CHAPTER TWO

Day 2

Pete, Ash, Drew and myself convened over breakfast on day 2 to discuss what we could do about our situation. Taking a look around seemed like an obvious first step. The others had all come to just hours before I did yesterday in rooms similar to mine on the first floor. A sweeping staircase (the one I’d walked down with Chris) leads down from there into a double height main hall, timber panelled with a huge inglenook fireplace and enormous two storey bay window. There are various rooms off that, each built in a similar style – a sitting room, a formal dining room, a room with a grand piano and a billiard room. The kitchen where we met last night is off a side corridor together with a suite of other rooms that remind me of some of the ‘below stairs’ scenes in period dramas on tv. Except there are no servants – there appears to be no one else here apart from us. The kitchen has a huge wood fired range, behind it a back boiler which I assume provides the hot water for the bathrooms. There is no electricity. No internet, no computers. No telephones. No clocks. No way that we can see of making contact with the outside world. No way of knowing the date, or the time. There is a large library full of books, both reference and novels, but none of them that I can see are any more recent than the 1970s. We searched for a map that showed an island called Aeaea near Bermuda, but found nothing.

Externally the kitchen wing sits at right angles to the main house to create a sheltered south west facing walled garden, which is packed with vegetables and fruits of all kinds. A larder next to the kitchen is also filled with a variety of vegetables, together with sacks of wheat, oats and barley. Whatever lies ahead of us, we aren’t going to starve. The front of the house, and all the first floor bedrooms, face east onto a more geometrical decorative garden with lawns beyond, falling in elevation as they stretch away from the house. Woods of oak, pine and birch flank the house on the north and south sides. Considering we were a day’s sail north of Bermuda when we’d run into trouble, the whole scene is incongruous; more reminiscent of an English country house than a tropical home.

We haven’t seen Chris all day. There is no evidence of a room that might be hers either, although there are still parts of the house we haven’t made it to yet – there’s a whole extra floor above our bedrooms that we’ll investigate another day. Considering there’s no sign of anyone the house is clean, the garden well kept and the larder full – enough there to occupy several staff I’d have thought. Just one more thing to add to the weirdness about the place.

Day 3

I suppose spending several years at sea on a relatively small boat equips you with a mentality that doesn’t panic when things go wrong. Things have gone monumentally to fuck since we left Bermuda but I feel like I’m managing to stay reasonably calm all things considered. Don’t get me wrong, I’m completely weirded out by the situation, but I feel like I can ride it out for a while and see if there’s a way we can get things back to normal. Being in a different body, a woman’s body, is impossible to describe. It wants to do things that my brain doesn’t. It’s like the way I walk and move and talk all default to the way a woman would walk, or move, or talk. And I’ve got to somehow try to establish my control over that, as a man, by forcing it to do those things in different ways. And then my body feels awkward being made to walk with a bigger stride, or sit with my legs apart, and I trip up, or say something weird.

Ash and Drew in contrast seem to have slipped right into it. They look totally natural, like they’ve always been girls. Pete, on the other hand, seems to have taken to the change much worse than the rest of us. He’s angry about it. He’s desperately trying to be as manly as possible. He’s not taken at all well to A&D seeming so comfortable with their femininity and takes every opportunity to criticise. I feel like I’m caught in the middle, trying to keep my crew balanced and happy.

Day 4

Pete and I went for a walk to explore the rest of the island. It was a chance to get him away from A&D as well. We took a paved path that led from the main door down through the front garden across the lawns and out via a wrought iron gate into a rougher field beyond. Here the path was a gravel track, maybe ten feet in width. We could see goats grazing in the field on either side and they approached us as we walked, perhaps expecting food. The track continued for around a mile or so, the field narrowing until the woods on either side merged. We walked on, the path dropping gradually as we moved further away from the house. It was a fine sunny day, although the temperature was more akin to an English autumn than Bermuda. I was still wearing the same clothes I’d picked out 3 days ago, but with a long woollen coat and leather boots I’d found in my closet. The boots were more for fashion than for walking, and even though the heel was modest, I found my gait, if I didn’t concentrate, unconsciously adapting. Pete noticed, and made a comment about me ‘walking like a girl’. I blushed, and tried to lengthen my stride.

About 3 miles further on, the woods gave way to a narrow sandy beach framed by rocky promontories on either side to create a small natural harbour. A timber jetty ran out into the water from the sand, but there were no boats. We stopped, ate a picnic lunch comprising hard boiled eggs, some cheese and some bread, still warm, that Ash had baked earlier. Pete grumbled all the way home – his feet hurt, the wind was blowing his hair in his eyes, his legs ached; just about everything you can think of. I had to tell him to shut up. He was in a huff when we got back to the house. I need to be careful – he’s not in a good place at all right now, which isn’t like him at all. Ash and Drew have each other, but there’s just me for Pete, so I need to be more supportive, even if he’s been a complete pain in the arse today.

After we got back there was still plenty daylight left so I went out the back of the vegetable garden – there’s an open field out there that stretches for a hundred metres or so before the land drops down via steep cliffs to the sea.

Day 15

I’ve not written for several days – there hasn’t been much to report. Still no sign of Chris – so much for what she said about ‘being there for me’. We’ve fallen into a kind of routine – breakfast together in the morning, followed by chores. Ash and Drew have taken charge of the kitchen, which I’m happy about – at least we are eating well. We worked out that the goats that Pete and I saw in the field at the front of the house were domesticated, and our source of milk (and cheese and butter, although we’ve not tried our hand at making those yet). I volunteered for milking duties. Despite having absolutely no experience I’ve actually been enjoying it. It’s hard to describe, but building a kind of relationship with the goats has helped my mood. I’m less stressed and feel a bit more grounded. For the first time since we got here I woke this morning without my stomach lurching as soon as I realised where I was. In the afternoon Pete and I will usually go for a walk. Ash and Drew seem happy around the house. We’ll eat together in the kitchen in the evening and then light a fire in the sitting room and read a book, or in my case, write my diary.

Pete’s mood, on the other hand, hasn’t improved at all. He cusses his way through the chores we’ve given him and at the slightest opportunity bites the head off Ash or Drew. It feels like we’re tiptoeing around him, all doing our best just trying not to upset him. I’ve tried speaking to him about it but he just complains about me picking on him, and says I’m ganging up on him with ‘the girls’ (as he’s taken to calling Ash and Drew).

It all came to a head this morning at breakfast. Pete and I were up first, wearing the same tops and trousers we’d worn since we’d arrived. We were both used to wearing the same clothes at sea for days on end and I couldn’t face the thought of choosing something different, in amongst all those dresses and lingerie. Ash and Drew appeared after we’d started eating. They paused at the opposite end of the table. Both of them were wearing short sleeveless dresses; Ash in lime green and Drew in a pale blue. Their blonde hair had been curled in matching styles and they were wearing lipstick and eye make up. Pete went apoplectic - I won’t repeat here the names he called them. After venting verbally he swept his arm across the breakfast table, crashing the bowls and plates to the floor, and stormed from the room.

There was silence for a few seconds.
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologise on behalf of him, Dave.”
Silence again.
“I mean sorry I haven’t been there for you. Both of you. I’ve been spending all my time with Pete because I’ve been worried about him, without even asking how you guys were coping with…everything. If I’d known…I mean…”
Ash and Drew stood facing me, quietly. Ash’s hand reached out and took Drew’s.
‘We’re ok, Dave.”
“Yes, but, I mean…” I gestured weakly towards them.
Drew responded. “What if we’re going to be here, like this, for years, Dave? What if we’re meant to be like this?”
I replied quickly “Yes but what if we can fix things? Don’t you want to be as we were?”
Drew was about to reply again, but Ash interrupted. “When you’re sailing, and the wind direction changes, you sometimes have to change your course. It’s a shit metaphor, but maybe it’s kind of like that. We don’t think we should fight it. We want to try and find something positive in it.”
I stood up. They looked small and vulnerable in the wreckage of the kitchen. Both of them were only 18, just a couple of years older than me when I’d left England. “Look, if that’s the way you want to tackle things, well, I’ll try to support you as much as I can. Don’t let Pete get to you. I’ll have a word with him.”

Pete didn’t appear for the rest of the day. I made my excuses after dinner and went up to my room early. I thought about what Ash had said. All the time I’ve been on the island, especially when I’ve been with Pete, it’s felt like I’m fighting my body, trying to make it behave in a more masculine way. Maybe Drew is right, maybe I should just be going along with it. I shivered with the thought. I looked up from my writing towards the bedroom door. A coat hook on the inside face held a long, burgundy coloured satin nightgown and matching robe. I stood and walked to it, taking the material in my hand and held it to my cheek. I turned the key in the lock and stripped quickly, then took the gown and pulled it over my head. The material flowed like a wave down my body, leaving the skin behind it goosebumped, like the ripples left in sand by an outgoing tide. I shivered again, my hands tracing the satin over my contours. I walked slowly about the room, immersed in the sensation of the material cascading over my legs.

In the adjoining dressing room I sat at the table and pulled the rubber band from my hair. I took a brush and swept it gently down the length of my tresses which fell softly now over my bare shoulders and down my back. I stopped, and looked back at my reflection in the mirror. Opening the drawers either side of the table I found an array of cosmetics, neatly divided by type - lipsticks, eyeshadow, mascaras. On the other side 3 drawers of jewellery similarly catalogued. I took out several of the lipsticks until I found one in a shade that matched the nightgown, and slowly and carefully applied it, then stopped again to look back at my reflection. My heart was thumping in my chest. My free hand had unconsciously moved up to my breast and was caressing it gently through the lace of the nightgown. I slipped my other hand down to the hem of my gown and pulled it to my waist, my finger slipping into the wetness between my legs, sliding into the slit and up and down across its engorged lips and then up, over the surface of my clitoris. Convulsions engulfed my whole body. I clung to the edge of the table, gasping out loud as wave after wave ran over and through me. Eventually, they subsided and I lay down, my head on the table, catching my breath.

I’m writing this now with a mixture of guilt and shame and anxiety and uncertainty. I can’t do what Ash and Drew have done. I just can’t. It would finish Pete off for good. And even if Pete wasn’t here, I don’t know whether I want to anyway. It feels like we’re trapped in time here, things are balanced on an edge. I don’t know what’s going to happen, and it feels like I’ve no control over it anyway.