Chapter 4

For me, the main effort was going into the winter catalogue. I went traditional for this, with coloured balls, holly leaves, and snow drifts in the coats and jackets section. The interior outfits had warming fires, Christmas trees and decorations. All six of us were featured, this time mixed up on the pages.

About half were photos, and the rest drawings. The major difference was that some of us had a professional photographer, and were paid, which was why there were only half as many photos of us, compared to the others, who had their pictures taken in the studio down the road.

I knew that Robert wouldn’t be happy, having to pay the agency, but when the catalogue went to the shops, there were many complaints about the difference in numbers. It appeared that our franchisees wanted more input for their fees. It was easy to see the difference in picture quality, lighting, and poses. Robert was going to have to take a deep breath and send us all to the professional in future.

When push came to shove, it was Rita that persuaded him to cough up. Marilyn told me that since I had been with the company, the sales were on an upward slope, and the Hokem range was bringing in a better profit to the shops and the holding company. The bottom line showed that the business could afford the extra cost with each season.

That meant that the spring catalogue would be mainly photos of us, with the others being signed to the agency so that they had the better pictures taken, whether they liked it or not. We closed the office for two weeks between before Christmas and after New Year. In the house, we had got each other presents, with it the first year I had been given earrings.

Mum had let me know that she was booked into the Premier, and her likely arrival time. I rugged up and walked to the hotel to wait for her. The odd thing was that the receptionist was a convert to the Hokem range and recognised me straight away. That led to me being given a hot coffee and a cake while I waited. When I told them who I was waiting for, they upgraded the room, and she had the full service when she arrived.

I saw her car pull up outside, so went out to meet her. I was beaten to her car by a couple of young lads, one helped her get out, offering to carry her bags, while the other told her that the car would be parked for her, and the keys delivered to her room. I just stood back, smiling, until she allowed the bags to be carried into the hotel.

“Even in that winter jacket you look lovely, Trixie. Come on and give your mother a hug.”

We hugged and cheek kissed, and I led her into the hotel and up to reception. There, it was all professionalism.

“Good afternoon, Mrs Southby. We have put you in one of our Star Rooms. Each one is themed with a film star décor. You are in the Monroe room. The boys will carry your bags up; you don’t need to tip them as it is all part of the service. If you and Trixie want to have afternoon tea first, that is complimentary and in the bistro. The door is card operated, and here is your card.”

We made our way to the bistro, where she was fortified with two cups of tea and some cupcakes. I had the tea but stayed off the cakes as I was watching my weight. We had a quiet talk and she told me that my father was slowly coming around to the fact that, on the face of it, he now had a daughter. She said that he almost blew his boiler when he saw the photo of me with my new name.

I told her about my successful showing and showed her some pictures on my phone, then told her about the modelling. She wanted to know what the guys I was house sharing with thought of my transformation, so I had to tell her that I had been living with four girls since I had arrived. After we had gone to her room and she put her things away, we walked to the footbridge and then the short distance to the house.

The girls welcomed her in and made a fuss of her, telling her that she should be happy to have such a talented child. I introduced them and told Mum what they did in the office. Gloria was the office manager and helped Judith who kept the books. Sally and Monica did the stock ordering and arranged deliveries to the shops. I told her that Marilyn, who she would meet, was the franchisee co-ordinator and placed the adverts in the magazines.

We then all put our coats on and walked to the ‘Angel’ for dinner. She was amazed at how friendly everyone was, with all of us well known by the management and the customers. She said that she didn’t eat a lot at her age, so she was included in the child serves. I was picking up the bill for tonight, and it was lovely, with Mum really getting to know my colleagues.

When she asked us what we usually did for entertainment, we couldn’t tell her that we went to a gay bar a lot, so Monica suggested the ‘Joiners’, where the two of us had been several times. We went back to the house, where I opened up the car that she hadn’t seen before, and I drove us the short distance to the ‘Joiners’. She managed to endure the live music until ten, so we all got back into the Galaxy, and I took her back to the hotel, telling her that I would pick her up at eleven, because we were having a lunch. After that, we dropped Gloria and Judith at the Edge and Box and the three of us went back to the house for a hot chocolate before bed.

We were booked for lunch at Cosmo, a buffet and all you can eat. They were open because of the cruise ships in the docks, with a steady influx of customers. The lunch was hosted by Robert and Josie, as a thank you for our hard work during the year. Gloria and Judith had to be roused to get ready after just six hours sleep, and we all piled into the Galaxy to get Mum. Monica, being the smallest, was the one in the back row.

At the restaurant, we found the right table and sat down, with Mum being introduced to the others that she hadn’t met. I knew that she would go for the endless supply of chicken nuggets, but she did try some of the other things that the rest of us were having.

“You’ve come a long way with food, Trixie. I remember the days that you lived on chips.”

“I remember the days when all we had in the kitchen was potatoes from the back garden, before the flower business took off.”

Josie sat next to Mum and regaled her with how much I had done for the company. After the dinner, she took us into West Quay and opened up her shop for Mum to pick something, ‘as a gift from me to thank you for giving us Trixie’. I took the others back to the house and then took Mum on a scenic drive around the city. We hardly stopped talking the whole afternoon. I hadn’t talked to her so much, or so frankly, when I was younger. I admitted that I always wondered what it would be like to be a girl. She wanted to see where I worked, so we left the Galaxy in the car park and walked the short distance to the office.

I took her up and opened the office, showing her the main room.

“The four girls work in here; Marilyn has her own office. There’s a toilet and a kitchen, and I work through here.”

I opened the door and she saw my workplace for the first time. I told her how I would scan the pictures we were sent, and then print them off in a larger size to add the human features. I pulled a tube out of my little storeroom and showed her one of the originals from an earlier catalogue. I went and made a pot of tea, and she sat in my chair while I put a fresh canvas on the easel and started painting. As I did this, we talked some more.

“Are you really happy here?”

“Yes, Mum. I’ve been able to discover the me that was hidden inside.”

“What was it that tipped you over?”

“I had a doubt since I was about thirteen, but it was the orders that we would be photographed for that catalogue which pushed me. I was made up for a head and shoulders picture, but I couldn’t work as Tristan with pierced ears and a perm, so I took the option to try the rest. It was incredibly easy, in the end, and I’ve embraced it ever since.”

“How are you with money?”

“I’m good. I’m paid well, but wonder if I’ve engineered my own redundancy, if we go to just photos in the next catalogue. The three pictures that I used to sell at the market for fifty pounds, were sold here at the gallery for five hundred each. I had a collection of nearly thirty pictures in the showing and they went for between fifteen hundred to two thousand each. That painting of me that was in the newspaper clipping, was bought by Robert for two and a half. I had enough from that one event to pay off the Ford, buy lots of clothes, and give me a good bank balance. The only money that was taken off the sales was the commissions and the frame costs.”

“What about boys?”

“No interest. I’m still a virgin and want to concentrate on my career. I have girls who are friends, and I have some boys who I’m friendly with. Some that I can dance with when we’re out. I go out more than I’ve ever done before; the only meal that’s been produced in the house kitchen has been breakfast and the odd sandwich since the day I arrived.”

We were quiet for a while, just happy to be in each other’s company, while I painted. I created an imaginary picture of the two of us, side by side, with the background of the flower fields in Plymouth, with my father in the background, cutting flowers. I did the background and our clothing quickly, almost impressionist, but took a lot of care with our facial features. We spoke about the situation at home as I worked. It took me two hours, and she was very patient with me.

When I had put ‘Trixie’ on the bottom corner and stood back to see to the brushes, she stood and came to look at what I had created. She burst into tears, and I had to hold her as she sobbed.

“Your father always called you ‘arty-farty’. If you had gone to college to study art, you couldn’t be any better. This is beautiful, created from nothing while we talked.”

“This will be dry before you go home, and we’ll put it in a bag for you to take. Maybe, it will allow Dad to accept me for who I am, not as who I used to be. I’ll ask for a few days off at Easter, if there’s space for me to lay my head.”

“This is the best Christmas present I’ve ever been given. There will be your old room for you. Do you want it redecorated?”

“No, Mum. Just gather up any old clothes and toys and take them to the op-shop, if you haven’t done that already. I don’t need a girly décor to feel right, my room in the house is totally neutral.”

I locked up and we went to the car, going back to her hotel where we had dinner. By the time I left her, we had hugged more often than we had in eighteen years. I picked her up the next day and took her into Portsmouth. She had said that she wanted to see the Overlord Embroidery, so we went to the D-Day Museum, where we spent a few hours, looking at the exhibits, especially the embroidered panels that told the story of the day. It was a modern version of the Bayeux Tapestry. We lunched at the café, and I took her up the river edge to park in Broad Street.

We strolled the promenade along the old City Wall, looked at the Round Tower, and had an early dinner in the old Black Horse Tavern. The whole day was good for both of us. She had taken me to Plymouth Hoe when I was ten, and we had spent that day looking at the historic sites. Today allowed us to both separate the Trixie I am now from the Tristan I was then.

She was going home the next day, so we went back to park near the office. She sat in the car while I bagged the now-dry painting. When we got to the hotel, I put it in her car. We went into the hotel and the receptionist called me over to her counter. She had a new magazine which had a full-page advert for Hokem. It was a photo of me, in a cocktail dress of red and green, standing with my arm resting on the mantlepiece of a log fire. When the photo had been taken, I had to stand with my arm up, drawing the fire and detail in afterwards. She wanted me to sign it for her. I asked her if I could buy another copy, and she found one in the office.

I signed hers, ‘To Janet, the best receptionist in Southampton, from Trixie’. I took the other one and signed it, ‘To the best parents in the world, from your loving Trixie’. I had hugs from both of the recipients, with Mum tearing up again. She went off to the lift and I turned to Janet, paying for Mum’s stay, including breakfast tomorrow. I drove back to the house and went to bed with a happy smile on my face. I was a new me, but I still had my Mum.

I spent the rest of holiday in my workroom painting. It was restful and quite productive. I was doing pictures of local scenes, as requested, with people in them looking much better than the reality. We were back to normal, with evenings in the ‘Angel’, and I went with the others to the January sales. It was an interesting experience, with my sketchbook benefiting in the evenings with visions from the hectic scenes in the shops.

For the first time, Robert had talked to our suppliers and asked for an advance shipment of one of everything for the spring catalogue, in the range of sizes that fitted the six of us. This would allow us to have the photos done, against a green screen, with me filling in the page with background and text. It actually made my job harder as we approached the print deadline but gave me more time to create earlier on.

One of the jobs I did have to do was to make sure all the autumn originals were undamaged and to sign them on the bottom corner as, ‘A Trixie original for Hook and Hokem’. They went to the gallery for framing and a speciality showing in spring. When the show catalogue had been printed, Robert sent a copy to every one of the franchisees. I had been pencilled in for an autumn showing and was slowly putting together a collection.

We spent most of a week being made-up and photographed. I had asked that we have four of each outfit, encompassing a hundred and eighty-degree arc, so that I could pick the best ones to fit the pages. With the two separate catalogues, we had close to sixty pages to work with. I had created some backgrounds, and when we received the digital images, I dropped the ones I wanted onto the backgrounds and printed the originals for the printer. This time, I saved every complete page onto the computer. I sent the two files to Robert to approve, before sending both the computer files and the hard copies to the printer.

All the girls were excited about this issue. We were there, in all our glory, in full colour. No more drawings. I was now only providing the backgrounds. It was a bit of a release, as it allowed me to think about my own pictures. And this is what I started to do.

When Robert had approved the two catalogues with a lovely email, the girls started to organise the orders for the shops so that we could order them in time for the season launch. We also asked for the summer range to be sent, one of each in the same range of sizes. I did learn that we had three warehouses. Ours covered the south coast, one in East London covered the centre of the country, and one in Manchester covered the northern area.

I tried to continue with my paintings on weekends, but Monica and me were advised of a location shoot for the summer advertising campaign for the Isle of Wight. When we got the news of that, Monica got me into the salon to have my penis hidden under a skin fold, so that I could wear a bikini. It would also be good for our own swimwear pages. I had to have a smile when I thought of the competition picture I had produced, never thinking that I would be modelling one myself.

I did go home over Easter for a week. It was interesting to see Dad fight his stiff-necked feelings to give me the first hug. Once the ice had been broken and we had sat and talked, he came to realise that I was much the same child, but looking closer to how I had acted when I was younger. I slept in my old room, now with more colourful bedlinen. I helped with the cooking, and I went out to visit my old stamping ground.

In the years I had been away, not much had changed. I drove past my old share house, seeing a brand-new BMW in the driveway, so my old pals weren’t living there, unless they had started dealing Class A’s without being collared. The Broadway was much the same. Of course, I had visited the shop when I did my introductory trip. I was recognised as soon as I walked through the door and the owner took me for lunch, asking about the next catalogue. Before I went back, I went into the Market, but the usual crowd were no longer on the site. It was now a smallgoods stand, and I bought some ham to take home for sandwiches.

The visit allowed me to move on, with almost everything I had been involved in after I left home consigned to history. I reconnected with my father, even helping him out in the fields. That gave me some visions that I sketched in my room. They would be suitable anywhere. When I got back to Southampton, I joined Monica for the stay on the Isle of Wight. We did have to wear bikinis, but my new look groin and false breasts were good enough to fool everyone, with most of the pictures long shots of us cavorting on a beach. We both had to take unpaid leave to be there, but it paid off later when we received our fee.

Back in the office, we were starting to get the products for summer, and I needed to think of a theme. I had my sketches of flowers, so I went out into the parks and sketched every different flower I could. Queens Park was a good one, with lots of smaller flowers in the borders, and Watts Park was another. Our usual running place, Palmerstone Park, had another good range of flowers, as well as flowering shrubs and blossom trees.

I decided on the rose, the hydrangea, daffodil, tulip, Calla lily, and the Peruvian lily. The last weren’t seen very often in parks, but Dad grew them in greenhouses to help them through the winter. Each of us would be shown on a page with our flower as the theme. I put it to Gloria, and she liked it for a summer collection.

Once again, we had sixty pages over two catalogues. Each of us had five pages in each catalogue. I did some preliminary work on the background before the clothes arrived. We were back into the studio, with it getting easier every time we went in. The other three were now happy with the way things worked out, as the shoots were a nice bonus in our pay packages.

With the digital images, and my background designs, it was a lot quicker to produce something for approval. When that had come through and I had sent the files and the hard copy to the printers. Robert sent a message for me to come to his house for a discussion. I dressed well, expecting bad news. I was welcomed in, and Rita had laid out a morning tea.

“Trixie, you are sensible enough to know that the catalogues do not take as long as they used to. It’s down to you that they now look better than they ever were. They have more pages, and the shops are experiencing a higher interest to see the new ones, with many having advance orders based on the photos. That never happened with the old issues. This gives you some free time.”

“I understand, Robert.”

“I can see by your face that you think I’m going to tell you that you don’t have a job. You couldn’t be further from the truth. I have spoken to a lot of the franchisees, and they want you to visit their shops and paint a mural for them, based on their location. The catalogue with the local scenes created a lot of phone calls telling me how good it was. When we have new ranges in, I’ll need you in the office to model and produce the catalogue. Other times, you’ll be paid the usual rate as you travel around the shops. What do you think?’

“That’s very good of you, Robert. It will be great to do that. I can be called back as needed. Can I use my car, as it’s big enough to carry my paints and luggage.”

“We’ll give you a debit card for fuel and hotels, and I expect that the shop owners will be taking you out for meals. Try not to spend more than a week anywhere. I know that you can produce a good-sized picture in that time. Don’t make them too detailed but make them local.”

“Understood. I will send pictures as I complete them. I’ll go anticlockwise, starting here and finishing in Bournemouth. I should be able to get a lot of new ideas for my own paintings.”

“I believe that the showing of the forty catalogue originals is in June. I’ll get Gloria to let you know the exact dates, and you can wind up what you’re doing and come back to attend that. You can get away as soon as you are ready. It should be a good thing for the company as a whole.”

I drove back to the office deep in thought. I had never done anything as big as a mural, but, there again, it’s just the name of a picture painted directly on a wall, so it can be as big as it needed to be. I would have to talk to an artist supplier to find out what the best preparation and paints would be.

As I was going to start with the West Quay shop, I went to see Josie. She showed me where she wanted the picture, over the counter. The fact that she already knew about it confirmed that she had been one of the instigators. As we spoke, I pulled out my sketchbook and wrote down a list that all of the shops would need to be told, starting with, ‘Decide where you want your picture and clear a space under it.’

I added, for me, ‘Get a drop sheet to carry’, and ‘Get a step ladder.’

I asked her what she wanted in the picture, a local scene, perhaps?

“Trixie, this is where the company started. Not this actual shop, the original was somewhere close, near the harbour, but I want this picture to reflect our standing in history. I want you to paint you six girls who have lifted our business out of the doldrums, with me in the middle. Then I want the words, ‘Number One’ on top, and ‘Head Office’ on the bottom.”

“That will be quite a big picture, with seven figures. It may tend to dominate the wall.”

“Dominate! I love it. Today, Southampton, tomorrow the world!”

Marianne Gregory © 2024