Wuthering Dormice (aka Bike) Part 929 by Angharad Copyright © 2010 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I was beginning to wonder what I was doing wrong–here I was with the only member of my family who couldn’t get away from me–Puddin’. I changed her nappy, and was talking to her when Julie decided to come down.

Her hair still bore some evidence of her near dyeing experience, but she was otherwise unscathed. “’Morning, darling,” I welcomed her.

She mumbled something incoherent and yawned, helping herself to cereal.

“Tea?” I asked and she nodded back to me. “Don’t eat too much, sweetheart, I’m doing a roast lunch.”

“’Kay,” she replied and made silly faces at Puddin’ who was sitting in the baby bouncer thing.

“Sleep well?” I asked, aware that teenagers, like cats, will sleep for twenty five hours a day and party all night.

“All right,” she yawned again.

“I suppose you’ll wake up eventually,” I joked.

“I was awake half the night,” she said yawning again.

“Why was that?” I passed her a mug of tea and sipped one myself, sitting down at the table once more.

“I was thinking about your poem.”

“That took you half the night?”

“Yeah, I was sort of makin’ up my own.”

“Oh, okay–are you going to share them with me?”

“No–I didn’t write them down, but I thought about my childhood and how bad it was.”

“I’m sure there were good times too.”

“Yeah, a few.” She seemed reluctant to acknowledge those but eventually agreed there were some. “Did you have a tough time in school?”

“In lots of ways I made it tougher than it needed to be.”

“How was that?” she began to look as if she’d woken up at last.

“I had long hair like yours, in fact probably longer and very girly.”

“How did you get away with that?”

“I refused to get it cut and argued that if girls were allowed to wear their hair long, so should boys. They eventually agreed–after it went all the way to the governors–as long as I tied it back like the girls did. It used to drive my father mad, but it was well looked after–my mother told me if I was going to wear it like a girl, I’d have to look after it like a girl–so it was carefully washed and conditioned, hot wax every so often and so on, plus every three months I’d get it trimmed to sort out the split ends.

“I got to know my hairdresser very well–she said I had hair like a girl’s and so well cared for–she actually asked me if I’d liked to have been a girl.”

“Cor, what did you say?”

“I told her, yes.”

“Like, what did she say?”

“She looked at me, and said,’Well these days they can do that for you, can’t they?’”

“She said that?”

“Yeah–I was so frightened, I didn’t go back for ages.”

“Frightened? Of a hairdresser?”

“Yes–my secret was out.”

“Did she like, tell anyone?”

“No–but she called me, Charlotte.”

“What, like out loud?”

“Yes, I went bright red and nearly died, then she whispered–don’t worry, they all think you’re a girl anyway. See–“ she showed me the appointments book and they wrote my name down as Charley–the girl’s spelling, with E, Y, at the end.”

“Crikey–that is frightening.”

“I’m not sure it was frightening, embarrassing–especially when the others called out, ‘Bye, Miss Watts,’ when I left the salon.”

“Were they being funny or did they think you were a girl?”

“They thought I was a girl–they had to cancel an appointment and left a message for me with my mother–‘Could she tell Miss Watts, they were postponing my appointment until the following week.’”

“Did she say anything to them about it?”

“No, she thought it was amusing and when I came in that evening, she said, ‘I had someone on the phone earlier wanting to talk to Miss Charlotte Watts.’ I nearly died and asked who and it was the hair salon, so I asked what she’d said. She told me she would pass the message on to her daughter.”

“So she knew, then?”

“I don’t know–I really don’t know.”

“So why didn’t you call yourself, Charlotte?”

“Too close to my past, I kept my initial but changed the name. In my class in junior school, there was a pretty girl called Catherine Jones, who I so wanted to be like–I couldn’t, she was beautiful–but I could borrow her name. So I did.”

“You are beautiful, Mummy.”

“Don’t be silly, Julie–I’ve been up since six, working on the paper for the bank, then I’ve done a roast meal, sorted out everyone else including Pud, so I can hardly look beautiful, can I?”

“Beauty isn’t just a glamour thing, Mummy–although you can look very glam when you want to. It’s about your inner person–and yours is so beautiful, it hurts to look at it for long. But angels do that to you.”

“Do what?”

“Transfix–is that the word? They like, hold you with their beauty which like, shines through anything.”

“You and your angels–it’s all nonsense. Here you can sit with her.” I picked up Puddin’ and handed her to Julie. She went off to sleep quite quickly in the teen’s arms.

“How come you’re, like, looking after the baby?” Julie asked me as I checked the chicken.

“Oh Stella wasn’t feeling too good and went back to bed.”

“Shouldn’t somebody like, check on her–make sure she’s like, okay?”

“Be my guest–tell her lunch will be in half an hour.”

She carried the sleeping baby with her up to Stella’s room. I didn’t see what happened next–I was too busy making gravy and checking vegetables and stuffing. I actually called Trish in to lay the table.

I made her wash her hands and her face–it looked liked she’d been making holes for the seeds with her nose–which is silly, because her nose is small and turns up a little–retroussé they call it I think.

“Someone has roses in their cheeks,” I told her.

“When’s dinner, Mummy, I’m starved.”

“Soon, darling, which is why I asked you to lay the table.”

The lunch went down well, Stella did come down and I pureed a little of the meat and veg for Puddin’. The girls helped me clean up because the boys were still doing the garden with Tom–this time they were preparing a trench for runner beans.

That took me back a bit to when I used to help my dad–we had to put anything that would rot in the smelly old trench. He used to put in manure and I remember when I was about seven, I think–not much bigger than Trish–and I was told to take some vegetable bits from the kitchen and throw it in the trench. It had been raining and I slipped and fell in–and a big slimy slug fell on top of me–I screamed so loud I think half the close heard me. Mum and Dad rushed out to see what had happened–and I was lying there hysterical as all these horrible slimy things slithered and crawled over me.

Dad thought it was hilarious until Mummy made him pull me out–I absolutely stank like a compost heap. It took me years to get over that–and I didn’t eat runner beans for a long time. I got my own back when I did A-level biology, we dissected all sorts of worms and slugs and other creepy crawlies.

“Can we go an’ play on our bikes?” asked Livvie. So they did. Julie was on the phone to Leon, Simon was asleep in the chair purportedly watching the television, the boys were out with Tom, and Stella was out pushing Puddin’ in the pram. I had a few minutes to myself and wondered what I could do with it.

I had plenty of chores, but didn’t fancy any of them, including my sewing and mending. I was too tired to go on the bike and really bored. I picked up the Observer but couldn’t settle–who cares if the Prime Minister is a bully–if it gets things done, so be it.

I don’t know why, but I ended up on the computer and in less than ten minutes, found some people I’d been to school with, then much to my surprise and delight, I found Siân Griffiths or Lloyd as she now was. She was a GP in Salisbury.

I spent the next ten minutes wondering if I should let sleeping dogs lie? Then fired off an email.

Dear Siân,

I hope I’ve got the right one. I took your advice from all those years ago in Bristol–remember when they humiliated me because of my hair–I kept the hair and changed everything else. I’d love to talk with you if that’s possible. If not, I hope all is well with you and yours. Love C. Cameron (nee Watts).

I pressed send before I chickened out and went to start organising the tea.