Sex and Other Changes (12 page)

The traffic was very heavy in the Kenilworth Road. That didn't worry her unduly. Half of her wanted to get there quickly and get it over with. The other half welcomed any excuse for delay. She noticed that the tattoo parlour had closed down, which seemed incomprehensible in view of the bodily habits of the majority of the townsfolk. It was hard to imagine a greater example of incompetence in business than running a failed tattoo parlour in Throdnall.

One of the windows of the pet shop was boarded up. An extremely fat girl in unwise leggings was unlocking the door of the hairdressing salon, Maison Doreen, and, good Lord, there was Mr Parker from number thirty-seven opposite, unloading boxes from his elderly Volvo (it did look as if they were overstretched) into the new herb and spice shop, Piccalilli Circus. Not a good location, the Parkers struck her as naive, how long would that little dream survive?

Some bright spark had blacked out the letter O on the sign outside the County Library.

The right turn into Brindley Street took for ever. The filter system was very badly set, about two cars at a time got through.

She drove past the hotel and turned left into the narrow alley to the hotel car park. She pulled into her reserved space – General Manager – and looked in the mirror to check her makeup. She didn't really know what she was looking for, but she knew that no self-respecting woman would get out of her car in a car park without checking her make-up first. She didn't like what she saw. In that light she looked like a gargoyle with jaundice.

‘Come on, Nicola. This is it,' she said out loud.

She could have slunk in straight from the car park, but she decided that on this occasion, for the sake of her self-respect, she would boldly climb the front steps.

She walked carefully down the alley from the car park to the street, past the frosted glass windows of the ground floor toilets,
and walked even more carefully along the pavement. She was frightened of catching her heel in one of the many cracks and crevices, ravines and hollows that made Brindley Street's pavements resemble the surface of the moon.

The Cornucopia Hotel had been an old coaching inn, called the White Hart. It was one of only two old buildings left in Brindley Street. The other one was a sex shop. Above the steps, atop the entrance canopy, there still sat a rather splendid, if now completely irrelevant, white hart. It was probably a listed animal which couldn't be pulled down. Two storeys had been added to the top of the building, ruining its Georgian proportions.

Nicola sighed deeply as she went in. This really wasn't easy.

The moment she entered the hotel she could always see the whole picture. Nothing escaped her. It was obvious that morning that there was a bit of a hoo-ha at the reception desk. Sandra was a tough nut as befitted a retired lady footballer who played centre half for Throdnall Amazons, but she was looking a bit frazzled as she faced a very determined businessman.

Nicola hurried over, glad of the excuse for some kind of immediate action.

‘Morning, Sandra,' she said.

Sandra's mouth fell open in astonishment.

‘Mr Divot?' she asked.

‘Ms Divot,' said Nicola, and she turned to the businessman, whose face was florid. ‘Can I help you? I'm the Manager.'

‘I booked a superior room. My room has not been superior. There must have been some mistake.'

There had been no mistake. None of their rooms were superior. It was absurd of Cornucopia to classify the rooms as Standard and Superior. Slightly Below Standard and Very Below Standard would have been more honest.

‘Have you sent for the Duty Manager, Sandra?' asked Nicola.

‘Er …' Sandra hurriedly stopped gawping at her. ‘Not yet, Mr … er … Ms … er … no.'

‘Right. Well I'll deal with it. Who is Duty Manager today, by the way?'

‘Mr Gulyas.'

‘Fine. Will you tell Mr Gulyas I'll see him in my office in twenty minutes? Now, sir, may I ask you why you didn't complain last night?'

‘I didn't have time. I arrived late, and had to go straight to a function in the Assembly Rooms. The Heart of England Financial Directors' Dinner Dance. I dumped my stuff, barely glanced at my room, jumped into my penguin suit and buggered off.'

Most people didn't complain about their rooms for the simple reason that they weren't paying, but Nicola could see why a financial director would want value for money.

‘Which room were you in, sir?'

‘Two three two.'

‘Right … er … Mr … er … ?'

‘Wilmer.'

‘Right, Mr Wilmer, let's go and have a look at your room, shall we?'

They shuddered up to the second floor in the painfully slow lift. A small advertisement asked, ‘Why not give our Kenilworth Brasserie a visit?' Nicola could think of eleven reasons.

‘The word Cornucopia suggests “plenty”,' said Mr Wilmer.

And there is plenty – plenty to complain about, thought Nicola. She looked at the second floor corridor through Mr Wilmer's eyes – carpet, threadbare and dirt-coloured (had been beige), lifeless prints of Warwickshire scenes, lighting just too dim, piles of dirty sheets at intervals. Only splashes of colour, only objects with any style – fire extinguisher and fire bucket.

They entered room two three two.

‘Limp pillows,' said Mr Wilmer. ‘A damp stain on the ceiling. Cracked paint on the radiator. Cheap curtains that don't quite meet. Tiny mites beneath the glass in the print of Old Throdnall. A tomato stain on page ninety-three of the Gideon Bible.'

He led her into the bathroom.

‘A chip in the enamel of the washbasin. A brown stain in the bath. Two loose floor tiles. Pubic hairs in the shower.'

The first morning of my brave new life and I'm bending down to examine other people's pubic hairs, thought Nicola. She stood up gingerly, anxious not to snag her tights.

‘I'm very sorry about the pubic hairs,' she said. ‘Heads will roll. The Gideon Bible will be replaced. With regard to the other matters, we are, I must admit, awaiting refurbishment.'

She didn't tell him that they were fifth on the list, behind the Coventry Cornucopia, the Haverfordwest Cornucopia, the York Cornucopia and the Crawley Cornucopia.

‘Is this one of your superior rooms?' demanded Mr Wilmer.

‘Yes, it is,' she said, ‘though I must admit it's not one of our best.'

She was lying. It was one of their best.

‘My wife has left me,' he said.

I'm not surprised, thought Nicola.

‘I'm so sorry,' she said.

‘I'm not,' he said. ‘I half thought I might pull, to be honest.'

You? No chance.

‘How could I bring a woman back to a room like this?'

Nicola didn't point out that he had claimed not to have noticed how bad the room was the previous evening, so he wouldn't have known that he couldn't bring a woman back.

Mr Wilmer picked up the little folder on the desk and read out loud, ‘Mr Nick Divot and his staff welcome you to the Cornucopia and will do all they can to make your stay a pleasurable one.' (Damn! That should have been changed to Ms Nicola Divot, get Ferenc on to it.)

‘Pleasurable, my arse,' said Mr Wilmer.

The unworthy thought flashed through Nicola's mind that even when she was a fully-fledged woman she would find nothing pleasurable about Mr Wilmer's arse. But the customer
was right, even if he was a complete tosser, and Nicola's first decision as a woman was the degrading one of offering Mr Wilmer a fifty per cent reduction in his bill.

On a more positive note, he hadn't appeared to find anything odd in her appearance as a woman.

He hadn't attempted to pull, though.

Ferenc had a soft little knock, but he was only playing at being diffident.

‘Come in.' Nicola tried to make her voice sound soft and feminine. It had never exactly been deep and masculine, and she thought the hormone treatment was having a gradual effect.

Ferenc slid in as if on castors, shut the door gently behind him and raised his eyebrows in a way that, frankly, was just a trifle supercilious. Don't waste my time. Tell me what your little game is, said Ferenc's eyebrows.

Damn it, she wouldn't!

‘Do sit down, Ferenc,' she said.

Ferenc settled himself elegantly into the chair on the other side of her excessively neat desk. Ferenc, it couldn't be denied, had style – a rare quality in Throdnall. He'd had it as a waiter – he'd stood out in the Pizza Hut in Plockwell, which was where Nick first saw him. He'd been fresh out of Budapest and could serenade a woman with a menu as if it was a gypsy violin. If he'd had a violin he'd have caused mass orgasms. There'd been trouble with a customer, he'd got into doubtful company and left. When he next came across him, Nick had just been appointed Manager at the Cornucopia, Ferenc was married and less wild, and Nick had given him a job as a waiter. Only eight years later, and already he was Assistant Manager. Nicola didn't resent it, but she was well aware that he might rise to heights that she couldn't aspire to. It wouldn't surprise her if one day he opened Throdnall's very first Hungarian restaurant.

What she found difficult in her relationship with him was to
establish any power over him. He had more natural authority than she did, and they both knew it. Today was different, though. Today she had something to tell him, and as long as she refused to tell him she had power over him.

‘Ferenc,' she said, ‘I need to talk to all the staff. I … er … I have something important to tell them.'

‘I see.'

Good! She had forced him into the English habit of saying the opposite of what he meant. Clearly he didn't see and didn't know quite how to ask her.

‘Er … ?' he began.

‘I'll leave you to arrange things,' she said. ‘Obviously I can't speak to the whole staff at once – the hotel still needs to function in its usual smooth, efficient way.'

She smiled slightly, just enough to let him know that she knew what a crap-hole it was. It crossed her mind that this was something that she could never have acknowledged as a man, and just for a moment she felt quite light-headed.

She began to wonder about Ferenc's sexuality. He was quite small, lithe, with a mobile face. She'd never given his sexuality a thought before, but she found herself considering whether he might be bisexual. He had a reputation as a ladies' man, but that might be a smokescreen.

Was she interested because she was going to be a woman, she wondered. Would she end up saying to him, ‘Take me, Ferenc'?

No, because he wouldn't.

She realised that while she had been musing he'd been speaking, and she had no idea what he'd said. That wouldn't do. That wasn't masterful (should that be ‘mistressfuP now, or was that politically incorrect? Personful? Concentrate!)

‘Sorry,' she said. ‘What did you say?'

‘I asked you – I should think it's a question anyone would feel that they must ask – why you are wearing ladies' clothes?'

‘Good question. Very good question. So I'd like you to divide the staff into two in such a way that while one lot hear me speak the other lot will be able to keep the place ticking over. I'll … er … the Aston Suite's free today, isn't it?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'll use the Aston Suite. One lot at eleven, the other at eleven-thirty. I'd like you to be there as well, Ferenc, for one of those times.'

She smiled, quite mistressfully. It was a good moment and she was determined to enjoy it. She sat back in her chair behind her neat desk and crossed her legs luxuriously. She had completely forgotten that she had balls and a prick and as she crossed her legs they got badly squashed inside her tights. It was excruciating.

‘Are you all right?' he asked.

‘Never better, Ferenc,' she gasped. ‘In the pink.'

The worst of the pain passed and she stood up very carefully, and tried to move her legs in such a way that her genitalia would cease to stick together and would rediscover their separate identities. In vain! There was nowhere for them to go. Her surprising feeling of well-being ebbed away. She found the prospect of carrying her male private parts around in her knickers for two whole years deeply depressing.

‘Are you sure you're all right?'

‘Yes. Yes. I was just wondering if my skirt was straight.'

‘Er … yes … yes. Pretty straight.'

‘It's difficult when you're not used to it.' She smiled. ‘I'll get used to it.'

His eyes widened slightly.

‘Don't tell me you're going in for a sex change,' he said.

She supposed that it was inevitable that he would guess – there weren't that many possible explanations – but it added to her sudden feeling of flatness. It rather took the gilt off her gingerbread. Nick had always felt that he was a man destined to
have the gilt taken off his gingerbread, and now it looked as if things might not be very different for Nicola.

It was to be expected, on this dramatic morning and with all the hormones that were coursing through her body, that Nicola should experience mood swings. As she stepped on to the raised platform at the end of the Aston Suite she no longer felt flat. Yes, she was nervous. Yes, she realised that she must cut a rather absurd figure. (Not
that
absurd, though. She had looked at herself in the mirror in the Ladies', and thought that on the whole she really wasn't too bad; she could have imagined fancying her if she had been a man, which of course she had been, so probably she wasn't a bad judge.) But above all she felt – perhaps for the first time in her life – that she was interesting. She sensed a crackling tension in her audience, not the usual ‘Oh God it's him again', but ‘What's going on?'

She felt a surge of great joy. Her liberation had begun.

The room had been arranged in lecture mode, with rows of chairs facing her. It was far from full, and her audience had gathered themselves into little clusters – kitchen staff and waiters at the back where they could giggle and whisper – receptionists, office staff and management at the front, looking serious and corporate – a gaggle of chambermaids to the left, huddling together for comfort in this formal set-up – a couple of porters to the right – one of the barmen all on his own to the left.