The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1264 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

It was a hardbound book with pasteboard covers and a matching cloth strip on the spine and on the corners of the covers. It was about A4 size, and about an inch thick. How had the police missed it or had they seen it and decided it would be irrelevant to their investigation. With bated breath I carefully opened the cover and discovered I had it upside down. I turned it round and started again, this time with irritation.

I sat down and set the book down on the desk and began scanning the pages. The dates went back to nineteen ninety six, I was thirteen and had been at the school for two years.

‘April: I get worried about C, I’ve watched him for a couple of years, he’s actually quite clever but tends to get bullied quite a lot–he’s a very pretty and feminine boy–just the sort the thugs like. He is probably tougher than he looks because he doesn’t seem to give in too often. Discussed it with the Head and a couple of other staff, he can’t see the problem and sees C as just another sissy, we have the odd one from time to time, but keeping them alive is another matter.

C has been transferred to my English class. He is very feminine without being effeminate. This kid isn’t a sissy, of that I’m pretty sure. He still gets the odd hiding from the bullies and he isn’t much good at sport. However, he rides a bike regularly and I’ve seen him repairing things on it. Today he had to replace his brake cables, some twit had cut them. He apparently carries a small repair kit in his backpack–one with the Care Bears on–it was substituted for his original while he was in class. He carries it round with him almost as a badge of honour. The head was not impressed when his father phoned the school to complain, the original was quite an expensive one.

The head is grinning like a dog with two tails, he managed to convince C’s father that C had swapped his bag willingly, because he was a swish and it made him feel more girly. I don’t believe it but feel the Head is watching me, because I’ve voiced my concern. Going to try something in my lesson tomorrow.

What have I done? I got the boys to read Shaw’s Major Barbara and asked for a volunteer to read the part. C got volunteered as I expected and a big lump of a lad volunteered to play ‘her mother’ Lady Britomart. I’d explained the context of the setting of the play and Shaw’s pacifist and socialist leanings. Of course the other lad played it for laughs while C gave it his best shot. He’s 13 and still has a boy’s voice if not a girlish one. His reading was excellent–given some tutoring, he could be very very good at reading aloud, although he does sound like a girl.

This week there was nearly a riot because we weren’t reading the play–go figure. I promised some more next week but they insisted C had to read Major Barbara. He blushed like a tomato and eventually agreed.

If he was a homosexual, would he want to read female parts? I suppose if he was an effeminate one he might, but then it would probably be a pastiche, like drag artists. His isn’t, it’s like he’s a girl–maybe he’s just a late developer. I did manage to stop a fight in the playground, I suspect C would have got the worst of it.

The Head expelled a boy for doing indecent things in the top floor lavatory. I listened to him rant about it in the staff room after, we don’t know who the other boy involved was, but the Head wanted it to be C. I wouldn’t have thought C knows who does what with what–seems very naive.

C hauled in for questioning over expulsion of boy for indecent acts, his father came as well and was pretty angry about the whole thing. C was told to join the football team selection in the autumn–the others fell about laughing.’

I had flicked through several pages and on each page there was some mention of C. I remembered the incident with Gilbert getting himself suspended pending expulsion. He was quite open about being gay and being quite a big lad, wasn’t hassled too much about it.

We all know who the other boy was, Jimmy Budden, who was also gay but was passive to Gilbert’s macho act. Neither knew me particularly, although the younger Budden was in my art set, so I saw him once a week. He was an amazing sketcher and painter and the art teacher, Ol’ Rembrandt actually, Mr Robins, saved his bacon a few times because he was so talented. He went off to the Slade eventually, but he was drawing nudes in lifelike ways while we were all doing matchstick men.

I remember the brouhaha when the sex scandal broke and Gilbert, who was a sixth former was suspended. They took in the obvious suspects including me for questioning. Old Murray, the Headmaster, called us in one at a time while the Deputy head, Mr Bone, stood at the door. They fired questions at us, I’m sure if they could have used water-boarding, they would have done.

I still remember Murray standing alongside me and insisting I was the other guilty party and to admit to being one of those wretched homos. Despite being extremely frightened, I stood my ground and I did cry in fear, but I admitted nothing. That was on a Friday, come the Monday, they had a copper with Murray and I had my father with me. Dad insisted that I wasn’t gay and was always chasing girls outside school.

He’d obviously seen me with Siân Griffiths. He asked me if she was my girlfriend, so I said yes, well she was a friend who was a girl, isn’t that a girlfriend? Murray was spitting feathers apparently afterwards. He wanted rid of me, why? I didn’t do anything, I was terrified of being stuck in detention or given lines because my father played hell with me for letting him down.

I flicked forward in the journal and found it, nicely marked by a photograph of me used on the cover of the programme for Macbeth. Did I mention that before? The local paper agreed to print us a thousand programmes if they could sit in on the dress rehearsal–we had to do a special one a couple of days before to give them time to print the progs.

They took photos of several of the cast, including me. I was the one they used–typical, and they insisted on calling me Charlotte Watts, wouldn’t believe I was a boy, so Charlie became Charlotte. I used to have a programme signed by all the cast until I moved to Sussex and Dad chucked it out. I was signing my autographs as Charlotte Watts–if I couldn’t beat ‘em, I joined in.

I looked at the date, it was 1999 and I was coming up sixteen, I stared at the photo, maybe I did look a bit like a girl in those days, after all.