The Dominafuhrer - THE GODMOTHER

Episode 25 - Tails It Is

I definitely wasn’t going to like Michael after the way that he had treated Kelly but I think I knew better than her what his reasons had been. She was crying yet again, her handkerchief now sodden and stained black from her ruined mascara.

“So your name really is Kelly?” I asked. “You didn’t have to change it?”

She gave me a faint smile, despite her tears. “You do not know the half of it. The name on my birth certificate is Kelly Jean Downham, after my Ma’s Irish and French Canadian Grandfathers, just as my brother is called Brian George after Pa’s Grandfathers. I have a feeling that Ma secretly wanted a daughter instead of another son; if only she knew. It wasn’t until I moved east that I realised that there was a lot more girls called Kelly than there were boys. In fact it made forging documents very easy as I just had to ink in ‘fe’ in front of ‘male’. It’s just as well that I wasn’t born in Quebec as I would have never been able to get my passport if I’d needed to change ‘homme’ to ‘femme’.”

She looked her watch and started, “Jeez, is that the time? We need to get moving”.

“Wait a minute,” I said, putting my hand on her coat sleeve. “You can’t leave your story like that. What happened next, why are you going to see Michael now and why is not being able to have sex so important?”

“Schnufflerin!” Kelly laughed at me and I coloured, wondering if she had overheard Miss Spiteful and me last night. “Ok, got any more fags?”

I showed her my almost empty packet but she shamelessly helped herself to another one and I joined her.

“Well, I did go back to the old house and sort through Michael’s pictures; I kept a painting that he had done on our trip to the Rockies, a sketch of Brian in his uniform that had been copied from a photograph and another one of my Ma and Pa. There were also a lot me as a girl, dressed and undressed, which I hid behind the wall and the rest I gave to Pa to take his pick before he posted them to England. I went back and dressed up a few times during the summer but my heart wasn’t in it without Michael there and, in the end, I nailed all the boards up again and just kept some underwear and stockings at home for when I wanted to masturbate.

We had a scare when Brian wrote to say that he was retraining for the war in the Pacific but the atomic bombs put an end to that and he was demobilized the following spring. He looked fit enough but his face was drawn and pale and Ma said that he had the same look in his eyes as Pa had when he came home after the first war. Brian worked on the farm during the day but for nearly a year he would go into High River or Calgary at night and get drunk but, just as we lost the Italians, he announced that he was going to Agricultural College and was engaged to Jenny Ramsay.

I had started writing to Michael almost as soon as he left, asking what I had done wrong, telling him how much I loved him and promising to wait until he came back or sent for me but I never got any replies. Instead, he wrote to my folks; said that he had got home safely and how grateful he was to them for looking after him. Later, he described how badly London had been damaged and how awful the rationing is and, when you had those bad winters, that they were nothing like the ones that he had experienced on the prairies. I was barely mentioned, just a polite enquiry each time as to how I was getting on. Apart from a broken heart, not too bad. Girls started taking an interest me and, if they looked good and wore nice clothes, I returned that interest and I actually got laid before I was even out of secondary school. I also found that some boys wanted me to be more than a friend but, I still loved Michael and I didn’t want anyone else taking that part in my life.

I had never really found school work a problem, even when I was leading my double life or afterwards when I was grieving for Michael but, to be honest, I don’t think that I had ever really tried hard. I studied, passed my grades and didn’t think about the future unless it included Michael. I moved up to the High School in High River and, after a couple of months, the Principal sent for me and my folks. I’m desperately trying to think what I could have done to be in the shit when he started telling them that because he only had just over a hundred students, he didn’t think that he could offer me the schooling that an outstanding student like me, who would make a good Doctor, would need if I was to get into medical school. I nearly fell off the chair in surprise; where did that come from? Hey! Suddenly dumb Kelly is a genius! Anyway, Ma was so over the moon at the thought of me becoming a doctor that I wondered if she was really Jewish and not Catholic. Pa just wondered how he was going to pay the college fees but I noticed that he started looking at me with the same pride as he did with Brian. The Principal said that it would be better if I transferred to High School in Calgary which was larger and better equipped to make me realise my potential and it also had access to a wide a range of scholarships which could fund my studies, either in part or in full, when I went on to the University of Alberta.

After that I had no choice, traveling seventy miles a day is not the best aid to study but, your Kelly worked like a beaver for three years and, at the end I had gained a national scholarship to the medical school at the University of Toronto.”

Kelly flicked the butt of her cigarette into a corner of the bunker and stretched out her long stockinged legs.

“You know most of the rest. I told you before that I quit medical school because I put on that damned nurse’s uniform and rediscovered my transvestism and thought that I could make it in the wide world outside as a full time woman but what really triggered it was a letter from my Ma, who passed on news from one of Michael’s letters. He was in his final year at the Royal College of Art in London and wrote to say that he was going to marry another student. That really did break my heart; I knew now that everything he had done and said to me was all lies and that he had exploited me for sexual gratification. If he didn’t think that I was real enough female to marry then I was going to prove him wrong. I got out the gold sovereign that Grandpa had left me in his will,” Kelly pulled the coin out of her coat pocket and held it up. “There was a note from Grandpa in the case when I got it, which the Spree turned it to pulp, and on it he had written: ‘Kelly, use this when your head and your heart cannot agree’. So, I tossed it in the air: heads for staying in medical school, tails for a new life as a woman. It came down tails, just as it did in Boston when I was considering Miss Spiteful’s offer to take me on a as her slave and get me out the mess I had made of my life. I got the same result that night after we escaped from East Berlin and I couldn’t make up my mind whether or not to go and knock on your bedroom door. I had promised myself that I was not going to fall in love with you but in my heart I wanted you and the coin told me to follow my heart.”

Kelly turned the deep pools of her eyes towards me and put her hand on mine. “I’m so jealous of you and David because that’s the sort of love that I wanted with Michael. I love you Ingrid, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with you and you don’t want to leave David for me. I’ve seen the struggle in your eyes when you are with me and I would not to go back and change anything that we have done together and I want us to be able carry on being lovers.”

I clutched her hand and smiled at her silently because it was my turn to feel choked in the throat and have moist eyes.

“I think that Miss Spiteful had plotted to get us together because I had told her all about Michael and how bitter I was and she kept going on about how well it had turned out for you and David and, as I said before, I hated you because you had been the perfect slave who had never done anything wrong.”

I burst out laughing at that, remembering all the beatings I had suffered for being a lot less than perfect.

“So”, Kelly continued, “just after we got back to New York from Sugar’s wedding, the apartment door bell rang and there, when I opened it, was Brian. I was speechless but he didn’t seem at all surprised at my appearance and was quite at ease with it when I invited him in. I introduced him to Miss Spiteful who chatted quite pleasantly to him before making her excuses and leaving us alone. Brian told me that he had come east to Toronto for a RCAF reunion had then taken a flight to New York to look me up. He had my address because I still sent cards and presents home and got letters from my folks but I had never told them what my situation was. Brian said that the farm was hard work but was doing well; Pa still put in a day’s work but was glad to get home and put his feet up in front of the television now that he had turned sixty and Ma was always in town doing some charity work or other for the Catholic Church. They had both forgiven me for walking out of medical school, even if they didn’t know why I had done it and they both missed me. Brian told me that his wife Jenny had just given birth to their second child and he had been redecorating our grandparent’s house, where they now lived, when he had discovered my old concealed wardrobe in the wall. Jenny had recognized some of her family’s clothes and all had become clear when they found Michael’s paintings and sketches of me as a girl. For over four years Brian had woken every morning, not knowing if he would still be alive to see the next sunrise and he was not going to condemn any one who took the chance to live their life the way that they wanted. He didn’t want to know the details of what I did, although I’m sure that he had guessed, he just wanted to tell me that it was alright with him and that my secret was safe with him and Jenny. He would tell Ma and Pa that he had seen me and that I was well and doing what I desired. He gave a big flat package of Michael’s paintings and drawings of me and, before he left, told me that Michael was now divorced, gave me Michael’s address and suggested that I might want to get in touch with him.

I cried and agonized for a long time afterwards and Mistress left me to make my own mind up but, when I knew that we were coming here, I wrote to Michael, simply stating that I would be arriving and expected him to put me up for the night. I got a terse and fairly grudging note in return saying that I was welcome but nothing about whether he would be pleased to see me or not. My plan was to go there and be as seductive as possible to see if I could win him back but, now that bastard Kurt has ruined it for me, what is the point of luring him into bed if I can’t have sex? I just don’t know whether I want to go at all now”.

Kelly’s voice was back to its agonized wail and I put my arm around her shoulder. “Why don’t you let the coin decide?” I suggested and Kelly stared at the gold sovereign in her hand as if she was seeing it for the first time. She flipped it up in the air with her thumb, caught it and slapped it down on the back of her wrist. While it was still covered, she kept her eyes closed and her lips murmured something that I could not catch. Then we both peered forward as she lifted her hand to reveal Saint George spearing his dragon and I lifted an enquiring eyebrow at Kelly.

She gulped smiled, replaced the coin in its case and stood up. “We had better get a move on, especially since you’ve almost run out of cigarettes because I don’t think that you’ll find many shops open around here on a Sunday afternoon”.

We flicked our dusty scarves and I was following Kelly up the stairs to the door of the bunker when she stopped, turned and almost sent me crashing backwards to the concrete floor.

“Quick, hide!” she hissed. “Kurt and Bradshaw are almost at the top of the path!”

To continue this story, click The Things That You Hear

Back to the top