Annie And Her Granny - Three Damaged Kids free porn video

Annie and her Granny By Susannah Donim Chapter 8A - Three Damaged Kids (Insert) How Ingrid, Fred, Steve's father and Dolly first got together, and how they became who they are today. [Author's note: as there was some interest in the past history of Steve's family, I thought I might flesh it out a little. 5,500 words later, here it is. For those who care, this section fits in the original Chapter 8 immediately after the visit to M & S when Annie and the new Ingrid bump into Maggie Tyler from the Garden Party.] * * * Our encounter with Maggie at Marks & Spencer convinced me that if I was to impersonate my mother convincingly for any length of time, I needed to know more than I did about her personal history. I remembered my fellow Garden Party ladies as a nosey lot. They asked many probing questions on that drunken afternoon, and I had had to make up my answers, none of which I could remember, due to the amount of Sauvignon Blanc I had drunk. No doubt it would be much worse at our restaurant date. They would all know each other well by now. As the 'New Girl' I would be fair game for the Inquisition. That was how female bonding worked. I realised that I knew very little about my mother's early life. As a normal boy growing up, I had shown no interest in my mother's girlhood, and she, being the taciturn woman she was, had no inclination to share. Since I was now forced to be my mother, I felt no compunction in rooting through her belongings to get to know her better. I searched the whole building, looking in places I had rarely been as Steve. I searched the flat, especially her - that is, my - bedroom; then the rest of the Manor House, the attics, and the outhouses. I found surprisingly little of use; endless bric-a-brac everywhere, but just the usual stuff: old toys in the attic; rusty bikes in the garage; souvenirs of places visited long ago and forgotten all around the flat. In dusty cupboards I found old school essays and end of term reports - hers as well as mine. There had always been lots of books everywhere, but I noticed for the first time that they were mostly non-fiction - politics, history, science, and school and university text books. There were very few thrillers and no romances at all. In the bedroom there were old clothes she'd clearly never got round to sending to the charity shop. There were dresses and skirts, and - to my surprise - trousers. I couldn't remember ever seeing her in pants. In fact, I didn't think she even had any. I tried a couple of pairs on, along with some dresses and skirts that were lurking on hangers at the back of a little-used wardrobe in the spare room. Sadly my prostheses made me too 'broad in the beam' to get into any of them (especially the slacks). Judging by the styles, they had probably been fashionable when my mother was young and slender. I considered making myself new, slimmer prostheses to replicate my mother as a young woman. I could say I'd been on a crash diet, but it would be highly suspicious if Ingrid went from a size 16 (OK, OK, 18, sheesh!) to a size 8 overnight. Anyway with a thinner figure, my smart skirt suits would then be too big for me. I needed to continue to wear them for work, to maintain my image as Ingrid McLaughlin with clients. I didn't find much to document the life of a forty-eight-year-old married woman and mother of one. Two things stood out: where were the photos, and why was there nothing - nothing - of my father's? Were the contents of that safety deposit really all she had kept of his? Finally in a cardboard box, under a dusty pile of old curtains, at the back of my mother's wardrobe, I found four photo albums. I had a quick look through them. According to the notes and labels, each seemed to cover about five years; the oldest starting in 1979; the most recent going up to 2001. It was fascinating to see familiar faces, decades younger. But the pictures just raised more questions... So one evening, when Annie was out with Dolly at bingo, I went along the third floor corridor to the other wing and Fred's rooms. He had mentioned that he would be staying overnight as he was running a long program down in the bunker and it would require his attention at around midnight. I knocked. "Oh, hello, Ingrid," he said, clearly surprised. "I thought you went to bingo...?" "No, I'm 'excused bingo'," I said. "I have to do a lot of embarrassing stuff as a pretend middle-aged lady, but Annie and Dolly know how much I hate that silly game, so they let me off." He laughed. "OK, come in," he said. "What can I do for you?" "Nothing for Ingrid, but Steve needs your help." I stepped inside and went into the flat's elegant sitting room. Fred shut the door behind me. I dumped the photo albums on his coffee table, and sat down on the sofa, sweeping my skirt underneath me, pulling my knees together, and crossing my legs at the ankles. Fred chuckled. "What?" "You're really good at that," he said. "What?" "The feminine movements and mannerisms," he added. "No one would ever suspect..." "I've had a lot of practice," I interrupted, grumpily. I felt myself blushing. "Never mind that. I want you to tell me about some of these old photos." "Oh," he said, his face falling. "Where did you find those?" "It wasn't easy." I explained about my current quest for Ingrid's background. "But the most recent of these albums finishes about eighteen years ago. My mother seems to have stopped keeping photos not long after I was born." "I'm sure it was nothing to do with you, old son." He chuckled. I raised an eyebrow. "Sorry, it's just that you don't look like anyone's son nowadays. Old, maybe..." He chuckled again. I folded my arms under my bust; an Ingrid gesture of disapproval that was thoroughly ingrained in me by now. Fred recognised that look. "OK then, but I'm going to need a drink. What can I get you?" I requested a glass of red wine. He got himself a whisky and soda. He brought the drinks over and came to sit down beside me. I scooted along, tidying my skirt as I slid. He opened the first and oldest album. He sighed and turned back to me for confirmation. I nodded. "Well, if you're sure. I just don't see what good will come from raking over the past. We're all very different people now." "I'm very different - obviously," I said, indicating my dress and figure. "You're all just older." "All right, all right." He turned a few pages, skimming faded black and white photos. "OK, the first few pages here are obviously pictures your grandparents took of your mother when she was little. I've never seen these." I looked at the pictures of an unfamiliar little girl. She could have been my mother, I suppose. She was often accompanied by little boys, her younger brothers. They were usually smiling and engaging in rough and tumble games. She was aloof and serious. "Your grandmother died young, didn't she?" Fred said. "Your Mum would have been eight or nine at the time, I think?" "Eight," I said. "Both my grandmothers died before I was born, but I never thought about the effect losing her mother at that age would have had on Ingrid. She must have had to grow up fast. That was - what? - 1979? I suppose my grandfather would have expected her to take on maternal responsibility for her brothers." "Spot on," he said. "Certainly when I started going to their place to see Ingrid, she was always in charge - of the house, the catering, and of the behaviour of your uncles. What happened to them anyway? I lost touch with them after Ingrid and I left school." "One lives in America; the other went to Australia. We exchange cards for birthdays and Christmas. They used to send me small amounts of money until I turned eighteen. We don't really talk about them much. I think Mum is afraid they emigrated to get away from her, or maybe they were disgusted by my father, their brother-in-law, and how his... oddities... would embarrass them." He nodded. "It's a shame when families lose touch." Fred's parents were old-fashioned, or what nowadays people would call 'bigoted'. I assumed they had disowned him for his sexuality. Even though he wasn't 'out' as such, he would have had to open up to them. There would have been conversations about girlfriends, marriage, children... wouldn't there? I turned over more pages, Fred making appropriate comments as I went. The little girl in the photographs had turned into an unsmiling teenager. There was a birthday party at which she was grudgingly attempting to blow out thirteen candles on her birthday cake. The only person in the picture who wasn't family was a very young Fred. "I first got to know her when we were in our early teens." "Yes, you met at school, didn't you?" "We were in the same class at the local grammar school. We were thirteen. Neither of us found it easy to make friends. I was a nerd, and Ingrid, well... she didn't seem to have much in common with the other kids. She played hockey and netball - quite well, actually - but she didn't hang around with the other players. She didn't watch TV; she wasn't interested in pop music, or make-up, or clothes. Also, having to look after her brothers and get them fed and off to school had made her a little... bossy." He was struggling to describe the thirteen-year-old Ingrid without making her out to be a dragon-in-the-making. "So everyone thought she was a stuck-up little cow, when actually she was just... shy?" "She was never shy, but she had no small talk, no social graces, no time for fools or silly kids behaving like silly kids..." "So the two of you became friends on the 'misery loves company' principle?" "Sort of," he smiled. "I got teased a lot; she was largely ignored. Then we were put together for a project in science class, mainly because no one else wanted to partner either of us. Actually that's not quite true. I was good at science, but I knew that the kids who offered to work with me were just hoping I'd do it all. So I approached Ingrid, and that was the beginning of our friendship. Our project won by a mile, and your mother more than did her part. I could do all the science and the maths easily enough, but she organised us and kept us focused. She's been managing us both ever since." He paused. "I probably wouldn't still be around without her." There was a moment's silence while we digested what he'd said. I thought this might have been the first time he'd admitted it to himself. A gesture of sympathy seemed appropriate. Instinctively I put my hand, with its rings and pink, polished fingernails, on his. In my mind I was Ingrid now, a woman, and his oldest friend. Then I realised that my mother probably wouldn't have done that, and I remembered who I really was. I withdrew my hand, embarrassed. Fred just smiled, not fazed in the least. I sipped my wine. We reached the end of the first album. I opened the second. There were more pictures of family events - outings, holidays, school activities. There was one of my mother in the junior play, which presumably sparked her interest in theatre. Next to it was a clipping from the school magazine praising her performance. Then, suddenly, there was my father. His first appearance in the album was in a group with Fred, my mother, and some of their classmates. It looked like a school outing. They were all in hiking gear. "Your Dad arrived in the fourth form, at the beginning of GCSEs," said Fred, seeing that I had spotted him in the photo. "He'd been at a private boarding school before. No one ever told us why he had to change school at fifteen. It might have been something to do with his mother dying. The disruption could only have made a horrible situation worse for him." I turned more pages. The photos were still mostly of the McLaughlin family, but any that included outsiders were invariably of Fred and the young Richard Steven Jones. "He was funny, charming, and good-looking," Fred said wistfully. "His family were well off - obviously, since they owned this place - but his mother was sick and his father was always away on business. Richard believed his Dad kept a mistress in a flat in London, but he has never known for sure. Anyway, he fell in with Ingrid and me immediately. No idea why. Perhaps he realised we were outcasts; each damaged in our own way. Perhaps he saw we needed him." He laughed. "It was a kind of m?nage ? trois, I suppose. We loved each other, in our different ways. Ingrid loved Richard for his gentleness, kindness, sweetness. I'm not sure when that love became physical - it was none of my business - but I was happy for them both. I was never jealous of either of them..." He seemed to think that remark needed further explanation. Perhaps I'd looked sceptical. "I've never been very passionate - physically, I mean," he explained, almost apologetically. I looked at more pictures of the three best friends: the independent, serious girl; the gay boy who wouldn't admit he was gay; and the gentle boy who perhaps should have been gay but wasn't. "So when you first met my father, he was... just a normal teenager?" I said. "No, but it was a while before Ingrid and I realised that he was just as damaged as we were. Don't forget: most of the time he was an only child rattling around by himself in this huge Manor House with a bedridden mother and a mostly absent father. When his Mum died, his Dad hired Dolly as their housekeeper. She was a widow, and on her own; her son and daughter had left home. So she moved in here and rented out her house in town. Richard wondered whether she and his father were... intimate, but I don't think so, looking back. The London mistress theory was always more likely. Anyway Dolly soon became crucial to young Richard. I think that may have been when his desires started to take root..." "You mean that watching Dolly made him want to be a maid?" "It was a lot more than just watching. She was his everything - mother, father, big sister, nanny, cook, all rolled into one. He admired everything about her. He used to follow her around. Then he started to help her look after the house." "Fair enough," I said. "It's huge; far too big for one person to clean." "Agreed, but perhaps she shouldn't have let him wear her spare apron and cap when he did it..." No, I thought, that was probably a bad idea. I'd found there was something about dressing as a maid... "She had to wear a uniform?" "Yep. That was going out in private houses by the eighties of course, but remember your grandfather was born before the war. The Manor House would have had several servants when he was growing up, and they would all have been uniformed. And Richard's mother had a full-time nurse - also uniformed. In fact, I think it might have been the cost of his wife's twenty-four-hour care that made your grandfather decide to get rid of all the other servants. But when he hired Dolly, I doubt it would have occurred to him not to have her wear a uniform, although from what she's said, she actually liked it, and obviously Richard did too. "Too much, in fact," I said ruefully. Fred grunted. I took another mouthful of wine. He went back to the album and turned a few more pages. Some of the pictures now included more teenage faces. "With Richard on our team, as it were, we fitted in better at school, or perhaps it was just that we were all growing up. Whatever the reason, the teasing stopped and the three of us found we had a wider circle of friends. We had regular gatherings at the Manor, often as many as a dozen kids, making use of the pool, the tennis court, the putting green, and the grounds. None of the rest of us had access to anything like the Manor House or its facilities, and with your grandfather away on business all the time, there was virtually no adult supervision. Dolly kept her eye on us as best she could, but frankly it was just good luck that no one got hurt. Or pregnant..." I recognised the backgrounds in some of the pictures now. Some of them were taken here at the Manor. "So who took all these photos?" I asked. "Well up to 1987 your grandfather would have taken them using the family camera, but she got a Polaroid for her sixteenth birthday, so she took most of the ones in these pages. Richard and I insisted that she let us take some, so that she could be in them herself." He stared at the pictures of happy teenagers, at first just the three of them, then gradually many more joined in. I assumed Fred was remembering the faces of the other kids, some of whom he wouldn't have seen for more than thirty years, and was trying to put names to them. Or maybe he was just staring into space. As I watched, a solitary tear escaped from the eye nearest me and rolled slowly down his cheek. He brushed it away without seeming to notice. I pretended not to. I was beginning to regret asking him to relive these times. Perhaps he was right; no good could come from raking up the past. He cleared his throat. We returned to the albums. The next batch of pictures we saw was of the three of them at a fancy-dress party. It was labelled 'Christmas 1987'. "I remember that very well," Fred said. "It was the first 'grown-up party' most of us ever went to. Richard managed to persuade his father to let us hold it at the Manor, and with no chaperones. I don't think the old man was being particularly kind or generous; he just didn't care enough to say no. He wasn't planning to be at home then anyway. Dolly was totally against it but she was overruled. Richard even got his Dad to pay for her to have a long weekend with her son and his family up North, so that she wouldn't be there to spoil our fun. We were all around sixteen, so of course in theory no alcohol was allowed, but a few bottles of some unspecified spirits found their way into the punch, and there were quite a few six-packs of cheap lager around the place if you knew where to look. Most of the vomit went into the flower beds round the back, fortunately." He laughed, but I hadn't been listening that closely. I was looking at the pictures of the guests in their costumes. Fred was a cowboy in a Clint Eastwood poncho; Ingrid was a very pretty Alice in Wonderland; and my father was a maid. It wasn't a sexy French maid outfit with frilly petticoat and fishnet stockings. It was an old-fashioned working housemaid uniform, complete with starched white bib apron and mob cap. Presumably the dress was one of Dolly's, but he must have hired the apron and cap because there was no way Dolly would have worn such archaic items in the eighties. Fred saw me looking at the picture. "Richard's hair wasn't really long enough for a girl," he said, "but with his maid's cap on you couldn't tell. He was wearing proper make-up, quite well done, and he looked totally convincing. He would have fooled anyone who didn't know him. He did fool some of the strangers who had come as 'plus ones'. "But it was how he behaved at the party that got me and Ingrid worried. He answered the door as a maid; he curtseyed to the guests as he let them in; he took their coats. Then he ran around all evening carrying trays of food and drinks, always curtseying, and addressing his class mates and their friends as 'madam' and 'sir' and 'Miss This' and 'Mr That'. Most people thought it was a hoot and happily treated him as a maidservant, which he obviously loved. A few of them, mainly boys who had never had time for him at school, made quite nasty remarks about his sexuality, deliberately intended to be hurtful, but he was oblivious. He just kept the act going, behaving just like a domestic. "Ingrid was distraught. She was desperate to dance with him and maybe sneak off for some innocent smooching - we were only sixteen - but he just played the maid all evening. By about nine-thirty she'd had enough. She grabbed him and told him to stop acting the fool. He broke away from her and said she must excuse him. He was just the maid and he had his duties. I could see that she was really upset so I joined in at that point. He must have realised he'd gone too far and apologised, saying it was just a bit of fun. He took his cap off and they went over to the dance floor. "She was mollified then, but when she and I met at school on the Monday morning she asked me what I thought he'd been up to. What could I say? Most of the time they were great together, and they were obviously falling in love. I didn't think he was gay and I hoped that everything would be back to normal when he was back in his own clothes. I didn't tell her what he told me later; that on the Sunday, when everyone who had slept over had left, he had put his full maid uniform back on and worn it all day while he cleaned and tidied up. When she got back on the Sunday evening, Dolly was astonished at how tidy the place was. She was delighted that her fears had been unfounded." "She might have been more concerned if she knew why," I said. Fred nodded. "Of course, none of us knew anything about cross-dressers then," he said, "and even if we had, we might have just accepted it. So what if your heterosexual boyfriend likes to wear women's clothes occasionally? It isn't necessarily a show-stopper. It might even be stimulating to a relationship, in a kinky kind of way. Well, you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?" He laughed. I couldn't help blushing. I pressed my knees together more tightly and pulled my skirt down to cover them better. Embarrassed, I took another sip of wine. "But your father was - is - a very particular kind of cross-dresser, isn't he?" Fred continued. "That wasn't apparent back then. He may not even have known himself. Certainly, his need to live and work as a humble domestic didn't become overwhelming for another ten years." He paused. What he had said filled in a lot of gaps and made good sense. He got up to fetch the wine bottle and refilled my glass, chuckling slightly at the lipstick on its rim. I thanked him and took another slurp. I realised he was watching me carefully, and I immediately guessed why. "You're thinking that the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree, aren't you?" I said. He didn't reply. "Well you're wrong. I'm doing this..." I indicated my Ingrid face, boobs, and dress. "...for my parents' sake. I'm cross-dressed, yes, but I'm not a cross-dresser. When they return, I'm hanging up my bra and knickers for good." "I think you're doing it for Annie too, aren't you?" he said quietly. "And you wouldn't dress as a woman if you really couldn't stand it, even for her, would you? I think you're 'a very particular kind of cross- dresser' too. Just not the same kind as your father." I was on the edge of anger, but I wasn't going to quarrel with Fred. I respected him too much, and he had always looked out for me. "We'll have to agree to disagree," I said. "Let's just whiz through the other two albums, shall we?" There wasn't a lot more to see. If my father dressed up again, he didn't do it in any photos that found their way into my mother's albums. GCSEs passed, then A levels. All three of them did well, and Fred and Richard went off to Cambridge. But my mother had to stay at home and settle for the local Technical College. Her father didn't want her to go to university and leave him and her brothers to fend for themselves. But the separation was only a few miles and she and Richard saw each other every weekend. There were far fewer pictures of their college years, and there were lots of new faces. Pictures of Fred often included other men, rarely women. I didn't comment. Their Graduation photos came next, at the end of the third album. Then my parents' wedding photos appeared early in the last album. They would have been about twenty-four. Fred was Best Man, of course, so officiating for Annie and me twenty-something years later must have given him a bitter- sweet feeling of d?j? vu. The nuptial pictures were clearly taken by a professional. A framed copy of the one of my parents as bride and groom was also on the wall of the sitting room of our flat. My mother looked beautiful and happier than I had ever seen her. My father was very handsome; I could see no signs in his face of Rita Johnson, the worn and haggard cleaning lady he would later become. I scanned my other relatives: my two grandfathers, both deceased, and my uncles who now lived on other continents. There was Dolly too, at the back of the group photo, beaming with happiness. Immediately after the wedding photos in the album were some taken on their honeymoon, in the beautiful Sicilian resort of Taormina. Some kind soul had taken a picture of the newlyweds in the Roman amphitheatre, and they looked as happy as could be. There were a few more photos of my father when they returned home, doing things that newlywed husbands did. He and my mother fixed up the unoccupied wing of the Manor House, and moved in. It was in a separate part of the building from his old rooms and my grandfather. "Richard mostly kept busy taking over the family's business interests," Fred said, getting up to refill his drink. I declined a second glass of wine. "I gather they were extensive and quite sufficient to keep him and his new wife comfortable. Ingrid was working at the local theatre, as you know, although they didn't need her salary." But, as Fred explained, major changes were coming. "I didn't see as much of your parents in the next two years," he said. "I had joined a start-up software house which was growing quickly on the back of the Dot-Com boom. I learned a lot, but in those days, I always seemed to be travelling, mostly to the USA, especially the Pacific North-West. So I missed the key events. Firstly your grandfather died - that was less than a year after the wedding - and your Dad inherited the estate. "With the old man gone, there was nothing to stop your father from indulging his growing obsession. He started going to cross-dressers meetings and making contacts. Then he bought himself a set of maid's uniforms and spent his days as Rita, the Manor's new uniformed housekeeper. At first he promised always to change back into men's clothes before Ingrid got home, but that didn't last. Soon he was cooking their evening meal in his uniform, and then he was sitting down to eat dressed that way too. I know Ingrid hated it, but she still loved him, and she learned to tolerate his strange hobby - even when he started calling her 'madam'. It's amazing what you can put up with when you love someone, isn't it?" He paused again. Was that another comment on my relationship with Annie? If so, I didn't rise to the bait. "She even used what she had learned working backstage at the theatre to make him a more convincing woman," Fred continued. "His new friends were impressed with the improvements in his feminine appearance and begged her to do the same for them. She reluctantly agreed but charged them hefty fees for her services. That led to her starting Transformations later, of course. She had the skills and the client base." "Was Dolly still working at the Manor? What did she make of it all?" I asked. "No, they had a falling out over his dressing and she left. I think she blamed herself for what she thought of as his perversion. He begged her to stay. He said it would be just as it had been when he was at school; they would be two maids working together in the big house. But she couldn't take it. She was really upset. I don't think you'll see any more pictures of Dolly in this last album. She didn't come back until after your father left and Ingrid started the business. That's when I returned as well. I think you know the rest, don't you?" I nodded. I scanned the remaining photos. There weren't many more. In some, there was a blurry uniformed maid at the back of a group, or in the corner of the room. You could never quite make out her face, but you could tell it wasn't Dolly. "Your father converted one of the attic rooms into a 'maid's quarters' and put all his feminine things up there. His men's clothes stayed in the wardrobes and cupboards of the master bedroom, and he still slept there - in a nightie - but Ingrid told me he used to get up at six, get dressed as the maid, and go off to do his morning duties, bringing his mistress breakfast in bed at seven-thirty. When she went in to work at the theatre, he'd start the day's cleaning or cooking or laundry. He worked very hard, but only at being a maid. He sold off the portfolio his father had left, so that he could devote all his time to housekeeping. Ingrid put up with this weird life because she loved him, but she wasn't happy. That's when she really started to..." He paused, trying to find a diplomatic way of expressing himself. I saved him the bother. "Turn into the humourless harridan she is today?" He frowned, but didn't argue. "Then she got pregnant," he said. The last few pictures in the album were my baby pictures. In a couple of them you could just make out the uniformed Nanny in the background, but again you couldn't see her face. "He stayed for a while after that, as you know, but eventually he decided that he was just going to ruin the lives of his wife and son. Ingrid helped him create Rita Johnson and put Richard Jones to rest, and he left." Fred fell silent. We both sat back, lost in thought. I checked my little ladies' watch. We had been talking and drinking for nearly two hours and were both emotionally wrecked. "I'm sorry for putting you through all that, Fred," I said, getting to my feet. "I hadn't realised it would be quite so... draining." "It's OK," he said. "It was cathartic for me. Good to get it all out in the open. You see now why I was dubious about you acting as your mother's test subject? I was afraid it might trigger something in you that would make your life as unhappy as your father's." I smiled and tried to reassure him. I wasn't unhappy - I had Annie. Not unhappy; confused, yes, especially about the future... I realised I had learned as much about Fred and my father as I had about my mother. In any case I would just have to be my own version of Ingrid; my own woman. I hoped she would be a happier, better-balanced lady.