by David Nobbs
I began to fry the onions though I’d lost all heart for the pork casserole (free-range, lived outside, we’d seen the farm they came from).
‘I wish I’d died years ago,’ said Dad. ‘I called her in t’paper shop Marge again yesterday. Me mind’s going.’
‘Your mind isn’t going, Dad,’ I said. ‘Look at the way you remembered that street light you nicked, which you never told us about. I didn’t realise I was being brought up by a criminal.’
He didn’t smile at my feeble joke. He was beyond jokes, where he was.
‘Aye,’ he said, ‘but that just makes it worse. When your mind starts going, you remember things from far, far away. Me mum and dad took me to Brid for the day when I were six. I can still remember that t’bus had an advertisement for Smith Kenyon’s Eucalyptus and Menthol Pastilles. You see! Alzheimer’s.’
Oh, Jen, I haven’t written as much as this since I had to do essays at school. I wrote such letters to you when we were younger, I poured out my heart, but I didn’t send them. I didn’t want to burden you. I was wrong. Burdens aren’t nearly as bad as not being close. I feel so close to you as I write this.
Thank you for the photos. How big Craig is now and …
*
Alan didn’t tell Gray or Em about Bernie being banned from the park, he couldn’t bring himself to, but he did get very angry with Gray when the question of where Nicola would sleep came up, and Gray suggested putting Bernie in a home.
‘Don’t you ever dare say that again,’ he said. It was unfair of him. He was angry because of the park incident, but Gray didn’t know of the park incident, because he hadn’t told him.
He got the kids together one evening before supper, and he said, ‘Listen. Your father comes home next Tuesday. I don’t think it’s suitable for us to share a bed any more. Now I can’t ask either of you to give up your room …’ He paused. He had had a wild hope that one of them would offer, but neither of them did, and he couldn’t really blame them.
‘I can’t,’ said Gray. ‘It’s my existence. It’s my link to the world.’
‘Good idea to leave it then and start to live in the world,’ said Em.
‘I don’t like your world. It has you in it,’ said Gray.
‘Children!’ Alan shouted. Children! Gray was seventeen and Em was coming up to twenty-two. ‘No, Gray, I couldn’t ask you to leave your room. Not because of the Internet. Because of your A-Levels.’
Em said nothing. Well, she brought Carl home in her lunchtime occasionally. She thought Alan didn’t know, but he had smelt sex and male feet in her room a couple of times when he’d checked it to see if it was clean enough for Mrs Pritchard to clean.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m going to sleep on the Zed-bed in the sitting room.’
‘You can’t sleep in the lounge for ever, Mum,’ said Em.
He didn’t reply. He let it sink in. He didn’t think they’d given a thought to the possibility that their father might not be there for ever.
*
On their journey back to Throdnall, as they slipped through the rolling Midlands countryside, through the trim villages and anonymous little towns, with the rain sparkling in the sunshine and a double rainbow in the west, Nicola was very quiet, obviously tense. One always feels very exposed on leaving hospital, and the immensity of what lay ahead was suddenly weighing on her. Alan drove very carefully. He didn’t want to jolt her insides. This made it seem a bit like a funeral procession.
He told her the sad business about Bernie and how changed she’d find him. He was dispirited. He was defeated.
He took a deep breath.
‘Have you given any thought to the sleeping arrangements?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘Well I don’t think we can go on sharing a bed for ever.’
‘No.’
‘I’m going to sleep on the Zed-bed.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘What else do you suggest? You have to have a proper bed. You’re recovering from a major operation.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘It wouldn’t be fair on the kids. Not at this stage. They’re too old.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I might have to put Dad in a home one day, I’m not a heroine, but not yet, he isn’t nearly ready, it’d kill him.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Anyway that’s the plan for the time being. You’ll have the double bed.’
Nicola didn’t reply. Alan wondered if the truth was dawning. Then, after a long delay, she said, ‘Sorry. I should have thanked you. You’re wonderful to me, Alan. I …’
She stopped. It did cross Alan’s mind that she had been going to say ‘I love you’, and had realised how inappropriate it would have been.
She sighed as they passed the sign ‘Throdnall – twinned with Verona.’
‘Dreading being back in Throdnall?’ asked Alan.
‘We’re hosting a twinning dinner. Dreading that. What will they think of our food? What on earth will they think of Throdnall?’
She walked back into the house very gingerly. It was slippery from the showers.
Alan had put flowers everywhere. The house was like a garden centre.
He’d made a succulent fish pie. They all loved his fish pie. It was comfort food, but not too bland. He used white wine and nutmeg and lots of pepper. It was the perfect thing to make, especially as Em had requested no garlic. ‘Carl hates garlic on the breath. Well he hates it period.’ Every reference to Carl diminished Alan’s hopes for Em with him.
His fish pie was always so successful that it saddened him that night, in their candlelit dining room, with the coal-effect blazing and the Pouilly-Fumé flowing, to see how little enjoyment there was.
Gray bolted his food.
‘I’ve got to rush,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a girl from Toronto in trouble.’
Alan’s heart sank and rose all at the same time. Did he really mean … Could he really mean …? If he did, if he had, well of course Alan couldn’t condone it, but to think that he might have got as far as that with a girl, it would make him reassuringly normal. But Toronto? It must be the Internet. Could you get girls in trouble on the Internet? Perhaps you met them on the Internet and then posted your sperm in a sealed container and she … wild thoughts! Why not just ask him? Hardly dared.
‘In trouble?’
‘Yeah. I’ve made a brilliant move with my bishop and I don’t think there’s any way she can escape now.’
Alan’s heart sank and rose. He was glad nobody could see into his soul. The morality of his reactions was deeply questionable, but … mother first, moralist second.
Em bolted her food too. Carl ruled her with a rod of iron, but Alan shouldn’t have said, ‘Does Carl have an obsession about Tuesday nights, by any chance?’
Bernie picked at his pie listlessly, despite which he ate quite a lot.
Nicola moved her food around on her plate like an anorexic model at a posh dinner party, but she didn’t eat much, she was racked with tension. Alan’s heart bled for her, and he knew that he couldn’t talk to her about the future that night.
The apple crumble was no more of a triumph than the fish pie. Em forswore it altogether, hurtling off into down-town Throdnall. Gray rushed upstairs after the fish pie, made a move, rushed down, bolted his crumble, burped, apologised and rushed upstairs. Bernie just shovelled it in without any signs of pleasure or even consciousness. Nicola picked at it tensely.
After the meal Bernie went through and sat staring at the TV with the sound off, Gray fought a long and heroic battle against his Canadian conqueror, and Nicola said, ‘I need to speak to you’ in a hoarse voice.
‘Aren’t you tired?’ asked Alan. ‘Don’t you want to go to bed?’
‘Soon, yes, but we must talk.’
This was a surprise. He didn’t clear away the pudding plates. They sat amid the wreckage of the meal, nursing the last of the Pouilly-Fumé.
‘Alan, I’m sorry to be so blunt
and to say it so soon, but … I don’t think I can stay here.’
To say that Alan was astonished would be an understatement.
‘I don’t think it’s fair on the kids to have a woman as their father. Alan, I think I’m going to have to leave you.’
The relief!Alan thought he was going to faint. Nicola reached across and held his hand. He was shaking.
‘I’ve upset you,’ she said. ‘I’ve been too blunt. Oh, Alan, I … it’s odd to be saying this, but I love you. I do, I do, but … it has to be over. Doesn’t it?’
Alan found himself unable to make any reply.
‘I’ll go as soon as I feel fit. It’s best. You’re unconvinced. Honestly, Alan, I … I have to lead a new life. I … who knows … ?’ She smiled bravely. ‘… I might even find myself a man.’ She squeezed Alan’s hand. ‘Sorry. That was insensitive.’
Alan was surprised to find that he did think it insensitive. He didn’t like the thought of her finding a man. It was a primaeval jealous twitch.
Alan looked after her brilliantly. Next morning he gave her her very favourite breakfast – two perfectly cooked boiled eggs and toast. She made no mention of the discussion of the previous night, but talked almost compulsively about all sorts of things, but particularly about boiled eggs.
‘Nobody ever uses the boiled egg argument for the existence of God,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I’m not a believer. Sometimes I wish I was, but I can’t, but if anything could persuade me it’d be boiled eggs.’
‘What??’
‘Well a chicken has no concept of cooking. It can’t. It has no access to stoves of any kind. So how can it produce an egg, consisting of yolk and white, which cooks in such a way that the white goes solid while the yolk remains runny at the moment of perfection? The egg must be an invention of a benevolent deity.’
‘I hate to be sceptical,’ said Alan. ‘I like your beneggolent God, but I can see why this argument has not caught on with clerics. Isn’t it the truth that an egg just happens to be like that, and man has had to make the best of it, and so has accustomed himself to liking eggs with hard whites and runny yolks, because that is the only alternative to having no boiled eggs at all. If eggs happened to come out with hard yolks and runny whites, maybe we’d all be saying, “Yum yum. It’s just how I like it.” ’
These were the sort of conversations they had in number thirty-three in those unreal days, as they avoided any further discussions of reality. Alan didn’t sleep well on his Zed-bed. He developed bags under his eyes, and Mr Beresford kept asking him if he was all right. He had a job to concentrate on his work. He couldn’t afford to make mistakes. They were weeks of stress. He longed for Nicola to go, and hated himself for it.
By the time Nicola had found a place to rent, on the other side of town, Alan was aching for the moment when she would leave, was counting the minutes, and had to resist helping her too much in case she would sense his eagerness to see her go. He had to rein in his enthusiasm as they sorted and packed her belongings, and curb his generosity when sharing out the accumulated possessions of so many years. He had to refrain from rushing out to stock her up with toilet paper and bleach, salt and pepper, marmalade and jam – all the little things that he thought she’d forget to buy because she’d been a man for so long.
Then, suddenly, he was watching her as she slipped out of the drive in the laden Subaru.
The moment she was out of sight he began to miss her.
What absurd creatures human beings are.
21 On Her Own
Nicola felt so very vulnerable as she embarked on the Great Trans-Throdnall Expedition. She had only been back at work for a week. She still wasn’t remotely confident about her body. She still felt the occasional sharp pain in her nether regions. Mr McWhinnie was very pleased with her, though, and had explained that her body was still in the process of getting over a massive shock.
She was leaving the only true friend she had in the world – her wife Alan. She was forty-three years of age.
As she approached the end of Brindley Street, past the For Sale notice on the boarded-up Piccalilli Circus, she had to fight an urge to turn right and go to work. She did sometimes pop in on Saturdays. You can’t ever leave your work entirely behind when you have the responsibilities of a General Manager.
Her first week back hadn’t been as stressful as she had expected. She’d fought her real battle long ago when she’d walked in dressed as a woman. She returned to a warm welcome from some, resignation from others (literally in the case of a young porter whose mother had forbidden him to work under a freak) and indifference from most. The hotel had continued to function in her absence and it would continue to function in her presence. It was Divot-proof – at least at the low standards it was permitted to aspire towards.
Ferenc had introduced certain minor changes, and the Welsh and Hungarian specialities on the menu were proving surprisingly popular, given the conservative nature of the clientele. Nicola decided to pretend that this didn’t annoy her. She even said nice things about Ferenc behind his back, though she couldn’t bring herself to say them to his face. She didn’t challenge any of his initiatives. She didn’t yet have the energy.
All these thoughts were going through her mind as she led her two-vehicle convoy through the labyrinthine one-way system and up the gentle slope towards ‘The Streets’. The second vehicle was the smaller of Bill Canning’s two removal vans and contained her pitiful worldly possessions.
It’s amazing how you can think of other things and still drive safely. She had no recollection of going round the new miniroundabout at the end of Percy Road or of turning left into Mallet Street. She didn’t remember passing the Shell Garage or the new doomed delicatessen, ‘Mr Tasty’, which wouldn’t last even as long as Piccalilli Circus. (All delicatessens are doomed in Throdnall, even ones with sensible names. They open, there is early excitement, they struggle, they close.) She was thinking about the Cornucopia, about how she hadn’t yet managed, on her return, to give a damn about it. Would she ever again?
‘The Streets’ are so called because all the roads are named after streets. It could only happen in Throdnall. The area could equally easily be known as ‘The Roads’, because all the streets are named after roads! Apparently, a man called Jasper Congreve, known as ‘The Father of British Road Classification’, once lived in a big house set back off what is now Avenue Crescent. He was instrumental (Throdnall believes, but this is very dubious, there are other strong candidates for the honour, if honour it be) in setting up the ‘A’ Road and ‘B’ Road classification system. Some half-wit in the Council’s Highways Department thought that this incredibly exciting and radical achievement should be celebrated in perpetuity.
She drove along Street Lane, turned left into Lane Street (truly an inspired move in the Throdnall game of Confuse-APostman!) and then right into Lane Road, where she was now to live, just beyond the junction with Crescent Rise.
Flat Three, Eight, Lane Road, Throdnall. Not an address to quicken the pulses. Not an address to inspire the poetic side of one’s nature.
Number eight was a three-storey Victorian town house divided into six flats. Her new life, her exciting exploration of womanhood, would take place on the first floor. She had a highceilinged room furnished in Late Mean Landlord style, a small but high-ceilinged bedroom, and a bathroom so old it should have been listed.
As she looked at her bedroom her spirits sank. It looked such a lonely room, so bereft of warmth. How could she ever warm it? How could anyone ever warm it with her?
Old Bill, her removals man, was a former policeman so his nickname was regarded as witty. He moved very slowly, though not in a mysterious way, and as he lumbered down to the van to collect Nicola’s sparse belongings, she looked at herself in the mirror in the unflatteringly brightly lit bathroom with the cracked basin. Was she remotely attractive? She had shaved that morning, but this was the first time for over a month and was largely symbolic, a
full stop on her sentence as a man. There were signs that the continued hormone treatment and the removal of the hated male appendages, whether from a physical or a psychological effect, were continuing to turn her less and less male in appearance. But to find a man who was attracted to her, and to whom she was attracted, and to have the confidence as a woman to feel that she could give herself to him, those were massive steps – and then, should she manage to jump all those hurdles safely, there was still the bedroom. Could she ever bring a man to this tall, bleak bedroom? Or to any bedroom? Oh, the hurdles she faced.
To think that that very evening … but let us not anticipate …
She was forty-three, she didn’t have a true friend in the world, she had an old car, old clothes, an old bathroom and a new or neo-vagina which she had dilated herself, as instructed, feeling about it rather as she would have felt about something that came flat-packed from Ikea. The prospect of its ever being dilated by anyone other than herself seemed remote, to say the least.
The loneliness that she felt that afternoon in her new rented flat, is it any wonder that that very evening … but no, let us not anticipate …
She made a cup of tea for Old Bill. She didn’t want him to go. When he had gone there would be nobody.
She saw him out, went down the stairs with him, because that meant it would be at least a minute longer before she was alone. As she shut the communal front door, the door of flat one opened, and a man stood before her.
‘Hello!’ he enthused. He had a Christmas cake of a voice – rich, fruity, fortified by alcohol, and with an icing of sexuality. ‘You must be the new tenant of flat three. How does the prospect of a little bevvy strike you?’
The prospect of a little bevvy struck Nicola much as the first sight of Samarkand would have struck a starving nomad with a sick camel. She could only think of one thing that she would prefer to a little bevvy, and that was a large bevvy.
