Sex and Other Changes (3 page)

‘I hope it isn't an omen,' said Jen to Alison.

‘You hope what isn't an omen?'

‘That stupid telegram.'

‘You hope it isn't an omen of what?'

‘I don't know. Nothing.'

‘You hope it isn't an omen of nothing. Well, that's brilliant.'

‘You know what I mean.'

‘Yes, I do know what you mean. You hope I'm not going to be happy.'

‘That's a dreadful thing to say.'

Jen ran from the room in tears. Alison had to go to the Ladies' room to calm her and bring her back.

In the Ladies', Alison kissed Jen and said, ‘Oh, Jen. I'm
sorry. I'm sorry for all the things I've done to you. I've been horrid.'

‘I deserved it,' said Jen. ‘I resented you because you're clever.'

‘I resented you because you're beautiful. You're so beautiful, Jen.'

They hugged each other and kissed each other and began to help each other repair their ruined make-up.

‘Who's Len Pickup when he's at home?' asked Marge.

‘He never is at home,' said Nick. ‘He's a womaniser. He kept calling and trying to do odd jobs when Dad was at sea. He used to bring his tool box. It was enormous.'

‘Did he get anywhere?' asked Bernie.

‘Now then, Bernie,' warned Marge.

‘With his tool box,' said Bernie. ‘I'm talking about his tool box.'

‘Nowhere,' said Nick. ‘He mended a few fuses, but it'd be easier to get into Fort Knox than into my mum.' He blushed scarlet. ‘Oh hell,' he said. ‘I didn't mean … that wasn't … I … Oh Mum! I'm sorry.'

Marge leant across and kissed him, warmly, left her cheek on his for a moment. He was astounded. Nobody in his family had ever kissed him as warmly as that.

‘I must go and see if those girls are all right,' she said.

Marge put her head round the door of the Ladies' and saw her two daughters standing at the washbasins and chatting and laughing like … like loving sisters.

‘Come in, Mum,' said Alison. ‘We were chatting about the hotels in Cyprus and that awful dirty old man on the beach.'

Marge entered. How typically British, she thought. We sit in silence on trains till three minutes before the terminus, when we begin to speak and discover that all the people we've been avoiding are extremely interesting. Alison and Jen had begun to
talk properly for the first time two hours before Alison went off to lead a new life.

‘It's nice in here,' said Marge.

‘Go and tell the boys to come and join us, Jen,' said Alison.

While Marge was out of the room, Bernie approached Prentice.

‘Why did you do it?' he asked.

‘Joke,' explained Prentice. ‘I'm training to be a comedian.'

‘It wasn't funny,' said Bernie.

‘No, I'm quite pleased about that, actually. A comedian has to overcome his fear of failure. I'm quite pleased with how I handled myself.'

‘Not a thought for Nick's feelings, then.'

‘We can't afford to consider the feelings of our audience. We're lost if we do.'

‘Well, I thought it was very offensive, Prentice.'

‘Probably. But then we're here to expand our boundaries.'

‘I'd have expanded your boundaries if there hadn't been ladies present. I'd have punched you in the face if this wasn't a three-star RAC hotel.'

‘Well, good, I got a reaction, then. It's indifference I dread,' said Prentice complacently.

Alison approached her mother and led her over to the window, which afforded a view over the railway line and the signalbox to the messy canal and river beyond. An Inter-City train was pulling out towards Sheffield.

‘Mum,' she said. ‘We don't want you to feel any of that losing a daughter nonsense. Our home will be your home always.'

‘That's very nice of you, Alison,' said Marge, ‘but you've got to put Nick first now, you know.'

‘I've discussed it with Nick. He's in complete agreement.'

‘Oh, it's been passed
nem. con
., has it? That's nice.'

‘What?'

‘You sound like a management committee, not a young couple. It's very nice of you, but it's your wedding day, and you're emotional. Don't make rash promises.'

When Alison had moved off, Bernie sidled over to Marge. He touched her bottom briefly, put his arm round her waist, and looked out at the fading day.

‘Well?' he said.

‘What do you mean – “Well”? Well what?'

‘Well, do you think it's gone well?'

‘Well there've been almost more tears than at the funeral, but, weddings, that's par for the course.'

‘It's all so quick.'

‘Oh, I know. They're so young.'

‘I know.'

‘They know so little.'

‘I know.'

‘We know too much.'

‘I know. I mean, he's very nice …
very
nice …'

‘He is very nice. He's a triumph of the individual over the environment.'

‘You what?'

‘I read in the
Reader's Digest
– are people more shaped by their environment or their heredity? But there's no warmth in his family, and yet
he
has warmth. Where does it come from? Not from his environment
or
his heredity. From him. It comes from him. There is nowhere else.'

‘I see what you mean. Oh aye. He's a triumph of the individual over the environment when you look at it that road. It's just … we … well … I think there's summat a bit … a bit odd about it all.'

‘Odd?'

‘Not quite right.'

‘Oh dear. Not quite right in what way?'

‘I don't know. It's just a feeling. Summat not quite right.'

‘Oh dear. About him?'

‘No, not really.'

‘About Alison?'

‘No, not really. About … them. Him and her together. I hope I'm wrong.'

‘I'm sure you are.'

‘I expect I am. It's probably that telegram. It's cast a damper.'

On her thirteenth wedding anniversary, Alison had a blinding revelation. It didn't occur on the road to Damascus, but in Marks and Spencer's, in Throdnall, in the menswear department.

When she got home, she sat at the dining table and wrote to her sister in Sydney.

33, Orchard View Close

Throdnall

Warwickshire TL2 5XJ

Dearest Jen,

I had a revelation this morning, in Marks and Sparks of all places. I decided I needed some shirts, and I walked into the menswear department, and started looking at the shirts, and suddenly I thought, ‘No, Alison. Wrong!' I'd forgotten, in a dreamy, confused moment, that I was a woman. I just stood there, stunned, among all the dully displayed rows of trousers and jackets (Throdnall isn't Milan). And I thought, ‘Alison, this is ridiculous. You've read about those sex change operations. You can have one. You don't have to be a woman for ever. You can do something about it.'

A great excitement swept over me. You remember how fearless I used to be? My spirit's been rather ground out of me by matrimony and motherhood – but it's still there.

An assistant approached me and said, ‘Can I help you, madam?', which was a little miracle in itself in Throdnall, and I said, ‘Not with what I need, no,' and went over to the women's department and bought some sensible blouses for my new job. I start work on Monday as Personal Assistant
(do you have that title in Australia?) to the MD of Throdnall Carriage Works, and I've been getting nervous. Me, nervous? How far I've sunk!

Now, of course, with the prospect of a far greater change, I don't feel nervous about my job at all. The old Alison is back – ironically, she's back because she's realised that she doesn't have to be Alison for ever!

I can hear you thinking,
‘I
know she was always a bit of a tomboy, but sex change?? Why?? What's she referring to when she says, “I can do something about it”? About what?'

About my situation, Jen. About my agony. About all the things that I have never mentioned in any of my letters, which have been minor masterpieces of evasion.

I know that this will all come as an enormous shock to you, Jen, and to Bruce …

She paused to allow herself a little smile, in which affection was mingled with contempt. It was somehow symbolic of Jen's lack of originality – she had never had an original thought in her life, as far as Alison knew – that the Australian she had married should be called Bruce.

… but I hope in the end you'll quite like the idea of having a brother!

Don't be alarmed, Jen. Nothing's going to happen in a hurry. I'm going to need to do an awful lot of research. I couldn't possibly do it till Emma and Graham are a lot older. I rather doubt if I could do it while Mum's alive. (She's looking older suddenly, and thinner, which worries me, but you know what she's like, she won't go to the doctor, she says, ‘They've enough on their plate without worrying about me', which is ridiculous.) So, please, Jen, you must promise not to mention a word of this in your letters to Mum and Dad.

I've had a dreadful recurring dream, Jen, all my life as long as I can remember. I dream that I'm in the womb, assuming that I'm going to be born a boy. Sometimes I wake up at that point and am absolutely mortified when I remember I'm a woman. I reach down to say a friendly good morning to my prick, and there isn't one! Other times the dream goes further and I am going through the process of being born – horrid, messy, what a shock – and everyone looks at me and screams, even Mum screams. That's so terrible, Jen, I wake crawling with sweat. Sometimes it takes me hours to forget Mum's screams.

I know how proud you always were of your breasts. I'm ashamed of mine. I hate them. I think of them as aliens, sometimes I've felt I could chop them off with a kitchen knife, I've felt frightened to be in the house on my own for fear I'll do myself a dreadful injury. I know that sounds mad, but my incarceration in a female body
has
been driving me mad.

Somehow I don't think I'll ever feel as desperate as that again. The knowledge that there is an escape, that one day I can change, I can become me at last, is amazing.

Now that I'm into confession mode I may as well tell you that all is not well with our marriage. Hardly surprising, really, under the circumstances. I mean on the surface we seem pretty happy, I suppose – I don't think the kids suspect anything – but we haven't made love since I got pregnant with Gray. Things tailed away quite a bit after Em, actually. I think Nick blames himself. Sometimes he goes to bed early and pretends to be asleep when I go up, sometimes he works late in his study, invents work, I think, or reads – he's so much more of a reader than I am – and creeps up late so as not to wake me, and
I
pretend to be asleep. It's a farce. I long to tell him that I don't mind, that I don't want sex with a man any more, that I hate the submissive gesture of
opening my legs, that it's all right with me that we don't have sex, but I can't. Not till I pluck up the courage, one day, to tell him that I'm going to become a man. I can just imagine his face.

How silly we were to spend so much of our youth fighting. Life's difficult enough without putting obstacles between us. Jen, darling, I miss you so much, I no longer feel remotely jealous of your beauty. I'm so proud of you, I need you, please write back a proper letter, please let's be close as we never really were, and have no secrets from each other ever again.

I do hope you and Bruce are well, also of course Craig and Kelly.

Your loving sister (but not for ever!)

Alison

Just as she was beginning to address the envelope – she found it difficult to think of Jen as Mrs J. Hackenburger – she heard the back door slam.

She went through to the kitchen and gave Em a hug. Em at ten was going through a really sweet phase.

‘Love you, Mum,' said Em.

Three innocent words. Two of them warmed her heart. The third stuck a dagger into it. Mum. It came as a shock after all she'd been writing.

She made herself a cup of coffee while Em piled two scones with butter and Marmite.

‘Your hand's shaking, Mum.'

‘It is, isn't it? Did you learn anything interesting at school today?'

‘Not really. Why's your hand shaking, Mum?'

‘I must have been thinking about rather frightening things.'

‘What frightening things?'

‘Oh, things from a long way away, Em. Wars and things.'

‘Oh. I don't think there should be wars, Mum.'

‘Nor do I, Em.'

‘If we can see that, why can't everybody? Are they stupid?'

‘No. I'm afraid there are some wicked people in this world of ours, Em.'

‘I know. Sandra Copeland, for one. She pulled my hair again today, the cow.'

Alison smiled. It was a weary smile. She realised, looking at Em in all her innocence, what a long time it would be before she could begin her sex change. She felt sad, but calmer than she had felt for a long time.

She went back into the dining room, sat at the table, picked up her letter to Jen, read it with the speed-reading techniques she'd learnt at a course in Luton, sighed, stood up, fetched a box of matches, lit a candle (she'd make the table really pretty, this evening, for their first anniversary dinner in the house) and held the candle to the letter. When it had all been reduced to ashes, she swept it carefully into the Habitat waste-paper basket, seated herself at the table again, sipped her instant coffee, grimaced, and began to write another letter.

33, Orchard View Close

Throdnall

Warwickshire TL2 5XJ

Dear Jen,

This has to be hurried as it's our wedding anniversary. I'm making Dover Sole, Nick's favourite. I start my new job next week, went to Marks and Sparks today and bought some blouses. Very sober and sedate. Not me at all. I've been appointed PA to a man called Clive Beresford. He's the big wheel behind Throdnall Carriage Works. It's quite a job to have landed and a big increase in pay. He asked me if I was going to have any more children. I said, ‘No, we've one
of each and they're fine and we're happy with that,' and he said, ‘Excellent. Keep taking the precautions,' and I said, ‘I will!'