The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2477 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

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Have you ever experienced the sensation of a distant familiarity? I was experiencing it now. I spent over three years of my life here, walked these paths, even cycled some of them, day in day out. I had been here since they handed me my degree. I’d done that talk with the outtakes and they’d raised goodness knows how much for conservation charities. Yeah, I was back at Sussex, my alma mater, so familiar but so different.

I wandered down Biology Road, where but a university could you have such a name? Thence to the John Maynard Smith Building and my appointment with Esmond Herbert. The bottle of single malt felt heavy in my bag—a capacious leather thing that Stella had bought me for a birthday present. It was almost big enough to shove a desk top computer in let alone a laptop, or as was in it now, my iPad.

Officially, I was still on sick leave following my re-bore. Healthwise I felt fine, well until I had to come here and eat humble pie, but until I did so, it would haunt me. I had totally misunderstood the man and was here bearing gifts and an apology. He didn’t know why I was calling to see him other than the mammal survey, with which we were both involved. Hence the iPad, I had loads of data on it and it was lighter to haul about than my lappie.

The final few yards grew harder and harder to walk and I found myself feeling heavy, my legs felt like lead and my breathing was rapid and shallow. It was breezy but mild for late October and the rain was holding off. I was wearing a smart two piece suit in dark green corduroy with a lighter green floral, silk blouse underneath. On my leaden feet, I wore black court shoes with three inch heels, which normally felt reasonably comfortable, today my feet seemed to sense every little anomaly in the road surface and jarred.

I entered the building, jeez, they had heating on no wonder all the reception staff were in short sleeved tops. I felt hot, not just warm, it was uncomfortable.

“May I help?” asked the young woman in a sleeveless blouse and gravity defying breasts.

“Yes, I have an appointment with Professor Herbert.”

“What name is it, please?”

“Watts, Cathy Watts.”

She consulted a screen of some sort, “Ah, there you are, please take a seat Professor Watts, we’ll let him know you’re here.” I nodded and deposited my backside on a seat opposite the reception desk. I was a few minutes early, but the apology was rather overdue.

I was tempted to check my phone or iPad for messages but decided I’d sit still and try and compose myself. I started thinking compose—music—Beethoven. In my head I tried to focus on the greatest piece of music ever written, his ninth symphony. Many prefer his seventh, which is also a masterpiece, but using human voices as instruments in his ninth is sublime.

I don’t know about relaxing me, but it certainly distracted me as strangers wandered past, I barely noticed them. Eventually a loud ‘ahem’ brought me back to the present and Esmond Herbert was standing beside me. “Lady Cameron, how nice to see you again.” He offered his hand and as I expected to shake it, he kissed it and then helped me to my feet. “I can’t believe that scruffy little urchin would transmogrify into the elegant lady I see before me.”

I blushed and smiled more through embarrassment than anything but he smiled back. “I’m glad we’re back on speaking terms, Cathy, I really am.”

“So am I, and I feel I owe you an apology, Professor Herbert.”

“Esmond, please, now you’re an aristocrat’s wife and a professor in your own right, surely you hold rank on me, don’t you?”

“Hardly, seeing as you were a professor to my undergrad.”

We entered his office and he asked his secretary to make us some coffees and then to hold all his calls. “Coffee, is okay, Lady Cameron?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“Please take a seat.” He waved his hand indicating I could sit anywhere. I chose a leather sofa and tried to sit as gracefully as I could.

“D’you know, I remember a certain Charlie Watts sitting on that same sofa with the same gracefulness when the girl who came with him plonked herself down like a pregnant hippo. I’m glad you found the courage to be true to yourself. I really am, and what a butterfly that chrysalis contained. You’re a fine looking woman, Cathy.”

At this point his secretary brought in a tray with coffees, a small jug of milk or cream, a bowl of sugar cubes—brown of course, and a plate of shortcake biscuits. The interruption spared my blushes and distracted the arch lady-killer in mid seduction.

He handed me a cup and saucer of coffee and indicated to use the sugar and cream as I wished. I added some cream and stirred it in. He took the other cup and added two lumps of sugar before sitting opposite me in an armchair that matched the sofa my bum was occupying, in cream leather.

I sipped my coffee before placing the cup back on the tray. “I’ve come to apologise for misunderstanding you and consequently treating you with less courtesy than I should.” I was finding it difficult to find the exact words I wanted, I hoped it didn’t show too much.

“When was this?” he looked genuinely surprised.

“About the UN job.”

“Oh that, you said you didn’t want it, I thought if we kept pushing the door would open, instead you slammed it in my face.”

I blushed. “Yes, I’m sorry.”

“No hard feelings, I should have listened to you—you said no. So have you come all this way to apologise for that?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Cathy, you are...too sweet, d’you know that? I’ve so many slaps in the face from women over the years, you’re the first to apologise. There was no need you know, but it is so sweet of you, it really is—thank you.” The smile he gave this time was genuine. I of course blushed even more if it was possible.

“I had you all wrong, I thought you disliked me when I was an undergrad here.”

“Disliked you, why should I do that?”

“I don’t know, I suppose because I disliked myself.”

“Why?”

“The gender thing,” I had difficulty holding his gaze.

“But Brighton is down the road with all sorts of colourful life forms, the university was one of the first to instigate a diversity and equality protocol, so why did you think I disliked you?”

“Paranoia I suppose. Most people either ignored me or treated me with contempt, so I just assumed you would as well...but I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, I think you were one of only two or three that year who got firsts. You were a very good student, if a little eccentric in your demeanour and dress. Half of us thought you were a girl or should be one...”

“Yeah, and the other half tried not to think of me at all.”

“I can’t answer for them, but I suspect they’d take notice now.”

“Because of Simon’s money and the title.”

“No—because you happen to have grown into a very lovely woman who has brains to match her beauty.”

Guess what? I blushed again.

“Tom Agnew showed me the letter you wrote him recommending me as a student.”

“I wrote so many...”

“Of course.”

“But I do have recollection of that one. Cathy, you were an outstanding student who we all—well those of us with any perception—realised was trying to deal with some sort of identity crisis—and still you got a first. I think I said that Tom, if you got your act together he was the best support you could wish for. I take it you know about his daughter?”

“Yes, he told me about her.”

“When I first knew Tom and Celia, they had one kid, a boy called Cameron, I think. The kid used to worry them to death, he was clever but there was something not quite normal about his behaviour, then he tried to top himself and they were all forced to deal with things. In those days, this like twenty five years ago, hardly any of us knew anything about gender identity disorders, but Tom and Celia really did their best to help Cameron become Catherine and she, like you, blossomed into a very lovely young woman. Her death was both untimely and unfortunate. I don’t think Celia ever got over it.”

“She didn’t.”

“You didn’t meet her, did you?”

“Uh no, but I’ve seen photos and Tom has told me about her, so I feel I know her quite well.”

He shook his head, “I’m getting old,” he said with sense of loss in his tone. “So you’ve got Tom’s chair have you?”

“I’m only keeping it warm for him.”

“Still, not bad being an acting professor at—what are you now, twenty nine, thirty?”

“Thirty.”

“I was thirty five—that was a million years ago. Time to move on, let the younger generation have a go. If I went, would you try for this chair?”

“No, I’ve got enough furniture and it wouldn’t match the rest of the house.”

He roared with laughter. “A sense of humour is the only thing that keeps us sane these days, glad to see yours is intact.”

“I’m an example of the Peter principle, promoted to the level of my incompetence. I’m a field biologist, not a professor. I like to be out in the woods or walking moorland not playing petty politics or balancing budgets.”

“Sadly, they need people at the top with brains and integrity to help those down the food chain and the objects they study and try to conserve, achieve their goals, because they have the same ones you used to have—they want to save the world, too but don’t have the clout or expertise that you do not to mention experience. It’s your job now to help them develop it and gather the data for you to present to the world—because of your seniority and experience—people will listen. That’s your job now, young Catherine, and the universe has given you the skills and resources to do it. Build your army of researchers and use their data to save your dormice or hedgehogs and after them the planet—use your position, your skills as a communicator—you’re the best in the business and nicer to look at than Brian Cox. Save the world, it’s what you were born to do.”