The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3339 by Angharad Copyright© 2021 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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This episode is dedicated to my companion for nearly 17 years, Bonzi, my cat, who died yesterday.

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I managed to get hold of Chris James, Professor of Physics at our university. "Could I have a word with you about a personal matter?" I said over the phone.

"Is that personal to you or me?" he asked back.

"Me, sorry if that sounded a little ambiguous."

"Could do about eleven this morning, if that's any good to you?"

"Hang on, I'll speak to the keeper of my diary," he chuckled down the phone at me. Diane showed me I was available so we arranged that he would come over to me which enabled me to get stuck into the correspondence that Diane had dumped on my desk.

It seemed no time later that Chris James appeared and Diane made us some tea and I opened the box of shop-made cakes and we each took one and went off to talk.

"Chris, I'm seriously thinking of asking you to offer my daughter Trish a place here to study physics."

"This is the one who I set that work for back in the summer?"

"Yes, she really enjoyed it, doing it, I mean."

"Her answers were pretty good seeing as she's what...?"

"Thirteen."

"Would she be able to cope with being the youngest by some years?"

"I think so. I think ultimately she'll probably end up at Cambridge but coming here would test her a bit and also help her decide if it's what she wants to do."

"She's pretty bright isn't she?"

"She got As at Physics and Math A-levels last year and she'd doing pure and applied this year. "

"Wow, five years early, well I feel as you work here any issues not related to her actual study could be dealt with, so I'm prepared to take a gamble and accept her."

"We'll go through the process and make an official application and as funding is no problem, can you believe it's only about a thousand above what we pay for her at the convent?"

"I know private schools are expensive, my granddaughter is being educated at one and my son is finding it quite a sacrifice, but she's quite bright and I'm sure she'll make it to university."

"What does your son do?" I asked never having spoken to Chris about his family before.

"He has his own computer firm, they do lots of retail-based work, internet purchasing that sort of thing. He's doing all right but he has a big mortgage as well as two girls at private school."

"Yes, I don't have a mortgage but I do have six girls at this convent."

"Wow, that must be nearly fifty thou a year?"

"It is plus another one who is a bit too young just yet."

"Did you plan on having six kids?"

"They're all adopted, I can't have my own babies."

"Oh," he blushed, "So why adopt a football team?"

"They needed a home and we had room."

"Goodness, you don't do things by halves do you?"

"All of them had problems with family or were in a home, Trish was originally in a home, one of my girls was dumped on me as a temporary arrangement so I thought but her mother pushed off to Africa I think and she and her husband were being pursued by half the governments in Africa or the Middle East for gun-running or something similar. We adopted her as she no longer wanted to be associated with her birth mother."

"Are all of them hard-luck stories?"

"No, but some were quite traumatic; one of my girls I found lying semiconscious on a rubbish pile, she'd been beaten up and just left."

"And you took her in?"

"Yes, she was sixteen at the time, she's now in her twenties and doing quite well running her own business with her sister who came to me after her mother died. She had stayed with us before and the two got on well together, so we took her in when she asked us to and to her credit, she fitted in and was soon acting as a sister to the others and calling me her mum and so it happened. They all have stories why they came to us, but they all seem to be happy there and no one is forcing them to stay.

"My eldest, is a whiz with computers, especially protecting them and she works with Simon at the bank's HQ, keeping out hackers and ne'er do wells, runs the computer security team and even helps GCHQ occasionally when they get stuck."

"Are all your kids special?"

"They are to me, but yes, as far as I can tell, they are all quite bright, perhaps not as clever as Trish or Sammi, the computer one, they are something else, but Livvie is pretty bright and will do well at whatever she wants to do, Danielle is an outstanding footballer and plays for Reading Ladies and has several England caps."

"Didn't she score that spectacular goal with an overhead bicycle kick for England against Germany?"

"That was her."

"Wow, so I'm the presence of something of a matriarch of gifted children, I bow to your achievement, madam." He stood up and bowed to me which caused me to get very hot and go bright red.

"I haven't done anything but give them an opportunity to develop themselves. Trish is also quite a good footballer but nothing like Danielle, who is something else. She's sixteen now and wants to do a degree of some sort and think she fancies biogeography at the moment, but it changes by the week."

"None of them want to study dormice?"

"I have one girl who wants to do biology, she isn't my daughter per se, but she sort of adopted me and I let her call me Mum because otherwise she'd be the odd one out and the others are quite amenable to her being one of the family, so they're all very generous in that way and I try to give them all as much equal time as I can. Simon's up in town most of the week, Stella his sister, who also lives with us and has two girls of her own, is a nurse specialist in genitourinary medicine, so Sarah, our latest member helps to look after them when I'm not there, she's doing a biology course as an entry to start here, and she's doing well at the moment."

"Don't you have any help, besides Sarah?" he asked.

"I have in the past but they don't seem to stay, I don't know why. The only one who has is David our cook, so that takes some pressure off me and means we all eat very well, he also does some supervision of the younger kids when necessary."

"Is he the only staff you have?"

"Really, yes. I make the children do some chores for their pocket money and they still squabble over who loads the bread maker."

"I feel in awe of you, Cathy, no wonder your kids are all special, they take after your example."

I blushed again. "Don't forget Tom, he's something special too as is my Simon."

"Simon?"

"My hubby, Simon Cameron."

"Of course, you're Lady Cameron in your alter ego, aren't you?"

"I operate here under my maiden name, professor or doctor is sufficient a title, wouldn't you agree?"

"I have to, it's as far as I shall get and that, when I look back, seems a long way from the backstreets of Southampton, which is where I started. I suppose you went to private school and so on?"

"Me? No, I went to grammar school, my dad was a quantity surveyor so we were okay but when I was small he was still struggling to get his qualifications, so I was the first one to actually get to university."

"Likewise, and now, even the family cat is expected to have a degree. I don't disagree with kids doing uni, but we need plumbers and electricians as much as we do doctors or teachers."

"I agree with you, but there's nothing to stop someone from training as a plumber after doing a degree, is there?"

"Yeah, except when they start to earn money, which is quite an important part of life, you may not agree there with the family owning a bank."

"I try not to let that influence too much of my thinking, I survived before I married into the Camerons and would beyond that. It does make things different, I'll grant you, but we try to instil some reality about money with all of them. They don't do without anything, but neither do they get spoilt and they know that I expect them to earn their livings when they're old enough."

"Good for you. I'd better get back to my department just to make sure there isn't a coup of some sort in my absence. I'll await Trish's application with some interest, we'll take her, I can guarantee that because I think she is special, and I'd like to think we helped prepare her to cope with Oxbridge."

"Thanks, Chris, that's really good of you."

"Not really, if she's as talented as I think, I'd be stupid not to take her even though she is bound to cause some of my staff problems."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, give her a year and she'll be teaching them stuff - but it will be good for one or two of them, as they need a bit of a challenge."

"I think I can pretty well be sure she'll do that all right."

He left chuckling to himself, all bar the paperwork, Trish has a university place lined up. I hope she's ready for it, she'll be the youngest student on campus, thankfully, she'll be on the same one as I am, so she does have a bolt-hole if she needs one, but I hope she'll fit in enough to cope with the social issues, because I know she'll do so with the academic element and she can get a lift to uni with me most days unless she goes with Sarah, assuming she's still with us.

Daddy appeared and invited me to lunch, he also invited Diane but she declined saying she had too much work to do. So just the two of us went, I was in the middle of my tuna salad when a familiar face hove into view. Sarah's uncle, Peter Dominic. What did he want?

"Sorry to interrupt your lunch, but I'd like to try and get us back to where we were before my sister tried to poison my mind against you?"

"I see, is this for the benefit of your job or for Sarah's sake?"

"I've met with Sarah every week since it happened. She says she forgives me for my stupidity and I'd like to do the same with you if you'd allow it?"

"Why should I?" I asked suddenly feeling my appetite disappear.

"Because I think it would make Sarah's life easier."

"So you can report back to your sister?"

"I haven't spoken to her since she came to see you, she was absolutely livid. I know that Sarah treats you like her mother and I know she could do a lot worse for someone to help her grow into womanhood."

"You weren't so complimentary when you tried to abduct her calling me anything but a woman." I felt angry as I relived the emotions of that evening.

"I was wrong, I was angry and I was trying to justify something that I wasn't at all sure about, but if you like, I was almost brainwashed into taking her back to her mother because she felt she was losing her and she also doesn't believe that anyone can change their gender. I don't agree with her and think you are an outstanding example of that."

"How do I know if I can believe you?"

"I'm still the person who believed in you at school, it was obvious when you did Macbeth that you were really a girl but that idiot Murray, couldn't see as far as the end of his nose and he was so full of homophobic prejudice, it blinded him to other possibilities."

"It certainly did that, but he also saw me breastfeeding and nearly had a stroke."

"Couldn't have happened to a nicer person."

"You know Mr Whitehead tried to keep an eye on me."

"No, he didn't did he?"

"He followed me down here when his wife died and kept a watching brief for years, he even kept a journal of it."

"Isn't that a bit creepy - like stalking?"

"It could have been had I known anything about it. He died trying to save me from an attack by an enraged parent who pulled a knife on us because his thug of a son was excluded or suspended, can't remember which. "

"Goodness, I didn't know any of that, I read about a teacher being stabbed in the school playground by a stupid parent, he was convicted of murder, wasn't he?"

"He pleaded guilty once the court refused to accept one of diminished responsibility, so we didn't have to give evidence, although I believe the police used my statement as part of their case."

"Didn't someone try to run him over?"

"Danni did, she was sitting in the car waiting for me and saw him with the knife and Mr Whitehead get stabbed, so she managed to start the car and ran it into him. She wasn't going very fast, but she saved my life, I reckon, or I'd have been on the next slab to Mr Whitehead."

"Bloody hell, Cathy, you do live dangerously, don't you?"

"I don't start it, I didn't with you, I just opened Sarah's eyes to wider possibilities than she had seen before."

"I see that now, she's going to study with you, isn't she?"

"She's going to attend my department if she passes the exam, but I won't actually be teaching her. It would be unethical, but she'll be well looked after, we try to support our students these days, they're our cash crop, so to speak."

"So can we start afresh?" he asked imploringly.

"For Sarah's sake, all right, but a hint of any of that prejudice from her mother, and I'll run you out of town if not the UK, and believe me I could."

"I don't disbelieve you, Lady Cameron, but I assure you it won't be necessary."

"I have your word on that?"

He offered me his hand. "I may not have quite the same reputation as your good self, but I like to think that if I give my word, I will honour it." I shook his hand and he thanked me and left.

Tom was silent the whole time. "Dae ye believe him?"

"I have to try to for Sarah's sake."

"Weel, I'll back ye up if he reneges on it."

"Thank you, Daddy." He placed his hand over mine and gave the gentlest of squeezes. I loved this old man I was privileged to call my father.