Chapter 4 New Experiences

Back at home, I sat in the garden with a bottle of wine, thinking about what Jeanette and Kelvin had said about me still dressing as a woman, As I had said to Jeanette, it was just becoming automatic for me. Obviously with the breast forms still fixed in place, putting on a bra just seemed the right thing to do, and everything else just followed on from that. I still felt that my guiding spirit, whether it was something buried in my genes and sub-conscious, or whether it was a ghostly influence on me, still had work for me to do as Lexie. I was comfortable and enjoying life, seemed to be accepted by everyone I met as a young woman, and had adopted my woman’s voice as normal, even when talking to myself.

I also had to consider the commitment we had made to appear on Eggheads, the girls were still on a high after the tournament win and Lexie would be needed as part of the team. Whether I liked it or not, for their sake, Lexie was here to stay until at least after that and I saw no reason not to just continue as I was.

That night Had another dream visit from Charlotte, but this time I heard her voice.
”Thank your what you are doing for me. I made a good choice in picking you to right the wrong done to me. I will help guide you where I can, but in the world of the living only you can discover things and put things right. If you help me I will help you discover who you are.” with that she just faded away and I returned to a deep sleep.

Feeling refreshed and with my mind buzzing when I woke, I set things up on my easel and started to sketch out a picture I had in my mind. It was a typical ‘turn of the century’ posed family portrait showing a seated teenage girl and a younger boy standing to her side, dressed in their Sunday best, against a backdrop of the garden of Manor Lodge, looking up towards the fell. The girl looked like a younger version of Charlotte, and I assumed that the boy was Harold my Great Grandfather. It may have been only a dream or a recollection from my early childhood memories, but I was becoming more and more convinced that the spirit of Charlotte was clearing up a lot to the family history for me.

I worked on the painting filling in the details for the rest of the day and when it was completed I could actually see some family resemblance to my father, the same high cheekbones, the deep dark eyes and the jutting chin, I was now even more certain that this was Charlotte and her brother Harold in the early 1900s. I also felt that this was more personal to me than to the Robson Lasses, it was a link to my side of the family, but with both my parents having passed away a few years previously in a car accident I had no way to get it confirmed. On the off chance that Julie’s grandmother Edith may have met Harold at some time. I dropped the painting off at the pub, asking Julie if she could get Edith to have a look at it.

“I reckon that you are right and that is definitely Charlotte, she has the same wild hair, even though it has been brushed tidily for the pose. From the family tree we have pulled together her brother was 5 years younger so that could very well be him. Where did the inspiration for this come from.? Have you had another of your visits from Charlotte?”

“ She spoke to me this time and has promised to help me find out more about my family.”

“ What are you going to do next Lexie, is this all not worrying you?”

“ As I keep saying, I do not believe in the spirit world and all that sort of stuff, it must just be some deep rooted memories of things I saw and heard as a young child, and my mind is linking them to the fact that I am now in the old family home at Manor Lodge.”

“Anyway Lexie, I will get this over to Gran Edith and see if she remembers anything. While you are here, let’s sit down have something to eat and drink and have a chat.”

The following day I decided to go ahead with organising some professional prints of the three ‘Charlotte’ paintings and drove up to Consett where several artwork quality Gicleé printers were located, showed them the paintings, discussed the quality of the print material and colour intensity with them, reviewed some of the work they had done for other artists and got quotations. The prices were reasonable, but if I was going to market them even unframed it would mean a selling price of at least £100 for a full-size print. I decided to order prints of the ‘Cathy and Heathcliffe’ for the girls, and for Jan and Mark, to see how they would turn out and whether they felt that they would be value for money. The printers I selected offered a while-you-wait service including simple mounting, so I left all three of the paintings with them and decided to travel up to the Metro Centre in Gateshead to do some shopping and have lunch until they were ready.

It was a new experience, in a shop buying women’s clothes for myself, not something that I had ever expected to do, At first I was very nervous and wary, but I gradually relaxed and actually enjoyed browsing through the racks and selecting and trying on various outfits. The clothes my cousins had given me were perfectly fine but I just felt that it would be nice to have some that were all my very own. I did not go too rash, a few tops, a couple of skirts, a smart cocktail dress, several sets of undies, and a pair of leather court shoes with a 3” heel. It was all a bit more than I had planned on spending, but I was happy with what I had bought and made my way back to the printers.

“ How did they turn out then Harry?” I asked with eager anticipation.

“They scanned and printed very well and they are super paintings.”

“ Come on then, let’s have a look, I can hardly wait. That’s a brilliant job Harry, they have turned out a lot better than I thought they would, the print quality is amazing and the textured paper you have used make them look like they are originals on canvas. How much do I owe you?”

“I have a suggestion for you first. We run a website selling fine-art prints for some of the other artists that use us, if you let us put them on the site and see what sales we get, I will open an account for you and offset today’s costs against any income they generate. The money from the first few sales will all go to us to cover our costs, after that we will charge you £20 a print for that size and £10 for a smaller copy, which is a lot lower than the retail costs as I expect that they will sell quite well, the rest of any sales will be yours. How does that sound?”

“ Sounds ok to me, although I don’t have any experience of doing this before. Let’s see how it goes.”

“ I thought that you might agree, so I’ve run off a few smaller prints from all the paintings, as samples for you.”

“ Thank you so much, my cousins will be delighted with them. See you soon Harry.”

“If you have any more, either email me a high-resolution photo or bring them up to me for scanning. The photo will be fine for the website and depending on the quality may even be good enough for the printing.”

I could hardly wait to get back home to give the girls their prints and get their reaction. To the untrained eye the prints were virtually indistinguishable from the original although they would never pass the critical eye of art experts. As expected they were delighted and even more so when I told them that they were gifts to repay all the friendship they had given me. Jeanette, who was probably the most cultured of the three suggested that she had seen similar size and quality prints from local artists in the £140 to £200 range, which gave me a bit of hope that I could even turn this into a viable business.

I sent a rolled, unmounted, copy in a protective tube to Jan and Mark as they would probably be more objective than my cousins. and a few days later got a call from Jan.

“ Thank you so much Lexie, it is beautiful we will get it framed and hang it in our living room so we are reminded of the wonderful few days we had up there with you. How much do we owe you?”

“ How much do you think it’s worth, if you saw it in a shop what would you be prepared to pay?”

“ You can buy poster prints that size for about the £50 mark, but artwork prints on quality paper are a lot more expensive, we bought one from a studio in the Derbyshire Dales for £135, and it was not nearly as well done as yours is.”

“ Thanks Jan, I’ll bear that in mind, but there is no charge to you, please accept it with my compliments for being a test-bed for me. All I want from you is a promise that you will come back to see us all again before too long.”

“ Try and keep us away ! Please tell Julie and Kelvin we will be back soon, and thanks again for the painting.”

On Monday, I picked up Josie and Julie and drove to the head of the dale and over the bleak moor to Allenheads, only to find that the Graham family had moved from there some time ago and settled in the larger town of Hexham in the Tyne Valley, where Charles Graham and his recently qualified son Russell ran a small solicitors practice. Using the excuse of needing some advice regarding some land purchase, we managed to get an appointment with Russell and an hour later we were ushered into his office, to be met by a modern version of a dead-ringer for James who had treated Charlotte so badly.

i blustered my way through a proposal to purchase a field behind my house, and he advised me of what would be involved and what their fees would be. He was a pleasant enough young man, and whilst he may have inherited his forebear’s looks, he seemed to have a much more reliable and friendly nature. we left him with a promise to let him know what we wanted him to do.

“What do you think of him then, girls?” I asked, to be met with a smile from Julie and a bit of a blush from Josie.

“ I was right when I said his grandfather was a bit of a looker, he is absolutely gorgeous and was so nice to us.” Josie answered too quickly.

“ Do you think that we should talk to him again and tell him why we are really here?” I asked, and again rather too quickly Josie agreed that it was a good idea, so I called back to his office.

“ Hello again Russell, Lexie Robson here, we would like have a talk with you, but it is more of a personal nature rather than business, can you meet us out of the office. We are not far from you, in the Abbey Tea Rooms. I’d rather not try to explain over the phone it will be much better face-to-face. Ok see you in a few minutes then.”

“ I’m intrigued Ladies.” he said as he came into the tea rooms, “I see you already have coffee and cakes, does anyone need a top-up or should I just sort myself out?”

When he came back with a pot of tea and joined us, I started by showing him photos on my phone of the paintings I had done without explaining what they were.

“It’s like looking in a mirror, where did you get these?”

Keeping away from the fact that I was really Leckie rather than Lexie, I told him the story of me returning to Weardale and my dreams and inspiration for the paintings, and what we had found out, or thought we had found out about Charlotte and James almost 100 years previously.”

“Excuse me a minute Ladies, I have to phone the office. Laura, is there anything urgent for me to rush back to deal with, otherwise I will be out for a while? No, good, see you later.”

That actually ties in with something I heard my Grandfather muttering about when I was younger. In your early teens you are not interested in things like that, but there was talk of a family scandal about that time. Can I come back with you to St John’s Chapel and see the actual paintings?’

“Of course, do you want to do it now, you can follow us back there?”

“ I’ll go with Russell just in case we get separated.” Josie volunteered, and Julie and I exchanged knowing looks, she obviously wanted to have some time to talk to Russell one-to-one.

I stopped of at the pub to get the ‘Cathy and Heathcliffe’ landscape and drove home to look at the two portrait scenes.

While I made coffee and sorted out some cake, they made themselves at home, looking at and talking about the paintings, and Josie made sure that she and Russell were side-by-side on the sofa, leaving Julie and I the two armchairs.

“ These are amazing pictures Lexie, you have a lot of talent.The one of James could be me, if you just updated the clothes and hair a bit. Can you do one like that for me? When I am stuck in the office going through dreary property transfers or divorce papers it will clear my head to look up and see that wild landscape.

“ Of course, I will be pleased to, let me take a photo of you so that I can sort out your portrait.”

“It is an amazing story that you have pulled together, however as a hard-nosed lawyer I am sceptical about your guiding spirit idea, but something has obviously led you to dig all this up. I will make a few discreet enquiries with my grandparents to see if the story makes sense from our family’s point of view, and will give you a call to arrange to come over again. It took a lot of nerve to open up to me about all this, I could quite easily have accused you of raking up scandal to shame my family.”

When he had left we talked through what we had found out.

“You don’t waste any time Josie, do you?” Julie looked over at her.

“You don’t know the half of it, we are going out for a drink next Tuesday.”

“What? you are giving up a quiz night out with your family for a first date with someone you hardly know, what are you thinking about?” Julie kept on at her, with a big grin on her her face, refusing to drop it.”

“You’ll all have to manage without me, I’m sure that you will survive, but you might end your winning streak without me there to support you.”

Josie walked back down to the village, happy at how her day had turned out, but Julie stayed behind.

“With a bit of luck that’s Josie sorted out with someone. What about you, is there anybody special in your life?”

“ I’ve had close friends and several potential partners, but nothing seemed to have worked out for one reason and another. I’m happy just on my own, and I can hardly go searching for someone looking like this can I?”

“You do not seem over-eager to go back to being Leckie, are you sure that you are ok as you are, I wouldn’t like you to think that you have to remain as a woman just to fit in with us?”

“After what Jeanette said the other day, I have been thinking about it. I am working from home, everything comes to me and is returned via email and document transfer, the only people I meet in person, other than casually, are you and the girls. I have no problems with other people I meet, I just seem to be accepted as a woman, and the longer it goes on the more normal it is becoming. Let’s get the “Eggheads’ over first and then see what I really want to do. I was perfectly happy as Leckie, and the thought of living as a woman had never entered my head, but now I am living as Lexie, I am just as happy, I have found family I can relate to. I enjoy meeting up with you all and the girlish chatter, and I seem to be able to socialise better, I am in no hurry to go back.”

“ If you decide to go back to being Leckie, that will not change what we think of you and you will still be in the family circle, but if you decide that you prefer life as Lexie that will be fine too, we have got used to having her around.”

It was two weeks later when I got the call from Jim at Channel 5 asking us to go in to record our challenge to the Eggheads. To make an impression We all had our hair done in similar styles, or as similar as they could be with the varied styles we all normally wore, and all dressed in the same primrose half-sleeve blouses and black short skirts, we looked not quite quins, but definitely a close family group.

At the end of the four rounds, Jeanette and Jane had won their individual challenges, Julie and Josie lost their rounds, and I, as team captain, went through automatically, leaving the three of us to take on the three remaining panel members. At the end of the final round, we just scraped through on tie-break questions to win the prize pot, which had grown since the last win up to £25000, a nice reward of £5000 each, but the main prize was actually beating the experts on the panel.

That night I had another dream of Charlotte. In it she walked towards me, smiling, gave me a hug and whispered “Thank you for bringing the Robsons and Grahams together again after all these years, you will hear from me again.”

A few days later I had a call from the media company behind ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’ apparently they had been tipped off about me by Jim at Channel 5, inviting me to a regional audition to take part in the show, just me not the rest of the girls. I was worried that they would feel snubbed and jealous, but they were delighted for me and wished me luck.

Two weeks later i was in a studio in Leeds sitting in a chair similar to that on the show with one of the production team representing the show host. At first I was uneasy and nervous, not about the questions, but more about making sure that I was 100% Lexie and that no trace of Leckie would show. However, the audition went well, I answered most of the questions they threw at me and found it easy to chat to the ‘host’.

“Thanks for coming in Lexie, I’m pleased to tell you that you will be on the show being recorded at the end of next month. You performed well, weren’t bothered by the cameras and crew and should make a good contestant. Good luck and I look forward to seeing you win a large amount of money.”

Another hurdle had now been passed by me, even with the camera close-ups and the pressure of what I could potentially win, I came across as naturally feminine, my time spent with the girls had now been ingrained into me and there was no trace of masculinity left at all. I was really looking forward to appearing on the show.

To be continued.