CHAPTER 14
The trip across the Solent from Yarmouth to Lymington is more scenic than the one from Cowes and the East to Portsmouth. For a start, there are views of the Needles, and then of Hurst Castle as Lymington is approached.

Mum took us on a drive up over the heathy parts of the New Forest to Beaulieu Road station, past ponies and deer, and then down to Ashurst, bypassing the jams of Brockenhurst and Lyndhurst. We parked up at the supermarket and I helped Pete into his chair. It was amazingly domestic, pushing him round the aisles, slapping his hands as he tried to sneak nice things as he passed the shelves, while my mother pushed a slowly-filling trolley.

Domestic. What a very strange word. I wasn’t at home, I wasn’t even fully at home in my skin, nor my clothes. My new breasts changed my balance and my spatial sense, and I had to make a conscious effort not to keep resettling my bra straps. I still felt good about this, though. It was like painting by numbers. I had all of two colours in place, and the rest would surely follow. At least I now had some idea of what I was, and perhaps who, but my mother had closed the conversation down while we enjoyed the glorious Autumn colours of the Forest. Pete seemed to be almost horizontal he was so relaxed, but I knew there was something hiding just out of sight. There were also the multiple images I was getting.

I was Laura, daughter of Lucinda, and sort of girlfriend to Pete, out for a drive through the National Park and marching around with her similarly country-wife mother, arguing over whether a lamb joint or some pork with the prospect of crackling would be better. Pork won.

I was John, in women’s clothes and false breasts, pushing his maimed school friend around a supermarket in a skirt he should never be wearing, with an insane mother prattling on beside him as if it was all perfectly natural.

I was me, the recent me, unable to understand what was going on, and slowly melting down as the conflict between images became too intense, trying to work out what the hell was going on, to pick the patterns out and deconstruct the utterances and events,,,

Context was, and is, everything, but all of this was so out of any realistic and appropriate context I would have been in danger of blanking out repeatedly, except for the way I had been shocked into reaction. You see, it was rather like recovering from a hangover, where little vignettes and hints come back at random, but steadily accrete, all through the next day. It was also like speaking a foreign language, one I had known in the past but not practised. I had progressed from “Yes, no, two beers please” and was heading towards more complex stuff, but there were still huge gaps in lexis and grammar.

There I go again, Old John’s voice sneaking in. Lexis is, in layman’s terms, vocabulary. I was remembering what I used to know, how to speak human being, but with an accent. I was making mistakes, using the wrong register or awkward words, but I really felt that with practice I could make a fair fist of it, and the accent might fade.

What had my mother been thinking? Was she trying to recover her little ‘girl’, whatever that did to me, or was she trying to let me do the recovering myself? I had no idea at all, but there was another side to this, one far more important.

Did I want this? Did I want to take the steps out on this route? It was clear that I had changed markedly since I was small, and I was profoundly confused about the pressure I felt she was putting on me, both in dressing and the way she seemed to be pushing me closer to Pete. I had another moment of insight: did she want to recapture her lost romance by proxy?

I was looking at my handedness, and that was the end and the beginning of everything. I was standing in front of a number of deep pools, each inviting my dive, pools of gender, of sexuality, of humanity itself.

As we drove back along the M27 I lay in the back of the car, musing on life itself and for once not at all pretentious in doing so. I watched my mother as she chattered brightly to Pete, and I realised I never, ever wanted to drift back into that swaddling numbness that had wrapped me most of my life, never.

I looked at Pete, and realised that we had had more physical contact than Jane and I had ever had, and all in a very few days, and I hadn’t shrunk from it, and, very oddly, neither had my big macho soldier.

‘My soldier’.

’My’. Where had that come from? I couldn’t imagine any intimate contact, and I mean I literally could not raise any images in my head, but he made me feel comfortable, so that was one pool I would plunge into, and another I would not shy from.

The last….who was II? There was a world of difference between the John who had dressed for comfort and peace in the house he shared with a woman, and the Laura who was slowly recovering …not memories, flashes of those certainly, but more feelings, moods recalled from bright days of play and ‘help’ in the kitchen…

I think I dozed off as we crept through the afternoon traffic, and I woke to a sudden pressure, suffocating darkness, something crushing me, pain, my mother’s face wet and oddly lit

And she was shaking me awake in the driveway, and I tried to hang on to the dream, and I couldn’t, and I was nearly crying with frustration. Pete asked if I was ok…

“Just a bad dream”

“Not surprised, Lor, after all we’ve been through just now. Come on, girl, get me out of here and I’ll get the kettle on”

It was nearly seven o’clock by the time we had everything stowed away, Pete delivering tea as promised, and Mum decided we would simply order an Indian meal delivered and sit and watch a film, which engendered a certain level of dispute. Pete wanted something noisy and action-filled, I fancied something with a little more challenge. I had Cyrano de Bergerac in the original rhyming alexandrines, with the Anthony Burgess translation in the same metre as subtitles, which is a wonderfully complex text, but for some reason they both refused to accept my choice.

As we settled down with our Indian on our laps, she hit me again with a devious one. The film she chose was a British romantic comedy, and where she found it I have no idea, but it was indeed underhand. It was called ‘Different for Girls’ and turned out to be about two old schoolboy friends who are reunited years later. One has changed….

I was at the edge of those pools, and she was pushing. Somehow, though, we ended up with Pete stretched out along the sofa, resting against me, with my left hand resting on his chest, bare where his shirt was open.

It was some time before I realised I was playing with the hairs. I started to pull my hand back in realisation, and he reached out and put it back, patted the back of it and then simply left it to carry on with its ‘duty’, and I began to realise there were two of us in this dance.

Was he gay? Was I? There had been a scene in the film where the girl goes to kiss the man, and he shies away, saying he is straight, only for her to reply ‘So am I’

If I had no idea what I was, what did that make Pete? Damaged, was the only certainty.

Bedtime came, and he pecked me on the cheek after I had helped him to settle down, which eased one worry I had had, especially after some of the more…direct scenes in the film. I did not sleep well, my head in Old John mode trying to categorise everything, and my body feeling wrong. I was sleeping without breasts, and after two days it felt odd.

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The next day, after another breakfast preceded by another cup of tea in bed with heavy, heavy hints about my clothing for the day, my mother wanted to go to the Gun Wharf Quays centre for shopping, and I drew the line at such close and crowded places. I insisted that we had done shopping the day before, and it would be nice to do something for Pete. He chortled; “Some girl, who doesn’t want to go shopping!”

Exactly, Pete. I suddenly had a brainwave. We needed somewhere wheelchair friendly, which the ‘Historic Ships’ certainly weren’t, and we needed something with man appeal.

“Pete, I have an idea. It may not be a good one. Be honest if it isn’t.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Bovington”

His face lit up; if I hadn’t liked him so much already I would have been bowled over.

“That would be magic, but it’s a bit of a drive”

“It’s not that far past Poole. Depends what Mum wants to do, I can always drive”

She was nodding. “Excellent idea. Far enough that Laura is unlikely to run into anyone who would embarrass her, just the place for a REME boy, and if I drive I get to choose what music we play, as long as you are happy with the roast as an evening meal, we have a plan, dears”

I should explain, as I say so often, that Bovington is the home of the Tank Museum, and as a REME ‘boy’ it was like a sweet shop for Pete. I had worries that he might suffer some sort of flashback, but he was that little boy incarnate, wanting to rush to the next exhibit each time, after spending what seemed like an hour looking all over some steel monstrosity or other. He gleefully informed us that the badge of the Royal Armoured Corps, their famous ‘mailed fist’, was known throughout the Army as the ‘wanking spanner’

I felt feminine. Never, ever more femme, looking over his head at my mother as we both pretended to stifle yawns, as Pete raved over some APFSDSCBCHE or some such. We took tea part way round, and an elderly man serving n the cafeteria looked at Pete and softly asked who he had served with, and when Pete told him he smiled, and they talked about Arborfield and Catterick while our tea got cold.

About twenty minutes later, a couple of museum staff came in and spoke to our new friend, and he pointed us out, and over they came. One could only have been about twenty, lean, leggy ,with pert little breasts and buttocks and long dark hair, and I hated her on sight. She sat down next to Pete.

“Excuse me, Tom tells us you are ex-REME. Can I be really rude and ask….where did it happen?”

“Helmand….why?”

“I’m sorry, my dad was REME too, and I lost him in the first Gulf War. I have a sort of… I like to try and be nice to soldiers”

She laughed, a really lovely sound, and I hated her even more.

“No, not like that! When did you last get into an AFV?”

“The day before…the day before this” said Pete, indicating his leg.

“Well….we have rigged up something for lads like you. Hand controls…we have a circuit, and a Leopard II, and if you would like to take a test drive, it will be free as a thank you”

“Thank you for what?”

“Being Tommy Atkins”

At that, I almost loved her.

Some short time later, an old German tank was roaring and farting round the demo track outside the museum, Pete laughing and yelling from the driver’s seat. It had been a wonderful day, and I nearly forgave him for the kiss he gave that girl as we left, and he was so, so happy.

The drive back he bubbled and bounced, and Mum even let him choose the music to play, and I couldn’t help holding his hand most of the way home. Dinner was perfect, the mood wonderful, the day relived in every detail. As I tucked him in that night, he took my face and kissed me rather firmly on the lips. I floated up to bed, and went off to sleep with a smile as wide as my head.

The darkness, the suffocation, my mother’s wet face, the pain, came in about three AM.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116102/
http://www.tankmuseum.org/Exhibitions