nursing as a career back then meant he didn’t have to officially come out of the closet to anyone. They all assumed he was gay. Since he’d never cared what anyone thought ever, he’d stuck two fingers up at the world and did what he wanted.
She wandered through to the other side of the house, where Mike had his office. This had lots of high bookshelves around two walls, only going halfway through the house. A dark wood desk, that looked a hundred years old, held a big computer monitor and a laptop. Notebooks, books, folders and papers were scattered around the desk, along with a photograph of the two of them on their wedding day. Sweet. There were more photographs on the wall, and some of them were from newspaper stories and even a couple of police mugshots. Activism had a price and Mike and Baz had always been willing to pay it. She sat in the chair, imagining herself one day having done things worth writing a memoir about. The bookshelf nearest the desk had box files marked “Clippings” and “Articles.” Mike didn’t only write books. She saw articles with his byline on lots of news sites. Some LGBTQ focused, others more general.
“Hey, are you ready to go?” Mike asked, appearing in the open doorway.
“Yes.” She jumped up. “I didn’t move anything.”
He chuckled. “Feel free to do some of my research. I’ll give you an acknowledgement. Grab your jacket. It will be chilly on the walk back, with the breeze off the sea.” They locked up and headed out of the driveway. This house had once stood isolated in extensive grounds, but there were large modern detached homes on both sides of it now. “We’ll have to sort a bike out for you,” Mike said as they walked. “Ours will all be too tall for you. I’m sure Baz will know someone who can loan you one for the summer. Best way to get around the village.”
“Ah, sure.” She hadn’t ridden a bike since she was twelve. As they walked into the centre of the village they passed a post box, which had one of those twee knitted toppers on it, which included a figure in a wheelchair, and someone with a white stick and a guide dog. Weird. The dog was cute though.
