This episode is offered up to see if there is a desire for a continuation of the story of Laura and Pete. Odd John is leaving the building, and unlike the first 'book' this is not a mystery story. The first part came to a natural end; this can be read as a separate story.
CHAPTER 1
That weekend, oddly, was one of the best I can remember. Dad Pete and my Pete seemed to have recovered a spark, a family bond that had been lost with his leg. Seeing them smile together warmed me, and it was hard work slowing my man down. He wanted to show his father everything at once, all the changes that had taken place since his so-called failure and run to York. More importantly, I was seeing my mother in love.
That was so obviously how she felt it was almost painful to watch, and he was so clearly in the same boat I wanted to cry at the thought of two wasted decades. They made an odd pair, to outside eyes, the perfectly turned out elegant lady with that huge bear in a checked shirt and jeans, but whose business was that beyond their own? She was so happy it looked painful, facial expressions beyond a raised eyebrow not being her thing.
That morning turned into a sort of group hug after what I would think should be called their confessions, and no words were needed to seal what was obvious between us. The two culprits were long dead, I was healing, and it seemed nobody else needed to know. Mary might suspect, but that was something I would deal with if it arose. What was important now was also between the four of us: what were we going to do with each other? I couldn’t see Dad Pete and Mum letting go of each other again, in fact, I hadn’t seen them let go all through breakfast, but what about my Pete?
Laura was back, almost fully it seemed, and she was me and always had been. There were huge gaps in my memories, and I think always will be, but the moods, the feelings were all there. I was thankful that one particular set of memories were locked away, only surfacing as confused nightmares, but I knew they were there. They always would be, but I now had a way of dealing with them, and I was no longer alone. I never had been alone, of course, but in my retreat from life I had felt it.
Feelings…Odd John had never really had feelings, just obsessions, focus. I was still learning how people worked, and as I watched I tried to tune my own behaviour, to live in my skin rather than simply wear it.
I dressed after breakfast, shivering a little as I slipped my wobbly bits in. They were becoming second nature to wear, and I felt really odd as John, without them. At some point…I pushed Pete out into the garden.
“We need to have another talk, Pete. About us, but mainly about me.”
I drew a deep breath. Where to start? How about where to finish?
“Pete, where do you see us going?”
“Wherever you want to go, but with one condition. Well, two, actually. The first is that you are happy with it, and the second is that I come along.”
“Well, there is one thing I do have in mind. You will need to move out of the Legion centre eventually, and you will have to find somewhere suitable for your wheels, work surfaces at the right height, and so on”
”Not necessarily, if I get my new leg I will be able to live almost normally, but what are you thinking?”
“Well, we have stairs here, but I rather suspect Mum would be happy to do some more mods to the house for you. That would do short term, but much as I love her, I do not want to live with my mother permanently. Once Jane has sorted out the payments, I will have half the value of the house in my hot and sweaties”
“Don’t you think you should raise the assumption you are making about me before that move, Laura?”
“Nope, I will be looking for somewhere of my own anyway. I just need to know if I should make it a bungalow.”
I kept very quiet about the other thought very much bubbling away. How many bedrooms?
With every breath that came into me, more of John left, more of his oddity.
“Before we cover those assumptions, I am asking for your support. I know I will have Mum’s.”
Breathe…
“I think it is about time that I started fitting myself to my soul. It will be a long, messy business. Will you please be with me for it? Please be my friend? I am rather short of those…”
He kissed me gently. No passion, just tenderness.
“No, John was short of friends. Laura will be different. I am with you, as much of the way as you want me. I have an idea as to where to start, if you feel brave.”
He fed me his little plan, and I nearly wet myself with terror. He held me, and whispered “Not alone”
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“Dave? It’s John. What are you and Sharon up to today? Fancy a run out to Bosham for lunch? Yeah? Well, you would know the tide tables, it’s a pub. One ish? See you there”
Done. I had just sealed my fate, after a rather shaky discussion with Dad Pete and Mum. We would head out for the Blue Anchor in Bosham, a tiny village right on the edge of the sea. In fact it is occasionally IN the sea, as high tide comes up onto the streets, and the garden walls serve to keep the houses dry, with a step up to pass through the gates. Parked cars serve to amuse the locals, especially with a spring high tide, which is why Dave had checked the tide tables. Good food, real ales for the boys and pretty views, and a falling tide.
I borrowed some more of my mother’s undies and stockings, and stayed with the suede courts from the previous night, which reminded me that I only actually had five pairs of shoes, discounting my male items, and shopping would be a real necessity at some point. Another hurdle to overcome, but one that would be necessary. What a horrible thought, more nice clothes….A cream blouse with a light grey mid-calf flared skirt would be warm, but still shout femininity, if the bloody shoes didn’t do the trick. Mum helped with my face, and teased my hair out, and by twelve we were out the door and into Mum’s car.
We arrived as the water was leaving, the best timing possible, and on a surprisingly warm Autumn afternoon we took seats outside. There were views across the water, a little egret fishing not far off, gulls crying and the rattle of rigging on masts as small boats swung at their moorings. We turned out to be about three minutes in advance of Dave and Sharon, and the boys went into the bar to choose ales, Pete managing a treat on his crutches. I realised that all the leaning on me may just have been a little…. unnecessary.
It was hilarious. Mum was looking out over the water as Dave walked right past the two of us, Sharon in tow. The beer was calling, and he was focused. Odd John wasn’t the only one, quite clearly. A few minutes later, four people came out of the door, three carrying drinks, the fourth making the introductions, and leading them to our table.
I stood up to say hello, and Dave dropped his glass. Sharon managed her surprise better.
“It is definitely not a fair world, he’s got better legs than me!”
Dave just nodded, and Sharon slapped the back of his head. I hugged her, and after a slight moment of stiffness, she hugged me back.
“This will be good….but should we get the food in before the juicy bits?”
We sorted out the orders, Dad Pete as errand boy, plus a replacement drink for Dave, and I made sure I was seen touching Pete. Let them see the truth. Dave snorted a couple of times, and I braced myself for one of the more traditional schemata…thar she blew.
“I didn’t realise you were gay, John. I mean, I spotted that mascara you had on the other day, but I just thought it was, well, dunno. So Pete here as well, then…”
Sharon was looking at me with narrowed eyes.
“No, lover, I think this is something else. This isn’t just dressing up, is it, John? And… is it John now?”
“Laura, and no, I am not gay, and I bloody well hope Pete isn’t”
Pete leant forward from his chair, peered at Dave, and murmured
“So…what are you doing tonight……big boy?”
Dave almost lost his second drink at that.
“Dave, there s a lot to tell here, and it was Pete’s idea to drop you in it like this. I have a story for you, but what I am really after is a little support for what will most certainly be a stressful time”
Sharon was still watching carefully. “You are so different from John, Laura. You are actually communicating. What the hell has happened to you?”
They got the abbreviated version, of course, and I left out the identity of my ‘attacker’, but in essence our childhood was replayed, and how the return of the warrior led to my recovery and re-entry into humanity. Sharon asked pointed questions, Dave asked blunt ones, and Sharon slapped his head a couple of times. Food was served, and then puddings were succumbed to, as redshanks and oystercatchers called over the receding water. Finally, as the boys supped, and we sipped, Dave asked the bluntest of his questions.
“Yes, Dave, that will be the plan. I need to fit me to me, but timing, work, all of that will need support. That is what this little lunch is really about. Do I have your good will, and your support?”
“Oh, come on Jo–Laura, how long have we been mates?”
“Since about one o’clock, Dave, you have only just met me. You knew a construct, a fiction, called John for a few years, though”
Sharon interrupted his stumbling attempt at a reply. “She’s right, Dave, we need to get to know her all over again, but do me a favour, just say bloody ‘yes’ “
She leant forward. “Fancy damaging some credit cards? I think we need some retail therapy in the near future, and I am going to hazard a guess that you don’t have the biggest of wardrobes. What credit limit has Pete got?”
CHAPTER 2
Dave was back to bluntness, but necessarily so.
“What exactly is the plan, then? I don’t think clip-clopping into college in those shoes would be quite the right thing.”
“Well, not unless I can fit cleats to them. Make pedalling a bit hard otherwise. I need to have a long chat to Mary, and get her confirmation officially, and then we start the preparation. You have to understand, Dave, that I have had 22 years locked up, and the tragedy was that I never realised how completely screwed up I was. I have to say this, I have major mental illness issues and to come straight out and drop that on the college leaves my job at risk, never mind my sanity. And what exactly is wrong with these shoes? I rather like them!”
“Bit fuck-me, aren’t they?”
“So? Pete, do these shoes say ‘fuck-me’ to you?”
“No, love, I let you speak for yourself”
Dave nearly lost that drink as well.
“Can you slow down a bit, please, you two? You are doing my head in completely, and I haven’t had nearly enough beer to relax me”
There was something, though, in that exchange that cut me deeply. I hadn’t slept with Pete beyond the time I had comforted him at his little flat, and I realised with a lurch and a skipped heart beat that it was what I wanted, needed to do. The thing that stood in the way was exactly what Dave was talking about, if he only knew.
I had a number of alternatives ahead of me. I had very little idea of sex beyond the rather arid performances of John with Jane, if I ignored the rape, and that was what hung in the air. I knew that such an act was actually commonplace between men and women, and not just gay men, and it would be a long time before I would be in a situation to offer the more conventional…route, but it was something I was profoundly unsure about. Would Pete want to? Would I? Could I, in fact, with all the unavoidable associations?
More to the point, in all physical respects except packaging I was male. Would, could Pete accept someone like that? If it was my illusion of femininity that turned him on, then it might be impossible for years.
Then, I remembered. Gentle kisses, hugs, with me as he dropped me off at college. Passionate kisses when I was ‘male’. The confusion of his declaration of his love. Whatever his inclinations, his tastes and preferences, it was me he had set his cap at, me in whatever wrappings he found me in.
I reeled myself back in. One little sentence and I am off trying to decide whether I am going to start something messy and possibly painful in a lot of ways, and there were so many other things not only more important but more urgent. I remembered Mum’s words: we would find our own way, and it was time for me to stop thinking in standard patterns just because that was what some other people might do.
And that was so important to me just then, just at that moment. I realised that the old male schema of ‘boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy tries his hardest to get into girl’s knickers’ wasn’t how I was thinking. This was Laura turning herself up to eleven, and John waving a last little two fingers of defiance. What was important was Pete, and me, together. Everything else was secondary, even adjusting my body. As long as we had that mutual support, we could cope with anything.
I suddenly realised that Mum was talking to me, and from her tone of voice had been doing so for a while.
“Sorry, Mum, I was miles away”
She looked worried. “Not one of your little absences, was it? I had hoped we were moving away from there, dear.”
“Not at all, Mum, I was just thinking about the future”
“Nice thoughts?”
I felt my whole face smile. “Very nice thoughts”
Dave got up, and came round to hug me. “That smile answered all the questions I ever needed to ask. John could never have done that.”
He kissed my cheek. “I am really, really pleased to meet you, Laura. Now, how do we start sorting this mess out?”
I caught a look from Sharon then, and for the first time ever I was able to see how much and how deeply she loved her husband. All the little slaps, all the mickey taking, it was all a dance between two people who really cared. If Pete and I could achieve even half of what they had, I would be happy.
Pete suddenly started to laugh. He leant over and whispered something to Dave, and he was off too. The rest of us stared and waited, until the chortles and the snorts subsided, and then Sharon said “Well?”
Dave grinned. “Remember Abigail? She’s going to be REALLY confused now!”
As Sharon started to laugh, and another wave took the boys, Mum simply looked at me and asked “Who is Abigail?”
Dave cupped his hands before his chest. “A student with…large personalities who wanted to offer herself to John in return for a mark, and he was so dim it just went straight past him”
I loved Dave just then. He had managed to say so much, just with a third person reference and the past tense.
Even Mum cracked a little bit of a giggle at that one.
I suppose I look back now at that day, and it really was that first day of the rest of my life. Dave proposed a toast, to renewal and rebirth, and then in his direct way looked straight at my mother and said “Do I need to get my suit cleaned, or isn’t he going to bother with the honest woman bit?”
That led me onto the other discussion, about moving out. I had run this one past my mother in the ladies’, and while she had not been best pleased that I was already looking to ‘abandon’ her, in reality she understood that we would need our own space. Finding a suitable bungalow could take months, though, and everything, of course, depended on Jane sorting out the finances. No hurry, but the sooner acceptance was gained the easier it would be for all of us. I walked over to the sea wall and rang Mary on her mobile.
“Mary Oliver”
“Hi, it’s Laura Evans, you said to ring you and let you know how things went.”
“And?”
“Well, I am out in a nice John Rocha number at the Blue Anchor in Bosham, with what is starting to look like my potential stepfather, Mum, Pete and a couple of friends. We laid some demons to rest this morning”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Reborn, renewed. Free…and frightened.”
“What are you frightened of?”
“Rejection, I suppose”
“Who from?”
“People at work, people who find out about me”
“What about Pete? Your mother?”
“Oh god no, they are being absolutely brilliant. To be honest…….Pete and I may well be moving in together. No, it’s the other people”
“Are they as important as those two? Are they important at all?”
“Well, no….”
“Then you have answered your own question. Laura, we need a proper assessment of your position. I already have my own opinions there, but I need to do it properly before you can move on. Can you ring my office to see me as soon as possible this week?”
“Certainly”
“Oh, and Laura….can I please meet you this time?”
CHAPTER 3
Now, there was a bridge to cross. It would be a necessary one, of course, but it was still daunting. So far, apart from the shock tactics on Sharon and Dave, I hadn’t been out anywhere that might hold people who knew me.
It also left me with a reminder of another dilemma: if I moved into a bungalow, as I was proposing to do, and did so as John, how would the neighbours react to Laura?
That was the decision made, really, I, we needed to start as I intended to go on. Work was another oddity, that Monday morning, after such a decision, getting all dressed up as a man for the day and having to remember to limit my contact with Pete to “hail fellow well met!” rather than “hello, my love”
Laura was fighting hard, but after a stern talking to, and some pouting, she agreed to stay locked away for a little while. I thought I heard a faint chorus of “Are we nearly there, yet?” and the answer, thankfully, was “yes, nearly”
I got some very odd looks in the first lecture on Monday, and later in my two tutorial groups. I realised I was actually engaging with the texts I was analysing, rather than just dissecting them, and in the tutorials I was actually animated. It is hard to describe what the difference is other than by analogy. The anatomist sees a cheetah as a collection of body parts that act in particular ways, the naturalist as a top predator in an ecosystem, the human being as a spectacle of grace and beauty that thrills him or her to the core.
And the gazelle sees it as painful death, of course, but let’s not strain the metaphor.
My approach to literature had always been as the anatomist rather than the lover, and now that I was finally and truly a lover, it took on a life that I had not perceived, and I found myself getting animated as never before. I might even be able to understand Mahler if this kept up, or even my mother’s Sibelius. Wonders beyond imagination.
I had managed to get an appointment the following day from Mary’s office lady, and hoped that my official recognition could soon follow. I was a little surprised that morning to be called into the Faculty Head’s office. He had a pot of coffee brought in, and sat me down in one of his easy chairs.
“John, pardon me for being so blunt, but what exactly is going on?”
“What do you mean, Howard?”
“I need to list it all out? Firstly, some human being seems to have replaced the alien life form that previously worked here. The students are astonished, you actually talk to them in lectures instead of, well, lecturing them. One of them told me your voice cracked when reading some Owen the other day, almost as if you were getting emotionally bloody involved!”
“Yes. ‘Dulce et Decorum’, terribly moving.”
“Exactly! You have never done ‘moved’, nothing ever moves you. And you are coming to work in a car now. What else is going on, I shudder to think”
He paused, looking nervous (see? I can do it now) and then said softly
“What exactly is the relationship between you and Mr Hall, John?”
“Well, he was my best friend in junior school”
“So that is why you kiss each other, then?”
Oh arse. “No, that s not why we kiss each other. People who are in love do that sort of thing occasionally.”
This was moving a little faster than intended, but I trusted Mary to do the necessary thing that afternoon. In for a penny…Howard took a deep breath.
“We have, of course, a full diversity policy at the University and as such no negative inferences or outcome will take place. I note that you have already distanced yourself officially from any involvement in his tuition or assessment, which is excellent. However, if I may be a little personal, neither of you has ever struck me as gay”
“We’re not”
“John, John, I am an old man and very easily confused. Please explain, in short and non-technical words if you will, how you are not gay. Heterosexual gentlemen generally refrain from such activities with each other.”
“We are both heterosexual, Howard, and Pete is most definitely a gentleman”
“Oh. I see”
Howard is a faculty head in a University. Stupidity in such a post tends to be frowned upon.
“Please, please John, explain.”
“Well, my name is actually Laura…”
The explanation was as censored as it had been for Dave and Sharon, but as detailed as necessary. I was astonished to see Howard in tears at the end of it.
“You say he died soon after, the man who did that to you?”
“Yes, he did, thankfully”
“Painfully?”
“No, in his sleep”
“What a great pity. I Have never been a religious man, John, Laura, but I do hope there is a special hell maintained just for his sort. Forgive an old man his emotions, do”
He visibly gathered himself, and I realised that what I had come to terms with was profoundly shocking to any normal person who heard the story cold. No wonder my childish mind had gone for such a long walk.
“Laura, did you say you were meeting your therapist this afternoon?”
“Yes, Howard, at three thirty. She wants to meet Laura, and I anticipate the issue of her official diagnosis of my gender problem. The first step so that I can stop confusing poor faculty heads when I kiss my beloved.”
“Where did you plan to, er, transform yourself? It is just that, well, this is something I will have to deal with, and if you do not mind I would like to discuss with your therapist how best we can assist you. To that end, I live nearby, and you are more than welcome to change there. I will drive, if you wish”
I would have kissed him, but I wanted such a lovely man alive a bit longer. So, when the bitching hour arrived, and after a word with Pete to let him know my plans, I rode alliteratively in Howard’s Saab to his rather posh pad up by the park, where he showed me to a guest room and awaited my appearance.
This was not a day to slap people in the face, more one simply to let them know who I really was. Dressed down, in effect. I wore flats over tan tights below a mid calf skirt and pale green blouse, beneath a forest green wool box jacket. Enough paint to make the point, but not to beat it to death.
Howard drew in a sharp breath when he saw me. “My dear, if your therapist can’t see what is before her, I know a decent optician.”
While changing, I had taken the chance to give Mary a quick call to warn her that Howard would be coming, and to stress that my father’s part should remain secret. We ended up parking next to Pete’s little shoebox so that I could help him out into his chair. We needed to push along his new leg, if only for his own self respect.
Mary had to ask for extra chairs from the office for the two boys, and before we started I noticed a number of envelopes on her desk. Pete and I, perhaps deliberately ostentatiously, sat next to each other and held hands. Mary smiled, just enough to let me see without being unprofessional again.
“Well, Laura, you seem to have come along a bit since our last meeting. You will have guessed that I have already made my decision, and that we have some paperwork to sort, but I want to get a few things cleared up first.
“Howard, where does she stand at work?”
And off we went. Pete was there, solid as ever; Howard expressed all the required policy statements, Mary gave me my certificate.
Run that one again: Mary, with no prompting or fanfare, handed me a letter declaring that I was a woman who needed a couple of adjustments. I can’t really say how well the session went, other than to sit and smile. I had my diagnosis to confirm what I already knew in my heart, I had my man beside me, I had the scrip for the magic pills in my hand, and totally unexpectedly I had my boss next to me nodding in agreement.
Howard left me with Pete in the car park, and we decided to cross another Rubicon up at Hedge End. My head was now spinning, so one more outing could make little difference.
“Are you sure about this, love? These are ex-squaddies, hardly the most tolerant people in the world”
“It has to be done some time, so why not today? Are you telling me now, after all the hoops you have jumped through, that you have doubts?”
“No, but….”
“Exactly. No buts”
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Martin was on the gate again as we drove in, and when I swang my legs out of the van his eyes widened. I was wrestling Pete into his chair, grateful for my flat shoes, when he came over to help.
“Is this a private fancy dress do, or can anyone join in?”
Well….for the first, but certainly not last, time I pulled out Mary’s letter.
“Ah, not what I thought then.”
Pete looked up sharply. “Martin, what exactly DID you think?”
He looked a little embarrassed. “Well, that you two were, you know, a bit crafty butcher sort of thing”
I looked at Pete and did the Mother thing with an eyebrow. He laughed; “I’ll explain that one later”
“No, Martin, neither of us is ‘good with colours’, nor do we ’jump puddles’, and as far as I know none of our friends are called Dorothy. You may also have noticed that I can no longer be described as ‘light on my feet’
“In short, no, we are not gay. Neither of us. Straight. Hetero. On the same bus as you. I’ve been reading the same book as you, Martin, so I know all the terms as well. This is Laura, my fiancée, and we wanted to let the Legion know that I will be leaving them soon, so they can arrange for someone else who needs help to take the room.”
When exactly did that little event happen? Pete caught my frown.
“Look, love, we’re moving in together, so not only does it go with the territory, it makes things a little easier for the rest of the world to grasp”
“That may be the case, Mr Hall, but you will be doing it properly, and I cannot guarantee a positive answer!”
Martin was now laughing. “That settles it for me! Definitely a bloody woman!”
CHAPTER 4
Pete was a little nervous, in the end, as we collected a large part of his possessions to take to my mother’s place.
“Moving in with the mother-in-law-to-be…not exactly easy on the nervous system”
“Why’s that?”
“Just look at her. Everything just so, no shoes on the carpets, clothes, I am sure, racked in order of colour….and me, a squaddy more used to hanging stuff on the floor.”
He paused. ”Look, love, it’s like me. I am slowly getting accustomed to losing a leg, you lost your entire life”
“I wanted to talk to you about that. We need to get you fitted with something other than wheels. I mean, you can hardly chase me round the bedroom in the chair, can you?”
Pete laughed at that. “Well, you’re in the wrong shoes for that, according to Dave!”
And there it was, almost in the open. At some point, there would be something to be done between us. I had repeated the masturbation several times since that first night, but while the images in my mind were of Pete, the rest was without form. My body was responding as a male, and I was thinking as the woman I was now remembering I had always been. I literally did not know what to do next, because I could not offer him what I should.
It was a truly odd mental trick, but then I had a history of that. My penis was giving me relief from the sexual frustration engendered by wanting Pete to do something to a part of me that didn’t exist, and I was looking at it as a temporary ‘toy’ that I would be trading in. I didn’t hate it, I was just waiting for it to leave, something like a guest who has overstayed their welcome. How odd; frenzied male masturbation serving to confirm my femininity. My life was passing from one confused state to another. One thing that was absolutely certain, though, was that I actually wanted no involvement from Pete in any way for that particular activity.
Well….as he drove, I reached across and put my hand half way up his left thigh. Let him make some of the decisions for once.
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We stopped at the chemists’ on the way back, and as Pete waited in the van I filled my prescription from Mary’s scrip. That took me about a quarter of an hour, so I wandered around the shop picking up some new make-up and avoiding the sexual health displays. This was turning into an obsession. As soon as I had my little package I took the first of my new pills. Back on the road, and into my mother’s, and a rare display of open emotion from her when I produced the letter and my medication.
“We have to sit down together and work out some form of timetable, young lady. When to change your legal name, when to attend work as yourself, and, to be brutal, when you will let that errant spouse of yours know the truth.”
Just then, the phone rang, Mother answered it, and it turned out to be Howard.
“It is your Faculty head, dear, and he is asking directly for ‘Laura’”
She looked rather puzzled by that one. He seemed to be in a much livelier mood than when we had left him, chuckling as he spoke.
“I have had two little things come up, Laura, which you may find amusing. Firstly, my lady wife wanted to know who the rather attractive young lady was that our neighbour spotted leaving the house with me”
“Oh dear, Howard, I haven’t caused you any trouble, have I?”
“Not at all, Laura. I took the rather presumptuous liberty of telling my wife the basics of your story, she was rather supportive. When I mentioned the…attack, she just asked me a question, which was ‘Where is the animal now?’ ”
“I understand, Howard, you have my thanks. People will have to know sooner rather than later, and I think I can trust you to filter the story as necessary. What was the other matter?”
“Do you remember a student of yours, one Abigail Thorpe? A young lady of considerable frontal aspect?”
“Yes indeed, I have a story about her I could tell you”
“Well, she is alleging that you have deliberately marked her work down”
“Why would I do that?”
“Apparently because she has refused your sexual advances”
At that point he burst into a fit of very healthy laughter. “I meant to beard you about it today, but events sort of took over. I tell you, though, this is one misconduct hearing I am really looking forward to with relish”
“Oh, indeed, Howard, but can you do one thing for me? Get somebody other than Dave to mark her work and assure my verdict on it. I presume you wish me to attend the hearing as myself?”
He sniggered, really sniggered. “I would have it no other way, Laura!”
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Mother had made a daube for the evening meal, and we talked strategy as my mother wrote lists on a pad beside her plate. Who to tell, the priority, banking details, deed poll, social security and electoral roll, she had obviously been planning away in private for some time.
“After dinner, dear, we are going over to Gun Wharf. They have a late night opening this evening, and you need to buy a lot of clothes for work.”
“Mother, I have not yet decided when I will have my coming-out”
“Oh, Laura darling, that has already been arranged. As soon as the first misconduct hearing is arranged, that will be your date.”
She descended from her little ivory tower just then. “Remember what we have been telling you ad nauseam: you are not, and never have been, alone”
Gun Wharf Quay is a large shopping centre in Portsmouth, just the other side of the harbour by foot ferry from Gosport. It is dominated by the Spinnaker Tower, famous for its failing lifts and whose early resemblance to a sex toy as it was being built led to it being referred to as the Rampant Rabbit. Long, knob on top, twin-forked arms sticking up from the bottom…..
We wandered around from shop to shop, and it was amazing how natural I felt doing so. Clothes were tried on and a proper fit found, shoes were bought that felt as well as looked good, and I saw (and bought) one pair of strappy heels that didn’t just say ‘fuck me’, but rather ‘screw my brains out NOW on a bed of chocolate”
Pete joked that he was luckier than most men, because he had his own personal Husband Chair. He claimed he could see no real difference in the various court heels I tried on, but saved himself from further injury by remarking on how nice they made my legs look.
There was one other place I looked in, apart from the clothing and coffee shop, and that was a laser hair removal studio. I booked an initial course of treatment starting the following week. Goodbye, beard, don’t write.
Eventually, the feeding frenzy abated a little, and we made our way back to the ferry.
“I see why you insisted I come” said Pete, “so you could use my bloody chair as a pack mule”
I snorted. “Some of this stuff is yours!”
“You mean the two paperbacks and the one shirt?”
My mother interrupted. “You two might as well be married, the way you go on”
“Funny you should say that, Mum, but he sort of proposed today”
Sometimes, just sometimes, I manage to crack my mother’s shell.
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Once again I was in John mode for work, and the more I did it the more I realised how unnatural it was for me, compared to how I felt properly dressed. I was beginning to realise that there had been a reason I had found dressing in the marital home so relaxing–it wasn’t a case of ‘finding my feminine side’ but of the simple removal of conflict. There were a number of things involved, and none of them involved sexual gratification, something Mary had prodded at in our first meetings.
Firstly, I felt now as if I was taking off a costume rather than putting one on for a while. Laura was becoming my default state, exactly as my mother had always known she would. When things were more advanced, and my body more obviously female, I would be able to dress down a bit, but a second factor was that I really liked clothes, and shoes in particular. I know they are silly, and impractical, but nothing is more elegant than a nice pair of heels. According to my mother, I have excellent taste, neither brash nor clumsy. Pete seems to like it, anyway….I just like prettiness, and elegance. Heels start to look truly ugly above a certain height; skirts too short look horrible. If I had a cleavage, displaying it the way Abigail did would definitely not be my style.
Rather like my mother, in fact. Then again, having had a rummage in her knicker drawer, I had my preconceptions overturned emphatically. Ye gods, she could undress like a whore! I wouldn’t normally use that word in association with Mum, but let me just say that she liked her underwear. I rather liked her underwear, too, and that thought brought back the earlier ones.
Work the next day. Mum parked up, Pete took a shower on his new chair, and I went to get ready for bed. After a good night kiss to Mum in her room, I started back down the stairs, and definitely heard her call out a soft ’good luck, dear’ at the first creak.
Pete was in bed by this time, and I caught a faint snore. I pulled off my slippers and lifting the edge of the duvet slid in beside him. He grunted and cuddled up to me.
“Thought you’d never come. If you have cold feet warm them somewhere else. I can’t exactly kick you out, can I?”
A kiss on the mouth, a wriggle, and he was back to sleep. No drama, no passion, just the best thing to happen in my life since he came back.
CHAPTER 5
The next morning was remarkably normal, Mother up early to bring us a cup of tea in bed, clearly checking my whereabouts. Pete had slept straight through, without nightmares, and I woke as before with an arm across me and dribble down the back of my neck.
My mother, as usual, was right. I really had no choice except to come out, as I would be leaving John behind at some point, and unless I stayed indoors all my life I would have to ‘face my public’. The only real choice would be to pick a moment for least harm, and best benefit, and the thought of getting one over on little miss Chesty was an attractive one.
That was another little moment, remembering Dave’s explanation of what she was up to. John hadn’t even noticed her tits, and here I was, envious as all hell of them! Funny world.
I arranged to have my lectures covered on the day of the first hearing, and my mother arranged a visit from a mobile hairdresser she knew. My mad mop passed as a woman’s hairstyle, sort of, while not being too out of place on a chap, but it was time to start the process of finding my own look, my own style.
Ginny was a stick-thin redhead, far from natural I was sure, and I was soon having what my mother insisted was my first proper wash. For god’s sake, it’s only dead keratin, there’s no ‘life’ to it by definition! Mind you, having my head massaged in that way was rather nice. Perhaps I could train Pete…..
She cut remarkable quantities of hair off my head while leaving it still somehow looking full, and layered it down to my ears so I looked as if the top of my head was wider than the bottom. Some slight waviness gave me a look I really liked, and I resolved to use her again.
“It makes your features look smaller, Laura” Ginny told me, “More feminine”
It seemed I was already out in several places. I had assumed the neighbours must already know, as I had been in and out en femme, but it was still an occasion for nerves. Ah well, today was the day.
I had a sudden thought, and after the noise of the drier had finally ceased I asked my mother a question that had surprised me with its appearance.
“Mum, what was Mrs Hall’s name?”
“Elspeth, dear”
“Do you think Pete would mind if took it as a middle name when we swear the Deed Poll?”
“I think he would be honoured, my darling”
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Mum drove me into Southampton so that I could stay as elegantly non-glowing as possible. I had gone for the full powersuited business lady look, in a charcoal skirt and jacket over black stockings and patent black courts. On Mum’s advice, I added a dramatic flash to the ensemble with a bright scarlet blouse with a large bow at the neck. Ginny had done my nails as well as the hair, and they were set up to match the blouse, as were my lips, courtesy of Mum. No accessories beyond a watch and a plain briefcase in place of a handbag. Powerful, efficient, strong yet fully feminine.
We had arranged with Howard to be there an hour or so before the meeting so as to have a last look at the allegations, and the plan was that the hearing would convene while I waited in an adjoining office until called for. There were two other representatives from the faculty, Professor Harriet Smythe and Doctor Sam Cordice. Both had been briefed on my situation, and I felt just a little exposed beneath their gaze. Sam just nodded. “Yup, works for me”
Harriet leaned in closer. “Has anyone ever told you, dear, those are SERIOUSLY fuck-me shoes? Wherever did you find them?”
I nearly passed out with relief at that point.
Things began on time, and Howard had rigged up a speaker phone so we could hear what was being said in the next room. It was a dreadful story. Young Abigail, not long out of the parental nest and inexperienced in the Ways of Wicked Men, had come to the Big City from her tiny village of thatched cottages and milkmaids, where small children fed ducks with organic wholemeal bread, or something, all for the love of English literature. Virginal and innocent, she had been unprepared for the frenzy of lust unleashed in her direction from the testosterone-crazed lecturer. He kept staring at her chest, which she knew was unnaturally large, so she always wore clothes like today’s baggy sweater, cause she didn’t like to think of things like that, being so innocent, like. And virginal, of course.
But even so, he had been making inappropriate references to her chest, and then she noticed her marks were dropping, so she had asked the evil sex-hormone-filled lecturer what was wrong. That was when he suggested that there might be a way to sort it out, but she was too shy to spell it out in front of people, but it definitely would have involved something utterly non-virginal and far from innocent, so in extremis she had finally turned to the Faculty for help and protection from this evil would-be rapist. And so on at great and inventive length. I had great difficulty in not collapsing with the giggles.
Harriet was first in. “Miss Thorpe, we have taken the liberty of having your submitted work assessed by other tutors. They actually have come to a pretty similar level of mark to each other”
“But higher than Doctor Evans, yes?”
“Er, no. Dr Evans seems to be quite generous”
I was fascinated by this. Could they keep up a gender-neutral reference to me throughout?
Sam was next. “You have a very extensive Facebook page, Ms Thorpe”
I am sure I caught a very, very faint “oh shit”
“Let me see…..four down, eleven to go on the Rugby 1st XV front…first prize in the Wet T-Shirt Competition at the New York/New York nightclub…I could go on”
“Yebbut, that don’t change what he wanted me to do, does it?”
Harriet said “Howard, do you think we should ask Dr Evans to step in for a while to address these allegations?”
“Certainly, Harriet. The good Doctor is waiting next door, I believe”
I was pacing when Howard came into my room. “Virginal, sweet and innocent! Howard, would you care to make a small wager with me?”
“Certainly, my dear”
“Five pounds says she uses the C-word”
“You are on”
I came into the room from behind Abigail ,and there was a fine moment of theatre as my heels left the carpet by the door and hit the wood of the parquet flooring nearer the desks. Abigail span in her chair, and I saw she was wearing a big floppy jumper, a long denim skirt, and no make up at all. Still couldn’t disguise her chest, though.
Tick, tock, tick, tock as I swayed up to the desks and took a seat, legs properly crossed at the ankles, knees tilted demurely and just so to one side. I folded my hands together on the desk so that the scarlet of my nails couldn’t be missed, after pushing a purely imaginary stray hair back into place. Abigail’s gaze had tracked me like a gun sight as I strutted across the office, her mouth hanging open in a particularly bovine way. Well, it would be, of course, it went with the udders. She managed to close her jaw and after a few false starts to speak. Rant, really.
“What the fucking hell is this?”
Harriet looked up over her glasses in that archetypical menacing-manager way. “Oh, didn’t you know? Your evil would-be rapist is a transsexual who is not only not interested in women sexually, but is actually engaged to an ex-soldier. I believe that to be the case, Laura?”
“Yes, indeed, Harriet, he proposed to me last week.”
“Oh you fucking cunt!”
“Howard…?”
CHAPTER 6
Howard looked around the three of us as Abigail sat tight-lipped and furious.
“Are we agreed, Sam, ladies? Right. Ms Thorpe, you have made serious allegations against Dr Evans here, allegations that could have resulted in a prison sentence for her if they had been true, which clearly they are not. To support those falsehoods, you have attempted to misrepresent yourself in a truly grotesque way.
“Dr Evans would be fully within her rights to take a civil action against you for slander, and as I would be more than happy to stand as a witness on her behalf, and…yes? Yes, my two colleagues here also, I believe that your chances in court would be as that of the well-known infernal snowball.
“We have another matter to consider now, and that is whether we can allow you to continue as a student at this establishment after such disgusting dishonesty. Accordingly, I would strongly suggest you take legal advice before your own hearing ,and at the very least consult your student council.
“For the time being, you are suspended from access to the University, its grounds and buildings.”
“Yebbut, that fucking freak’s not even a proper woman!”
Harriet leant forward, just a little. “Mss Thorpe, if you are offering yourself up as a feminine role model, I am afraid I will go with Laura here”
Abigail was crying now. “But it’s not supposed to go this way! You’re all just sexists!”
I almost felt sorry for her at that point. Harriet, clearly, did not.
“We will be in touch when a date is available for your disciplinary hearing. Close the door as you leave”
She almost stumbled out of the office, in floods of tears. Harriet stared at me.
“You feel sorry for her, don’t you? Typical bloody soppy woman, no wonder we get trodden all over! Listen…I have spent my entire career striving for equal treatment, respect, all of that, and too many women are just like you, the slightest bit of emotion and they crumble. Cows like her use that, and they destroy everything the rest of us fight for, and girls like you are too bloody soft to stop them!”
She paused, opening and shutting her mouth almost like Abigail.
“Ye gods, you really are a woman, aren’t you?”
“A couple of small areas that need adjustment, but, yes, I always have been.”
“Well, less sympathy and more ‘let’s nail that bitch’, and you still haven’t told me where the shoes came from”
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Harriet insisted on taking me for a coffee, and I called Pete up to meet us at a little café in Above Bar. I spotted him on the pavement, and trotted out to help him with his chair into the place.
“You look absolutely gorgeous, love. Those are definitely Dave shoes. The hair suits you as well, really nice”
“Keep talking and you’ll get me into bed, young man”
“I was sort of hoping that might be the case! Who is this we’re meeting?”
“Harriet Smythe. She has all the letters and stuff, but she seems to prefer the high-powered admin stuff to what we lowly lecturers slave away at”
“How did it go n there?”
I snorted. “Tell you inside”
Harriet stood to offer him her hand. “So you are the magic bullet, eh?”
“Perhaps an unfortunate metaphor, but I take it as you meant it. Just don’t follow it with a comment about going down a bomb or finding our feet”
That was a moment that truly warmed me. I looked at my Pete as my healer, my rescuer from the living hell of Odd John, a hell so deep and dark I didn’t even know I was in it. With that little flurry of jokes, I realised that perhaps it was far from being one way traffic, that I was healing him as he did me. I also knew I loved him, but that was like the sunrise, it was there each day.
Some time later I realised they were still talking, and Harriet seemed to have thawed considerably in his presence. We worked through the rather unequal meeting of minds with young Abigail, and when I mentioned my side bet with Howard, Harriet brayed with laughter. “You utter bitch! I wish I had thought of that!”
She finished her coffee, and taking my hand pulled me off to the ladies’
“Well, you can hardly use the gents’ like that, can you, and you will need to get used to it”
Where exactly did she think I had been going since Hurricane Mum turned my life inside out? Never mind.
“Laura, are you familiar with Richard Thompson’s music?”
“Is he a popular singer or some such?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, I thought John had buggered off for good! He’s a folk singer”
“I don’t do folk…”
“Bear with me, Laura. Richard writes seriously deep lyrics, usually rather dark, and on one of his albums he wrote a song about a girl watching her friend go off out, and the tag line is ‘has he got a friend for me?’ ”
She looked straight at me then. “Well, has he?”
I realised she was deadly serious. There was a vulnerability there, behind the sharp suit and the perfect make up, hidden by the hard professional manner, and I saw the need within her. I was finding out that there are currents in people’s lives that don’t always show on the surface, and to have them confide in me was confirming my shiny new humanity.
“Yes, I am at least half serious. Watching you together almost hurts, he loves you so much and so obviously. For somebody with your…anatomy, you are so wholly female you make me realise what I have squandered over the years. So, when I see how totally John, that peculiar and profoundly irritating tit, has softly and silently vanished away, I seek my own boojum”
I did what women do, and hugged her, and we talked some more, and I resolved to speak quietly to Pete that night in bed.
A thought that had me trembling with joy. I kept it from Harriet.
We tottered back to the table, laughing, and Pete just looked puzzled.
“Girl talk, love. Let’s get back, we’ll be a little early, might have time to go down to the front for a wander”
We were indeed early, and there was a Landrover Discovery parked in the driveway.
“That’s Dad’s….”
I had a sudden suspicion, and with Pete on his crutches, I opened the front door of the house as silently as I could manage. I was right, and rather surprised.
My mother makes a LOT of noise when having sex.
CHAPTER 7
As soon as the indecent requests and instructions from upstairs had died down, I busied myself noisily in the kitchen, calling loudly out to Pete to ask if he wanted a cup of tea.
My subtle hint to the loving couple that the house was now occupied fell a bit flat when Pete shouted up the stairs “Do you want a cuppa, Dad?”
The two appeared looking a little sheepish, in the case of Dad Pete, and rather smug in the case of my mother. She looked at me, and with the usual facial twitch said
“Darling, we have the same taste in shoes, and Pete was always happy to follow instructions”
That got me chortling, while both men looked puzzled. My Pete was the first to twig, and then had to explain it to his father, and suddenly my mother was crying, and I was holding her as tears ruined my blouse. Harriet’s question about Pete having a friend came to mind, and I realised that he did, and it was his father. I resolved to look up the song in question.
“Mum, we have all wasted so many years, can I begrudge you doing some catching up? We have lots to tell you about today, and then I need to run that question past both boys, and I must have a little chat with my Pete”
I went through the events once more, with laughter at the appropriate places and frowns at others, and my mother got very pushy about a defamation suit against the girl. I pointed out that she was likely to have her studies terminated, which was something that would follow her around for life, and that I myself just wished to close the chapter.
“Pete, Mr Hall, sod it, Peters both, I have something I wish to ask. I will be going this week to swear a deed poll at mother’s solicitors, and I will thereafter be Laura Evans for all legal purposes.
“Would either of you object if I took Elspeth as a middle name?”
Nem con, and it was Dad Pete’s turn to cry.
We did indeed have time for a wander along the front, and Dad Pete drove us out towards Stokes Bay for some fresh winds and a sight of the many yachts that use that part of the Solent. I was touched by the gentle way he lifted his son into his Discovery, and how he seemed proud to be pushing him with my mother on his arm. This is my son, and my woman and I love them both.
We stopped at the café by the nature reserve for more tea, and I got a few moments alone with my Pete.
“Love, what did you think of Harriet?”
“Out of ten, I’d give her one OUCH”
“No, Pete, as a person, not whether you think her legs are better than mine”
“How could that possibly be?” (he was clearly learning) “Seriously, she seemed nice, if a bit intense. A bit like you used to be, in a small way. Why do you ask?”
“How are you off for single friends?”
“Oh no, you’re the English prof, you must’ve read ‘Emma’!”
“Of course, but I was thinking more of simply letting the dog see the rabbit than pushing people at each other. That never works. It was also for me”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you have met my friends, my colleagues, and John being as he was he didn’t make many of the former. I just think that it is time I started meeting some of yours”
Pete looked a little apprehensive at that point, and I realised that one thing his friends would bring with them was memory. Could he cope? Then, of course, I realised that it was ‘could we cope’. I reached across to him.
“You are not alone now, you know. I understand what you are afraid of, but I am going nowhere without you.”
“Yes, I know you say that, but what have I got to offer you?”
“Are you taking the piss, Hall? I wouldn’t even have a life if it wasn’t for you! I thought we’d got that clear! What the hell has got into you?”
“Shit, love, can’t you see? Can’t you tell? What do you think I see when I look at you? No, shut up for once, since you came back you talk far too much, and that’s just like a bloody woman, ’cosi fan tutte’, yeah? Look, I love you, so much it hurts. Do you understand that?”
I went to speak, and he put his hand over my mouth.
“Just answer. No speech, no lecture, answer the question”
“Yes I understand”
“Do I see you as a woman?”
I thought on that one, and all my inner arguments came back to me. “Yes, I think so. I am a woman, and I hope, I trust you see that”
“Oh, love, I do, I do. Now, do I want you in my bed?”
“I hope so. I hoped you would last night”
“That should be an easy one for you to answer, but yes, I did, I sleep better by far when you are there to catch my nightmares for me. But there is more to sharing a bed than a cuddle and a good night’s sleep. Just think how your mum was screaming earlier.”
“Pete, I know, but….”
I had to take a number of breaths to sort my thoughts and next words. “Pete, I want you to make love to me,I want you to be my man, for your woman, I want what my mother has, but I can’t just now. I haven’t got the bits, and I have thought about the alternatives, but, that, after, well”
I couldn’t help it. I blame the hormones, the same ones that make my chest itchy; I started into tears.
“I want you, Pete, but my body is still wrong”
He was still holding me. “I want you love, but my body just won’t”
I pulled away slightly, just so I could see him. “The…injuries?”
“No, nothing there or then. More of an impotence. Before,I would look at a girl, like that one at Bovington, and it would be phwooar, look at the legs, tits, whatever, and Soldier Blue would be up for it without a second thought. Now, you come in dressed like that, or you slip into bed with me, and nothing. Not a stir.
“What can I offer you if I am not a man?”
I kissed him, hard, and repeated my earlier words. “Listen, stupid. No you, no Laura. You think I expect more? We will do as my mother says, find our own way. You do NOT get away from me without a fight, I intend to be like bloody Colditz with you. It has taken me all these years to get you back, to fucking get myself back, you are NOT running off, got me? You are MINE, Peter Hall, you bloody well proposed to me!”
I paused, whether for breath or dramatic effect, I am not sure, then added “Do you think you could bring yourself to do it properly? We have some witnesses….”
Pete suddenly started laughing. “I suppose you’ll want me to go down on one knee!”
At that joke, I realised I had broken the bleak mood that had taken him, but I made a sudden and thrilling decision for that evening. Impotent? Not if I could help it. On the other hand, I wanted to push the point about the “proposal”
The other loving couple were returning. I waited till they were back at our table, and looked at my mum, who had clearly spotted the puffy eyes. I raised an eyebrow of my own, and in a moment of simple telepathy she simply nodded. Pete sighed, and turned to his dad.
“Can you help me out of my chair please, Dad?”
As Dad Pete lifted him up, he whispered in his ear. The older man smiled, and kissed his son on the cheek. With amazing gentleness and care, he knelt with him till my Pete was balanced on his intact knee.
“Laura Elspeth Evans, will you marry me?”
I screwed everything down tight. “I suppose I could check my calendar….oh, my love, of course I will!”
Dad Pete hugged his son, then looked at Mum.
“I’m on my knees as well, Lucy. I ran away, and left you in pain. We wasted a lot of years because I was stupid and a coward. Can I now make it up to you? Will you….?”
I hadn’t realised that we had gathered an audience with our gymnastics, but when my mother said yes the round of applause let me know.
CHAPTER 8
I laughed happily as Elder placed Younger back in his chair. “You have just made my life easier, you know, I can call you ‘Dad’ now so tiny brain here doesn’t get confused!”
There was a lot of work left to do. Abigail was certain to have passed the word about the ‘freak’, so I would be attending work from now on as Laura. That brought on another long chain of thoughts, where I tried to work out if there was actually anywhere I would need to dress up as a man, and I could think of none. Jane, perhaps…no. It would clear the decks, and that was all I still needed from her.
My wardrobe was large enough, a last relic of masculinity insisted, to see me through work for a while, but I would definitely be dressing down a bit from the Abigail Offensive. Serious Academe required more of a librarian than a laser-sharp management bitch, and I would be able to relax a little. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my sharp suits, and I think I have dropped a few hints about my taste in shoes, but I wanted no distractions for the students.
That got me giggling properly. Dr Evans turns up in a dress and the students aren’t distracted. Yes, of course.
I had a lot to do, indeed. Mary would need a visit, the solicitors, Jane, registering interest at an estate agent for our flat, the banking details…
“Pete–no, not you, my Pete, what do you want to do about the Legion?”
“Well, I suppose that is up to your mother, love”
She smiled. “If you have to ask, she was right to call you ‘tiny brain’. Of course you can stay, as long as you need until your own place is ready. Your father is here till Sunday, so there will be plenty of brute labour available from the lower orders.”
Dad snorted.
Dad. Not my father, but someone who seemed to care for me. Perhaps as a response to his son’s feelings for me, but for whatever reason there was a clear affection growing in his voice when he spoke to me.
“OK ladies, here is a plan. We get as many of these visits out of the way tomorrow as we can. Tonight, we go out to dinner somewhere nice, and perhaps invite a couple or six friends out, so we can toast today’s engagements.
“Which reminds me, son. We both have jewellery to buy. How are you off for funds?”
“Not too bad, Dad, and I will be saving on the Legion rent. Which reminds ME…Mrs Evans, I need to start contributing if I am to live with you. I don’t like to freeload.”
She laughed out loud at that. “You have already paid, Peter, you gave me my daughter. All I will ask is that you tidy up, and perhaps help with the food bills. We seem to have got through a phenomenal quantity of wine since your return”
“Food bills” I murmured…”That reminds me, what did Martin mean about ‘crafty butchers’?”
Dad snorted again, and kept doing so until he could keep in the laughter no longer. Pete was blushing slightly. “Crafty butchers, er, take their meat in at the back door….”
“Oh. Ah. But you set him straight, if you excuse the pun.”
“Yes, remember what he said? ‘Definitely a woman’ ”
Why is being human so complicated, and why do they have to have so many bloody in-jokes? We, or rather Dad, got Pete into the Discovery and we set off by way of the supermarket yet again. Mother had decided that if we were to invite guests to dine with us, we would have to have the wherewithal to have them back for cheese, biscuits, coffee, all that “Good Housekeeping” stuff she does so naturally. As I was ringing the usual suspects, plus Harriet, Sam, and Howard, and Pete a few friends via HMS Haslar, the local naval hospital, my mother started to laugh.
“I have just realised something, my dears. You have deprived me of a true maternal tradition. Peter has known you so long, how can I show him embarrassing pictures of you in your childhood? He’s probably in half of them himself!”
That set us all off. The joke wasn’t that amusing, but the mood was so good, the atmosphere buzzing with the sheer joy of four people, that anything would have been funny. We cleared the shopping needs, and as Mum set out the various plates and bowls for later, Dad made reservations at “Le Chat en Oeuf” for our party. I took a bath before we went out, and made bloody sure that I had disposed of any stray hair. I looked forward to the end of my zapping sessions.
Mum laid out my clothing for me, as she said that we would match as much as we could, and detected just a little of that common mother-daughter ploy of ‘sister, not mother’ She had dug deep into her knicker drawer, and I found myself offered a black basque, stockings, very abbreviated knickers, and an absolutely adorable LBD.
As I stood in my towels admiring the outfit, she came in and hugged me, damp from her own shower. “I overheard part of your conversation today, my dear. Please, just see if these can help. Have no wish to know of your intimacies, but if he can see you in that underwear and NOT respond, we will have to work very much harder than I would imagine possible.
“I have my own laid out for this evening…..”
She was blushing. My mother was blushing! “He, er, likes the look, and it seems to work rather well for both of us…”
I hugged her, and she whispered the rest into my ear. ”You will be feminine tonight, my dear, feminine and as beautiful outside as you are inside. Let Pete’s little problem have both barrels!”
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We had quite a party at the restaurant. The four of us were joined by Dave and Sharon, Howard, his wife, Sam, his partner John (confusing….not at all!), Martin and his wife Anna, plus Harriet.
Pete had called on the staff nurse who had looked after him on his return to Gosport, a ridiculously cheerful ‘Badian called Tyler, as well as his physiotherapist, Ollie. And, I must admit it, I thought “sod professionalism”, and Mary could make it. I was losing count, but I made it 16. The owner of the restaurant must have blessed his good fortune, being so full on a weekday evening, and he returned the favour by giving us some free bubbly for toasts after the meal. I don’t think it was quality stuff, but what do I know about wine?
And do you know what? I couldn’t have given a toss. It could have been tap water, it mattered nothing. This was my night, and my mother’s, and our two men’s. The owner, who spoke to everyone in French or broken English, but admitted to me that he was Dutch, had pushed and shunted tables until we had a hollow square for our party, and from somewhere balloons had been found. Harriet ended up lodged between Ollie and Tyler (remember Emma, Laura!), Pete quietly advised Martin about his sense of humour around Howard and John, Dave passed a number of comments about me and Mum while Sharon slapped him, and Mary just sat and smiled.
I really felt for her. Unlike her hypnotist, she had been compelled to sit through all of the shit that passed for my life, and I owed her a huge debt for her strength in seeing it and me through to life and sanity. How did, how could, someone like her unwind?
I made several visits to the ladies’. I was learning quite quickly that we don’t have weak bladders; we just have a deep need for gossip. Harriet in particular was cock a hoop.
“Two, you sod, two! They’ve each slipped me their bloody number, what the hell do I do?”
“A threesome?”
Sharon chipped in, “Bugger me girl, you take my Dave home and wear him out so I can sleep, and I will suffer the horrors of those two in your place, ‘cause I am a selfless cow! Or is that ‘selfish’?”
Mary murmured in a cod German accent, “Tell me about your childhood” and we were off into giggle land.
Oh, I could write a book on that evening, it was a real eye opener. I had learnt, or recovered, so much, thanks to Mum, and Pete, and Mary, but was still learning, and that night I saw a group largely made up of strangers united by a mutual bond, who came together in a happy social unity, and it came home hard to me how much I had lost, how many years I had wasted, and how much I really hated my fucking father.
Pete caught my mood, as always, and turned it around, which is one reason I love him, and Dave stood up to play toast master.
“Ladies, gentlemen, and my wife. I wasn’t doing anything tonight, so this little party filled a bit of a loose end for me. Seriously, I have had a friend for a number of years, but I don’t think he knew he had me. He was always in his own world, obnoxious as all hell, but despite the fact that I am as sensitive, according to my wife, as a sloth on valium, I could always tell there was more to him than was obvious.
“There was never any harm to John, never any malice, but he could never connect unless on ground he knew. To my credit, he adds modestly, I stuck by him till this young chap came back into her life and it all went silly, in the nicest possible way.
“I found out why my odd mate was odd, then I found out she was lovely, and now we are here to see a circle completed with four long-split halves coming together again after far too long. If this world were perfect, they would never have been apart in the first place. Then again, if that were so, we would not have had such a joyous night, nor the chance to eat so much at someone else’s expense, which is never a bad thing.
“I could talk all night, but my wife would kill me, so, please, my friends, raise a glass to love divided, love revived, Lucy, Laura, and two Peters.
“The happy couples!”
Tears are a natural thing when your heart is bursting.
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Some hours later the house was empty again, crumbs and plates the only sign of the crowd of friends and locusts who had swept through. Dad had literally carried Mum up the stairs to their–wonderful thought–bedroom, and I had helped Pete into our–even better thought---bed.
I was still in the LBD, and my best ravage-me-mercilessly shoes, and I stood by the bed, unzipped and let drop. Pete gasped, “Fuck me, Laura”
You know, I didn’t, but Mum had been right yet again, and what we did do was very, very satisfactory. I must put a box of tissues by the bed.
CHAPTER 9
I woke up yet again with the dead weight of an arm across me, and dribble down my neck, which, of course, is why I decided I needed the tissues.
I slipped out, still wearing the bloody stockings and stuff, and made my way to Pete’s shower, where I spent a while getting myself human again.
I remember many years ago reading a piece about underwear, how women look good in theirs, and men don’t. Men don’t in male underwear, that is, as the alternative would just be silly. When women disrobe, though, the lingerie that looks so good to the men leaves a lot of red lines and indentations that look pretty horrible, especially with nasty elasticated things like hold-up stockings. There was I stripped of my trapping gear, and covered in smeared make-up, with red lines from my various bits of said kit.
I was also stripped of my breasts, which had become so nearly real a part of me since Mum had bought them. As I soaped myself, I could feel the puffiness building up around my nipples, and they themselves were rather nicely sensitive, as Pete and I had discovered that night. I dreamily wondered how big I would get...
That was a thought, the disappearance of Pete’s impotence. I would have to talk to Mary about that, but I had a theory of sorts. That night, Pete had been rather well refreshed. Not too refreshed to respond nicely, though; my own little attribute hardened at the memory.
That was so odd, feeling as a woman, responding by reflex as a male, but STILL feeling feminine. Anyway…Pete had been relaxed, and I had gone all out on the seduction front. He was only a man, after all, and certain things, certain well-worn strategies, will almost always take charge of a mere male. As Sharon had remarked, I do have rather nice legs (no false modesty there) and for almost any man, stockings, suspenders and heels on a decent pair of pins go straight to the little brain. A little personal attention in just the right way…..mmmmmmmmmm. Fond smile at the memory.
What I was considering, though, was Pete’s mental state. He had a bad case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as any idiot could see, and that first time I slept with him I was introduced to Lefty, the one in his nightmares. That seemed to be the crux of his problems, and I had surreptitiously been researching a subject called ‘survivor guilt’ that seemed to fit his case. And there was a joke; a girl who wasn’t even a girl, who had been in fugue for two decades, looking to deal with the mental illness of another.
Two words foregrounded themselves in my mind (John still paid little visits when I went into analytical mode), and they were ‘illness’ and ‘disorder’
Illnesses can be healed. Disorder can be put straight. My beloved man would be fixed as well as I could manage.
Standing naked under a shower, newly feminine hairstyle washed flat under the spray, ‘breasts’ sitting in a pile of underwear and penis dangling semi-hard as I stroked my lovely nipples, I had a real moment of revelation. I was Pete’s Christmas present, and once we got these wrappings off and he saw the real contents….oh gods, doubts washed away with the soap, and I was all female despite those extras, and I loved him completely and without reservation.
Pete was stirring when I reentered, with the obligatory cuppa, and after I had put it down, and it couldn’t spill, he hauled me close and proceeded to kiss me very, very hard and deeply.
“Did we really do all that last night?”
“Oh, yes!” I purred. “We need to get you tipsy more often”
“No, we need to see how it goes when I am sober, now that we know it can go.”
“Mr Hall, are you offering me lots of sex?”
“No, I am offering you as much lovemaking as I can manage. There’s a difference”
Can’t argue with that, and as at least part of me is sane there is no way on Earth I would! After a snuggle while we drank our tea, I helped my grubby soldier off for his shower while I started breakfast. My mother came down with hair all over the place, and I recognised the look on her face. I grinned.
“Snap!”
She smiled dreamily. “Oh yes indeed…..”
Women and tears. I hugged her, and asked a serious question.
“What can we possibly have done to deserve such a pair of diamonds?”
Mum looked at me sadly. “Survived your father”
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It was a busy, busy day. Had to take in a briefcase full of documents to the bank, including the stuff from the solicitors who were our second port of call, the first being a photo booth. Along with the deed poll we obtained a letter and signature for the third stop, the Post Office, where my driving licence amendment was set in train.
“Mother, I don’t drive”
“You have a licence, my darling, and Pete has a car that you might need to drive f he refreshes himself. He is a man, Laura”
The Bank.
“Most irregular…”
“Come along, my dear, after this nice man closes our accounts for transfer to…”
“…but I do believe there will be no problem”
His gaze was rather unpleasantly tracing my body. If he was undressing me with his mind’s eye, what was he seeing? What did he want to see, considering that he knew my previous details? Ugh.
We ran through as many errands as we could think of, including dropping in to see Howard. He had already arranged a change in my University documents, and all he needed was a copy of the deed poll and a photograph for my ID.
“Morning Laura, Lucy!” with a kiss to each of us.
“No hangover, Howard?”
“Just a little, but made far worse by Harriet’s infernal jollity. I don’t know what has got into her”
He grinned. As he opened his mouth, Mother simply said “No. No jokes about getting into her, OK?”
Those were the nice bits. An early tea on a terrace at the Slug and Lettuce on Gun Wharf Quay was also nice. In between was horrible; a session of beard destruction. I will draw a veil over that one.
And so it went, from good to better. The weekend was a rather pleasant time, a family time, where nothing particular gets done and nothing is needed apart from being together, but it was spoilt a little by Dad’s departure for York on the Sunday. Mum cried, of course, as did I, but we knew that it was a temporary thing. Our decisions were made, and our course set.
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Monday morning and back to work. For a number of reasons, such as feeling sneaky, went in by bike for the first time in ages, and could feel the drop in fitness. I needed to get out more, and so did Pete, and I idly wondered if he fancied doing some wheelchair competition stuff. How fast could a chair go? Would it be too slow for me to ride next to? I remembered a Belgian who had passed me near the French border once, in a skinsuit and cleat, his leg pumping away as he powered his carbon roadbike along. What was left of his right leg sat under a sort of stirrup arrangement, and he was truly flying. Perhaps….
I met Pete with the garment case outside my office, where I changed into my librarian costume. Tan tights once more, a floral mid-calf dress with plenty of flare to the skirt and a reasonably high neckline, with a royal blue cardigan over the top. Face done, hair fluffed, feet slipped into black shoes with a modest heel, and I was ready. This was my moment, when I would emerge from the shelter of family and friends and meet my public. I suddenly realised that having my lecture notes might be useful: the American versus the French concept of Film Noir, with schematic analysis, a fascinating subject.
No, really, it is! That’s not John speaking; anyone with a heart must see how the intertextuality and homage elements tie into so many other fields…you are not listening.
I left time for the lecture theatre to fill before making my entry. I could be sure that Miss Udders would have made sure that my gender issues had been spread as widely as possible, so this was going to be brutal.
I stepped in and mounted the podium, eyes downcast as I laid out my notes. When I looked up, the theatre was packed. All come to see the freak, I supposed. Ah well…better get it moving.
“Good morning, all. Before we proceed to address the origins of Film Noir, I realise there will be questions bubbling away. I do not want this lecture to degenerate into a whispering session, so we will have a few minutes to clear the air. Any questions?”
A forest of arms flew up, and I started the process of point, listen answer.
“What do we call you now?”
“Dr Evans”
“Are you going to have it all cut off and stuff?”
“Yes”
“Are you gay?”
“No, and neither is my fiancé”
“Did you proposition Abi the tits?”
“Not at all. I told you, I am not gay”
That one caused a real murmuring.
“Dr Evans, Abi said you looked like the Bride of Frankenstein. You don’t”
“Thank you. One last question before we start. You, with the deathwish, in the Pompey shirt”
“What are you doing tonight, darling?”
“Going home to my fiancé, but thanks for the offer!”
That one broke the mood, and after the laughter had died down we made a start, and as it really is a wonderful subject it all went very well.
I was flying solo at last, and it was a delight.
CHAPTER 10
The staff rooms were my next hurdle, but that was helped along by the presence of Dave, who gave me a kiss on the cheek when I arrived.
“How did it go?”
“Need tea…..”
He did the honours, and Harriet joined us. “You OK?”
“Never better, except when….but you don’t want to hear about that stuff, do you”
Harriet just grinned. “Oh yes I do, my girl! But look at poor Dave, he’s gone pink!”
When someone is on the edge, or in the actual process, of blushing, the mere mention of the word ‘pink’ can set them off. He was crimson.
“Bloody women”
Harriet frowned. “Ladies, David, ladies. In case you hadn’t spotted that fact, Laura here is particularly ladylike”
She turned to me. “You are, you know, always so elegant. I know this has been said a stupid number of times to you, but you act so naturally it is clear what you are. I just wonder where John went.”
“John never really existed, Harriet. I have been doing a lot of reading on this, and there were two things that came up. One was false memory syndrome, but that is certainly not the case here. With all the other people who witnessed what happened when was little, the miracle is that I was able to function at all. No, the closest I can come to an explanation is something called fugue state. I used that word to explain my little absences, but true fugue is something different. It is as if you have all of your memories replaced; people have been known to simply go away, to be found ages later living an entirely different life, different name, history, everything.
“In my case it wasn’t quite that, but an entirely different personality was adopted. When I say John wasn’t human..”
“John was you, Laura”
“No, Harriet, he wasn’t. John was a shield built around me to keep me from dying. That is why he could never deal with people, because he wasn’t a person, he was the psychotic equivalent of a small child putting their fingers in their ears and going lalalalala I can’t hear you”
“Psychotic? A bit strong…”
“Not at all, I was insane. With good reason, after what my father…oh, can you please forget I said that”
Harriet had been the only one to catch that, as Dave had drifted away to some sporting discussion. Harriet just nodded. “Your father, my uncle. What a world we share. My problems only stopped when he fucked off to New Zealand. I was 12 then, and it was my best birthday ever, because I was getting old enough to understand what ‘our little secret’ really meant. I am one of the lucky ones, I suppose, I have managed to come to terms with it. I can still enjoy sex, just wish I could get some more”
“What about those two mates of my Pete?”
“Both test driven already, my darling!”
She licked her lips, the strumpet. “Not sure where they might lead, but I will see what happens and take t as it comes, one day at a time, with no presumptions, eyes wide open, and I’m running out of clichés!”
“Legs wide open, it sounds like!”
“Ooooh mmmmmm yes indeed!”
Her face fell at that point. “The truth is, I haven’t actually had the courage to ring either of them. I am great at banter, I just fold when intimacy comes along.”
“You seem to be doing all right with me”
“Yeah, but you are a woman, I can do that. Men scare me”
Thank you so much, Harriet, that was so unconsciously lovely. “What if we are in a group, so you have me and, say, Sharon as back up? Might that work?”
“It can’t hurt to try, Laura, and as I said to you, I have to do something before it fucking heals up”
This was a girl using a lot of banter to cover some very deep pain. If it worked…”So, which one, or shall we toss up for whom you get to toss off?”
In a very small voice, ”I rather liked Ollie, the physio guy.”
“OK, we shall see what we can do. Remember that word, H, I wouldn’t be here without support, so you have mine. Now shush, Dave’s coming back.”
The rest of the day went much as the morning had started. Questions, banter, laughter, and then down to the business of teaching young folk. Pete collected my garment bag at the end of proceedings, and by the time I had put the miles in he was waiting at home for me with a cuppa. Mum had a light meal for us that night, salad and cold meats, and I talked them through Harriet’s problem. Mum looked grim.
“You know, my dear, it would be so, so easy to hate men as a whole, were it not that we have such fine examples close to us. Darling, don’t scratch your breasts at the table, it isn’t ladylike”
“Sorry, Mum, it’s just that they are getting rather sensitive”
Pete smiled. “So I had noticed, my love”
“Oh shut up, the pair of you. Pete, did you get any feedback from Ollie?”
“Absolutely nothing at all. Unless you count the large number of times he has asked me when she will next be out with us”
“Mother, perhaps you can revise your opinion of men downwards. So Ollie is interested, then?”
“Very much, but he thought she’d be a bit stand-offish. You know, University professor and MOD torturer. Laura, please don’t kill me, for he clearly has no taste, but he said he thought she had better legs”
How very dare he! That brought on the giggles. You know, whenever Pete grins, the scars stand out on his face, and remind me again of how oddly luck works. Even the loss of his leg had brought good. Without his wound, he would never have met John, and John would probably have still been here. If he had that courage…
“Peter, my love, there is a loose end to us that I must tidy before we start sorting out our friends. We will arrange a meal once again, and get a few people along, and I know exactly the excuse. Have you bought the jewellery yet?"
He fumbled in his pocket, and blushed. “Er, yes”
“Well, you can give it to me when we have our little soiree, and that will give Harriet a reason to turn up and some close support. Now, I need you to drive me somewhere. I won’t change, this will do.”
It wasn’t that far. I pushed him up to the door and rang the bell, waiting patiently by his chair for it to open.
“Yes, can I help you?”
Jane looked well, and more relaxed than I had EVER seen her before, and i felt real guilt at how I had spoilt her life.
“Hello, Jane”
“Do I know…fucking hell, John?”
“Can we come in? Pete has his crutches if we need them”
“In, in, someone might see you like that”
As we entered, I said “People do see me like this, it is who I am”
We got Pete sat down, and Jane seemed in shock for a second, then it clicked.
“There was no other woman, was there, John?”
“It’s Laura, and this is my fiancé, Pete Hall. Pete, Jane, my wife”
“Fuck me backwards, John, Laura, what is this?”
“Oh, Jane, it’s a very long story, and I need some promises of confidentiality from you. Can you do that?”
“Yes, J-Laura. Tea first, I think. “
Cup in hand, then, I started the story, leaving out, naturally, my mother’s starring role, but this time I made it clear who had attacked me. It is a testament of how unpleasant my story truly is by the fact that everyone who has ever heard it has been left in tears, and Jane was no exception. She was in a real state, and I moved across to hold her.
“No wonder I could never get through to you. If I had only known, I would have stuck with you”
“Darling Jane, if you had I would never have recovered. No push, no Mum, possibly no Pete. I owe you my life”
That set her off again. I needed to change the subject.
“How is it going with Mark?”
“Very well, love. I think he is planning to ask the question soon”
“Pete already has, and I have to ask: would you come to our wedding?”
“Oh god, woman, I can see bits of John in you, just little tics and mannerisms, but you are just so much more REAL than he ever was. Of course I will come. I loved John enough to marry him, Perhaps I can make that up with you? What about Mark?”
“He will be welcome. Please, darling, be very careful what you tell him. People can still be hurt”
“Worry not. Just a thought…what have you done about that cunt’s grave?”
Ouch. She really had cared for John. Pete just smiled. “There were no flowers, there, but Laura watered it rather well”
CHAPTER 11
That was a hard job, but once again my soldier was there, solid as a rock.
Jane had revealed deeper emotions than I had suspected, but I knew I was right. No separation would have meant me staying in hell. John had, sort of, cared for Jane, and if I could recover more than just ‘being civilised’ it would be wonderful. Would smoky Mark be as positive? I doubted it, but time would be the only way to find out.
Anyway, more pressing matters. I started the long round of phone calls for my ‘Mission Emma Possible’ as I was mentally calling it. Matchmaking for friends, not often a good idea, but we did at least have the admission from both targets that they were rather interested. There was a quiz night at the Anchor and Hope near Mum’s on the Saturday, and we set aside the spare bedroom for Harriet.
You know, the spare bedroom, not the guest bedroom. The guest bedroom was my room, the one I used before I ended up downstairs having happy nights with Pete,
Harriet was bloody early. .Utter panic was the only way to describe her nerves, and that was one reason we had settled on the quiz. She was so ferociously competitive that once we began, she would dive so deep into the contest that she would forget there was a man watching what he could see of her legs. Hopefully.
Ollie was going to meet us there, along with Dave (“Mmmmm! Beer!”) and Sharon. It turned out to be a typical affair, with preprinted sheets for our answers and a taped music round half way through the evening. That was the one I was dreading, as my involvement with popular music was non-existent.
We found a table, and then had to choose a team name. It was Pete who came up with it–the Raspberries. I should explain that in English rhyming slang there is the phrase “raspberry ripple”, and it was another mark of how far my man had come since the days of shuddering nightmare that he could make a joke of it. Then again, we had three raspberries in our team.
“Shit, Laura, he’s not fucking coming ,is he?” muttered Harriet, just as the man in question entered the pub.
“Will you take a deep breath and just be yourself?”
“But I’m shitting myself!”
“Put it this way, which of us is sitting here with plastic chicken fillets in their bra?”
Harriet blushed. “Er, both of us, actually, I thought I’d boost my chances a little”
I had to snort at that. “H, not only is he a leg man, but once you get him talking he’ll be lost in your eyes. Lose the plastic while you still can”
We gave the new arrival a quick wave, and scooted off to the ladies with my handbag, found an empty cubicle, and quickly popped out Harriet’s boosters.
“Oh, that’s better! I didn’t have a bigger bra, so I’ve been a bit squashed in there”
I looked at her breasts, covered only by her bra, and had a sudden wave of pure jealousy, swiftly followed by tears. I wasn’t real, I never would be, and as itchy and puffy as my nipples got, could I ever grow something as natural in their beauty as hers? She realised very quickly what the problem was, and of course she held me till I could get my control back.
“We’ve both been through the mill, girl, but I wouldn’t swap mine for yours for anything. You have more balls, more courage than I could ever have. I never did anything but wait for him to fuck off or die; you are taking your life back. Don’t ever see yourself as fake, or second rate. Now, come on ,clean up, and let’s go and shaft these plebs.
Ollie was standing, coat still on, when we returned. Pete whispered that he had assumed Harriet was doing a runner. How we make assumptions; they make perfect sense at the time, and prove to be so wrong.
Of course, we shuffled seats so that Ollie and Harriet were pushed together. Dave appeared, having left Sharon to get the drinks, and made sure we had ours. The seats were taken, the quiz called to order, our team name giggled at, and we were off.
The first round was on Books and Writers. Oh dear, it felt like cheating, but poor Sharon and Ollie were right out of it. Then Sport, for which I felt useless till they asked one about cycling, in two parts: to which opponent, and at which climb, did Armstrong give ‘The Look’?
“Ullrich, Alpe d’Huez”
Pete nodded. “Yeah, she’s dead right.”
I had to explain later, but it was a great moment in cycling.
The next round was geography, in which Pete, Ollie and Sharon did well, then TV, which seemed primarily to be about soap operas, so I was the spare wheel in that one.
Harriet, however, with help from Sharon, was cruising it. She caught my stare.
“What? What else do you think I have to do in the evenings?”
Ollie stuttered a bit. ”I tend to be at a loose end as well, and even cooking’s boring for one”
I kicked her, then again, and finally she muttered something about not being a cook, and Ollie said how much he enjoyed it, and finally, finally she suggested he show her. That became a visit to his place in three days’ time.
Pete squeezed my leg under the table. Job hopefully done.
And then it was music, and it was all pop, and then both Harriet and I jerked up and started to giggle as one of the tracks we had to guess came on, with the lines “Your boyfriend’s good looking, he’s got it all there…”
In unison, we whispered to Dave the chosen scribe, “Richard Thompson, has he got a friend for me?”
What with Sharon’s odd knowledge of shouty men who can’t sing, and Ollie’s deep insight into the music of dwarf Australians (“II like her voice, it’s got nothing to do with her bum”) we did surprisingly well.
Science next, and over to my tame engineer in the wheelchair, and a final flourish with a General Knowledge round, which turned out to be quite hard. Harriet kept leaning over Ollie a lot to check what Dave had written, and for some reason she seemed to need to steady herself, at one point with her hand on his thigh. For his part he kept whispering to her, which apparently needed his hand on her shoulder to turn up the volume, or something.
I had another poignant moment on realising that John would not only have missed every one of the little tells, but would have had no interest. I reached down to squeeze Pete’s hand.
“What’s that for, love?”
“Because I can”
The marks were counted, and we had, indeed, won, and as it was a bottle of wine we decided that it could best be consumed together with its friends back at Mother’s. By this time, Ollie and Harriet were walking hand in hand. Dave was pushing Pete as Sharon and I walked behind, and she began the old refrain.
“You were born to this, Lor, weren’t you? I understand John now, I just wish I could have known you when we were both girls. Just think of the stirring we could have done! The way you have prodded those two along, you are clearly as devious as me”
She stumbled to correct herself. “I know we weren’t young girls together, Lor, but you know what I meant”
I smiled, and linked arms, and we swung into that step-lock that women in heels do when they are cuddling up for a proper gossip. “I do know what you mean, Sharon, so let’s not waste any time fretting over it. I am back, I am here, I am in love with and loved by a wonderful man, I have friends who stuck with me even though I was so lost, what more could I ask for?”
“World peace and a cure for all diseases?”
She can never stay serious for long.
Mum was still up, largely due to the fact that I had phoned ahead and asked her to get some chilled white out ready for the house invasion. Once in I took everyone out to the garden for a bit of trivia. Jupiter was high, and I had a pair of binoculars that let one see four of the moons, the same ones that nearly got Galileo burnt. I handed them around my friends, one by one, saving Ollie till last. As he took them and tried to restore the focus I had deliberately altered, the rest of us slipped away into the house.
Harriet and her friend were a few minutes behind us, and she was smiling rather dreamily. I found Ollie a tissue to wipe his mouth.
Time ticked on, and Mum went off upstairs, followed by Sharon and Dave, who had the guest bedroom. I offered to call a taxi for Ollie.
“Or, you could stay if you want, but you’d have to share with someone. My mother’s spoken for, I‘m afraid”
Ollie was laughing now, his arm around Harriet. She frowned at him.
“Oh fuck it, I suppose I will have to take one for the team. I sleep on the left, and no snoring or farting?”
I reminded myself to take her plastic tits out of my handbag in the morning. No, she wasn’t as loud as Mum.
CHAPTER 12
Mum was first up on Sunday morning, and brought me and Pete a cuppa as we lay snoring and tangled up, as she described it. As I sat up, she smiled.
“My little girl is starting to get bigger, I see! Now tell me, dear, how many cups for Harriet?”
“Two, I believe, Mum”
“Good-oh. I shall do the necessary”
I looked down, and she was right. There were definitely lumpy bits appearing in my chest, which brought a smile to my own face until I remembered I was due yet another torture session to said face. I was still shaving, though not as often, and it was strange when I went from treated to untreated sections of the skin, the razor speeding up and slowing down. Odd. I cuddled into Pete’s warmth for a bit and realised I could not and did not want to lose these moments, nothing said, no passion, just comfort and love.
Breakfast was at the big table, which was the same as the small table, just pulled out. Harriet looked happy and soppy, Ollie a little haggard. I wondered if he had found it hard to keep up with her; she had a lot of lost time to make up. Just for a moment I wondered if it had been one push too far, and then he smiled at her, and I knew that, at least for now, they were fine.
Astonishingly, Dave was in the kitchen helping my mother with her usual mammoth guest breakfast, while Sharon did teas and coffees. Once we were all served and seated, my mother called for silence.
“I have spent far too many of the last few years sitting here on my own. It is dispiriting to prepare a meal when you are to be its sole consumer. Since my Laura came back, this house has rarely been empty, and that is a wonderful thing. I would like to thank you all for bringing new cheer to an old woman!”
Dave laughed. “Now, Lucy, you know how happy I am to eat free food. Keep serving breakfasts like these and I will abandon my wife and move in with you permanently!”
Harriet whispered in my ear “Already had MY breakfast…..”
“Oh, I had a nightcap…” and we were off, giggling like teenagers.
No wonder Ollie looked so tired.
People dispersed from around ten, Harriet giving Ollie a lift home. If all that had happened was the scratching of a mutual itch, that would be fine, but Harriet’s string of clichés was rather true. Watch and wait.
What to do with the day? What else does a girl do on her day off, but shop?
I can hear the sigh of boredom as I write this, but there were a number of things I needed, not least being a top-up on my medications. There seems to be little difference in Britain these days in shop hours from Monday to Sunday, and there was a huge branch of Addison’s the chemist in Gun Wharf, so off we went on the well-worn track to the foot ferry. Mum was chattering away as we pushed Pete up the ramp, and I realised that she had felt every word she had said over breakfast. It wasn’t just the return of Dad Pete, nor my own rebirth, but a whole mishmash of stuff. There was life n the old house she had rattled around in, there was life in my mother.
I know I have said this before, but it bears repeating. There is always more than one victim for crimes like that of my father. It wasn’t just me; everyone around had been soiled by him, from my mother to our men. Even that miserable bastard of a doctor had been brought lower than he might otherwise have been.
It was a day for better thoughts, though, and after a coffee on the quayside by the Tower, I handed in my prescription at Addison’s, getting a sharp and slightly puzzled look in the process, which pleased me. With a promise to Pete of “no more shoes” (I lie well) we started a trawl through some of the nicer shops. I needed some bras, as after my mother’s observation that morning I had decided to dispense with the plastic and go fully natural. I was rather hopeful about my chest, and I rather think Pete was too.
We worked our way along the racks, Pete looking rather embarrassed.
“This is odd, love, I like this stuff on you, but it just looks so weird hanging up empty”
“Well, I’ll just go and see how a few of them look filled, then!”
I grabbed my handful of bee-sting bras and clattered off to the changing rooms. Some minutes later, feeling rather pleased with the fit, and especially the look, I went out to ask Pete what he thought.
“What the fuck is that man doing in the women’s changing rooms?”
It was a scream, and I almost didn’t recognise the voice. I turned, and there they were, Abigail’s face purple above them. She was waving at the sales assistants.
“Call the fucking police, that’s a queer in a dress trying to perve in the dressing rooms!”
“Abigail, if I were a queer, as you put it, I would have no interest in perving at women, would I? And as a straight woman, just as uninterested”
“Shut the fuck up, you fucking turd burglar! Jay, this is the fucker!”
Oh dear, there was her current paramour, ratty jeans belted below his arse and a grubby T-shirt bearing the rather dreary slogan “You stare at me because I am different, I stare at you because you are all the same”
Listen, son: that is a mass-produced T-shirt….got it?
I was rather amused by this time, and almost missed her next move, which was to throw the contents of a soft-drink cup at Pete. Cow. I leapt at her, but Jay got in the way and Pete went flying out of his chair, and it all got complicated. I felt her kick me in the tit, and by god did it hurt. Pete had got hold of one of his crutches, and was whacking at the Neanderthal, but it was only light alloy and not too effective.
There was another loud scream, and as I struggled to my feet I saw my mother hanging off the back of Abi, tearing a chunk of her hair out, her expression terrifying even to me, I managed to trip Jay up as he went to punch Mum, and suddenly another body slammed into him, hands clawing at his face.
It was Jane. She was quickly followed by Mark, who delivered a few very precise blows that made the bastard collapse, as Jane and Mum, followed by me, piled onto Abi, who I sort of punched in the face. There was a loud shout of “Stop fighting!” and I turned to see two coppers, batons drawn. Mark backed away, hands up.
“I’m in the job, intervened in an assault here”
“Got any ID?”
“Warrant card?”
He went off with one of the coppers. Abi was stupid enough to keep fighting, and in a remarkably quick time was cuffed and stood up. Her friend had obviously been sprayed or struck before, so he just sat on his hands and waited.
Poor Pete was bleeding from the mouth, and his crutch was bent beyond repair. I hugged him, and he winced. “I think I’ve cracked a rib”
Three more police officers had turned up, two of them women, and shortly after some paramedics began attending to poor Pete. They decided he had better go to hospital, as he may have had a broken rib, and I rode in with him. My face and chest hurt badly. Before we left, I checked Mum, who was unhurt but breathing like a train, and then hugged Jane, carefully. She grinned, ruefully.
“Told you I loved you, girl!”
There was a sort of conference between the coppers and the other witnesses, and then the bovine and her mate were arrested. You know, she still wouldn’t shut up. Remember what I sad about students who are unable to learn?
I gave a statement to the police as they worked on Pete, taking a couple of X-rays. The WPC (“No, love, we’re just PC’s these days”) was a nice touch, showing that the police were taking me as I wanted to be seen and not as a bloke in a dress. She efficiently took my statement, and then sat for a talk about our circumstances and the likely outcome.
“Oh, the store girls are all on your side. They had thought it quite sweet the way you were teasing your fiancé, especially with him being in the chair, and they thought t particularly sweet that such a pretty girl was staying with a wounded man”
“Wounded?”
“Yes, one of them recognised him as a soldier from the Legion home. They got a good view of the two attackers, so they are all on your side. Apparently your mother was described as terrifying”
“So what happens now?”
“Let’s see, attack on person in wheelchair, hate crime on transwoman, multiple witnesses to it all, CCTV, any sense and they should plead guilty. Their brief will be advising them of that, I hope. Now, as you are a victim of a hate crime, we can offer you a family support Officer, but I rather gather you have some quite fierce support already”
Oh gods yes.
CHAPTER 13
That was effectively the end of Abi’s crusade against me.
We healed, as, for once n my life, the scars were physical, and we got to see the CCTV footage after Mark called in a favour, and watched it at home as a group, with wine and nibbles. It was hilarious at times, Pete trying to land blows with a crutch while lying on his side, and there was a groan as my mother attacked. The girls had been right, she was bloody terrifying. I asked her how she had felt when we had a few moments alone, and she simply did her thing with the eyebrow and said “I wasn’t going to stand by a second time while my darling was hurt”, and then I crumbled, and so did she, and we had to do some repairs before we rejoined our group. They were replaying the right hook I had landed on Abi, and Pete and Mark were giving it points out of ten.
This was an extremely odd situation, if looked at from outside. A male university lecturer in women’s clothing, cuddled up to a one-legged man. The lecturer’s wife is cuddled up to another man, whom the lecturer has kissed on arrival. The mother of said male lecturer is now discussing underwear sizes with him, while they all wait for the kettle to boil for coffees.
Look at it anew, from the inside. As I lay against my lover, and my mother asked how my new things were fitting, my closest girl friend was snuggled up to her rather delightful hunk. Pity he smoked…
That is the key, that the two pictures are not congruent. A little girl went to sleep and was swallowed up, only to emerge years later. John was not me. I am not John. That is how I can look at Jane and be happy for her, not jealous. I am not her ex-husband, he never existed.
I continued on with work, even getting a cheer when I turned up for my first lecture with a black eye. I was extremely glad of my new bras, as the chicken fillets would have made my bruises extremely uncomfortable, but I did have to explain to Harriet why I had apparently shrunk. She just cackled.
“That’s us both bloody equal now, then!”
In the end, Abi and Jason/Jay pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and were sentenced to 140 hours community service each.
She did not bother turning up for her own hearing, but I did, my initial sympathy for her vanished in a haze of painkillers. Fuck her. Well, no, you know what I mean. She was immediately evicted from course, college and Hall of Residence, and I made a note to look up her (sore) Facebook page later to see what the latest fun updates might be.
“First XV campaign on hold till further notice.”
And so it went. My face took more torture, my chest slowly rose like a well-made soufflé, and Jane and I began to share more confidences. I have tried to explain this, but I now had three best friends, Pete, Mum and my wife. Of course, Dave and Sharon were still there, and Harriet was coming up on the rails, but the intimacy of old relationships trumped so much.
Six months into my recovered life I confronted Mary.
“When?”
“When you have done your life test, Lor. When did you intend starting?”
“Oh, you sod, stop teasing. This is my real life!”
“You still have to wait another six months…”
“Ah, so you admit I have had six months, then!”
Gotcha.
There was one other event on the horizon, and that was Pete’s leg. We had an appointment at the Naval Hospital at Haslar some months later, after ribs had healed, and I collared Ollie to find out how I could help. I did the collaring by the simple process of ringing Harriet’s house one Sunday morning, which should tell you all you need to know.
“Laura, just be there with him. He will be frustrated as all hell when he starts, he will hurt, there will be tears, and as he hasn’t walked for so long he will be really weak on that side. That will make him even more frustrated, and I can guarantee that at one point he will try and throw the leg at me.
“Please, just be there, it’s all we need”
So, one dreary morning he drove us out to the hospital, and if I had thought my hair removal torture, this was ten times worse. Not because it was painful to either of us, though it clearly hurt Pete, but because I had to sit and watch.
The fitting had been reasonably straightforward, it was the parallel bars that tormented him. Hauled to his feet, and pushed to stagger along the short course, Ollie cajoling him.
“No, Pete, the bars are there for stability, not support. Walk, don’t hop!”
This went on for some time, Pete getting steadily more frustrated, until he sat for a rest and started to unfasten the prosthesis. Ollie nodded at me, and I stood up.
“Peter Hall, put that back on, NOW! You have come here to learn to walk, and that is what you are going to do! I am NOT getting marred to some fucking loser in a wheelchair!”
He looked at me, and I realised he was starting to cry. I walked over and enfolded him.
“Love, that is true. Not a threat. I want you standing proud by my side, but you have to do this yourself, and for yourself, and for your dad, and for me, and for Lefty and all the others.
“Look, what we will do is try again. You have the bar on your left, and you can have my hand on the right. I am never leaving you, and that means you are not doing this alone. You have me here, you have Ollie, and if I can walk in my best fuck-mes, you can walk on this. Come on, up, my love.”
We started again, his body lurching as he tried to balance, knuckles white on the left hand bar as his right crushed mine.
“A little less squeeze, love”
“Sorry, Lor”
He was sweating by now, and Ollie brought over some towels, and a paper cup of water.
“You’re getting there, mate, you’ve got weight on it now. Can you give me five more runs?”
“Run? You are fucking kidding now, Ollie!”
“You know what I mean, Pete. Laura, you OK?”
We did five more passes through the bars, and then Ollie looked at me.
“Laura, are you ready to do the Ginger Rogers bit?”
I caught his meaning, but had to explain it to Pete.
“She complained that everyone raved about Astaire, but while she did everything he did, she had to do it backwards, in heels”
That was Ollie’s suggestion. I would walk backwards, holding Pete’s hands, while he walked without any support other than me
He was sweating again, and it was like watching Karloff as the monster, but much better looking. We managed three runs before Ollie called time, Pete getting steadier with each pass, and on the last one I just let him walk into my arms for a kiss. He was sweaty, and trembling with fatigue, and I helped him over to a seat where Ollie removed the prosthesis. Pete hugged him, one armed as the other was holding my hand. He sighed.
“Sorry mate, being a bit of a wimp today.”
“Not at all, Pete, not only do I get a lot worse, but I get paid for this. Just be glad you have this woman here for you. A lot of the lads don’t have that advantage.”
So, Mary, have I started that real life test then?
CHAPTER 14
It got easier. No surprises there, but the day was getting closer when I would be able to walk properly with Pete. Do you know, I had no idea how tall he really was?
Even though we had a leg at home now, so Pete could continue to build strength and balance, he was still hunched as he walked.
Jane came through with a settlement, and it was decision time. No, not whether to move in together, that was as certain as sunrise, more where Pete was going. He had to make some decision about a career after he finished his studies, and that would influence where we lived, and at the same time I needed to be within a reasonable morning’s ride of Southampton. I also wanted to be away from my mother.
That sounds nasty, but what I mean is that I wanted to have both personal space for me and Pete, and to leave space for her and Dad. It wasn’t just the rather direct way she gave him instructions when they were being intimate, though that was rather embarrassing for all concerned, it was that all of us needed to recover some independence.. I also wanted to make visits special, not just something that happened every day.
We finally found a three-bed bungalow in Woodlands, just on the edge of the New Forest. The previous owner was being moved by their family to a home for the elderly, so there was no chain, and two months later it was ours. The only real problem was the terrain. Being in the country, I had to start wearing sensible shoes occasionally, and that really went against my nature.
My nature. A slowly blooming pre-operative transsexual rape survivor who had been living in fugue for two decades. As the students would say, “Yeah, right”
And I was blooming. I had breasts at last, not udders like Abigail (and I hoped I had hormones of taste and breeding) but definite, wobbly, sensitive breasts. I had finally finished the beard removal course, which pleased both of us as mutual stubble sort of spoils a good morning kiss, and my mother had treated me to some waxing sessions.
Treat is a word I associate with presents, gifts, not torture. Thank you, Mummy dear.
Jane was pregnant, and engaged, though I am unsure of the exact order, and when Harriet saw the ring she sighed.
“Fucking typical. I walk him past so many jewellers, you two flash your rings, and he still can’t take a hint. I’ll have to stop shagging him until he gets his arse in gear”
She paused, and grinned. “Nope, that would be punishing myself. I‘ll stop his beer instead!”
Mother was my big worry, though, and this may sound selfish. At some point, there would be a wedding, and the decision would have to be made as to where the two of them would live. Dad still had his business in York, and while it would be unfair to expect him to drop it to move down here, it would be almost as unfair for Mum to leave all she knew and move up there. I realised that although this was clearly a matter for the two of them, a family chat about it made sense.
The next time Dad was down we held a housewarming party, with as many of what I now saw as “our friends” as possible, including Howard, Martin, and some of Pete’s cohort of students. That was an interesting experience.
I am the child, a word I use quite deliberately, of my mother. She is a refined lady of impeccable taste, which I know is impeccable because I share it. All except the syrupy music, of course. Jane is a solicitor, so enough said. Howard, Harriet, they move in the same world as I do, and Pete does as I tell him, so we have a general level of refinement that means a party is more of an evening of interesting snacks and conversation over wine than a madhouse of beer and shouting men who can’t sing.
I was able to stand and watch a group of six young things who clearly felt that everything from their clothes to their choice in the bottles they brought was being weighed and found wanting. They were also in a private house with not only lecturers but their faculty heads. I am certain that some of them expected the hand to come out of the air and start writing “mene, mene, tekel upharsin”
The thing was, that while I was dressed as one would expect ,in a rather nice LBD that showed off my, ahem, cleavage, plus the usual shoes and accessories, I was in essence as out of place as they were. Of course, they all knew that, but what they didn’t realise is that I both sympathised and empathised with them, and once we had done all the necessary refined bits, I took everyone down the pub.
Or rather, sent them, in the charge of Ollie, Dave and Martin, while I took a few minutes to have that discussion with Mum and our men. I was straight to the point.
“Mum, Dad, you have probably guessed what I want to talk about. I can’t set any dates or make any plans till my little readjustment is finished, but you two can and should. I see no point in either of you losing any more time, and I am sure you agree. It is just that I would like an idea as to where you will be when we have our own nuptials”
Dad smiled. “You never do anything for just the one reason, do you?”
“ I disagree entirely! There s only one reason I am marrying your son, for example”
“Oh? And that is?”
“Because he has an absolutely enormous……(long pause while Pete and my mother slowly reddened)…amount of love for me. Sorry, Mum, but being human for such a short time has given me a sense of humour proportionate to that age”
Dad smiled. "I can see the little girl in you when you grin, you know. It’s actually quite simple. I am getting on, and I do not want to spend the rest of my life as a worker. This may surprise you, Laura, but us clever businessmen discovered, many years ago, a thing called a ‘manager’. Does that answer your question?”
My hopes were lifted, both for me and Pete. “You are coming down here?”
“Oh yes! I have two kids back, and I want to enjoy my time with them”
Dad left to wipe my lipstick off, and I began to sort out Pete’s chair. He called out to me.
“No, Laura. The Gamekeeper is only a short walk away.”
“Are you sure?”
“You, Mum and Dad will be with me, and I will have a stick. It is a short walk, so I am bloody walking it”
We got everything attached, for which task sent my mother out of the room. Dad was almost in tears as his face was all but rubbed in the state of his son.
“Sorry, Dad, but this is how it is. Look at it this way: when was the last time I walked to a pub with you? New house, new beginning, OK?”
We got him fastened, his trousers up, and I helped him to his feet. Foot. Feet. He stood up as tall as he could, and for the first time I could measure myself properly against him. About six foot one, I guessed, and as my heels brought me up to about five foot nine, it was perfect, but then I thought he was perfect anyway.
“Cinders is going to the ball” he said, “and he’s taking his mother in law!”
We slowly made our way up Woodlands Road to the pub, Pete eschewing the stick for my arm, and when we joined the rest and they saw him upright, there was a cheer, Ollie in particular looking so proud I thought he would burst.. Pete did the boxer’s salute thing, and once again I could see every scar in his face as he grinned, and I knew he was happy.
It was a very different evening to the house party, and I felt a little out of place in my posh frock, though I did get my bottom squeezed, and not by Pete. The only slight darkener of the evening was when a couple of well refreshed men started bumping into Pete at the bar, and I saw Dad have a quiet word with them, after which, for some reason, they decided to move away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Martin put back down the empty glass he had picked up, and as I looked round the group I saw that almost everyone seemed, well, ‘poised’.
It was one of those moments where you realise that it is not that you have been perceptive in picking out a diamond that others have missed, but that everyone else has realised their quality, and you just happen to have been the lucky one who got in first.
Pete, unfortunately, was so pleased by his new freedom that he ended up rather well refreshed himself, and with a stream of jokes about hollow legs and being legless, he made the return journey supported by Ollie and Dad and trying to sing. Some of the crowd left for home from the pub, but we still had a hard core to spread blankets and sleeping bags in the living and dining rooms while H and Ollie took one spare room and Dad and Mum the other. Sharon had, as usual, stayed on soft drinks for love of Dave’s love of beer, so we kissed goodnight and I went to our bedroom to put my happy little soldier to bed.
CHAPTER 15
The next morning, I made a valiant effort to outdo my mother’s breakfasts, but even with Dad’s present of ’decent’ black pudding, I was doomed to failure.
Too many people, not enough chairs. Pete walked into the kitchen….
“Don’t know how long I can keep it on, love, a bit sore from last night.”
“Sore in the leg, or in the head?”
“Er… is there any tea in the pot?”
That answered my question. I passed him a glass of cold apple juice.
“Here, this will take the edge off it. I’ll make another pot.”
“Ugh, looks like wee”
“How old are we, Mr Hall?”
He grinned, and I can’t be irritated when he does that. “I’m a student, it’s traditional”
“That reminds me, we need to talk about your studies, or rather after. When we get time, it would be nice to have a chat about what you fancy doing.”
“I’ve already got some ideas about that, love. Do you fancy lunch out somewhere nice? Pop out to Bank?”
“Tell you what, let’s go to Fritham, the Royal Oak, if the weather’s at all reasonable. Now, get plating.”
Pete was stable enough to plate up the breakfasts, but there was still no way he could carry full ones to the table. Mum appeared, looking rather tired, but smiling happily. Even given my own rather unusual circumstances, the thought of my mother making love was an odd one. Parents don’t do that, do they?
Pete’s problem was still showing its face, and it seemed to be tied to a number of specific things. Anxiety was one, not just from things like the work with Ollie, but also from his own self-image, it seemed. Despite all our talks, despite the love I gave him, he still had a little voice telling him that one was either a whole man or no man at all. I worked on that, and it seemed he was getting better as he learnt to stand on what were now becoming his own and plural feet, but when he was in bed, and incomplete, it was always lurking just below the surface.
And then there was me. This was sometimes very painful, but I was not a woman in all senses, and that told. I was changing, I had changed, and that pleased us both. I have joked about morning stubble, but that really was a victory for us, as were my burgeoning breasts. Pete loved them, and paid particular attention to them, which was rather nice for both of us, but I was still an odd chimá¦ra, and his subconscious Straight Bloke saw that and muttered to his libido.
This was something I had been dreading confronting. Pete loved me, he said from childhood, and I loved him. The real problem seemed to be that we are both utterly heterosexual. The more I blossomed as Laura, the easier he found it, the more natural. To be rather crude, when I kissed him down there, or used my hand, he responded rather well and naturally on most occasions, but when I was kissing him, and especially when I was still using those plastic things, he would sometimes slip away from me.
That was so hard on him, and I did not intend that as any form of joke. I knew, and he said he knew, that it was all coming from his hind brain, that there was no ‘fault’ that he should accept blame for, but the savage thing was that because he loved me so much he felt even guiltier. That hurt both of us.
I did what I could. I am naturally an extremely girly girl, and I went to town on those aspects that men like, in things such as underwear, heels, nice materials. At the same time, I did my best to show him how much I loved him back with the little things that are so big, like hand holding and hugs. He was my man, and I was proud of him, proud to be seen with him, pleased beyond words that he was mine.
And the more I saw the pain they gave Pete, the more I hated that ugliness between my legs. I nagged Mary relentlessly, and she kept pushing her calendar in front of me, until one day she surprised me. But that is getting ahead of myself.
After we had cleared the house of guests, Dad drove us out to Fritham. The Oak is a very old-fashioned pub, where beer is served from casks racked behind the bar using tap and spile rather than beer engine. They serve excellent food, but take no modern means of payment, just cash and cheque. There is a huge garden, with tables and wildlife, and it is all rather pretty. Once food had been ordered, Pete began.
“Dad, Mum, Laura and I have been talking about what I should do after college. I’ve got some ideas, but I’d like to run them past you first. I suppose the common thread is teaching.
“I’ve watched both Lor and Dave when they are in full flow, and they both have a real love of their subject, and delight in getting it across to their students. Lor, I watched John in one lecture, and it was like reading a textbook, and then those times you have stood in for Dave I saw the same fire as he has. You really want your students to get it, don’t you?”
I smiled, as I thought I could see where it was going.
“Lor, there’s no way I can get up to your level, I was a fitter in the REME, for my sins, but if could do something like that at a lower level, whether in English, or in mechanical engineering, that would be great. I have a sort of ideal job plan…teaching English and doing a sort of after-school thing with the machinery. The trouble is, I know bugger all about teaching, how the system works, whether I would be allowed to do the after hours thing with just my Army qualifications, all that crap. What do you think?”
Mum had been nodding as he spoke. “You want to give something back, don’t you?”
Pete grinned. “You have read my mind. It’s sort of a reaction to our childhood, both of us lost so much because of abuse, and it would be nice, even in a small way, to help other children get a better start”
Dad said his bit. “If that works out, I may be able to help with the machinery thing. You still have quite a way to go on this course, son, so no chicken-counting, OK?”
That was a very pleasant afternoon indeed. But…back to Mary
She had a calendar, and on it she had arbitrarily marked my first day at her surgery, dressed as Laura, as the start of my life test. That was in early November. It was now early June, and she was ticking off the days. Counting down to my final passing out. Each time I visited, she would have it on prominent display, and then, that day, she dropped her little bombshell.
“Laura, I have been extremely naughty. Can you possibly forgive me?”
When a head doctor says something like that, you have to examine it from all directions. Was she trying to trip me up on something, probing, testing?
“What could you possibly have done, Mary, that I should ever have to forgive you for?”
“Well, you will need to talk to Howard to arrange a few things, but I will be looking to you to arrange a few yourself, such as the interviews and assessments pre-surgery”
My heart rate went silly. There were still months to go, there was no way she could have signed me off already.
“You are probably saying to yourself that I cannot have signed you off already from your life test. I haven’t. I just decided that as the chances are absolutely zero of you ever going back to that oddity I first met, I might sort of set things in motion in advance. I put you on the waiting list months ago, dear. I just stipulated that it had to be after October, and a slot came up this morning for a date in early November, just past your last day of testing.
“All you have to do now is say yes or no”
Howard was officially displeased when I told him, but behind the obligatory management-speak his eyes were twinkling. H was even worse.
“Laura, love, when he’s finished chopping you out your new fanny, do you think you could get him to tighten mine up a bit? Ollie’s starting to get me all stretched”
I saved telling my family till I was home. Peter was ecstatic, both for him and for me, and I had to physically stop him from starting an internet trawl for wedding venues.
“Let’s just get the summer and my op out of the way first, love, there’s a lot that can still happen.”
Mother was apparently unbothered. “How convenient, dear, I was considering gong to Munich for the Christmas Market this year and you should be recovered just in time to travel”
Her face twitched a little, then cracked into a grin and suddenly she was wrapped round me, squealing like a fourteen year old girl.
http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/00/98/009830_1d4a9843.jpg The Oak at Fritham
CHAPTER 16
Pete was off for a fortnight in the summer break to the rehab centre at Headley Court near Leatherhead. For the first time in the best part of a year I was sleeping alone for an extended period, and it felt odd.
There was too much room, and it felt cold; on Mum’s suggestion I moved into on of the other rooms, so that it wouldn’t feel so much like he had left me. That worked…not at all, and I ended up moving back to Gosport for the weeks he was away.
This was the assessment time, when they would decide what sort of leg he could use best. His problem was that the amputation was above the knee, so that there were more mechanical and physical difficulties than would have been the case with a lower wound. I felt for him; not only was he without me, and that was not vanity speaking, he was away from the comfort zone that Ollie, Tyler and the others gave him.
I was definitely more weepy than I had been, and it wasn’t just the enforced separation. There was girliness coursing through me, and I just wished it would hurry up and do its job. Mum got so fed up with me mooning around that she dragged me off to a spa in Haslemere for a few days of swimming, massages and other treatments. I had a little moment of inspiration there, as not only were their meals delightful, and the service impeccable, but they also did marriages on site, in a little band stand affair on the edge of a lake at the foot of a great sweep of lawn.. Mum caught me reading their brochure.
“Darling, why do you think I chose this particular place? There is ample accommodation for those who need it, the food is indeed exquisite, and that is a view to treasure. And we may get the BOGOF.”
For those who do not buy their groceries in supermarkets, it stands for “Buy One, Get One Free”, the offer that used to be called “Two for the price of one”.
As opposed to airport shops, and motorway services, of course, where it is usually “One for the price of two”
I digress. “Mother, are you suggesting we do it as a double affair? The logistics….I mean, who would have first pick of the potential bridesmaids?”
I hugged her. “You really love him, don’t you, Mum, it’s not just the wild animal sex then”
I put on my stern face. “Mother, I know you were without him for a considerable period, but it is actually impossible to make up all that time in one weekend”
Up went the eyebrow. “A lady always strives to do her utmost, my dear”
She took a carefully elegant sip of her white wine, which was rather spoilt when she appeared to snort half of it out of her nose in a fit of giggles.
“Darling”, she said as she wiped her face, “I laugh so much more since you came home. You make a mother proud, not just with the way you have coped with such a catalogue of unpleasantness, but how gracefully you have done it. You also delight me with your elegance, I have obviously brought you up as befits a lady. There is one problem, however”
She leant closer to me and lowered her voice. “You really need to organise your underwear drawers better. I can never find what I want”
Was this some odd mother-daughter bonding institution I had missed, the elder borrowing skimpies from the younger for seduction purposes? And not telling her….I would store that admission away for future use.
“Laura, dear, may I make an observation? That style you adopted for your hair was born of necessity. I really think you do suit a much longer style, something softer rather than flirty, perhaps with a little colour to it
“It is just an observation, my dear, but I really think you would benefit from a visit to a proper stylist rather than having Ginny visit.”
She sipped her wine, entirely though her mouth this time, and asked the other question that had clearly been fermenting. “Darling, we will need to begin considering what we will be wearing”
“Mother, no we will not! Without a date, I will have no idea of what I will actually look like”
“Beautiful, as always of course!”
“No, Mother” I whispered, “the final size of my bust…”
Sometimes, flatteringly, she appears to forget.
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My soldier was soon back, with a brand new leg. This was rather interesting; I had sort of assumed that his new limbs would be some variant on a shop dummy idea, a plastic replica of a real leg. This device was like an aircraft undercarriage thingy, all rods and struts, with a foot shape at the end of it. At least, that is what he showed me after I had put him down, as my mother phrased it.
“Love, what are we doing for the Summer?”
Right out with it.
“I fancy some sun, and a bit of luxury, and you could do with getting some swimming in. We could go down to Nice or something”
“Pete Hall, you just want me to get my tits out on the beach!"
“The thought had occurred to me”
Cheeky sod.
“Well, Lor, they do sort of belong to me as well!”
“Pete, if you keep that up I shall stop taking the magic tit-growing medicine. Or perhaps start slipping it into your own cuppa… then you can have some of your very own to play with”
“Not the same at all, love. And I did bring this back for you…”
Thank god Mother was out of the room at that point. She took the hint a little later and went home, and, well, he had been away for two weeks with a lot of men.
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Pete’s idea for a break turned out to be rather a nice one, and with remarkably little fuss we flew out for ten days of sun. It was rather surreal, in the end. I had to use my old passport, and the ticket was in the name John Evans. At the first security check on boarding I handed over my letter from Mary with the boarding card and passport, and apart from a little widening of the eyes we were through. Not bad for a little provincial airport next to the M27. So next to it, in fact, that an aircraft once parked itself on the motorway.
I loved the flight, the difference in view from on high reminding me of how I first came back to life, and being shorter than Pete meant I could legitimately claim the window seat. We had his wheelchair in the hold, but he had insisted on walking to the aircraft. We still took the priority boarding, though.
Pete had picked Gibraltar for our little holiday, and I had another emotional moment on thinking that this was our first proper holiday together, but certainly not our last. There was a Levanter blowing as we flew in, the Rock looming out of mist as we swung round south of it to make our approach from the West.
I had absolutely no problems with entry, the only downside being the rather surprising smokiness of everything. People smoked, everywhere. We took a taxi to the hotel, which was an experience. Scooters and mopeds buzzed and farted everywhere, but nobody seemed to hit anyone, and horns were left unblown
Pete had found a deal for the Rock hotel, which was supposedly the top place, but had a faded charm on the outside that didn’t match the rather smart interior. That was our first problem. As we entered, I looked for the lifts. They were up a flight of stairs. Arse.
To my surprise, Pete just grinned. “Watch this, love”
Step up with good leg, feet (yes feet) together. Step up again…step, together, step, together, my man was using stairs.
Bloody hormones.
We had a room with a balcony looking over the bay to Algeciras, and I was a little surprised when, after we had entered the room and I had flung open the French windows, Pete shut them rather quickly.
“What’s up love?”
He just pointed. There was a bloody great monkey sitting on the flat roof below us. Five minutes later the hairy sod was sat on our balcony.
We had our first meal in the bar, as the sun went down spectacularly over Spain to the West. The staff fussed round Pete, even more after they found out he was ex-forces, and I began to understand why. This place had forces blood soaked into it over hundreds of years, and they had long memories. Pete wasn’t on a seaside holiday in some generic resort, he was n a place that knew what he was and understood.
There are times I realise very clearly why I love him.
CHAPTER 17
All too soon we were back in the UK, and once again I had no problems with entry. My passport went under a little scanner, I was asked to pull my hair back a bit, and that was it. Once my details were sorted, those little dangly details, I would still get a new passport as soon as possible. Mum and Dad collected us at the airport.
“We have news for you, my dears. The York house is now on the market.”
Pete was overjoyed. “When are you moving, Dad?”
“Er, yesterday, son. Roger’s already in the hot seat up there, I just had to make sure he was up to speed before I got out”
“So I assume you’ve got loads of stuff to bring down? Need anything dragging, we’re off till after September.”
“No, that’s OK, son, there are removal firms, but I wouldn’t mind showing the girls the old place before we finally sell it. I was thinking of taking a drive up next week, if you fancy it”
“That would be great, there are some pubs I haven’t seen for a while!”
Men. Beer. I must admit, though, that I did rather fancy a look at the city, reputedly rather lovely. Doing it from a family home would be preferable to having to suffer a luxury hotel, wouldn’t it? I realised that the time in the Lythe Hill spa and Rock Hotel was spoiling me. Back to reality, Laura, you have your own laundry to do now.
A few days later and Mum and I were both bored rigid in the back of the Landrover, and I was idly wondering when I could get out on my bike again before my arse got too fat. Too much good living, too little exercise. Dad pulled off the motorway at last, swinging past Sherburn until we got onto some charming little country roads. This would be good cycling country. The House was by Acaster Malbis, near a river and surrounded by arable land. It was gorgeous, but I did wonder what it was like after harvest and Winter stripped the fields.
It was a serious house, too, an old rectory built in stone with a slate roof. I shuddered to think of its value, but if it was a good indication of how well Dad’s business was doing we were marrying into money. I mean, my father’s old business after the bastard had…died had left Mum rather comfortably off, but this was on a different scale. Besides which, as Dad had the good sense to keep his business running but with someone else’s hand at the tiller, he would continue to be well off.
There was a new range of titanium bikes out….
The house was a little musty, and I wondered how much of our holiday time had been used by the two old lovers to make up for that lost time. I also resolved to check my knicker drawer for any loss or damage; that revelation was still making me chuckle.
Pete being a little worn, we pushed him round to the Ship pub that evening, for a very simple pub meal and some beer for the men. The meal was more than acceptable, and we sat outside on some rickety old picnic tables in the late Summer warmth. I still hadn’t seen the city, yet, but Dad was clearly giving up a great deal by joining Mum. It was one more thing that warmed me, let me realise that he loved her deeply, and once more, in my imagination, I visited my father’s grave.
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The next day, Dad and Pete took us on the shorter form of the grand tour. It was clearly a tourist city, with all the attendant ‘experiences’ and ‘original oldes’, but there was still a soul there, beneath the tackiness. We passed over Lendal Bridge to see some of the old walls, which we obviously couldn’t walk, and continued up Museum Street to the Minster, which was a delight.
I like the cool quiet in old churches, and there were little flashes of Odd John as I saw the logic of the structure. All built by hand and eye. I felt rather inadequate, till I considered that the same eye for a structure such as a flying buttress was also behind more important delights such as the shoes I was then wearing. Delicate grace, arching beauty, what more could a girl hope for?
We took an early lunch in tea rooms in the Shambles, and then Dad took us to what he called his favourite place, the Castle Museum, unusual in containing entire ‘streets’ from various dates, and a large costume collection. Despite my reply to my mother, I was indeed thinking about wedding dresses. November wasn’t that far away, and I had absolutely no intention of making it a long engagement, even if I had fallen for a man who definitely could not run away.
And so back to Hampshire, with some small items from the house and rather a lot of black pudding, and as I felt the extra flesh wobbling on my arse I had an idea. Two days after we were back I put it into practice.
What is the point of living in a National Park full of cycle routes if you don’t ride them? I had spent part of the previous day on the phone to a place in Brockenhurst, a cycle hire and retail centre. They did all sorts of odd things, including a sociable ‘tandem’, a bicycle where the two riders sit side by side, and I had had a moment of inspiration. True to their reputation, they had two at one of the other shops in the chain, and they had one brought over. I put some riding kit in a bag that afternoon and told my man to get driving.
Coming through Lyndhurst from the Totton/Ashurst side is quick, it’s the return that is a sod. We parked naughtily behind The Foresters, and once in the shop I identified myself, which still gave me a thrill, and the manager appeared.
“Hello, Laura, I’m Eric. We have them in, they came this morning. Is this who they are for?”
“Yes, this is my fiancé, Pete, he has some mobility challenges”
Eric was looking at Pete, critically. “Above the knee, mate?”
Pete winced. “Yeah”
“Sorry to hear that, it makes pedals a bit of a non-starter without a really special leg. Have a look over in the workshop”
They did look the part, when he got them out. Two different makes of hand-cranked trike. Pete’s face lit up.
“Laura, you are a bloody genius! This is serious shit!”
Boys, toys. Face shining, he turned to Eric. “Any chance of a test ride on them?”
He laughed. “I rather assumed it was what your lady brought you down here for! Of course, we don’t sell much of the really specialist stuff, so we only get it in for order. See that in the window?”
He pointed to what I recognised as a rather expensive fixed-wheel bike. “Somebody, no longer with us, ordered that one on spec, and it’s been stuck there for two years depreciating the shit out of us. These two are hire items. If they work for you, we will sit down together and look at what is available. Only then will I be ordering anything in”
“Are you going to wait here, love?”
“No, Pete, I’m just off to the pub to use the ladies’ “
When I got back, in my rather nice pink and black top and skort, Pete understood what was going on. Eric provided me with a mountain bike and off we went. The trike was set up for off road use, with mountain-bike style tyres, and as I led Pete past the Balmer Lawn and off the road he seemed to be coping, and indeed as he became more familiar with the gears he was making a reasonable speed. We climbed a little as we came around the back of Holland’s Wood, and then we were deep into the trees, a deer sprinting off as we rounded one of the bends. We paused so Pete could let me know how he was doing, and I saw a grin almost as big as the one he had had at Bovington. That told me everything.
“We’ve got some gates ahead, love, and then quite a fast downhill into the camp site, so don’t go silly”
What a bloody stupid thing to say. He took the hill at full tilt, and only avoided hitting the closed gate at the bottom with a sideways skid that would have pleased a speedway rider. When I arrived, he was dripping with sweat and grinning like a lunatic.
“This is fantastic! So much more fun than the chair! I just need to find the handling limits”
Oh bugger. “I rather think you’re starting to get close to them, and you are too heavy for me to lift, so slow down! Now, there is actually a speed limit on this next bit, plus road humps, so be careful. I want to see how fast you can get her on the main road back to the bike shop, and I can’t do that if you are wrapped round a tree”
Through the camp site, and I followed Pete as he wound it up. Bent forward out of his seat, sweat soaking his hair, by my computer he peaked, on a very slight downhill, at 20mph. There was no way he could sustain that, and he dropped back immediately to a more sedate cruise of around 14 to 15. We turned off just before the level crossing and pulled up outside the shop. Eric looked at Pete, then at me, and smiled.
“That’ll be a sale, then”
A week later we began our proper exploration of our new home. That would keep my bum under control.
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The Summer died in a real conflagration of Forest leaves, and we were both back at college, often riding in together as Pete’s fitness improved and he got used to the traffic. And then it was November. Mary wrote me off….and I found myself lying on a trolley looking at ceiling tiles as my mind fuzzed off with the premed.
They gave me some sort of gas. It smelled green.
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An internet image of a hand-cranked trike http://www.news.appstate.edu/wp-content/uploads/2004/06/0628...
CHAPTER 18
It smelled green, so logically it tasted green when I was sick, and said vomit was green as well, as my empty stomach dredged deep for something to chuck up.
Someone was hammering a piece of hot metal into me. I knew they were down there, with their mallets, because I could feel the banging, which they were timing to my heartbeat. My throat was sore, and my mouth still tasted green. Green and very dry. Someone was quietly snoring. I couldn’t seem to get my eyes to focus for a while, and my head…ouch.
That was how I knew the dwarfs down below were hammering in time with my heartbeat, because I could feel it in my head. Diastole, systouch, diastole, systouch.
My mouth was not only on its own synaesthetic trip, it didn’t want to talk to me. It didn’t seem to want to talk to anyone, actually, as I tried to ask whoever was about for a bloody drink, and tell them to evict the dwarfs.
My head was clearing only slowly, but I realised that the snoring was coming from my mother, in an armchair off to one side. Pete was sitting in his wheelchair, head thrown back and drooling. No stamina. I found a button thingy lying on my blanket, and pressed it Ten minutes or an eternity later, a nurse came in.
“Wawa, peas!
“You can’t drink yet, you’ll just throw it up, but I can give you something to wet your lips. Just a sip”
She held a cup with a straw to my mouth, and when I went to draw a big slug up, she actually pinched the straw shut.
“Now suck on this”
An ice cube. Bless you, girl. She gave Mum a shake, and then Pete, who made a lot of noise when he woke.
“Tea for you too?”
Mum stretched in a very unladylike way. “That would be delightful, my dear. Darling, how do you feel?”
“Whose bloody idea was this?”
“Yours, I believe. Something about matching your body to your soul. At least, that was part of a rather long and incoherent speech you were giving as they wheeled you away.
“Now, the surgeon says it went rather well, so now it’s just the healing process. The nasty bit is over”
Not from where I was lying it wasn’t. The nurse was back with tea, and did something to a drip bottle hanging by the bed, and…oooooooh, that was better. Pete was fully awake now, holding my hand, the one without all the wiry tuby things on it.
“Thank you for all this, love”
The silly man thought I was doing it all for him. That could be useful, save it up as a bargaining point. As the anti-pain stuff did its job, I was not only beginning to wake up, I was starting to think again. That old image of a viewpoint came back to me, and this was certainly an odd one, given my starting point. Looking down an expanse of white and pale blue hospital blankets, past the swell of my own breasts, to my mother on one side of the bed and the man I was to marry on the other. Well done, at last, John.
An aeon or two later I was allowed my own tea, and I sent the two of them off to find some breakfast or lunch or whatever time of day it was, and the surgeon made his first little visit. Up went my blanket, down went his head, in went his hands.
“Good, good, splendid, I should take a job sewing in a top fashion house, it’s that good!
“My little joke, dear. Now, I’m sure someone as educated as yourself has read every available piece of literature on the healing process, so you will know all about dilation, so I won’t go into all that nastiness. We have a pack you can take with you, a bit like an Ann Summers gift set, with instructions. You were rather well-endowed, and as you still had your clockweights I had plenty to work with. I must admit, the hair removal down there was a superb idea! Where did you get it from?”
“An article in the Guardian, doctor. There was a girl who hadn’t got rd of enough of her short and curlies, and ended up with a patch still growing right at the top of her new vagina. Every time her partner made love to her, he said it was like shagging a brillo pad, so I thought…”
“Excellent, excellent! I like well-read patients, it saves me so much trouble!”
And off he went. I remembered the embarrassment of lying there in that place by Gun Wharf, as they methodically went over a very sensitive part of me. Ouch. I also remembered the other part of that Guardian article, and shuddered.
A girl just like me had had her operation, and as is so often the case found herself alone and lost. So alone, that when the fundamentalist bible-bashers came round, she was swallowed up. They educated ‘him’, to realise that their deity didn’t make mistakes, and as Burns put it, “A man’s a man, for aa’ that”, and ‘he’ was a man despite everything, ’for aa’ that”
Men get married, to women, so they had found ‘him’ a suitable young lady from among the faithful, and post-nuptials she had quite reasonably complained that her husband shouldn’t come with breasts and a vagina. So ‘he’ went back to hospital and had ‘his’ femininity irrevocably destroyed, only to come to her senses a short time later.
There are articles I occasionally find that make me cry, and after laughing out loud (and wincing) at brillo-pad-girl, I had wept, at the story and at the picture of a woman who had utterly lost any chance of being complete.
That left me thinking, about several things. I was so lucky in my support, so utterly blessed, I could almost forget the wasted years courtesy of my father. Almost. But now I had taken a step so huge it frightened me. Was this the right thing to do?
I knew the answer as soon as my mind asked the question.
Mary popped round that afternoon (I had finally adjusted my clock) and after the usual pleasantries, she got down to it.
“You’re going through the ‘is this right?’ stage now, aren’t you?”
I laughed, which was stupid ,as of course it hurt. “You know me so well, Mary!”
“Well, I should do, shouldn’t I? And that question is inevitable. This is such a huge step that cold feet will be there before as well as after. It’s why we insist on such a long process before doing anything as radical as surgery”
“Yes, but you effectively signed me off early”
She laughed, which obviously didn’t hurt. “Was I wrong, then?”
I kept mine to a grin. “No. I have, as you know, just been working through that question, and I am absolutely certain this was right.”
She turned a little serious. “Laura, there are certain stages you will go through, one of which will involve some potentially serious depressive episodes. It doesn’t mean you are wrong, it doesn’t mean you have made a mistake, it’s just a glorified bout of nerves. Just remember, always, that you have your family around you, and that I am on the phone. And always, always bear in mind when you have those moments of self doubt that most women like you have to do this on their own. You have support beyond price; use it, rely on it and rejoice in it”
There were other visitors, over the next few days, including a waddling Jane, who had the ultrasound picture with her.
“It’s twins, Lor!”
I tried not to laugh, as that conversation with my mother came back, but in the end I had to.
“What’s tickling you. Laura?”
“It’s like when you went shopping, Jane, you always looked for the BOGOF!”
That set her off, and then she grimaced. “Er, Laura, do you have any spare knickers? I’ve sort of wet myself”
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An eternity later, they pulled half a bedsheet from inside me, along with the catheter, and I was free to move around. I am not going to go into any more intimate details here. You are either familiar with the processes or you are not, and if not you have no need for the details.
A little later we were back at our bungalow in Woodlands, and a relay team of home helps started, including both Tyler and Ollie, which was very useful. My first moment of angst came as I looked in the bedroom mirror naked. Still a boyish figure, despite the breasts. Was this illusion meant to be?
The door opened behind me, and Pete walked in. He held me from behind, and looked at my reflection over my shoulder. I felt him stiffening against my naked bottom, and my doubts were answered.
That’ll be a sale, then.
That's all, folks
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