Epilogue 101 Votes to 16
“Hurry, Will!” Frank called out to his youngest son, who was still pulling on his boots in the front entrance of their newly built brick house. The first drops of rain were already beginning to fall.
At seven, Will was still all elbows and knees, but he had the same mop of curly brown hair as his father and grandfather. Pulling up the zipper on his coat, he ran into the open passenger side of the car. “Why are we going to Granddad’s tonight? We only go on weekends.”
Frank turned on the windshield wipers against the rain and pulled the car out of the drive. “Something special is happening tonight.”
“Is Grandma back?” Will’s eyes lit up. He adored his grandmother, and as the youngest grandchild, he benefited from being royally spoiled.
Frank shook his head. His mother’s annual hiking trip to Scotland was not to be messed with. “No, not for another two weeks. Tonight it will just be Grandpa and Great-Uncle Ned.”
“Will they still have biscuits?” Will asked as Frank entered the motorway that would take them to North London.
“I don’t know. They aren’t very good cooks.”
Will nodded solemnly. “I’m glad that Great-Uncle Ned stays with Granddad. They help each other with things like cooking.”
Frank cleared his throat. “I’m glad they have each other, too.”
His parents and Uncle Ned had retired to a fine stone house in North London.
That it had been taken as a given that Ned would live with Charlie and Betty was something the family never spoke about.
Frank tightened his hands around the steering wheel.
Or rather, they didn’t talk about it until tonight.
The rain was pouring down when they pulled into the drive, and he and Will had to run from the car to knock on the door.
Ned opened it, towering over everyone as usual.
His hair had long since gone white, but the same round glasses perched on his nose.
“Francis! William! What an unexpected delight!”
“Great-Uncle Ned!” Will ran right into the arms of the imminent viscount.
“Is that Frank at the door?” Frank’s dad was slower getting into the hallway. The rain must have been making his arthritis worse. That his cane was once again abandoned by the door didn’t help.
Ned's eyes darted over to Charlie in concern and Frank offered his dad an arm of support. “Let’s go sit down.”
Despite the fact that Frank’s parents hadn’t moved into this house until he was well into adulthood, Frank had always felt at home here.
Decorating it had been his father’s project after selling the second Villiers Automotive, and he had filled it with brightness without being gauche.
The walls in the living room were covered in pictures of exotic locales taken during Ned’s years as a governor and the high commissioner.
Frank’s parents standing on beaches in the Caribbean, he and his sister making faces beside the skyscrapers of New York, Uncle Ned surveying the mosques of Istanbul.
“Is everything okay?” His father’s eyes were full of worry as he eased himself into his chair. “Violet? The girls?”
“Everyone is fine, Dad.” Frank squeezed his dad’s hand. “Violet sends her love. The girls would have come tonight, but they both had schoolwork to do.”
“They have good grades?” His dad was always anxious that his grandchildren did well in school. Frank had heard him recite his grandchildren’s end-of-year exam results like they were Arsenal football scores.
Before Frank could answer, Ned joined them.
“William’s happily lost to the world of African jungle adventures in his books.
As well as devouring the last of his grandmother’s biscuits,” Ned said, sitting down in his stuffed armchair, which was slightly to the side of Frank’s father’s.
Closer than the settee where Frank was perched. Close enough to hold hands.
Frank looked at their faces, weathered and lined.
He was struck with memories from his childhood—of his father’s hands, always embedded with motor oil and grease.
Of the plaster dust that had covered his body when Frank had helped pull him from the rubble of their blitzed home.
The silent tears that had streaked down his face when Frank had passed him the sleeping bundle of his first grandchild.
Uncle Ned had always been a force of nature to Frank. Slamming doors and calling out creative insults because of the latest catastrophe in the office. A solid hand on his shoulder as he walked Frank to the Higher School Certificate Examination, telling him, “Your future awaits.”
With each visit it hit him harder that he might not have as much time with either man as he wanted.
Which was why he had to be here tonight.
Frank cleared his throat. “Sorry to be arriving out of the blue. It’s only, well, I wanted to be with you tonight.”
“Tonight?” his dad asked neutrally, as if he had no idea what Frank was talking about.
Christ, this was hard, but he wasn’t giving up now. “Because tonight, Parliament will decriminalise homosexuality.”
Frank didn’t think he had ever experienced a silence so loud. His father’s hands were white, gripping the arms of his chair. Uncle Ned opened his mouth to speak, but Frank jumped in before he had the chance. “Dad, I worked out what you and Uncle Ned were to each other a long time ago.”
How could he not? Whenever Ned walked through the door, his father’s face would light up with a grin. He remembered how they washed dishes together in the evenings, Ned’s shoulders relaxing as he and his dad chatted. The way their hands would accidentally brush when they thought no one was looking.
Frank met the eyes of both men, hoping his love for them came through. “I didn’t know how to tell you before now, but with the vote tonight, I had to be here. To share this moment with you.”
Ned spoke first, with an emotion-filled voice that Frank had heard only once before, when the old viscount, Ned’s father, had died. “I was about to get out the champagne.”
“Don’t jinx it.” His father’s gaze hadn’t left Frank’s.
Ned rolled his eyes and Frank couldn’t help but laugh.
He had been shocked a decade ago when he had first realised that the love between his dad and Ned went deeper than that of two old friends.
Had been angry, even, for his mother. When Frank got married himself, he realised that his template for a successful relationship was the dynamic between his dad and Ned.
That mix of challenge and support. Of unflagging love.
Frank had lots of questions, but he was long past any condemnation.
“I’m sorry, Frank.” His dad’s voice sounded smaller than Frank could ever remember hearing it. “I love your mother, and we were excellent business partners, but…”
“You are a wonderful father, an exceptional granddad. My life is richer for having Uncle Ned in it. And Mum, I always thought you made her happier than either of you realised. You gave her space to be herself, and never once discouraged her from her latest adventure. It might not be conventional, but I don’t remember Mum ever being unhappy.
” Frank took his father’s gnarled, stiff hand. “I love you, Dad.”
“Love you, my son.”
The lamp light caught his dad’s cufflinks, battered and worn. Even for an evening at home, his dad always wore them. Frank knew they were a present from Ned, but it was only seeing them again that Frank was reminded of how little he knew of his father.
“How did it happen?” Frank tried to keep his voice casual.
“What?”
“How did you fall in love?” Frank continued, feeling braver now. “I know you two met in the war, but I can’t help but feel like I only know half the story—the version you edited for us. I want to know it all.”
Ned came back into the room, balancing a bottle of champagne and three glasses. “It’s a very long story. Took us nearly a quarter century to get ourselves sorted.”
Charlie smiled with touching fondness. “Your uncle is a very stubborn man.”
Frank leaned back on the settee. “Somehow I think you might have played a role in this.”
“Oh, he did.” Ned looked over to Charlie, and though they weren’t saying a word, Frank could tell a whole conversation was going on.
Ned removed his glasses the way he did whenever he was going to speak at length. “I guess the beginning is when I went to settle up a debt for a hat in 1923.”
Ned didn’t get any further because his father interrupted, “That’s a stupid place to start, we knew each other before then!”
“I didn’t think you would want to start with the other stuff, not with Frank!”
Frank pinched his nose with new appreciation for his mother’s patience. “Why do I get the feeling you’re both going to be telling me this story at the same time?”
Ned settled into his chair. “We have time. The vote hasn’t started yet, and the parliamentary clerks are going to take forever.”
???
It did take forever. Frank learned things about his father he had never thought possible.
About the strengths and weaknesses of both men.
His heart broke when he learned of the pits of despair both his father and Ned had found themselves in during the war.
He laughed and wanted to slap them both upside their heads at some points.
Moments he had lived through and thought he had understood, he saw in an entirely new light.
His parents’ marriage, with all its unspoken complications, took on a comforting understanding.
His dad and uncle were explaining how they had gone to Oxford to exchange vows when the phone rang, and Ned got up to answer it in the hall.
“I remember you going to Oxford. It was the first time I had seen your medals.” It had been a striking moment, proof that his father had done things that seventeen-year-old Frank couldn’t even imagine. “Do you still have the photograph?”
His father slowly pushed himself out of his chair. “I wanted you and Ellie there, but I never dreamed you would understand.” He shuffled over to the battered desk in the corner and Frank resisted the urge to go help him. His father returned with a thick cardboard folder of old photos.
Frank’s breath hitched as he looked down at the first photo.
A middle-aged Ned was sitting on a chair looking straight at the camera, one leg casually crossed over another.
Charlie stood behind him, a hand on his shoulder.
Frank never would have noticed before, but he could see now the little bit of make-up on Ned, the possessive way his father’s hand sat on Ned’s shoulder.
The way both men positioned their wrists so that their cufflinks were prominent.
Tucked away behind this photo was a smaller one. Taken the same day, except this time the two men were in a passionate kiss. Frank fought a blush as he passed the pictures back.
Before they could say anything more, Ned returned, making a beeline straight towards the champagne bottle, which he popped unceremoniously.
“That was Andrew Matthews. His clerks just finished the vote tally. It will be a few more minutes before it is announced on the BBC, but the bill passed. 101 votes to 16.” Ned paused before he spoke, this time his voice trembling. “Homosexual acts in private are no longer criminal offenses.”
Charlie doubled over in his chair, head in his hands and shoulders shaking. Frank realised with a start that his father was sobbing. He moved to reach out, but Ned was there first, on his knees with his arms around Charlie. “It’s done, love. It’s done.”
His father looked up, eyes bright, and without any hesitation kissed Ned.
It wasn’t a passionate kiss, but it still was so full of love, and intimacy, that Frank could only feel privileged to be included in such a private moment.
His father was running his hands through Ned’s hair and whispering something into his ear.
Frank took up the abandoned champagne bottle and decided to give his father, and his father’s husband, a moment of privacy.
As he poured the glasses, Frank thought to himself that he would need to talk about this with Ellie somehow.
He wasn’t sure what she knew, what he could say, but they needed to agree that they would look after Uncle Ned as much as their own parents.
“Why are you crying, Granddad? Why is Uncle Ned crying?” Will’s young voice came from the doorway, the pop of the champagne bottle having distracted him from the book he still held in his hands.
Ned pulled himself together first. “We were talking about old memories.”
Looking to the two men in front of him, men who had lived, made and defied history, Frank’s heart swelled with pride and love.
He lifted his glass in cheers for the night’s historic milestone, and in tribute to the men in front of him, and said, “And we are smiling about bright news for the future.”