Sex and Other Changes (20 page)

No. Think positive, Alan. Welcome the problem. It will take the spotlight off you and your problem. That was the way to look at it.

He marched into Mr Beresford's office.

‘Morning, Mr Beresford. Nasty one here, I'm afraid. Northern Vision. They're seeking additional safety checks in the wake of Godawfulming.'

‘Oh my God, are they? Let's see.'

Mr Beresford snatched the letter, began to read it, suddenly did a double take.

‘What on earth? Jacket and tie?'

‘Yes, I'm going to change sex too. I see they want these checks at no extra cost to themselves. Shall I just acknowledge and play for time?'

‘Change sex?'

‘Yes. I was planning it before my husband did it, so I had to put it off. I mean if the checks find that there is nothing faulty with our couplings we'll be in a stronger position.'

‘If there
is
something wrong we'll be in a weaker position, Mrs … become a man, do you mean?'

‘Yes, that's right. Have to change the name on my door to Mr A. Divot. Obviously anyone who wants to can call me Alan. I don't think we should allow ourselves to be too frightened by Northern Vision, Mr Beresford. I don't think their cash flow is particularly brilliant, and so …'

‘Never mind Northern Vision's cash flow, Mrs Divot. I cannot have a man as my PA.'

He had a fierce look on that sullen, square face. His eyebrows needed trimming. Untrimmed, they were too chaotic to be effectively ferocious.

‘I will still be the same person, Mr Beresford,' said Alan. ‘Still someone whose judgement you have come to respect. Nothing against Connie, for instance, but I don't think you'd get the same – how can I put it? – “gravitas” in her advice. I realise, Mr Beresford, that the change won't be easy for you.' His unspoken addition, of course, was ‘knowing that you've rather fancied me all these years'.

‘I don't want to seem to be threatening you, Mr Beresford,' he continued. ‘I'm really not. I'm just pointing out that in these days of political correctness there might be quite a stink about your sacking me on grounds of sex discrimination.'

Mr Beresford stared at him.

‘That may have worked at Cornucopia Hotels,' he said. ‘I'm made of sterner stuff.'

‘I feel as if I know every little detail of how you tick, Mr Beresford,' said Alan. ‘Every little detail. I can inform my successor of all sorts of little things, but it won't be the same.'

Mr Beresford went pale. All the colour went from his cheeks. Just for a moment he didn't look at all like the strong man Alan had come to know. Just for a moment he looked like a lost and sullen child.

‘You have a point,' he said. ‘I have to admit you have a point. I'll give it a try; see how things work out.'

Alan was happy to get out of Mr Beresford's office before he changed his mind. He stood for a moment at his internal window, looking down at the great length of the sheds, with carriages at different stages of creation. He went over what he had said. Why did it have such an effect? It was clear that Mr Beresford believed that he was threatening him. But what with? Later, much later, when it happened, he would think back over those words, and understand something of their significance. At the time he was happy just to accept his good fortune.

Mr Beresford came through the adjoining door into Alan's
office. Alan turned away from the window. Their eyes met. Alan realised that he had no idea what Mr Beresford was thinking.

‘Yes,' said Mr Beresford. ‘Play Northern Vision for time. Let me see your letter when you've drafted it. Thank you, Mr Divot.'

That evening, they held a press conference and photo-shoot with Em – if you can call the efforts of the
Advertiser's
overweight undertalented chief photographer by a term as impressive as ‘photo-shoot'. He took hundreds of pictures. Photographers always do. They like people to think they're being thorough, but usually it's because they're too lazy to work out in advance what they want.

Nicola looked extremely feminine in a knee-length tan skirt that matched her high-heeled court shoes. Her blouse was a fetching feminine pink. When she crossed her legs nobody would have guessed that she had ever been a man. Alan felt that he played his part too, casual and relaxed in stone-coloured slacks, with an open-neck rust-coloured check shirt and an expression so relaxed and so masculine that he might have been posing for a pipe-tobacco ad.

Em had talked to them very seriously about publicity. Neither Nicola nor Alan had given it any real thought. It was a publicity mad world out there, full of people whose sole aim was to be famous. Television fed on it. They alone seemed not to want publicity, but to dread it.

‘A story of a double sex change is bound to be widely covered,' she'd said. ‘And you must expect distortion from the tabloids.'

Alan remembered how Marge used to examine behind her ears for things called mastoids, and how the word had seemed sinister and frightening. It occurred to him now that tabloids sounded like a form of disease. ‘I keep breaking out in sensational allegations, doctor.' ‘You've got a bad dose of tabloids.'

He realised that the reason why his mind was wandering was that he couldn't cope head-on with the nation's publicity machine. His own daughter berated him severely. ‘Concentrate, Mum, for goodness sake,' she said. ‘Look, my view is that if you try to hide it people will be fascinated and it'll run and run. Your only chance is to tell the world, tell them on your terms, tell them everything so that there's nothing else to tell, seem to be eager for publicity, seem to long for it. People will soon get tired of you.'

‘Isn't that a high risk strategy?' Nicola had asked. ‘The papers are full every day of the same mini-celebrities craving publicity and getting it.'

‘Yes, but you won't crave it, so you won't go on seeking it, so you won't go on getting it.'

Nicola and Alan felt very proud of Em that evening and in the hectic days that followed. She became their publicity manager for the whole of their brief spurt of fame. Some parents are blind to their children's faults. That is sad. Others are blind to their children's virtues. That is sadder. Alan and Nicola tended to fall into the latter category. They were amazed when they saw any evidence of maturity in Em or Gray.

It felt strange to them both to be standing alongside each other, dressed the other way round, but they didn't discuss it. They were strangely shy with each other.

Em interviewed them both separately, then together. They found it difficult, but they must have done all right because the article that appeared under the supremely inelegant headline ‘Throdnall Double Sex Change Shock Sensation' wasn't overly cringe-making. The editor, incidentally, loved the headline. He had once told his chief sub-editor, ‘There are four words that I love to see in my headlines. They are, in order of importance, Throdnall, sex, shock and sensation.' This headline used all four of them, and in the right order too.

Em's predictions over publicity were pretty well right. They
were plastered all over the national press for a day or two. They appeared on breakfast television, and did some radio interviews. Nicola rather lost her way on the first radio interview, and the interviewer said, ‘Never mind, we can edit that out.' Then they went on Radio Throdnall and the interviewer said, ‘I wouldn't have thought Throdnall would be a comfortable place to be a freak,' and Alan, always the more outspoken – well one can hardly say ‘freaked out' under the circumstances – let's say he lost his rag.

‘Listen, young man,' he said. ‘The world is full of people who might be described as freaks – exhibitionists wearing drag in public, inhibitionists wearing drag in private, drag queens in the King's Road, drag kings in the Queen's Road, cross-dressers getting dressed down by cross partners, gender blenders going on gender benders in down-town Capetown and up-town Motown, Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do, what shall we do on a bisexual made for two – and we are just two ordinary, decent people trying to find our identity in a respectable way, so don't speak to us like that if you don't mind, you cheeky, prejudiced, ignorant, pathetic young media whippersnapper,' and then there was silence, a stunned silence, and Alan said, ‘Sorry about that. I lost my temper. You can edit it out, can't you?', and the interviewer said, ‘Can I hell as like? We're still on the fucking air … oh shit!!'

If you go to the window, just before the evening light begins to fade, and you stand there for more than an hour, looking out over your garden, you will never see the light fading, but in the end it will be dark.

Nicola and Alan's sex changes were rather like that. Ferenc never said, ‘Good morning, Nicola. Your voice seems softer today.' No waiter at the Trattoria Positano ever said, ‘That man's voice at table eight has just gone gruffer halfway through his cannelloni.' Gradually, though, Alan's voice deepened. Imperceptibly, Nicola's softened.

The only person to comment on these changes was Denise Ploughman at the bridge club. ‘Have you got a cold, Alison?' she asked, and then she remembered, and blushed, and looked confused, and apologised. ‘Sorry, Alan.'

‘It's quite all right,' said Alan.

People didn't know what to talk to them about, and they received only one invitation all that long winter, and that was to speak, both of them, at the annual dinner of the Transvestite Crown Green Bowls Society – secretary, Bernie's old bowling colleague, Vince Brodley. They turned it down.

One evening at the table in the kitchen Nicola said of Alan's chicken curry, ‘Very nice, Alan. As always.'

‘Talking of “always”,' said Alan. ‘Why should it always be me who cooks?'

‘Well, you're …' began Nicola, and found that there was nowhere for her sentence to go, ‘… the person who always cooks,' she finished lamely.

‘I thought for one moment you were going to say “the woman”,' said Alan.

‘I was,' admitted Nicola.

‘Well, you're the woman now. You should cook.'

‘I don't believe what I'm hearing,' said Em. ‘I don't want either of you to change sex, especially Mum – there are too many men in the world without women becoming them – but you really did have, I thought, a wonderful chance to deconstruct the bi-genderist ethos of a capitalist patriarchal sexual hegemony.' Like many people who aren't quite as original as they'd like to be, she sometimes took refuge in long words to endow her thoughts with meaning. ‘So far as sexual politics are concerned, this family is in the Dark Ages. Correction. They aren't anything like enlightened enough for the Dark Ages. They're cave dwellers.'

‘Nobody sat around in caves doing nothing and saying, “When will it be ready?” ' said Gray.

Em looked at him in astonishment.

‘Sixteen years!' she said. ‘That's all we've had to wait for him to say something intelligent. Not bad. Cool!'

Gray blushed. He squirmed with embarrassment like an eel with an itchy back.

‘Dad was outrageous all those years,' continued Em.

‘So now
I
should sit around and say, “When will it be ready?” ' said Alan.

‘Absolutely not, Mum,' said Em. ‘The one good thing about all this is that it's put a rocket up the arse of sexual stereo-typicality. We have the woman sitting around doing nothing and saying, “When will it be ready?” '

‘Which I have to say, Nicola, is not in the spirit of your Real Life Test,' said Alan. ‘You are supposed to play the woman's role. Come on. Do the cooking. Start the dishwasher. Change the beds. Be a woman, or I'll snitch to Doctor Langridge.'

‘And what are you going to do, Mum?' said Em.

‘Sod all. I have to, for my Real Life Test. I take mine seriously.'

‘Oh come on,' said Nicola. ‘What sort of a man are you proposing to be?'

‘The sort you were. Lazy, insensitive and selfish,' said Alan. ‘What are we having for tea tomorrow, Nicola?'

‘It's all beyond me,' said Bernie. ‘I've lived too long.'

In bed that night, Nicola whispered, ‘We're getting on each other's nerves. Do you think we should split?'

‘You're only saying that because you think you'll have to do all the work,' whispered Alan. ‘I was only joking about that. I think we should share the work equally.'

‘What??'

‘Surely you can't object to that.'

‘I suppose not. My God. You mean … I cook every other night?'

‘Yes.'

‘Hell's bells.'

‘Yes.'

‘Is there much point in our staying together? We don't have sex.'

‘You could have said that any time during the last fifteen years.'

‘You're divorcing me. I should move out.'

‘If you don't feel I can offer you any support, do. I just thought … this is very hard for both of us … we'll have to split up one day, of course, but for the sake of the kids the longer we're together the better. We can't do much separately till we've had our ops. Why don't we try to support each other as long as we can? We did love each other once, you know.'

Two cats began to wail at each other. If that didn't wake the rest of the family, nothing would, but Alan and Nicola continued in whispers.

‘Yes. Yes. Well, all right,' whispered Nicola. ‘But … do you really want me to do half the work around the house?'

‘Yes. Yes, I do.'

‘This is a shock, Alan.'

‘Good.'

That winter seemed like an eternity. They tried to be patient, tried not to wish their lives away, but oh how it dragged.

They fell into the new routine, Alan more easily than Nicola. Equality. Task sharing. Burden sharing. It was utterly equitable, unlike life, but it seemed unfair to them both. Nicola had never had to work so hard at home, while Alan was still working far harder than Nicola had when she'd been a man. A winter of elaborate fairness and aching resentment!