The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2349 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I considered that if we had about five billion years before the sun killed us all, it was probably worth starting a new book. I went off to hunt for one and in doing so found Mr Whitehead’s scrapbook. I hadn’t looked at it for months and I wasn’t sure what I felt about it. It seemed that he’d developed an obsession with me, working out what
I was and then processing it by gaining more information, almost stalking me. That was well weird.

Opening the book at random, I saw a report of one of my school escapades. Remember, I had hair down to the middle of my back, which was usually in a ponytail, but this one morning I’d allowed Siân to plait it and instead of having it drape like a ponytail, she wound it round my head at the hairline. “You’ll get me murdered,” I told her.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get them to arrest the whole school.”

“Gee thanks, that’s a great consolation.”

“Knew it would be,” she smiled back at me.

Of course, it was inevitable that I’d bump into Murray as soon as I set foot inside the school. We didn’t even get to school, he spotted me walking along the road with Siân and told me to either put my hair back into a ponytail or wear something more suitable to my hairstyle. I was to report back to him as soon as I got to school.

Siân took me home and dressed me in her old uniform while her mother tutted in the background. Then, she undid my hair and did two plaits, quite fine ones, on either side. Most of my hair was put into a high ponytail and the two plaits were secured underneath it. It was very girly and she smirked at her cleverness. Then it was on with the eyeliner and mascara, a squirt of some smelly or other and she dragged me back to school, pecked me on the cheek in a girly air kiss and pushed me down the drive.

As I trudged down the driveway, my slightly heeled, bar shoes clopped along and my body felt warm under the two socks filling my bra—well Siân’s bra. I could feel the straps pulling on my shoulders under the straps of my ‘Care Bears’ backpack. Boys watched from the classroom windows and I saw them calling others over to see the arrival of the Queen of Sheba, the music from Handel’s oratorio ringing in my ears, though the truth were told, I much preferred Zadok the priest, the coronation anthem of George II in 1727.

When I knocked on Murray’s door, I was told he’d gone off to a meeting at the council offices and to go to my classes. Once there, maths, not my favourite subject nor teacher. “Ah, Miss Watts, so kind of you to grace us with your presence,” said Quacker. His name was Duckworth and he had a sense of humour which was based around humiliating schoolboys. I was a gift and he asked me several questions, each time calling me Miss Watts or Charlotte, and referring to taxing my beautiful head to answer him. Being acutely embarrassed my mind was in locked mode and I probably couldn’t have answered my name if he’d asked me, let alone the answer to his algebraic problem.

On replying that I didn’t know, his response was, “They say that girls find maths harder than boys, listen young lady and you may learn something.” He asked one of the computer brained set who gave him chapter and verse. I began to think calling Murray’s bluff was a mistake as a rivulet of sweat ran down my back under my bra strap.

Whitehead had written, ‘C turned up in school wearing the girl’s uniform and when challenged told the teacher that she’d been told to wear it by the headmaster. It brought the usual taunts from a thousand inmates of this asylum. She really does look like a girl, the way she walks and carries herself—there’s no sign of a boy there. This child really does have to be guided on what to do with her life before it gets too late and masculising hormones become too plentiful. If she’s going to become a girl, she needs to do it soon.’

Underneath in a different coloured ink was written, ‘Heard today that C has finally decided to join the fair sex. She’s doing a master’s degree at Portsmouth. I hope the strain of her changeover doesn’t distract from her studies. Why she took so long to become herself, is a mystery. I saw her some months ago dressed supposedly as a boy, but it was obvious to all and sundry what she is, a very lovely young woman.’

I remembered that day only too well, not so much for the lewd suggestions of a thousand sex starved boys, but of Murray’s reaction when he saw me. He was incandescent. “Just what d’you think you’re playing at, you unnatural creature?”

“Just doing what you told me to do, sir.”

“I suppose you think this is funny, do you?”

“No, sir,” I said blushing as brightly as a heat lamp.

“You’ll wear that uniform for the rest of the week, understand?”

“Is that wise, sir?”

“Are you questioning me?”

“No, sir.”

“Do it, now get out of my sight. Oh, and Watts, report to me or the secretary every morning in your uniform before you go to assembly.”

“You want me to go to assembly, sir?” I was beginning to feel this was a mistake, just wait till I see Siân, I’ll give her school uniform. The stir that would cause would guarantee I’d get loads of grief for ages.

“Yes, Watts, or should I say, Miss Watts.”

My parents weren’t impressed and my father called the headmaster to complain but somehow Murray got him to agree to my punishment for trying to be too clever. Perhaps I deserved it, but surely not the extreme humiliation of being called out before the whole school while dressed as a school girl and have it announced, “Miss Watts is visiting with us for the rest of the week. She is to be accorded every courtesy a visiting schoolgirl could expect to receive. If I hear of any discourtesy, there will be trouble for the perpetrator—that I can promise.”

I could feel my tummy convulsing as I relived that scene from my history and wondered how he managed to get away with being such a sadist and practising so much abuse on so many boys and me. But he did. I supposed his warning to the others about according me courtesy as a visiting schoolgirl, was a way of pretending to protect me, whereas it was a covert signal to the bullies to be less open about victimising me. They might not have been very subtle but they could operate below the radar and I got plenty of beatings and threats unwitnessed by teachers or prefects.

I closed the book and returned it to the shelf along with the sometimes painful memories it contained.