Sex and Other Changes (43 page)

After the meal there were the usual speeches, and then, at the end of the speeches, the great shadow that was Prentice loomed over the proceedings.

‘I would like to say a few words,' he shouted. ‘I am Nick's oldest friend.'

Unease flowed across the room like lava. Maybe the guests saw the tension in the faces of Nicola and Alan and Em and Gray and even Bernie.

‘My name's Prentice Prentice,' said Prentice. ‘I was actually born John Prentice, but that was too ordinary for me. I'm a part-time comedian. I've done a stand-up spot at comedy clubs up and down the country. Don't worry. It only lasts an hour.'

Nicola thought that she might faint. She caught Em's appalled eye.

‘Nicola and Alan have been extremely brave,' said Prentice. ‘I just want to wish them luck and raise our glasses to them one more time. To Nicola and Alan.'

Everyone stood up and said, ‘To Nicola and Alan' and drank and sat down.

Prentice sat down too. Nicola and Alan and Em and Gray and Bernie couldn't believe it.

After the speeches they were all invited to go back to the Aston Suite for the dancing, and as they filed towards the door, Nicola and Alan found themselves alongside Prentice.

‘Thank you for that,' said Nicola.

‘That's all right,' said Prentice. ‘I looked round and I realised that I had you in my power. You couldn't have shat yourselves any more, whatever I said, so I didn't need to say anything. It was brilliant. It was the culmination of my career.'

They manoeuvred Prentice out of the doorway, so that the other guests could filter through.

‘Why do you feel obliged to be so unpleasant?' asked Alan.

‘Because nobody has ever made love to me except for money, and never will.'

‘Why do you think that is?'

‘I'm so fat.'

‘Prentice! There are fat people who are loved. Fat people can be happy. Fat people can be beautiful,' said Nicola.

‘I know,' wailed Prentice. ‘Don't you think I know that? But I'm not. That's what makes me so angry. I'm not beautiful, and I'm not likeable.'

‘Then change,' said Nicola. ‘I have. Alan has. Bernie has. You can.'

‘I can't. I'm a slob.'

‘Stay a slob if you're happy, but you obviously aren't, so take yourself in hand.'

‘I do, regularly. I have to. Nobody else will.'

‘Don't be silly. I'm serious.'

‘Can't cope with that.'

‘Yes you can.' Nicola was fervent. Suddenly she was on a mission. ‘Lose weight. Give up comedy. You know it doesn't suit you. Try being nice. You might find you take to it.'

‘Do you really think I could do it?'

Nicola hesitated, chose her words carefully.

‘I think it's not utterly impossible.'

Prentice rested his podgy hand briefly on Nicola's shoulder.

‘I suppose that's something,' he said.

He could only get through the door sideways. They followed him as he waddled painfully to the Aston Suite.

The dancing was to the music of Throdnall's very best jazz band, which also just happened to be … you've guessed it … Throdnall's only jazz band. They hadn't wanted a disco, it wasn't that sort of wedding.

There's something a bit sad about most ageing jazz bands –
it's sad that they're ageing, for a start – but it's impossible to believe that Sid Sargasso and the Doldrums weren't sad even when young: three tall men with a short percussionist, all four with white, nicotine-stained beards, two of them with red boozers' conks, and Sid himself with watery eyes and a microphone technique which managed to give the impression that he had always forgotten the next word but one.

‘Drink as much beer as you like, smoke as much as you like, but play for us, not for each other,' Alan instructed them. ‘We've booked you,' he added, lying through his teeth, ‘for your pzazz.'

It's wonderful what a compliment will do, even an insincere one. Sid Sargasso and the Doldrums obliged them beyond their wildest dreams. Sid said afterwards, ‘That's the best night we've had for ten years.'

Everyone wanted the happy couple to begin the dancing, and they had no alternative but to oblige. It was appropriate that they should perform what could well have been called The Dance Of The Double Negatives. Nicola found it hard not to forget not to lead, and Alan found it hard not to forget not to allow himself to be led – but they did all right, they tried, and people do make allowances, and certainly the applause was whole-hearted.

Bernie led Peggy on to the floor, and they tripped the light fantastic, and the years rolled away from them, but not entirely. They were as arthritic as they were ecstatic.

Eric took Nicola on to the floor just once, danced very correctly but rather stiffly, escorted her to her table, said, ‘I'll be making tracks. I'm not big on dancing,' and walked out of the hotel and, they suspected, out of their lives.

Em danced, only slightly defiantly, with Clare whose dancing was cool and controlled. Em no longer harboured media ambitions. She understood her destiny and didn't rebel against it. She would become a local institution, the eccentric lesbian stalwart of the
Advertiser
, present at every Throdnall event, a
legend in her Throdnall lunchtime. Clare would indulge her eccentricities, and be the rock around which she danced.

Alan took Juanita on to the floor and danced like the tomboy he once was. Gray danced with Nicola and said, ‘I haven't half given bloody Ferenc a shock,
Dad,'
and winked. He no longer had any idea what he wanted to do for a living or even which continent he wanted to do it in, and he felt intoxicated by the uncertainty.

Lance fell over and had to be put in a taxi. Sir Terence Manningham danced with Nicola and said, ‘To think I wanted to sack you!' and added, ‘I shall be coming to stay in a few weeks' time,
without
Lady Manningham, if you get my drift.' Nicola got his drift, was thrilled by the compliment and horrified by the implications.

Ferenc felt obliged to dance with Sally. Her lovely face was disfigured by anger.

‘I hadn't seen him before,' she said, as they moved slowly round the crowded floor.

‘What? Who?'

‘Your son.'

Ferenc stopped dead in his shock. It caused quite a traffic jam. Then they moved on.

‘How did you find out?' asked Ferenc.

‘I have eyes to see, and I wormed the truth out of Alan.'

‘Alan? I didn't know you knew him.'

‘Oh, yes, I know him. How many times did you sleep with her?'

‘I don't … oh … about three, I suppose.'

‘Beat you!'

‘What?'

‘I've slept with him six times.'

Ferenc's second shock was perhaps even greater than his first. Certainly the traffic jam on the dance floor was greater. People piled into each other. It was like being on the dodgems, but without any cars.

*

Nicola would always recall one image above all others from her second wedding day, and that was of the huge, grotesque Prentice gently moving around the dance floor on his own, arms held round a non-existent companion, and with a beatific smile on his face. He looked almost beautiful. Was it the smile of a man who is about to begin to change his life?

Only time will tell.

What Alan would recall most vividly was a moment of deep shock, when a huge shadow darkened his great day. He looked across the room and there was Bernie, with his head slumped forward on to a table. He was certain straightaway that he was dead. The shock sent convulsions through him. He thought for a moment that
his
heart had stopped.

Oh no! he thought. Tonight of all nights. It was a beautiful way to go, for him, happy with his Peggy on a happy day, but still … to have to remember your wedding day for that. And he didn't want to lose his dad. He realised just how much he loved his dad. Had he told him? Even if he had told him, had he told him enough? Too late now.

Then Bernie stirred, looked up, smiled sheepishly, and said, ‘I must have nodded off.' His smile changed from sheepish to coy. ‘Peggy's wearing me out.'

All too soon for some, and all too late for others, it was time for ‘Auld Lang Syne', in the rather individual rendition by Sid Sargasso and the Doldrums.

So ended their second wedding. So ended the most glamorous night, perhaps, that the Cornucopia Hotel in Brindley Street had ever seen (that isn't saying much).

It was time to go ‘up the wooden stairs to Bedfordshire', as Marge used to call it.

Alan and Nicola walked slowly up the recently recarpeted
main staircase of the old hotel, arm in arm. They crossed the corridor and reached the door of their suite. They opened the door and went in. Alan returned to put a ‘Do not disturb' notice on it.

Can it really be that they will defy medical predictions and overcome the artificial nature of their reconstituted genitalia? Or will their loving be a matter of kissing and touching? Do we really need to know? It wasn't ever about sex. It was about gender.

They have so much in common – sense of humour, love of golf and bridge, of travel and food and wine. They will exchange smiles across the log-effect fire, vie to make the best moussaka, enjoy snubbing the Collinsons, gasp politely at Bernie and Peggy's photos of their cruises, take the children of Gray and Juanita to the pantomime, with Auntie Em and Auntie Clare, to laugh at a man dressed as a woman, and to cry for a girl dressed as a man.

It's time to take our leave of them. Our age is far too interested in other people's sex lives, perhaps because it has made sex so easy that it is no longer sufficiently interested in its own. Let us, though, not regard sex as a spectator sport.

Alan closes the door. It squeaks, despite the renovations. Surely, after all they have undergone, they deserve to have their wishes respected?

Let us disturb them no more.

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Published by William Heinemann in 2004

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