Dot and Sam 34

Dorothy Philpot. Landlady of The Harbour Light pub
Sam Philpot. Drag-queen and lifelong companion of Dot’s.
Billy Parkins Doorkeeper.
Jessica Merlot The town’ and county archaeologist.
Josephine MacDonald The town and county archivist.
Richard Drummond Town planning inspector
Robert Vincent. Junior planning inspector.
Georgina. (Georgie) Homeless Transgender girl previously known as George.
Bobby Gay boy on the school bus.
Marty Girl on the school bus. (She becomes Georgie’s best friend and lover)
Jack. Marty’s twin brother (Keen runner).
Trevor Aitkins, Georgie’s Biological father.
Lucinda Aitkins Georgie’s biological mother
Terence Georgie’s step-dad
Peter Terence’s homophobic son.
Allison. Old school friend of Trevor & Retired Solicitor
Fred Allison’s husband
Elizabeth Aitkins (Beth) Georgie’s younger biological sister. Later proves to be sympathetic to her ‘sister’
Jonathon Aitkins (Johnny) Georgie’s younger biological brother.
Rosie the Rivetter Terf Gang Leader on campus.

Chapter 34

Despite the cold afternoon, I suggested that we drank our coffees outside. Marty sniffed unappreciatively but followed me nevertheless and we chose one of the few garden seats remaining around the college lawn. Once seated she looked at me expectantly.

“So why out here, it’s cold?”

“I just want to get away from all that shit.”

“Nah, it’s more than that, what ‘you up to?”

“Nothing. What makes you ask?”

“You’ve never turned aside from an argument before, and your demeanour as you stalked out showed fear. You’re up to summat!”

“Do you believe what Rosie said; about some sort of agent-provocateur?” I asked Marty.

“What? Macavity and all that? It’s a bit far-fetched if you ask me.”

“I think we should go to the next police briefing, the schedules are posted on the notice-board in the union.”

“There’s one tonight in the City College’s student union.” Marty affirmed as she read the notice.

I checked the time and sucked my lip.

“We’ve got time if we leave now, it’s four ’ish.”

“I don’t suppose there’ll be much more info than what Rosie brought.”

“I’m going.” I announced. “D’ you wann’a come?”

“I’ve got time booked in the lab; I can’t cancel it.”

“Damn.” I cursed softly.

I had wanted Marty to accompany me just to provide an alibi; not for any specific reason, but it could prove I was not involved in any trouble-making if anything took off at the meeting. I knew the City College was a hotbed of contention because most of the Terf attacks and Morality patrols had taken place on or around the City campus. The City college specialised in arts and literary subjects not to mention law, whilst my college specialised in the STEM subjects. The atmosphere in the city college was pretty tense because the morality patrols. I wanted to get a feel for the mood amongst the college students.

Reluctantly, I crossed town alone on the tube and made my way to the main student’s union building where I was not surprised to find a considerable queue for the meeting. There were even a couple of lady police officers keeping a discreet eye on things.

Keeping myself to myself I joined the queue and when we entered the hall I chose a spot close to a group of middle eastern students who seemed quite agitated even before the meeting had started. There I switched on my translator device and eavesdropped their conversations through my ‘button-hole, video-broach.

It was difficult at times to discern what was being argued but one strand became clear. The muslim students were not prepared to have flamboyant, transgender students bringing ridicule and indecency to their protest march, even if they claimed to be supporting the dispossessed Durian farmers.

The truth was that many muslims from the middle east were innately homophobic and the idea that LGBT’s should sully their protest march was anathema to their beliefs. I decided to stick close to their group and record as much as I could without drawing any attention to myself. I just sat quietly listening and adding occasional pencilled notes to the back of my police flyer.

The meeting proper started with a speech by the Police superintendent referring to the leaflets they had distributed. Then the police asked for any observations or suggestions concerning the march. When one of the Dhuranian students asked the police to prevent any LGBT protesters from attending the march, the superintendent was compelled by law to tell the student that in England, LGBT people were fully entitled to attend and accompany the march and there was no legal way of preventing them.

I made a point of turning to listen to the Dhuranians as they started arguing loudly amongst themselves. However, my actions were not conspicuous because lots of other students had turned to watch the argument which was becoming heated. Very quickly, the organisers of the march had to call the meeting to order but the angry arguments carried on in hoarse whispers which I could discern quite clearly because I was close to the group.

Once some sort of order was recovered, the police made it known that any attacks against LGBT marchers would not be tolerated.

I smiled inwardly as I made sure I got some good close-ups of the obvious ringleaders amongst the religious bigots.

Eventually, the meeting closed and I was happy with the audio/video evidence I had gathered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once back home, Marty pumped me for information and I freely disclosed that the islamists had caused some friction in the hall about LGBT students joining the march.

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Marty answered as she closed her notes and packed her back-pack ready for tomorrow’s lectures.

“I’m tired” I replied as I yawned and sat on the bed to remove my jersey.

Marty took the hint so she made us each some hot chocolate and joined me as I sat up in bed. Not surprisingly, neither of us were up for fun so we soon dozed off in each other’s embrace.

Monday was a busy day in our lecture timetables so I had no time to act upon the information I had gathered at the Sunday meeting. There was no rush however because the march wasn’t scheduled until May and if I were to sow dissention between the warring hate groups it would be best to do it closer to the day of the march.

This delay would force the hate groups to act quickly at short notice and thus mistakes could be made that might afford the police some help in identifying the ring leaders. I decided to sit out the intervening days and weeks.

During these weeks, I was quietly pleased to learn that the objections by the islamists were becoming more vocal and strident. The temperature seemed to be rising without any input by me.

Halfway through April there was another islamist incident concerning a newly opened mosque in the East end of London. Some girls who had collected together for safety as they made their way home from some party or celebration, had encountered a group of muslims as they were leaving the new mosque after celebrating the inauguration of the mosque’s opening.

The girls loud singing and shrieks of laughter had apparently upset some of the more radical members of the congregation as they were coming out of the mosque and some of the girls were apparently assaulted.
This made headlines the following day and the following night, the mosque had suffered an attack. There was a lot of superficial damage to windows but fortunately no structural or serious damage occurred. Nevertheless, it was a clear warning from some unknown hate group to the muslims that they had better ‘pull their horns in’.

I decided that a couple of night’s studying at the Library might not go amiss and Bingo! Four days after the attack, I discovered a planned islamist attack aimed at a known English nationalist group whom the muslims were convinced had perpetrated the attack on the mosque;

This time, I decided to go a step further and assembled a letter from word cut-outs that were stuck to a piece of ‘A-four’ paper. The letter contained date, time and location of the planned attack. At the bottom of the page I glued a capital letter ‘M’ scissored from the banner title of a national newspaper

Then, using extreme care and surgical gloves to avoid DNA evidence, I typed the address onto an envelope and posted the anonymous letter to the police from a letterbox far from our home in the college. Then I waited for a result.

I was pleased when the police caught four islamist criminals late one night the following week outside an English nationalists home going equipped to commit arson. The police now realised that they had an unknown informer who was party to islamists secret planning. While the English Nationalist hate group mistakenly thought they might have some sort of ally within the muslim community.

When the police had made their previous arrest, there had been quite a commotion outside the racists’ home and they had quickly learned that the police had been alerted to the intended arson attack.

I secretly wished I had been a fly on several walls during that week; not least being a mosque down the east end and a hate-gang’s hideaway in North London.

On the Friday following the police arrest of the arsonists I happened to be passing the room next to the students common room where the Durians held their meetings. I glanced in as a small group of visiting students were filing into what was already a packed room. Inside there was much discussion and no little argument as there seemed to be something that was causing much dissent. Apparently, the arrested arsonists were four of the senior Durians amongst their prayer group.

I deemed it time to do a bit more eavesdropping.

As I sat a couple of spaces away from my favoured study table, I still managed to discern that the Durians had already mistakenly concluded that there was a spy amongst them and a witch hunt had already started.

‘Good!’ I concluded, ‘When an organisation starts to turn in on itself, the fallout can be very informative.’

My next and hopefully last endeavour would be to set the islamists against the TERFS. I had already concluded that the best time for this would be at the May bank holiday protest march supporting the Durian tribes who were about to lose their lands. The irony was that the tribes were not against the greening of the land for they were essentially farmers themselves. Their gripe was that they were being dispossessed of their title to the peninsular where the first experiments were being conducted.

I knew that the Durian hot-heads and several other islamist groups were against any sort of LGBT support attending the march and, during that week before the march was scheduled, my eavesdropping had already determined that the islamists intended to stop the LGBT contingent at the very beginning of the march starting at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park.

It was but a simple matter to inform the Nationalist ‘defence’ gangs of the time and location when the islamists would attempt their blocking of the LGBT contingent. To this end, I suggested in my ‘cut-out’ letter that the islamists were attacking ‘traditional British values’ to freely make protests and express their own opinions. Once again, I signed the letter with my big, ‘cut-out’ M.

This crude but effective argument convinced enough hate groups that the islamist ‘invaders’ were indeed attacking British values of freedom to gather and freedom to protest. It remained only to inform the police of a possible confrontation at the March and of course this ‘cut-out’ letter was also ‘signed’ with the hallmark big ‘M’

With these efforts completed by the following Thursday before the May-Day march, I concluded my job done and shut down my brief endeavour. It wouldn’t do to fall to temptation and continue laying a long trail of messages and evidence. That sort of conceit was what often ensnared criminals who considered themselves too clever to be caught.

If my efforts failed to produce sufficient disturbance to force the government to look again at transphobic developments on the streets and in the cultures of the UK, then I had to accept that I had failed. That weekend I booked myself and Marty a brief weekend break in Manchester’s gay village to give myself and my companion a solid alibi in the event of any serious disorder in London.

“I would have thought that you’d be manning the barricades at the protest march this weekend.” Marty opined that Friday morning.

“Naah.” I replied dismissively. “I reckon there’s gonna be trouble like there was with the other March, two weeks ago. This march’ ll be much bigger with more chance of trouble. I’ve seen enough shit already.”

“But these tribes need support. It’s not like you to avoid a protest for human rights.”

“Who are we supporting Babes? I asked Marty.

"You know who we're supporting." Marty riposted.

"Yeah. A gang of tribesmen who would execute us out of hand in their own country if we ‘came out’. That's a gang who could well attack us even in London, if we go on a march to support them.” I answered my own question.

“Naah! To hell with them I say. They’ve even attacked us here on our own campus. They hate us LGBT’s and they even hate themselves. I reckon I’m best out of it so I’m goin’ to Manchester.”

Marty pouted with disappointment before declaring.

“Well, I’m going on the March. If enough LGBT’s stick together, we’ll be able to protect ourselves.”

I had no definitive answer to Marty’s reasoning so I just shrugged my shoulders and slid into our bed. Marty finished packing her notes away then turned to look down at me.

"I just know you're up to something, but what?" She asked before adding. “I don’t understand you. You don’t usually back down from a fight.”

“I’m tired of it all darling, and besides, I reckon there might be serious trouble at this one. It looks like it’s gonna’ be huge and people could get seriously hurt. You’d best come to bed and have some fun, if you get hurt on the march, this might be your last night of enjoyment on earth.”

“Don’ be daft!” Marty riposted as she slid in beside me.