Chapter 4

Saturday morning, Henny was beside herself with excitement. I had to get her to slow down, or else she wouldn’t last the morning, let alone the day. We had breakfast in our nighties and gowns and then worked on showers and dressing. I was ready by the time the doorbell went, to find Maria and Penny on the step. From my own experience, I knew Penny couldn’t resist a shopping day.

Over breakfast, I had told Henny that she would get a lot of help today, so to listen and learn. Also, that whoever would be with us didn’t know that she was anything but a girl, maybe a bit awkward, but a girl, nevertheless. It was all right to tell them that she was bright, as that would be a camouflage for the fact that she didn’t have a lot of little girl stories to tell. Mum would take us down, again, but had other things to do, so would pick us up later. Before we left, she gave me an envelope.

“Betty sent some money with Henny yesterday. She wants you to get her some nighties, and a gown, to take home on Sunday, so that she can be herself every night. I’ve added some of my own and will top up your credit card if need be.”

Saturday morning was all about Henny and she loved every moment. The third verse of the song could have been a description of our progress through the shops. The lines ‘Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall’ came to mind as Penny led our little band from place to place. I discovered that she had a younger sister about a similar age, so knew all the pre-teen shops, and she promised to bring her along if we did this again.

We ended up getting Henny some more tops and skirts, two short dresses, and a range of shoes. Henny just loved shoes. In the lingerie store, she picked out some nighties and a gown to take home, and another couple of nighties for when she was with us. The ones to take were mainly night shirts with flowers and bunnies on them, while the ones for her time with us were much more adult, and very like the ones I had bought for myself. It was a good start of her own wardrobe. At the department store cosmetic department, she had a pre-teen make-up. And left with a small bag of cosmetics, and a bottle of cleanser.

Penny and Maria chatted to her as we strolled the shops, with Penny helping her pick things out. Henny showed me that she must have excelled in English, especially in essay writing, as the stories she made up of an earlier life were so believable. I just hope that she had a good memory, as it wouldn’t do to contradict herself in the retelling, especially if it was with Penny’s sister.

We had a light lunch and then went to the Aquarium, storing our bags in their cloakroom. We wandered around and looked at the fish, with Henny smiling as she could see our reflections in the glass. Today, she was a little girl, out with three teenage girls, having a good time. I think that this day helped her forget any bad feelings about her parents. What they had done, in the end, had freed her to be herself.

We met Mum at the designated spot, loading the back with our bags. She took us home, via a fish and chip shop, and we emptied our tea from the wrapping paper onto plates in our kitchen, while a kettle was started. It was nice and easy going, with Mum brought up to date on what we had bought. After tea, Penny said she had to go, as she had a date, while I sat with Maria, cuddling, and Henny sat next to her Gran, as we watched some television.

As it was now dark, I got my bike and accompanied Maria on her trip home. We did stop in a small park and had some passionate kissing on the way. When I got back, the house was quiet, so I sat, for a while, looking for next week’s lesson in my notebook as well as making notes for the next column, based on our trip to the Aquarium.

Sunday, we drove a little way north, to the historic Bluebell Railway, and had a steam train ride, catering to the little boy in two of us. That’s when I found out that most of the stories Henny had told, the day before, had been true, but related from a girl’s viewpoint. She really did have a younger brother called Tony, which shocked my mother. She said that she had loved her brother, who would have cried when he found out that he was now alone. She did say that he now had her train set to play with.

Then we had a quiet stroll in the grounds of Sheffield Park. Our evening meal was in the Fountain Inn, in Plumpton Green, a place my sister and her family would never have stepped inside. I discovered that it’s LGBTQ friendly, and the atmosphere was easy-going. The meal was good, and I determined that it would be a great place to bring Maria, once I had four wheels. The only thing that I thought of as odd was how Mum knew it was there.

Back at home, Henny stripped off and had a shower. Instead of putting on the clothes she had arrived in, she was dressed for bed, in a new cotton nightie with a bunny on the front, matching her new bunny slippers. With the new dressing gown wrapped around her, a very sleepy Henny was taken home, along with the bag of her other nighties and her Henry clothes. Betty and Jerry welcomed us in, and Henny was put to bed. It had been a big weekend for her.

We sat and had a cup of tea, and Betty asked us if we could pick them up, next Saturday, and go to her sister’s house, in the outskirts of Peacehaven, off a lane called The Lookout. This sister was also on the outer, and hadn’t been to the wedding, or anything else to do with her parents, for twenty years. Betty had kept in touch, and her sister had been horrified at what their brother had done.

On Monday, our class was visited by the Headmaster, who congratulated everyone on a job well done. That week, we did another pair of advanced cooking lessons with me also working on my column. Come Friday, Mum came home with Henry, who went straight to the bedroom to emerge as Henny.

On Saturday morning, we all dressed nicely to visit someone new. Henny was incredulous at the number of relatives she had that she hadn’t known about. Her Aunt Betty and Uncle Jerry, on her father’s side, her grandmother and Aunt on her mother’s side, and now a new Aunt Trudy, and Uncle Jack on her father’s side. I helped her with her minimal make-up, and we set off to pick up Betty and Jerry. They sat, in the back, with Henny in the middle, and we talked about things as we went along. Peacehaven isn’t that far but I had never been anywhere near The Lookout. It really was on the outskirts, a small farm with some sheep wandering in a few acres.

When we arrived, the two sisters embraced and then the rest of us were introduced, with Henny getting a big hug from both her Aunt and Uncle. Inside, with the pot on the kitchen table, and home-made biscuits, the sisters caught up with events, and then it came to who we were. Betty showed Trudy the pictures of Henny in Harriet’s dress, and then the picture of Harriet wearing it. Mum was revealed as the owner of the Times, while I was revealed as the writer of the Constance Morgan column. That created a bit of a stir.

We found out that Trudy had been thrown out of the family, some twenty-five years before, and had nothing to do with them since. From what was said, I think that she may have had a lesbian fling. Betty admitted that she had only pulled away from them when she got married to someone not from the church. Mum floored them when she said that, before the time that Henry had turned up at the printers, she had only held Henny as a baby, just the once, and until last weekend had never been told about Tony, her other grandson. Everyone tut-tutted at what the brother had become.

It was a pleasant visit, with us being shown the farm, and Henny stroking the farmyard cats. She told us that her ‘old’ family didn’t believe in pets, and she had to make do with neighbours cats, but wasn’t allowed to feed them. Trudy had made a big pot of stew, lamb, of course, and we tucked into a great meal. When the matter of my father was raised, they had all read about his exploits. Not in the Times, as that was just an obituary, but in the county paper, which took great glee to report on his landing on his head in the front garden, along with the other events that led up to it. I had read what they said but couldn’t relate those stories to the Dad I knew but was hardly ever home.

When we left, we took Betty and Jerry back to our house, where they were shown Henny’s room, and Henny insisted that we show them the printing press. I made up a mock notice of their visit and Henny printed off a copy for them. Mum and I put together a light meal, and she took them home. I sat with Henny, talking about his expanding family. That made me think about the family tree that Mum said she would organise. When she got back, I asked her about it and she said that she had asked for it to be done, but that these things take a long time, if you want to do it right.

On Sunday, I fired up my laptop and got Henny to show me how I could look up family histories. She showed me several sites that were at the front of the market. She showed me the website for her father’s supermarket chain. Then she showed me the website for the cooking school. I clicked on the Headmaster’s image and got a potted history of his career. I knew that he had achieved the three hats in Paris, but some of his earlier work was in England. For a period, he had been the chef at the Fountain Inn, Plumpton. That was weird!

Auguste Mollinaire had only been there for a couple of years and had then moved to a good place in London, before being headhunted by the Paris restaurant. He had gone into teaching in a school in Paris, before joining the school in Brighton. That was only four years ago.

On the website for family trees, there was a link to get a DNA kit, so I filled in the form and paid the fee. If nothing else, I may find out where my father had originated from, the family tree that the guy at the Times had done only went back about ten generations. There had to be more.

I asked Henny what she looked at now and was told that one of the things she couldn’t take with her was her laptop. She was now limited to the ones at school. Her father had instructed Betty that one wasn’t allowed, with a warning that he would sue, should he find out that one had been supplied for home use. I went and told Mum about this. She exclaimed that the warning didn’t apply to us, so we asked Henny what she would like, as long as it stayed with us, for at least a number of months. Henny told us what was needed, and Mum organised one, through the Times, at a discount, to be in her room the following weekend.

That set the tone for the immediate future. Henny spent a lot of time on her computer, doing schoolwork. Now she was working while wearing a skirt or a dress, the shemale websites weren’t needed, but we did, together, explore some of the more informative sites as we both learned a lot about what we were both starting. She also helped me find cooking sites and showed me some simple ways of searching for experimental cooking. It wasn’t something I’d been able to do before, not being a total computer geek.

The weeks moved on. We both became more comfortable in our clothing, and had several outings with some, or all, of the girls. One time, when Henny asked us, we took the bus to Worthing and went into the supermarket to get a few things. Harriet was on the check-out, looking a lot more than twelve years older than me, and didn’t recognise either of us. Penny declared that we were now total girls, as even our own mother and sister didn’t recognise us, at a distance of two feet. Henny wasn’t sure whether she was sad at seeing her mother or elated at getting away with it.

I had done the DNA test and had sent it off. The advert said that it may take a few weeks, so I forgot about it. My relationship with Maria was moving ahead, with her coming home with me on a few weekday afternoons when we would explore each other before Mum got home. With one session, she got me to ejaculate for the first, and last time, in my life. That’s when it was decided that I needed to talk to a doctor, as much of what came out was blood.

Mum organised a visit to our doctor, who sent me to a radiologist for an ultrasound and X-Rays. I was still in the radiologist’s office when they told me that they were organising a bed in the local hospital for me. The prognosis was that I had a lot of trouble with my prostate, and that an immediate operation was needed. That operation changed my life.

I had a month away from the cooking school, but I was visited by a lot of people, from the four girls, my mother, Betty, and Trudy with Henny, and, oddly, Auguste, the Headmaster, who had taken over the advanced courses, with my notebook as his guide. The girls all told me that he was a lovely man, once you got to know him, and that he had regaled them with stories of his times in different restaurants.

When he visited me, he told me that my place in the cooking school was safe, and that he was getting the records changed to reflect my new status. The name was now Constance Strickland, seeing that when they operated, they had to take my shrivelled testicles, my cancerous prostate, as well as so much more – enough for them to invert my miniscule penis and create a vagina. My surgeon told me that it had been the only sensible option and that Mum had approved the operation. My bloods had shown virtually no production of any hormones, either way, and I was now on hormone replacement therapy to boost the oestrogen levels.

When I went home, skirts and dresses were now a necessity, not just a whim. On top of that, my breast area was starting to feel odd. I was to have another two weeks before going back to the cooking school, but that coincided with the end of term. I had a message that, if I went in, when I could, and caught up with the practicals, I would pass the term, and I would get a copy of the theory notes to catch up before the next term. I took my time at home as a chance to get some walking done and was taking the bus into Brighton and walking the esplanade. It allowed me to think about my life, and what I was going to do with it.

The idea of my own restaurant started to creep into my mind, and, as I walked around the town, I looked at all the places we now had. Almost every cuisine was presented, in some form or another, and there just didn’t seem to be anything we didn’t have. Then it struck me. There were gay bars, gay pubs, but no gay restaurants. Some were gay friendly, but nowhere advertised itself as straight unfriendly. As I walked, I looked in real estate offices for an empty shop which could be converted.

As I improved, I got Mum to drop me off at the school and I spent three day doing practicals, with Mum picking me up to bring me home. On the last day, there was a large envelope waiting for me in the days post when we got home. I waited until we had finished dinner before I opened it, as we were sitting with our cups of tea. I read what it said, and looked at the charts, and the coloured map that was included. Then I looked at Mum.

“What is it, dear, you look surprised?”

“This is the results of a DNA test I sent off, Mum. It’s a bit odd.”

“Why is that, Connie?”

“Well, I expected to find that I was descended from some Vikings, or Goths on my father’s side. But the results tell me that my ancestors were from Norman stock, from an area around Chartres. It also tells me that I have strong links to a family that is descended from a Viscount de Mollinaire. What’s weird is that it’s the surname of the Headmaster at the cooking school.”

“Auguste, he’s in Brighton?”

“Yes, that’s his name, how did you know?”

Instead of answering, she got up, went to the drinks cabinet, and poured herself a brandy, slugged it back then poured another before coming back and sitting down.

“Connie, you have no idea what that news means to me. I need to tell you a story, one that I’ve kept secret for so long, I’ve almost forgotten it. That meal we had at the Fountain Inn brought some of it back, although it’s changed a lot since the last time I was there. The story begins some months before you were born. Robert and I had been at each other’s throats for some time, and he was spending a lot of time away. I got friendly with a woman, my age, at the local market, and, before I fully understood what I was doing, we had ended up in her bed. It was wonderful and we met, at her place, several times. She started to get possessive, telling me that my marriage was over and that I should leave Robert.”

“Wow, Mum! So, you had a lesbian lover, as well. I wasn’t the first one in the family.”

“Quite so. Well, we met, one evening, at the Fountain Inn, and had a blazing row over dinner. She ended up throwing a glass of wine in my face and stormed out. I never saw her, again. Of course, that scene was enough to attract the notice of the staff and the chef came out to see whether it had been because of his wonderful food. He comforted me, then led me back to the private quarters where I could take off my dress and rinse out the wine. He was beautiful, and I was vulnerable, so we ended up in his bed. It was, I can tell you, the best sex I had ever had. When my dress was good enough to wear, I put it on, and we kissed before I came home. Two days later, Robert came home, drunk as a skunk, and proceeded to almost rape me. When it was evident that I was expecting, I visited the Fountain Inn, only to find that Auguste had gone to London.”

“You’re telling me that I’m the child of Auguste Mollinaire, a three hat Paris chef?”

“Well, you’ve never been the child of Robert Strickland, the alcoholic bully and womaniser, have you?”

“Now that you say it that way, I suppose I wasn’t. So, mother dear, what are we going to do about it?”

“I don’t know. On the one hand, I’d love to see Auguste again, but I’m worried that he might not want to see me, or worse, that he doesn’t remember our time together. What do you think?”

“The term doesn’t finish until next Friday. I could get an appointment to see him and show him this DNA result. That will see if he’s dismissive, or whether he does remember. He wouldn’t know that I had been born, so it will be a shock for him. If he wants to meet you, I’ll give you a call, at work. I can’t think of any other way to work this through.”

I think we both had a sleepless night. I heard Mum walking around at about two and went down and brewed us both some hot chocolate. We sat and sipped without the need to talk, and it must have worked, because we both had a few hours of sleep. When Mum went to work, she was dressed nicely, just in case. She was still a good-looking woman, and I hoped that when I was in my late forties, I would be as good. I rang the school and arranged a meeting with the Headmaster for later in the morning.

I was up to being able to cycle, again, and it felt strange when I sat on the saddle. At the school, I was ushered into the Headmaster’s rooms, and he welcomed me, telling me straightaway that my practicals had passed with flying colours, if that’s what I wanted to talk about.

“No, sir. What I came for is to show you this and see what you make of it.”

I took the results out of the envelope and gave them to him. He sat back, read some, frowned, read some more, and smiled.

“That’s a result from one of my family, Connie, how did you get hold of it?”

“If you read the name on the top, sir, you’ll see that it’s my results.”

“How on earth can you be related to…. Mon Dieu, you are the child of Constance. How could that be. We only made love the once and then I was in London.”

“They tell me that it only takes once, sir, if you do it at the right time.”

He came around the desk, I stood, and we hugged.

“Your mother, she is well?”

“Oh, yes, and waiting for me to call her. That’s if you want to meet, again. After all, she’s worried that you may have forgotten all about her after seventeen years.”

“Make your call, Connie, daughter of mine. I’ll clear my decks for the rest of the day.”

I made my call, and Mum told me to tell him the café where they could meet, for lunch. He told his secretary to clear his day and, when I told him where he was to meet Mum, he hugged me again and told me that he knew that I had French blood in me, because of the dishes I had created.

I cycled home, smiling all the way. I was reading the theory notes when two cars pulled up, outside. Mum and Auguste were like two kids with new toys when they came in and both hugged me.

The song has lines about the slow one now will later be fast, and that the order is rapidly fading. It was so true, from that moment on. I had started this story as a loner boy, with good cooking skills, a fractured family, and an alcoholic father. I came out the other end as a popular girl, with inherited good cooking skills, and a new, and wonderful, father – with three hats! I now call him Dad, with a sense of pride, as they had married. He gave up his apartment and came to live at home, becoming granddad to Henny in the process. We had some wonderful weekends, and then Henny came to live with us, full-time. Betty was happy that her niece could live with her grandmother. Henny thrived in the happy environment and ended up going to university, as Henrietta, after her own operation.

Nobody said anything to Harriet, and I don’t think that she cared who looked after Henny, as long as it wasn’t her. I passed my driving test and got a small car. I also finished the cooking courses, with honours, and joined my father as one of the teaching staff, running a ‘Creative Cuisine’ course. My four girlfriends got themselves good jobs, Penny and Jane joining Pete in his family’s restaurant, as specialist dessert chefs, making speciality dishes that cost a fortune and tasted like heaven,

Maria and Brenda became an item and went to work with Charles in his family restaurant. They were in charge of creating new ideas and had developed a range of dishes which became themed ‘Foreign Food Months’. I went to one of the Hungarian times came away with a very full stomach.

My body filled out, with the hormones, and I looked as female as I now felt. I still see Maria, but only as a friend, as I’m now dating a boy who makes me shiver when I think of him and makes my toes curl when we kiss.

The newspaper was a little different as well. Auguste now writes a column with high class dishes that any woman could create in her own home. Mum employed a guy from the gay community, something Robert could never have contemplated. They had a column dedicated to gay happenings around town, as well as the usual straight events. Sales increased by fifty percent inside a month.

Even The Patcham Times had changed!

Marianne Gregory © 2023