by David Nobbs
They rounded the meal off with tarte au citron. Em was only really happy with French food now that she was in love with François. The land of Em’s lovers became paradise, and Alison went along with it for the sake of peace. A pall of garlic had hung over the house since François had come on the scene, but Bernie didn’t like garlic, so on that important night Alison had chosen dishes that were French but had minimal garlic. Choosing menus had become a difficult balancing act.
At the end of the meal, Alison stood up.
‘Coffee will be served in the sitting room,’ she said, ‘but before that I have an announcement to make.’
Behind her, the coal-effect fire glowed cheerfully.
‘I have something important to tell you. There’s no way of breaking it gradually. I’m going to change sex too. After tonight, you will please know me as Alan.’
They all just gawped. Shock united them as nothing else could. The alarm call of a blackbird pinked loud in the silence of the dusk.
‘I’ve lived too long,’ said Bernie.
‘What a story!’ exclaimed Em.
Gray didn’t say anything. He tried to stand up, swayed, swooned, and crashed to the ground in a faint.
16 A Taste of Fame
Alison hardly slept all night. Beside her, Nicola slept, woke, pretended to be asleep, fell asleep, stirred, grunted, and, just after four o’clock, said, ‘I really am very sorry, sir’, so she must have been dreaming about a customer at the Cornucopia.
Alison dropped off just once, only to be woken a few minutes later by an almighty clattering of bottles. An urban fox was rooting around in the black bags outside number thirty-eight. One of the Parkers, or maybe both, had a major drink problem. It wasn’t surprising, really. Their house was up for sale. He said it was because the area was bad for her catarrh, but that was nonsense. They’d been declared bankrupt and they had to sell, and they had to keep it all secret from people they would never see again.
Alison told herself that her problem was nothing compared to the Parkers’ difficulties, but that didn’t help her sleep. Her mind was too busy.
She was thinking, of course, about the approaching morning, when she would face Mr Beresford for the first time dressed as a man. She tried not to be nervous about it. Damn it, she wasn’t a nervous woman – but she defied any woman not to be nervous when facing Mr Beresford at such a moment.
Several very long months had passed since that evening when she had told the family, but she was thinking now of the years she still had to face, the two years of the Real Life Test, the three major operations, this vast journey to an uncertain destination. There was a temptation, just a little window of temptation, as dawn crept into the bedroom like a guilty husband, to give it up, quietly drop the whole thing, take all the clothes back to London. It was a temptation that made her uneasy, even though she knew that she wouldn’t give in to it.
It was absurd of her, as she listened to the magnificence of the dawn chorus, to wish to be a garden bird. How happy the birds seemed, but they weren’t free from the fear of predators for one waking second of their brave little lives.
She thought about Em, sleeping … or not sleeping … on the other side of the wall.
She had taken Em to London to help her buy men’s clothes. She hadn’t dared buy them within a thirty mile radius of Throdnall, for fear that the story of the double sex change might break. That would have devastated Em. This time it had to be a scoop.
They’d gone by car because it would have been hard to carry a whole wardrobe of clothes on the train. They’d gone to Harvey Nicks and Harrods and Selfridges and Austin Reed and Jaeger. The hurt inflicted by Giorgio still ran deep, despite François, and Em saved her mother quite a lot of money by saying, ‘It just isn’t you, Mum’ about anything by Armani or Cerruti.
They’d done themselves proud. They’d eaten in San Lorenzo in the hope of seeing somebody famous (they didn’t, or, if they did, they didn’t recognise them) and enjoyed the fusion cooking in a Pacific Rim restaurant. The Pacific Rim hadn’t yet come to Throdnall, where the cooking was more confusion than fusion.
In their double room, after slightly too much wine, they had had a giggly girly chat long into the night.
The poignancy of that chat seared Alison’s heart on that long, slow, Throdnall night. It was the first truly adult chat that mother and daughter had ever had, and it was the last that they ever would have.
‘Did you enjoy that?’ Alison had unwisely asked on their arrival home.
‘Of course I did, Mum,’ Em had said. ‘My last ever weekend with my mum,’ and she had walked into the house very quickly.
Alison wept silently for her daughter as the birds greeted the dawn.
Then she found herself leaping out of bed, without being aware that she had decided to do so. Her fears had gone. She owed it to Em to be happy about it, otherwise she would have inflicted grief to no purpose.
She pulled the curtains energetically. A charm of goldfinches flew from the cherry tree in the back garden, unaware that their collective name was the prettiest in the language, and almost as pretty as them.
She owed it to the birds to be as brave as they were. No. That was silly.
She owed it to herself.
Alan looked at herself in the … Alison looked at himself in the … Alan looked at himself in the mirror. That was it. You’re Alan now, Alison, he told herself. No, you’re Alan now, Alan. He couldn’t tell Alison that he was Alan. There was no Alison to tell. There was no herself. He was Him Indoors. He had crossed his Rubicon. He smiled at the pretentiousness of the phrase.
He didn’t like the look of his face. The sleepless night had taken its toll. He had great black bags under his eyes. Be quite a make-up job, that.
No. He was a man. Men didn’t use make-up. Well, not in Throdnall, anyway.
Men didn’t need make-up. A woman has bags under her eyes, it’s a disaster, her looks are ruined. A man has bags under his eyes, he’s been on the tiles, his face looks lived in, he’s a hell of a fellow.
‘Good morning, Alan,’ said Alan to Alan in the mirror. ‘Are you a hell of a fellow?’
Alan in the mirror smiled ruefully at Alan. ‘Hardly, Alan,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’
He examined his upper lip. There had always been, in certain lights, the faintest trace of downy hairs, though one would have had to be very ungenerous, he felt, to have called it a moustache.
There were also … or was it wishful thinking? … the first faint hairs on his chin and cheeks.
He felt, with a little spurt of excitement, that there was just the faintest justification for shaving.
He opened his brand new shaving bowl, got his beautiful virgin brush from the cupboard – ‘sorry, Brock’ – brushed his hairs with hot water to soften them – ha ha! – gently covered his face in the luxurious cream, which was scented with sandal-wood; nothing but the best for the novice shaver.
With infinite care he drew his disposable razor around the edges of his nose and lips, across his chin, down his cheeks, right to the bottom of his ears, so slowly, so carefully, so enjoyably. He felt so wonderfully masculine. It was a real shock, when he went down to breakfast in his smart dark suit and Pierre Balmain tie (‘François would love it’) to be greeted with ‘Hi, Mum, where’s the Weetabix been put?’
Gray was trying to be extremely cool about the whole thing, as he had done ever since his fainting fit. Fainting wasn’t cool.
‘Nice tie, Mum,’ he said coolly.
Unfortunately, at fifteen he was not yet mature enough to maintain his cool. When Alan couldn’t resist offering to drive him to school, he was horrified.
‘Christ, no,’ he said. ‘Do us a favour, Mum.’
He felt tempted for just a moment to make another illegal U-turn in Sir Nigel Gresley Boulevard. No! Wrong! ‘You are Alan Divot and you fear no man,’ he told himself. ‘You didn’t when you were Alison. Why should you begin now?’
He turned left along the sheds, then right at
the end. The Daimler was there. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Thank goodness, he wasn’t late, but Mr Beresford would look at him as if he should have been as early as him.
He’d never been very interested in cars, but he found himself gazing longingly at the elderly Daimler, that old gentleman of a car, and wishing that he could have a vintage car, now that he was a man.
He walked along the bare corridor, then through the door into carpeted first class. He suspected that within a few minutes he would be being carpeted. He walked into his office. Mrs A. Divot. Have to get Andy the sign-writer to change that. He sat at his desk and began to open Mr Beresford’s mail in the usual manner, calmly sorting it into four categories – urgent, nonurgent, I can deal with and bin – as if nothing whatsoever had happened.
Oh no. There was a nasty one about the faulty coupling incident on the Great South Central train, the notorious 6.22 from Godawfulming, as railway people now called it. You remember the incident, I’m sure. The last carriage of the 6.22 from Godalming – one of their carriages, of course – became detached from the rest of the train. A signalman failed to notice that the three-car train had become a two-car train – he couldn’t really be blamed – and the last carriage had slid to a halt between Godawfulming and Hazlemere. Ten minutes later, another train had narrowly avoided running into the back of the stranded carriage, only because the driver had been keeping a particularly sharp look-out because there had been reports of deer straying on the line. The wrong sort of deer, of course. He had pulled up extremely abruptly, causing an osteopath with prostate problems to fall while urinating and cut his head on the flushing lever, thus flushing the toilet and soaking his dinner jacket as his arm went down the bowl. He injured his back in the fall and had to miss the Osteopaths’ Dinner, to which he had been travelling. Next day he had endured death by headline, a figure of fun in all the tabloids and indeed most of the broadsheets. There had been no other casualties, but it had all been further bad publicity for Throdnall Carriage Works, not to mention the threat of the recall of two hundred units for testing of the couplings. Now here was a letter from a potential customer, Northern Vision, threatening to withdraw from a proposed contract if additional safety checks were not introduced ‘at no extra cost to ourselves’. Today of all days.
No. Think positive, Alan. Welcome the problem. It will take the spotlight off you and your problem. That was the way to look at it.
He marched into Mr Beresford’s office.
‘Morning, Mr Beresford. Nasty one here, I’m afraid. Northern Vision. They’re seeking additional safety checks in the wake of Godawfulming.’
‘Oh my God, are they? Let’s see.’
Mr Beresford snatched the letter, began to read it, suddenly did a double take.
‘What on earth? Jacket and tie?’
‘Yes, I’m going to change sex too. I see they want these checks at no extra cost to themselves. Shall I just acknowledge and play for time?’
‘Change sex?’
‘Yes. I was planning it before my husband did it, so I had to put it off. I mean if the checks find that there is nothing faulty with our couplings we’ll be in a stronger position.’
‘If there is something wrong we’ll be in a weaker position, Mrs … become a man, do you mean?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Have to change the name on my door to Mr A. Divot. Obviously anyone who wants to can call me Alan. I don’t think we should allow ourselves to be too frightened by Northern Vision, Mr Beresford. I don’t think their cash flow is particularly brilliant, and so …’
‘Never mind Northern Vision’s cash flow, Mrs Divot. I cannot have a man as my PA.’
He had a fierce look on that sullen, square face. His eyebrows needed trimming. Untrimmed, they were too chaotic to be effectively ferocious.
‘I will still be the same person, Mr Beresford,’ said Alan. ‘Still someone whose judgement you have come to respect. Nothing against Connie, for instance, but I don’t think you’d get the same – how can I put it? – “gravitas” in her advice. I realise, Mr Beresford, that the change won’t be easy for you.’ His unspoken addition, of course, was ‘knowing that you’ve rather fancied me all these years’.
‘I don’t want to seem to be threatening you, Mr Beresford,’ he continued. ‘I’m really not. I’m just pointing out that in these days of political correctness there might be quite a stink about your sacking me on grounds of sex discrimination.’
Mr Beresford stared at him.
‘That may have worked at Cornucopia Hotels,’ he said. ‘I’m made of sterner stuff.’
‘I feel as if I know every little detail of how you tick, Mr Beresford,’ said Alan. ‘Every little detail. I can inform my successor of all sorts of little things, but it won’t be the same.’
Mr Beresford went pale. All the colour went from his cheeks. Just for a moment he didn’t look at all like the strong man Alan had come to know. Just for a moment he looked like a lost and sullen child.
‘You have a point,’ he said. ‘I have to admit you have a point. I’ll give it a try; see how things work out.’
Alan was happy to get out of Mr Beresford’s office before he changed his mind. He stood for a moment at his internal window, looking down at the great length of the sheds, with carriages at different stages of creation. He went over what he had said. Why did it have such an effect? It was clear that Mr Beresford believed that he was threatening him. But what with? Later, much later, when it happened, he would think back over those words, and understand something of their significance. At the time he was happy just to accept his good fortune.
Mr Beresford came through the adjoining door into Alan’s office. Alan turned away from the window. Their eyes met. Alan realised that he had no idea what Mr Beresford was thinking.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Beresford. ‘Play Northern Vision for time. Let me see your letter when you’ve drafted it. Thank you, Mr Divot.’
That evening, they held a press conference and photo-shoot with Em – if you can call the efforts of the Advertiser’s overweight undertalented chief photographer by a term as impressive as ‘photo-shoot’. He took hundreds of pictures. Photographers always do. They like people to think they’re being thorough, but usually it’s because they’re too lazy to work out in advance what they want.
Nicola looked extremely feminine in a knee-length tan skirt that matched her high-heeled court shoes. Her blouse was a fetching feminine pink. When she crossed her legs nobody would have guessed that she had ever been a man. Alan felt that he played his part too, casual and relaxed in stone-coloured slacks, with an open-neck rust-coloured check shirt and an expression so relaxed and so masculine that he might have been posing for a pipe-tobacco ad.
Em had talked to them very seriously about publicity. Neither Nicola nor Alan had given it any real thought. It was a publicity mad world out there, full of people whose sole aim was to be famous. Television fed on it. They alone seemed not to want publicity, but to dread it.
‘A story of a double sex change is bound to be widely covered,’ she’d said. ‘And you must expect distortion from the tabloids.’
Alan remembered how Marge used to examine behind her ears for things called mastoids, and how the word had seemed sinister and frightening. It occurred to him now that tabloids sounded like a form of disease. ‘I keep breaking out in sensational allegations, doctor.’ ‘You’ve got a bad dose of tabloids.’
He realised that the reason why his mind was wandering was that he couldn’t cope head-on with the nation’s publicity machine. His own daughter berated him severely. ‘Concentrate, Mum, for goodness sake,’ she said. ‘Look, my view is that if you try to hide it people will be fascinated and it’ll run and run. Your only chance is to tell the world, tell them on your terms, tell them everything so that there’s nothing else to tell, seem to be eager for publicity, seem to long for it. People will soon get tired of you.’
‘Isn’t that a high risk strategy?’ Nicola had asked. ‘The papers are fu
ll every day of the same mini-celebrities craving publicity and getting it.’
‘Yes, but you won’t crave it, so you won’t go on seeking it, so you won’t go on getting it.’
Nicola and Alan felt very proud of Em that evening and in the hectic days that followed. She became their publicity manager for the whole of their brief spurt of fame. Some parents are blind to their children’s faults. That is sad. Others are blind to their children’s virtues. That is sadder. Alan and Nicola tended to fall into the latter category. They were amazed when they saw any evidence of maturity in Em or Gray.
It felt strange to them both to be standing alongside each other, dressed the other way round, but they didn’t discuss it. They were strangely shy with each other.
Em interviewed them both separately, then together. They found it difficult, but they must have done all right because the article that appeared under the supremely inelegant headline ‘Throdnall Double Sex Change Shock Sensation’ wasn’t overly cringe-making. The editor, incidentally, loved the headline. He had once told his chief sub-editor, ‘There are four words that I love to see in my headlines. They are, in order of importance, Throdnall, sex, shock and sensation.’ This headline used all four of them, and in the right order too.
Em’s predictions over publicity were pretty well right. They were plastered all over the national press for a day or two. They appeared on breakfast television, and did some radio interviews. Nicola rather lost her way on the first radio interview, and the interviewer said, ‘Never mind, we can edit that out.’ Then they went on Radio Throdnall and the interviewer said, ‘I wouldn’t have thought Throdnall would be a comfortable place to be a freak,’ and Alan, always the more outspoken – well one can hardly say ‘freaked out’ under the circumstances – let’s say he lost his rag.
‘Listen, young man,’ he said. ‘The world is full of people who might be described as freaks – exhibitionists wearing drag in public, inhibitionists wearing drag in private, drag queens in the King’s Road, drag kings in the Queen’s Road, cross-dressers getting dressed down by cross partners, gender blenders going on gender benders in down-town Capetown and up-town Motown, Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do, what shall we do on a bisexual made for two – and we are just two ordinary, decent people trying to find our identity in a respectable way, so don’t speak to us like that if you don’t mind, you cheeky, prejudiced, ignorant, pathetic young media whippersnapper,’ and then there was silence, a stunned silence, and Alan said, ‘Sorry about that. I lost my temper. You can edit it out, can’t you?’, and the interviewer said, ‘Can I hell as like? We’re still on the fucking air … oh shit!!’
