Charlotte’s Tale.
by Angharad.
Part 16.

“Why are we going to London?” I whinged all the way to the station.

“Charlotte, if you don’t shut up, I’ll leave you behind and you can go and spend the day with Jane.”

“Erm, okay, I’ll be quiet. Can I have a magazine to read, please?”

“That should be, please may I have a magazine?” Corrected my mother.

“Okay,” I sighed, “Please may I have a magazine, Mummy dearest?”

“Miss Smartie Pants, just you be careful or I’ll get them to lock you in the guard’s van.”

“Sorrreeee,” I said quietly, knowing it to be an idle threat, they don’t have guard’s vans on trains any more, but it was the appropriate response and I thought I’d better keep in her good books–who knows what treasures I might find to enrich my wardrobe.

The train ride was tedious enough for me to fall asleep while I glanced at pictures of Angelina Jolie’s latest baby, I suppose I was still tired from my concert. My mobile ringing and vibrating woke me up. For a moment, I had to remember where I was and why, by which time the phone had been ringing for quite a little while. I only just managed to pull it out of my bag and say, “Hello?” before the caller lost interest or died of old age.

“Can I speak to the famous singer, Christine Monk?” said a voice I recognised instantly.

“No, she’s doing a photo session for ‘Hello’ magazine.”

“Damn, I suppose I’d better speak to Charlotte then.”

“Simon, it’s a good job you’re not closer or you’d deserve a slap for that.” I noticed my mother giving me a very strange look.

“So where are you, if you’re not at home?”

“On a train going to London, Mummy’s promised to buy me some ace clothes.”

“We’ll see about that, you cheeky little madam,” assailed the ear that wasn’t pressed to the phone.

“Oh, so I won’t see you then?”

“Dunno, depends on what time we get back.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“Dunno, I’ll give you ring when we get back, but you know what it’s like shopping, we’ve only got three native bearers with us, so we won’t buy too much.” I could hear my mother stifle a snigger at my remark.

“You realise my mother has just resurrected her crush on Cliff bloody Richard, don’t you? I can hardly think for the racket, she keeps playing his records and singing along with them. I threatened to call the doctor once.”

“He was already there when I did it?”

“What? Who was?”

“The doctor, silly.”

“What are you on about?”

“You wouldn’t have had to call the doctor for me when I sang along with him, ’cos the doctor was already there.”

“What last night?”

“And yesterday morning, in fact the doctor took me to see him.”

“See who?”

“Harry Webb.” My mother sniggered again.

“Who?”

“Harry Webb, look it up on Wiki or Google it.”

“Okay, see you later, byeeeeeee.”

“Byeeeeeeeee,” I replied. I switched off the phone and looked at my mother.

“You are getting wicked, Charlotte. I’m sure that James would never have done that sort of thing.”

“James didn’t have a boyfriend like Simon.” I blushed as I realised the implications of what I’d just said.

“I’m glad to hear it,” said my mother stifling a grin.

“Ooooh!” I said and pretended to slap her. Thankfully she laughed. I went back to my magazine, I’d hoped to pick up some advice on makeup or hairdos but there wasn’t much worth reading. Some long article on the rights and wrongs of abortion, and another on dyslexia in cats. I didn’t know they could read, maybe we should get another one and see what sort of things they like to read. Mews of the World, I suppose. I chuckled at my own silly joke.

“I’m glad you’ve found something amusing in that magazine, what an extortionate price for a pile of glossy paper and vacuous journalism. I think we’ll get you a proper book for the return journey.”

“Okay,” I sighed, just ‘cos she was stuck on the Times crossword. She always gets tetchy when she’s stuck on it. I wonder if I’ll be like it when I’m old.

We finally got to London and left the train, only to go down to the tube station. I like going on the tube, whooshing around under the streets, although sometimes you have to stand because it’s so crowded. We went down the very steep escalators, keeping to the left so those in hurry can pass on the right. I held on tightly, because they are very steep and if you fell, it would certainly hurt rather a lot. Mummy told me she once saw on old lady fall and she had to be taken away by ambulance, the old lady I mean–not my old lady, hee hee.

Down on the platform, it’s quite warm and yet there’s a breeze flowing through the tunnels. When a train goes by you can feel the air being sucked by its motion. The carriages rattle and most are rather old, but today I didn’t mind that. I was wearing a denim mini skirt with leggings and my black boots. On my top I had a pink tee shirt under a pink hoodie. My hair was tied back in a pink scrunchie and I had a belt which sat more on my hips than my waist, this was in pink plaited leather with a gold buckle.

We got on the tube train and went off, passing through several stations. The names didn’t mean very much to me as I was busy watching a young couple who were practically making out on the train. They started by kissing and suddenly they had hands rubbing all sorts of bits of each other’s anatomy. I wasn’t sure if I found it offensive or enlightening. She had her hand in place which I’m sure Simon would enjoy if I did it to him. I found myself getting very hot as I thought that and Mummy looked at me watching the young couple and tut-tutted.

“I hope you and Simon don’t get up to such things,” she said and I blushed even more. How did she know?

“Erm, no, Mummy,” I said without looking at her, blushing even brighter red. I think if I’d got any hotter, I might have set off the fire alarm. Eventually we got off the tube at Oxford Circus and reversed the trip on the escalator, going up the long moving staircase.

“Why do they call it a circus, Mummy?” I asked hoping there wasn’t a big top nearby. I had horrible memories of the one and only time I’d been taken to the circus. I was about four years old and my parents thought it was a treat for me. In some ways I suppose it was, I almost enjoyed the animals and the acrobats, although I was anxious for the tightrope walker and trapeze artists–thinking they might fall and hurt themselves. Then, in came the clowns and I felt myself becoming frightened–I don’t know why, but I was.

We were sitting in the front row when one of the clowns came right up to me and terrified me. I screamed, and desperately tried to escape from him. Daddy got cross, calling me a girl, whilst those in the audience around us thought it was funny. I clawed my way free of the seats and ran off, out of the big tent with my father in hot pursuit.

I can still remember running out into the car park and my father scooping me up just in time to save me from being squashed by van. I was shaking and crying, and he was red faced and angry. He shook me, and shouted, “You silly boy, what were you thinking of?” I couldn’t say anything, except cry. Eventually my mother found us and calmed things down.

“It just means the road is in a circle,” I heard these words and jumped. “Charlotte, are you okay?”

“Yes, sorry, Mummy, I was miles away.” I blushed.

“A circus means the road goes around in a circle.”

“Oh, does it? So why do they call those horrible things in a big tent a circus?”

“I suppose because of the Romans, who called some of their amphitheatres circuses, because they had a round arena. The big top has an arena which they call a ring, so I suppose that’s what it’s from.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

“I thought you didn’t like circuses.”

“I don’t, horrible places with cruelty to animals.”

“I thought it was something else you didn’t like.”

“I don’t like any of it, oh look, there’s Next, can we go and look inside?” Before my mother could correct my English again, I darted into the shop pulling her along behind me. We concentrated on the clothes and soon forgot about circuses.

Soon it was lunch time and we ate in a Spaghetti House. I had minestrone soup, which was enough for four–I didn’t need a main course, although I did have some Italian ice cream for pudding. Mummy had soup too, without the ice cream–erm, I mean she only had soup, she didn’t want a pudding.

Back to the ordeal–yeah, she had to twist my arm to look in all these shops, I was in so much pain. Okay,the only pain I had, actually, was from carrying all those plastic bags full of shopping. I had a new dress, some cord trousers, and strappy top. She wouldn’t let me have the shoes I wanted–‘they were far too high a heel for girl of my age’–grrrr! I’ll buy my own some time. Mummy doesn’t seem to understand that we artistes, need to wear outfits that mark us out from the common herd–I had enough of that when I was a (failed) boy.

The shops have to close at four on a Sunday, something to do with all the shop assistants being able to get to a church in the evening? I don’t know, but by then we’d like, spent most of the day shopping, so I was ready to go home.

We stood on the platform at the station waiting for our train, and I was aware of some boy further along checking me out. He looked alright, so I must have been doing the same to him. We had eye contact and he smiled then looked away. He was interested, or should that be interesting? I blushed and kept looking at the rails as if they were going to do something interesting, or that my life depended upon watching them.

Actually, that’s not like, quite true. I sneaked another look and he was now staring at me. I was blushing profusely and waggling my foot to try and distract me, but his eyes were magnetic and kept attracting mine. I wasn’t sure how to get out of this.

I mean, like, if it was Simon, I’d like, tell him to like, get lost. But I’d never spoken to this boy and thinking of Simon, made me feel even more embarrassed–in fact, I was like being unfaithful to him.

“Are you all right, Charlotte?” Mummy asked.

“Eh? Yeah, why?”

“You seem to be having a hot flush”–her eyes followed mine along the platform and she saw him looking at me. “Oh, what would Simon say about that, I wonder, you floozie.” She scowled at me and then at the boy. He looked away sniggering. How do I know? Erm, it was a guess–gosh it’s like, hot on this platform.

On the train, Mummy insisted I sit on the inside seat, so that I didn’t indulge in any unnecessary flirting. “I don’t know, Charlotte, sometimes I begin to think you’re boy crazy.” She rebuked me and I blushed again. I wasn’t really doing anything, only exchanging glances. I’ll bet she did it. How do I know, Daddy, once told me that Mummy was a real flibbertigibbet, so I’ll bet she was a floozie, too.

On the way back, I sent a text to Simon: ‘On way home, call me l8r, C xxx.’ The boy from the platform walked by while my mother was in the loo, he just had time to drop a piece of paper on her seat before she came back.

“Was that the boy from the station?” she asked.

“Where? I replied, pretending to look for him out of the train window.

“He came past you a moment ago.”

“Did he? I was sending Simon a text, I didn’t see him.” I pretended to act as if I was uninterested, except I was desperate to see what was on the paper.

“We were going to get you a book, why didn’t you remind me?”

“Sorry, Mummy, I forgot.”

“I’m sure you did, too busy thinking about boys, I expect.”

“Mummy, I like, don’t think about boys all the time. I think about one, Simon, so there.” I sat with my arms folded looking out of the window at the passing fields, pretending to be in a king-sized sulk. The problem was, I was still holding onto the bit of paper the boy had dropped and my hands were getting all sweaty. Part of me suspected he’d probably written it in crayon, another part of me thought it might have cooties on it, so now I’d have them.

I picked up my magazine and after a bit of surreptitious manipulation, I managed to open the paper and read it. I gasped.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked my mother.

“Erm, Victoria Beckham has six houses,” I lied, looking at the paper again. I reread the message–‘my frend thinks you have nice tits:-)’ What a prat, he couldn’t even spell friend properly.

I closed the magazine on my covert message, I knew I couldn’t respond, Mummy would spot it, besides how would I write it without her seeing me doing it? I did run through some ways I could have done it, but I couldn’t really be bothered. Then I saw him alight at two stations before ours and I felt vindicated in not doing anything. This was especially so, after he made a vulgar gesture as the train pulled away, he pretended he was supporting breasts on his own person. Boys–I’m soooo glad I’m not one.

As we got closer to home, I began to think about Simon and Jane: how could two such different people come from one family. Simon was so nice and Jane, was such a psycho. I recalled my dream and her selling the photos to the man in the dirty mac. Was she that mercenary? If she was it wouldn’t completely surprise me, if she wasn’t it would be good.

“Charlotte, wake up we’re nearly there.” Mummy, patted me on the knee to bring me back to the real world. I wasn’t asleep, just lost in my thoughts. I was still dreading going to school, which would be in the next few weeks. Jane had the power to destroy me by blabbing my little secret. I had no retaliation even her prosecution didn’t really compare. She had promised not to tell anyone, but then she promised not to hurt me and did.

I didn’t know how important Simon was to her, because if it became known I used to be a boy, how would it look for him, dating me? I shuddered as I got in the car.

“Are you all right, Charlotte?”

“Yes, somebody just walked over my grave.” A stupid expression, especially as most of us get cremated when we die, but she understood it.

“Oh, what caused that?”

“I don’t know, Mummy.” I did but I couldn’t tell her.

We got home and I put the kettle on and ran upstairs to put my shopping away. We’d only been home half an hour when the phone rang, it was Simon. He would come around after tea, I told him we were only having a light meal tonight, salmon salad with watercress, home grown tomatoes and new potatoes with a pat of butter on them, scrumptious.

I helped Mummy make the salad, I scrubbed the new potatoes and popped them on to boil, then washed the tomatoes which she’d picked from the greenhouse earlier. The salmon had been cooked the day before, so we ate it cold. It was really tasty, Mummy cooks it with garlic flavoured sunflower oil, which she prepares herself.

As I helped her wash up, I did wonder if the garlic flavoured salmon could be antisocial, especially with Simon’s arrival imminent. Just before he came, I ran up and cleaned my teeth and used some mouth wash–at least I’d tried, hadn’t I?

He arrived at seven and asked if I wanted to go for a walk. I’d been walking all day, but there was less chance of being parentis interruptus, if we were out. We walked along the river, which is about half a mile from my house, we were holding hands as we strolled. There were quite a few people about, walking dogs and just out for a stroll like us.

In one spot, the path widens quite a lot and the council have put a few picnic tables, we sat at one of these. “I’m nervous about going to this new school,” I said to Simon. We were both sitting astride the bench seat, him behind me, his arms around me.

“I suppose anything new is a bit scary, but I’m sure you’ll cope,” he tried to reassure me.

“Yeah, that’s like, scary enough. It’s Jane, who like, really scares me.”

“I think she has that affect on most sensible people.” He chuckled, as he said it, “She frightens the crap outta me.”

“It’s that she could like, destroy me with, like, a few words.”

“Surely, she knows that, and what would it gain her?”

“I dunno, but it like worries me. Especially, as it could have an affect on you.”

“Me, how could it affect me?”

“If it like,became known I like, used to be a boy, then it would hardly do your reputation any good like, would it?”

“Oh,” I felt him pull away from me and my back felt colder where he had been cuddling me. “I’ll have a word with her, if she drops me in it, I’ll murder her.”

We both got up off the seat, and walked a bit further, we were holding hands but somehow the warmth had changed, I felt a distance in Simon’s attitude towards me.

“Are you like, going off me?”

“No, course not, why did you ask that?”

“You took your arm away,” I looked into his face but he avoided eye contact. He put his arm around me again and tried to laugh it off.

I stopped and turned to face him, “Simon, tell me honestly, are you going off me?”

“No, no I’m not. It’s just I forget–about your past–then you remind me, and it throws me a little. I mean, it’s not like I don’t know about it, but like I said, I forget.”

“I’m sorry,” I felt a tear run down my cheek. He saw it and pulled into a hug.

“Hey, I still like you, okay? It’s all okay, so don’t cry.”

Of course, telling a girl not to cry always has the opposite effect, and I bawled all over him. At the end he suggested he’d have been drier if he’d jumped in the river. That made me laugh.

He helped me clean up my mascara, which was supposed to be waterproof, but had dribbled down my cheeks a bit. I didn’t have a mirror with me, so he had to wipe the tissue under my eyes. In doing so he had to put his face really close to mine and I made life difficult for him, by lunging forward and kissing him every few seconds.

I loved being a girl, but getting the hang of relationships, was soooo difficult. At least Simon still liked me, least I hoped he did and he would help me, I hoped, to deal with Jane.

We got home and he kissed me on the doorstep. Actually, he kissed me on the lips, but I was standing on the doorstep. I went in and ran up to the bathroom and took off my makeup, before Mummy saw it. She gave me a funny look when I came back down. “Oh, Jane phoned, she’d like you to call back.”

“What? Tonight?”

“Yes, why not, it’s only ten, I’m sure she won’t be in bed yet, and I got the impression it was fairly urgent.”

“ ‘Kay, I’ll ring her now.” I dialled her number, and Simon answered. We bantered for a few minutes before I asked to speak to the poison dwarf.

“Oh hi, Charlie, look, a group of us girls are going into town tomorrow night, wondered if you’d like to come. It’ll be good, and you’ll get to meet a couple of girls from school.”

I hated being called Charlie, but I’d never tell her, she’d do it all the more. “Where are you going altogether?”

“There’s a new place opened, does a disco for teens on a monday, it’s supposed to be really good, lotsa dancing. There’s five of us going, six if you come.”

“What time?” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go or not.

“Come to my house around six, we’ll all catch the bus together.”

“I’ll have to ask, hang on”–I went to speak with my mother. She agreed I could go. I had misgivings, but thought it better to keep her on side, and she had contacted me, rather than the other way round. “Yeah, okay, see you tomorrow.”

“Oh brill, yeah, later, bye.”

I had signed my covenant with the princess of darkness and it hung over me like a personal black cloud. Maybe, I’d have been better staying as a boy, I only used to get beaten up in those days. Now I’d be completely annihilated if it got out. No wonder teenagers get depressed.

“Are you all right, Charlotte?”

“Yes, Mummy, just a bit tired.” In some ways I was exhausted but the thought of going to bed and having more scary dreams didn’t make me feel any better as I trudged up the stairs.

~~~~~

Thanks to Gabi for more express editing and suggestions, some of which actually related to the story.