by David Nobbs
17 Friends and Enemies
If you go to the window, just before the evening light begins to fade, and you stand there for more than an hour, looking out over your garden, you will never see the light fading, but in the end it will be dark.
Nicola and Alan’s sex changes were rather like that. Ferenc never said, ‘Good morning, Nicola. Your voice seems softer today.’ No waiter at the Trattoria Positano ever said, ‘That man’s voice at table eight has just gone gruffer halfway through his cannelloni.’ Gradually, though, Alan’s voice deepened. Imperceptibly, Nicola’s softened.
The only person to comment on these changes was Denise Ploughman at the bridge club. ‘Have you got a cold, Alison?’ she asked, and then she remembered, and blushed, and looked confused, and apologised. ‘Sorry, Alan.’
‘It’s quite all right,’ said Alan.
People didn’t know what to talk to them about, and they received only one invitation all that long winter, and that was to speak, both of them, at the annual dinner of the Transvestite Crown Green Bowls Society – secretary, Bernie’s old bowling colleague, Vince Brodley. They turned it down.
One evening at the table in the kitchen Nicola said of Alan’s chicken curry, ‘Very nice, Alan. As always.’
‘Talking of “always”,’ said Alan. ‘Why should it always be me who cooks?’
‘Well, you’re …’ began Nicola, and found that there was nowhere for her sentence to go, ‘… the person who always cooks,’ she finished lamely.
‘I thought for one moment you were going to say “the woman”,’ said Alan.
‘I was,’ admitted Nicola.
‘Well, you’re the woman now. You should cook.’
‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing,’ said Em. ‘I don’t want either of you to change sex, especially Mum – there are too many men in the world without women becoming them – but you really did have, I thought, a wonderful chance to deconstruct the bi-genderist ethos of a capitalist patriarchal sexual hegemony.’ Like many people who aren’t quite as original as they’d like to be, she sometimes took refuge in long words to endow her thoughts with meaning. ‘So far as sexual politics are concerned, this family is in the Dark Ages. Correction. They aren’t anything like enlightened enough for the Dark Ages. They’re cave dwellers.’
‘Nobody sat around in caves doing nothing and saying, “When will it be ready?” ’ said Gray.
Em looked at him in astonishment.
‘Sixteen years!’ she said. ‘That’s all we’ve had to wait for him to say something intelligent. Not bad. Cool!’
Gray blushed. He squirmed with embarrassment like an eel with an itchy back.
‘Dad was outrageous all those years,’ continued Em.
‘So now I should sit around and say, “When will it be ready?” ’ said Alan.
‘Absolutely not, Mum,’ said Em. ‘The one good thing about all this is that it’s put a rocket up the arse of sexual stereo-typicality. We have the woman sitting around doing nothing and saying, “When will it be ready?” ’
‘Which I have to say, Nicola, is not in the spirit of your Real Life Test,’ said Alan. ‘You are supposed to play the woman’s role. Come on. Do the cooking. Start the dishwasher. Change the beds. Be a woman, or I’ll snitch to Doctor Langridge.’
‘And what are you going to do, Mum?’ said Em.
‘Sod all. I have to, for my Real Life Test. I take mine seriously.’
‘Oh come on,’ said Nicola. ‘What sort of a man are you proposing to be?’
‘The sort you were. Lazy, insensitive and selfish,’ said Alan. ‘What are we having for tea tomorrow, Nicola?’
‘It’s all beyond me,’ said Bernie. ‘I’ve lived too long.’
In bed that night, Nicola whispered, ‘We’re getting on each other’s nerves. Do you think we should split?’
‘You’re only saying that because you think you’ll have to do all the work,’ whispered Alan. ‘I was only joking about that. I think we should share the work equally.’
‘What??’
‘Surely you can’t object to that.’
‘I suppose not. My God. You mean … I cook every other night?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hell’s bells.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is there much point in our staying together? We don’t have sex.’
‘You could have said that any time during the last fifteen years.’
‘You’re divorcing me. I should move out.’
‘If you don’t feel I can offer you any support, do. I just thought … this is very hard for both of us … we’ll have to split up one day, of course, but for the sake of the kids the longer we’re together the better. We can’t do much separately till we’ve had our ops. Why don’t we try to support each other as long as we can? We did love each other once, you know.’
Two cats began to wail at each other. If that didn’t wake the rest of the family, nothing would, but Alan and Nicola continued in whispers.
‘Yes. Yes. Well, all right,’ whispered Nicola. ‘But … do you really want me to do half the work around the house?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
‘This is a shock, Alan.’
‘Good.’
That winter seemed like an eternity. They tried to be patient, tried not to wish their lives away, but oh how it dragged.
They fell into the new routine, Alan more easily than Nicola. Equality. Task sharing. Burden sharing. It was utterly equitable, unlike life, but it seemed unfair to them both. Nicola had never had to work so hard at home, while Alan was still working far harder than Nicola had when she’d been a man. A winter of elaborate fairness and aching resentment!
By Christmas they had reached shaving equipoise: they were both shaving every ten days. By springtime Alan was shaving once a week, Nicola once a fortnight.
In March, unnoticed by either of them, came their bicipital equipoise. From that moment onward, did they but know it, Alan’s biceps were the stronger. Another triumph for British hormones.
At last, spring came. The suburban street erupted with daffodils. There were carpets of tulips in the vandalised parks. Spring excited them, but it brought its own problems.
It brought The War of Jenkins’ Plate at the golf club.
Jenkins’ Plate was a competition for men, and Alan put his name down for it.
The invitation to the PP’s office came swiftly.
‘You can’t play in the Plate,’ said the PP, running his hand nervously through his wig. ‘I’m sorry, but you just can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Which tees would you play off?’
‘The men’s.’
‘You aren’t muscular enough.’
‘I’m becoming more muscular by the day, and, in any case, who will I be handicapping but myself?’
‘I’m glad you mentioned handicaps,’ smirked the PP. ‘The whole handicap system is based on gender. I cannot just transfer your handicap willy-nilly from woman to man. That would be the road to anarchy.’
‘I don’t care how severely you handicap me. This isn’t about winning. It’s about taking part.’
‘You cannot take part, Alison.’
‘Alan. It’s Alan, Miles.’
‘Alan, then.’ He made the concession as if it was a minor matter, ground yielded in order to regroup for the major battle to come. ‘You cannot take part as a man. Your vagina disqualifies you.’
‘Does it say anything about vaginas in the rules?’
‘Of course it doesn’t. The rules were framed when men were men and decent.’
‘Well then, it’s all a load of bollocks.’
‘Thank you,’ said Wing Commander Miles Forrester primly. ‘You’ve reminded me of another cause for disqualification.’
‘I don’t suppose you had many friends in the RAF,’ said Alan. He hadn’t meant to say it. It had just been a thought, but it had slipped out, as his thoughts sometimes did.
The wing commander’s eyes narrowed. There
was real hatred in them.
‘I don’t think you’ll find you have many friends in Throdnall Golf Club,’ he said. ‘Frankly, Alison … Alan … frankly, a lot of people around here think your behaviour … and Nick’s … Nicola’s … to be “a bit off”.’
‘ “A bit off”.’ Strong words!
The sarcasm escaped him. Quite a lot escaped Miles Forrester.
‘We have no intention of expelling you from the club,’ said the PP, ‘but between you, me and the gatepost, the sensible thing to do would be to move to another club.’
‘I don’t do sensible,’ said Alan. ‘And thank you for being so polite. I could have been expelled, but I’ve escaped with a wigging.’
It was very childish, but he couldn’t regret it.
Spring also brought an embarrassing meeting with Jane Collinson. Well, it was embarrassing for her.
Alan was shopping in Asda, and he found himself in the queue behind Jane at the check-out. He peered into her trolley; other people’s shopping trolleys fascinated him, they bought such dreadful things that he despaired for civilisation, and he rather enjoyed that.
Jane’s trolley contained a very substantial joint of lamb and several large parsnips.
‘Hello, Jane,’ he said. ‘Having a dinner party?’
Bull’s-eye. Jane looked very embarrassed.
‘Yes. Yes we are. Saturday.’
‘Just a reminder, Jane. Now that we’re both doing our Real Life Tests, we wouldn’t untidy your table.’
‘Ah. No. No. Quite. Yes. Absolutely. No.’ Words tumbled out of Jane’s mouth like bats from the roost. ‘No … er … well no … Sometime perhaps, yes. Jolly good.’ She lowered her voice. ‘We’ve got the Mallenders. Very conventional. Easily shocked. But, yes, well … and how is … isn’t it a cold spring?’
They were never going to be invited again. Thank God! How could they ever have been part of all that?
Alan agreed that it was a cold spring.
Spring brought Prentice.
He’d seen them on television and had been impressed by their courage and had realised how fond he was of his old school friend, the former Nick. He’d kept in touch with Christmas cards, but now he felt that he wanted more. He wanted to see them.
‘We ought to have him to stay,’ said Nicola.
‘I have a feeling I didn’t like him,’ said Alan.
‘Well he is my oldest friend,’ said Nicola.
‘Well, all right, then,’ said Alan, ‘but where can he sleep? We can’t move Bernie or Em or Gray out.’
‘Why not? It’ll only be for a couple of days. Em could sleep on the Zed-bed.’
‘Oh, it has to be Em who moves. You don’t like her now you’re a woman, do you? She’s a rival.’
‘That is ridiculous nonsense. I’m very close to Em. Closer than I can ever get to Gray, actually. It’s as if … I don’t know … well, anyway, my relationship with Gray just isn’t as close.’
Alan hoped he wasn’t blushing.
‘Gray has exams and studies. He needs his computer. And Prentice would go into obscene chat rooms.’
‘I’m sure he would. Why are we inviting this man?’
‘He’s my friend.’
‘Some friend.’
‘Your dad’s too old to sleep on Zed-beds. We could at least ask Em.’
They did, and to their surprise she agreed. They’d forgotten what a good mood she could be in during the couple of weeks before her visits to Paris to see François.
Prentice arrived with a bottle of wine.
‘I didn’t bring flowers or chocolates or anything like that because I wouldn’t have known which of you to give them to,’ he explained.
He had grown decidedly obese, eighteen stone at least. His round face bubbled with chins.
‘Emma has given up her room for you,’ said Alan.
‘Thank you, Emma,’ said Prentice.
Alan thought that he could have been more fulsome.
They had a bottle of champagne before dinner. It wasn’t often a friend came to stay.
Bernie joined them but chose a beer. It was a Kronenbourg.
‘Even the bloody beer’s French in this house,’ he said.
‘Em has a French boy friend,’ explained Nicola.
‘I see,’ lied Prentice. ‘Cheers. Spring in the air.’
He gave a little jump, managing to lift his huge frame at least an inch and a half off the ground.
‘What?’ said Alan.
‘It was a joke,’ said Prentice, gasping for breath like a beached whale after his exertions. ‘It’s spring, so I said, “Spring in the air”. Double meaning. Riveting. I’m now holding a glass of champagne and your attention. Zeugma.’
‘What?’
‘It’s a figure of speech, in which a word is used to modify or govern two or more words although appropriate to only one of them or making a different sense with each, for example, Mr Pickwick took his hat and his leave. Zeugma. Or was she married to Scott Fitzgerald?’
The family looked at Prentice with utter bemusement. It had dawned on them all that this was not going to be an easy visit.
Bernie latched on to the only thing that he had understood.
‘I hate the spring, me,’ he said. ‘The man what came to read the meter said, “Aren’t the leaves lovely and green?” I said, “Course they bloody are. They are every sodding year. What did you think they’d be this year – beige?” He gave me a funny look.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Alan.
‘No, but what it is, you see, with the spring, all that rebirth, it’s a bit of a bastard when you’re waiting to die.’
Prentice laughed. His laughter was like gunshot. The family looked at him in horror.
Over an anxious dinner, Prentice announced that Ferenc Gulyas’s painting of Lake Balaton was ‘appealing or appalling, according to your spelling’, but he did praise the food. He ate greedily. ‘Oh, this is beautifully garlicky,’ he said.
‘Garlic?’ said Bernie. ‘I don’t like garlic.’
‘You’ve eaten it every day for the last year and a half,’ said Nicola.
‘Have I? Oh,’ said Bernie.
‘Em’s French boy friend again,’ said Gray.
‘Ah!’ exaggerated Prentice.
‘Why are we drinking Italian wine?’ asked Em.
‘Prentice brought it,’ hissed Nicola.
‘Oh sorry. Sorry, Prentice, I don’t drink Italian wine,’ said Em. ‘It tastes of bad experiences.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Nicola.
Alan just wanted Prentice to be gone. He hated his wet lips and the bits of white spittle at the edges of his mouth.
There was a lull in the conversation. Nicola became very aware of the faint hissing of the coal-effect fire, and the gurgling of the central heating and Prentice’s stomach. It was as if the stomach and the radiator were holding a conversation in gurgles. She wanted to laugh.
‘So what are you doing these days?’ she asked Prentice.
‘I’m a financial consultant.’
‘Ah.’
There isn’t much to say in response to ‘I’m a financial consultant’ except ‘Ah’.
‘I thought you were going to be a stand-up comedian.’
‘That has to be my hobby at the moment. I haven’t broken through yet.’
‘What venues have you played?’
‘The Comedy Store in Dumfries. Various pubs. The Cellar Café, Lowestoft. Nowhere absolutely top-notch yet. Oh, and … er … yes, rather interesting, the Allied Dunbar Christmas Party.’
‘Good God! How did that go?’ asked Nicola.
‘Brilliant. I didn’t get a single laugh. Well, I’d have given up in despair if I had, from those bastards.’
‘Not your usual audience?’ asked Alan with a politeness that he didn’t feel.
‘True, but I die a death with my usual audience too. Laughs are cheap. Laughs are easy.’
‘Do you joke about being so fat?’ asked Gray, and
Bernie spluttered into his chilli. Prentice was on to his third helping. Nicola had just known he’d be a glutton for chilli, which was why she had made it, it being her turn.
‘Gray! Please!’ said Nicola.
But Prentice was not offended.
‘No, Gray,’ he answered. ‘That would have been too obvious. I joke about being thin. The audience don’t get it.’
There was another lull. Prentice squelched his chilli like a man walking through long, wet grass.
‘I met a man yesterday who told me he had a pronounced limp,’ he continued.
‘Couldn’t you see he had?’ asked Gray.
‘He was sitting down. I asked him how he pronounced it? He said, “Limp”. I said, “But that’s how everyone pronounces it.” ’
‘That story was limp,’ said Alan icily.
‘Exactly,’ said Prentice. ‘My point precisely. Well done that man.’
Everyone was very tired that night and went to bed early, leaving Nicola alone with Prentice, a large whisky and several zeugmas.
‘Bit of a thing you turning into a woman,’ said Prentice. ‘Bit of a thing. I find it rather exciting actually.’
‘Oh?’
‘Sexually.’
‘Ah.’
‘Come to bed with me. Christen those crisp sheets so thoughtfully provided.’
A thought occurred to Nicola and, however you spelt it, it was appalling, not appealing.
They hadn’t asked Prentice how long he was staying.
Many and varied were the attempts to find out.
