Sex and Other Changes

by David Nobbs

  Some chance.

  She hunted for a bridge column. There wasn’t one. Pity. She felt starved of bridge. She hadn’t yet dared go to the bridge club and tell them that she wanted to transfer to the ladies’ team.

  She tried to concentrate on an article entitled ‘Tomorrow’s Food?’

  Will the day come when hotel chains will cook their food centrally in powder form and send it to their individual hotels to be reconstituted? The savings could be enormous and Sebastian Snodgrass of the Instant Gourmet Group believes it could soon become a viable option.

  She snapped the magazine shut. That sort of thing was only going to depress her. She recalled an astonishing word that Alison had used in bed the other night. She had said, ‘We mustn’t let them defeat us.’ We! What an amazing word for her to use. What a woman. She was so involved in Nicola’s sex change, so supportive of it, that she thought of it as a joint project. Nicola mustn’t let her down.

  A secretary, neat enough but rather shown up by Nicola’s smartness, approached uncertainly.

  Nicola stood up.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the secretary. ‘I was looking for Mr Divot.’

  ‘I am Mr Divot.’

  The secretary hid her amazement most professionally. Nicola sympathised with her for her slight discomfiture. She should have been warned.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘This way.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She opened the door of the Board Room and ushered Nicola in. She found herself in a large, long room dominated by a huge table, oblong with shallowly rounded ends. At one side of the table sat three men. At the other side, all the chairs had been removed except one.

  Along the wall behind the men there was a huge picture window. Along the opposite wall were paintings of leading Cornucopia hotels. The Throdnall was not among them.

  ‘Good morning … er?’ said the man in the middle.

  ‘Ms Divot.’

  ‘Do sit down, Ms Divot.’

  Nicola sat down very carefully indeed. She was beginning to get more practised at not squashing her genitalia in her tights, but you couldn’t be too careful.

  She felt very isolated in her solitary chair. That, of course, was the idea.

  There was silence as she arranged herself, and the silence continued after she was settled. It made her feel uneasy. That, of course, was the idea.

  It is said that one’s whole life flashes past one as one is drowning, and at that moment every aspect of the Throdnall Cornucopia flashed through Nicola’s mind. She realised, to her amazement, that she loved that crappy old hotel. She loved the worn, stained carpets, the dusty chandeliers, the creaking, achingly slow lifts, Paulo’s sad limp as he struggled across the barn-like restaurant with their over-priced wine list, the synchronised dome lifting to reveal the pitiful creations of Leonard Balby from Goole.

  Behind the three men Nicola could see a great expanse of crisp blue sky criss-crossed by widening vapour trails. London’s skyscrapers were glinting in bright sunlight.

  ‘Ms Divot,’ began the man in the middle, a large, crumpled man with a paunch and a double chin. ‘I am Sir Terence Manningham, Chairman of Cornucopia Hotels. On my right is Mr Jeremy Barnstorm, OBE, Managing Director.’ He indicated a neat, dapper man with an elegant suit, an expensive haircut and a well-groomed smile. ‘On my left is Mr Brian Jukes, Personnel Officer.’ He pointed towards a tall, untidy man wearing a lurid tie and an expression of anxiety.

  Nicola felt an absurd pride. They had brought the heavy mob in for her.

  ‘We have a board meeting this afternoon, so I’m afraid you’ve got the heavy mob,’ said Sir Terence Manningham. He switched on a smile, but only in order to switch it off abruptly. ‘We have been sent faxes of an article in the Throdnall Advertiser? He invested deep contempt for local newspapers into those last two words. ‘Do you have any comment?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Nicola, trying to make her voice sound soft and feminine. ‘Pretty accurate on the whole.’

  ‘Why didn’t you inform us that you were planning a sex change?’ asked Brian Jukes.

  ‘I didn’t think it relevant.’

  ‘You didn’t think it relevant,’ said Jeremy Barnstorm, OBE in recognition of services to himself. ‘It’s hardly a minor detail.’

  ‘Not to me, no, but I fail to see how it could affect my ability to do my job.’

  ‘You fail to see how it could affect your ability to do your job!’ Jeremy Barnstorm had come to hotels via steel, from where he had received a substantial settlement on his dismissal for poor results. He had gone to the steel industry from electricity, from where he had also received a substantial settlement on his dismissal for poor results. Clearly someone clever enough to receive repeated payments for failing must be the ideal man to run Cornucopia Hotels, especially as he was completely ignorant of hotels and would therefore come unencumbered by ideas. Nicola had to admit to a feeling of disappointment that, on the evidence of this interview, the brilliant man’s technique of repeating everything she said seemed rather basic.

  She thought of saying, ‘Yes, I do. I fail to see how it could affect my ability to do my job’, but then she thought that if nobody moved the conversation on the interview might go on for ever.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she said. ‘After all, I’m still the same person with the same brain, the same principles and the same experience. I must point out that I am not so much turning into a woman as accepting that I should always have been one and ironing out a few minor details.’

  ‘Ironing out a few minor details,’ said Jeremy Barnstorm, OBE for services to repeating things. ‘That sounds a bit of an understatement for a sex change.’

  ‘Yes, I like understatement. I’m very British.’

  Nicola thought, afterwards, that she was being guided by her feminine intuition, the intuition that had so influenced her in deciding to become a woman. She hadn’t intended to adopt so bold an attitude. She’d had no tactical plans as she entered the room.

  ‘You wouldn’t deny, I presume, that your sex change might affect how you’re perceived?’ asked Brian Jukes.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ she said, ‘but that’s other people’s problem, not mine. I would also point out that in the nature of my work I don’t have a great deal of day-to-day contact with the general public. They meet our waiters, our head waiter, our sommelier, our porters, our receptionists, our bar staff, but not me. If a manager does his or her job well enough, he or she is invisible.’

  ‘Well now,’ said Sir Terence Manningham, ‘in considering whether you are one Divot that needs to be replaced – huh! …’

  ‘Ha ha ha ha,’ laughed Jeremy Barnstorm.

  ‘Her her her her,’ laughed Brian Jukes.

  Oh God, thought Nicola. You’d think these people in these positions would be bright enough to realise that an adult has heard every possible joke about his name several hundred times at least. But she smiled, thinking as she smiled how callous it was of Sir Terence to joke about her possible dismissal in front of her.

  ‘… we have to consider the publicity angle,’ continued Sir Terence complacently. ‘Publicity of this kind …’ He waved the fax. ‘… is not helpful. This sort of thing could lose you the Rotary. Bit of a disaster, I would have thought, in Throdnall, if you lost the Rotary Club.’

  ‘If publicity worries you,’ said Nicola, ‘I hope you’ll reflect on the kind of publicity you might receive from the sexual equality lobby in these politically correct times if you sacked me almost immediately after I’d decided to become a woman.’

  Think her naive if you must (and when she looked back with hindsight she was astounded by her naivety), but she hadn’t even thought of this line of approach. It only occurred to her as she listened to Sir Terence.

  She knew she’d scored a bull’s-eye immediately. She realised afterwards that they probably thought she was issuing an unspoken threat. (She would have hated to have sued. She despised the culture of litigation. Sh
e didn’t like lawyers and she liked their fees even less.)

  All three men stared at her in silence for a moment, then exchanged looks for a moment, then went into a huddle for a moment, then whispered to each other for a moment. Then they nodded in unison, withdrew from the huddle in unison, and looked across the table at Nicola in unison.

  ‘ We believe that it is only fair, within the Cornucopia Code of Conduct,’ said Sir Terence Manningham, and the other two men nodded in unison, ‘to give you a chance to prove what you have claimed today, viz – that your … er … transsexuality … that is, I believe, the term … will have no adverse effect upon the Throdnall Cornucopia. Thank you, Ms Divot.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  13 Close Encounters of the Throdnall Kind

  On the first Saturday after Nicola had ‘come out’, Alison went to their lawyers and instituted proceedings for divorce, on the grounds that Nicola had rendered them incompatible by changing sex. She had told Nicola that she was going to do it, and Nicola hadn’t objected. It was inevitable.

  She hadn’t told Nicola that one day she would be changing sex and would want to be free to pursue a new life.

  She knew that it was what she wanted, but she still didn’t enjoy the visit to the solicitors. It was a sad moment.

  Just after seeing them, she met Jane Collinson in the Saturday Market. This being Throdnall, there was no longer a market in the Saturday Market on a Saturday.

  Jane looked embarrassed and said, ‘Oh, I’m so glad I’ve run into you, Alison. It saves phoning.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Alison innocently.

  ‘I … we … I hope you’ll understand, but … next Saturday’s dinner party. We’re not going to be able to invite you after all.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well … you know … and Andrew’s very … how can I? … conservative with a small c, well as well as with a big one really … and … it’ll all be couples and you coming together, both as women … well … it’d untidy the table.’

  Alison’s mind worked quickly when she was angry. She decided to avoid outright rudeness. Sweet sarcasm would be more stylish.

  ‘Of course I understand, Jane dear,’ she said. ‘We’ve been good friends for … what is it? … must be the best part of ten years. I’d always help you if you were in trouble, you know that, so of course I’d hate to untidy your table.’

  Jane Collinson reddened and said, Tm sorry, Alison, but you know how it is’, before escaping into the doorway of the nearest shop, only to discover that it was Woolworth’s, in which she wouldn’t be seen dead, so she had to come rushing out again past Alison in ever deepening embarrassment.

  Nicola was upset when Alison told her the story.

  ‘Look what I’ve landed you in,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t even think like that,’ said Alison.

  Early in the new year, almost two months after Nicola had ‘come out’, there came an event that she dreaded but refused to avoid. It was the first round of the Ladies’ Knock-out, the Palmerston Cup, at Throdnall Bridge Club.

  There was considerable opposition, within the club, to her participation in the event, but, since nothing could be found in the rules that actually prohibited such a thing, it was decided to allow her to take part ‘in the spirit of fair play and tolerance for which the club has always been noted’.

  But who could she partner? It would have been easier, everyone felt, if she had partnered Alison, but Alison always played in the Palmerston Cup with Ann Pilkington, who was very easily slighted – she had no confidence, no woman could have any confidence if she was married to Philip Pilkington, so Alison felt that she couldn’t let Ann down.

  The solution was to pair Nicola with Hilda Neff. Hilda Neff was a dragon. Nobody wanted to play with her. It was an unspoken rule in the club that nobody should be forced to partner Hilda Neff two years in succession. She was running out of suitable partners and, faced with the stark choice of playing with Nicola or with nobody, she narrowly chose Nicola.

  Nicola didn’t enjoy the evening. She had a bit of a cold, which made her voice sound deeper and more masculine just when the hormones were really kicking in and softening it. Hilda Neff frowned every time she sniffed or blew her nose, so she took to visiting the lavatory to blow her nose between hands.

  Throdnall Bridge Club saw itself as a fortress of morality surrounded by swamps of decadence. There were no unisex toilets. A proposal to make the toilets unisex had been rejected by the committee as ‘giving out the wrong signal to our members’.

  It might have been fine for Nicola to use the Ladies’ in the hotel, but two lawyers, three wives of lawyers and four barrack-room lawyers were playing that night, and Nicola felt obliged to use the Gents’ each time. This was very convenient, as there were no men present, but it incurred resentment because there was sometimes quite a queue for the Ladies’. ‘I was in a no-win situation,’ she said to Alison after the event.

  Hilda Neff didn’t make one piece of small talk to her all evening, but she clearly wanted to win very badly. Nicola realised that she desperately wanted to lose. She had made her stand, but she couldn’t have faced playing in the second round, so she bid two absurd grand slams, both of which failed dismally, to ensure that they did lose.

  Hilda Neff never spoke to her again.

  Shortly after that, Nicola faced similar difficulties at the Golf Club. It was her second visit since the article in the Advertiser. On each occasion she had played a competitive eighteen holes with Alison, winning once and losing once. On each occasion she had used the men’s locker room, believing that it would embarrass the ladies (except for Jennifer Griffin, of course, whom nothing could embarrass) if she used the ladies’ locker room, complete as she still was with prick and testicles.

  On each occasion they had gone into the nineteenth hole for a drink afterwards. Arnold Willink had said, ‘Good on you, Nicola’, rather spoiling it by adding, ‘I said to Phyllis, “I’d never have thought he’d have the bottle”, but nobody else referred to the matter at all. The avoidance of it was like a constant shriek. One or two people snubbed them, others avoided them out of embarrassment, some clung to safe avenues of conversation, so that by the time they went home they felt qualified to become weather forecasters.

  They were just finishing their second and last drink after their second eighteen holes when the PP entered, strode to their table and said, ‘Word in your ear if you don’t mind, Mr Divot.’

  ‘I see no one of that name here,’ said Nicola bravely. Alison felt that she had already shown more courage than she had ever shown as Nick.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ said the PP.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicola. ‘I shall be there, don’t you worry, wing commander.’

  Wing Commander Miles Forrester, Secretary of Throdnall Golf Club, known throughout the club as the PP, which stood for Pompous Prat, examined Nicola’s use of his rank for traces of sarcasm, wasn’t sure if he could find any, nodded, said ‘Ten minutes?’, didn’t wait for an answer, and retired from the bar.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Nicola to Alison. ‘Crunch time.’

  She presented herself at the Secretary’s Office ten minutes late.

  ‘Do sit down,’ said the PP.

  Nicola sat down carefully and glanced round the PP’s room. The walls were covered in photographs and there were several framed photographs on his desk. All of them were of the PP. There were so many of him in front of aeroplanes that Nicola suspected that he had never actually held a flying job in his career.

  ‘You have entered the men’s competition and the ladies’ competition,’ said the PP. ‘That’s what we used to describe in the RAF as hedging your bets.’

  First reference to the RAF! The PP would have been mortified if he’d known that people regularly had unhedged bets on how often he would refer to the service in a given time.

  ‘Well yes,’ said Nicola. ‘I wasn’t sure which one I should enter, so I entered both, awaiting your expert ruling.’


  The PP failed to examine Nicola’s remark for traces of sarcasm, and nodded modestly.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. He scratched his wig as he regularly did while summoning up his authority. It wasn’t a bad wig, but, since everybody knew it was a wig, Nicola failed to see how it could make him feel better about his baldness. ‘The answer, I’m afraid, is neither. You cannot play in the ladies’ competition because you are not technically a lady. Which tees would you play off? I think the ladies’ tees would give you a most unfair advantage. None of the ladies would be happy to accept that. But how can one person in the ladies’ competitions play off the men’s tees? Surely you must see how impossible it is for you to play in the ladies’ competitions.’

  ‘So what will happen when I’ve had the operation and am a woman?’

  ‘Shall we cross that horse when we come to it?’ The PP had a disconcerting habit of muddling his metaphors.

  ‘All right,’ said Nicola, ‘I accept that I can’t play in the ladies’ competitions, but why can’t I play in the men’s?’

  ‘Because you are claiming to live as a woman,’ said the PP. ‘You have decided to give up your status as a man. I couldn’t allow you to be untrue to your status as a man. I couldn’t allow you to be untrue to your principles.’ He smiled. His self-satisfaction erupted. ‘You have consigned yourself to a golfing limbo. Golf-wise, Nick … Nicola … you are temporarily stranded in no-man’s-land.’

  ‘I think you mean no-woman’s-land,’ said Nicola.

  ‘You are more than welcome, of course, to continue to use the club’s facilities.’

  ‘And you are more than happy to accept my subscription,’ said Nicola, ‘while not allowing me to participate fully in the club’s activities.’

  ‘You are welcome to resign any time you wish,’ said the PP. ‘I learnt in the RAF how important it is to run a happy ship.’

  Even the PP looked slightly unhappy about that mixed metaphor.

  These humiliations, little though each one might be, made Nicola’s social life very wearing. She was in no-man’s-land, and she was in no-woman’s-land. The exhilaration of being able to live as a woman faded, as exhilaration does. She was still happier than she had been as a man, yet she longed not to live as a woman but to be a woman. How she yearned for the thing she dreaded – the surgeon’s knife. She counted the days like a national serviceman longing for demob.