Sex and Other Changes (37 page)

‘Prentice! Why are you saying all this?'

‘To cheer you up.'

‘I'm finding it extremely sad and depressing.'

‘Well there you go.'

What a double whammy. It was the king of double whammies. Prentice and Mr Beresford in one evening.

He couldn't believe that Mr Beresford came. He had never spoken to the man or even seen him out of the context of work, unless you counted those dreadful Christmas parties, but they were work really. Horrid things. Mr Beresford looking absurd in a paper hat, bellowing out a joke from a cracker, ‘What worker drives his customers away?' and being childishly disappointed when Connie hadn't the sense not to blurt out, triumphantly, ‘A taxi driver', thus ruining Mr Beresford's moment of glory and her prospects of promotion.

Now, there he was with his bag of grapes, with only three minutes of recovery time between him and Prentice.

Mr Beresford didn't even like him! Since the announcement of his sex change he had virtually been ostracised. After all the work he had put in towards organising the reception for the launch of the tilting carriages, he hadn't even been invited. Anyone who was anybody in railways had been there – ‘arrivistes from Virgin, virgins from Arriva, con artists from Connex', as he'd put it in his usual forthright biased way – but no Alan Divot, née Alison Kettlewell.

An unworthy but splendid picture crossed Alan's mind. He imagined Mr Beresford on his way up meeting Prentice on his way down. He imagined Prentice saying ‘It's love at first sight. Those eyebrows. Irresistible', and throwing himself on Mr Beresford by the lift doors. His heart hammered with the hatred that he felt for these two men. He was having a heart attack! He forced himself to calm down, he wasn't having a heart attack, the
hammering slowed down, sweat poured off him, he hadn't heard a word of what Mr Beresford was saying, and Mr Beresford hadn't even noticed that anything was wrong.

‘Sorry,' he said. ‘I rather missed all that.'

‘What?' Mr Beresford noticed him properly for the first time. ‘I say, are you all right?'

‘Hot. Very hot. Couldn't dampen a cloth and run it over my forehead, could you?'

Mustn't hate. Hatred was self-destructive. Be a man, Alan. You almost are, after all. Try to see the funny side.

It wasn't too hard to see the funny side of Mr Beresford returning with a damp flannel and solicitously wiping his forehead for him. He looked so awkward and out of place. It quite restored Alan's heart and humour.

‘Thank you, Florence,' he said.

‘What? Ah! Florence Nightingale. Me as Florence Nightingale. Very droll,' said Mr Beresford. ‘Glad to see you haven't lost your sense of humour. I see you're a bit over-stocked with grapes. Sorry.' For a moment Alan thought that Mr Beresford was going to take home the ones he'd brought. He did have a mean streak. ‘No, I was just bringing you up to speed with developments at base. Things are looking up.' That seemed unlikely, in view of the disastrous news that Bangladesh had got the contract for the Northern Vision Three-Car Units. ‘Everything is hunky-dory.'

He pulled his chair close to Alan's bed. Alan thought that his transformation must be difficult for Mr Beresford. He had always suspected that the man held a bit of a torch for him as Alison, and the awful thought occurred to him that maybe he still did! Maybe he was bisexual. Maybe he wouldn't have been too displeased if Prentice had thrown himself on him.

‘Alan,' he said. Alan was amazed. He had only once used his first name before, in the old Alison days. ‘You don't mind my calling you Alan in this context, do you?'

‘Not at all, Mr –'

‘Call me Clive.'

‘Oh. Well … Thank you …' Gulp. ‘… Clive.'

‘I have an apology to make, Alan.'

‘Oh? … Clive.'

‘Yes, Alan. I have not responded to your sex change in as sympathetic a way as I should have done. Since you've been away I've spoken to the Almighty and He has told me that I have been small-minded.'

‘Oh. Well … thank you … Clive.'

‘Don't thank me, Alan. Thank Him.'

‘Right. I … er …' Alan was going to say that he wasn't actually a believer, but it was too weighty a subject to touch upon at this early stage in his recuperation. ‘Right. I will.'

‘Good. He'll be pleased. Don't look so sceptical. God has time for everybody. What God has shown me is that you and … er … your ex-husband … your divorce is complete, isn't it? … have done no harm to anyone but yourselves.'

‘Exactly, Mr … Clive.'

‘The world is full of people doing the most dreadful harm to other people – sex offenders, paedophiles – and things not connected with sex, hardly even worth a mention. The grinding everyday cruelty of humanity, almost always towards those weaker than themselves.'

‘I could let such thoughts get to me if I didn't have a stream of visitors to cheer me up and take my mind off things.'

‘Precisely. Our job precisely.'

There was silence then, deep and loud as only a hospital silence can be.

Suddenly Mr Beresford brightened. He had thought of something else to say.

‘Had your supper?'

‘Yes.'

‘What did you have?'

Well, it passed the time. He spun it out as best he could, even
made him smile as he described their attempts at creme brulee. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen Mr Beresford smile before, and he wasn't sure that he ever wanted to see him smile again, there was something unconscionsably mirthless about his smile. Alan had the absurd thought that he looked like the Old Testament. He longed for him to leave.

‘Yes, well,' said Mr Beresford at last, ‘beastly old tempus has done his rotten old fugiting again.' He stood up. ‘Alan, take as much time as you need to get well, but come back soon. With Mrs Walsh, it isn't the same, it just isn't.'

Mrs Walsh. It took Alan a moment to realise that this was Connie. He didn't think he'd ever heard her called Mrs Walsh before.

‘Perhaps I shouldn't have said that, Alan, and I'd not like it repeated. I wouldn't want you to think she isn't doing her best, and really she's not doing too badly at all but … well … there just isn't any substitute for quality.'

That was easily the nicest thing Mr Beresford had ever said to him. In fact it was the only nice thing he had ever said to him.

Or ever would say to him, come to that.

Alan was discharged from hospital two days before Bernie went off on his cruise.

His cruise! He had booked a fortnight on the
Oriana
, on his own.

Nicola slept on the Zed-bed in the lounge for those two nights, and their time was spent almost entirely in getting Bernie ready. Alan sat in an armchair in his bedroom and shouted instructions – ‘Don't forget his cufflinks' etcetera.

‘Leave it to me,' Nicola called out. ‘You are no longer the woman of the house.'

‘Nor are you,' shouted Alan.

Two things disturbed the calm of Alan's convalescence, one involving Em, one Gray. Both were important. One was serious.

The one that was only important first. Em.

She said to them early one evening (a Thursday), ‘I won't be in this evening. I should have told you earlier. I'm going out with my lover.'

Alan thought that she looked quite slim that night, almost ethereal, certainly beautiful, paradoxically feminine, his … their … chameleon of a daughter.

‘Ah!' he said. ‘A shame to miss Nicola's curry, but … I'm glad you have a lover. I guessed that you had, but you've been unusually quiet about it.'

‘I had cold feet. About telling you.'

‘Good heavens. What's wrong with him?'

‘Nothing. She's a chiropractor. That's how we met.'

This shouldn't have been a surprise at all, it was utterly
logical. Of course it would just about ring their death knell in Throdnall society, but from their perspective as transsexuals it could hardly be described as shocking.

Nevertheless, it has to be said that neither Alan nor Nicola welcomed Em's news wholeheartedly. It's difficult even for loving parents, perhaps especially for loving parents, to accept that a child of theirs is gay.

Some of the reasons for this are creditable. They know that life will be at least a bit more difficult for the child in question. They know that the child in question will never have children of his or her own. This could, and often did, lead to a lonely old age, and the fact that they would be dead didn't stop Nicola or Alan from worrying about Em and Gray in old age.

Some of the reasons are less creditable. There will be remarks in the pubs, comment in the shops, sympathy from the complacent, explanations to the neighbours. There will not be the patter of grandchildren's tiny feet.

Nicola and Alan's disappointment did not run deep and, once they had met Clare, was less than they would have felt had Em married her Greek waiter, or her American control freak, or her oversexed French egotist, or her Italian overburdened with charm and style at the expense of content.

Clare was slim, quietly elegant, always immaculate, and seemed rather cool towards all the world except Em. Some men found it disturbing that it was so impossible to deduce that she was a lesbian. They felt that it was an affront to their sex that somebody so pretty and so well-balanced should prefer her own sex.

Two foolish remarks were made, however, about Em's relationship with Clare – one of them merely foolish, the other foolish but rather more fundamental.

The merely foolish remark was made by Gray. No surprise there, then. ‘I've always hated lesbianism,' he said to Em. ‘I like homosexuality, but hate lesbianism.'

‘How on earth can you justify that attitude?' asked Em indignantly, rising to the bait like a suicidal salmon.

‘Because two gay men are rivals I don't have to bother about, while two lesbian girls are two opportunities I'll never have the chance to have.'

‘I might have guessed your comment would be trite, trivial, stupid and self-centred,' snorted Em, and she stormed out, slamming the door violently behind her.

The more fundamental error, sadly, was Alan's, and it came two days later, over Nicola's lasagne – creditable, but not a patch on Alan's.

‘I hope you don't think it's our fault,' he said to Em.

‘I suppose I should have anticipated that as you become a man you'll start to become utterly and totally crass,' Em retorted. ‘The word “fault” is deeply offensive to me. Since there is absolutely nothing “wrong” with lesbianism the use of the word “fault” is intolerably narrow-minded and falsely judgemental.'

‘You're talking like a debating society, not a human being,' said Gray.

‘Oh, fuck off,' said Em.

‘That's better!' said Gray.

‘I apologise,' said Alan. ‘I apologise utterly and totally. But you must realise that your moth … your father and I … God,
I'm
getting muddled now! … are quite naturally extremely sensitive to the possibility that our sexual confusion and subsequent unusual though not confused behaviour may not have been a great example to you.'

‘You're talking like a pamphlet,' said Gray. ‘What's got into everybody?'

‘Arrogance,' said Em. ‘Patronising arrogance. I make up my own mind. I deeply resent the suggestion that you're responsible for my actions, not me.'

‘Ted Jackson,' said Gray.

He flinched and held his hands over his ears as the door crashed shut behind Em.

‘Ted Jackson?' echoed Nicola.

‘He makes doors,' said Gray with a grin, luxuriating in the rare experience of being the better behaved of the siblings.

And the other thing to disturb the calm? The one that was serious? Gray.

Well, the fault was Ferenc's. Alan thought that a grown, mature man, even if he was Hungarian, would have had more sense. Later he understood.

Nicola's encouragement of Ferenc had borne fruit. He had begun to take his painting more seriously. He had had seven pictures exhibited at the Lafayette, and five of them had already been sold, and for good prices, by the Windlass man, whom Alan thought to be as nutty as a fruitcake, not to mention as fruity as a nutcake. So Ferenc had given Nicola a present as thanks, and Nicola had brought it home from the hotel and unwrapped it, and there it was, a portrait of the family, with Alan and Nicola in their sex change roles, and a wonderfully vivid portrait of Em, and there beside her, Gray.

It was good. It went beyond the surface of their characters. It captured them. And Gray was Ferenc's son. It leapt from the picture, as it didn't in life.

They stared at it in silence – a terrible silence. A family struck dumb. Thank goodness Bernie wasn't there to blow their reticence out of the window.

Oh Ferenc, you prick, you great prick, thought Alan with accuracy on two counts. How could you have done this?

The next morning, after Nicola had left for work, Gray went into Alan's bedroom, where he was still accepting breakfast in bed. Alan didn't think he'd ever seen their … his … son so ashen. A very grey Gray indeed.

‘That picture, Mum,' he said.

‘Yes.'

‘Ferenc's my father, isn't he?'

‘I'm afraid so, yes.'

‘Oh my God.'

‘Oh, Gray, I'm so sorry.'

‘I mean, I knew it the moment I saw the picture, but, I don't know, hearing you say it … it's … it's hit home.'

Alan patted the duvet, inviting Gray to sit. He became his mother's little boy again. It made no difference now that he was grown up and his mother was a man.

Alan wrapped his dressing gown firmly round his chest. He'd grown used to the scars after two years, but he was still uneasy about his children seeing them. He told Gray all about Nick and his troubles, and the isolated affair, and how he'd felt pregnant and had known instinctively, and how he'd had to make love to Nick, so that Nick would never suspect. He told him how he'd always seen little bits of Ferenc in him, and had always been amazed that Nick hadn't seen them too.