Chapter 3

Going back into the house, I helped with the dinner, and we sat to enjoy the meal. Mum had found a bottle of white wine which had been in the fridge, and we had a glass, each. It wasn’t bad. I had baked a cake, during the week, so we each had a slice, covered in custard out of a carton.

She went off to watch some television, while I washed up and put the things away. Then, I sat at the kitchen table and looked through my special recipe book, for something not too difficult for the class to try on Thursday. If Mum brought home some ink, I would print it tomorrow evening so that I could hand it round on Tuesday. I went back out to the shed to check what paper we had and found a box with some good pages of what looked like parchment. There was a good few hundred sheets, so that would work for a while.

I sat on the stool and looked at the bike I was going to use. It had a front carrier, which would take my satchel, as well as a back platform with a big spung loop, that would be good for oddments that I may carry, like a handbag. This girl thing just kept throwing up new wrinkles. The last thing that Mum had said, before she went back to the house, echoed in my mind. What did she mean by saying that I had ‘been out of the box’? One thing, for sure, she was in no state to be pushed, just now. Perhaps she’ll enlarge on that statement, some other time. Then I thought about my nephew. Would I be his Aunt Connie? He would, I guessed, be about eleven, and a real go-getter if he was looking for part-time work.

The more I thought, the odder it seemed. I went back into the house and spoke to Mum, during an ad break.

“Mum, you said that your grandson had come in looking for work. Surely Harriet lives down in Worthing? He wouldn’t be cycling this far for a couple of hours.”

“That never occurred to me. The school is in this area as well. I’ll ask him, tomorrow, when I see him. I might be a little late home. I’ve written a reminder to get the ink, so you can get the typeface together before I get home. I’ll bring a take-away to give you plenty of time to do the printing.”

The next morning, I made sure that I had a skirt which would be all right on the bike. It had a cover on the back wheel, so I wouldn’t catch anything in the spokes. I showered, checked for any new hairs, and dressed conservatively. The skirt was a new one, just above the knee, and the top was one I already had. A new pair of what I had been told were Mary Janes nearly finalised the outfit, but I did put on a pink puffer jacket that had caught my eye on Saturday. Mum had already gone to work, so I locked up and rode to the school, making sure that I wasn’t flashing my panties on the way. I got hugs when I arrived, and Pete looked at me and then his eyes went wide.

“You were in our restaurant on Saturday evening, with an older woman. Was it your mother?”

“Yes, we were there. I did see you working in the kitchen but didn’t want to bother you as you were busy. It was a very nice meal, well produced and very tasty. If I was a food critic, I would give you eight out of ten.”

“Only eight! We aim for ten, every time.”

“Well, no-one is perfect. In fact, many people in the world consider perfection as an insult to God. The other point was off because you’re located in Brighton, rather than London, always a minus for high society.”

We all had a laugh and the day passed very pleasantly, My chopping had improved, as has my interest in normal meals made from normal ingredients. At lunch, the girls said that I had been totally female, so far, and Maria told them, in no uncertain terms, that I couldn’t be anything else but a girl. That caused a couple of the others to exchange looks.

I had told our teacher what ingredients went into the first dish, and he had looked through the recipe. He agreed that it was a good start, as not being very far from the usual sort of thing. It was really how it was put together that made it difficult.

The afternoon went slowly, but it finally ended. Outside the school Maria and I kissed and then I cycled home. In the shed, I started to assemble the type into blocks for the press and was engrossed in that when the door opened and Mum came in, followed by a young lad.

“Connie, this is Henry, your nephew. He’s had a bit of a shock, today, when he found out who I was, so I’ve brought him home to meet his family. The computerised typesetting will just have to work without him for a day.”

“Hello, Henry. I’m Connie, and your mother is my sister.”

“Mum said that she only had brothers.”

“That’s right, this time, last week, I was still her brother, Conway. Today is my first week of being Connie, her new sister, that she doesn’t know about.”

His eyes went wide and then he smiled.

“Cool, at least I know that it runs in the family.”

“What does?”

“Being queer. That’s the reason I’m not living at home. I’ve been sent to my Aunt Betty to live, because my parents caught me looking at she-male sites on my laptop. They were outraged and called me all sorts of nasty names. I’ve never felt ‘right’ since I was about seven but couldn’t figure out why. It’s only since I’ve had time on the computer that I realised that I should have been a girl.”

“It doesn’t mean that you’re queer, Henry, just different. I still have my boy bits and have a lesbian girlfriend. Does that make me hetero or homo? Yesterday, we were at the park and danced with boys, does that make us both normal? It’s a very wide world when you’re different, and you can be anything you like until you settle. One day, you may find that you want to be a boy and like other boys; or you may lose your boy bits and still like girls. There’s so many combinations lie in your possible futures.”

“Wow. You’re so with it, Connie. You’re the light in my darkness.”

“Nice words, young man, did you excel at English as well as computer studies?

“Along with science and maths. My teachers tell me that I’m bright, with a good future. How can that happen when I don’t know what I am?”

Mum decided to intervene.

“I’m sure that you’ll work it out, Henry. Does your Aunt Betty know why you were sent to her?”

“Oh, yes. My Dad said that she was the black sheep of the family so a perfect place for a deviant queer. He has banned me from going to church, thank God, and Aunt Betty has a lot to say about her own parents and their fixed ways, I can tell you!”

“So, your parents have thrown you out! How unchristian is that!”

“Yes, everything I have is now with Aunt Betty. I suppose that she’s now my guardian.”

“Connie, I completely forgot to get the take-away, so let’s get dinner for the three of us, then I think that we have to see Betty and work out how we’re going to help Henry, and make sure he continues his schooling, along with exploring his desires. We will have to have Betty as support. I remember her from the wedding, she was not part of the bridal group, and now we know why. You can finish your printing when you get back.”

“Can we do that before we leave, Gran? This press is a museum piece and I’d love to see how it works.”

“All right, we’d better see about an early dinner, then.”

So, I left what I was doing, and we went into the house. Mum busied herself with dinner, while I showed Henry my room, and my clothes, and told him that a lot of them had belonged to his mother when she got married.

“So, some of these are older than me? That’s wild. Do you have anything that would fit me, I’d love to see how I’d look.”

The bags for the op-shop were still there, so we rummaged through them to find the things that had been too small for me. He was quite a small lad, for his age, and we did find a dress that Harriet must have worn as an early teenager. He stripped down to his pants and put it over his head. I have to say that he looked the part. I combed his hair with a center parting, and he looked in the mirror and laughed out loud, then turned to me to hug me, saying “Thank you” over and over.

We didn’t have any shoes for him, so he went, barefoot, down to the kitchen. Mum almost dropped a saucepan when she saw us come in, told me to take over and then hurried into the lounge to find a photo album. When she came back, she showed us a picture of Harriet wearing that dress.

“This was taken when Harriet was twelve. It was a birthday party for one of her school friends. She loved that dress and could never part with it when she outgrew it. Look, she had her hair parted in the middle, and, except for the fact that her hair was longer, you look like her twin sister, Henry.”

“Wearing this, Gran, please call me Henrietta. Or Henny, for short.”

“All right, Henny. Whatever you want. That meal should be close, can you serve, Connie, while I show Henny pictures of his mother at the same age.”

We had our dinner, with a lot of smiles and laughter, and Henny emerged, fully formed, if only for a little while. When we had cleared everything away, Mum told us to go to the shed and get the printing done, while she was going to call Betty on the number that Henny had given her. Before we left, she took some pictures of us, individually and together.

The two of us went out to the shed and it didn’t take long to finish the type blocks and set up the press. I let Henny print the first page and she was like a kid with a new toy. We allowed that page to dry, so she could take it with her, while we did another dozen copies, pegging them to a stringline to dry. Wiping off the excess ink, we removed the type blocks and put all the letters back into the storage box. We shut the press and covered it, made sure our hands were clean, then went into the house.

Henny was sad to be returned to Henry but was bright enough to know that it wasn’t the end of being dressed. We had talked while we had been working and discussed the likely future. A lot depended on what Betty had to say, and if she did, indeed, have guardianship paperwork.

We went to see Betty, not that far away, and were welcomed in. Mum had spoken to her, on the phone, and they had worked out a lot of things. We met Betty’s husband, Jerry, and he was very nice. They made tea and we sat in their kitchen and made plans. They did have all the paperwork that made them guardians, as Henry’s parents had completely disowned him. That made what we planned a lot easier, and his parents would have to go through the court to stop it, which Betty said they would never do, as it would highlight why they needed to call a halt to proceedings.

The plan was for Henry to work at the printers, in the evenings, on the setting up of the weekly paper. On Friday, his bike be put in the back of the Cruiser, and he would come home with his Gran, to spend the weekend as Henny, with us. Mum told them that she would fund any clothes, and that we would set up my brother’s old bedroom for her. She would be returned to them, as Henry, on Sunday evening. Betty and Jerry were good people, already the parents of a lesbian daughter, now in university, so fitted Harriet’s ideal of guardians for deviant queers.

As for Henry, he was radiant as the prospect sunk in. He was bright enough to know that he couldn’t go to school as Henny, and that anything we did would have to be totally reversed by Sunday evening. The idea of spending two days a week as Henny was enough to satisfy his desires for the time being.

Mum had sent Betty one of the photos of the two of us, with another she had taken of Harriet in the album. Betty was amazed at how alike the three of us were, with me looking like the Harriet she first met.

“Not like the harridan bitch she now is!”

With Henry’s bike taken out of the back of the Cruiser, we went home again, with Mum over the moon to be now so close to her grandson, or granddaughter when she was with us. This last few days had changed both of our lives, making them a lot more interesting, if busier. Back home, I took the dry papers down and slid them into a folder, which went into my satchel. Then I thought a bit more, and rummaged around until I found a large shoulder bag and transferred the contents of my satchel into that, another link with the past snipped away.

I sorted through my wardrobe for something more business-like for tomorrow, and found a grey skirt suit that Harriet must have brought for the short time that she worked in an accountants office. It was these accountants that did the books for the supermarkets, so she had seen the numbers before she saw the eligible son. I looked, and I mean really looked, through the drawers for suitable underwear. If I kept the jacket buttoned, I could get away with an item that I now knew was a camisole, or else I could go with a blouse. There again, I could go with both and leave the blouse unbuttoned down to the artificial boobs.

I hung these on the hook on the back of the door and then went through my, now becoming second nature, evening make-up removal and hydration regime. I stretched out, in bed, and thought through the weird day. I now have a nephew who wants to be a girl, something I’d never considered for myself, until Saturday. I tried to think of members of the family that could have been similar. They would have to be down my mother’s line, I thought.

In the morning, I asked her if there were any ‘black sheep’ among her ancestors.

“I’m not sure, Connie. There were a couple in my grandmothers generation that they knew about, but never talked about. Maybe, we should do a family tree and see if oddness pops up. There’s a guy, in the office, that does research and an occasional column; I’ll ask him to see where I came from. He did one on your father and found several generations of thieves and bullies. There was one that was on Cromwell’s side who was hanged for burning down a farmhouse with fifteen royalists in. They made allowances, at that time, but this was too much to be hidden under the carpet.”

That day, at school, I was complimented on my outfit. When we finished the normal things, we were joined by four of the older students. Our teacher opened the lesson by saying that this was for skills advancement only and would not bolster any poor performance in normal lessons. Then he passed to me. I was glad that I had printed a dozen sheets, as there was ten in the class, and a copy each for me and the teacher. I would have to do more, next week.

We had a lesson that touched on things that had been tried by television chefs, and discussed ingredients by their main taste, and how you can alter that taste with additions of herbs and spices, or other ingredients. Then I we got to what we would do on Thursday.

“If you look through the recipe, you’ll see that the ingredients are pretty simple. The bulk of the dessert is blitzed fruit of your choice, with a layer of cut fruit in sour cream. If we were on a cooking show, each layer of blitzed fruit would be frozen in a quick chiller. The trick, here is to make a sugar layer, as thin as you can, which will be placed over the first layer of smoothie, and then under the second layer of smoothie. It calls for extreme attention to detail. Too big and you’ll have unsightly gaps, too small and you’ll have migration of the smoothie into the middle layer. You’ll use these glasses that have been chosen for you, and you will make three desserts – one to taste, one to take home, and one for the Headmaster to try. Remember, the sugar layer has to be thin enough to be broken though with a spoon. Too thick and you’ll need a hammer and chisel. Try it out at home if you want. Bring the recipe with you on Thursday. We’ll all be making the dish.”

The teacher gave me an old-fashioned look.

Wednesday and most of Thursday passed without any real drama, and then we arrived at our practical. We were still ten strong. Luckily, everyone had brought their recipe. We were all in our cooking outfits. I nodded towards the three boxes of a dozen dessert glasses and pulled out my three. There was a whine of motors as the various pieces of fruit were blitzed. I knew that this was the time to be adventurous with your choice and could see the older students picking some odd combinations. For me, the first thing was to make my sugar layers, so they could be set by the time I needed them. A few saw what I was doing and twigged. This was the time for working by intuition and an attention to the detail of each layer. The smoothies would settle, if left, and the cut fruit could be done when needed. The fruits chosen needed to be sour enough to offset the pure sugar layer, but not so sour to add to the sour cream.

I worked next to the teacher, and I could see him glancing at what I was doing. Everyone could watch, if they wanted to, so I didn’t mind. I put some sugar into a saucepan and heated it up, until it was liquid, the chose two cake cutters, which I checked in the dessert glasses. I put them on the chilling stone and poured a careful amount of sugar mix into each one, being very careful not to add too much. Leaving that to set, I picked my fruit mix and blitzed some, and chopped the rest into small pieces. By this time, the sugar had set, so I made up a second batch. As we moved on, I could see my group getting with what I was doing, but the four, older, ones were doing their own thing.

When my third batch of sugar was set, I made sure that they were thin enough. The I put the smallest cake cutter into each dish, making sure it was level, and made a texta dot, followed by doing the same with the larger one. It was time to assemble the desserts. I carefully poured the smoothie into the dessert glass until it was just shy of the dot, then carefully placed a sugar layer on top. The smoothie would grow slightly when it was frozen, and the small amount of air would be pushed into the middle layer. The middle layer of cut fruit in sour cream followed, then the second sugar layer, with the poured smoothie on top. When you came down to it, it wasn’t the most adventurous dessert you could do, but it was one that could be done in the home. There was plenty of time to get more technical. We had sticky labels, and each dessert had one with our names on. When everybody had finished, the desserts were put on trays and slid into the fridge. They would be ready to be tasted in the morning.

The teacher had said that we would have a short get-together, in the morning, for the tasting, and that there would be ice cream or cream to add to the top. Everybody had done different fruits, so every trio of glasses were different colours. We spent a bit of time going over what had been done, with questions asked and advice offered. I told them to keep the recipe and try it again, at home, with different fruits.

When we changed back into our normal outfits, with me doing this with the girls as a matter of course, now. As everyone left, I stood outside with Maria, and then we kissed a couple of times before we got our bikes. She wanted to know what we were doing on the weekend, so I told her that we would be doing a little shopping with my niece. She would be needing almost everything. I said that we would go into town, in the morning, and have lunch there, so, she should come to my home about ten, to meet my niece.

Mum had made note of Henny’s sizes, and had purchased some underwear, tights, and trainers that would fit, as well as a denim skirt and top. In the evenings we had been working on the bedroom, leaving the single in place and taking the remaining bunk out to the shed and stacking it with its mate. There was a spare wardrobe from Mum’s room, and a couple of chairs from odd places in the house. We wouldn’t do any painting or decorating so that Henny could choose for herself. The only thing we did do was to make up the bed with new sheets in lilac and add a few plush toys from the top shelf of the wardrobe in my room. While I was about it, I pulled down a teddy bear and put it on my own bed.

Friday morning, we gathered in the classroom and sampled the finished desserts. We all had a small spoonful of every one of the twelve results. To me, the range of tastes were amazing, and everyone had done well. It would be up to the Headmaster to decide which ones he approved of. There were a few that had some of the smoothie migrating to the middle layer. These were the ones we chose to taste, so leaving better ones for the Headmaster, but, overall, I think that we had all done what was required. We each had one to take home on Friday afternoon and were told to wash the glass and bring it back on Monday.

Friday, after dinner, Mum and Henny tried a portion, each, and Henny thought that is was the most wonderful thing she had tasted. With her, sitting there in her new outfit, even with tiny bumps from the padded bra, everything was great as far as she was concerned. That evening, she changed into her own nightie and gown, and sat with us watching television until we all decided to get some sleep. Tomorrow would be a big day.

Marianne Gregory © 2023