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