The wealthy old lady...who was a man

What's it like to discover that the sweet little old lady in your village was not only a multimillionaire but also a man? JULIA STUART finds out.

There was nothing particularly remarkable about Cynthia Watson's two-bedroom red-brick bungalow, though those who peered closely may have turned their noses up at the blistered paintwork, the mould on the inside of the curtains and the sunroom which was literally hanging off the back of the house.

The closest the 72-year-old spinster had come to modernising it during the 20 years she lived there was to install a shower.

About the only thing going for the Berkshire residence was its glorious views over the surrounding fields, where pheasants scuttled and shaggy cattle stared gormlessly through long fringes whenever anyone approached.

So villagers in Midgham were stunned to learn, on the publication of Watson's will last month, that the pensioner was a multimillionaire.

But what caused even louder gasps was the revelation that Cynthia Watson was really Peter Acke.

"Nobody knew she was a man," says Robin Nicholson, aged 76, a retired atomic-energy manager and former chairman of Midgham Parish Council.

"When she died, she had left a telephone number of her next of kin in her papers.

"A neighbour, John Goddard, rang relatives to say: 'I'm sorry to tell you your sister has died in the hospital.' The reply was: 'We haven't got a sister, we've got a brother.'

"That was the first anybody in the village knew that she had been a man, or whatever the right phrase is. Later, when the will was published, the name Peter came out."

"It was a surprise to the village," says Robin's wife, Mary, 73. "They accepted Cynthia as she was and never questioned anything, unless they knew her a bit better."

But the Nicholsons had their suspicions about Watson, who was much liked in the village and noted for her generosity.

"We suspected that she was a transsexual, or whatever the word is, because it's very unusual for women to work as jobbing carpenters," Robin Nicholson says.

"When she hit a nail in it wasn't a gentle tap, it was good strong stuff. It's also unusual for a woman to work as a cowboy on an Argentine ranch, as she said she had. And it's not particularly usual for a woman to have been in the Merchant Navy.

"She was a very cheerful sort of character and very generous, but we thought there was something unusual there, put it that way.

"We left it as that, though. She had a right to live that way and that was fine. Live and let live is the answer. I never heard any whispering campaign about Cynthia Watson in all the years we've lived here."

Midgham parish councillor June Dutton says that Watson, who moved to Midgham 20 years ago, was very much accepted by locals. "There was no malicious sneering in the village. It wasn't one of those things you ever asked her about.

"Everybody thought she was more a man than a woman in some ways. But as far as we were concerned, she was Cynthia.

"There was no gossip about her, we didn't discuss her. We knew her, we liked her, we knew she had certain characteristics, but why shouldn't she have? I myself have some characteristics which are decidedly male.

"We weren't interested because we knew her. It's like tigers being interesting to people who have never seen them. If you have a tiger living in your house, it's just a cat, isn't it? I don't know anyone who didn't like her. She was generous, warm-hearted, full of fun, and she never complained.

"She did absolutely nothing reprehensible or offensive. She put the village before herself, she put other people before herself. She was lovely - beautiful no, but certainly lovely."

Watson was a former Stowe School pupil and a bachelor. She is believed to have worked as a carpenter in the Merchant Navy.

Her bungalow boasted a ship's cabin-style wooden bunk bed, complete with curtain. Much of the house was decorated in wood.

Watson's carpentry skills were particularly admired and welcomed in the village. She made exquisite wooden toys for the raffle at the Christmas fair, held in aid of the Sue Ryder charity, and they were offered as first prizes. She spent hours toiling away in her garage. A note still on her front door says: "If no answer, then knock on the blue garage door." Commissions included meticulous model replicas of ships, the details of which she researched at maritime museums.

"We had a village noticeboard with a plaque saying that we were in the Domesday Book and it was vandalised," Nicholson says.

"Cynthia volunteered at her own expense to repair it herself. She was very generous."

Watson always wore dresses, even when she was doing carpentry. The villagers did not find it curious that a spinster was volunteering to do these jobs. "She was willing to do them and that was fine as far as we were concerned," Mary Nicholson says.

"She did quite a lot of carpentry for us. She was a good carpenter. And she filled in pipes, that sort of thing. She was very good with her hands. She could cross-stitch beautifully."

Mystery still surrounds how Watson made her fortune. The Nicholsons suspect it might have been on the stock exchange. "One morning she was doing a little job for us here, making a letterbox, and she said: "Oh, I won't be here early tomorrow morning because it's the morning I talk to my stockbroker in Tokyo," says Robin Nicholson.

"We thought it was rather funny, but we still believed her. There was no reason not to. She didn't go out to impress anybody."

Watson, who was not known to have had any romances in the village, was not only generous in life, but in death.

She left $3.6 million of her $11.8 million estate to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution for a boat to be named Witch of Osier - Watson had once lived on the one-property Osier Island in Wyre Piddle, Worcestershire.

A third of the estate goes to her godson, and a donation was left to the League of Venturers' Rescue Care in Southampton.

"One of our team called to see Cynthia after she expressed an interest in leaving a bequest," says lifeboat association representative Tania Hall. "We are very grateful for such a generous bequest. A brand new all-weather lifeboat costs £1.8 million and it will go a long way to funding one."

There are those, of course, who say they always knew that Miss Watson was born a man.

Glynis Snow, landlady of the nearby Coach and Horses pub, says: "She certainly came in here a few times a year. She used to have little dinner parties. She was totally eccentric, but lovely. She had a good sense of humour and used to wind people up a little bit.

"She didn't like the French. I remember her saying, 'Down with the French,' then having another glass of wine. She was always generous and would buy you a drink and have a laugh.

"Everybody was surprised she was a multimillionaire."

Did anyone have suspicions about her sex?

"Yes, everybody knew," Snow says. "You could tell.

"Her wig was always a bit skew-whiff. But she was lovely."

Whatever Miss Cynthia Watson will be remembered for, it will certainly be with affection.

- INDEPENDENT