Transvestia

an excuse to keep them waiting outside for about five minutes so that I could change.

After this, I was reluctant to use makeup because of the time needed to remove it. Perhaps this fear of discovery led to a certain amount of tension along with my anxiety over examinations, and what I should do after college. Along with this, for months before Betty helped me to experiment with female clothing I was undergoing a lot of stress with my inner torment. In any case, for some time now I was having a lot of digestive trouble which, when I finally saw a doctor, was attribut- ed to nervous tension and also to an inflamed appendix. I was given an examination in the hospital (courtesy of the free National Health Service), and the specialist agreed that I should have the appendix removed as soon as possible after the end of the college term.

This left me in a greater dilemna than ever, for at the end of term my London Country Council education grant would cease, and I would no longer have any spend- ing money. The operation and hospital care was free, but I found that appendix cases were kept in the hospital for only a week after the operation unless there were complications. I would still need about three or four weeks rest after this before I could seek employment, and I would have no where to stay unless my parents would have me back, and this was the last thing I wanted. Betty had taken her flat only for the college term, and her te- nancy expired the week after the end of the term.

However, Betty again came to the rescue with the invitation to spend the summer with her family. I felt I would be "sponging" and was most reluctant to accept, but the alternative of going back to my parents was

worse.

Here, because it has considerable bearing on later events, I had better mention something about her family. Actually she was an orphan which might account for her promiscuity and living for kicks. Her father had been a prosperous farmer in Northamptonshire, and had been killed in a car accident about four years before this. Betty's mother had died in childbirth some years pre- viously, along with the child. After this her sister (Betty's