Chapter 11

The village control room was manned from the fifth, with our cars sporting the new stickers. We each had a list. There were some of the old and some new names on them. We were to prepare and start the rounds on the sixth.

That gave us time to do a stock take and get more bulk supplies in. We still had a lot of items left over from last time. Back at home, we did the stock take and Margaret rang Mum while I prepared the annex, shifting a load of jeans, tops, sweaters and underwear in, then loading the Cabinet with enough things to give her room. It wasn’t as if we couldn’t go back and pick up things.

We went and picked her, and her suitcases up. Dad was at the GSK site for the duration, and it was better for her to be with us than in a lonely house. The last long lockdown she had me and Margaret with her. At Lower Green, we got her settled in and had lunch. We took her through what would be happening in the future and showed her the bulk storage.

She was keen to help, so we started off with her joining us at Costco, where we topped up the fuel tanks and then walked the aisles with one of the big trolleys picking up boxes of things. I paid for them, and we went back to the house. We stored the boxes and she thought for a moment.

“You paid for these with your card. Do you get reimbursed?”

“I don’t know. I paid for everything in November, just getting some cash from people who paid me for their shopping.”

“If this goes on for a while, you’ll be losing a lot of money.”

“I suppose so. Margaret is getting a payment from the council, by the visit. The business that I have is entertaining and cake making, so neither would count.”

“Do you keep the dockets?”

“Of course.”

“Collect them up and talk to your area controller, if you have one.”

“All right. It’s time for you to meet Molly, anyway.”

We left Margaret sorting out her supplies and took the Subaru to the Village Hall. I introduced Mum to the volunteers, and she told them that she would be available to help out, if needed. She could help with the bookkeeping, seeing her librarian skills included that. I asked about getting reimbursement for my outlay at Costco. Molly was shocked.

“Surely you’ve been putting in for payments!”

“No. I wasn’t aware of a procedure. I know that Margaret gets paid by the visit, but that doesn’t apply to what I do.”

“Do you have your sales dockets?”

“Yes, I’ve brought them with me from the beginning of November.”

“Sit at that desk and cross out all the ones that are your personal purchases. The remainder will be attached to a form that we submit. I’ll give you one to fill in, and the payments will be made to your account. In future, eliminate personal purchases on the dockets and hand them in fortnightly, and we’ll submit them. I know that you’re a volunteer, but you’re not expected to pay to feed the parish.”

Mum stayed to help in the Hall, and everyone gave me a wave and a smile as I left. Well, I think that they were smiling. It’s hard to tell when everyone’s wearing a surgical mask. After that, we had the additional trip to the hall to drop Mum off and pick her up again when we started doing our rounds.

The next day, I had an email from the accountant. The album had sold forty-seven thousand, one hundred and sixty-two copies in December. That put over ninety-four thousand in my business account, less nearly fourteen thousand, one hundred and fifty for Margaret. I didn’t expect any sales listed for the second album, seeing that it had been issued right on the cut-off date.

Later, that day, I had a phone call from the label. He told me that the stock of the duets album was in their warehouse and would be shipped as usual in response to internet sales. He also said that they had listened to all of the Trotters’ tracks and had sorted them into two albums. The first would be issued in February, to give time for the product to be made overseas and shipped to him. The second would be held back until the middle of the year. He then said that he would offer another contract then and would talk to me about it at the time.

As January moved on, the restrictions began to bite. A lot of my visits included a bit of counselling. I was starting to call the police more often as I saw roaming gangs, several consisting of children. As we moved through February, it was clear that a lot of people were dying. All of us volunteers and first responders had test kits to use if we felt any symptoms, with Mum now part of the group. She was thriving with the work, as it kept her mind active and allowed her to know that she was doing something positive. We had a small party for Margarets’ birthday, with me making a cake and the three of us having a little too much to drink.

By the end of January, my personal account had been bolstered by the payment from the local council, who would probably submit all of their payments to the government to cover. It was now getting topped up fortnightly. The album sales during January were well down, with less that fifteen thousand for the first album and only just over ten thousand for the second.

March brought some relief, with some schools reopening on the eighth. I knew, from what I was seeing, that it was more to reduce youth crime as much as anything else. Mind you, the attendances were now a lot less than they had been last year, so I heard. At the end of March, we were allowed to gather in groups of six, and outdoor sports were allowed, but without spectators.

My March album sales were up, for both albums, but not by a lot. The Trotters first album had sold seventeen thousand, six hundred and three copies in March, which returned a bit over ten thousand to each of us, less my fifteen hundred to Margaret. The other two had picked up a bit, with the first album selling over twenty-six thousand and the duets one selling over thirty-two thousand.

Non-essential services were reopened in the middle of April, but our work continued for the elderly and infirm, with the control centre still operating. Indoor hospitality was resumed in mid-May, with pubs re-opening, with distancing, and the social scene slowly getting back to life. It didn’t help me, though, as three of the band had caught the virus. Tiger had died, and the two wind players had survived, but with lungs so damaged that they couldn’t play for more than a few minutes. The Trotters were no more, but I did have the satisfaction of knowing that all the album payments would be going to them for some time, and to help their families.

Our work wound down during the May-June period, and we took Mum home again before the Library re-opened. She had been part of the good works through the lockdown, and we had really bonded in a way that was good. We weren’t just her children anymore; we were now friends on another level altogether. We had laughs, we had tears, but we had each other. Dad joined her a week later, and he resisted the pleas to get a dog, with them ending up with a budgie. She called it Molly, because the singing reminded her of the times that Molly would sing to bolster the flagging spirits of the volunteers.

Probably the best thing about those six months was the fact that it had been one of the mildest winters for a long time. It had been frosty, but nothing our cars couldn’t cope with, and May had been one of the wettest we had in history, but it hardly ever dipped below freezing.

Like most of the country, we celebrated Freedom Day on the next Saturday after July the nineteenth, with a big get-together in the Village Hall. It was a simple ‘bring a plate and drink’ affair. I did several plates of cakes. After that, life returned, but not to the previous normal.

I got in touch with the label, to tell them to send all the payment from the Trotters’ albums to an account that Oswald had given me earlier, and that the band was no more, with the details. I was assured that the second album would be issued with the fact that it would be the last.

I had stayed in touch with Oswald, and he wanted us to get together for a talk. We had lunch at the Kings Arms in Bedford. The upshot of that meeting was that the remaining three, Vince, the guitarist, Eldon, the drummer, and Neill, the bass player, wanted to carry on playing. Oswald could get us nightclub work if I was willing to be in it. He had already spoken to his contacts, and could get us every Saturday evening, rotating through four clubs, at a hundred a week, each.

We discussed it, with the guys keen to back me as the main singer. We agreed to give it six months. We had Esquires for some mornings to put some songs together. It worked out well, as a lot of what we had played after I joined were good for a quartet, dropping some of the old-time dance music. The customers we would be playing to wouldn’t be up for the foxtrot anyway. It only left us to decide on a name. After much laughter, we decided on using our initials, so ‘Vent’ was formed. Margaret stepped aside as my performance manager and I came under Oswalds’ umbrella, paid monthly.

We played Saturday nights, and I got solo work at the Cricketers and a couple of the places we had played as the Trotters, for some Friday evenings. Margaret still came along, but when she wanted to, in the Subaru so she could leave when she wanted.

One Friday evening, at the Cricketers, I saw her dancing with a guy most of the evening, and she had left before I finished the set. She wasn’t home when I got there, so I looked after the dogs and had them both on my bed when she did come in. I didn’t mention it the next morning, but she was smiling a lot.

I got to meet the lad some weeks later. His name was Gavin, and he was a hairdresser. So, they had a lot in common. It got serious, one evening, three months later, when he arrived at the house, and they sat down with me to talk about things. It was to tell me that they were in love and expecting a baby. Between them, they almost had enough to put a deposit on a salon, with an apartment over the top, in Letchworth. It had been successful before COVID, but the owner had died, and the shop had just come available after probate.

The asking price, including the equipment, was a hundred and fifty thousand to take over the long lease, and they had about a hundred and twenty with Margaret now appreciating the payments that she had been given from my album earnings.

I told them two things. The first was that Margaret should talk to Dad to look over the paperwork and let him lead on the purchase. He would also help when Margaret changed her company from a sole trader to a fully registered business. The second was that I would put in fifty thousand in exchange for a partnership and a free visit every now and again, and that I wanted to be shown the books every three months, to make sure that they were on track.

The wedding was at St. Katharine, on a Sunday, with Molly doing the service. The reception was at the Cricketers. I supplied the cake and Vent supplied the music as our gift to the couple, as the guys had got to know her over the time we had played. Gavin had some furniture, I let Margaret take the bed and odd things, and wedding gifts equipped the kitchen. Dad had managed to get the price down to one-thirty, so they had a bit to get them started. The one thing they had was a lot of women who had been grateful for Margarets’ care and attention over the lockdowns, so she had a core of loyal customers, on top of those who had frequented the salon before.

After I got home, that evening, to what was now just me and the dogs, it was deathly quiet. I poured myself a wine and sat in the lounge with my feet up. I was content to be alone again. I had both vehicles, I had a shed full of baking and leftover supplies, I could play the piano into the early hours if I wanted to, and I could watch whatever TV that caught my fancy. The last thought stopped me in my tracks. There was one thing that I had and had looked at it for a very long time without playing.

It was a CD, the one with the duets, called ‘Tanya and Tonya sing the Blues’. I had given some away, a lot of people had bought it, but I had never listened to it. Maybe I was scared of what I’d hear, maybe it was the fear of hearing her voice with mine, with her now long gone. Maybe, it was the fear of raising her ghost in the house she had lived in.

I topped up my glass, went and took my dress off and put my gown on, went to the CD player and slid the disc into the slot. I sat on the sofa and raised my glass to the sound of the opening piano notes. I don’t know what I expected. I had heard me sing, and I had seen the DVD of her. What I didn’t expect was an hour of gut-wrenching beauty, with the two voices swirling around each other like playful birds. My own voice was normal, with Tanya given a slight echo that sounded ethereal. However much Hector had ripped me off, after this I forgave him. It took me twenty minutes to stop crying tears of joy.

I hadn’t bothered to check my accounts since Margaret had stopped being my manager. I would find out if I ran short of money, so I sat in the bedroom, two dogs already on the bed, and went back through my emails from the accountant. The first album was ticking over at between five and six thousand sales a month, but the duets was doing a regular twenty-five to thirty-five thousand, and I could now see why.

I didn’t know, directly, what the Trotters albums were doing, with the second now on the market, but Oswald had paid in around ten to fifteen thousand for the couple of months before the second one had been issued, and the last payment of my share had been thirty-eight thousand.

On the Monday morning, I slept in until woken by dogs, either hungry or with a full bladder. I let them out, put their food down and lazed around getting breakfast. I sat there with a notepad and wrote down the details of my life. I had turned twenty-one, I played four or five times a month, I had a small, but steady, order book for special cakes. I had more money in the bank than I’d ever thought I’d earn in a lifetime. And I was alone in my home.

I wondered if I should start getting around as Anthony again. I had the solvent and the glue so I could attach and remove the breasts and the wig any time I wanted. The semi-permanent had finally faded, even the dye on my lips, and I was able to create my looks at will. I didn’t need to be Tonya full time but was scared at not being her. My own hair had been growing out under the wig, to the point where I now needed a skull cap to hide it. The only things that screamed ‘girl’ were my eyebrows, puffy lips and earrings. I decided that morning, to cut back on the ‘full girl’ look except for shows, and to spend more time as the real me.

That day, I removed the breasts and wig, showered and washed my own hair twice, ironed one of Toms’ old shirts and put a pair of black jeans on with it. I looked in the mirror and saw someone who was neither sex but a little of both. That would be all right for what I did next. That was to lock up the house with the dogs outside, and drive the Subaru to Birmingham, where I spent a fair amount of money getting new clothes from menswear stores. I went for stylish with good materials. I looked gay and was treated well in the sorts of stores that gay men, with style, would shop. Back home, after looking after the dogs, I re-organised things. Margaret had left the chest of drawers with the lit mirror and had emptied the wardrobe. I took in the free-standing rack and transferred all of my day-to-day Tonya clothes there, replacing them in my room with my new things. In my bedroom, the only female things would be the panties I couldn’t bear to replace, and the things in the Cabinet.

It was hard to change after over a year of living as Tonya, but I would be Tony around the house. If anyone called, then so be it. I could become Tonya for the shows, but make sure that she was put aside for normal life. Francis became a great help with me there, as she could see what I was trying to do. She became a sounding board for me as I worked through my fears of being a lonely man. I could have lived with a man, in fact, I had lost count of the men who wanted to live with me, but I wasn’t gay, and would only have a meaningful relationship with a girl.

I started spending the week as Tony, going shopping and delivering any cake order, until that had become almost normal. Then, I pulled back with the show outfits, starting to wear slacks instead of skirts, and minimising the make-up. It took some willpower to do but it did have a positive result.

There had been a girl, around my age, who had attended a lot of shows and had got fairly friendly. She had often been with a guy, but hardly ever the same one twice. One evening, after we had finished our set and were sitting at a table with drinks, she sat down beside me, and we talked a bit. Then she asked me if she could have a quiet chat.

We moved over to a quiet corner.

“Tonya. I have to make a confession. I’m bisexual and I fancy you something rotten. I’m sorry, but I just had to tell you. I’m sure that you have a whole string of men.”

I smiled.

“Charlotte, friend. Don’t be sorry, I’m honoured that you like me enough to tell me this. I like you, too, a lot.”

“I’m more attracted to you as you’ve been wearing slacks. It may be that I want a more manly woman.”

“How would you like me if I was a womanlier man?”

She looked me in the eyes and giggled.

“Prove it!”

“How would you like me to take you out on a date, tomorrow. I’ve got a Subaru that I use when I don’t need to transport the keyboard. We could go somewhere warm and cosy for lunch. There’s a good place near Cambridge called the Blue Ball Inn. I’ll tell you my life story if you’ll tell me yours.”

She gave me an address to pick her up, and I removed all trace of Tonya that night, dressing as Tony in the morning. I arrived at the address with a bunch of flowers for her and rang the bell. She smiled when she saw me and left the flowers in a vase as we left her home. We had a lovely day, and I took her home to meet the dogs and see my double life. We christened my bed before I took her home.

We became a couple, with her by my side at the shows, content that I was her boyfriend, even though I looked like a songstress. She moved in with me before the next Christmas, and we married the following Easter. We agreed to hold off on a honeymoon until we were more settled, with there being a full book of shows until the following Christmas. The other three had said that they would like to finally retire then, so we organised three days in the studio and made a sixteen-song album, which I sent to the label. Split four ways, it would make a good retirement payout if it sold well.

That ‘Vent Your Feelings’ album was issued two years after the second Trotters one and showed the extra experience that we had gained playing the one kind of music for all that time. At a pound each share, it sold well enough to give us all more than twenty thousand a month for a couple of years. By that time, Charlotte and I had been on our honeymoon, bought a bakery business in Letchworth, and employed three bakers and a shop assistant. I did the special orders but let them do the day-to-day baking.

Our son was born in August of that year, and he was called Thomas Anthony Underwood. He had good lungs but did allow us to have a reasonable sleep, sometimes. The dogs loved him. My mother-in-law would sometimes stay with us, sleeping in the annex, and we had a full social life. We helped out at the church, we had a big circle of friends, we had a good bank balance, but our only splash out was to trade the Defender on a new Range Rover, still needed as our road was unlikely to be paved in our lifetime.

We had some friends who sang, and I would often accompany them with the keyboard, but it was all off the cuff. One strange twist was when I was asked to apply for a job at St. Francis School, to teach Music Appreciation.

There was one thing that I didn’t hide from them, and that was my life, and recording history, as Tonya, and they said that it was one of the things that made me a good candidate. My ‘street cred’ was something you can’t push aside. It didn’t take the students long to start calling me ‘Lofty’.

Charlotte didn’t need to work but took over making sure the bakery was working well, and taking orders for special cakes that I would make in the evenings after being at the school. She was a regular at ‘Megs’ Salon’ and would spend hours in our garden, looking after the raised beds of flowers and vegetables, with the dogs running around and young Thomas chasing them as fast as his little legs could run.

The house on Lower Green had become a genuine home, full of love. I think that Tom would be happy with me, and I sometimes played the duet album, when I’m feeling laid back, knowing that Tanya would be proud of the way I had managed my career.

When our second baby was showing, we organised an on-line auction of all the show and daytime outfits, to make room for the spare room to become the childrens’ room, The Cabinet of Curiosities becoming my wardrobe.

My Uncle Henry had been right about one thing. Being around Tom, I had caught something, but it wasn’t nasty, after all.

Marianne Gregory © 2026