Scene Seven
"Do you mean, you really want me to move in ….and live with you," Sally stammered, hardly being able to believe her ears. The next second, her imagination was ignited and a picture of seventh heaven irradiated her senses. This was such a contrast with months of living alone, her nerves in shreds, no job and no love. She was coming home. Out of nowhere, comes rescue for the damsel in distress at the hands of this dashing white knight. As the prison gate opened and freedom beckoned, confusion suddenly set it. Was she really worthy of this paradise?
"……….I mean, I've never lived with a woman before."
"There's always a first time for everything, babes." Trisha said with unsettling confidence as she laid her hands on Sally's shoulders. "Sometimes, you'll never know something until you try it. I mean, did you anticipate a month back that you would be sleeping with another woman and that, as lovers go, you are really special?"
"You're really being ever so kind to me but I'm not so sure. I mean I haven't known you that long, Trisha ……."
"This is the start of the new millennium, babes," Trisha urged, not for the first time to past lovers over the last couple of years, " I mean, this isn't the land of Jane Austin, of eligible spinsters, chaperones, two year long engagements, betrothals, etc etc. It's really so much simpler these days between women. There are two simple questions, babes. Question one, do I want to share our lives together full time; question two, do you want to share our lives together full time. From my experience and my feelings tell me, my answer is yes. So perhaps you tell me what you feel?"
Trisha's manner mixed the seductive and the dominating in one confusing mixture and Sally felt contradictory urges of intense desire and frameless fear. She wanted to be held forever in Trisha's arms and was scared at what she was letting herself in for. She feared that this would change her life forever and there was no going back but she couldn't say for the life of her what made 'going back' something she might want. Her head was whirling.
"What I don't get is your reaction, Sally. I'm not sure if you're simply being modest in underestimating your obvious charms, that you're inhibited or are you simply getting cold feet?"
A more sympathetic tone underlay Trisha's words as she uttered these words. Her desires had run away with her and she realized that she ought to be more patient. As a mid thirties lesbian who had been 'out' since her schooldays and had long since left home to live in the big city, her lovers since Nikki, had been women equally as experienced as her. Not everyone was like that as she was belatedly discovering. Sally Anne remained silent.
"What I don't understand is how come you had the courage to take the stand at Nikki's first appeal and face up to that evil barrister and yet you find this so frightening. I saw you face up to a real ordeal with no trouble yet a life of pleasure is a problem to you."
Sally blushed and nodded dumbly several times. She was totally unable to put the kaleidoscope of feelings into words. In reality, it suited her if somehow the choice was taken away from her, and she arrived in the situation of living with Trisha without a conscious effort of hers. Once she was there, perhaps her fears would go away which is what part of her really wanted. The blond haired woman frowned briefly at Sally's apparent lack of enthusiasm for the idea. Nikki's enthusiastic and decisive reaction in similar circumstances all those years ago floated back into her memory. She sighed wearily, feeling that this wasn't what she had expected when she had proposed to her. A peevish instinct at the back of her mind was beginning to feel that she was carrying this relationship like a ball and chain but warmer and more charitable thought challenged this perception. She reasoned to herself that Sally Anne certainly wasn't Nikki and that when her dark haired partner had moved in, she'd feel more confident and relaxed. She thought that she should give her time and make allowances.
Once the decision was made, Trisha was impressed by the energy with which Sally Anne
prepared for the move. When she came round on Sunday morning, lots of cardboard boxes and wooden crates filled up the front room and the furniture that was hers was placed ready to be moved. Sally Anne looked slightly red faced and out of breath and dressed in her most practical outfit of loose fitting jeans, trainers and casual top, far away from her normal outfit of smart suits. She smiled bashfully as Trisha knocked quietly at the door to her flat and put her head round the corner.
"Everything's under control, Trisha or I think it is. I'm sorry at the state of me."
"No pressure, babes. You're hardly like to get packed in high heels and a tight dress. I've dressed down a bit to help you move."
Sally Anne couldn't help thinking that, even while Trisha was wearing casual clothes, she still looked stylish. The dark haired woman just felt flustered and out of breath. She looked around uneasily, her fairly logical plans having flown out the window.
"You tell me what wants moving first and I'll help carry it," Trisha said gently.
"Ah, yes. The big packing cases first. I'll warn you. They're heavy."
Trisha gritted her teeth as the full weight of her side pressed heavily on her hands. Sally Anne was clearly stronger than she looked. Nevertheless, Trisha gamely staggered along to the van while the dark haired woman expertly slid the case into a recess of the van, making the best use of the spare space. The rest of the morning carried on this way and, now Sally Anne was active and doing something, she became positively single minded. It's that training in the police force that must be responsible, concluded Trisha, starting to feel unpleasantly sweaty and her hands rough. Sally Anne looked happy and content as she gradually filled up every bit of spare space and as her former flat was left bare and empty.
"No regrets, babes?" Trisha asked softly.
"Not now the show is on the road. I find it hard to deal with changes in my life and it was just all an upheaval. I just want to leave my past behind. I have too many unhappy memories of this flat. I want to move onwards and upwards."
Trisha felt the smile on her facial muscles, which she knew was emotionally real. It was that it was masked by the tiredness in her bones, muscles and her hands. Whatever regular exercise she took at the gym somehow missed these muscles, which had just been worked to death.
"Are you ready to go, Trisha? I've got to check the flat, shut up behind me and post the keys through the letter box."
"Were you a girl guide when you were a kid?" Trisha asked in weary tones, a stray untidy strand of hair flicking irritatingly in front of her eyes. Only such a background and a spell on outward-bound course would explain Sally Anne's unexpected aptitude.
"Of course, Trisha. Becoming a policewoman was logical for me what with everything else I'd done."
"….including working as a steeplejack, babes."
"Not quite that far," laughed Sally-Anne.
Everything was ready and presently, Trisha sat behind the wheel, ready for the off. She wasn't looking backwards at the flat but was full of unnatural energy. She put the van into gear, manoeuvring with confidence the big white square sided slab of a vehicle drove it capably enough that bright Sunday afternoon. Trisha knew that she would be enthusiastically organizing where everything went when they got there but charitably considered that such confidence was precisely what she had been urging the dark haired woman to have in the first place to move in with her. She had only got what she had asked for.
When they arrived at Trisha's spacious flat, Sally Anne was surprisingly resourceful in squeezing her belongings into every unregarded, obscure recess that Trisha had walked past every day. It was only when the dark-haired woman walked up to Trisha's dressing table that she blushed slightly. This intimate representation of a shared relationship wasn't some children's 'make belief' game of 'let's play houses'. This was for real.
"So here we are at last," Trisha said brightly, spreading her hands. She summoned up the warmest, most reassuring smile she could manage to reassure those flickering eyes.
The dark haired woman swayed on her feet and suddenly rushed into Trisha's soft, welcoming arms. The gentle touch of her fingers running through her hair and the subtle perfume emanating from her reminded her that this was what she really wanted. After all, she thought, as both women shed their clothes like leaves, this part of living together was what she had been getting used to ever since the night of Nikki Wade's reappeal. It was just the case of becoming as neatly settled in as the furniture was.
Sally had remembered with fond nostalgia, the first previous occasion when they had first danced and kissed on the dance floor at Chix and at that time, the club was a romantic backdrop in which other couples silently performed the communal siren dance. Everything had melted into a dim background in which only Helen and Nikki stood out as their friends, beckoning them onwards. The first night Sally Anne came down to the club to help out Trisha showed a completely different slant on things. It was now that she saw Trisha interact with a number of women in a way that showed a familiarity of a shared background. Her manner could even have been taken to be flirtatious in an enigmatic kind of way depending on your point of view. The problem was that Sally simply didn't know what her point of view should be and what was reality. It was all very confusing to her. Trisha introduced her to a bewilderingly large number of women, all very confident of themselves and possessing that sheen of attraction. They glided in and out of their appointed spaces and Sally felt flat footed and gauche. The only woman who stood out in her mind was Trisha's assistant, Gill, who had some indefinable quality that troubled Sally in a way that she couldn't put her finger on. She tried to do her best to socialize but she didn't feel normal even if the other women did. It made her wonder just what Trisha saw in Sally in comparison with how more desirable these women were in comparison with her.