Chapter Text
“Do you think you two will ever get around to doing this?”
Jean was brought back to her more immediate surroundings by Iris dropping into the seat next to her, leaning back against Millie’s blazer, which she had put on the back of the chair for safekeeping. She had been watching Millie dancing with Hailey and Cadence on the other side of the marquee, the two women taking it in turns to twirl the little girl around in time to a pop song she was sure all three would jokingly berate her for not knowing the name of.
“Getting married?” Jean laughed. She looked across at her friend, who was holding a glass of red wine, and was reminded about the gin and tonic Millie had brought over for her a few minutes before, in between dances. She picked it up and took a sip. “We’re too old for all this nonsense.”
Iris shook her head, amused by her practicality. “It’s been a beautiful day.”
It had been a beautiful day. Edward and Rusty had said their vows in a small ceremony at some local ornamental gardens, and followed that with a considerably bigger party in a marquee in the grounds of a historic building. It had been lovely to watch them being so clearly happy, and surrounded by people who loved them, especially after everything they had been through to be together. (When Jean read opinion pieces about how homophobia was a thing of the past, it was their experiences, rather than hers and Millie’s, that she primarily thought of when she shook her head in disbelief).
“I didn’t say it wasn’t beautiful nonsense,” Jean said. She noticed a drip of condensation roll off the bottom of her glass and onto her skirt. It was her usual wedding skirt (which was incidentally also her interview skirt, and the one she wore on the rare occasions that the memory of her father prompted her to go to church), but she had been persuaded to wear a new blouse that Millie had picked up for her on a recent shopping trip, with a buttonhole attached which matched Millie’s bouquet. Millie’s outfit, a claret satin jumpsuit, had been provided for her due to her hybrid best woman/bridesmaid role, and this was ultimately the only reason Jean believed they had been able to arrive anything resembling on time. “Besides, we've been like an old married couple since before we were even together. It feels like any wedding of ours should have been years ago.”
“Straight off the plane, you mean?” Iris joked.
“At San Francisco International, right after we got our passports stamped.” Jean imagined, briefly, what her past self, made redundant when barely over the trauma of a car accident which she had been told would affect her mobility forever and finding it hard to believe she was being taken along on a great adventure by an ex-colleague ten years her junior for any reason other than pity, would have said to that. (She would have dismissed it as absurd, of course, like she would have done many things about her life here.)
“Now there’s an image,” Iris said with a laugh. “You might have missed my talk with all that wedded bliss going on though, and who knows where we would be now?”
They had been friends for more than half a decade, ever since Jean and Millie had been the only people Iris didn’t already know who turned up to a public lecture she had organised about women in computer science, early on in what was intended to be a year in San Francisco for them. Hailey had attended too (she was twenty-three at the time, just getting started on her PhD and keen to do anything Iris asked of her, something Iris had expected to wear off with time but had turned out to just be the younger woman’s personality) and gave away her rural roots by being unashamedly fascinated by the British women. Her enthusiasm, coupled with Jean and Millie’s impressive knowledge of the Bletchley Park women and their contributions to the development of modern computing (“It’s just a hobby really,” Jean had insisted, “My area of expertise is much more in the women’s suffrage movement”) had meant that Iris had found herself agreeing to carry on the conversation over drinks, and their friendship had grown from there.
“Oh, with far inferior friends, I’m sure,” Jean said with a small smile.
Iris returned her smile. “I’ll drink to that.”
As they clinked their glasses the sound of a mobile phone sounding came from Iris’ handbag. She took it out and had a quick look.
“It’s Marcus, he’s found a patch of reception,” she said. “Do you think the boys will mind?”
The two women scanned the room and seemingly at the same time caught sight of the grooms surrounded by a dozen or so guests, engaged in what appeared to be some kind of dance off.
“I think it’s fair to say they’ll manage a few minutes without your presence, dear,” Jean said dryly.
“Keep an eye out for the kids?” the other woman asked, eyes darting quickly to check that Cadence and Dennis were still where she had seen them last.
“Of course. I’ll intervene if I see Dennis with his ‘eat the rich’ face on,” Jean said, referencing Iris’ older child’s tendency to get into deep political discussions with strangers at social events, a habit which was both a cause for admiration and of concern. On seeing Iris' frown, she added: “I didn’t mean to suggest that was likely. It’s a meme.”
“I know it’s a meme, I just thought-" Iris said.
“I might have ‘1950s librarian vibes’ as Millie puts it, but I am not entirely devoid of popular culture knowledge,” she said, though she knew really that Iris’ surprise was not unfounded. Her Facebook account had only been set up when she had started volunteering with Rainbow Readers, an organisation which matched people up with older LGBTQ people to read to - Millie had come back from an afternoon shift at the café with a flyer and said “You'd be perfect, darling, that voice of yours in itself would give those old ladies more action than they've had in decades” - and her profile photo had been the same (a blurry shot of Millie making a kissy face at their tabby cat, a flash of Jean’s face just visible behind a feline ear) since she opened it. “Millie keeps me up to date. She says the sign that we are irredeemably old is that we don’t understand memes,” she conceded.
“That sounds like something she heard from a younger person.”
“I’ve no doubt about that,” Jean agreed. “I’m surprised I haven’t had to sign the Official Secrets Act to be allowed to know how close to forty she is.”
Iris laughed softly and then looked down at her phone again. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Take all the time you need, really.”
As Iris left, a group of young men walked past and Jean smiled at someone she recognised from what Millie exclusively referred to as the ‘Gay Brunch Club’. Almost everywhere they went, everyone seemed to know Millie, whether from her various occupations (it was her travel writing that had brought them here, specifically the very lucrative fellowship that she had been awarded, but it couldn’t be consistently relied upon to pay the bills these days, so she topped it up with translation work and occasional shifts in a queer venue that was a café by day and a bar by night) or from the varied social life she had when she wasn’t working, and most of the people who knew Jean only did so because of Millie. She had Iris and Hailey and a handful of friends she had made through her own work and volunteering, and then she had acquaintances she had met through accompanying Millie to events when the mood took her. She was by now very used to the sensation of people looking at her and feeling like she could hear their thoughts: “That’s Millie Harcourt’s girlfriend? With the stick and the stern expression?” She couldn’t say it bothered her; the people who got to know her generally liked her, but she had never been especially interested in persuading people to do so.
She sat alone at the table for a couple of minutes before Hailey appeared through the crowd.
“All this dancing has got me working up a thirst,” the younger woman said. She gestured towards Jean’s now almost empty glass. “Can I get you another?”
“Thank you, dear,” Jean replied. A mischievous part of her wanted to add ‘Any excuse for you to talk to that bartender again’ but she knew that Hailey would be embarrassed by her teasing.
“Where's the Prof?” she asked. It had been some time since her graduation but her nickname for Iris had stuck.
“Talking to Marcus,” Jean replied.
Hailey appeared to briefly weigh it up. “I’ll get a fresh one for her,” she said. She tapped the two pockets in her dress and then frowned. “If I only knew where I had put my wallet...”
As Hailey wandered around to the far side of their table to check her bag for her missing wallet, the DJ changed the track and Jean watched the customary movement of the crowd, some getting up to dance whilst others decided this was one they would sit out.
She spotted Cadence coming towards her shortly before the young girl spoke.
“Aunt Millie wants you to dance with her to this one,” she said matter-of-factly. She was holding Millie’s bouquet, as she had at virtually every opportunity she had been allowed to all day (which had been a lot – Millie wasn’t fussed on children, but she claimed that Cadence was the exception that proved the rule).
“Oh, does she now?” Jean asked, looking up to see Millie just behind Cadence.
Listening briefly, Jean recognised the song from a few weeks back, a rare morning when Millie was up before her, despite having done a shift in the bar the night before. When Jean had come into the kitchen it was to find her partner singing loudly to the radio, her oversized night shirt slipping off one shoulder, hair loose and held away from her face with a headband. This had quickly turned into Millie singing the lyrics to the song directly at Jean and trying to get her to dance with her, whilst Jean laughed and protested, before eventually pulling the other woman to her and kissing her firmly.
“She does, even though in this song it is a man singing to a lady but you are both ladies who like other ladies,” Cadence said.
“You know, I don’t only like ladies,” Millie said. Her hair was mostly loose, with just a few curls pinned back with a hair clip adorned with a large bow the same colour as her outfit (and her lipstick, naturally), and as she spoke and some hair slipped behind her shoulder Jean was reminded how little the straps of the jumpsuit did to disguise the butterfly tattoo on her shoulder (a product of her teenage rebellion that she wore with pride, in spite of how terrible the tattoo itself was). “I like all sorts of people.”
Millie described herself as ‘queer’ but for Jean, a woman who’d had an entire bookshelf in her flat dedicated to lesbian literature, but had needed more than 30 years and a man who she’d had a disastrous attempt at a one night stand with to suggest that perhaps her ‘interests lay elsewhere' before she realised she was into women, it never felt like the word she was entitled to use (it felt too self-aware, somehow).
Cadence frowned. “But you like Aunt Jean the best?”
“Of course, darling,” Millie reassured her. “The very best. That’s why she’s going to come and dance with me.”
“Okay, good,” Cadence said approvingly. She looked pointedly from Millie’s outstretched arms to Jean until the older woman took the offered hands. She watched Jean put her weight through Millie’s hands, establishing whether she needed her stick or not, and then, satisfied that the dance was going to go ahead, the young girl scrambled across the chairs to where Hailey, wallet now in her hand, had got distracted by something on her phone.
Millie and Jean could hear her saying “Aunt Hailey, do you think I will like ladies when I grow up? Or will I like all sorts of people like Aunt Millie?” as they made their way to the dancefloor and they shared a private laugh.
“You’re going to owe Hailey a drink for fielding that one,” Jean said. The dancefloor had cleared a little and, whilst Millie had made an effort to steer them to an edge on the opposite side to most of the tables, Jean knew she could find herself feeling a little exposed if she allowed it.
“It’s worth it to get a few minutes with you,” Millie said. “Hi, darling.” She wasn’t drunk, but the sparkle in her eyes and the softness of her features was at least partially as a result of the champagne she had been drinking since noon. She put an arm on Jean’s waist and pulled her closer.
“Hi yourself,” Jean said.
When they started to move their tempo didn’t match that of the music, but they swayed their way through the chorus regardless.
Millie’s eyes were fixed on Jean. “How did I get so lucky?”
“Oh, nonsense,” Jean said. She busied herself adjusting the lapels of Millie’s jumpsuit, which she suddenly decided were slightly askew from her last few dances, and then reached up to briefly kiss her lips. “Now, are you going to spin me or do I have to ask?”
“Oh don't you dare look back
Just keep your eyes on me
I said you're holding back
She said shut up and dance with me
This woman is my destiny
She said oh oh oh
Shut up and dance with me.”