Part 5

I hugged Sally and told her that she would easily cover the topics. We had done enough of these tours, now, for all three of us to be able to repeat the lines.

“Look, with the new slant on the narrative, there won’t be many places for the building details. What they’ve said is the title of my thesis, I could do ten hours of that with my eyes shut, it took up three years of my life. Come on, let’s get dressed and go out there and slay them in the aisles.”

When we got back, a girl fitted me with a tiny microphone, with the transmitter just a small box that sat in the front of my bra. She then sat me in a corner to give my face some extra make-up, so I didn’t shine under the lights. Then I was positioned at the starting point and the director called action!

I had the first lines of my thesis ready to go, and started the narrative with a comment on how the Grand Tour changed the interiors of grand houses, it also improved the knowledge of the owners of those houses, and of all those that have visited them since. I then spoke about the painting I stood beside; then moved on to the portrait of the man who had brought it back, moving through the edited tour as smoothly as I could. At the end of my talk, beside the last painting in the room that was on my list, I just stood and heard “Cut!”

Then things were re-arranged. The main camera was taken to the next room, while a second one was set up in front of a sculpture that Sally would describe. I watched as she did that, with altered words to match the new tone of the show. I left her to her job and went to where the camera was being fixed, did the measuring procedure, then we did that room, taking two set-ups to get all of the pictures in. As that camera was moved, along with the lights, to the next room, Sally came in, followed by her crew, to film those sculptures and ceramics that were here.

I had a quick word with her, and she told me that she now had the tone of the talk, after having to repeat the first bit three times. She said that the crew didn’t seem to mind and had encouraged her as she moved on with other set-ups. In the end, including lunch, we completed three rooms, and the director was happy. He finally got around to telling me his name was Scott Bradley, and that we had done better than he had expected. By the end of the day, Terry and Oscar were seasoned hands, knowing what to carry and what to leave alone.

Back in our normal clothes, Sally and I decided to go somewhere nice for dinner, and the boys were happy with that. Both guys praised our composure and performance, and both were caught up in the excitement of making a film. Terry said that his brother would have to work in the shop all week, so that he could continue. Oscar was back on duty so wasn’t able to come back tomorrow.

On Tuesday, we had to redo two of my positions, and one of Sally’s, due to poor lighting and, in one case, tinsel in the shot. We did those with the small crew that followed Sally, while the main camera was set up in another room. That set the tone for the week; we filmed three rooms a day, catching up on the reject shots after they had seen the results in the comfort of a studio. When I got to my final picture, I described how she had arrived at the Hall, smiled, and finished with, “And she has never left.” I stood there and the director asked me to stay still, then told me to walk away, while I could see the camera still rolling. It did so for nearly a minute before he called “Cut” and the crew all slapped each other’s backs and smiled a lot.

Friday was simple, we had four shots that needed redoing and then I was free of the long dress, which had proved a bit warm under the lights. We had lunch and Scott came up to Sally, Terry, and me, as we were talking.

“Jesse, I have to say that it’s been a pleasure working with you two, this week. You’ve done everything we asked, without question, and the result looks fantastic. Terry here has been a real help and he is welcome on my sets whenever he’s able. To tell you the truth, I heard him talking to Jim, our cameraman, about angles, and a few of the things he asked about made Jim change things, for the better. If we do another house, I’ll let him try out on the second crew. I have to cobble the show into some sort of order. We will do it as two, half-hour episodes and another as a full one hour. That way, we can give a prospective customer a choice. I’m going to pitch it to the BBC and the History Channel. If anybody takes it up, it’s likely to be for the end of the year. If they want a series, we’ll need to film the other episodes over this summer, so that the series could show next summer.”

“Thank you, Scott,” Terry grinned. “I’ll talk to my Dad this weekend about getting time off from the shop so that I can take up that offer. It’s been a fantastic week and I’ve learned a lot.”

“That’s good. By the way, what happened to the other lad, Oscar?”

“He’s a fireman,” Sally said. “He works in Nottingham and had to go back on shift. He told me that Monday was an eye-opener for him, as well. I think he may have caught the movie bug.”

“Tell him that if we start filming a series, we’ll need a fire warden on set in the old houses. You have one here, who has been keeping an eye on us, but I don’t think that every house has one, especially if we get asked to work in the privately owned ones.”

I went to have a word with the shop manager, who told me that she didn’t have any vacancies, but to talk to Doris, the Restaurant Manager, who usually does need extra staff. I did so and found out that my sister could start in two weeks, if she wanted. I told Doris I would talk to her, and, if she was still keen, would bring her in next week for an interview. Then we left, with another week before we were back in the house full time. There was more cleaning up to do, now, after the Christmas opening, and we then had to prepare for Easter, when we would be doing Egg Hunts in the grounds. After that, it was just weekends until the beginning of March and the Summer Season.

Terry had to do extra time in the shop, to placate Tommy and their father, so I didn’t see much of him for several days. I spoke to Dawn, and took her into the Hall on the Monday, leaving her with Doris while I went to my room to pick up a few things that needed cleaning. When I got back, it was smiling all round. There was a place for her that she had the skills for, in the kitchens. The Restaurant served all sorts of food, all day, and her fast-food expertise was well respected. The thing for her was that it was steady work, with no night shifts, and with older customers. For me, it was getting her away from her useless friends.

We all met up on the Monday, at the Hall. I took Dawn, and would take her home, until she got a car of her own. I could stay at home until we were into the Easter preparations. That’s how the first part of year unfolded, going in, doing my bit, and going home. My sister grew up several years in two months, becoming the woman she should have been, without the distractions. She became a solid member of the Restaurant staff and was happy.

It also made a difference at home. Mum now felt that she could trust her not to fill the house with her friends if they went away. They started planning a holiday, the first they had taken in several years. With me going home, Terry would often come around for dinner and we would take time to cuddle on the sofa. He had given me a list of doctors and I had been able to see one, who had been very helpful and supportive. I was now on a regime of blockers and hormones, that made me feel odd some days and weepy on others. Mum told me that I was having sympathy turns as the other two women in the house went through their periods, something that I had never considered to be part of my own future.

In the week after Easter, we had a visit from Claudette. She brought her new husband to show us. We knew that she had a French mother, thus her name, but now found out that she spoke fluent French and had been an Easter bride, in Toulouse, where she had married Jaques, one of the doctors that had treated her after her accident. They were in Britain as part honeymoon, part collecting all of her things, before going back to France to live. We all had a Saturday evening meal, where she met Terry and Oscar, telling us that we had both found keepers.

Two weeks after that, the Restaurant had a big screen set up, and we were all invited to a meal. There was all the girls, the gardeners, Derek, a few Trust guys, and the family. The film that we had done was shown before we ate. It opened with Lady C in the family drawing room, telling the audience that she was inviting them to go on a journey into history, with this show featuring her own family home of Kedleston Hall. Then it cut to a vista of the façade, before zooming in on the main doors, with a brief overview of the history of the house. The next shot was me, starting my talk, and it worked through the whole thing, with Sally coming in to describe the sculptures, ceramics, and their place in history. I was amazed at how smooth it all went. We saw the one-hour version, with the final shot of me, talking about the Lady D’Aubigny. When I said that she had never left, I slowly faded into nothingness while the Lady stayed smiling as the credits ran.

There was applause, with hugs all round. Scott then stood and congratulated all of us for our work, thanked the family for the opportunity to film here, then he said.

“I can tell you now. The BBC have given us a contract for this, and eight other shows, each running for half an hour. The History Channel wants us to do twelve, one-hour shows with this being the first. The money is on the table, and we now have some shows to plan!”

There was a babble after that. I was shocked, and I saw that Sally was as well. I didn’t know what to think. We had featured highly as the presenters in the credits, a list that was much longer than the numbers we had filming. Even Terry and Oscar got named as grips. I did notice that the program had Trust Authorisation. That would have been a feather in the cap for Derek.

Dawn had tears in her eyes as she brought out mine and Sallys’ meal. She told us that the whole kitchen was happy with us, and that she was especially proud of her clever sister. I can tell you that the clever sister wasn’t feeling so clever at the moment. I think that the two of us were numb, with the effect of what we had just seen, sinking in. Neither of us had picked up a piece of cutlery. I looked at Sally, and she looked at me.

“Well, Best Friend Forever, we’ve gone and done it now, haven’t we.”

“We sure did, Sally. It was a shock, seeing us there on the screen, looking like all those other fashionable women on the box. At times I thought I was looking at someone else.”

“It did look good, though, and the altered wording made it a bit less like the tour, and more like a couple of shows on famous places that I’ve seen.”

We then turned our attention to the food, a simple meal of a stockman’s pie and some veg, covered in gravy. We both left half of it, still spooked by what we had seen. Looking around, I saw that the Trust guys were in deep conversation with Derek, and Scott was almost head-to-head with Brian, the lawyer. We were drinking coffee when Brian came over and pulled out a chair to sit with us.

“That was a very polished performance, you two, and Scott tells me that you nailed most of it in one go, with most of the retakes his fault. He wants to work with you both into the future. I’ve told him that you were contracted to the Hall until the end of next year, but we would be happy to release you during the week to go and make films. The family are over the moon with what has happened, and they are only taking reservations for weekend special tours.”

“I did start to wonder about that,” I said. “Our tour, and that show, was more than a quick thing. The content was the result of three years at Uni, and another six months in planning. He’s going to have to have a good team doing the research, and then give us at least a week to work out our approach. We won’t be doing any future recording in period dress, although I think we will continue to wear long dresses, something a bit lighter would be good.”

“The timing is close to what I insisted on. He is happy with that and tells me that his team is second to none. You’ll get paid the going rate for presenters, while you are on set, and he will start by paying you for the five days here. I have given him your payment details, so expect something in your bank soon. He’ll get back to us with papers for you to sign, as well as a likely set of filming dates. He’s very keen on this, and from what I saw, today, I don’t blame him.”

After he left, the seat was taken up by Derek.

“I have to thank you two. The executive have asked me to join them, in head office, to work on pepping up the properties across the country. My first job is to provide Scott with a short list of likely places. I clear out of here, tonight, and they’ll appoint a new guy before the Summer Season. None of this would have happened without you. I’ll make sure that many doors are opened to you as you move on, and I look forward to seeing you both grace my screen.”

As he stood, so did we, to give him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek, telling him that he had been the best, and deserved everything that has occurred. I then sat there, looking around and thinking of how my life had slowly changed since I came to work here, less than a year ago. Somehow, I had been urged into presenting as a woman, made use of my studies, found some very good friends and one special boy, and was now being put into the role as a TV presenter of art in great houses. As something to test the media, I got my phone and typed Kedleston Hall, getting thousands of hits, most of the ones I looked at having a picture of me, some with the tag of “the cute new tour guide with brains”. That was a bit different! I considered the possibility of getting bleached. Would the tag then be “cute guide performs frontal lobotomy!”

I was stuck, I had been shown my future. As far as my life went, the moving finger had moved on. Nothing would change the past year, and there was no way I could do anything different without disappointing a lot of people. That’s when I realised that if I didn’t follow the path I had been shown, the one with the most disappointment would be me!

Over the next couple of weeks, we set up the old planning room to work on new projects. It was odd to be doing all of this without Claudette, but we just had to make the best of it. Scott dropped in with Brian and we signed new contracts as presenters, being paid for our time in front of the camera as well as for us to bill the production company for our time spent getting a script together. The money, which he said was on the table, gave us enough to bring in a good computer and a printer/scanner. With the first set of paperwork from his researchers, we got stuck into producing a script for the next house to be explored. I had asked him to get the researchers to look at the other people who had visited and worked in the houses, along with any significant differences in the surrounding area to areas without a great house.

Just before we opened, we had the winning ticket holders for the tour and meal. Over the past few weeks, Terry had been a little withdrawn and I was starting to wonder if he was cooling down. I needn’t have worried, as all was revealed that day. Ada and Fred told me that they had sold the shop to a large chain, and it will be demolished, along with the whole row of shops, to make way for a hypermarket. That was why all the shopkeepers were in a good mood, most of them being close to retirement age and happy to be rid of the worry.

The tour went well, and I saw Tommy with his phone, taking lots of pictures. I spoke to him at the lunch, and he told me that he wanted to start painting, seriously. I said that we had a big workroom where he could set up an easel if he wanted. I took him and showed him the room. It wasn’t the best for light, but he said that he had portable lights he could use. We started the season with me taking Dawn to work and Terry took Tommy in his car. Terry helped us with the planning, from floor plans of the next batch of houses, while Tommy started working on a painting, taken from a picture of me in front of the Lady D’Aubigny.

Over that summer, we had a week of planning sessions, followed by a week of filming, where we all stayed in the house we were at, or else a hotel not far away. Weekends were generally two tours a day, one before lunch and one before dinner. On the shoots, we all got into a pattern, Terry was now spending a lot of time on the second crew, behind the camera, and the usual cameraman was working with a hand-held, getting general scenes of the house we were visiting. Oscar was on the payroll as the fire-warden and also a general handyman. I did my bits, one picture at a time, as we couldn’t move things around to create a natural timeline. Sally did the same.

We did these shows in tea dresses, calf length and light material, and had no problems with the heat under the lights. After a while, those dresses seemed to become our trademark, different ones for each house. The summer sped by, with us being busy, but we didn’t mind. We were planning our fifth house when Scott came by walking into our workroom with a big smile on his face.

“Girls, great news. I’ve shown two of the new shows to our customers and they’ve commissioned a second series. On top of that I’ve had a phone call from a big French Channel, asking us if we could do the shows dubbed in French. Of course, I said we could, the money they offered will fund a translator and you can just do the sound in a studio, while watching the vision.”

We congratulated him on the momentous events, and he then noticed a couple of Tommy’s pictures that we had put on the wall, then went over to where Tommy was working on a painting, taken from a photo he had taken at our second house. I could see the light bulb appear over his head. Before he left us, Tommy was on the payroll as our illustrator, with Scott planning to use his pictures as the lead-out and lead-in to likely advertising breaks. As he said, “You cover the chances, and you look as if it’s all been planned.”

We worked at the Hall, and in the field, through to Christmas and the December festivities. I was much more organised, this time, and had bought presents for all my loved ones, before time and in proper shops. My doctor was really happy with me, my breasts were growing, and my skin was much smoother. I had regular visits to the salon, so my facial hair was now non-existent, while my crowning glory was now, indeed, a glory to behold, if a pain in the butt to keep looking good. By this time, a lot of the things I needed to do to remain a good-looking woman were now second nature, and I had become accustomed to spending hours before a date to get ready. I loved it all, though.

After Christmas, a number of things happened to move me further along the road. I was approved for SRS later in the year, Sally asked me to be her Maid of Honour at her wedding to Oscar, and the original film was scheduled for screening. The first half-hour was to go on the BBC after Easter, and, at the same time, the first one-hour version was to be seen on the History Channel, both here, and in the U.S.A.

The first thing was expected, and, once we had a date, my work was shifted to take it in. The second was the easy one, just a frilly dress and help my best friend achieve married life. Was I ever wrong with that!

There were so many things about a wedding that I hadn’t known, hadn’t bothered to learn, or simply hadn’t cared about. It was almost worse than the final exams at Uni, and we only had two months to get it right. It was a whirlwind of dress finding, salon choosing, car booking, church trial runs, special girlie evenings, cake purchase, reception organisation, the list went on and on. It took my mind off of the upcoming operation I had booked for a week after the wedding.

As occasions go, the wedding was something that I had never imagined. I had been to a few, granted, but never at the centre of the action. It was fortunate that Terry was the Best Man, as he was a real help on the day. I had often wondered why a girl would wear a huge dress that was impossible to control, but found out, that day, that it was because it looked so damn good in the photos, as well as needing several helpers to move you around. The attention was intoxicating!

The second thing, that took place a week after, was both wonderous and awful at the same time. It was painful, embarrassing, messy and not good to look at for some weeks. After that I was in a new world where I looked like I now felt, was able to strip in changing rooms, and could shop for ‘delicates’ without blushing. When the next Summer Season started, I was ready to take it on.

That summer we filmed the second series, for both channels, and employed Claudette to be our translator, being able to give the script an informed tone. Sally and I did the speaking, which gave us another string to our bows. We both had school French, but the technical terms had never been covered. The French language shows went out in Autumn.

By the end of summer, we were getting requests for interviews, invites to openings, queries about being part of new projects, a lot of paperwork came in. Dawn was our part-time secretary, and Tommy helped out, organising publicity photos of Sally and me that we signed. We did our last special tour at the end of summer, then started training up a few of the regular girls to take over the year after. We had fulfilled our contracts, and everyone was happy.

Before all that, however, I was dolled up in another impossible dress to be married to Terry, now that we could truly become man and wife. We did trial my new equipment for some months before the event, just to make sure it worked. It wasn’t as if I could get pregnant.

That winter saw us renting a space in the same building as Scott. We were now part of his production team. The tone of the second series had moved, where we could, into the lives of the ordinary people that had worked in the houses, soaking up culture that was well out of the ordinary. There was also a long list of well-known artisans who had gained a foothold because of work they had done in houses that were exhibiting a definite European attitude.

We now worked closely with his research teams, often joining them when visiting likely houses. We started with an offshoot series, discussing the art and objects in museums and galleries that had benefitted from the largess of the owners of the grand houses. Then we worked on a series that explored the lives of great artists who had started out selling small paintings to the tourists of the day, then becoming the ‘Old Masters’.

As we were doing all that, Sally fell pregnant and decided that she would rather work in the background, leaving me out front as the presenter. I was, by now, well able to hold my own in front of the camera, as well as discussing our shows in interviews. I started doing talks about art, and was often invited to talk on the radio, whenever an expensive painting was coming up for sale.

There had been a show, on the TV, about fake pictures and the ways that could prove a genuine one. We started a similar one called “Real or Rubbish” and invited viewers to bring us artworks to work with, picking out the ones that were very realistic, or the real thing, to film the process. Then I was asked to be an art expert on the “Roadshow”. It was regular work, through summer, and I did that for more years than I could have ever hoped for.

Dawn blossomed in the restaurant and went on to take more studies in cooking. After a few years, she came on board with us as our catering manager, eventually being in the same position on the ‘Roadshow’ team. She also went on TV as the host of a show called ‘Britain’s Best Burgers!’ She married a chef and produced more grandchildren for our parents to spoil.

Tommy became a respected artist. It was odd, at a ‘Roadshow’ many years later, to have someone bring me one of his early works that they had bought. It was from that first rush of energy, and I was the subject, looking at a painting. And talking about paintings; we did a show from the grounds at Kedleston. I did a segment talking about the Hall and its contents, then meeting up with the current Lord to discuss, and value, the Lady D’Aubigny. He had been a toddler when I worked there and the shoot ended with us standing next to the portrait, with him holding up one of the original postcards.

I had to thank that time when there were no outfits in my size. I doubt that I would have had the career that I ended up with, had I worked, that day, as my male self. I had become the expert that the auction houses called in for advice, and the social media was full of pictures of me in a variety of shows and events, hanging on Terry’s arm.

We have two, adopted, children, and they used to play with Sally and Oscar’s three until they got old enough to go off to University. All five children are brainy and will do well. My son wants the MGTF to drive to Uni, but Terry will never give it up. He says that it’s a blast to drive a very recognisable car, especially as it had featured in the new opening shots of the ‘Roadshow’ for some years.

The finger had truly moved on, and there were no words that I cried over, as nothing in my life needed to be washed away.

Marianne Gregory © 2023