11. ARRESTED!

Things seem to be going from bad to worse

I know who I am, thought Ivan Bramble, lying in bed and postponing the moment of getting up and dressing for as long as he could, I know exactly who I am: I’m Ivan Bramble, I’ve always been Ivan Bramble and I’m the head of the English department at Joseph Hollows Comprehensive where I specialise in apostrophes! I’m a man, I’m almost divorced from the love of my life and I don’t want to be a woman for one moment longer or I might find myself fancying me!

But when he tentatively explored his body he found that he was still a woman. He had an extravagant bosom and the parts he almost treasured were still missing, and unbidden tears formed in his eyes.

It’s enough to drive a fellow mad, he thought, and what was that nonsense the officer was saying about triplets and me being one of them? I’ve never heard so much nonsense in my life … and yet being a woman when I’ve been a man all my life is even worse nonsense. I’d have thought it was impossible, I mean, how can some parts grow and other parts vanish overnight, it goes against everything I learned about biology when I was at school myself...

Then a horrible thought struck him. He’d have to face the world the moment he got up. He knew that. He’d have to dress in female clothes or look silly. Should he hack his long blonde tresses off, maybe, and man himself up? Then face the world? He groaned, but he got up anyway.

He selected one of his free brassieres from the bag where they were still waiting to be worn, and looked at it.

Lace, lace and more lace, he mumbled as he adjusted the straps until they approximated the same as the bra he’d worn yesterday. But a little voice inside his head suggested that the garment was pretty. He’d learn to love it, the voice said, just think of what he’d missed being a bloke with nothing but a hairy chest to tempt the little ladies ... this bra had tiny flowers woven into the lace, and there was a firm softness to the fabric designed to hold his breasts just right. And it was expensive, or would have been had he not been given it. The price tag horrified him.

After the humiliation in the pub he’d stopped by at a market stall, one of those that lined the high street, and bought what he thought was the kind of dress he would be able to use as a shirt when he reverted to his proper gender, which he was sure he must. It was a loose fit, but then he liked things to fit loosely. He always had. After all, he had never been able to boast the sort of six pack some men spend their lives exercising in order to maintain. And loose was comfortable bearing in mind that his clothing didn’t double as an ad for excessive posing and posturing.

The dress fitted nicely and he smiled. You’ll be falling for yourself sooner than soon, he thought, wickedly. And the idea wasn’t that ridiculous. He might have unexpected and frighteningly got the body of a fifty year-old woman, but he retained the mind and thoughts of an equally fifty year-old man, and he’d always had an eye for the ladies.

The doorbell rang, breaking into his thoughts.

“Damn it,” he cursed, and went to open it. Who might be calling on a day like this, a Sunday to boot? Can’t a man get half an hour to himself without every Tom, Dick and Harry wanting a slice of his time?

But it wasn’t a Tom, Dick or a Harry, it was Inspector Piggott who was doing overtime when all he wanted to do was get back home to his wife and Sunday lunch. Just behind him stood his sergeant who was also working overtime. Things needed sorting out, dead bodies needed explanations and if dirty deeds had been involved in their deaths then people needed to be brought to justice. It was what the two men lived for, their combined raison d’être.

“May I come in?” asked the Inspector, and without waiting for an invitation he walked in.

“You’d better sit down,” he said to Ivan, who he thought might be Evana.

“I prefer standing,” retorted Ivan, not liking the idea of being told what to do in his own home.

“Very well then, Miss or Mrs Bramble. Neither my sergeant nor I are at all sure of your status, madam, but as you’re in Mr Bramble’s home we assume you must be close to him, in an emotional sense.”

“You might say that,” he grunted and winced when it didn’t come out all gruff and manly but had about it an almost soprano timbre.

“Then I must inform you that we believe we’ve found the body of Mr Bramble, in a field not too many miles away, and that the circumstances surrounding his death are, to say the least, somewhat peculiar. Were you aware that he had any, let me see, cross-dressing tendencies?”

“What do you mean? Cross-dressing?” he asked dreading what the answer might be.

“He was found in a frock,” put in the sergeant, who never liked to be left out what he saw as the verbals for long.

“Take it easy, sergeant,” warned Piggott, who had more concern for the feelings of others than did his junior.

“Sorry, guv,” responded the sergeant, meaninglessly.

“And don’t call me that!”

“Sorry, sir.”

“The man we believe to be Ivan Bramble was wearing a black dress, black tights and high heeled shoes,” continued the Inspector, “and yet, underneath such finery, and it was finery, I know a thing or two about the cost of ladies clothing and how much some to the nice stuff can cost, he had the attributes of a man.”

“A black dress, you say?”

The Inspector nodded. “Quite a short black dress, if the truth is to be told, the sort my own lady wife used to wear before she decided she was too old to be fashionable,” he said, thoughtfully.

“Ivan would never wear black,” said Ivan/Evana decisively. “He was the sort of man to delight in light colours, shades of blue reflecting the summer skies of his youth, maybe pale greens that are resonant of the springtime of the year, that sort of thing. But never black. Not black trousers, not black shirts, not even black ties at funerals, not that he went to many funerals...”

He was running out of things to say, and knew it.

“You were telling my sergeant that you believed that you yourself were Ivan Bramble,” murmured the Inspector, “why might you have suggested such a thing as that?”

“Did I?” asked Ivan, then remembering how he’d described waking up minus his genitalia the previous morning, “it’s all been so confusing,” he added lamely, “what with dead men next door and no heating until the electrical people saw sense and disconnected the wire leading to his flat.”

“I think you’d best come down the station for a chat,” said the Inspector, “we need to record what’s said from now on because, dear lady, there’s quite a possibility that you aren’t who you claim to be and that you murdered both your neighbour for stealing your electricity and Mr Bramble for reasons yet to be discovered.”

“Me?” asked Ivan, appalled, “you’re arresting me?”

“No, madam, you’re just helping us with our enquiries while we try to discover what’s behind a situation that’s giving me one hell of a headache,” said Inspector Piggott, “Sergeant, the bracelets.”

And Ivan Bramble was led from his own flat under the eyes of half a dozen curious neighbours, and for once he was grateful for his unwanted feminine disguise.

© Peter Rogerson 21.12.18