Bethany stayed downstairs, a tower of strength. On Trish’s suggestion she stood for the council, and won, which now gave the Preservationist Independents a bloc of six, which as they tended to caucus with the Greens gave them a reasonable say in what got done. The days when Trish could overhear the mayor saying that global warming meant it was a waste to put money into Morecambe were over. She found the work was often frustrating when established interests refused to consider things that she thought were good sense. There was a huge battle that year over moving the market. It had been on its present site since 1660, not long enough for it to be considered traditional, according to some of the council who wanted to sell the land for a mall. The Preservationists resisted them fiercely and won. The market was revamped and made fireproof and given ramps, but stayed where it was.
Helen had another baby, a boy, Anthony, in September 1986. Cathy continued to be a banker and a single mother, but in 1986 she began dating another woman in her bank, Caroline. By winter they had moved in together and she brought her home for Christmas. Trish did not take to Caroline, who treated her as if she knew nothing about feminism and needed to be educated. She tried not to be relieved when she and Cathy broke up before the next Christmas.
George and Sophie came home from the moon, and had a party to celebrate their wedding with their Earth friends in Sophie’s family home in Aberystwyth. Trish couldn’t make it because of Mark, so she held another party for them in Lancaster. They settled down in Cambridge and had twins, Rhodri and Bronwen, born in February 1988. “We didn’t want to risk having babies on the moon,” Sophie said. George went back into space soon after, to the big international space station, Hope. He was there for several months at a time, then back in Cambridge for a few months. Sophie was working in Cambridge on the Mars terraforming project and on hydroponics for the planned domes.
“Will you go to Mars?” Trish asked, apprehensively.
“Not on the first mission,” George said. “But maybe eventually. When the twins are big enough. Mars will be a proper home one day.”
27
Time’s Wingéd Chariot: Pat 1978–1985
Philip went to the King’s College and worked seriously on his music. Pat and Michael began the Seven Wonders Foundation, which eventually grew entirely out of their control. Soon they had lists of seven wonders on each continent, though Pat never felt that any of the American ones could possibly really count. “New York’s skyline, indeed,” she muttered to Bee. “I’m glad to have anything protected, but how can that be considered artistic or historical?”
“They’ll be moving all their weapons in there,” Bee warned.
All the countries of United Europe and the USA and the USSR signed the Seven Wonders Pledge, along with Israel and Egypt and China and India, which made Pakistan the only nuclear power holding out, and Michael felt confident that the Shah of Iran would help put pressure on them.
When they came home from Italy in the autumn of 1980 it was to terrible news from Lorna. “Thyroid cancer,” she said.
They visited Lorna in hospital where she was starkly bald from chemotherapy and so thin her bones showed. “If only it did some good,” she said.
“She’s only fifty-two,” Bee said, afterwards as she wheeled herself back to the car. “My age.”
“Is it radiation?” Pat asked.
“Maybe. It could just be one of those things. There have always been cancers. But thyroid—could be. Could well be. Not likely Delhi, but it could be Kiev. That was such a thoughtlessly placed bomb. Poor Lorna.”
“She was the first lesbian I knew well,” Pat said.
“Me too. The first lesbian I ever knowingly met. At one of your parties in that flat on Mill Road.” Bee levered herself into the driving seat.
“She was the person I asked what women do together, when I first realized I was falling for you.” Pat wiped her eyes and heaved the wheelchair into the car.
“Really? I never knew that. I didn’t ask anyone. I just sort of went on instinct.” Bee shook her head as Pat sat down and did up her seatbelt.
“Poor Lorna. Well, she may pull through.”
“No,” Bee said. “Not with anaplastic thyroid cancer. Don’t get your hopes up. We can cure AIDS and leukemia, but not this kind of cancer.”
Lorna died before Christmas. They went to her funeral on a bitterly cold day. Although they hadn’t belonged to a choir in years, Lorna’s partner Sue asked Pat and Bee to sing “Gaudete.” “Lorna used to talk about you singing that at a party years ago,” Sue said. Pat sang it, and remembered the party, before Suez or the Cuban Exchange, before the children, when she and Bee had only just met. Bee’s voice was as powerful and true as ever. “We really did know Lorna for a long time,” she said to Bee on their way home.