The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1879 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

The drive home was uneventful and from the motorway one could see the fields under water where streams had burst their banks and spilled over everything. I felt really sorry for anyone whose house became inundated–flooding is an awful thing to happen to anyone.

When we lived in Bristol, or should I say when I lived in Bristol, one of the few boys I knew as a friend–well it was as close as I got to friendships with boys–lived down near the river. They got flooded and although he managed to get to school each day he told me that the house downstairs was a real mess. I asked if I could help clean it up.

He said he’d ask his mum and the next time I saw him, he invited me to go there on the Saturday but to wear old clothes because the place was knee deep in mud. I duly turned up in my old jeans, wellies and sweater over my tee shirt.

He laughed at my wellies–they were shiny black and had a butterfly on each–okay–they were cast offs from Siá¢n–but they would do the job and my old ones had a hole in the seam. My hair was tied back in a ponytail, but I thought I looked okay. Apparently I didn’t.

Marc was tipping a bucket of sludge into a skip outside the house as I arrived. “Shit you look more of a girl than usual.”

“Well hello to you too, Marc Absalom, I came to help not be insulted.” I looked down at the wellies, “Yeah, okay, I had to borrow a pair.”

He shook his head and told me to follow him into the house. The smell was the first thing that hit me–it was like being in a cave where that mildew smell is almost overpowering. The garden was strewn with carpets and damaged furniture as were the neighbours. It was almost painful to look at.

“Mum, Dad, this is Charlie,” he cheerfully said to his parents.

“Hi, Charley,” said his mum, “Marc has said so much about you–except, he didn’t tell us you were a girl.”

Marc was facing me at the time and mouthed, ‘Agree with her.’”

I nodded at him and his mother, “Hi, Mr and Mrs Absalom,” I said in my normal voice and realised that neither turned a hair.

“If you men can do the heavy lifting and us girls will continue sweeping the mud out towards the doors, okay?” suggested Mrs Absalom.

“Right, Mother,” agreed Mr Absalom. “Have you got a pair of rubber gloves for Charley, don’t want her making her hands all mucky–do we love?” he looked at me and Marc nearly wet himself.

For the next two hours I sweated sweeping the mud out though the door where Marc and his dad shovelled it into buckets and emptied them into the skip. Then I helped them dump the carpets and small pieces into the same skip, by which time it was lunch time. Marc’s dad disappeared for half an hour in the car and I wondered if he’d gone down the pub or something, but he hadn’t he’d gone to the chip shop and got us all fish and chips, which we had to eat out of the paper with fingers which had been washed in a bowl of clean water courtesy of a bowser which brought water twice a day. It seemed ironic that the first thing you lose in a flood is water–domestic water that is.

“Is that all right, love?” said Mr Absalom handing me a parcel of fish and chips, “Not trying to diet too much, I hope?”

“No, thank you,” I was hungry and grateful for the meal. He did bring some of those wooden fork things as well, which was okay for the fish but the chips, I ate with my fingers–well, actually I guided them to my mouth with my fingers–I still eat things with my mouth, even though I was then an emerging transsexual.

I worked the afternoon there as well and by the time we finished, the floors were clear, although a lovely wooden block floor was destroyed by the water as well as a fridge and washing machine. They too went on the skip after we all manhandled them out of the house.

Mr Absalom thanked me for my assistance and offered to run me home, I declined but he did so anyway. “Thanks, love, for helping us–you made a big difference–and you’re the first girl Marc has brought home–come and see us again anytime.” He pecked me on the cheek and drove off. I thanked the universe that no one had seen him and went in through the back door.

“Charlie, those are girl’s wellingtons,” observed my mother.

“I know, mine have a hole in them, I borrowed them from Siá¢n to go and help Marc and his family clean up after the flooding.”

“You could have said.”

“I told you where I was going.”

“About the wellingtons, you silly boy.”

“They did the trick,” I said as I pulled them off, at least my socks were dry.

“Except with those on and your long hair you look like a girl.”

“Well, you’re the only one who thought so,” I lied and blushed.

“Huh,” she pouted and turned away. Of course I got my leg pulled something rotten by Marc once he’d calmed down. He was at first amused, then angry, then amused again. To his credit, as far as I know he never told anyone else about our adventure including his parents.

Driving along the motorway I wondered what he was doing–he was pretty clever at maths–so I assumed he’d be into computers or something technical like that. We lost contact when he moved a year or so later, I think his parents were worried about flooding again and they moved somewhere up in the midlands.

“You look very serious, Mummy?” commented Phoebe.

“Sorry, sweetheart, I was thinking about all the poor people who got flooded.”

“Yeah, it must be awful.”

“It is, I helped a school friend once whose house had got flooded.” I went on to relate the story including the misapprehension on his parent’s part. She roared with laughter.

“They were the only ones to get it right, how could anyone think you were ever a boy?”

“My parents did.”

“Yeah, but you put them right in the end, didn’t you?”

“I did my father, but my mum died just after I transitioned.”

“Oh, Mummy, that’s so sad, so she never saw how beautiful you are?”

“She saw me as Lady Macbeth so had some idea, she did meet me moments before she died, but she didn’t recognise me.”

“How d’you know?”

“Stella and I went into see her, she was delirious and slipping into unconsciousness and she said something about two angels coming to see her.”

“Perhaps she did know, you are an angel really, aren’t you?”