Just a Lark

It was all just a lark, a little harmless fun. I mean, what could go wrong?

I suppose I had better start at the beginning. I’m Trevor Watson, aged eighteen and working as a cycle courier. My parents are Terry and Sadie, or should I say were, my mum passed away from cancer a couple of years ago. She left my father with me and my twin sisters to look after. I wasn’t too bad as I was almost at school leaving age then, but my sisters, at fourteen, still needed to be brought up properly. Thankfully, both had gone through the menstrual stage before Mum left. Dad or I didn’t have a clue about that part.

Annabel and Abigail didn’t stop growing until they reached sixteen. By that time, they were taller than me by half a mile! They took after Dad, slightly overtaking his two metres, and both played in the local netball team. I supposed that I took my height from Mum, looking at family photos, she hardly came up to Dads armpits. I also took some of my features from her as well, while the girls had Dads’ blue eyes, mine were greenish, while Mums were more greenish-brown.

I had gone to see the girls play in the semi-final of the yearly competition and they had won. I joined them at the pub for the celebrations afterwards. The other girls in the team had their boyfriends, as did Abby. I sat with Annabel and gazed at the pub TV as the group got louder and then quieter as the pairs started to leave. Abby was about to leave, with her guy, and asked us if we needed a lift. We both said no as we were watching a show that had us interested.

The show was one we had watched at home, about using DNA to find your family. Luckily, the pub TV had the subtitles on so we could follow the story. Actually, at home we used to watch it with the subtitles on as well, just so we could imagine the beautiful girl who hosted it speaking normally, without dropping the ‘t’s.

Annabel remarked, “You know, we should do that. Who knows, we may discover a load of family members who are rich, or famous, or hopefully both rich and famous!”

I laughed and told her that I would, if she could get the others to do it. Abby and Annabel should come back identical, which would be a good proof that the company was ethical. Mum had a family crest that she had coveted, sold to her by a guy in a shopping center. She was certain that the Watson family crest was truly ours, even though I had looked up the family history on the internet and found out that the Watsons, with that crest, had died out in the seventeen hundreds.

So Annabel worked on Dad and Abby until they agreed to do the home kit DNA as a lark. Between us we speculated on what royal lineage or pop star we would get linked to. The results, when they arrived, had no such links. They simply had a chart which indicated your ethnic background and included a voucher for a tracing service so that you could pay for more definite links to other families who had taken the test.

Dad opened his first. The chart showed that he had ancestors from England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as a small part of Scandinavian. He then revealed that he knew that his grandfather had been born in Scotland and that there was links to the Irish who were escaping the potato famine. He thought that his great grandmother had come from a line which had married Vikings in York.

The twins opened theirs and compared notes. As to be expected, theirs were identical. The major difference to Dad was that Mums side had made its mark. We knew that our grandmother, on Mums side, had been born in France, so there was a big linkage to Europe in their results. It all looked remarkably normal and it would be easy to trace our family tree.

Then I looked at mine and I sat for some time trying to take it all in. My DNA returned some English and some European, as would be expected from my Mums ancestors. The problem that made me break out in a sweat was that there was no sign at all of the Scottish or Irish connections. My greatest connections were set in the Balkans.

As I sat there, Abby chortled and snatched the paper from my hand.

“OK, brother, dear, what’s slowed you down?”

She looked at the paperwork and then looked at me.

“Well, that answers a few questions.”

Dad took the paper from her and read it all, slowly.

“Trevor, my boy. You have always been my son. Even now, as I see that I am not your father, you will always be my son.”

I stood and went over to him, and we hugged.

“Dad, you are still the only dad I’ve ever had, and will ever need. Did you suspect anything?”

“Not really, your mother was pregnant with you when we walked down the aisle. We had been sleeping together before we married so I was not surprised when you were born just seven months later. We were living in a terrace in Hammersmith at the time. Your Mums family was still in the family home in Earls Court. Her parents had stayed there, looking after her grandparents before they passed away. Your Mum moved in with me, oh, some three months before we married, but she used to spend a bit of time with her parents.”

That evening I went to bed, certain that a visit to my grand-parents was on the cards. They would be surprised to see me, as I hadn’t visited in a few years. My sisters had come to terms with me now only their half-brother, and Dad was, well, still Dad.

The next day I rang the gramps and made an arrangement to see them the following Sunday. I was to get there in the morning so that they could have lunch with their favourite grandson. I smiled at that, I was the only grandson.

On Sunday morning I cycled over to Earls Court, chained my bike to the railings and knocked on the door. It opened to reveal my grandmother, Rosie, with a huge smile on her face.

“Trevor, it’s so wonderful to see you. It’s so nice of you to come and visit us old fogies. Dear God, you look just like our Sadie when she was a teenager.”
We hugged and I gave her the box of chocolates I had brought with me. I shucked my backpack in the hall and followed her into the kitchen, where Bert, my grandfather, was sitting in his special chair. Bert had fallen off a ladder some years ago and had damaged his back, needing a purpose-built chair for comfort.

“Bert, look what Trevor brought with him, your favourites.”

She turned to me. “He has to take his teeth out now to eat these, or else they get stuck and I have to prise them out with a spoon.”

We sat and I brought them up to date with their son-in-law and the twins. We then had lunch and were sitting there, with a cup of tea, when Bert said “It’s nice seeing you Trevor, but there’s something on your mind.”

I grinned, told them to stay as I went to my backpack and brought back the DNA report. I just gave it to Bert and waited. He looked at it closely, and then passed it to Rosie, and he looked me in the eyes.

“Trevor, I knew, as soon as I saw you as a baby, that Terry wasn’t your father. It was the eyes. No-one, in our family, has had green eyes and Terrys’ are blue, which the twins have taken on. I said nothing at the time, your parents were so happy together and Sadie was radiant at the wedding.”

Rosie looked up from the paper. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Bert?”

He nodded. “Lad, there was a family up the street. The father, Tanek, had been an air ace in the Polish squadron during the Battle of Britain. There was a son, Jason, who was the same age as Sadie, went to school with her and they spent a lot of time together. He had the most piercing green eyes I had ever seen. I expected them to get married and was surprised when she came home with Terry. After Sadie was married, I went to see Jason and was told that he had moved away. Tanek had no reason that he would give me. He actually looked embarrassed when he spoke about Jason. Maybe, while you’re here, you should have a stroll down the road and see if you can find out anything.”

“I sometimes see Hanna at the shops and we pass the time of day,” said Rosie, “I’ll take you down.”

After we had tidied up and made sure Bert was comfortable in his chair in front of the TV, Rosie and I strolled along the road until we came to a house that stood out from the others, by being nicely painted in bright colours. She rang the bell and a wizened old lady came to the door.

“Rosie, who do we thank for this visit?” She then looked at me and started swaying. Rosie and I went to her and held her up, helping her inside.

“Tanek, Tanek” my grandmother called, “Do you have a chair, Hanna is feeling faint.”

A bent-over man came and helped us take Hanna into the kitchen, where we sat her on a chair until she regained her colour.

“Tanek, have you looked at this lads eyes?”

“Yes, Hanna, he looks just like Jason as a teenager.”

I looked closely at Tanek and saw that, although his eyes were now hazy, there was still a significant green tinge to them. Could I be here with my paternal grand-parents? I took out the paper and showed it to Tanek, who immediately gave it to Hanna. I explained that this was my own DNA result and that it was different to my two sisters. Hanna stood and hugged me closely.

They then told me much the same as I had heard this morning, that they had expected Jason and Sadie to marry and were really surprised when they hadn’t. Tanek said that it wasn’t his place to tell me where Jason was, but, if I left my name, address and phone number, he would talk to Jason and leave it up to Jason to contact me. Before we left, Tanek got an old style camera and Rosie took a couple of pictures of me with my new grand-parents.

Rosie was quiet as we walked back home. She stayed quiet as we had afternoon tea until Bert asked her to let on with what was bothering her.

“It’s just that I can’t figure it out,” she said, “Sadie and Jason were so much in love and he had given her Trevor before they parted. It’s so weird.”

As I cycled home, I thought through things and the only answer that I could come up with was that Jason had a terminal disease and left Sadie to live a normal life.

Life carried on as usual, until there was a letter for me in the post. It was from a J. Smart at an address in Kent. I left it until we were sitting down for tea. Abby kept on until I opened it, and read it out.

Dear Trevor,
It shook me when my father contacted me and gave me your address. I had no idea that Sadie had fallen pregnant and would have married her had I known, no matter what the consequences were.
I would very much like to meet you and talk about old days with your mother.

It gave me a phone number to ring and asked that I spend a week, or more, when I visited, so that we could fully get to know each other. An address was given and the signature was just J. Smart in a flowing script.

I had some money saved, so I made the arrangements to take time off and phoned the number, talking to a lady who said that I would be picked up from the station when I got there.

On the Saturday, I got myself and a small case to St. Pancras to take the one hour journey to Canterbury. As I walked out of the station, I was called by a striking woman who had a photo in her hand. She came over to me.

“Trevor, I hardly needed the picture my father sent me. I would be able to pick you out anywhere.”

I looked into her vivid green eyes, eyes that I saw every morning in my mirror. I dropped my bag and hugged her as she tried to squeeze the life out of me.

As we parted, I grinned. “So, do I call you Daddy, now?”

She laughed. “I don’t think that would do at all. You can call me Janice. Now pick up your bag and I’ll take you home to meet my husband.”

Home was a little way further east, in a village called Ickham. She drove a very nice, older Rover with lots of room. As we went, she chatted about her current life as a real estate agent, in partnership with her husband, Basil. They concentrated, so she told me, on up-market houses, their own being one that they had bought from a client.

When we arrived, I was staggered. Up-market was not the words I would use, magnificent was more like it. It was a red-brick mansion that used to be an oast house. I was shown to a room that was almost bigger than our house. Janice waited until I had hung away my clothes, and then took me to the study. Here, her husband, Basil, was sitting with a list of houses that he was studying. I was introduced and soundly hugged, almost coughing with the air of old tobacco and whiskey that he was surrounded in.

He gathered up his papers into a neat stack and announced that we had to go out for lunch. He then drove us to a pub, overlooking the Stour, where we had a fabulous lunch, with far too many drinks, as I told them about my life to date. Basil drove us back to the house, somewhat erratically, and went back to his study while Janice took me into the sitting room.

“I think he likes you,” she smiled.

“I think I like him, too. He’s the typical uncle from the country and not the sort of person that I would have met, unless they were customers I delivered to.”

“Trevor, I now have to tell you how you came to be. I never thought that Sadie would get pregnant and she never let me know that she had. You see, Sadie and I had been friends since primary school. She was the one I told first about wanting to be a woman. She helped me a lot, as she learned new facts she would pass them on to me. She gave me some of her old clothes, she helped me shop for my own, and she taught me how to apply make-up. I owe her my whole existence. The night you were conceived was the only time we made love. I had satisfied her as a woman to woman but she had made me aroused. She said that if anyone was going to take her virginity, it would be me, and she sat on me. It was my first time, as well as her first time. I was certain, with the pills I had started to take, that I couldn’t have any children. And yet, you sit there, large as life, proof that I had been wrong. If she had told me, I would have reverted and married her. But she said nothing.”

I sat there, taking it all in. “I suppose you had the surgery before you met Basil, does he know of your past?”

“Oh, yes. He said it didn’t matter as he couldn’t have children, anyway. We made a successful, childless, couple, and now here you are, my son. There is something you have not told us about. What about girlfriends, significant others, old flames. With those green eyes and that physique, I expect that you have to beat the girls off with a stick.”

This was the moment I had dreaded since I had seen her. “No old flames, not even an ember. No girlfriend. I meet up with the netball team my sisters are in and they treat me as if I was just one of them. I’ve even been dressed in my sisters’ old jeans and a top and gone out with the crowd. Being spoken to as if I was a girl is nothing out of the ordinary. I can’t say that I’ve tried very hard, but every time I think about chatting a girl up, I dry up and we end up being just friends. I know a lot of girls and they are all just friends.”

“Oh, dear!” she cried. “I expect that I may have passed more than my eyes to you. Are you up for an experiment while you’re here? You and I are about the same size and we can go into Canterbury to get you underwear. How about I transform you into a girl for a couple of weeks? That way, you can see if it fits. If it doesn’t, at least you’ll have some idea of what a girl wants to hear from a man. That will give you a better chance when you go home again.”

When we went up to my room, she repacked all of my clothes and took the case away, leaving me sitting on the bed with a towelling robe wrapped around me. She then made several trips, bringing back various tops and skirts, a couple of dresses and some underwear. For shoes, we had to make do with my sneakers. That night, she showed me how to brush my hair out, moisturise and gave me the schedule for my showering and skincare the next day. That night I slept in a nightie for the first time and, by the time I took it off again, I had decided that it may not be the last time.

In the morning, I showered and took care of my skin and hair as requested after shaving as much of my body hair that I could reach. I realised that I really didn’t have that much. In a padded bra and panties, I picked a bright yellow tee and matched it with a denim skirt, the sneakers not looking out of place as I looked at the new me in the mirror.

Downstairs I was not prepared for Basil to come to me and hug me, saying, “Good morning, the daughter that I never knew I had.”

Janice laughed and told me that I was looking too good to have not done this before. Being Sunday, I was expected to go to the local church with them. Janice gave me a make-over before we left. Made up and sporting stick-on red nails, I walked with them and no-one laughed or pointed at me. I did get some looks from the teens in the choir, with smiles from the guys. A new younger person in the area may just be an interesting thing.

Afterwards, I was introduced to the vicar as Truda Watson, Janices’ niece. As we walked away, she whispered, “I made that up on the fly. Truda is an old Polish name. I had a favourite aunt called Truda.”

“That’s all right. I like it, and its close enough to Trevor that I’ll probably react when I hear it.”

And so, over the next few days, I became Truda. We went and shopped, I had full spa treatment, had a make-up kit bought for me after a session with a beautician, and gained a whole set of drawers full of bras, pants, slips, hose and nighties. I’m not sure, but I think Janice enjoyed it more than I thought she should have. Getting a whole rack full of shoes was an experience not to be missed.

The following Sunday, after church, a very handsome boy asked me if I wanted to go to the pictures with him and I said yes. On Monday night, he picked me up at the house, where I waited for him in a nice dress and smelling good. That night I was treated as a lady, enjoyed a boys’ company, and found that, although I had never kissed a girl, kissing a boy was something to dream about.

We went out again, twice more before the weekend. He was a wonderful companion, had a great future ahead of him as a doctor and told me, on our third date, that he knew I was really a guy under my skirt but he didn’t care. He said that he could see what sort of girl I would make and that he wanted to marry me once I had made that transition.

On Saturday morning, I rang home and told my father that I was staying here. I told him that my father was now my mother as well, and that I wanted to be her daughter. I asked him to let the courier business know I wasn’t coming back to work. I had enough work to do to complete my transition.

That afternoon, I was standing in the large garden, just taking in the whole experience. There was a light breeze which made my sundress flutter around my legs. My husband-to-be was behind me, his arms around my waist and his stiffy poking me in the butt. Janice and Basil were sitting with his parents, chatting away, quietly.

It was then I heard a wonderful bird singing as it flew around among the trees. I asked what the bird was and my man took time out from nuzzling my neck.

“It’s a lark, my darling, just a lark.”

Marianne Gregory © 2022