Bruce Finds His Rainbow. Part 7

Peter took her home and gave her a kiss before he left for work. Her mother said that she would now have to sit down to pee and was told that the penis had been so small she had been sitting down for years. Before she went back to work she went to see Joy to tell her that she would be working days for a few weeks so couldn’t help.

Joy said that she had expected it and that she had spoken to a niece who would be coming in to help. Bree said she was going to help in reception and left with a bright red pantsuit with a silk violet blouse. Of course she had to go via the shoe store to get red shoes to match.
She went to work for the usual 7.30 start and Mr Jackson showed her where the supply cupboard was and where the tea and coffee making supplies were. When the receptionist came in they sat together and she was shown how the paperwork was treated and where everything was filed. She was introduced to the postman when he brought the big stack of envelopes. She was told to sort through them to divide them into orders, invoices, receipts, cheques and other items with the receptionist checking her work afterwards. She was then shown how to type up the invoices that went out to their customers from the checklists filled in on the delivery line. There was an accountant who checked it all before it was posted and he also took care of payments and the wages. During the day she also took phone calls, talking to suppliers and customers and, by the end of the week, she was deemed good to do everything herself.

Saturday morning she went to see Joy again and bought more outfits to suit the position, a green pantsuit, a blue wool dress and a similar one in orange. She smiled as she tried that on as it reminded her of her first days working. There was a shock for everyone in the middle of her second week when she opened a letter which was signed by the receptionist and told them that she had eloped with her boyfriend and, by the time they read the letter, she would be on the way to Gretna Green to get married and then would be sailing to New Zealand to start a new life together. She showed the letter to Mr Jackson and he told her that he will want to talk to her before she left that day.

At the end of the day she was asked to sit in his office with the accountant and he offered her the job in reception. The accountant told her what her salary would be and that there would be a clothing allowance as well as access to the damaged goods area. She would have her own locker in the little kitchen next to the office and she would not need to clock on in future. On the Friday she went into the womens locker room and cleared her locker, putting her yellow kit in a bag to take home. The girls all congratulated her on her new status and said that it would be good to have someone in the front office that had done their time in the warehouse. They showed her where the damaged goods were stored and she saw that there were a few clothing bags with tears in them. When she looked there were a couple of dresses in her size that would just need some repairing so she clocked out for the last time and took them home, along with her other kit.

That weekend her father told her that her room did not comply with the standard needed for a professional woman and that she needed to go with him to the hardware store and pick a new colour for the walls. Her mother then helped her sort out all of her old Bruce clothing that was still hanging around to put into bags for donation. There was not much Bruce stuff left that went into boxes to go into the attic, just some old toys and his bundle of poetry, which no longer read with any idea that the person who wrote them was now female. She thought about tossing them out but then decided that it could be fun reading them in her old age.

While at the hardware store she had spotted a small pressure washer which would be ideal for cleaning the scooter, especially if there was snow and they salted the road. On the Sunday she put on her old Bruce jeans and jumper and parked the scooter in front to the house to try out the pressure washer. It worked well but when she went to turn the scooter around she noticed that where she had over-sprayed the front wall of the house it looked lighter. When she had cleaned the other side of the scooter she moved it to one side and sprayed a small portion of the front wall which revealed beautiful red bricks. She called to her father and when he looked at it he said “Surely you don’t want to do the whole house?” She said that it would certainly make the place look brighter. Her mother then had a look and said that it would be wonderful to have the whole front of the house as clean as the dirt was probably over a hundred years old from the old coal-fired industrial age.

They discussed it and that week arranged for a ladder to be delivered, along with her buying a bigger pressure cleaner. She asked Peter if he could help on Saturday afternoon and the following weekend saw them do the whole house. Of course, being one in a terrace, this meant that the house now stood out like a beacon. Their neighbour then asked if they could do their house if they paid for it to be done. They settled on fifty pounds and the following weekend saw two houses, side by side, showing the original bricks for the first time in a hundred years or more. In the next week they had got orders from the entire row so this took up several weeks after that with Peter getting half of the payments. When they had finished the local paper came around and took pictures with an article in the centre section that had pictures of their row alongside pictures of neighbouring houses that were still dirty and grey. The day after the paper came out their local council member knocked on the door and asked them what magic they had wrought, to be told that it was just soap and water at a high pressure. A month later there was a council crew, armed with an industrial pressure cleaner and an elevated platform vehicle that was seen slowly travelling around the town, cleaning facades. She easily passed her test riding the scooter and started taking driving lessons and practising with Peters’ Cortina.

Bree was now really settled into her new position and was starting to make suggestions to streamline the paperwork process. It took her by surprise when Miriam contacted her about the photo shoot. Miriam told her that she would be sharing Bree with Joy, who would supply the dresses, and that the photographer would do full body shots as well as close-ups. This took place in early March and, within a few weeks; there were pictures of Bree in stunning make-up in Miriams’ shop window and in the newspaper and also pictures of Bree in the spring fashions in Joys shop window. Her mother managed to get a few and framed them for hanging on her new bedroom walls. The D2G girls also got hold of some and they were put up in the womens locker room and the corridor outside. Bree was quite embarrassed with all the attention.

Her love affair with Peter was now strong and they spent a lot of time together. She was starting to bud small breasts but was unable to have sex so they had a discussion one day that she feared would end it for good. She explained how she had gone from being Bruce to Bree and he said that he knew it all along. He just loved her for the person she was and would have tried being gay if she hadn’t made the semi-transition. They kissed for a long time and, that Saturday night, on the way home from the pictures, they pulled into a lonely lay-by and she took him into her mouth for the first time and proved that she could please him in that way, at least.

As spring turned into summer the whole town started to look clean for a change. The council cleaning crew was slowly working up and down all of the terraced streets making them look good and the shops in the town started to sport new awnings and paint. Her home terrace row now sported new paint on all the front doors and window frames and the trend was slowly working outward from there. Her town won an award for its new look and she went, with Peter, to a party at the Town Hall where she was given a certificate saying she was a respected and important person in the town. The week after that Bree was interviewed for the paper as some sort of agent of change and the clipping soon appeared on the wall at work. After six months in the job she got a raise and Peter was transferred onto the day shift as a trainee foreman. Not long after that he proposed and she accepted.

As the summer meant the workload dropped somewhat they organised a week off and went down to London to visit some sights and see a specialist that her GP had recommended. The specialist said that she could live the rest of her life as she was without any troubles but could have another operation to take her to the next level once she had gone through another six months of living as she was now. She discussed it with Peter and he suggested that they have a long engagement so that they could enjoy their wedding night as a true man and woman. They made another appointment for just after Christmas the following year and went to spend their holiday looking at the tourist spots and also looking at the shops. They heard about an area that was supposed to be the home of small boutiques and ended up in Carnaby Street.

Bree had a flash of inspiration and spoke to as many of the shop owners and designers as she could, taking copious notes and collecting business cards. She also bought a few items from designers she thought would be popular back home. Back in the office she spoke to Mr Jackson and explained that there was a whole new movement in the fashion industry and that she thought that SupplyMode should have a secondary supply chain of cutting edge products that no-one else in the area had thought about. She was tasked with going back and setting up shipments in a small way to test the waters.

It took her region by storm and everything went through the warehouse so quickly it hardly touched the shelves. She was sent back to London to source more as there were good margins for the company. By the end of the year they had hired another receptionist and she was now the chief buyer, going to the existing suppliers in her company car and sorting out new lines and better pricing. The D2G girls were taking book on what she would come up with next but they didn’t factor in her holiday in hospital to finalise her transition.

As the next year rolled on she was sitting in her bedroom with her wardrobe open and it suddenly struck her that she could see her past there.

Firstly there was the red pantsuit that mimicked the one worn by the receptionist on the day of her interview.

Then there was her orange dress that she had bought when she was sitting behind that same desk.

Next was the yellow sundress that she bought to match the yellow scooter.

Then there was the emerald green dress that her mother had wanted her to try on and which looked fantastic on her when she did get to wear it.

This was next to the cobalt blue dress that she wore to the Christmas party and had her first proper kiss with her future husband.

Further along the rail there was an indigo tie-dyed blouse that she loved as soon as she saw it in London and the violet blouse she wore on her first day as trainee receptionist. She had found her rainbow.

There was just one colour that was needed to round out the set and that was white, just like the white dress that was hanging on a hook on her bedroom door and which she would be wearing the next Saturday when her father was going to walk with her down the aisle to marry her Peter and then, when they are man and wife, their promise to themselves would resolve itself and they would then be man and woman.

The end,

Marianne G 2021