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Holby Pride has been handed down to us,
Holby Pride is a flower that’s free.
Holby Pride means our own dear town to us,
And our Pride it for ever will be.
[With apologies to Noël Coward]
***
“If you just don’t want to be spotted, I’m sure we can come up with a suitable disguise,” Serena wheedles. “What about going as Harry?”
Bernie gives her a puzzled look. “Who on earth is Harry?” She asks.
“You know, Harry the Holby Hospital Hedgehog,” Serena clarifies. “There’s a costume somewhere - I think Sacha was the last to wear it, for some charity thing - so it’s bound to fit you - room for us both, I should think.”
Bernie blanches. “A hedgehog? You mean like one of those football mascots, all foam rubber and fur? You’ve got to be kidding me - I’d boil to death!” She doesn’t add that she’d die of embarrassment as well, but they both know it, and it wasn’t a very serious suggestion, and they go back to the drawing board.
***
It is almost a year to the day since Bernie Wolfe, dragged reluctantly along to the hospital’s gay pride event, had hidden behind a rainbow flag to avoid the object of her unrequited affections, Serena Campbell. A year since she overheard Serena confess to Ric that she harboured more than friendly feelings towards her co-lead Bernie, and a year since she and Serena had kissed behind that same rainbow flag before emerging with a flourish to their colleagues. As coming out stories went, it wasn’t a bad one.
Since then, Serena has revelled in her newfound queerness, embracing her new community with gusto, but Bernie is still reticent and bashful despite her partner’s best efforts. Serena has at least managed to talk her into going to Holby Pride this year - actual Pride, not just the lame version they went to in the hospital lobby last year, however well that had turned out for them.
Serena is all for going on the float that the hospital has entered in the parade, but Bernie has needed a lot persuading. The only way she’ll go on it is if she can pay a backstage role - which, as Serena points out, doesn’t sound quite so much like pride as mild embarrassment, but it’s Bernie’s best offer, and Serena accepts it.
How about her old RAMC uniform? All the nice girls love a soldier, Serena misquotes, a twinkle in her eye, but: “It’s not fancy dress,” Bernie says gruffly, and it is not suggested again.
It finally occurs to Bernie that her driving license permits her to drive an HGV, and she volunteers to drive the float. She drove vehicles bigger and heavier than this when she was in the Army, and although she protested about wearing actual uniform on the back of the float, for old time’s sake, and because it just feels right at the wheel of a big beast like the float, she wears an old pair of camo combats and a white ribbed vest, along with an old khaki cap bearing the RAMC crest. Serena likes this outfit very, very much.
***
Despite all her misgivings, Bernie finds herself quite enjoying the parade - it’s been a while since she drove an HGV, but it comes back to her in a trice, and it’s easier driving along Wyvern Road than through Helmand, that’s for sure. But after a while she gets a bit bored: the parade route is long and slow - and Serena isn’t in the cab with her, and half the point of today was that they were doing this together. So she lets her co-pilot take over, and she goes to find Serena.
Bernie lets the engine idle as Derek takes the wheel. She hops down from the cab and swings herself up onto the float. To her consternation though, Serena is no longer on the float.
“Where’s Serena?” she shouts at Dom over the hi-energy drive of Dr Beat.
“Gone exploring!” he replies. “I think she went that way - she wanted to see some of the other floats.”
Bernie is somewhat put out that Serena has abandoned her until she remembers that she herself had sworn blind that nothing would induce her to leave the anonymity of the cab. She has to concede that if Serena wanted to see the parade, she will have had no choice other than to see it alone. Feeling a bit bad about it, she makes her way towards the back of the parade, as Dom has indicated.
She passes float after float, from the LGBT representatives of the Wyvern Constabulary, to the Pink Panthers RFC; from Holby Switchboard to Teachers against Homophobia; from the Gay Prison Officers Association to Turf Out TERFS, an association battling transphobia in women’s sport. Everywhere she looks she sees joy, colour, defiance, celebration: Pride. These people are her own, she thinks: a family just waiting to welcome her, but she has resolutely been ignoring their calls.
She gradually realises as she moves through the crowd that she still hasn’t really owned any sense of pride about her sexuality, her self. Even though she has agreed to come along today, she has done it because it was what Serena wanted, and she has done it in the least visible way open to her. She wants that to change, she decides - she wants to take as much joy in her identity as all these wonderful people do: as much as Serena does.
For Serena, as in all things, has thrown herself into this new family of hers. She has joined the Holby City LGBT society and is the life and soul of their many parties (most of which she has attended without her less extroverted partner). She is mentoring a young F1 who is a little timid following somewhat homophobic treatment from a final year tutor (her gaydar is much more finely tuned than Bernie’s, needless to say). Regardless of what label she chooses to apply, or not to apply, to herself, she has of course joined Lesbian Lushes, a gay women’s wine club, and Bernie feels sure there are more activities that she has forgotten.
And getting it at last, she thinks, Today is for me, as well - this is my parade, too. She picks up her pace, more eager than ever to find Serena.
***
She gets all the way to the tail of the parade without seeing Serena, and comes to the conclusion that she must have gone forward, not back, and she sets off at a trot to catch her up. But there is no sign of her. Bernie’s not worried - she’s probably missed her somewhere along the way, and they’ll find each other once the parade’s over and the party starts in Millennium Square.
When she gets to the very front of the parade, she sees that it is headed by the local branch of the Army Cadet Force marching proudly with rainbow hackles in their berets, and it brings a genuine smile to her face. She is half sorry now that she eschewed the opportunity to wear her own uniform as she is still entitled to do, but glad that she is at least wearing khaki. Her dress uniform would have been too hot anyway.
“Hi hi, Major Wolfe!” she hears a familiar voice cry, and to her delight, recognises the commanding officer as Karen Simkins, formerly her aide-de-camp on her first tour in Iraq, and now, judging by her insignia, a Captain in the Wyvern Regiment, and evidently seconded to the Holby ACF.
“Hello, Simkins! Still hard at it, I see?” Bernie swings into step beside her old comrade, who grins at her.
“This lot are harder on me than you ever were, ma’am!” she says, and Bernie laughs happily at her.
“Have they all earned their rainbow?” she jokes.
Simkins smiles proudly at her little band. “A few of them,” she acknowledges. “It's so good to be able to encourage them, to help them be proud of who they are, and proud of being a cadet as well. Would have helped me a great deal at their age,” she confesses. “And the others - they’re so supportive of each other. I gave them a choice about the hackle - they all wanted to wear the rainbow today, though.”
Bernie smiles wistfully, and says, “How wonderful. I’m proud of them - and so glad for the ones that need it.”
Simkins eyes her without quite looking directly at her. She decides to brave it. “You too, then, ma’am? I always did wonder.”
“Then you wondered about me long before I ever did, but yes, me too.”
They catch up on each other's news, and Bernie tells her all about Serena, tells her shes been looking for her in the parade, but she seems to have vanished.
“Oh! I think I might have seen her!” Simkins describes what Serena is wearing today, and Bernie nods - yes, that’s her.
“She’s gone on ahead with one of my youngest lads - poor kid fainted from the heat and the excitement. She picked him up and took him off to get him looked after - she’s probably still with him, it was only back there. We’ll catch up with her at the end I expect.”
The parade comes to a pause to let a queue of cars go past at the junction, and Simkins suddenly bellows, “Atten-tion! Cadets, present arms!”
Bernie hoots with laughter as the little squad of youngsters snap to it, presenting their inflatable pink rifles as seriously as though they were loaded weapons. Not a one of them cracks a smile, though she can see how much they want to. She nudges Simkins.
“Go on, let them blow off some steam. They’re here to celebrate, aren’t they?”
“All in good time, ma’am - there’s a protocol to follow, you know?”
Simkins turns back to her cadets. “Officer present! Cadets, acknowledge Major Berenice Wolfe, Royal Army Medical Corp. Eyes right!”
Bernie colours up a little, but she accepts the salute with all the pomp and dignity of an Army Major, giving them a crisp salute and a nod of approval in return.
“At ease!” She can’t help ordering them. They stomp into a wider stance, clasping their hands behind their backs, and she is hard pressed not to applaud, but she won’t offend their dignity. She does, however, give a friendly laugh and says, “Now, really at ease. Fall out, even if it’s just for a few minutes!”
The young people are glad of the break, and eyeing Captain Simkins who gives them the nod, they relax, and spend a minute or two chattering excitedly amongst themselves. One young woman, a tall slim girl with fair hair scraped back into a neat bun beneath her beret approaches Captain Simkins somewhat diffidently, and Bernie is reminded of a toddler tugging at her mother’s sleeve. The cadet murmurs something to Simkins, glancing shyly at Bernie. Simkins listens attentively, nods and gives the girl a little shove in Bernie’s direction.
“Major Wolfe, I’d like to present Cadet Elspeth Kirby. Cadet Kirby is our academic star, wants to study medicine and follow your footsteps into the RAMC, ma’am.”
Bernie talks kindly to the girl about her ambitions, gets the impression she will achieve anything she sets out to do, but won’t find it all plain sailing. She sees a lot of herself in this serious young woman, who she puts at about fourteen, fifteen. So focussed, so confident in what she wants to do, but so utterly unprepared for the social obligations that will come with it. She recognises, too, something she hadn’t recognised in herself until much, much later in life: Elspeth Kirby is what Serena tells her is called a baby gay.
“Well, good luck to you Cadet. You set your mind to it, and I’ll be saluting you one of these days,” she smiles. Elspeth blushes, thanks her: evidently knows when she’s dismissed, and she steps smartly back into the throng of her peers. But a moment later, she rushes impetuously back to Bernie, and sweeping the beret off her head, she presses it into Bernie’s hands.
“I’d be honoured if you’d wear this, Major Wolfe. You should be wearing one - for the parade, I mean.”
Bernie turns wide eyes to Captain Simkins, who couldn’t look prouder.
“Cadet Kirby here was chosen to lead the parade in this afternoon, Major. I think she’s conceding the honour to you.”
Elspeth nods shyly but certainly, and looks hopefully at Bernie. She wants to laugh hysterically - today is so not going how she thought it would - but she treats the gesture with the dignity it deserves. She looks into the girl’s eyes, satisfies herself that it’s a genuine offer meant as a tribute, not a way for a shy girl to get out of an onerous task, and gives Cadet Kirby a salute and a formal little bow.
“Thank you, Cadet. I'm very proud to accept.”
She digs in her pocket and finds a band to tie her hair back: it wouldn’t pass for a regulation bun, but then, nothing is quite by the book today. She pulls the beret on and almost sighs at the familiarity of it. Simkins adjusts it slightly for her, ensuring that the hackle is standing proud. The Captain gives another order, and the squad falls in, two of them raising shining cornets to their lips, and when the parade resumes, it is to the sound of I Am What I Am in the style of a military march.
So it is that Serena, waiting in Millennium Square with a peaky and embarrassed young cadet, hears the parade approaching, and turns to see her very own Army medic leading it home, dressed in a wet dream of a uniform, a plume of rainbow feathers waving above her eyebrow, and wonder of wonders: her shy, bashful, unassuming Bernie is dancing at the head of the Holby Pride parade, her bare arms glistening with sweat, her hips swaying to a disco classic, and the widest smile Serena has ever seen on her face.
Bernie dances straight into the arms of the most overqualified First Aider on duty, and flings her beret in the air triumphantly - but makes sure to catch it: she’s keeping that. Behind her, Cadet Elspeth Kirby is wearing a very nice RAMC cap, and a smile that matches Bernie’s.
As the music of the cornets is subsumed by the party proper getting going in the square behind them, Bernie keeps dancing, spinning Serena in her arms until they are both dizzy, and they collapse against each other, laughing until they are almost weeping. Bernie takes Serena’s face between her hands and kisses her deeply, but as she draws back, she playfully licks her nose, and laughs as Serena squeals.
“Happy Pride, my darling,” she says happily, and Serena beams back at her.
“Happy Pride, Bernie.”