There are much darker things coming from this chapter onwards.

CHAPTER 13
I find as I go back through the events of three years ago I can still feel the changes that rippled through my life like waves on the incoming tide, some reaching further, some not as far, but the water steadily advancing. Not a comfortable image in some ways, as I had, then, no idea of what was riding the flood tide.

I wandered down to breakfast, still yawning, to find that my mother had transferred Pete’s chair to the kitchen so he could help sort out the cooking. By that, of course, I meant ‘get in the way. I remembered when I used to help Mum make a sponge cake, and he would hang around, similarly getting in the way, just for a chance to lick the bowl out after the cake went into the oven.

Where the hell did that one come from?

I was astonished, given the night’s pain, that the atmosphere was so jolly, until I realised that they had had at least half an hour to get some order into their relationship, while I, in response to maternal direction, had primped and fussed over my appearance. Not the clothes so much, more a critical examination of myself as a sort of woman.

I suppose it is time I gave you a better idea of what I look like. I have said ‘small, slim and fair-haired’, and that is basically it. I am only 5’7”,and my hair then was rather like that of the odd cycling man who is or was London’s mayor, a sort of shaggy mess. I do believe that, despite my rather restrained taste, or perhaps because of it, I passed quite well in public. Not that I had any empirical evidence to back that up, as I did not go outside when dressed, up until that moment in the garden with Pete. I began to realise my mother’s odd idea of a drive on the Island was being put into practice, and she expected me to come along, Laura dear to be there.

I look back three years and I remain astonished that I gave in so easily, and the only schema that explains this is that of unconscious desire, coupled with outward protest. My mother even sent me upstairs to make myself ‘more presentable’ and I ended up looking like some caricature lady dog walker, in tweed (yes, really) skirt, flesh coloured tights, cardigan and ‘sensible walking shoes’

We took her car, and were soon in Portsmouth, queuing up for the second most expensive ferry crossing in the world, mile for mile, second only to the one from Gosport. Less than an hour later we were rolling up the hard at Fishbourne on a superb Autumn day, Pete twisting and peering round to see what had been out of reach for twenty years for him.

She took us across the eastern end of Wight, past Bembridge and its yachts and up to the viewpoint at St Catherine’s, from where, on a clear day, you can see an awful lot of water. We sat in the car park for a while, the quintessential English daytrippers, sitting in a car to enjoy the views towards Normandy over the horizon. My mother passed around some scones and we shared a flask of tea. I asked one of the obvious questions.

“Why do you insist on calling me Laura, Mum?”

Pete laughed. “You would ask the easy ones first! It is the easiest, actually. We had a friend at school, and she had a mop top just like you, and you said she had a pretty name, and the same hair as you, so you decided, just like that.”

Mum giggled, which was incongruous to say the least. “You were quite insistent; you said that as she had your hair, you should have her name. You were very logical back then”

“But why? It makes no sense. Why would I want a girl’s name?”

Mother sighed. “Peter is right, dear, you asked him the easy one first, but I see you leave the hard ones for me.”

She turned away from me where I sat behind John, and spoke to the Channel. I had to lean forward to hear her, her voice was so faint.

“You came into the living room one day, you were about five, and you said you didn’t want to do boy things any more ‘cause they were silly. That was your word, ’silly’

“I asked you why they were silly, other boys didn’t think they were silly, sad, and you said…..you said ‘but I‘m not a boy, Mummy, I’m a girl’ “

She was breathing raggedly now. No tears, but they were haunting the corners of her eyes.

“Your father was reading the paper, and he called you over, and he said ‘is that right, son?’ and you nodded, and he hit you so hard he knocked you into the wall and you lost two baby teeth, and that was your first trip to hospital for walking into a door, and after he hit you he just carried on reading as you screamed.”

“And after that, after the burglary, after more such little moments of family togetherness I slept with Pete and he was kind and loving, just like his son here. And yet you stayed the course, my darling, you outlasted almost everything he could hit you with. I started researching your condition, because I realised you were not having some childhood phase, you were sincere.

“The worst thing was when I would try to ease your pain afterwards, and you would ask me why you were so naughty, and were you bad, because didn’t daddy love you….”

The tears were there now, flowing steadily without fuss. I realised Pete was the same, and he reached back to take my hand as I leant forward to hold my dear distressed mother.

“You still insisted, though…Peter, you may laugh at this one, I won’t mind. Peter was always there for you, darling, but I could never tell him why you couldn’t come and play, but when you could, and your father was out, you were my little girl, and you always said that one day…”

She started into some sort of spasm, and I was terrified until I realised she was actually laughing ,tears still flowing, and she guffawed, until she could speak again,

“One day…one day you would marry Peter here and make me a grandma because if I was such a good mummy I must be a good grandma”
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The thing was, the frightening thing, was that it made so much sense to me. All of my oddities, my feeling of fitness, of rightness when dressed like I was, the way Pete acted around me, it all made sense. Except for one thing… all I had ever read about transsexuality, for surely that was exactly what my mother was talking about, it all said that the condition was something that did not go away. It was a continuity, a condition of life, and I did not have that certainty in me. I did not, as I have already said, have that ‘left-handedness’ certainty. I had no ‘handedness’ whatsoever.

There was more to this. There was much more, but I really did not know if I could take so much in one 24 hour period. We packed up the flasks and Mum drove us down the steep road into Blackgang and along the Military Road to Freshwater Bay and its cliffs, before we cut inland past Golden Hill to Yarmouth.

With a whispered instruction of “Ladies use the ladies’, dear” Mum treated us both to a pub lunch involving, for Pete, some Timothy Taylor Landlord and for me a rather rich cafetiere of good coffee. I was out, I was dressed and I was relaxed. Nobody seemed to bat an eyelid, and the bar staff were solicitous to Pete in his chair. Mum asked him another obvious question, which resulted in a plan; we would stop at the supermarket outside Cadnam and get the makings of a Sunday lunch, and a Sunday tea, and a Monday morning breakfast, and I would get to keep Pete for another couple of nights.

That was another surprising thought, and the tide metaphor replaced itself in my mind. Like an Imagist poet, I was moving from snapshot to snapshot, and this new one was that of a collapsing dam; as the flow increased more and more chunks would break off, and I was praying that the inevitable collapse would not be a catastrophe.

But for now, it was a mixture of surprise, confusion, moments of genuine delight and revelation, and one supremely important fact.

I had discovered that I could actually talk to my mother, and that she loved me completely and without reservation. That was a result beyond price.