The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3391 by Angharad Copyright© 2023 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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I had been reading of the deaths of thousands of fish off the coast of Texas - the cause, probably suffocation which sounds bizarre, but when water gets warm it releases oxygen to the atmosphere which means there is less in the water for animals which require dissolved oxygen to breathe. They therefore suffocate and apparently in large numbers and it's going to get worse as global warming looks on course to exceed the 1.5 degrees Celcius that was suggested at the Environment conference led by the United Nations. We all signed up for it but have done nothing much about it so it's going to get worse. Here in the UK that is manifesting as longer bouts of warm weather, more wild fires and drought in Summer, with flash flooding and possibly cold snaps in Winter. When it happens just remember I did warn everyone about it ages ago.

It was my lunch hour and I'd finished my sandwich and was tucking into a lovely apple. I was reminded of the joke about what was worse than finding a whole grub in your apple - was finding half of one. I casually perused my apple and discovered I had half a grub, probably a codling moth, in my apple. I searched for my pen knife and dissected out the second half so I could finish my apple and realised it was the second time this had happened to me.

The first was while I was in school just as the role of the female lead in Shakespeare's Scottish Play was emerging. Suddenly my mind was in memory state, or recall thereof. I was perhaps fifteen and we were reading Macbeth for GCSE and to help try and explain some of the complexities of the plot and the characters. The drama group was going to perform the play. on the stage as the school play. In our class read through, I had already been cast as Lady Macbeth. It was by popular request of the other students (fait accompli?) that I do so probably because I was the only one in it who had been missed by the puberty fairy, so they argued with my squeaky soprano voice, I'd be the most obvious choice. I didn't mind reading one of the parts, perhaps Macbeth himself but they all laughed at my suggestion. Matthew Vincent agreed to play Macbeth if I'd play his wife. He had developed quite a deep voice and the class agreed with him, so I got lumbered with reading the part of his psychopathic wife, not only once but throughout the reading of the play.

In some ways I felt pleased because as a girl, I was the obvious choice but if you will remember I was trying to assert my masculinity. I was already teased and bullied by my peers and even some smaller boys because I was relatively slightly built, but my reading of the part impressed them all and I agreed to do it if they would stop bullying me. For a week or two it seemed to work. Then somebody suggested to the headmaster that he should listen in to our reading as it might suggest possible roles for the theatre or drama group. He did and I, oblivious to his ulterior motives, carried on doing my best with speaking four hundred year old English, which is quite different to our own but just about understandable.

I was told to read it in an English accent, even though I knew I was a birthright Scot, I'd been brought up in Bristol, so just avoiding the local accent was something I drummed into me by my mother, who was a Scot and always despised the local drawl.

I wasn't only oblivious of Murray's intentions but even of his presence at first, as he slipped in while I was reading and therefore almost unaware of anyone who wasn't in the play. We were doing the bit where Macbeth had just murdered Duncan and his wife daubed the two pages with the bloodied sword as he seemed to be in state of shock until she sent him to kill them. It's quite melodramatic stuff and I was trying to get more out of it than just speaking the words. Murray was impressed, for the first time that his least favourite girly pupil, viz moi, was of use to the school. He did his scheming without me being aware of it. Matthew agreed to play Macbeth, then Murray played his masterstroke, he phoned my dad. He knew my father wasn't in favour of my girly habits, in fact he was as hostile to them as Murray, and I had tried to hide them, but they were still there. Murray suggested that being chosen to play the female lead and to be encouraged to wear the costume during the rehearsals and play's run, would encourage me to man up and be more masculine from the embarrassment it would cause.

We then had the scene where I got sent to his office. I think I mentioned it long ago but I had a real flashback to it. He welcomed me in and told me how well he thought I had read the part. I nearly collapsed under his praise and I should have seen it just as a softener, because it was.

"Seeing as you did such a good job, I and Mr Grenfell,( my English Literature teacher) want you to play Lady Macbeth in the school play."

"I thought you had someone from the girl's school do that normally?"

"Not this time, we'd like you to do it."

"No thank you, sir." I'd replied, I was just thinking of it advertising myself across the school as a target for beatings by my colleagues, it was bad enough as it was.

"But you did such a good job in the reading and I know Vincent has agreed to play Macbeth opposite you." Mathew was good and his voice did something to me but I held firm.

"Um, no sir."

"It would improve your mark in English literature."

"I think I'll do alright in English lit, sir."

"But I want you to play it, and that's an order."

"Sorry, sir but it's still no."

"Oh, and why is that, you already half look the part with that stupid long hair of yours."

"I don't think you can make me do it, sir, with all respect."

"Oh don't you, and what's to stop me?"

"I don't think my father would like it, sir."

"Oh, don't you now?"

"No, sir."

"But it was played by boys or young men, originally."

"Times Have changed in four hundred years, sir. Women are no longer banned from acting by bigoted so-called ruling classes."

"Oh, I didn't know you were feminist, Watts?"

"I believe in equality of all people, sir."

"Very noble, Watts, but aren't you disproving that? By not playing the part, aren't you excluding boys playing women's parts and women playing men's parts? I believe women have presented all female casts playing Shakespeare?"

"They may have, sir, but I still won't play the part."

"Why?"

"Because you haven't given me a free choice."

"I see, so the fact that you are taking English literature is a choice as well is it?"

"No sir, that's a core subject, like maths, sir."

"So you have none of your feminist objections to doing maths?"

"No sir."

"So if I asked you to do a presentation on maths, you'd agree to it?"

"No sir, because there are better people than me, to do that."

"So, you think that your father wouldn't agree to you doing this play?"

"I know he wouldn't, sir."

"So, if he did, you'd play it?"

"No sir, I'm not an actor and my life is busy enough, sir."

"You are going to play it, Watts."

"No sir, I don't want to."

"We all have to do things we don't like."

"Perhaps, some things are obligatory, this isn't, sir."

"So if your father said he wanted you to play it you would?"

"He wouldn't in a month of Sundays," I stood my ground.

"Shall we ask him?"

"Go ahead," I said sure Dad would disagree with me doing anything girly.

He looked up my father's number and dialled on speaker-phone. I started to feel uneasy and said," Wouldn't it be better to leave it until after I've spoken with him.?"

"Oh no, I'm not having you try to sway his opinion."

"Watts," came the reply over the phone.

"Ah, good morning, Mr Watts, I have your son here with me and he seems to think that you'd be averse to him playing Lady Macbeth in the school play, I've heard him read the part and I think he'd be excellent in it."

"Fine with me, it's all part of his educational experience isn't it?"

"But, Dad, I don't want to do it and you can't make me do it."

"Oh dear, like that is it? Well, as your parent, Charlie, until you reach an age of majority I can make you do things you dislike. You will play the part and accept Mr Murray's instructions about doing it, at least you can use that ridiculous hair you insist on having. Good bye, Mr Murray." He rang off and I was very close to tears, betrayed by my own father, I was totally dejected.

"Right pop along to costume later this afternoon and sign up to the drama group, won't you?"

"Sorry, sir, I won't."

"Unless you want detention until you leave here, you will."

"No I won't." I stood my ground even though tears were rolling down my cheeks.

"You will, and you're in detention for the rest of this week. That's all, Watts." I was dismissed and dejected, surely my mother would have something to say about all this and if I played her correctly she'd talk my father out of it. I was distracted the rest of the day and didn't eat much of lunch. I was sent for in detention and led to the drama group's costume fitter, who looked me up and down and told me this would be easier than she'd thought.

"I'm not doing it, there has been a mistake," I voiced in shrill tones.

"I can see why you were chosen," she said, "We're doing Romeo and Juliet next year, you be a shoe-in for Juliet."

"Bah," I said and ran off back to detention, staring at a wall was preferable to that. I eventually got home half an hour late and my dad was already there, he'd convinced my mum it would be good for me. End of story as my plan to try and undermine him had come to naught and in fact, he'd done that to me. The rest is history, I was forced to play the part, received the acclaim of the local paper, and pissed off Murray something special when I turned up in a girl's uniform, courtesy of Siân, plus enough mascara to paint a black cab.

Murray had me in his office about a month later telling me I was bringing the school into disrepute. I told him that I was wearing a skirt to learn how to move in them, not mention that I had hoisted him on his own petard and he sent me out with a warning not to piss him off. I didn't know then that both Mr Whitehead and Madame Le Clerc, our French teacher who was supposed to teach me how to walk in skirts like a woman had told Murray that she thought I already walked like a girl because I was one, the same opinion that Pru Whitehead had stated to her husband about a week before when she had seen me in the school when she had come to collect her husband. He joked and said, "Oh, that's our Charlotte," I teach him English language."

"That's no boy, that's a girl but maybe he doesn't know it yet. You should be protecting her not allowing that clod Murray to humiliate her." Ever afterward he did.