CHAPTER 22
Enid was waiting for us, as she had house sat for our holiday, and after we had squeezed our luggage into the car we set off for Dover, Jim actually getting excited as he got nearer home.

He knew his landmarks well (“There’s the White Horse!” “There’s the sound mirror!” “The castle yay!”) and when we finally rose over the top of Shakespeare Cliff with its view of the harbour he was almost dancing with joy.

“So, Jim” I said, “you like Dover so much you don’t want to go on holidays any more?”

Despite his deep remarks to me earlier, this particular comment floored him. Unable to explain why coming home is so good, even if it means the end of a holiday, he resorted to standard child logic.

“Daddy, mummy’s being silly again!”

Silly mummy, but happy mummy.

Enid put the car away as we hauled the bags up to the front door, and then to my great surprise she waved at Tony to put his key away, and rang the doorbell. The door was opened by a rather dumpy grey-haired woman in a burgundy print dress. It took an instant for my brain to put sense to the picture.

“Alice?”
She smiled. “Enid’s idea, she said the beard was naff when on top of a dress, and then she found this wig…. “

The smile faded. “I look stupid, don’t I?”

Jim just dodged past her, running for his room. “Hiya, Aunty Alice, pretty dress!”

Tony frowned down at her. “What exactly do you think you are doing? Why isn’t the kettle on, woman?”

At that, he grabbed her for a hug, then turned her round and pushed her towards the kitchen. “You know how we take it!”

He looked at me, then kissed my cheek. “I think she might like a hand in the kitchen, love”

I found her filling the kettle, and crying. “I wanted to surprise you. Enid has been helping me, and we thought if I answered the door, but I knew you’d hate it, and I look stupid, don’t I?”

I looked at her. Enid, obviously, had her in a simple, practical polycotton house dress, with a buttoned collar, some low heels over tan tights, and something was filling her chest out. With her collar-length bobbed hair, she looked like a favourite grandmother.

“No, you don’t. Do you feel stupid dressed like that?”

“No….”

“How do you feel?”

She looked up at me from under the fringe of her ---no, call it her hair. “I feel, I don’t know, but…calmer? As if I’ve stepped into a room I was only looking into before? More connected? Is that how it was for you?”

I could just about remember some of those feelings, but I had been Sarah, myself, almost all of my life, and it was hard to put myself into the shoes of someone who had been so torn for so long. Even Steph’s experience of transition would be different to mine. How could I help her?

“What have you and Enid done while we have been away? No, that sounds wrong, let’s get the tea sorted and we can have a chat.”

In the living room, she sat next to Enid, who seemed very fond of her, patting her hand every now and again. They really looked like a matched pair of mature ladies, the sort who finish each other’s sentences and say “ooh, I know” a lot. I suppose I realised then that Enid had seen her far more clearly than I had. She had also done far more. Yet again, I could see where and how Tony had been shaped.

Enid started. “The more time I spend with Alice, the more I can tell how right she is, and how wrong as Alan, so I decided to try and move her along a little. The beard just had to go…..”

Alice laughed. “Do you know where I got the idea from? Renee Richards, the tennis player. Her doctor suggested she grew a beard to stop her crossdressing!”

I remembered a film, I think with Vanessa Redgrave. Enid continued.

“You can see I have done a bit of shopping for her, and she has had rather a relaxed time while you have been away. We have done more than that, you know”

“Yes, we have, you old nag, you. She only dragged me down to see my doctor!”

“Well, you weren’t going to do it, were you?”

It really was like watching some sitcom argument. I wanted to giggle, and I am sure I heard some quiet snorts from Tony. Jim, meanwhile, was playing with his cars, oblivious.

“So she drags me into my GPs surgery”

“Well you wouldn’t go on your own, and I made the appointment”

“And she says it’s because I have depressive issues”

“Well you do, dear”

“That’s not surprising, is it? So she insists on coming into the room with me, and I am trying to get my problems across to the doctor”

“Trying to wriggle out of it, you mean”

“And he is asking what sort of depressive feelings I am having”

“And she is obfuscating in a ridiculous way”

“And then Enid says..”

They both laughed and said in unison “Oh, just get on with it, Alice!”

Alice turned a little more serious. “All the doctor said to that was ‘I wondered when you would finally talk to me’”

Enid squeezed her friend’s hand. “It seems he had had a suspicion of where her worries may come from, had it for years, and all he said was ‘ I will find someone for you to talk to properly’, and then he offered her some anti-depressants”

Enid was smiling, and crying, and she looked at Alice., who looked back at her.

“I told him I’d brought my own prozac, and she was sitting next to me”

Enid started to laugh, then, really laugh, and Alice joined in. Something really funny had them chortling for ages, and then we had one of those “You tell them” “No, you do” arguments. Alice finally drew breath, and continued.

“I have a therapy person, and very nice she is, and she tells me that she is probably going to give me an official diagnosis of being transgender, gender dysphoric, thingy”

“No, dear, she sad that she HAS diagnosed you as that, but she hasn’t decided how far you are along the scale thing”

That was wonderful. I felt almost useless; all I had been able to do with her was listen, and offer her a safe house. Enid, on the other hand, had stepped in, taken charge and set her on the road to a potential solution.

“Alice, I am impressed, and so proud of you. Enid, what can I say? You remind me of my sister, she did much the same to me---I mean, for me. With Elaine it is sometimes difficult to tell which it is. But I think there is something you are not telling us.”

Enid smirked. Alice whistled, trying to look innocent, pointing surreptitiously to Jim. I called to him. “Jim, want to go and put the heater on for a bath?”

As soon as he was out of the room, Enid collapsed into giggles again. Alice was only slightly more controlled.

“He asked….he asked if I wanted to put Enid down on my records as my partner! He thought we were dykes!”

And they were off again, laughing and crying together.