Saddled 6

As the babies were all now six months old we needed to get them baptised and it was arranged for the last Sunday in January. The church was quite full of friends and family as all four of the aunts had come along. The one that I had met on the first day with Louisa gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, saying “I knew you would be a keeper.”

The first up was Odette and her married surname was Bardot. So it was Henrietta Bardot as the first to be christened and I stood beside Odette as the ceremony happened. I then stayed in place when Nicolette Bardot was brought forward by Giselle to be named and there was a bit of a rustle from the parishioners as I stayed in place as Louisa came forward with Antoinette and Bernadette. I held one while the other was baptised. When they were named the priest turned to me and asked “Have you been baptised in your new name, Marie?” and when I said no, he smiled and said “I can do you now, if you like.” I nodded my head and so Marie Bardot came into existence on the parish records.

A couple of weeks later we had the van sign-written with ‘Patisserie Bardot’ and got another magnetic sign to go over it each side with ‘Marie Bardot Produits en Cuir’ for when I was on leatherwork business. Winter finally became spring again and it was time for the local festival. This time we had a stall with a proper banner over the top and we had baked about twice as much as we had the previous year. We still managed to sell the lot by mid-afternoon. Louisa met a chap she worked with and they spent some time together with her wheeling the twins in a double baby carriage. Giselle and I had the other two with us at the stall all day and then strolled around with our two in their prams. Odette was busy in the gift shop and Claudette was manning a stall for the Pharmacie, mainly selling perfumes and cosmetics.

Three weeks later Louisa went to work on the Friday with a small bag and we didn’t see her again until Monday evening. When stared at that night by four pairs of eyes she admitted that she had spent the weekend with Phillipe, the guy she had met at the festival. She told us that they liked each other and that he was unable to father children so an unmarried mother with two of her own already was not a problem. As we moved towards summer she was away a lot more and it was no surprise when she brought him home to meet her family. We were introduced as the Bardot family and named as her mother and sisters.

It was a summer wedding at the church and my whole family came over to see it. Louisa had insisted that she wanted me to be her Maid of Honour and she asked my father to walk her down the aisle. My other sister arrived a week early, on the back of a motorcycle. The rider was her same-sex husband, Bill, formally Willamina. Bill was a bit unsure of us but brightened considerably when she realised that I used to be Anthony and Claudette let on that she used to be Claude. My sister Janine fitted right in and it was a far better visit than my other two sisters. They both loved the babies and I could see Janine getting a little clucky.

The church was packed for the wedding and it all went well, the happy couple heading off in his car for a couple of weeks in Spain, leaving the twins with us. My mother spent a lot of time with me and the babies as I was sure that she considered them to be her true grand-children, rather than the poor sods my sisters had been given. My father said that the picture of us taken at the last visit was pinned to the notice board in the pub and that all of my mates had said that I was a lucky guy, until I was no longer a guy.

When the happy couple came back we took the twins and all of Louisas’ belongings around to her new house in Tours. Claudette and I moved into the big bedroom which left the side with two bedrooms free for us to do holiday lets or bed and breakfast if we wanted to. The two babies were in the big house and we had a discussion one evening about it. Claudette surprised me by saying that she would give up her job and run the let. She had figured out that we could get almost as much in fees as she earned in the year and it would allow her to stay at home and help with the other parts of our business. I had to admit that, if it wasn’t that I worked through winter to stock up; the leather side would be full time in summer. Both Giselle and I thought that our output now was at its maximum and we would need to either invest in a new kitchen or else find a dedicated bakery to buy.

Oddly enough, the chap that picked up our product in the mornings came by a couple of weeks later and told us that our biggest customer was thinking of closing down due to old age. Giselle and I went to see them and we talked about buying them out. The shop was a good size, with eat-in possibilities but the back was something else again. They had stopped baking their own some years previously and the ovens were old but useful. There was a big storeroom as well. We looked at it and thought that if we made the storeroom smaller we could put in new ovens and we could, in our conservative estimate, double our output as well as selling a good proportion of it directly to the customer, thus increasing our margin.

We did the numbers and spoke to the bank and ‘Patisserie Bardot’ became an actual place. With the wall changed and our new ovens we were off and running. We hired a couple of local girls to serve at the counter and installed a coffee machine and some tables and chairs. By the end of our first month it had become a very popular place for the locals and visitors alike and Giselle could handle the day business in the off-season to allow me time to produce the leather stocks. I made our own place mats out of leather with the name branded on them and these were so accepted I had to make some we could sell, along with branded keyrings and pencil bags.

We worked it so Nicolette was looked after by Odette until I got home after the baking, so allowing her to go to the gift shop while I looked after the two babies. Claudette had spoken to the tourist agents in the village and they assured us that we would get the business. We cleaned the place thoroughly and had our first customers before the end of summer as well as advance bookings for next spring. Claudette would stop her full-time job in spring and her boss had asked if she could be on-call for the times things got too busy. We let my family know that we had two double bedrooms available over the winter months if they wanted to visit.

And so we had a future now mapped out. Giselle and I had a Patisserie to run that was also a base to bake the stock we still supplied to our other customers. This left the house kitchen free to cook meals for tourists if they wanted to pay extra. I still supplied the gift shop with product but would only accept custom orders for the saddle bags which dropped my time in the workshop. Claudette had also spoken to her other contacts and we made an appointment for my surgery at the beginning of winter.

There I was, then, stretched out in a hospital bed waiting to be prepped and Odette was sitting beside me with the two babies in a double stroller. She held my hand and softly said “I sat here some years ago, when Claude wanted to become Claudette. I was afraid that he had taken the wrong path and worried that, as a she, he would find that things were not as he thought they would be. Henri was not happy about it and I am sure that it contributed to his inattention the day he was killed.”

“I am now sitting here with you, a person who my daughter brought home as a stud for her desire to be a mother, something both she and Giselle were fixated on but too lazy to do the hard work finding the right man. As Anthony you would have been a wonderful son-in-law for me but then you were such good fun and so virile we all became intoxicated with the sex. I have no worries about your future as you are more Marie than Claude was Claudette. She is, I am sure you have noticed, becoming far more feminine and I am certain that it is loving the very girly you that lets her explore the true side of her.”

“By you being part of our family you have changed it completely. We now run three businesses; you have taken my husbands’ craft passion to new heights; I have three beautiful grand-daughters and a new daughter of my own who I love completely. As a family we have a future and you have a future as part of our family. I know that you had no idea that we would be here, waiting for you to be made Marie, yet here we are. I sit beside the father of my new baby, yet see the girl who makes my Claudette happy. I sit beside the man who managed to knock us all up and now realise that you didn’t do any of it maliciously. I know what Claudette was giving you and, in my stupidity, condoned it. Yet, all in all, it has worked out very well for all of us and I will greet you as my new daughter when you wake up.”

I pulled her hand to my mouth and kissed it, then replied “Thank you, Maman. When I met Louisa I fell totally in love and would have done anything she asked. In fact, I did do everything she asked. I did make lust at first but it became true love for all of you. I would have happily become your second husband in any other circumstance, just as I would have married all three of your daughters if I could. The one thing that I never saw coming, other than the opportunity to be in love with four different women; was the sheer joy that I now get from my babies. I will be their mother, father, aunt or whatever but I will be there for them as they grow into fine young ladies, just like their grand-mother.”

Just then the nurse came by with the needle poised and Odette bent and kissed me on the lips and said, as she stood, “That is from all eight of us.”

The next Christmas was, once again, very different from all the ones that went before. This time I was Marie in both mind and body. They may have brought Anthony home as some kind of stallion but I am now a mare and they were saddled with me now.

Marianne G 2021