There Are Many Ways To Be by Jennie Hart

Liz tumbled into consciousness after an uneasy sleep and the wildest nightmare. A gigantic oak with enormous feet formed of sprawling roots was lumbering towards her and about to trample her into the ground. She crept out of bed with a sense of foreboding.

Joe slept on as she closed the back door noiselessly. The sky was pink and pale, and hazy sunshine reflected on the sash windows of the house facing theirs. Their road was steep; downhill led to the High Street; to the restaurants and bars; the shops selling trinkets that people wanted but didn’t need. She took the left turn uphill and then left again, past the Gardener’s Arms and on to her beloved forest. 

Her lungs craved the oxygen oozing from those towering trees. She climbed to the woodland’s highest point where a lone Victorian house stood sentinel over a worn track leading down to a narrow stream. A little bridge crossed the brook which meandered along the forest floor for a mile or so. Most of the year it was free-flowing, with silvery minnows swimming and jumping in search of midges and dragonfly larvae, but today it was barely a trickle.

She descended, almost running till she reached the flimsy wooden crossing. Harry, her grandson, as a child, used to find it hilarious when Liz hid beneath the old rotting planks, pretending to be the ugly troll. He, the billy-goat, screamed in excitement as he clip-clopped over, terrified of being caught. Harry was sixteen now; tall, fair and delicate; her heart melted when she thought of him.

Liz crossed the stream and climbed up through a thicket of brambles; the thorns tagged her skin. Clumps of fern thrust through the menacing briars, but the tangled vegetation lessened as the sunlight penetrating the heavy canopy, dimmed. She didn’t need a ball of wool; she knew her way and wanted to reach the dark brooding centre.

A persistent breeze caused a thousand leaves to whisper in the dense, web-like network, high above. She heard another sound, something like the moan of an animal. In the forest canopy, rooks and jackdaws squawked, but on the woodland floor, there was little to nurture them. She followed the distressing cries, stumbling over broken-off bits of branches. Flickering sunbeams penetrated the half-light and there she saw him. Her grandmother’s instinct had told her it would be Harry. He was half-perched on a cheap wooden stool he had brought along. A blue synthetic rope hung over a sturdy lower branch of a hornbeam, and Harry was preparing a noose. She recognised the small packets strewn around; paracetamols and aspirins, a pack of razorblades and a discarded half-bottle of spirits. She gazed in horror at the sight of blood dripping from his left cuff onto his cut-down denims.

Harry panicked as Liz approached. He wiped his bleeding wrist across his face, smearing his cheek.

‘Oh Harry my precious child, what on earth are you doing?’

The gin bottle was empty, and she saw a discarded blade. She caressed the cut wrist; the blood had started to clot, so a feeble attempt.  He held back as Liz enfolded him, but his resistance faltered and he sank into her breast.

‘This is our special place isn’t it? Do you remember eating strawberries here Harry? And drinking coke?’

Harry took shallow breaths; he was physically shaking. His life had been difficult she knew. When her son, Harry’s dad, had died after a complicated illness, Harry’s light went out. Her daughter-in law, Harry’s mother, had always been unmotherly. She was a Member of Parliament, spending time in London or her constituency. When she met her new partner, Henry, things continued to crash for Harry, an only child.

Liz knew Harry’s issues. At Christmas family gatherings, the young cousins used to entertain with little plays and Harry was always the princess, never the prince. Sometimes he had dressed-up in Liz’s high heels and pinned on her most glamorous brooch. Once recently, he had called round and barely able to speak, told of finding a pair of girl’s knickers in his locker.

‘I know it was Eddie’s gang,’ he’d said. ‘They always wind me up.’

He’d been too embarrassed to report them.

‘Gran, I don’t want to be here anymore; I hate school. I hate living. Henry hates me and he can’t bear me around the house when mum’s not here.’

He loved his mum despite everything.

‘He doesn’t hate you Harry, he hasn’t even tried to understand you.’

Henry was a buttoned-up sort of man, repressed, Liz thought, but she had to admit, he suited her daughter-in-law. He was sarcastic to Harry for not wanting to go the races or watch a cricket match, and when he saw him wearing nail varnish, he had exploded. She’d heard about that.

‘Harry, you are such a marvellous person; with so much to live for. What more can I say or do?’

‘I don’t know Gran, but that business with the locker, it made me want to end it.’

‘Harry, there are many ways to be; you are free to be whatever you want. You remember Auntie Rachel? My friend?  Well, Mia, her daughter, has struggled too. She’s reaching out to people; like herself; like you. She’s started a project in Birmingham getting friends in the LGBTQ community to talk about their lives; she’s going to publish their stories. I know she’d love to meet you.  Actually she calls herself ‘they’.’

‘That’s what I want to be called Gran; but I can’t tell mum; or Henry.’

‘Don’t you worry about them; there’s going to be a serious conversation.’

‘Thanks Gran. I would like to meet Mia.’

I’m a bit unreconstructed Harry; please remind me what LGBTQ stands for.’

‘Oh, Gran, it’s ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer’. Q can stand for the whole community but we never actually use ’Gay’.’

Liz gave him the biggest hug.

She definitely wasn’t going to give up that easily!’