Time for Penny to go under the Knife!

This is the story of Penny. A closet Transwoman thrust into the outside world 24-7 when she would rather go and hide away. Perhaps the title should be Welcome to Penny’s Paranoid World…

From part sixteen
“I’ve just spotted your security camera.” He say grinning, tipping his head towards it. Then let’s go of my hand and with a wave starts down the path. Stopping at the lane to turn back to me.
“I tell the girls when they pull that face. Careful, or your face will get stuck like that.”
Then he starts to move across the lane and then has to hurry as a car pulls out of the village hall car park without checking, nearly running him over.
I close the front door and lean on it. The sitting room door opens to reveal a smiling Carol.
“Come on, I’ve put the kettle on.”

And now as they say, read on…

I closed my eyes and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on my face. We had arrived around eleven-thirty, popped into the Asda supermarket and bought a cooked roast chicken and a portion of roast potatoes. Put in an insulation bag they were still nice and piping hot when we arrived at the beach hut ten minutes later. We had brought some cooked runner beans from home that just needed to be re-heated to eat. They had on sale a small low powered microwave which was perfect for the beach hut, so I got one. It was worth having to hump it from the car park behind the sand dunes round to the Beach Hut for the extra ability it gave to cooking there.

Carol was reheating the beans in it now while waiting for the kettle to boil on the two burner camping stove to make the gravy. When we were children mother would bring a fresh chicken with us and cook it in an old folding tin oven on top of a camping gas stove while we played on the sand and splashed about in the sea.

When Carol is here she insists on doing the cooking. Nothing against my cooking, she just says it is the only chance I get to have a rest and not cook, so I am banished from the kitchen wherever it might be, when she is here. Problem is I find it hard to just relax. Even here on the beach huts little veranda. I open up my eyes and checked on Mother beside me, still fast asleep with Fred in her lap. She had had a cup of coffee when we got here, and fell asleep soon afterwards out on the veranda. Fred’s head poking out from the blanket at her waist. She had put his floppy paw over his eyes to shut out the light and turned him on his side so he could have a nap too. Her hands resting across her lap holding him in so he did not fall out.

There are a few more people about this week-end on the beach and walking along the prom. I smiled thinking about being here last week with Evie and the girls. Even if things go all wrong, at least I will have those memories. Sometimes you can live a lifetime in a day, and sometimes that is all you get.

A steam whistle coming from behind the dunes told us they had the little steam loco out today on the miniature railway. If you listened hard enough as the little train pulls away if it is going to the station by the pier you can hear the cuff-chuff of the pistons working. Too many people on the beach and all you hear is the whistle. I may have wanted to be a girl in my head as child, but I was always fascinated by the two little steam locos they used back then. The miniature railway has a ten and a quarter inch gauge track. The steam loco is still one of those two old steam engines. The other one was sold years ago to help the railway through a bad patch moneywise. They were built in the 1930s based on the Great Western Railways Dukedog class 4-4-0 locos. They only steam her when they are just busy enough to need two engines pulling three carriages each. In the heat of summer they use two trains,’ six carriages long with the class 37 diesel on one and their bigger and latest steam locomotive that is based on a narrow gauge Denver & Rio Grande Western Railway K37 loco on the other. She is far too powerful for this little seaside line, but I guess the owner wanted one.

I am not being morbid, and try not to think about it, but this will probably be Mother’s last year down here with us. David our doctor told me at the beginning of last winter to be pre-pared for the worst as we would be lucky if she made it through the winter. And here we were in the second week of May with nice sunny weather and she had made it so far. But you could see how fragile she was now, and the increase in her dementia. We really would be lucky for her to get through next winter as well.

“All ready. Come and sit down. Is mother still asleep?”

“Yes, fast away in the land of nod. Have you made her soup?”

“No, thought I’d check before doing it.”

I checked again before coming back in. We sit down and enjoy our typical English Sunday roast lunch listening to the odd seagull squawking as it flies over us as the waves roll up the beach as it nears high-tide. Mind you after seeing Finding Nemo on tv last Christmas every time I see or hear a seagull now, all I hear in my head is:

Me, me me me. Me me me, me, me, me me. Me. Me.

Who would think a cartoon film moment would get so stuck in the brain for so long. As we were eating Carol stops and looks out past the open doors to the sea sparkling in the sunshine.

“This takes me back.”

“When we were children.”

“Here? Yeah.” She was smiling. “It does that too. No, I was thinking of looking out of our cabin window on Canberra at the sun glistening on the sea.”

With the tide in the sea was close enough to look past the beach at the sea and think back to being on her.

“Did I tell you about Trish and Malcom have chairs from the Meridian Lounge. They flew over to the ship breakers to get some when she was being scrapped and had to buy a dozen of the club chairs along with half a dozen of the swivel chairs before they would ship them back over. Trish says if they put them all in the same room together, they could open Lower Steeping’s first pop-up night club.”

Carol smiles remembering. “We had some fun on board her, didn’t we? First time we went on her. You were five and a half and I was eight and a half and we slept in father’s day cabin.”

I popped some runner beans in my mouth and thought of the next eleven years when we spent a month every summer holidays on board Canberra so our parents could spend some time together when he was working. Although I did not remember staying in Father’s day cabin, and said so.

“We only stayed there once. He said we were too noisy. After that we always had cabins on C deck. C31 and C29, because they had connecting doors. Mother kept our outside door locked so we could only get out through her cabin.”

“I sort of remember that, but the memory plays tricks on you. I didn’t think about being on Canberra for ages, not until Trish’s dinner party and seeing the chairs… and come to think about it, they were from the Bonito Club, not the Meridian Lounge.”

“You said tricks, what tricks?” I noticed the slight change in Carol’s voice.

“Oh… I think it’s just my going full-time Penny, that did it. But I can only think of myself on Canberra as a girl and not as a boy. Like I said memory playing tricks. Wishful thinking, I guess.”

Carol had gone an embarrassed red and said nothing. Eating some more before replying.

“Not, really.” She paused a while before continuing. “It was all my fault.”

I looked up at her as she sighed. “Mother had taken us up to the Junior Club. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. I had on my new dress and thought I looked very pretty. You were only five and a half and had on this red shorts and bib thing that I guess could have been for a boy or a girl. Anyway, there must have had a smudge on the paperwork or something as when they were going through our names, they didn’t know your Christian name. You were just P Johnson to them and I was cross as they hadn’t noticed my pretty dress.

So when they asked your name and said you were very pretty when you said nothing. I got jealous. You had just clammed up as you were very shy and would stick to me like glue. So I said my sister’s name was Penny. When mother could not hear us, I use to call you that all the time and pretend you were my twin sister and not brother, so you didn’t complain and I use to dress you up in my old clothes anyway, when we were playing.”

Ok, I could understand that. Carol had always been the more forceful of the two of us. “But, how did you?”

“Get away with it? Well. Mother never found out at first as we had our lunch, and our tea and dinner at the Junior Club. But a couple of days later we had a fancy dress party. What I didn’t know was the Captain and parents were invited to see us parade around the room and the Captain would pick a winner.”

Carol looked across at me ruefully. “And of course he had to pick Princess Penny, didn’t he. You burst out crying at all the attention. Father realising it was you, looked embarrassed. Mother looked at me sternly. So I started crying as well. When everyone realised you were the Chief Engineers daughter, they thought that was why he was embarrassed. The Captain told everyone he would be back to judge another fancy dress party in a couple of days. So there was no trouble about it. He took a shine to you and picked you up and asked if you would like to see the bridge. You shyly said, ‘yes’.”

She looked up at me and grinned. “So. The Captain carried you up to the Bridge. Followed by Mother holding on to me. Father didn’t come.” Carol smiled. “The Bridge officers made a big fuss of the both of us.”

Carol pulled a face at me. “Course the shit hit the fan when we got back to Father’s day cabin. I blamed you and the people looking after us and said you said your name was Penny. I wasn’t about to admit what I had done with father mad as hell.”

Mother stirred and we both went to get up. “It’s alright, I’m closest,” I said getting up.

I bent round Mother and said ‘Hi, sleepily head’ to her. “Would you like some soup?”

“Yes please.”

“Ok. Be just a minute.”

Carol was already up at the microwave putting a Heinz chicken soup in it.
When mother was happily drinking her soup and offering the spoon to Fred as well. I sat back down. Looks like Fred is going to take a spin in the washing machine again!

Carol looked remorseful at me. “So! If father came clean and admitted to everyone the pretty little girl everyone had made such a fuss of on the Bridge was in fact his son and not his daughter. He would be a laughing stock with his engineers and the rest of the ships officers. So mother and father agreed you would be Penny for the rest of the cruise. Mother had to go and get you a load of girl’s clothes at the next port of call.” Carol said grinning.

“And of course, that meant that you had to be a girl the next year, and so it went on. Every year for our time on Canberra, you had to dress and act as a girl.”

“Well, at least I know I was not going crazy when I kept remembering being a girl on Canberra.”

“I’m sorry. I feel responsible for what has happened to you. To how you feel about yourself.”

I looked up at her and realised that she was close to tears. I got up and went round and hugged her as the tears came.

“Silly you. I told you Malcom said if they had gone to the doc’s when I was young and had me checked out properly. They would have done corrective surgery and I would have been brought up as a girl, anyway. If anything you probably helped me keep sane as a kid.”

We talked some more about it. We had come late in life for our parents and father had not been happy that for our holidays on board I was appearing as a more and more a pretty girl as I got older it seems. Carol saying he finally put a stop to it after the Christmas cruise just after I had become sixteen and seemed to be attracting the attention of far too many boys and young men.

Carol laughed. “God, you were a flirt. I mean I knew you got bullied at school as a boy for being a pretty boy. And then on Canberra, the same sort of boys were falling over themselves trying to chat you up as Penny like crazy. I think you saw it as taking revenge on them. But Father blew a gasket when he saw them.” She looked at me. “Don’t you remember any of this?”

I shook my head.

Carol watched me as she got up to take mother’s soup bowl.
Coming back, she continued as she started the washing up. Telling me Father was home for the New Year and it was all a bit fractious.

“You were tense, nervous around father, wound-up tight like a drum. And then in the New Year just before school started again, you had a nervous break-down.”

“I mean, Christ. You were barely seventeen and a nervous wreck. It scared the hell out of us all. Mother drove you down to Aunt Ivy’s in Devon and you stayed there for three months. When you came back you were very withdrawn and had blocked out Penny altogether. You were hooked on being a pilot and Father was pleased to support that.” She paused and looked at me. “Don’t you remember any of this?”

I shook my head. “No. not a thing. I vaguely remember staying at Aunt Ivy’s. That’s all.”

She looked at me ruefully. “When Penny surfaced again I was worried you would have another breakdown.”

We spent the afternoon sitting in the sun. Part of me wanted to go over in my mind the thrill of last night dancing with John. The feeling I had in his arms was so, so fantastic that it could have gone on forever and I would not have complained, and then with Emily asleep on my lap as Evie and I chatted with Zoey with little April on her lap. Never have I more intensely felt a mother than at that moment. At times with mother, I feel like her parent. But this was different.

So many things to think about. I thought I was a lipstick lesbian stuck in the wrong body. And in truth I am only attracted to John, and perhaps that navy officer down in Portsmouth who looked like Cary Grant. But no other male.

See a beautiful woman and like men my eyes home in on her, and it is attraction, not envy of her beauty. And when I fantasize it is with a beautiful woman, two women together. Same goes for porn on the internet. It is two women with not a man in sight that gets my motor running. So why John. Is it just a way to be mother to the girls. No, that is not it either. If I had had a vigina last night, we would have had sex and I would have been a willing virgin pulling my clothes off to stand naked before him. Well, I would have kept my stockings and suspenders on, and my heels. That imagine in my head of standing before him like that in my high-heels virtually naked is soo sexy.

And then. As I look around me seeing Mother and Carol beside me I wonder if this is the last time we will ever do this. I have not told Carol just how much Malcom had urged me to ring Evie to come and fetch Mother so I could be admitted that afternoon. I knew that meant I was going to get bad news the next day if I did. And what if they wanted me to stay in longer, have further operations. Maybe I was going to be joining Father in the Big Sleep before mother did. And if that was the case, what have I done to Emily, Eve and Lizzy. Given them the hope they have their mother back to then go and take her away from them by dying. I wonder if that is why Malcom agreed to put my breasts in. to let me die with some comfort of femininity about me.

God! I had to stop this or I was going to start crying and Carol would want to know why.

Evie took me back round to Mid-Steeping railway station after we had dropped off the girls at school. Carol could not do it as Mother would have wanted to come with me on the train. I glanced at The Station Arms as we past it going down Station Lane, remembering the meal with John two nights ago and smiled to myself. We had covered my overnight case so the girls would not see it and ask any questions. They just thought we were going to town shopping after dropping them off.

Standing on the platform and even when I was on the train I was too preoccupied to realise this is the first time I had been out as Penny all by myself. If anyone noticed, had clocked me. I was too preoccupied to notice them.

Once in London I took a black cab to the QAMC, Malcom’s hospital, and went to the coffee shop on the ground floor and sat down with a cup of tea and a croissant. Since after mid-day, or maybe it was after two in the afternoon. I would be on liquids only diet ready for tomorrow’s op first thing in the morning. I had the paper somewhere, but must have left it at home. Anyway it did not matter as I had to book in at twelve and I am sure the nurses will not let me eat anything after that.

“I Ope, you are being carful? I put on weight, just looking at them.”

I look up to see a smiling Jenni André looking down at me.

I stood up and we hugged and air kissed. “Hello, Jenni. Are you having lunch with Paul?”
“One, moment. I must get un café and a croissant, too. I am français, we do not let our friends eat alone. Food is something to be shared and enjoyed together. It is the French way. Oui.”

With that Jenni smiled and made her way to the self-service counter, looking immaculate and stylish, before coming back with a coffee and three of their big croissants on a plate. She sat down and put one of the croissants on my plate.

“There. You will be staving by tonight. It won’t do much to fill a hole.” She grinned at me. “But Chéri, it will be nice eating them,” and laughed.

I like Jenni. She did not shy away when she found out I was not a girl, or we thought I was not a girl. At Trish’s dinner party.

“You have to be careful, or you’ll have no appetite for lunch.” I said. “It’s not far off. What time are you meeting Paul?”

“Silly, Chéri. I am ere for you, not him. Do you think I would let you come and wait all by youself? Till tomorrow. Non.”

Jenni studied my face for a moment, and said worried. “That, so long as you want me too stay. I do not want to impose, if you want to be alone.”

I shook my head. “No it’s lovely, I thought I would be by myself.”

“Then,” she said poised to take a bite out of a croissant. “Let us eat and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Oui, that is the saying, Yes?”

I was not sure if the ‘for tomorrow we die’ bit was appropriate in a hospital, but happily grinned and nodded.

I lay on the hospital trolley. Yesterday, after I booked in. I found myself in a bed on the women’s surgical ward. Anna came and did a thorough check-up. Made sure I really did want the breast implants. Had them take an armful of blood and said she would see me bright and early tomorrow morning at seven-thirty. Jenni stayed with me until Paul came and collected her.

The anaesthetist came back and gently pushed a syringe into cannula stuck down with a big see-thu plaster in a vein on the top of my hand that the nurse had put in. It was not painful, but not pleasant. He smiled and asked me to count back from ten.

“Ten, nine, eight, seveen,” I began, then it started to get difficult. “… siiiiix… fffii…,” then, before I could finish, the ceiling rushed down at me and surrounded me in darkness.

I was coming out of the supermarket, both hands full of shopping bags. It was the 24hour one I use to go shopping in Thursday nights when I worked as a flying instructor. Except this time as I left the lights went out behind me and when I turned round the building seemed empty and shrouded in darkness. I looked back nervously to see if anyone else was going to their car as well as me, but I was alone in the carpark. For some reason tonight I had parked Baby, half-way across the large empty car park instead of where I normally did outside the supermarket cafés window.

The carpark seemed to have its own dark ominous clouds gathered around it, and they seemed menacing and malevolent and watching me. All I could hear was the tap-tap-tap, of my heels echoing on the tarmac. It was creepy and I could feel the fear rising inside me. I walked faster, almost breaking into a run. As I got closer to Baby I found I had to go around a black BMW that was parked in my way.

I heard him before I saw him.

“Fucking Queer.”

He was just a shape. The fist slammed into me, the sharp pain doubling me over as I collapsed down onto the ground…

I smiled and looked around the cottage garden in the bright sunshine. It was so peaceful. I could hear the birds singing. My sister and I grew up playing in this garden. I walked over the grass feeling it between my toes, past the rose bushes my Mother tended so carefully and looked to see if the people who lived here now had covered over the well. So many people nowadays put a concrete cap on an old well in their garden, covering them over with soil to be forgotten. In our day there was just a big stone slab over it and we had strict instructions from Mother to never stand on it and NEVER jump on it and to stay well away from it all together.

Except our one had been added too. The slab was gone. There was now a round stone wall rising up with a little tiled roof over it together with a wooden pole with rope wrapped around it and a wooden handle waiting to be turned. There was even a metal bucket tied to the rope sitting on the wells stone wall. It was a prefect cholate box cottage garden picture. Mother would have love it. She had always loved this place. I will have to bring her back over sometime. I am sure the people will not mind.

I was looking at the runner beans growing along their cane sticks stuck in the ground next to the peas, when I realised I could faintly hear a piano playing somewhere. They were too far away to make out what they were playing. But it must have been someone in one of the nearby cottages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPJJKVt5-Y

To be continued…