1.The Reckoning
As I read the letter one paragraph summed me up.
‘Dear Olivia, You are an ordinary member of the public with an extraordinary story to tell. Your strength is an unusual personal life, soldiering, spying, the Mossad, the Serious Fraud Office, MI5 and MI6. It is not like any of the other books, a variety unique to you, it could have a very wide appeal to a much wider readership – not only to those interested in the more exclusive world of espionage, but also to the ordinary woman/man in the street. The widest possible readership is essential. It has something for everyone.
Once again, your very good friend, Peter.’
A Cook Reporter, indeed, Roger’s top man, Salk must be right, so began the reckoning.
“I don’t think this baby wants to be born...”
Since Mum told me what she had said, the midwife’s observation has haunted me. Mine an awkward breech birth, made worse, the umbilical cord tried to strangle me. Great start, 1956 and doomed on my début, alas, it wasn’t long before life rejected me.
Two years earlier, after an extensive stint of exemplary service and Dad had retired from the British Army. He had served a crack regiment and saw action in Afghanistan, India, the Middle East as well as North Africa during the Second World War. His exciting covert missions in the desert inspired me. Wounded for his pains, upon leaving the services, not ready for Civvie Street and missing his military friends, Dad soon felt lonely. Mum toiled as a sewing machinist, very down-to-earth and independent, she survived in a poky two-up-two-down in the once grimy heart of Manchester. As Mum’s willpower seduced Dad, a classic love at first sight and a fine romance evolved into a long affair. Mum was 28 and Dad aged 40 when they married and twelve months later, when I came to be, Mum stayed home for me. As Dad joined the management team at a local firm, although he missed his former freedom, time to settle down and not long after in 1960, Mum gave birth at home to Kathryn.
The first of many tragic experiences, they have plagued me. When a doctor saw the awful bulging sac scarring her spine, he called it spina bifida. Paralysed below the waist, Kathy also had kidney damage. Taking time out to tell me, I was barely four when Mum and Dad pledged
“We must all love Kathy just a little bit more, her time with us may be short.”
Our house stood on a busy road in Belle Vue Street. West Gorton a poverty-stricken area, far from an ideal environment to bring up
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children. As big lorries with their foul fumes thundered past our door, unable to open windows and keen to escape, Dad bought a BSA motorcycle and sidecar. It allowed him to take us all to the countryside.
A keen angler, as Dad fastened all of his fishing tackle onto the motorbike, a tight squeeze in the sidecar, I had to perch on Mum’s knee as we clung onto Kathy’s carrycot. A few weeks on, hardly able to contain my excitement, Dad had bought a small caravan in a farmer’s field at Pott Shrigley in Cheshire, near his favourite fishing spot at picturesque Poynton pool. Rural life opened up my heart to another world. I loved feeding hungry farmyard chickens, watching spellbound when the farmer’s wife milked all the cows. Rustic beauty and rippling rivers inspired within me a profound love of nature, if only this idyll would never end. Regrettably, as each weekend closed, Dad always returned us all home.
When Kathy returned to hospital, Dad exchanged the motorbike for a Standard Vanguard. He needed a large car to convey all the medical bits and bobs fixed to Kathy’s delicate body. As I sat on the backseat by her carrycot and gently squeezed her tiny hand, gazing at her, so pretty, big brown eyes and stubborn chin, Kathy always a cheerful little girl. Nothing gave me greater joy than making her giggle, but nowadays she tired quickly. Mum took me to see her in the hospital nearly every day, as she fell weaker, Mum asked the doctors to let her baby return home. They said no, but they didn’t know Mum and Kathy came home.
As Mum and Dad struggled through a hospital car park, my heart in my mouth in case they dropped anything. Wishing that I could help, it was hard to manage the complicated tubes and bottles comprising Kathy’s lifeline, it made me wonder why watching nurses failed to lend a hand. As she responded to our love, gaining weight, rosy colour soon returned to Kathy’ cheeks. Mum and Dad suspected foul play. They reckoned that the staff at the hospital had meant to let Kathy die. When they returned her to the ward, I remained in a corridor outside. Overhearing a scuffle, later on, I discovered that as she laid Kathy in her cot, one nurse had pushed Mum to the floor and snapped
“Why don’t you leave her in peace to die?”
Seriously upset, Mum and Dad had a word with the family doctor, he had Kathy transferred to Booth Hall Children’s Hospital where wonderful nursing staff showered her with care. It soon restored Kathy’s bubbly personality. It was hard to believe that she suffered constant pain. Amazing the medical staff and me how one so small could take so much, Kathy touched everyone. Several weeks more, Mum and Dad faced the truth, unless they consented to surgery, the doctors predicted that Kathy must die. Holding nothing back, one surgeon warned Mum and Dad that the operation was very risky and Kathy may not survive it. No option, as they signed the
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fateful form and as the surgeon prepared to operate, he told us it was best that we return home. Shortly, after we had retired to bed, a heavy knock on the front door soon got us up. As Mum and Dad tread gingerly downstairs, sneaking after them, as I watched from the stairs, a poignant scene unfolded. Reluctantly, Dad opened the door and let a sad-looking constable into the house. As he slowly removed his helmet, he didn’t want to be here. Doing his duty, the policeman told us
“I’m sorry…I’ve got bad news for you...”
Expecting the worst, it was still a shock. When the constable left the house, Mum broke down in floods of tears. Dad cried too. Only five, my initial taste of death, I wished it were my last. The sad event prepared me for what was to come and certain Kathy’s spirit could not be far away, whispering to her, I pledged
“I promise to be brave – just like you…”
Mum and Dad had to move from our little house in Manchester, it had lost its soul since Kathy’s death. During an awful winter in 1962, we ended up in a new house in the Derbyshire Peak District near the sinuous Snake Pass and bleak Pennine Moors. Dad took it slow in the treacherous snow and as the car reached a junction near Glossop, he took the road into Hadfield. In the midst of a swirling blizzard, as we helped the removal men unload all of our furniture from the van, a bitter struggle, but somehow, we got the job done.
An inside loo, no cockroaches here, they had terrified me. Now I could sleep with my bedroom light off. Difficult to keep the house warm, water pipes froze all the time and frightening blizzards an everyday thing, each morning, grabbing a shovel, I joined Mum and Dad and helped them dig the car out of yet more snow. We waited ages for a giant yellow snowplough to clear a path before Dad could reach his office in Manchester. Fully six months later and one far off peak still lay snow-capped.
Peculiar in their ways and we soon realised that local people didn’t take to townies. Several years later, when cult comedy The League of Gentlemen appeared on television, I don’t know if you know, they used Hadfield as their film location for wacky Royston Vasey. It reminded me of the modest gas-lit local shop up yonder brew. Stock stored specimen-like in huge jars on dust-encrusted shelves and lurking behind the austere counter, her sparse curls worn in a bun, four-foot nothing and severe black frock covering her ankles, going on ninety and shopkeeper Annie was truly a precious thing.
In their haste to leave Manchester, Mum and Dad had neglected the question of my schooling. Only six, I had already attended two schools. The teachers refused to let me mix with girls and press-ganged me to bond with boys, utterly unable to relate to them and isolated in my confusion, my birth certificate claimed me a boy,
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but according to my nature, I was very much a girl. Desperately lonely and warily watching them, longing to join the girls and for sure missing Kathy much more now, she had been my only friend. Secreted in my pocket, my fingers clutched a tiny doll that Kathy had loved. Sad I know; it was my only comfort. A few days on and a boy aged twelve ran up to me in the playground and punched me in the face and broke my nose. Mum led me to the local casualty where my nose bled again. As he attended to it, a doctor told Mum that I had been lucky? He explained that if the blood clot had not burst, I might have been dead by morning.
The education authorities let me try another school, I liked it no more than the last. My schooldays a woeful tale of misery, bullied and misunderstood and I reviled the abuse. Too young to raise my voice, each day hoping it would end, it got worse. No place else for me, I had to attend a Roman Catholic school. They said don’t tell them you’re Jewish. So, I went to church like the others, taking no part in the ritual. Really, they should have known better, as the nuns programmed the children and said Jews killed Christ, it has put me off religion. Like other kids, not fire, not brimstone, my fear the cane. Worshipped by the nuns they let fly with it for the least misdemeanour and honestly, not fair, they hit me too.
Scant fun in my life, while my peers raced from the classroom and joined their mates in the playground, off limits to me, I found a corner and watched them from a distance. At least, once home I had pets for pals, two delightful cats, and as I trekked across misty moors with them, a brace of dogs. I didn’t want it this way, my first ten years an ordeal. As I thought about the next, facing the question of me, inescapable, always on my mind, scared of anyone labelling me a freak, I prayed to the Almighty, unaware that, one day, surgery could release me. For now, I struggled on alone.
Aware Mum and Dad loved me I loved them too and never wished to hurt them. Growing more ashamed of my body, wanting them to feel proud of me and like Kathy, reckoning that I had been born handicapped. No war hero like Dad, unable to battle the world like Mum. It terrified me, how could I ever impress them? Would they reject me? An insatiable thirst for knowledge gave me real hope. Always pestering Mum and Dad, please buy me more. Armed with my books, I believed in a future.
One day, as I helped Mum with some small task in the kitchen, all of a sudden, as two blokes called out to us, we stared back at them through a window. Wearing overalls and sneaking a fag break as men do, while supposed to be painting the house next door, they caught Mum’s notice and cheeky, one chap appealed to her
“’Scuse me luv, send yer little girl out with a cuppa’, we’re dyin’ o’ thirst.”
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Angry and Mum told them off. A mop of tiny black ringlets curled around my ears and before making them a brew, Mum told me I needed a haircut. Nonetheless, happy in heart, until now, I had believed everyone blind.
At the onset of my puberty, dreadful and too bad to be ordinary growing pains attacked my wrist and ankle joints. Sometimes, the pain so bad it made me scream. As my hurts worsened, Mum took me to see the doctor. He enquired if I had any other problems. I told him about the sickness, which chased the pain. Mystified, he fixed it for a consultant in Manchester to see me. However, he was equally perplexed. As I went back and forth to hospital, no one had an answer.
With my primary education concluded, Mum and Dad wanted me to take an 11+ exam and win a place at grammar school. As they fought the initiative, the nuns argued that my poor school record suggested it was a waste of time. Not easily put off, Mum and Dad insisted they knew best and as I sat the test, my success resulted in more friction. In the end, the nuns confessed they didn’t want me at a Catholic grammar due to my Hebrew faith. Fair enough, but the nearest Jewish school much too far away in Manchester, I ended up at a Catholic comprehensive in Glossop. I wanted to stay home and stick my nose in my books to give myself a real shot at life. I detested the new place. Within the year moving again, I ended up at an Anglican school just over the Cheshire border in Longdendale. Life no different there, once more, standing out as a loner, it didn’t take long for the bullies to get me. One-by-one, as I stood my ground and picked them off, I had learned that it was better to stand up and fight than be hurt.
At the start of my ‘teens Mum reckoned I had sufficient ability to settle into a professional occupation, she also believed I would buy a house, marry and father children. Conversely, viewing my future with trepidation, I fell victim to frightening asthma attacks. Mum took me to see the doctor again. He put down my asthma to bad nerves and asked me what was wrong. It presented a great chance for me to tell them the truth. It must destroy Mum and Dad. They had been through too much. Panicking and blaming bullies and my lame excuse prompted the doctor to quiz me
“Why are you bullied?”
Dumbstruck, in the end, the doctor recommended Mum and Dad should ask me what was wrong, but impossible to tell them, as the 70’s dawned, homesick, we failed to settle in the hills, returning to Manchester, we moved to Higher Crumpsall near the very hospital where I was born. My next school in Cheetham Hill decrepit, its bleak façade gave me the creeps. As my Jewish faith betrayed me once more, bullies set about me yet again. One week later, as I entered the playground, punching and kicking me about the head
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and body, three big lads pushed me to the ground. Not yet fifteen and another year before I could leave school, Mum and Dad found me a place in Crumpsall. Its repute went before it, the headmaster of this school banned bullying and teachers had genuine interest in the children. Older than my years, serious by nature and one teacher described me perfect to dress up in top hat and tails, a starring role as Dr Barnardo in a drama and in front of Mum and Dad too. I loved acting. However, still ashamed of my body and I loathed undressing in front of anyone and sneaked off to avoid it. To my joy, this school boasted individual changing cubicles and all of a sudden into all sport, it gave me freedom of expression and showing off at football and cricket, a bonus, my athletic prowess won me lots of friends. Only ever a partial release, as adolescence beckoned, girls considered me attractive and pestered me for a date. Aware it would, claiming I had a girlfriend rapidly put them off. Admittedly, a blissful conclusion to my schooldays, it was still fantastic when they ended and my asthma up and left me.
Longing to end the issue of my gender, it dominated my every thought. I could still tell no one. One teacher saw me in the police. She told me I had all the right qualities. To satisfy her, I contacted Greater Manchester Police sat the entrance exam and passed. As they pointed out a little snag, a bit too short, my height fell below the then required minimum. An inspector advised me to try again within the next two years. I gained an inch and fancied being a cop, but my sham birth certificate led me elsewhere. Lonelier than ever, I didn’t know how to handle Mum and Dad, then no good at telling secrets and nowhere to go for advice, I had no idea where to start. As weeks rolled into months, too scared to raise it with them directly, I yearned to stop living a lie. Tongue-tied, unsure what to do, albeit needing to do something, I bought a matching set of knickers and petticoat and draped them in full view on top of my bedside cabinet. Not then my regular gear, Mum was sure to enter my bedroom and ask questions. It didn’t take long. When I saw Mum examining the frilly evidence, at once raising her hopes, she asked me if I had a girlfriend. Not the result I had wished for and an awful moment, as Dad joined Mum in the living room, my mind in turmoil, I whispered
“In my heart and in my head, I am a girl.”
As I revealed my big secret, Dad looked stunned and Mum crying. I wished none of it were happening. Agreeable to any suggestion, I visited the doctor and asked him about counselling. Reckoning me a sensible type and thinking me joking, a wit, he recommended
“Why not join the army – try the Middlesex regiment.”
“Its no joke,” I told him, flat.
I hated the idea of seeing a psychiatrist. Not my head, my body needed mending. Hoping that no one could see me as I skulked
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into an outpatient clinic, making it worse, as he approached me, about 60, short and plump, sporting a goatee and red bow-tie, his classically mad manifestation urged me to run away. Too late, the professor led me into a book-lined consulting room.
Taking a seat and a deep breath as I faced the stigma, it felt even worse than I had reckoned. Not ready for his dreadful grilling, as shame engulfed me. I so wanted to be normal until he confused me by asking what that was. As he went on about sex, begging for mercy and reminding him then only 16, I had never experienced it. Having none of that, he argued
“You must have thought about it?”
Shy and shameful, confessing maybe I dreamt about it sometimes, quickly adding that my mind seldom dwelt upon it, he enquired if I saw myself in my dreams having sex with a man or a with a woman
“A man of course” I told him, blushing.
“That could be it” he rejoined “Are you afraid to admit to being homosexual?”
“I’m not that way!” I screamed “In my dreams, my body’s female.”
He wondered if I thought women enjoyed easier lives than men. I smiled, admitting his enquiry amused me. I explained to him that after listening to Mum’s tales and relating to him a sample of her harsh experiences, it demolished his theory. Unmoved, he asked me if I wanted to become a woman so that I could have sex like in my dreams. His question upset me, I retorted
“It’s not like that!” losing my patience “I don’t want to become a woman, I am a woman – that’s why I dream of sex with men.”
“What can I do for you?” he relented.
“I want you to let me have surgery.” I begged.
“Do you think I can make you into a woman?” he responded.
“You can’t make me into anything” exasperated, I told him, “I am what I am.”
“What’s that?” he quizzed.
Explaining I felt trapped and asserting nobody seemed to want to understand, in those days, uninformed folk often made cruel jokes about people like me. I admitted it made me want to cry. Those who thought they knew, blamed a weak father or doting mother, in my case, that premise absurd. I argued that my awareness of my sexual identity felt entirely natural and so must be rooted in some sort of physical anomaly. In response, he warned me
“You can’t change your sex.”
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“I don’t want to do that” fed up, I wailed, “Don’t you understand, my sex is female, every thought, feeling, emotion inside me is female – please help me.”
Only a test, finished winding me up, he called my problem Gender Dysphoria. I had to see a specialist about endocrine glands. They control the hormones that dictate sexual desires. We met not long after and I had found a friend. At once telling me that he had seen the score for my head test, an endocrinologist, he began
“I think you have a female brain.”
“Are you saying I’m not mad, this is the work of nature?” I probed.
Needing him to reassure the child inside of me that I was no freak. As he comforted me, the specialist asserted
“My theory’s based on professional experience alone, I need you to undergo tests, though I’m sure I’m right.”
Two weeks later and the hospital sent for me. The endocrinologist had warned me it would take a week to complete all the tests. As I packed a case, feeling certain that all my woes would soon be over, longing to live and be me, to end the shame, perhaps even to love. My childhood had taken its toll. I had survived an existence of repression. My anguish made worse by bullies, more than ever, I needed Mum and Dad to feel proud of me. As Dad drove me in his car to the hospital, no sooner had I unpacked than he had to leave. As a junior doctor drew blood from my arm, a minute more and a nurse sped me to cardiology. As the same nurse whisked me off to more departments for more tests, I queried
“Is it going to be like this all week?”
“I’ve never known anything like it,” confessed the nurse.
As the day wore on, the same nurse took me to more departments for more tests. Eventually, back on the ward again, another junior doctor told me to go home. Not bargaining for that, I protested
“But I’m supposed to be here for a week.”
“Usually it does take a week,” he explained.
Raining when I left the hospital, but not far and electing to walk home, I prayed that the body test results beyond all doubt proved me female. Deep down, I knew they must, there could be no other outcome. However, losing weight before the endocrinologist sent for me, if the results failed to yield a problem, I feared it must suggest me mad after all. On edge, as I took a lonely seat before him, his face expressionless, as he opened my bulky file sat on his desktop, decisive, the specialist told me
“Begin your life as a woman.” A smile, he added, “My theory’s proven. You have a female brain. I’ll write to your doctor and ask him to prescribe œstrogen.”
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The verdict in my favour, yet only punishment came next. As we talked it over, gravely, he warned me that I must face many more problems. Few people then wanted to understand. Unless I tread gingerly, ridicule, maybe more beatings up would be my bag. This lady not for turning back, he directed
“You must begin hormone therapy at once.”
“When do you think I’ll have a date for an operation?” I probed.
“Left to me I would recommend surgery in six months” he added ”Its not up to me alone.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him, expecting bad news.
“You must convince a psychiatrist that you’re ready for surgery” he added “It means you’ll have to live and work as a woman for at least two years before you can gain an operation.”
At least happy about the hormones, not entirely alone, as I broke the news to Dad, he supported me. Mum remained obstinate. I had swapped doctors, the joker had died and hoping for empathy, I visited my new doctor. At once, he handed me a prescription for my precious œstrogen. A gregarious guy, describing himself as a psychosexual analyst, he found my case immensely interesting. Believing I had found another friend and promptly asking him if he reckoned that he could help me get an operation, nodding his head, he told me
“Yes I do, but there’s something you don’t understand.”
“What’s that?” I quizzed, anxious.
Asserting that I was still only a teenager, he told me even after two years, I would find it hard to convince a surgeon that I was old enough to know my own mind. Advising me to leave it with him, he promised to look into it and asked me when did I plan to begin my new life. Downcast, I explained Mum refused to accept my plans.
“Try taking one step at a time” he counselled “For now take your prescription to the pharmacist, do let me know if you have any problems with it.”
The prescription symbolised my freedom. Eager and I offered the doctor my heartfelt thanks before racing to the nearest chemist. The pharmacist about to depart into the back of the shop with it, pausing to glance at the prescription and frowning, he queried
”Are you sure this is for you – it’s for a woman!”
“Then it is for me,” I confirmed, bold and smiling.
Faced by a life-changing decision, I yearned for release, but a huge step, best taken with least hassle, it would be simple if only Mum agreed to move house I could avoid people who knew. Dad willing, Mum refused even to discuss it. Reflecting upon her words and
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the midwife right I didn’t want to be born. The notion upset me. Compelled to look at gaining a job, I hoped to save enough money to raise a deposit on a flat. A local Careers Officer found me a post he thought ideal. I knew next to zilch about accountancy, however, once at the interview, my new boss shared Mum’s judgment and insisted I had the makings of a good accountant. As more weeks passed, I didn’t want this sort of reckoning.
Mum discounted medical results and insisted that my new career would help me grow out of my desire to be a woman. As Mum deluded herself, clinging to the notion mine was a teenage whim, she believed I would change my mind when I had a quality career, steady girlfriend and started thinking about children. However, as the œstrogen kicked in, my instincts made me feel more desperate to break free. I told the doctor
“I’ve got breasts, my skin’s smooth and soft.”
As he examined me, only ever slim, more shape now and perking me up, the doctor told me I had a female frame. Then he spoilt it by asking me why I had not adopted the female role. Reminding him that Mum remained an obstacle and as I outlined to him her hostility, he wondered why didn’t I just leave home. I explained to him then only an articled clerk, until qualified, I would earn only peanuts. He admitted concerns about the length of time I would need to wait for surgery. I didn’t want to know, but demanded
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think surgeons will operate until you’re 30,” he predicted.
“It means ten more years of my life wasted” in despair and I cried “Can I have the operation in another country – will they help me sooner?”
Unveiling he had heard many horror stories, he warned me that he believed I would regret it. As my chin dropped, trying to offer me encouragement, he told me it bought me more time to gain my independence and then there would be nothing to stop me. As he endeavoured to raise me from my melancholy, I asked him what in the meantime should I do about relationships. He counselled me to focus on a career first. Aware he meant well and smiling, I told him
“You sound like my Mum now.”
“You’re young, you want everything now. I’m afraid you’ll find life isn’t like that,” he warned me.
Striving to remain positive, I needed a career, which might help me through the next decade. Accountancy not me and life no better at home, useless arguing with her, Mum had convinced herself that she must have feminised me. As we fell out, Mum adamantly refused to accept that my problem was no one’s fault.
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Nowadays, science has proven nurture plays absolutely no part in establishing gender. The fallacy that we learn how to be a girl or boy during upbringing has prevailed too many years. The truth poles apart, like everyone else, my sex decided in the womb and people like me born not made. The Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanner established gender by taking images of the ring-shaped limbic system sitting in the centre of the brain, at its nucleus, the amygdala, the size of an almond and in essence, the heart of all human emotion. As an MRI scan generated an image of my amygdala’s rings, measuring the extent of their span determined my sex and die-cast me female. Alas, it made no difference to Mum. Before unveiling to her my intent, needing an ally, I sought military counsel.
Never glorying in it, Dad had told me only bits about his war. A firearms expert and crack sniper, he had deployed with the fabled Long Range Desert Group, a forerunner to the Special Air Service. Not so much his tales of Rommel and the Afrika Korps, which motivated me, it was the potent imagery, infinite space and rolling golden contours, the mysterious Bedouin, Lawrence of Arabia, I ached for it. Seductive, the child inside me craved the Middle East and as a Jew, the Arab world profoundly intrigued me.
Seizing my chance, I asked Dad if we could talk. I began by telling him that no surgeon would operate on me until I reached 30 and what did I do until then? Dad confessed that he had left home to join the army. Hastily, he added that he wasn’t suggesting I run away, urging me not to, he stressed that I had to think of Mum, it would devastate her. I assured him that the professor had warned me against it. Indeed, he had unveiled that many people like me did run away, only to end up on the game begging for the next fix. I had never deserted my problems, but with Mum always going on about me finding a girlfriend and getting married, claustrophobic, I explained to Dad there seemed no alternative to fleeing the nest.
“Its your life,” he concurred, “I only want to help. I’ll talk to your Mum again.”
Reckoning I had let him and Mum down, I argued that nothing he could say would make me feel different. Owning up, as I outlined my plight, feeling trapped and needing urgent escape, desperate to relieve my torment and yearning to prove myself. I believed that the stigma had made me appear inferior. Intent on dispelling such beliefs, I craved for something out of the ordinary. A nine-to-five desk job was no good to me.
“What do you want to do?” quizzed Dad.
“I want to live!” I cried, “Yet, stuck in my body, it looks like I’ll have to face the next ten years in prison” a sigh, “Well that’s what I believe it’ll feel like.”
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While the professor might reason that like others in my position, I sought to hide myself in a uniform until I had had my operation. For me, no truth in that, I didn’t wish to hide, like Dad, wanting something exciting and worthwhile, a career that would stretch me. An occupation that might alleviate my sense of incarceration and make me feel that despite my physical anomaly, it remained possible for me to get a life. Joining the army or the police would do it for me, but they wouldn’t have me, not with my body, or so I reckoned then.
“Who knows?” I suggested, “Maybe me wanting to be a soldier’s in the blood, it seems I can dream, but can’t emulate you.”
“No such word as can’t” snapped Dad, “You’re too wrapped up in yourself,” he argued “Oh I understand why, you need to refocus, you’ll have to look at another career.”
Fighting my corner, I told him that it wouldn’t be easy for me to get any job. What did I tell employers, for sure not the truth, no one would have me, I argued that they didn’t accept folk like me and more than rebellious, I wasn’t about to conform for them. I had endured all that at school. It was so unfair, admittedly, feeling sorry for myself, branded a reject and none of it my fault. I begged Dad
“Can’t your friends help?”
“What do you mean?” he responded, cagey.
Contending I didn’t believe that the gentlemen who circumspectly visited our home for little conspiratorial chats behind closed doors were just ‘friends from the office’, as he claimed, I reminded Dad that he had taken me to his place of work. I had met most of his colleagues. Mine still a wild assumption and admittedly afraid that he would laugh at me, faltering, I alleged
“Knowing you, they’re from the Mossad – now I could get to grips with that!”
Making me feel stupid, as he chuckled, I cringed. Insisting that my deduction was pure fantasy even if he could help and trying hard to convince me, Dad persevered that was nonsense, he argued that my dream was too dangerous. Refusing no for an answer, I put him on the spot and asked
“Do you want me to give up…you and Mum never did...Kathy never did.”
A bit mean, I had put him under intense pressure. No longer his decision and from this point on, he would share no blame. Dad doubted my theory about it being in the blood and recalled that my paternal grandfather had claimed he was a pacifist. Admitting that he felt he still had to do something. As he blamed himself for occasionally living in the past and feeding my imagination with
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colourful tales of El Alamein, then defensive, Dad declared that he had never expected me to want to be a soldier.
“I can’t help it,” I admitted, “Anyhow, it’s academic, I want the impossible.”
Against his better instinct and Dad promised to try and help me. I never knew what he used to talk about with his strange friends during their irregular visits and to be honest it wasn’t really their meetings, which first drew my curiosity. One day, upon finding his war medals, I asked Dad what had he done to win the big silver one, sheepish, the old Desert Rat reluctantly responded
“Nothing, everyone got one…it’s just that, well…it means a lot to me.”
It was the Palestine Campaign Medal. Long ago, Dad related to me a story, which had inspired my soul. As I recalled the tale, it took place in Palestine during the Second World War in the days when Whitehall directed the British Army to stop Jewish refugees from landing on the beaches. Seeking sanctuary from Nazi tyranny, as thousands of Jews endeavoured to bypass the blockade, for sure no dilemma for him, Dad looked the other way. As his fellow Jews entered their promised homeland, effectively, Dad had granted them their freedom.
Indeed not pride, the medal personified tangible memories, never forgotten old pals. Dad’s friends included people responsible for founding Israel. It gave me ideas. I suspected that some of them could be spooks. As I speculated, Dad’s job could have proved valuable to them. He had access to chemicals and their formulae.
Meanwhile, as Dad held his chat with Mum, he mentioned to her the prospect of another visit from his pals. Curbing her doubts, he suggested they might alter my blueprint for the future. As Mum relented, not long after, Dad let two men into the house. Wearing a snazzy blue blazer and a real character, the first man sported a full head of silver hair, aged perhaps 60, he called himself Moshe. As he removed his Homburg, swarthy, around 45, his tall chum easily doubled for a rabbi. An elegant lounge suit, it matched his full black beard. Both men hid their heads under yarmulkes. As Mum joined us in the lounge, once seated and the extraordinary meeting underway and Moshe’s piercing blue eyes twinkling, he reassured me
“You are wrong to interpret your gender identity as a handicap” gladly willing to be converted, he insisted “The Almighty makes no mistakes, everybody possesses unique talent, too often it remains dormant, at other times, learning awakens it.” Persuasive and he argued “You have lived and relied on your capacity, yours is a natural gift – an asset and rare!” Pausing a moment, allowing his wisdom to sink in, he concluded, “Israel offers you a wonderful prospect to begin your life “
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And the nuns had thought me a dunce. His pitch truly knockout and like Dad, a charmer, Moshe had made a big impression on me. As he encouraged me to talk about it, no longer wrapped in shame and recounting my ordeals, aware that they were listening to my commentary, I reckoned that it might help Mum and Dad understand. Summing up and boldly unveiling that I knew myself to be a girl, at least from the age of 3-years, forced to hide and conform, I insisted that once let free as a woman then I could be anyone that I wanted to be.
“It must have been a hard struggle. How did you cope?” enquired the beard.
“I learned to pretend,” I responded “I did it because I had to, I used to watch boys in the playground and copy their behaviour. It didn’t feel right, but I had no choice, I had to appear to be what everyone else considered normal.”
“Did no one suspect that you were, eh…different?” probed Moshe, delicately.
“No one knew my secret.” I told him self-assuredly, “Until I felt ready to tell them.”
Employing more of his charisma, as Moshe asked her to leave us alone in the room, Mum knew only that Dad had told her his pals might advance my career prospects. Unwilling to make a move, Mum looked very put out until once more, Moshe reassured her that it was for the benefit of my future and taking it on the chin, when Mum left us to the plot, it soon thickened. Unlike now, in those days, spy agencies didn’t advertise in newspapers for new recruits. Moshe revealed
“We think you were born to join the secret service.”
I had spent all my formative years practising and sure could keep a secret. This was the reckoning. Excited, I had always wanted to be a spy, though, beyond my reach, no university education only common sense, I had had to accept the British wouldn’t have me. Facing a new obstacle, leaving me perplexed, Moshe divulged
“Initially, you must join the Israel Defence Force – the tzahal.”
“The army!” I yelled, feeling deeply shocked. No wonder Moshe had wanted Mum out of the way, “I can’t join any army.”
“Hear me out” he demanded, chuckling “Let me explain, your father’s told me all about your dream. Israel is a small nation surrounded by dangerous frontiers, a land founded and defended by not only men, but women…”
As the penny dropped, it felt like I was dreaming now. Still not sure, I had to verify it and ask them
“You want me to join the IDF as a woman?”
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“Its why we’re here” unveiled Moshe, “Its your big chance to prove yourself, to be assessed for the secret service. If you do well with the IDF, there’s little doubt that eventually, the Mossad will want you.”
“We can make good use of your British ID,” explained the beard, fervently.
“When you join us, you’ll claim you’ve signed the necessary papers and appear to be just another British Jew emigrating to Israel. We’ll report our findings to the relevant people,” he promised, “We can’t give you guarantees, but we’ll try hard to gain a result.”
Well surreal, surviving my isolation and confinement, as freedom beckoned, it felt most unexpected. Lawrence had once assumed romantic Arab garb, though similar to his life, mine still full of Eastern promise. Even as my thoughts raced, well certain and unable to resist. I had to ask them if they were from the Mossad.
“We are all the children of God’s pasture,” replied Moshe, going all cryptic on me.
Six weeks on and still no news, I felt seriously dejected, resigned to the notion that nothing would now happen. More hopeful, Dad told me that these things take time. My downer changed to joy. A note in the post advised me to make ready for a flight to Israel. My delight short-lived, as a serious snag surfaced, it threatened to halt my future, but there seemed no option except to apply for a passport by filling out a standard application. For me not an easy matter, the sex recorded upon that so-called birth certificate a lie it made me a target for malicious discrimination.
Problem solved, as Dad handed me a new passport, embossed upon its shiny cover sat the imposing crest of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Inside the passport, my own face staring up at me, and my sex recorded female, it was in the name ‘Ruth Mayer’. As Dad laughed at my uncertainty, suddenly serious, he told me
“Don’t let your mother see it, apart from all else it’ll only set her off worrying” he warned me. “Tell her you’ll pick up your passport at the airport.”
“But Dad” I told him “I was going to apply for a passport in my own name.”
”No questions” he directed sternly “Just use the name on the travel documents.”
“I’m in then, they’ve accepted me!” I whooped, all excited.
“They’ll want to ask you a few more questions in Israel first,” Dad cautioned me.
The El-Al ticket came later, its delay bought Dad more time to get me used to the idea of using false ID. I still needed clothes. My stuff unisex and all too easy to buy things through mail order, it
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resolved the immediate problem, but failed to address the real issue. Still a problem to buy the right togs and fed up, I mused
‘And you want to be a spy...’
One thing to sneak into a tiny empty shop to purchase two little bits of lingerie that I claimed were for my girlfriend, an altogether different matter to step into a city store and select several outfits for myself. Convinced the world must stop and stare, until only recently, my big secret and still then imprisoned in a sad era of bigotry, it remained a big deal. My mind made up, I found Mum with her feet up reading by a lamp and asked her if we could have a talk. As Mum folded her magazine, affecting I know, but honest, I began
“I know you dreamt my future would be very different, I know I’ve made you unhappy…I suppose I’m one of God’s mistakes.”
Unable to hold back the tears, as we forcefully embraced, Mum told me I was her flesh and blood, she gave birth to me. If there had been any mistake, it was hers in not accepting me. Another die cast as Mum insisted
“You’re perfect – you’re my daughter.”
As Mum expressed her concerns about me going to Israel, though she admired my pluck and understood the appeal. Confessing there was a time when she might have done the same, Mum knew that for me, Israel spelt release. Still worried about the danger it posed and I promised her to take care. We enjoyed a good cry and afterwards, feeling tons better, I had sparse notion about fashion, needing Mum’s help for that too, I made sure and asked her
“Did I hear you right, you’ll help me choose my things?”
“I want to see you dressed as a young lady,” said Mum, decisive.
Friends once more, as Mum took my measurements, within the week she joined me in the city intent on shopping. Back home and burdened with bulky shopping bags, eager to try on my new things about to dash upstairs, stopping me in my tracks, Mum ordered
“I want to see how you look in a skirt.”
As I dropped all the bags in my bedroom, a fresh dilemma, I had never before now worn women’s clothes. After long deliberation, I chose a simple skirt and blouse. Unlike some folk might suppose, my gender issues had nothing in common with transvestism or sexual stimulation. Like anyone else, for me, wearing appropriate attire simply identified me with my true sex.
For the first time about to step into knickers, a neat trick and a little manipulation convincingly feminised the appearance of that which didn’t belong. A source of immense pain, I have never liked talking about it and mercifully, the hormones had reduced it to nothing, whereas in contrast, my budding boobs filled the bra.
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Pleased with the mascara and having great fun, I tried a lipstick. On with the miniskirt and thrilled, my legs looked good in tights. Like a little girl with nice new clothes, enjoying myself, pleased that everything fitted so well. Released, my emotion spilling joyful tears, as I brushed my long curly hair a final check with the mirror – I had found me!
As Mum cried up the stairs and told me to get a move on, she had telegraphed my mounting trepidation. Fearful of rejection and summoning all my courage, I headed downstairs about to face the limelight. Pausing by the door and taking a deep breath before slowly turning the handle, I entered the stage. My audience meant everything. A shy début, unexpectedly bursting with self-belief, a big smile and cheeky, I asked them
“Well, what do you think?”
“Give us a twirl ” directed Mum, well pleased, she told me “You’ve got nice legs, better than mine.”
“Well Dad, what do you think?” I demanded.
“You look bloody marvellous!” he enthused, grinning broadly.
Free at last. Losing no time making my first public appearance as me, even so taking care to avoid neighbours, I paid another visit to the city. I didn’t need to be a bundle of nerves in Israel and taking time out and registering achievements to bolster my confidence, I homed in on the cosmetics at Boots. Making my purchases and needing to hurry or I would be late for the hairdressers, they say blonds have more fun and I wanted plenty. As my roots changed colour, my long tresses needed a trim for the army. I loved my new hairstyle and after a trip to the ladies, my childhood misery now behind me.
Dad not far behind, Mum tearful, 1974 and all grown up, flying, my life belatedly taking off and on another planet I witnessed the sand. As everyone clapped, the plane gently touched down at Ben Gurion. Except for childhood summer holidays in Wales, this was my first venture outside England.
As I disembarked from the plane, my head still somewhere in the clouds and lost in the terminal until I found a prominent sign, it proclaimed Welcome to Israel.
Much like student refugees off campus, a youthful denim-clad pair approached me. A baseball cap struggled to hide his perm. An uninspiring greeting, appearing bored, as the young guy asked me for my name
“Ruth Mayer” I responded.
“The Defence Department sent us to meet you,” said the likewise young woman, chewing gum.
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By no means chatty they ferried me by car to a modest apartment in Tel Aviv. They warned me not to leave the flat. Peeved, I had to save the bucket, spade and saucy postcards for another time and instead spent all day watching telly, at least the food tasted good.
Next morning, two men in black called to quiz me. Skipping the introductions, they ardently promised me that all my big secrets would remain hush-hush and much like I imagined tabloid hacks might do it, as they dug for dirt, my grilling deeply intrusive and protracted. As days flashed by, I exposed my personal habits and still immature political beliefs. Moshe right, a natural in my new role, questions done they expressed their surprise, delighting me, my interrogators could scant believe I had only just begun my new life.
Two weeks on and the refugees from Ben Gurion resurfaced. They told me to pack and taking a trip, we returned to the airport. Hard to contain my excitement, we boarded a helicopter. Spoiling my fun, once airborne, they forced me to wear a hood over my head. A short flight, as we descended, pleased to discard the hood, we had landed at a lively military base. Leaving the aircraft, they led me to a mean cluster of concrete buildings. Fuelled by my dream, quite unaware of their drabness, the blocks served as utilitarian offices.
As we entered one of the buildings, my escort led me into an office. I had seen them in films and thrilled, but trying hard not to show it, wanting to appear all grown up. As my escort departed, I faced a uniformed commanding officer. As he gestured, taking a pew before him, like I had read in the novels, a smile softened his rugged features. My latest hero, as his slender finger pointed to a busy pile of papers strewn atop of his enormous desk, wasting no time, he began by revealing that the messy documents before him represented everything compiled on me since my entry into Israel. He asked me if I knew what I was letting myself in for. Finding my voice
“I know I’ll need to prove myself,” I told me.
“If you pass basic training,” he pledged, not appearing optimistic, “You might succeed, I wish you well, but must warn you this army is like no other.”
As my future began to take shape, the buzz it gave me began to lose its initial impact. I had a great deal on my mind during the flight back to England. In an effort to quell her fears, doing as they bid, upon arriving home, I told Mum that I had won a job with the Defence Department. At least it pleased Dad, my news made Mum worse. No longer bothered about my prospects, she hated the idea of me leaving home. Dad tried to reassure her it was for the best, having none of that as Mum begged me think again, our farewells proved very tearful.
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During my second flight to Israel, harbouring plenty of self-doubt, so far I had worn a brave face and blithely agreed to everything. Deep down and my knees knocking, on the principle that you only live once, forgive me, but not into politics and Palestine then, I rallied at the prospect of release and adventure.
Back at Ben Gurion and I met the same dubious pair as before. This time, maybe Israel felt less strange, not yet home, as I hoped that might come later, the car whisked me to an airfield where another helicopter awaited. Helping my confidence, no hood this time and soon landing at the same base as before, an Officer’s Academy, a friendly female cadet marched me to a small garrison and left me to unpack. No time to stick up any posters in my tiny quarters, another cadet warned me that the C/O wanted a word. Back before him, this time he handed me loads of paper to sign. A formality, the medics gave me another going over. Passed fit, my sexual status meant that for now, forced to get my kicks in other ways, I would have to stay like a virgin. As a future spy, at least it ruled me out of sex traps and when you think about it, all part of what Moshe meant about me being an asset.
When I ventured to the stores to collect all my kit, the best part of the induction, stripped of my civilian garb and dressed now like everyone else, it felt much more like I belonged. Admittedly, there was some truth in what the shrink had said about me hiding in a uniform. As the mechanism to my new life piled up on a bench before me, at odds with psychiatric opinion, determined to create a new me, as my training began, no hiding now.
No means the only rookie, Jewish volunteers had dropped in from all points of the globe. Still relatively recent, the Yom Kippur War had wreaked heavy losses. Beset by the road before me, this was the morning after and wondering what had I done was my dream worth it? No one called us soldiers until we fought basic training and earned it. As I faced my first assault course, my newfound self-belief threatened full-scale mutiny.
As I tangled with clinging nets, slippery ropes, oozing slime and all the mouthy instructors jeering at my efforts, it soon got very much worse. Scrambling soaring walls with an enormous weight on my back, they had fed my load with bricks. Limbs paining, it raised my capacity for clangers making me look and feel stupid. Blazing, at least nowadays, I swore like a trooper. Toppling off greasy logs and plunging headfirst into putrid ditches and the first war with me, no soft soap here, tough bastards had their fun as I wallowed in stinking mud. Cursing them, as I crawled out of the mire, adrenaline fuelled my flagging muscles.
As more time passed and for sure no longer wrapped in me, route marches in the Negev under a scorching sun served to remind me of Dad’s tales. As I saluted the bastards as real soldiers grown up into a real woman now if only they knew, Mum and Dad might
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feel proud of me. Bursting with strength and fitness, these days, I too scorned the efforts of the latest batch of virgin soldiers.
Not the conclusion to my training it never ended. No time for parade, practising communications, map reading, martial arts and first aid, always so much more to do and handling firearms with deep respect, on the range, I tried a 5.56mm Galil assault rifle. It looked like an American M16, crossbred with a Russian AK-47. I had to try out the ubiquitous 9mm Uzi sub-machinegun, still only a teenager, it felt exhilarating, once I had experienced the killing fields, then I would question the ethos.
As the daunting parachutist course began, no easy job visualising me leaping out of a plane all that way up there. As I stared, my head no longer in the clouds, yet the sky represented ultimate freedom. If I failed now, here it ended. I needed no greater spur. A gruelling ordeal, it demanded huge commitment. As I faced a severe test of strength and character and even worse assault courses, it had all the spills, but not the thrilling life that I had wished for and many punishing weeks later, battling icy cold and searing heat, willing myself on and a survivor much like Mum, no cosseted beginning to life as a woman for me.
Next morning, I jumped into a jeep with my instructor. Taking a new route out of camp, we headed for a matching pair of lofty scaffold pillars. They resembled electricity pylons, standing just as tall and they sure shocked me. Confronting the challenge of the forbidding confidence test, gulping as I stared up at them, linked together by slender steel parallel bars forming a flimsy bridge, narrow planks fashioned crude platforms at the very top of each pillar. As my craggy mentor ordered me climb and shuffle across them, his hot breath on my neck, he pursued me as we scaled a ladder together.
At the summit, adrenaline pumping maybe, still feeling extremely vulnerable. My belly in knots as we surveyed the view from the platform and from up here the gap looked at least miles wide any fall must end me, aware of my fearful thoughts, as the instructor goaded, using up all his taunts bar one, emphatic, he screamed
“Women can’t do it!”
“Fuck off!” that told him.
So, this was a lads’ army? Gusting winds threatened to throw me, scrambling to the winning post, I cried out
“What can’t women do?”
“You’ve done nothing yet!” he warned me.
Wiping my snigger, he urged me to straddle the bars again. Aware that I had just done it, no problem, I had a second go and once accomplished, he enquired
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“How do you feel now?”
“Awesome!” I yelled, smirking.
“Do it again!” he barked “Only this time stick your arse in the air and touch your toes.”
I thought he was joking, but an evil repute to uphold he meant it. Avoiding looking down, halfway across, demons seized my bottle. Denying them, I bent touching my boots. It seemed an age, but I held the rude pose. A butt for more of his ribald jokes before he would let me go, I saw the funny side too and giggled nervously. As I earned my reward and reached the far end, he screamed
“Do it again!”
The sequel much less terrifying, no more demons now and smug, I enquired
“Would you like me to do it again?”
As the hard bit began, swapping scenery, I found myself posted to a secret airbase in the desert. Joining more wannabe airborne personnel, all sexes mostly junior officers, NCOs, and more cadets like me, keen to get our first jump done. Before then, we had to study a myriad of manuals and attend limitless lectures banging on about drill and safety. Not just about learning how to jump, we already did that effectively on the ground. Faced now by a critical test of aptitude, though it bored us, going on and on about method and procedure, we carved it into our soul until innate.
More exciting now, the course moved into a cavernous aircraft hangar where we all huddled about a large fuselage. The colossal transport plane ideal for drops, it had dropped off a beleaguered Hercules C-130. As he held court, pleased with himself, a smug corporal told us how to take a jump. Queuing for our go, me back at school in the playground, one big difference, this time with my mates. We all leapt from the dummy must be hundreds of times. A soft landing and we touched down on spongy rubber mats placed below. Strapped into a sturdy harness ready to jump from height, ankles tight together and arms corpselike resting across a reserve ‘chute as more, weeks passed, eagle-eyed observers weighed up all we did until perfect.
The smirking corporal called it an aircraft-exit trainer. Taller than the spindly pylons, which we had encountered earlier, the strange tower confronting us much like a gibbet. Its infamy went before it. Meant to simulate slipstream, we loathed it. As a tailback quickly formed at the top of the scaffold, nobody fancied a go. Strapped into another harness, one-by-one, hanging by slender cable from the wrong end of a gantry, we dangled like hapless spiders in mid-air, tossed by wicked winds, scooped up, just as sudden plunging and no volunteers for a second go.
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Finally, the day arrived when we could jump for real and everyone wound up as we entered the hangar and slipped into American T-10 harnesses. On edge, legs leaden and fearfully we ventured forth and scrambled aboard a Hercules on the tarmac.
As the roar increased, launching us into a cloudless sky, a young female NCO instructor broke the nervous silence and informed us that we had perfect weather. It did nothing to shift our unease. Ashen-faced as an eager dispatcher hovered by a gaping porthole we circled above our drop zone. As I joined a fast diminishing line, the green bulb flickering and rushing air swept across my face. My turn and frozen to the spot, a fierce shove sent me flying.
Down and down to my relief a sharp tug. As the canopy blossomed end of drill, floating at 300m we had only half a minute, but what freedom.
Above them only sky, Israel and Palestine, stunning, one day it might always be this peaceful.
Absorbing shock through legs bent at the knee and as the ground rushed up, a gentle landing, fifteen more like it and stick out your chest for Wings Parade everyone proud of us. Ending my months at the Academy, I was in the army now.
© COPYRIGHT OLIVIA FRANK ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
As I read the letter one paragraph summed me up.
‘Dear Olivia, You are an ordinary member of the public with an extraordinary story to tell. Your strength is an unusual personal life, soldiering, spying, the Mossad, the Serious Fraud Office, MI5 and MI6. It is not like any of the other books, a variety unique to you, it could have a very wide appeal to a much wider readership – not only to those interested in the more exclusive world of espionage, but also to the ordinary woman/man in the street. The widest possible readership is essential. It has something for everyone.
Once again, your very good friend, Peter.’
A Cook Reporter, indeed, Roger’s top man, Salk must be right, so began the reckoning.
“I don’t think this baby wants to be born...”
Since Mum told me what she had said, the midwife’s observation has haunted me. Mine an awkward breech birth, made worse, the umbilical cord tried to strangle me. Great start, 1956 and doomed on my début, alas, it wasn’t long before life rejected me.
Two years earlier, after an extensive stint of exemplary service and Dad had retired from the British Army. He had served a crack regiment and saw action in Afghanistan, India, the Middle East as well as North Africa during the Second World War. His exciting covert missions in the desert inspired me. Wounded for his pains, upon leaving the services, not ready for Civvie Street and missing his military friends, Dad soon felt lonely. Mum toiled as a sewing machinist, very down-to-earth and independent, she survived in a poky two-up-two-down in the once grimy heart of Manchester. As Mum’s willpower seduced Dad, a classic love at first sight and a fine romance evolved into a long affair. Mum was 28 and Dad aged 40 when they married and twelve months later, when I came to be, Mum stayed home for me. As Dad joined the management team at a local firm, although he missed his former freedom, time to settle down and not long after in 1960, Mum gave birth at home to Kathryn.
The first of many tragic experiences, they have plagued me. When a doctor saw the awful bulging sac scarring her spine, he called it spina bifida. Paralysed below the waist, Kathy also had kidney damage. Taking time out to tell me, I was barely four when Mum and Dad pledged
“We must all love Kathy just a little bit more, her time with us may be short.”
Our house stood on a busy road in Belle Vue Street. West Gorton a poverty-stricken area, far from an ideal environment to bring up
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children. As big lorries with their foul fumes thundered past our door, unable to open windows and keen to escape, Dad bought a BSA motorcycle and sidecar. It allowed him to take us all to the countryside.
A keen angler, as Dad fastened all of his fishing tackle onto the motorbike, a tight squeeze in the sidecar, I had to perch on Mum’s knee as we clung onto Kathy’s carrycot. A few weeks on, hardly able to contain my excitement, Dad had bought a small caravan in a farmer’s field at Pott Shrigley in Cheshire, near his favourite fishing spot at picturesque Poynton pool. Rural life opened up my heart to another world. I loved feeding hungry farmyard chickens, watching spellbound when the farmer’s wife milked all the cows. Rustic beauty and rippling rivers inspired within me a profound love of nature, if only this idyll would never end. Regrettably, as each weekend closed, Dad always returned us all home.
When Kathy returned to hospital, Dad exchanged the motorbike for a Standard Vanguard. He needed a large car to convey all the medical bits and bobs fixed to Kathy’s delicate body. As I sat on the backseat by her carrycot and gently squeezed her tiny hand, gazing at her, so pretty, big brown eyes and stubborn chin, Kathy always a cheerful little girl. Nothing gave me greater joy than making her giggle, but nowadays she tired quickly. Mum took me to see her in the hospital nearly every day, as she fell weaker, Mum asked the doctors to let her baby return home. They said no, but they didn’t know Mum and Kathy came home.
As Mum and Dad struggled through a hospital car park, my heart in my mouth in case they dropped anything. Wishing that I could help, it was hard to manage the complicated tubes and bottles comprising Kathy’s lifeline, it made me wonder why watching nurses failed to lend a hand. As she responded to our love, gaining weight, rosy colour soon returned to Kathy’ cheeks. Mum and Dad suspected foul play. They reckoned that the staff at the hospital had meant to let Kathy die. When they returned her to the ward, I remained in a corridor outside. Overhearing a scuffle, later on, I discovered that as she laid Kathy in her cot, one nurse had pushed Mum to the floor and snapped
“Why don’t you leave her in peace to die?”
Seriously upset, Mum and Dad had a word with the family doctor, he had Kathy transferred to Booth Hall Children’s Hospital where wonderful nursing staff showered her with care. It soon restored Kathy’s bubbly personality. It was hard to believe that she suffered constant pain. Amazing the medical staff and me how one so small could take so much, Kathy touched everyone. Several weeks more, Mum and Dad faced the truth, unless they consented to surgery, the doctors predicted that Kathy must die. Holding nothing back, one surgeon warned Mum and Dad that the operation was very risky and Kathy may not survive it. No option, as they signed the
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fateful form and as the surgeon prepared to operate, he told us it was best that we return home. Shortly, after we had retired to bed, a heavy knock on the front door soon got us up. As Mum and Dad tread gingerly downstairs, sneaking after them, as I watched from the stairs, a poignant scene unfolded. Reluctantly, Dad opened the door and let a sad-looking constable into the house. As he slowly removed his helmet, he didn’t want to be here. Doing his duty, the policeman told us
“I’m sorry…I’ve got bad news for you...”
Expecting the worst, it was still a shock. When the constable left the house, Mum broke down in floods of tears. Dad cried too. Only five, my initial taste of death, I wished it were my last. The sad event prepared me for what was to come and certain Kathy’s spirit could not be far away, whispering to her, I pledged
“I promise to be brave – just like you…”
Mum and Dad had to move from our little house in Manchester, it had lost its soul since Kathy’s death. During an awful winter in 1962, we ended up in a new house in the Derbyshire Peak District near the sinuous Snake Pass and bleak Pennine Moors. Dad took it slow in the treacherous snow and as the car reached a junction near Glossop, he took the road into Hadfield. In the midst of a swirling blizzard, as we helped the removal men unload all of our furniture from the van, a bitter struggle, but somehow, we got the job done.
An inside loo, no cockroaches here, they had terrified me. Now I could sleep with my bedroom light off. Difficult to keep the house warm, water pipes froze all the time and frightening blizzards an everyday thing, each morning, grabbing a shovel, I joined Mum and Dad and helped them dig the car out of yet more snow. We waited ages for a giant yellow snowplough to clear a path before Dad could reach his office in Manchester. Fully six months later and one far off peak still lay snow-capped.
Peculiar in their ways and we soon realised that local people didn’t take to townies. Several years later, when cult comedy The League of Gentlemen appeared on television, I don’t know if you know, they used Hadfield as their film location for wacky Royston Vasey. It reminded me of the modest gas-lit local shop up yonder brew. Stock stored specimen-like in huge jars on dust-encrusted shelves and lurking behind the austere counter, her sparse curls worn in a bun, four-foot nothing and severe black frock covering her ankles, going on ninety and shopkeeper Annie was truly a precious thing.
In their haste to leave Manchester, Mum and Dad had neglected the question of my schooling. Only six, I had already attended two schools. The teachers refused to let me mix with girls and press-ganged me to bond with boys, utterly unable to relate to them and isolated in my confusion, my birth certificate claimed me a boy,
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but according to my nature, I was very much a girl. Desperately lonely and warily watching them, longing to join the girls and for sure missing Kathy much more now, she had been my only friend. Secreted in my pocket, my fingers clutched a tiny doll that Kathy had loved. Sad I know; it was my only comfort. A few days on and a boy aged twelve ran up to me in the playground and punched me in the face and broke my nose. Mum led me to the local casualty where my nose bled again. As he attended to it, a doctor told Mum that I had been lucky? He explained that if the blood clot had not burst, I might have been dead by morning.
The education authorities let me try another school, I liked it no more than the last. My schooldays a woeful tale of misery, bullied and misunderstood and I reviled the abuse. Too young to raise my voice, each day hoping it would end, it got worse. No place else for me, I had to attend a Roman Catholic school. They said don’t tell them you’re Jewish. So, I went to church like the others, taking no part in the ritual. Really, they should have known better, as the nuns programmed the children and said Jews killed Christ, it has put me off religion. Like other kids, not fire, not brimstone, my fear the cane. Worshipped by the nuns they let fly with it for the least misdemeanour and honestly, not fair, they hit me too.
Scant fun in my life, while my peers raced from the classroom and joined their mates in the playground, off limits to me, I found a corner and watched them from a distance. At least, once home I had pets for pals, two delightful cats, and as I trekked across misty moors with them, a brace of dogs. I didn’t want it this way, my first ten years an ordeal. As I thought about the next, facing the question of me, inescapable, always on my mind, scared of anyone labelling me a freak, I prayed to the Almighty, unaware that, one day, surgery could release me. For now, I struggled on alone.
Aware Mum and Dad loved me I loved them too and never wished to hurt them. Growing more ashamed of my body, wanting them to feel proud of me and like Kathy, reckoning that I had been born handicapped. No war hero like Dad, unable to battle the world like Mum. It terrified me, how could I ever impress them? Would they reject me? An insatiable thirst for knowledge gave me real hope. Always pestering Mum and Dad, please buy me more. Armed with my books, I believed in a future.
One day, as I helped Mum with some small task in the kitchen, all of a sudden, as two blokes called out to us, we stared back at them through a window. Wearing overalls and sneaking a fag break as men do, while supposed to be painting the house next door, they caught Mum’s notice and cheeky, one chap appealed to her
“’Scuse me luv, send yer little girl out with a cuppa’, we’re dyin’ o’ thirst.”
- 5 -
Angry and Mum told them off. A mop of tiny black ringlets curled around my ears and before making them a brew, Mum told me I needed a haircut. Nonetheless, happy in heart, until now, I had believed everyone blind.
At the onset of my puberty, dreadful and too bad to be ordinary growing pains attacked my wrist and ankle joints. Sometimes, the pain so bad it made me scream. As my hurts worsened, Mum took me to see the doctor. He enquired if I had any other problems. I told him about the sickness, which chased the pain. Mystified, he fixed it for a consultant in Manchester to see me. However, he was equally perplexed. As I went back and forth to hospital, no one had an answer.
With my primary education concluded, Mum and Dad wanted me to take an 11+ exam and win a place at grammar school. As they fought the initiative, the nuns argued that my poor school record suggested it was a waste of time. Not easily put off, Mum and Dad insisted they knew best and as I sat the test, my success resulted in more friction. In the end, the nuns confessed they didn’t want me at a Catholic grammar due to my Hebrew faith. Fair enough, but the nearest Jewish school much too far away in Manchester, I ended up at a Catholic comprehensive in Glossop. I wanted to stay home and stick my nose in my books to give myself a real shot at life. I detested the new place. Within the year moving again, I ended up at an Anglican school just over the Cheshire border in Longdendale. Life no different there, once more, standing out as a loner, it didn’t take long for the bullies to get me. One-by-one, as I stood my ground and picked them off, I had learned that it was better to stand up and fight than be hurt.
At the start of my ‘teens Mum reckoned I had sufficient ability to settle into a professional occupation, she also believed I would buy a house, marry and father children. Conversely, viewing my future with trepidation, I fell victim to frightening asthma attacks. Mum took me to see the doctor again. He put down my asthma to bad nerves and asked me what was wrong. It presented a great chance for me to tell them the truth. It must destroy Mum and Dad. They had been through too much. Panicking and blaming bullies and my lame excuse prompted the doctor to quiz me
“Why are you bullied?”
Dumbstruck, in the end, the doctor recommended Mum and Dad should ask me what was wrong, but impossible to tell them, as the 70’s dawned, homesick, we failed to settle in the hills, returning to Manchester, we moved to Higher Crumpsall near the very hospital where I was born. My next school in Cheetham Hill decrepit, its bleak façade gave me the creeps. As my Jewish faith betrayed me once more, bullies set about me yet again. One week later, as I entered the playground, punching and kicking me about the head
- 6 -
and body, three big lads pushed me to the ground. Not yet fifteen and another year before I could leave school, Mum and Dad found me a place in Crumpsall. Its repute went before it, the headmaster of this school banned bullying and teachers had genuine interest in the children. Older than my years, serious by nature and one teacher described me perfect to dress up in top hat and tails, a starring role as Dr Barnardo in a drama and in front of Mum and Dad too. I loved acting. However, still ashamed of my body and I loathed undressing in front of anyone and sneaked off to avoid it. To my joy, this school boasted individual changing cubicles and all of a sudden into all sport, it gave me freedom of expression and showing off at football and cricket, a bonus, my athletic prowess won me lots of friends. Only ever a partial release, as adolescence beckoned, girls considered me attractive and pestered me for a date. Aware it would, claiming I had a girlfriend rapidly put them off. Admittedly, a blissful conclusion to my schooldays, it was still fantastic when they ended and my asthma up and left me.
Longing to end the issue of my gender, it dominated my every thought. I could still tell no one. One teacher saw me in the police. She told me I had all the right qualities. To satisfy her, I contacted Greater Manchester Police sat the entrance exam and passed. As they pointed out a little snag, a bit too short, my height fell below the then required minimum. An inspector advised me to try again within the next two years. I gained an inch and fancied being a cop, but my sham birth certificate led me elsewhere. Lonelier than ever, I didn’t know how to handle Mum and Dad, then no good at telling secrets and nowhere to go for advice, I had no idea where to start. As weeks rolled into months, too scared to raise it with them directly, I yearned to stop living a lie. Tongue-tied, unsure what to do, albeit needing to do something, I bought a matching set of knickers and petticoat and draped them in full view on top of my bedside cabinet. Not then my regular gear, Mum was sure to enter my bedroom and ask questions. It didn’t take long. When I saw Mum examining the frilly evidence, at once raising her hopes, she asked me if I had a girlfriend. Not the result I had wished for and an awful moment, as Dad joined Mum in the living room, my mind in turmoil, I whispered
“In my heart and in my head, I am a girl.”
As I revealed my big secret, Dad looked stunned and Mum crying. I wished none of it were happening. Agreeable to any suggestion, I visited the doctor and asked him about counselling. Reckoning me a sensible type and thinking me joking, a wit, he recommended
“Why not join the army – try the Middlesex regiment.”
“Its no joke,” I told him, flat.
I hated the idea of seeing a psychiatrist. Not my head, my body needed mending. Hoping that no one could see me as I skulked
- 7 -
into an outpatient clinic, making it worse, as he approached me, about 60, short and plump, sporting a goatee and red bow-tie, his classically mad manifestation urged me to run away. Too late, the professor led me into a book-lined consulting room.
Taking a seat and a deep breath as I faced the stigma, it felt even worse than I had reckoned. Not ready for his dreadful grilling, as shame engulfed me. I so wanted to be normal until he confused me by asking what that was. As he went on about sex, begging for mercy and reminding him then only 16, I had never experienced it. Having none of that, he argued
“You must have thought about it?”
Shy and shameful, confessing maybe I dreamt about it sometimes, quickly adding that my mind seldom dwelt upon it, he enquired if I saw myself in my dreams having sex with a man or a with a woman
“A man of course” I told him, blushing.
“That could be it” he rejoined “Are you afraid to admit to being homosexual?”
“I’m not that way!” I screamed “In my dreams, my body’s female.”
He wondered if I thought women enjoyed easier lives than men. I smiled, admitting his enquiry amused me. I explained to him that after listening to Mum’s tales and relating to him a sample of her harsh experiences, it demolished his theory. Unmoved, he asked me if I wanted to become a woman so that I could have sex like in my dreams. His question upset me, I retorted
“It’s not like that!” losing my patience “I don’t want to become a woman, I am a woman – that’s why I dream of sex with men.”
“What can I do for you?” he relented.
“I want you to let me have surgery.” I begged.
“Do you think I can make you into a woman?” he responded.
“You can’t make me into anything” exasperated, I told him, “I am what I am.”
“What’s that?” he quizzed.
Explaining I felt trapped and asserting nobody seemed to want to understand, in those days, uninformed folk often made cruel jokes about people like me. I admitted it made me want to cry. Those who thought they knew, blamed a weak father or doting mother, in my case, that premise absurd. I argued that my awareness of my sexual identity felt entirely natural and so must be rooted in some sort of physical anomaly. In response, he warned me
“You can’t change your sex.”
- 8 -
“I don’t want to do that” fed up, I wailed, “Don’t you understand, my sex is female, every thought, feeling, emotion inside me is female – please help me.”
Only a test, finished winding me up, he called my problem Gender Dysphoria. I had to see a specialist about endocrine glands. They control the hormones that dictate sexual desires. We met not long after and I had found a friend. At once telling me that he had seen the score for my head test, an endocrinologist, he began
“I think you have a female brain.”
“Are you saying I’m not mad, this is the work of nature?” I probed.
Needing him to reassure the child inside of me that I was no freak. As he comforted me, the specialist asserted
“My theory’s based on professional experience alone, I need you to undergo tests, though I’m sure I’m right.”
Two weeks later and the hospital sent for me. The endocrinologist had warned me it would take a week to complete all the tests. As I packed a case, feeling certain that all my woes would soon be over, longing to live and be me, to end the shame, perhaps even to love. My childhood had taken its toll. I had survived an existence of repression. My anguish made worse by bullies, more than ever, I needed Mum and Dad to feel proud of me. As Dad drove me in his car to the hospital, no sooner had I unpacked than he had to leave. As a junior doctor drew blood from my arm, a minute more and a nurse sped me to cardiology. As the same nurse whisked me off to more departments for more tests, I queried
“Is it going to be like this all week?”
“I’ve never known anything like it,” confessed the nurse.
As the day wore on, the same nurse took me to more departments for more tests. Eventually, back on the ward again, another junior doctor told me to go home. Not bargaining for that, I protested
“But I’m supposed to be here for a week.”
“Usually it does take a week,” he explained.
Raining when I left the hospital, but not far and electing to walk home, I prayed that the body test results beyond all doubt proved me female. Deep down, I knew they must, there could be no other outcome. However, losing weight before the endocrinologist sent for me, if the results failed to yield a problem, I feared it must suggest me mad after all. On edge, as I took a lonely seat before him, his face expressionless, as he opened my bulky file sat on his desktop, decisive, the specialist told me
“Begin your life as a woman.” A smile, he added, “My theory’s proven. You have a female brain. I’ll write to your doctor and ask him to prescribe œstrogen.”
- 9 -
The verdict in my favour, yet only punishment came next. As we talked it over, gravely, he warned me that I must face many more problems. Few people then wanted to understand. Unless I tread gingerly, ridicule, maybe more beatings up would be my bag. This lady not for turning back, he directed
“You must begin hormone therapy at once.”
“When do you think I’ll have a date for an operation?” I probed.
“Left to me I would recommend surgery in six months” he added ”Its not up to me alone.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him, expecting bad news.
“You must convince a psychiatrist that you’re ready for surgery” he added “It means you’ll have to live and work as a woman for at least two years before you can gain an operation.”
At least happy about the hormones, not entirely alone, as I broke the news to Dad, he supported me. Mum remained obstinate. I had swapped doctors, the joker had died and hoping for empathy, I visited my new doctor. At once, he handed me a prescription for my precious œstrogen. A gregarious guy, describing himself as a psychosexual analyst, he found my case immensely interesting. Believing I had found another friend and promptly asking him if he reckoned that he could help me get an operation, nodding his head, he told me
“Yes I do, but there’s something you don’t understand.”
“What’s that?” I quizzed, anxious.
Asserting that I was still only a teenager, he told me even after two years, I would find it hard to convince a surgeon that I was old enough to know my own mind. Advising me to leave it with him, he promised to look into it and asked me when did I plan to begin my new life. Downcast, I explained Mum refused to accept my plans.
“Try taking one step at a time” he counselled “For now take your prescription to the pharmacist, do let me know if you have any problems with it.”
The prescription symbolised my freedom. Eager and I offered the doctor my heartfelt thanks before racing to the nearest chemist. The pharmacist about to depart into the back of the shop with it, pausing to glance at the prescription and frowning, he queried
”Are you sure this is for you – it’s for a woman!”
“Then it is for me,” I confirmed, bold and smiling.
Faced by a life-changing decision, I yearned for release, but a huge step, best taken with least hassle, it would be simple if only Mum agreed to move house I could avoid people who knew. Dad willing, Mum refused even to discuss it. Reflecting upon her words and
- 10 -
the midwife right I didn’t want to be born. The notion upset me. Compelled to look at gaining a job, I hoped to save enough money to raise a deposit on a flat. A local Careers Officer found me a post he thought ideal. I knew next to zilch about accountancy, however, once at the interview, my new boss shared Mum’s judgment and insisted I had the makings of a good accountant. As more weeks passed, I didn’t want this sort of reckoning.
Mum discounted medical results and insisted that my new career would help me grow out of my desire to be a woman. As Mum deluded herself, clinging to the notion mine was a teenage whim, she believed I would change my mind when I had a quality career, steady girlfriend and started thinking about children. However, as the œstrogen kicked in, my instincts made me feel more desperate to break free. I told the doctor
“I’ve got breasts, my skin’s smooth and soft.”
As he examined me, only ever slim, more shape now and perking me up, the doctor told me I had a female frame. Then he spoilt it by asking me why I had not adopted the female role. Reminding him that Mum remained an obstacle and as I outlined to him her hostility, he wondered why didn’t I just leave home. I explained to him then only an articled clerk, until qualified, I would earn only peanuts. He admitted concerns about the length of time I would need to wait for surgery. I didn’t want to know, but demanded
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think surgeons will operate until you’re 30,” he predicted.
“It means ten more years of my life wasted” in despair and I cried “Can I have the operation in another country – will they help me sooner?”
Unveiling he had heard many horror stories, he warned me that he believed I would regret it. As my chin dropped, trying to offer me encouragement, he told me it bought me more time to gain my independence and then there would be nothing to stop me. As he endeavoured to raise me from my melancholy, I asked him what in the meantime should I do about relationships. He counselled me to focus on a career first. Aware he meant well and smiling, I told him
“You sound like my Mum now.”
“You’re young, you want everything now. I’m afraid you’ll find life isn’t like that,” he warned me.
Striving to remain positive, I needed a career, which might help me through the next decade. Accountancy not me and life no better at home, useless arguing with her, Mum had convinced herself that she must have feminised me. As we fell out, Mum adamantly refused to accept that my problem was no one’s fault.
- 11 -
Nowadays, science has proven nurture plays absolutely no part in establishing gender. The fallacy that we learn how to be a girl or boy during upbringing has prevailed too many years. The truth poles apart, like everyone else, my sex decided in the womb and people like me born not made. The Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanner established gender by taking images of the ring-shaped limbic system sitting in the centre of the brain, at its nucleus, the amygdala, the size of an almond and in essence, the heart of all human emotion. As an MRI scan generated an image of my amygdala’s rings, measuring the extent of their span determined my sex and die-cast me female. Alas, it made no difference to Mum. Before unveiling to her my intent, needing an ally, I sought military counsel.
Never glorying in it, Dad had told me only bits about his war. A firearms expert and crack sniper, he had deployed with the fabled Long Range Desert Group, a forerunner to the Special Air Service. Not so much his tales of Rommel and the Afrika Korps, which motivated me, it was the potent imagery, infinite space and rolling golden contours, the mysterious Bedouin, Lawrence of Arabia, I ached for it. Seductive, the child inside me craved the Middle East and as a Jew, the Arab world profoundly intrigued me.
Seizing my chance, I asked Dad if we could talk. I began by telling him that no surgeon would operate on me until I reached 30 and what did I do until then? Dad confessed that he had left home to join the army. Hastily, he added that he wasn’t suggesting I run away, urging me not to, he stressed that I had to think of Mum, it would devastate her. I assured him that the professor had warned me against it. Indeed, he had unveiled that many people like me did run away, only to end up on the game begging for the next fix. I had never deserted my problems, but with Mum always going on about me finding a girlfriend and getting married, claustrophobic, I explained to Dad there seemed no alternative to fleeing the nest.
“Its your life,” he concurred, “I only want to help. I’ll talk to your Mum again.”
Reckoning I had let him and Mum down, I argued that nothing he could say would make me feel different. Owning up, as I outlined my plight, feeling trapped and needing urgent escape, desperate to relieve my torment and yearning to prove myself. I believed that the stigma had made me appear inferior. Intent on dispelling such beliefs, I craved for something out of the ordinary. A nine-to-five desk job was no good to me.
“What do you want to do?” quizzed Dad.
“I want to live!” I cried, “Yet, stuck in my body, it looks like I’ll have to face the next ten years in prison” a sigh, “Well that’s what I believe it’ll feel like.”
- 12 -
While the professor might reason that like others in my position, I sought to hide myself in a uniform until I had had my operation. For me, no truth in that, I didn’t wish to hide, like Dad, wanting something exciting and worthwhile, a career that would stretch me. An occupation that might alleviate my sense of incarceration and make me feel that despite my physical anomaly, it remained possible for me to get a life. Joining the army or the police would do it for me, but they wouldn’t have me, not with my body, or so I reckoned then.
“Who knows?” I suggested, “Maybe me wanting to be a soldier’s in the blood, it seems I can dream, but can’t emulate you.”
“No such word as can’t” snapped Dad, “You’re too wrapped up in yourself,” he argued “Oh I understand why, you need to refocus, you’ll have to look at another career.”
Fighting my corner, I told him that it wouldn’t be easy for me to get any job. What did I tell employers, for sure not the truth, no one would have me, I argued that they didn’t accept folk like me and more than rebellious, I wasn’t about to conform for them. I had endured all that at school. It was so unfair, admittedly, feeling sorry for myself, branded a reject and none of it my fault. I begged Dad
“Can’t your friends help?”
“What do you mean?” he responded, cagey.
Contending I didn’t believe that the gentlemen who circumspectly visited our home for little conspiratorial chats behind closed doors were just ‘friends from the office’, as he claimed, I reminded Dad that he had taken me to his place of work. I had met most of his colleagues. Mine still a wild assumption and admittedly afraid that he would laugh at me, faltering, I alleged
“Knowing you, they’re from the Mossad – now I could get to grips with that!”
Making me feel stupid, as he chuckled, I cringed. Insisting that my deduction was pure fantasy even if he could help and trying hard to convince me, Dad persevered that was nonsense, he argued that my dream was too dangerous. Refusing no for an answer, I put him on the spot and asked
“Do you want me to give up…you and Mum never did...Kathy never did.”
A bit mean, I had put him under intense pressure. No longer his decision and from this point on, he would share no blame. Dad doubted my theory about it being in the blood and recalled that my paternal grandfather had claimed he was a pacifist. Admitting that he felt he still had to do something. As he blamed himself for occasionally living in the past and feeding my imagination with
- 13 -
colourful tales of El Alamein, then defensive, Dad declared that he had never expected me to want to be a soldier.
“I can’t help it,” I admitted, “Anyhow, it’s academic, I want the impossible.”
Against his better instinct and Dad promised to try and help me. I never knew what he used to talk about with his strange friends during their irregular visits and to be honest it wasn’t really their meetings, which first drew my curiosity. One day, upon finding his war medals, I asked Dad what had he done to win the big silver one, sheepish, the old Desert Rat reluctantly responded
“Nothing, everyone got one…it’s just that, well…it means a lot to me.”
It was the Palestine Campaign Medal. Long ago, Dad related to me a story, which had inspired my soul. As I recalled the tale, it took place in Palestine during the Second World War in the days when Whitehall directed the British Army to stop Jewish refugees from landing on the beaches. Seeking sanctuary from Nazi tyranny, as thousands of Jews endeavoured to bypass the blockade, for sure no dilemma for him, Dad looked the other way. As his fellow Jews entered their promised homeland, effectively, Dad had granted them their freedom.
Indeed not pride, the medal personified tangible memories, never forgotten old pals. Dad’s friends included people responsible for founding Israel. It gave me ideas. I suspected that some of them could be spooks. As I speculated, Dad’s job could have proved valuable to them. He had access to chemicals and their formulae.
Meanwhile, as Dad held his chat with Mum, he mentioned to her the prospect of another visit from his pals. Curbing her doubts, he suggested they might alter my blueprint for the future. As Mum relented, not long after, Dad let two men into the house. Wearing a snazzy blue blazer and a real character, the first man sported a full head of silver hair, aged perhaps 60, he called himself Moshe. As he removed his Homburg, swarthy, around 45, his tall chum easily doubled for a rabbi. An elegant lounge suit, it matched his full black beard. Both men hid their heads under yarmulkes. As Mum joined us in the lounge, once seated and the extraordinary meeting underway and Moshe’s piercing blue eyes twinkling, he reassured me
“You are wrong to interpret your gender identity as a handicap” gladly willing to be converted, he insisted “The Almighty makes no mistakes, everybody possesses unique talent, too often it remains dormant, at other times, learning awakens it.” Persuasive and he argued “You have lived and relied on your capacity, yours is a natural gift – an asset and rare!” Pausing a moment, allowing his wisdom to sink in, he concluded, “Israel offers you a wonderful prospect to begin your life “
- 14 -
And the nuns had thought me a dunce. His pitch truly knockout and like Dad, a charmer, Moshe had made a big impression on me. As he encouraged me to talk about it, no longer wrapped in shame and recounting my ordeals, aware that they were listening to my commentary, I reckoned that it might help Mum and Dad understand. Summing up and boldly unveiling that I knew myself to be a girl, at least from the age of 3-years, forced to hide and conform, I insisted that once let free as a woman then I could be anyone that I wanted to be.
“It must have been a hard struggle. How did you cope?” enquired the beard.
“I learned to pretend,” I responded “I did it because I had to, I used to watch boys in the playground and copy their behaviour. It didn’t feel right, but I had no choice, I had to appear to be what everyone else considered normal.”
“Did no one suspect that you were, eh…different?” probed Moshe, delicately.
“No one knew my secret.” I told him self-assuredly, “Until I felt ready to tell them.”
Employing more of his charisma, as Moshe asked her to leave us alone in the room, Mum knew only that Dad had told her his pals might advance my career prospects. Unwilling to make a move, Mum looked very put out until once more, Moshe reassured her that it was for the benefit of my future and taking it on the chin, when Mum left us to the plot, it soon thickened. Unlike now, in those days, spy agencies didn’t advertise in newspapers for new recruits. Moshe revealed
“We think you were born to join the secret service.”
I had spent all my formative years practising and sure could keep a secret. This was the reckoning. Excited, I had always wanted to be a spy, though, beyond my reach, no university education only common sense, I had had to accept the British wouldn’t have me. Facing a new obstacle, leaving me perplexed, Moshe divulged
“Initially, you must join the Israel Defence Force – the tzahal.”
“The army!” I yelled, feeling deeply shocked. No wonder Moshe had wanted Mum out of the way, “I can’t join any army.”
“Hear me out” he demanded, chuckling “Let me explain, your father’s told me all about your dream. Israel is a small nation surrounded by dangerous frontiers, a land founded and defended by not only men, but women…”
As the penny dropped, it felt like I was dreaming now. Still not sure, I had to verify it and ask them
“You want me to join the IDF as a woman?”
- 15 -
“Its why we’re here” unveiled Moshe, “Its your big chance to prove yourself, to be assessed for the secret service. If you do well with the IDF, there’s little doubt that eventually, the Mossad will want you.”
“We can make good use of your British ID,” explained the beard, fervently.
“When you join us, you’ll claim you’ve signed the necessary papers and appear to be just another British Jew emigrating to Israel. We’ll report our findings to the relevant people,” he promised, “We can’t give you guarantees, but we’ll try hard to gain a result.”
Well surreal, surviving my isolation and confinement, as freedom beckoned, it felt most unexpected. Lawrence had once assumed romantic Arab garb, though similar to his life, mine still full of Eastern promise. Even as my thoughts raced, well certain and unable to resist. I had to ask them if they were from the Mossad.
“We are all the children of God’s pasture,” replied Moshe, going all cryptic on me.
Six weeks on and still no news, I felt seriously dejected, resigned to the notion that nothing would now happen. More hopeful, Dad told me that these things take time. My downer changed to joy. A note in the post advised me to make ready for a flight to Israel. My delight short-lived, as a serious snag surfaced, it threatened to halt my future, but there seemed no option except to apply for a passport by filling out a standard application. For me not an easy matter, the sex recorded upon that so-called birth certificate a lie it made me a target for malicious discrimination.
Problem solved, as Dad handed me a new passport, embossed upon its shiny cover sat the imposing crest of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Inside the passport, my own face staring up at me, and my sex recorded female, it was in the name ‘Ruth Mayer’. As Dad laughed at my uncertainty, suddenly serious, he told me
“Don’t let your mother see it, apart from all else it’ll only set her off worrying” he warned me. “Tell her you’ll pick up your passport at the airport.”
“But Dad” I told him “I was going to apply for a passport in my own name.”
”No questions” he directed sternly “Just use the name on the travel documents.”
“I’m in then, they’ve accepted me!” I whooped, all excited.
“They’ll want to ask you a few more questions in Israel first,” Dad cautioned me.
The El-Al ticket came later, its delay bought Dad more time to get me used to the idea of using false ID. I still needed clothes. My stuff unisex and all too easy to buy things through mail order, it
- 16 -
resolved the immediate problem, but failed to address the real issue. Still a problem to buy the right togs and fed up, I mused
‘And you want to be a spy...’
One thing to sneak into a tiny empty shop to purchase two little bits of lingerie that I claimed were for my girlfriend, an altogether different matter to step into a city store and select several outfits for myself. Convinced the world must stop and stare, until only recently, my big secret and still then imprisoned in a sad era of bigotry, it remained a big deal. My mind made up, I found Mum with her feet up reading by a lamp and asked her if we could have a talk. As Mum folded her magazine, affecting I know, but honest, I began
“I know you dreamt my future would be very different, I know I’ve made you unhappy…I suppose I’m one of God’s mistakes.”
Unable to hold back the tears, as we forcefully embraced, Mum told me I was her flesh and blood, she gave birth to me. If there had been any mistake, it was hers in not accepting me. Another die cast as Mum insisted
“You’re perfect – you’re my daughter.”
As Mum expressed her concerns about me going to Israel, though she admired my pluck and understood the appeal. Confessing there was a time when she might have done the same, Mum knew that for me, Israel spelt release. Still worried about the danger it posed and I promised her to take care. We enjoyed a good cry and afterwards, feeling tons better, I had sparse notion about fashion, needing Mum’s help for that too, I made sure and asked her
“Did I hear you right, you’ll help me choose my things?”
“I want to see you dressed as a young lady,” said Mum, decisive.
Friends once more, as Mum took my measurements, within the week she joined me in the city intent on shopping. Back home and burdened with bulky shopping bags, eager to try on my new things about to dash upstairs, stopping me in my tracks, Mum ordered
“I want to see how you look in a skirt.”
As I dropped all the bags in my bedroom, a fresh dilemma, I had never before now worn women’s clothes. After long deliberation, I chose a simple skirt and blouse. Unlike some folk might suppose, my gender issues had nothing in common with transvestism or sexual stimulation. Like anyone else, for me, wearing appropriate attire simply identified me with my true sex.
For the first time about to step into knickers, a neat trick and a little manipulation convincingly feminised the appearance of that which didn’t belong. A source of immense pain, I have never liked talking about it and mercifully, the hormones had reduced it to nothing, whereas in contrast, my budding boobs filled the bra.
- 17 -
Pleased with the mascara and having great fun, I tried a lipstick. On with the miniskirt and thrilled, my legs looked good in tights. Like a little girl with nice new clothes, enjoying myself, pleased that everything fitted so well. Released, my emotion spilling joyful tears, as I brushed my long curly hair a final check with the mirror – I had found me!
As Mum cried up the stairs and told me to get a move on, she had telegraphed my mounting trepidation. Fearful of rejection and summoning all my courage, I headed downstairs about to face the limelight. Pausing by the door and taking a deep breath before slowly turning the handle, I entered the stage. My audience meant everything. A shy début, unexpectedly bursting with self-belief, a big smile and cheeky, I asked them
“Well, what do you think?”
“Give us a twirl ” directed Mum, well pleased, she told me “You’ve got nice legs, better than mine.”
“Well Dad, what do you think?” I demanded.
“You look bloody marvellous!” he enthused, grinning broadly.
Free at last. Losing no time making my first public appearance as me, even so taking care to avoid neighbours, I paid another visit to the city. I didn’t need to be a bundle of nerves in Israel and taking time out and registering achievements to bolster my confidence, I homed in on the cosmetics at Boots. Making my purchases and needing to hurry or I would be late for the hairdressers, they say blonds have more fun and I wanted plenty. As my roots changed colour, my long tresses needed a trim for the army. I loved my new hairstyle and after a trip to the ladies, my childhood misery now behind me.
Dad not far behind, Mum tearful, 1974 and all grown up, flying, my life belatedly taking off and on another planet I witnessed the sand. As everyone clapped, the plane gently touched down at Ben Gurion. Except for childhood summer holidays in Wales, this was my first venture outside England.
As I disembarked from the plane, my head still somewhere in the clouds and lost in the terminal until I found a prominent sign, it proclaimed Welcome to Israel.
Much like student refugees off campus, a youthful denim-clad pair approached me. A baseball cap struggled to hide his perm. An uninspiring greeting, appearing bored, as the young guy asked me for my name
“Ruth Mayer” I responded.
“The Defence Department sent us to meet you,” said the likewise young woman, chewing gum.
- 18 -
By no means chatty they ferried me by car to a modest apartment in Tel Aviv. They warned me not to leave the flat. Peeved, I had to save the bucket, spade and saucy postcards for another time and instead spent all day watching telly, at least the food tasted good.
Next morning, two men in black called to quiz me. Skipping the introductions, they ardently promised me that all my big secrets would remain hush-hush and much like I imagined tabloid hacks might do it, as they dug for dirt, my grilling deeply intrusive and protracted. As days flashed by, I exposed my personal habits and still immature political beliefs. Moshe right, a natural in my new role, questions done they expressed their surprise, delighting me, my interrogators could scant believe I had only just begun my new life.
Two weeks on and the refugees from Ben Gurion resurfaced. They told me to pack and taking a trip, we returned to the airport. Hard to contain my excitement, we boarded a helicopter. Spoiling my fun, once airborne, they forced me to wear a hood over my head. A short flight, as we descended, pleased to discard the hood, we had landed at a lively military base. Leaving the aircraft, they led me to a mean cluster of concrete buildings. Fuelled by my dream, quite unaware of their drabness, the blocks served as utilitarian offices.
As we entered one of the buildings, my escort led me into an office. I had seen them in films and thrilled, but trying hard not to show it, wanting to appear all grown up. As my escort departed, I faced a uniformed commanding officer. As he gestured, taking a pew before him, like I had read in the novels, a smile softened his rugged features. My latest hero, as his slender finger pointed to a busy pile of papers strewn atop of his enormous desk, wasting no time, he began by revealing that the messy documents before him represented everything compiled on me since my entry into Israel. He asked me if I knew what I was letting myself in for. Finding my voice
“I know I’ll need to prove myself,” I told me.
“If you pass basic training,” he pledged, not appearing optimistic, “You might succeed, I wish you well, but must warn you this army is like no other.”
As my future began to take shape, the buzz it gave me began to lose its initial impact. I had a great deal on my mind during the flight back to England. In an effort to quell her fears, doing as they bid, upon arriving home, I told Mum that I had won a job with the Defence Department. At least it pleased Dad, my news made Mum worse. No longer bothered about my prospects, she hated the idea of me leaving home. Dad tried to reassure her it was for the best, having none of that as Mum begged me think again, our farewells proved very tearful.
- 19 -
During my second flight to Israel, harbouring plenty of self-doubt, so far I had worn a brave face and blithely agreed to everything. Deep down and my knees knocking, on the principle that you only live once, forgive me, but not into politics and Palestine then, I rallied at the prospect of release and adventure.
Back at Ben Gurion and I met the same dubious pair as before. This time, maybe Israel felt less strange, not yet home, as I hoped that might come later, the car whisked me to an airfield where another helicopter awaited. Helping my confidence, no hood this time and soon landing at the same base as before, an Officer’s Academy, a friendly female cadet marched me to a small garrison and left me to unpack. No time to stick up any posters in my tiny quarters, another cadet warned me that the C/O wanted a word. Back before him, this time he handed me loads of paper to sign. A formality, the medics gave me another going over. Passed fit, my sexual status meant that for now, forced to get my kicks in other ways, I would have to stay like a virgin. As a future spy, at least it ruled me out of sex traps and when you think about it, all part of what Moshe meant about me being an asset.
When I ventured to the stores to collect all my kit, the best part of the induction, stripped of my civilian garb and dressed now like everyone else, it felt much more like I belonged. Admittedly, there was some truth in what the shrink had said about me hiding in a uniform. As the mechanism to my new life piled up on a bench before me, at odds with psychiatric opinion, determined to create a new me, as my training began, no hiding now.
No means the only rookie, Jewish volunteers had dropped in from all points of the globe. Still relatively recent, the Yom Kippur War had wreaked heavy losses. Beset by the road before me, this was the morning after and wondering what had I done was my dream worth it? No one called us soldiers until we fought basic training and earned it. As I faced my first assault course, my newfound self-belief threatened full-scale mutiny.
As I tangled with clinging nets, slippery ropes, oozing slime and all the mouthy instructors jeering at my efforts, it soon got very much worse. Scrambling soaring walls with an enormous weight on my back, they had fed my load with bricks. Limbs paining, it raised my capacity for clangers making me look and feel stupid. Blazing, at least nowadays, I swore like a trooper. Toppling off greasy logs and plunging headfirst into putrid ditches and the first war with me, no soft soap here, tough bastards had their fun as I wallowed in stinking mud. Cursing them, as I crawled out of the mire, adrenaline fuelled my flagging muscles.
As more time passed and for sure no longer wrapped in me, route marches in the Negev under a scorching sun served to remind me of Dad’s tales. As I saluted the bastards as real soldiers grown up into a real woman now if only they knew, Mum and Dad might
- 20 -
feel proud of me. Bursting with strength and fitness, these days, I too scorned the efforts of the latest batch of virgin soldiers.
Not the conclusion to my training it never ended. No time for parade, practising communications, map reading, martial arts and first aid, always so much more to do and handling firearms with deep respect, on the range, I tried a 5.56mm Galil assault rifle. It looked like an American M16, crossbred with a Russian AK-47. I had to try out the ubiquitous 9mm Uzi sub-machinegun, still only a teenager, it felt exhilarating, once I had experienced the killing fields, then I would question the ethos.
As the daunting parachutist course began, no easy job visualising me leaping out of a plane all that way up there. As I stared, my head no longer in the clouds, yet the sky represented ultimate freedom. If I failed now, here it ended. I needed no greater spur. A gruelling ordeal, it demanded huge commitment. As I faced a severe test of strength and character and even worse assault courses, it had all the spills, but not the thrilling life that I had wished for and many punishing weeks later, battling icy cold and searing heat, willing myself on and a survivor much like Mum, no cosseted beginning to life as a woman for me.
Next morning, I jumped into a jeep with my instructor. Taking a new route out of camp, we headed for a matching pair of lofty scaffold pillars. They resembled electricity pylons, standing just as tall and they sure shocked me. Confronting the challenge of the forbidding confidence test, gulping as I stared up at them, linked together by slender steel parallel bars forming a flimsy bridge, narrow planks fashioned crude platforms at the very top of each pillar. As my craggy mentor ordered me climb and shuffle across them, his hot breath on my neck, he pursued me as we scaled a ladder together.
At the summit, adrenaline pumping maybe, still feeling extremely vulnerable. My belly in knots as we surveyed the view from the platform and from up here the gap looked at least miles wide any fall must end me, aware of my fearful thoughts, as the instructor goaded, using up all his taunts bar one, emphatic, he screamed
“Women can’t do it!”
“Fuck off!” that told him.
So, this was a lads’ army? Gusting winds threatened to throw me, scrambling to the winning post, I cried out
“What can’t women do?”
“You’ve done nothing yet!” he warned me.
Wiping my snigger, he urged me to straddle the bars again. Aware that I had just done it, no problem, I had a second go and once accomplished, he enquired
- 21 -
“How do you feel now?”
“Awesome!” I yelled, smirking.
“Do it again!” he barked “Only this time stick your arse in the air and touch your toes.”
I thought he was joking, but an evil repute to uphold he meant it. Avoiding looking down, halfway across, demons seized my bottle. Denying them, I bent touching my boots. It seemed an age, but I held the rude pose. A butt for more of his ribald jokes before he would let me go, I saw the funny side too and giggled nervously. As I earned my reward and reached the far end, he screamed
“Do it again!”
The sequel much less terrifying, no more demons now and smug, I enquired
“Would you like me to do it again?”
As the hard bit began, swapping scenery, I found myself posted to a secret airbase in the desert. Joining more wannabe airborne personnel, all sexes mostly junior officers, NCOs, and more cadets like me, keen to get our first jump done. Before then, we had to study a myriad of manuals and attend limitless lectures banging on about drill and safety. Not just about learning how to jump, we already did that effectively on the ground. Faced now by a critical test of aptitude, though it bored us, going on and on about method and procedure, we carved it into our soul until innate.
More exciting now, the course moved into a cavernous aircraft hangar where we all huddled about a large fuselage. The colossal transport plane ideal for drops, it had dropped off a beleaguered Hercules C-130. As he held court, pleased with himself, a smug corporal told us how to take a jump. Queuing for our go, me back at school in the playground, one big difference, this time with my mates. We all leapt from the dummy must be hundreds of times. A soft landing and we touched down on spongy rubber mats placed below. Strapped into a sturdy harness ready to jump from height, ankles tight together and arms corpselike resting across a reserve ‘chute as more, weeks passed, eagle-eyed observers weighed up all we did until perfect.
The smirking corporal called it an aircraft-exit trainer. Taller than the spindly pylons, which we had encountered earlier, the strange tower confronting us much like a gibbet. Its infamy went before it. Meant to simulate slipstream, we loathed it. As a tailback quickly formed at the top of the scaffold, nobody fancied a go. Strapped into another harness, one-by-one, hanging by slender cable from the wrong end of a gantry, we dangled like hapless spiders in mid-air, tossed by wicked winds, scooped up, just as sudden plunging and no volunteers for a second go.
- 22 -
Finally, the day arrived when we could jump for real and everyone wound up as we entered the hangar and slipped into American T-10 harnesses. On edge, legs leaden and fearfully we ventured forth and scrambled aboard a Hercules on the tarmac.
As the roar increased, launching us into a cloudless sky, a young female NCO instructor broke the nervous silence and informed us that we had perfect weather. It did nothing to shift our unease. Ashen-faced as an eager dispatcher hovered by a gaping porthole we circled above our drop zone. As I joined a fast diminishing line, the green bulb flickering and rushing air swept across my face. My turn and frozen to the spot, a fierce shove sent me flying.
Down and down to my relief a sharp tug. As the canopy blossomed end of drill, floating at 300m we had only half a minute, but what freedom.
Above them only sky, Israel and Palestine, stunning, one day it might always be this peaceful.
Absorbing shock through legs bent at the knee and as the ground rushed up, a gentle landing, fifteen more like it and stick out your chest for Wings Parade everyone proud of us. Ending my months at the Academy, I was in the army now.
© COPYRIGHT OLIVIA FRANK ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
