The Girl Who Just Appeared

by Jonathan Harvey

  I worked in prison. I worked in the kitchens. I was good, learned to cook. And then they trained me to cut hair in the barber’s there. And I found I liked it. Though I would’ve been more interested in styling women, of course. When my date for release came, I was excited. I knew what was gonna happen next. But I was scared. I knew I wouldn’t be seeing Frankie or Rob for some time. And I’d just have to live with that. I had to be prepared for their rejection. God knows why I cared so much about Frankie. She was hardly Mother Earth.

  Anyway, I was lucky. When I came out of prison, I went to stay with April. I dread to think where I’d be now if I’d never met her. But these things happen for a reason. And she knew exactly what I had to do. I went to a gender clinic in London. They said I had to pass for a woman for a year before they’d consider surgery. That year was the toughest of my life. Harder than prison, harder than living with Frankie. I hated being seen in public. I was like a vampire – only going out after dark, afraid what people might say when they saw me. When you transition, well, there aren’t words to describe it really. I felt ugly. I felt like a freak. Even though I was slender and slight and had quite feminine features, people knew. It only took one bit of name-calling or a laugh from someone on the other side of the street and I’d go to pieces. I’d stay in drinking vodka and pretending it wasn’t really happening. I just lay on my bed, counting the days till my surgery. The only person I really had was April.

  These days not everyone wants the full surgery, but I did. It was the only way I could properly be Lucy – that’s what I was calling myself back then, till one drunken night April said Lucy wasn’t pretty enough for me and I was more of an English rose. It kind of stuck. I was impatient. I couldn’t wait the year, so April paid for hormone tablets off the black market to kick-start the transition. They were useless, if I’m honest, so I had a boob job in France. Couldn’t speak a word of the language. She’s been my guardian angel. I had the final operation in 1986 on the NHS in London. Seven hours it lasted. When I woke up, I felt every bad thing that had ever happened to me, or that I’d done, had been washed away. I’d not exactly felt trapped in Darren’s body, but I had felt trapped in Darren’s head. And now suddenly I was free. I was a woman. I was Rose.

  I’d been to visit Frankie and Rob when I was transitioning. It was a bit mad. I didn’t warn them what I was doing, just invited them for dinner at this place on Lark Lane that Frankie liked. I turned up late dressed as Rose. They both got the shock of their lives. Rob walked out. Frankie took the free meal, called me a freak, then did what Rob had done. Over the years Rob has got used to it. Frankie was a tougher nut to crack. April thought I was mad even wanting to go there again, but one day, out of the blue, I got a phone call from Rob. Not long after he’d moved to the States. Frankie was in hospital and had given his name as next of kin. She’d been beaten up quite badly. I was staying with April in London. I went back to Liverpool and got her out of hospital and took her home. She didn’t like it, but she put up with it and together we established some sort of truce. I visited her every year or so after that. Eventually I moved back up North and . . .

  And what? She had run out of words.

  ‘The rest is history?’ I offered.

  ‘Everyone wants to know if you’ve had genital surgery. It’s the first thing they ask. Have you had the chop? I find it really rude. Like asking a gay man if he takes it up the arse.’

  I was quite shocked at her turn of phrase.

  ‘Do you think you wanted to be Rose so you could forget your past and run away from all the bad things that had happened to you?’

  She considered this. ‘I don’t think so. Though it was an added bonus.’

  ‘But reading your diary, you hardly mention it. I thought transgender people knew from an early age they wanted to be the opposite sex . . . or whatever you’re meant to say.’

  She smiled. She was the teacher and I was the dunce of the class.

  ‘You seriously think I’d write it all down? What if someone had found the diary and read it? What then?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I talked about Lucy, I think.’

  I nodded. ‘In the third person.’

  ‘So she was there,’ Rose pointed out. ‘To be honest, I always knew, but it’s that that I ran away from.’

  ‘As opposed to later, me saying you might’ve run away from Darren and your past?’

  She nodded. ‘I knew it. In my head. It was my only truth. I knew that so much that was going on around me was wrong. I knew there was something about me that was wrong. But I knew when I played with Frankie’s dresses or make-up or played with my hair or . . .’

  ‘Being a woman’s about more than that, surely,’ I suggested.

  ‘Of course,’ she concurred. ‘But they seemed to me like little bits of a jigsaw, a passport that would move me somewhere else. To who I wanted to be. Sorry, I mustn’t be making much sense. It must be a lot for you to take in.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I always knew I wasn’t a boy. No matter what the mirror told me.’

  ‘One must always leave something out of one’s diary. Who cares about the truth?’ I said in a very posh voice, as if I was quoting Oscar Wilde.

  ‘Who said that?’ She sounded keen.

  I winced. ‘Me, sorry.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Actually, it was incredibly brave of you to even write about Lucy, I suppose.’

  ‘I’ve never felt brave, Holly.’

  ‘I think you’re incredibly brave.’

  ‘I was very lucky to meet April. She’s been my rock.’

  Rose, it would appear, couldn’t take praise. I blamed Frankie.

  ‘Well, I do.’

  ‘Irish says I’m brave. I don’t see it myself. I’m more confident now, but that’s because I’m Rose and not Darren, and it’s like everything’s slipped into place.’

  I realized something. She hadn’t said how she had met Irish Alan.

  And whatever became of Woody?

  As I processed both those thoughts, so close in succession, it hit me.

  They were the same person.

  Rose’s surname was Kirkwood. Alan’s was too. Kirkwood. Woody.

  Oh, Alan knew her secret all right. He’d been there before it even happened.

  He’d been a hardman in the 1980s, but hadn’t Rose said he’d had a stroke? Maybe that had softened him? Oh yes. It all made sense now.

  ‘Woody.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Is he Irish Alan?’

  Again her eyes widened. I had, I had found her out! But then she gave such a laugh. It was the first time today she had seemed even the slightest bit relaxed.

  ‘No. Woody liked to think he was one of the Krays. Irish is more like one of the Krankies.’

  And she laughed. And I laughed. I thought, Father and daughter laughing together. But that didn’t feel quite right, of course. As Father was wearing a frock. And had an NHS vagina.

  She went on to tell me how she had met Alan when she cut his hair. He fell for her quickly, but she was worried if she told him the truth about her past, he’d reject her, so she batted him away. But he was persistent and eventually she was honest and he’d said it didn’t matter at all. I liked Irish Alan even more now. And I was glad I had got the Woody connection wrong. She didn’t know where Margy was anymore, or Woody. She said she wouldn’t be surprised if Margy had died of AIDS. She said lots of the girls did in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Frankie always felt she was lucky she’d not contracted HIV.

  Once Rose’d moved in with Alan on the Wirral, she saw more of an accepting Frankie. And then she had started to lose her memory.

  And then really the rest was history.

  ‘As I read the diary, I felt myself growing so close to Darren. I really hoped he was my brother. I really wanted to meet him.’

  She looked genuinely touched. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’re not that different deep down.’

  Just then April return
ed. She stood in the doorway, majestic with the sun behind her.

  ‘Holly, the sun’s about to set. If you’ve not seen it yet, you must.’

  I looked back to Rose. She nodded and stood.

  We went and sat together on the terrace – that’s what April called it, not the patio – and watched an amazing piece of theatre. Every building and wall I could see was covered in people. Like sparrows on a telephone wire they perched to watch the ball of flames fall slowly into the sea. Three women. Three glasses of wine. Three different stories. As the sun neared the waterline, the people on the walls and roofs started applauding. I put my glass down and joined in. I hoped Iggy was watching it too.

  April looked to me. ‘Isn’t it incredible?’

  I nodded and looked to Rose. She was looking at me curiously. ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t repulse you.’

  Again, I couldn’t tell whether it was a statement or a question.

  I answered it anyway, with a shake of the head, then turned to watch the sunset.

  ‘I’m not quite sure why we’re drinking wine,’ sighed April. ‘I think this calls for something with bubbles.’

  ‘Ooh, pint of cider?’ I said with a wink to show I was joking. Both women laughed.

  ‘We’ll have to watch you!’ April poked me as she returned indoors.

  I saw Rose staring at me. ‘She’s nice, isn’t she?’ She sounded so desperate for my approval.

  I nodded. Then turned to face the sea.

  I stayed on the terrace for an hour or so longer. When we said our goodbyes and promises to see each other the following day, we hugged and kissed and the tension between me and Rose had completely vanished. She was less of the ice queen now, and when she hugged me, it was as if it was the first time she’d had permission to do so, as if she never wanted it to end.

  As I walked the dusty track back to the hotel, I reflected on the past few hours. The sky was a velvet navy now, glittered with stars. Storm candles flickered outside houses; lanterns hung in tavernas. I heard laughter, music. I heard life.

  I turned and looked down to the slick black sea. I had often wondered what I might have inherited from Ted and Jean. Whatever you think of nature and nurture, you can’t spend that many years with people and not be influenced by them. A certain stoicism perhaps, an appreciation of manners.

  I wasn’t sure what I had inherited from Rose, but I knew what I hoped I had. Her courage. Although she had told me so much of her story, I still couldn’t honestly begin to imagine how difficult it must have been to go through what she’d been through.

  When I arrived back at the hotel and approached our cave, I heard giggles coming from inside. Two people. Two men. Maybe I had got the wrong room?

  I checked. No, I hadn’t.

  I peered inside. The curtain to Iggy’s bedroom was drawn open. He was naked. So was another man. They were kissing, then play-slapping each other, giggling. They didn’t see me. Iggy’s body was so white it was almost blue. The other body was as orange as the fruit. And I’d have recognized those eyebrows anywhere.

  Iggy and Clifford/Cillian?

  How did that happen?

  I decided to go and sit in the bar for an hour. I ordered a gin and tonic. I sipped at it daintily as I observed the stars reflecting in the pool.

  People really were full of surprises.

  EPILOGUE

  London, a year later

  I knew what I’d order before I got here: hamburger, a Filet-O-Fish, medium fries and a strawberry milkshake. I know I’ll never finish it all, but I don’t care. It’s a special day – I can have what I like. Rose has a quarter-pounder with cheese, small fries and an orange juice. McDonald’s seems to be in a different spot in Leicester Square now, though that could just be my memory playing tricks. I bagsy us a table in the window so I can watch the world going by. Out there, the sky is turquoise and the buildings the colour of gravy; in here is all mahogany wood and Day-Glo art deco lights as we tuck into our fast food.

  Rose smiles at something outside. ‘State o’ that,’ she says, and shakes her head.

  I turn to see a man dressed in tin foil with his face painted silver pretending to be a statue, some bored Chinese tourists half-heartedly taking photos of him.

  ‘Oh,’ says Rose, dabbing her mouth with a napkin, ‘before I forget.’ She pulls a gift-wrapped parcel from her bag and hands it to me. ‘Happy birthday, Holly.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, Rose.’

  The paper is white with pink polka dots, very girly, and matches perfectly what Rose is wearing today: a long white PVC rain mac, a pink flower in her hair and pink footless tights. She even has some pink strands of hair.

  ‘Dip-dyed,’ she’d explained earlier. ‘I could do yours if you like.’

  We’ll see.

  I do what I always do when I receive a present that clearly isn’t a jigsaw. I shake it and say, ‘Is it a jigsaw?’

  She smiles and shakes her head, then carries on eating her burger. In the past year Rose has bought me some awful presents: a ceramic pair of praying hands (even though she isn’t religious), a painting of a flamenco dancer and a snow globe with the Liverpool skyline in it.

  Actually, I quite like the Liverpool-skyline snow globe. I can shake it from the discomfort of my tiny studio flat in Nunhead and imagine I am back there. I now know where Nunhead is. Which is miles away from anywhere decent.

  I rip open the paper and see that Rose has bought me a framed piece of cross stitch. Written in thread in cursive writing, it says:

  Daughters hold our hands for a little while, but our hearts forever.

  It is completely hideous.

  ‘Oh, Rose, that’s gorgeous!’

  ‘Thought you’d like it, hon.’

  ‘Yeah, I do.’

  There is no way I am displaying it anywhere.

  ‘Thought it’d go lovely in your little bathroom. Over the loo.’

  ‘Great idea. Yes.’

  ‘Happy birthday.’

  ‘Thanks, Rose.’

  I suddenly imagine phoning Rose in the future and saying, ‘Rose, hi. It’s me. All good here except . . . well, you’ll never guess what. My whole flat caught fire. Everything’s fine, but what I have lost are the gorgeous embroidered “shit things people say about daughters” picture, the praying hands and Una Paloma Blanca and her castanets. Soz, hon.’

  These days I find Rose much more easy-going than when we first met. She reminds me more of thoughtful, caring Darren than the prickly ice queen I first encountered up North. But I can now see that back then she’d been carrying the weight of the world around on her shoulders once I’d reared my ugly head, and was caught in a cat’s cradle of lies, desperately trying to create a history for me that sounded presentable, acceptable, nice.

  Rose thinks there’s a lot to be said for nice.

  I don’t see lots of her. We speak every week on the phone, and I go and stay in Derwentwater Road with her and Alan once a month or so. Or, like today, she’ll come down and stay in a budget hotel and we’ll hang out. On my first trip back to the Wirral, I was brave enough to ask why there was a padlock on one of the spare-bedroom doors. Turned out it was the box room in which they kept all their computer and office-type equipment. I was mortified.

  ‘Hey, I seen your friend on telly again the other day.’

  ‘Jax?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s on quite a bit now. On This Morning. They get her on to do debates. She’s dead outspoken. Twitter goes mental about her.’

  Rose recently set up a Twitter account when I showed her how it worked. She has thus far written tweets like:

  New shoes bit sore lol.

  Going london see R Holly. (not the singer lol)

  And:

  Anyone recomend a good space movie?

  As Irish Alan said, she’s no Caitlin Moran.

  I have a new job. It’s only temporary, but I am quite enjoying it. I am working part-time in Frank and Esther’s deli round the back of Tooley Street, and as well
as serving in the cafe, I’m helping them make sense of their books since their bookkeeper died earlier this year. All the while I continue to weigh up my options to see what I want to do next. Sylvie has been adamant that I will never get a reference from her in the future. In fact her final email to me included the following:

  If you dare to offend me by telling future employers to ask for a reference, remember this: I will warn them that you physically attacked me and neglected my dog. And I will send them a photo of the sofa.

  Rose’s phone makes a loud whistling noise. She checks it. ‘It’s Irish. He’ll meet us at the theatre.’

  ‘Where is he again?’

  ‘Seeing a cousin in Kilburn.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  I knew I would go and see Miss Saigon again the minute I heard it was heading back to the West End. The fact that Rose and Alan were up for it as well was an added bonus. My weekend is going to be very special indeed.

  When we finish our food, we walk through the crowds towards Old Compton Street. Rose links my arm and walks proudly at my side. She gets some funny looks, but what do you expect when you’re head to toe in pink and white? Rose informs me that she has been to the theatre twice: once to see the ballet, another time to see Les Mis. She informs me that she preferred Les Mis because ‘It was obvious they’d put a lot of work into it.’

  I tell her about going to see Miss Saigon as a child, and how Mum told me about the adoption that day. I tell her about Mum making us leave at the interval because there were prostitutes in it. We both stop at that point, look at each other, clasp each other’s arms and laugh our heads off.

  Rose Kirkwood, it has to be said, has a really dirty laugh.

  Alan’s waiting for us at the theatre. Bless him, he’s got his sheepskin coat on and a flat cap. He smells of Paco Rabanne and cigar smoke. He’s already bought three souvenir programmes.