This chapter describes Beverly's slow assimilation of living an alternative life-style on earth. The first steps on her road to happiness.

NEW SPACETRAN 10

Chapter 10.

I arrived back in the gay village to find Beverly back in her now familiar seat in the hotel being amused and entertained by her newly found she-male and transsexual friends. All trace of the anger and frustration from the afternoon's encounter seemed to have evaporated as the group noisily discussed dresses and bridal outfits for the forthcoming wedding. They welcomed me with open arms and eyed Beverly enviously before congratulating her once again at having discovered such a wonderful companion to share her life.

“And Ruby’s a ‘lipstick lesbian’ to boot love. You’re a lucky girl Bev.”

“Well not quite. She’s bi but with strong lesbian leanings. Anyway, we’re both lucky girls.” Chirped Beverly, as she made room on the settee for me to squeeze in beside her.

As we sat with our arms loosely draped possessively around each other’s shoulders and chatted, a waitress supplied us with drinks and we spent the rest of the evening being introduced to other residents of the village. Beverly positively blossomed and soon found the confidence to circulate. This proved an excellent situation because everybody she met was sympathetic and supportive. I hugged myself with silent satisfaction as I watched her smile widening with almost every new acquaintance and her circulating freely amongst the she-males, transvestites and transsexuals who regularly frequented the bar. The nicest feeling was to watch her growing in confidence by leaps and bounds and yet often turning to me to give me a shy excited smile.

‘This is the sort of ‘Therapy’ that Beverly needed;’ I told myself, - ‘companionship, support, affection, sympathy; ‘not the brutal shocks, beatings and poisonings of her childhood!’
She even seemed to overcome her dread of men and she spoke with easy confidence to a couple of gay guys who had dropped in on their way home from work just to enjoy a couple of glasses of wine. When I queried her about it later she just shrugged dismissively.

“It’s strange. I just didn’t feel threatened Ruby. In fact I didn’t feel threatened all night. This village is a terrific place; it’s like proper therapy. In fact, I’m going to buy a flat here.”

“I thought you wanted to live in my cottage in New England.”

“We can have a pierre-de-terre’ in Manchester can’t we. It only takes a few minutes to travel across in the Albatross.”

I had forgotten of course. The Albatross had reduced the whole world to a village. I still hadn’t adjusted to the concept and I grinned to myself as I contemplated the grief and heartache it would bring to immigration departments and nation states when world citizens could live in Africa, work in Europe, lunch in Asia and club the night away in the Americas or Australia, - or even the moon!

I grinned at Beverly and hugged her tight as I finally grasped the portent of her remark to the Spanish captain in the cabin of the Albatross. ‘I’m a bloody Earth woman and this is bloody Earth!’

“Whatever you wish Beverly.” I observed with a smile. “With the money I make from the prosthesis business and your income from development of the anti-gravity engines and ships we’ll be able to afford an apartment in every city.”

“I’m not that greedy.” Beverly grinned. I don’t need a house in every town; it’s just that I like it here.”

“D’you intend keeping your transvestism a secret?”

“Originally I did, yes. I felt so threatened, but this place is so cool and people are so friendly. Anyway it’s no matter now. One of those two transsexuals at the bar is lawyer and she’s dead keen to see a tranny make it to the top of the business world. She says that once one of us has got a toehold in the industrial world they won’t be able to sack us from our jobs when we ‘come out’.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Gosh you can be dim sometimes Ruby. Just think if the company that builds the space ships is owned and run by a transvestite and a lesbian; - that is, if you’ll still marry me, - then the whole work force can be what they like. It’ll be like an umbrella to shelter any person who has any ‘problems’ with his or her sexuality. There won’t be any sexist or racist or fascist bastards to persecute anybody for being gay or lesbian or transsexual or transvestite or anything. Just remember how you were made to feel vulnerable and threatened when you came out as a lezzy at the Freethinker’s Journal.”

I thought back to exactly that time. How people made snide remarks behind my back, how hushed conversations were shut down whenever I approached; how little sniggers and titters followed my every step. The worst of it was that I had still had some bisexual leanings and it had wounded me deeply to learn that the one boyfriend I thought I could rely on for support had betrayed me and rejected me out of hand when I had ‘come out’. It had made my life a hell.

Strangely I had not adopted Beverly’s ideas and instigated a ‘positive discrimination’ policy towards gays etc but I had done something similar for maimed, disabled and paralysed individuals. I realised I had been slightly remiss in not doing as Beverly intended and I felt mildly guilty. She had shown me the light. I hugged her tight to me as I whispered to her.

“So you intend to employ only gays and trannies and suchlike?”

“Oh gosh no!” She smiled. “I intend to employ people on merit first. I’ll have to if I’m to maintain standards of workmanship and stuff. Look at how well made Albatross 2 and 3 are. The Amphs are brilliant craftsmen. It’s just that there will be a positive discrimination towards gays and trannies if there’s nothing else to choose.”

While Beverly spoke, the transsexual lawyer rejoined us and we hammered out some important questions. As the evening passed our discussions became more open until it almost became a public meeting. The lawyer was adept at handling such events however and things progressed smoothly. By midnight we were tired and ready for bed and the lawyer studied us enviously as we made our excuses. In fact several envious but grateful eyes watched us leave as our ideas had become common knowledge amongst the clientele. Out of the fifty or so in the small hotel on the corner of Canal Street that night, about forty had lost their jobs because of their sexuality. Most had lost their marriages and the majority had been unable to find another job. Many were going home to a lonely flat with no companion. Many were capable, intelligent, imaginative people who had lost good jobs in high places and were now reduced to low paid menial jobs in the service sector. Beverly’s policies would change all that and if it was multiplied in factories around the planet the social implications were enormous.

Contrary to general preconceptions we found that the one thing we could rely on in the village was discretion. Beverly’s secret transvestism was not going to get out until the legal structure and control of the company was bound up and watertight. The lawyer explained to us with a tight ‘self-satisfied’ smile.

“It’s as simple as this Beverly. Only you know the secrets of the space warp and time warp. How can they ever deprive you of your property for as far as Earth is concerned, it’s locked up only in your head? They cannot use your transgenderism against you for that has proved to be your biggest motivator and empowerment. As long as you hold those warping secrets tight to your chest, none can deprive you.”

We woke the next morning expecting to find the town alive with reporters and gutter press looking for some obscene angle to our forthcoming marriage but we were pleasantly surprised to find all our arrangements still a secret. The village community could be tight lipped and protective when it wished and we were grateful to it.

Beverly and I got married in a quiet, little used inner city church close to Canal Street, the gay village in central Manchester. Even the visit to the registry office attracted little attention although the lady registrar was only convinced of Beverly’s ‘true’ legal sex after personally witnessing a medical examination with a lesbian gynaecologist attending. There were no urologists immediately to hand and the gynaecologist was after all a fully qualified doctor. I also attended cos’ Beverly was paranoid about any (as she called them,) medical invasions of her body.

Even then the gynaecologist was asked to prepare and sign a document attesting to Beverly’s ‘true’ condition. It was the one single unpleasant indignity that Beverly was forced to suffer and although it hurt her deeply, it was a price she was prepared to pay. The registrar had the decency to apologise after explaining she was required by law to make certain the wedding was legal. However, she cheered Beverly up no end when she backhandedly complimented Beverly by observing that she looked far too much like a woman to ever be accepted as a man. We left to indulge in a wedding bash of truly earth-shattering proportions as virtually the whole gay village turned out to celebrate. It was only because of the tumult in the village that the press finally got to pick up the ground waves of some earthshaking developments. It was all too late however. By the time their gutter vultures had arrived, Bev and I were off to my cottage on our honeymoon. We left a very murky trail because we travelled by train via France and Switzerland to call Cold Albatross by remote control down from her ‘hidey-hole’ behind the moon, then, after boarding her from a remote valley in the Alps, we warped to America in secret.

After spending a couple of weeks at my cottage we left for several months amongst the Amphs enjoying the company of our numerous children. We finally left the Amphs to resume our work on Earth but happy in the Knowledge we were never more than a couple of ‘days’ warp time away from our children.

Six months later the first commercial gravity engine was built in Manchester and installed in a spaceship built on the River Tyne. Eight months later after fitting out, the space ship departed from Liverpool for the planets.

We discovered that the huge ‘ship sized’ spacecraft were better handled from large open stretches of calm water because of the supportive equalising forces of water floatation buoyancy. During launching and landing the hugely disruptive forces of accumulating and dissipating anti-grav were best discharged over the same calm ‘displaceable’ water. It was quite a sight to watch the mighty craft imprint a huge ‘footprint’ into the water as they commenced or ended their journeys.
Liverpool, with its wide river Mersey, was the nearest suitably large area of calm water. Old traditions were resurrected in that traditional seafaring city as many dewy-eyed grandfathers revisited their youth by taking their grandchildren down to the banks of the Mersey at The Pier Head to relive the sight of ‘The Big Liners’ once more docking in the river.

Our activities also brought a new lease of life to the old derelict Manchester Ship Canal as freight traffic ploughed to and from the engine factories at Trafford Park to be installed in hulls on both the Clyde and the Tyne. Beverly was keen to spread the wealth around the deprived people of the north. Long dormant and derelict factories came to life again in these cities bringing vibrancy and hope to Glasgow, Newcastle and Manchester, Liverpool’s competitive, sister city further up the same river. Beverly held these cities in huge affection.

Our new venture had returned prosperity to four large depressed cities. Manchester were the gravity engines were built, Glasgow and Newcastle where the ships were built and launched and finally Liverpool were they arrived and departed from a new dedicated spaceport for Mars and Venus. It was Beverly’s way of saying thank you to those two old rival cities; - Liverpool for saving her life and sanity during childhood after her escape from care and in later life; - Manchester when she found a refuge in the gay village. As an anonymous child beggar on the streets of Liverpool, Beverly had much cause to be grateful for the generosity of the Liverpudlians who generously gave her food and money. Then again in the gay village of Manchester as an ‘outed’ transvestite where she found the safety and companionship that she been starved of for most of her life. I had never thought of Beverly being a philanthropist but then there were still many sides to my wounded partner I had still to discover.

The final seal of bliss to our marriage was some years later when I discovered I was pregnant to Beverly. She was ecstatic at becoming a father and yet hugely envious of my condition. It was my first real insight into the duality of her transgenderism and transvestism.

Each night she would fondle my growing lump and squeeze as close as she dared in an attempt to somehow assimilate my condition to herself by proximity. I never realised just how much she envied women until that time. The final delight was discovering it was twins. That particular night as I whispered the news into her ear I suddenly realised how I could alleviate her envy. I suggested that she share in the breast-feeding of the twins. She let out a squeal of delight and her mood improved immediately.
Some months later when she had started taking the hormones to stimulate her milk she visited me in the maternity hospital and secretly revealed the damp patches inside her nursing bra. She had timed her lactation hormone dosage to perfection and the following afternoon my labour pains started. I was delivered of the twins in the small hours of the morning. In the privacy of our private ward our lesbian gynaecologist friend helped Beverly to breast-feed the twins while I recovered from the delivery. Three days later we were released from hospital and returned to the cottage to commence our new life as a family. Every day we could be found sharing in the secondary delights of motherhood as we sat facing each other sharing blissful smiles and each nursing a suckling twin in our arms. Beverly’s happiness was complete. So was mine.