Sex and Other Changes

by David Nobbs

  It was exciting, emotional stuff, with dramatic changes of tempo that sent surges of adrenaline into the bloodstream of the listener.

  But to Alan this was not the time for music. Only one thing could have sent a surge into his bloodstream.

  ‘I must have a word, Nicola,’ he mouthed to the music.

  He led her over to a far corner of the little room, and there they sat, so unobtrusively that their unobtrusiveness might have been blazoned in lights. Em and Clare, Gray and Juanita, Bernie and Peggy, even in this emotional and lively gathering all of them were so aware that there in the corner were Alan and Nicola, trying to conceal the fact that they were holding a meaningful conversation.

  This conversation occurred in little bursts while the musicians conferred after each tune. It was impossible to talk during the music.

  ‘I have to tell you this,’ said Alan. ‘I am a man. You are a woman. There is no obstacle to our loving each other.’

  Nicola made no reply.

  ‘I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s only just occurred to me, so it occurred to me that it might not have occurred to you. Nicola, I love you.’

  The music stopped them before Nicola could reply. Maybe she would not have replied.

  ‘I love you far more than I did when we were our original sex,’ resumed Alan as soon as the next tune had stopped. ‘We were a couple of fumbling freaks, for God’s sake, and now we’re both truly ourselves. We did all right, on the whole, for half a lifetime. Think what we could do together now. I love you. I don’t want you to go. There! That’s pretty straight and up-front for Throdnall, isn’t it? Why do you have to go?’

  ‘I …’

  ‘Don’t tell me you love Eric.’

  ‘Please don’t start running Eric down. I know you don’t like him, but he’s a dear dear kind loving lovely man.’

  The music began again. Alan pretended to be listening intently. He didn’t know whether Nicola was listening intently or also pretending to. He didn’t know what she was thinking.

  This was perhaps as important a discussion as Alan had ever had in his life, and it was being conducted as if it was the conversational equivalent of a game of musical chairs. The moment the music stopped he resumed his impassioned pleas as if he had never been interrupted.

  ‘I know he is,’ he said. ‘I’m not jealous of him any more. I just don’t believe you love him. Do you love him?’

  Nicola looked at him like a cornered rat. She wasn’t prepared to say that she did and she wasn’t prepared to say that she didn’t. She thought of saying, ‘What is love?’ or ‘Does anybody know what love really is?’, but managed to avoid such pathetic copouts.

  She gave a helpless little shrug.

  ‘We’ve learnt a lot from all we’ve …’ began Alan, and again the music stopped him. Em glanced anxiously in their direction.

  ‘We’ve learnt a lot from all we’ve been through,’ continued Alan when the musicians conferred once more, ‘and if at the end of all that we haven’t learnt that true love should be an unselfish emotion we’ve learnt nothing. If you truly love Eric, then go, be with him, be happy, I want you to be happy, Nicola. If you truly love him, you go with my blessing. You really do. But I don’t believe that you do. You don’t live with him. I think you’re very fond of him, but I don’t think you love him. That’s all. You don’t need to say anything now.’

  Nicola didn’t look as if she had any intention of saying anything.

  ‘Perhaps we’d better move,’ said Alan, ‘or people will start looking at us.’

  32 Reflections on the Validity of the Turner Prize

  The tide was coming in, sliding sexily up the creeks, lifting the boats off the mud, sending the birds packing. An oystercatcher piped noisily overhead.

  Nicola had arrived the previous evening. It had been a long drive; traffic had been heavy. She had crawled through the flat lands of the Fens, where the fields were like carpets of sticky toffee pudding. She had felt extremely tense. She hadn’t known that she was going to feel extremely tense.

  ‘I’ve made a real Norfolk fish stew,’ he had said.

  ‘Good-oh,’ she had said.

  ‘So, how was the wedding?’ he had asked.

  ‘It went all right. No, it was very good actually.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Actually it was extremely moving and I was very proud of Gray and Em.’

  ‘I’m so glad.’

  Was he?

  The fish stew was subtle but just a little thin, Nicola had thought. Rather like Eric. She’d felt ashamed of herself for having that thought.

  She hadn’t wanted to make love. She hadn’t known that she wouldn’t want to make love. She had feigned extreme tiredness and he had suggested that she went up early while he cleared up. He could never leave anything less than immaculate. He might be awash with desire, but he’d still lay out the breakfast things ready for the next morning.

  When he had come up to bed, Nicola had feigned sleep in the pale, pink bedroom. She hadn’t needed to do that for a long while, but it was like riding a bicycle, once learnt never forgotten.

  In the morning Eric had driven the car to Thornham, painfully slowly, and now they were walking along the coastal path to Hunstanton.

  ‘It’s good to have you back,’ he said.

  ‘It’s good to be back,’ she said.

  It was and it wasn’t.

  They walked steadily, trying to keep themselves warm. There was a cruel, snidey breeze from the north, and the air was as raw as herrings. If the sad sky had begun to weep it would have lost control and deluged.

  The path plunged into a melancholy wood. Nicola felt that she would die of gloom among the dark trees if she didn’t say something cheerful.

  ‘I felt that old feeling as I left Kings Lynn behind and turned north for Hunstanton,’ she said. ‘That feeling of coming home.’

  She had and she hadn’t.

  ‘Good,’ he said.

  She wished she hadn’t said it.

  Now the path was in the open again. It rose and fell across the dunes like a miniature Alpine pass. To the seaward side there were salt lagoons, where shelduck swam serenely. A cormorant flew low over the water, late for an appointment as always.

  ‘Birds live and die and leave no individual mark, and neither will I,’ said Eric.

  ‘Eric! Don’t be so depressing,’ said Nicola.

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t depress me in the least,’ he said. ‘I think it’s a relief.’

  Yes, his mood was strange, and she wondered how much he knew of her mood.

  They walked along the side of the golf course. Only one hardy couple had braved the winds on that early spring day.

  A tiny wren scolded them valiantly.

  ‘See what I mean?’ said Eric.

  She did and she didn’t.

  They caught a bus back to Thornham from Hunstanton. They sat in the front seat upstairs, as if that could bring back the spirit of childhood. They lunched on smoked salmon and chardonnay in the Lifeboat Inn, and then Eric drove, painfully slowly, to Wells-Next-The-Sea. Eric told her that Wells had once been a raffish place. People from Burnham Market had only gone there in disguise. Now it was Chelsea-Next-The-Sea.

  Easter was coming, and the tourist attractions had just begun to creak into gear for the season. They went to an exhibition of marine paintings in a tiny gallery, and then to a little tea shop in a sweet old cottagey street. It would all have been twee, had it not been beautiful.

  They discussed the works that they had just seen, which had been pleasant, safe, a million miles from the world of the Turner Prize.

  ‘What do you think of the Turner Prize?’ Nicola asked.

  ‘I can’t comment on its recent decisions,’ said Eric, ‘because I haven’t seen the works in question except in the papers and on television, but I hate the whole award. I hate it because I hate all prizes, and I hate it particularly among prizes because Turner would have hated it, because Turner hated all prizes.’
/>   She gazed at Eric, and she drank of his passion among the toasted tea cakes, and she knew that she loved him at that moment as much as she ever could.

  ‘Art is about truth, not glory,’ he continued. ‘It’s about beauty, not rank.’

  She wished that she could listen solely to Eric’s words, and not have to listen at the same time to her emotional reaction to those words.

  ‘Nothing in the world of creative art is as contemptible, in my opinion, as to shock for the sake of shocking, and if that is what these Turner artists are doing they are traitors to art,’ said her furniture restorer.

  She felt privileged to listen, she felt proud and moved that she agreed, but she had nothing to contribute.

  ‘Nothing in the world of art is as craven as not daring to shock when necessary,’ Eric continued. ‘Shock is the most precious of all the weapons in art’s armoury, and that is why to abuse it is the most serious crime in the world of art.’

  Yes, at that moment she loved Eric as much as she ever could, and she knew that it was not enough.

  She lay back as he clambered on to her. She made all the right noises and all the right movements, and she didn’t think there was any way in which he could have deduced that she was playing a bridge hand in her head, for fear that she would be unable to go through with it if she thought about it too closely. She bid two hearts and her partner went three spades and she felt that a small slam might be on, and by the time that they’d bid it and she had played the hand and made the small slam Eric had come inside her with such energy and with such a cry: Oh yes! He wasn’t only passionate among the toasted tea cakes.

  Quite soon after that they were asleep, oh blessed sleep, far far from owls and lies.

  In the morning, after their immaculate breakfast, laid the night before and served on the best Worcester, with not a milk bottle to be seen and the evenly browned toast wrapped in an Irish linen cloth, Eric said, ‘You still love him, don’t you?’

  33 Up the Wooden Stairs to Bedfordshire

  The sun beamed with pleasure on Alan and Nicola’s wedding day. It shone on the fourteenth-century church of St James. It shone on the bird shit on the roof of the Cornucopia Hotel. It shone on the unlovely lift-shaft tops that disfigured the unlovely roofs and the unlovely sixties blocks that dwarfed the fine old church.

  It shone on Mr Beresford, but he didn’t notice.

  They had spent their wedding eve in traditional separation, but not for them the excesses of stag fortnights in Prague and hen weeks in Dublin. Alan had taken Bernie and Peggy to the Positano, and Nicola had been given a Peruvian dinner cooked by Juanita.

  They had remained in separate beds until after the wedding, even though Nicola had gone back to number thirty-three after she had confirmed Eric’s suspicion that it was over. Alan had slept in the master bedroom, Nicola in the granny flat. This was less a moral gesture, fatuous in today’s climate, than an attempt to make their second wedding day something special. They felt that something should be denied them before the marriage, so that the day itself might seem, and indeed be, special.

  Neither of them slept well on the wedding eve, Nicola at number thirty-three, where Gray and Juanita were spending the night, so that Juanita could help Nicola get ready in the morning, and Alan at Bernie and Peggy’s flat.

  Mr Beresford did not sleep well either.

  By eight o’clock Peggy was cooking Alan a man’s breakfast in their flat, Juanita was cooking Nicola a Peruvian breakfast in number thirty-three, and Mr Beresford was in all probability walking across his dewy lawn towards his garden shed. It must have been about that time, according to the pathologist.

  They had wondered whether to invite Mr Beresford and his wife. In the end, reluctantly, they did. However, they didn’t turn up. They couldn’t. They were both dead.

  Round about half past eight Alan finished his breakfast with a slice of toast and marmalade – the sweetness of the marmalade was luscious after all the fat – a nervous Nicola gave up the struggle to do justice to Juanita’s splendid bacon and eggs – yes, they have those in Peru too – and a loud scream from the jobbing gardener in the grounds of Helvellyn, home of the Beresfords, awoke their neighbours in Gairloch and froze the blood in their veins.

  The police called first at number thirty-three, whence Nicola directed them to the flat.

  Bernie answered the door, and came to Alan with a pale, stricken face.

  ‘It’s the police,’ he said. ‘They want you, Alan. I told them it were your wedding day. “It’s his bloody nuptials like,” I said.’

  ‘Bernie! Talking to the police like that!’ said Peggy.

  ‘Aye, but it’s his wedding day. It’s not right. I were resentful. I were being protective.’

  Alan hadn’t stayed to hear Bernie’s justifications. He hurtled to the door, heart pounding.

  ‘It’s a Mr Clive Beresford,’ said the police officer, and a wave of the most enormous relief churned through Alan and made him go all weak at the knees. Oh, thank goodness. Oh, thank God. It was nothing to do with Nicola.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘He’s been found dead in his garden shed. First indications are that he’s hanged himself.’

  It was a shock – a terrible shock. Of course it was. On that emotional morning Alan felt a great swirl of conflicting sensations: compassion for the misery Mr Beresford must have endured to bring him to that; compassion as he saw, more vividly in his mind than he had ever seen it in the flesh, the sadness in Mr Beresford’s face; but also, he had to admit, he felt relief, overwhelming relief that this was not something that affected his family, that it was not something which anybody could reasonably suggest was a cause for postponing the wedding. Also, he had to admit this too, he felt spasms of irritation (Oh God, we’ll have to rearrange the table plan) and even of hatred (I bet the bastard chose this day deliberately – he never liked me).

  ‘I appreciate that this is serious,’ said Alan, ‘but it’s my wedding day. Can’t it wait?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. We need you to take us to his office, show us a few things. We don’t want to break in. We’ll drive you there, drive you back. We’ll get you to the church on time, don’t you worry.’

  So Alan whipped on a few clothes, didn’t shave – he still didn’t quite need to every day though obviously he would today – and was driven across Throdnall, up Sir Nigel Gresley Boulevard (longing to make an illegal U-turn) and into the office block, deserted on a Saturday morning. Suddenly his office, and Mr Beresford’s, seemed utterly dead, defunct. The great sheds stood silent too, now that there was no weekend working due to slackness of business. He began to wonder about his job, and then an even more pressing worry struck him.

  ‘I’m off on my honeymoon tomorrow. I hope you won’t need me for questioning.’

  ‘No need for that, sir. We will question you, but on your return. The inquest will be adjourned. In any case, you are not a material witness.’

  ‘That surprises me,’ said Alan. ‘I should have thought I knew about the difficulties at the works as well as anybody.’

  ‘We can’t say too much, sir, but I think I can inform you that Mr Beresford’s presumed suicide is not considered to be a direct result of trading difficulties.’

  They took away one whole filing cabinet, for which only Mr Beresford had a key, and all the books relating to financial matters.

  One of the officers rushed Alan back while the other officer continued to search the office and move stuff downstairs. As they drove (and even at that awful time he felt a certain thrill at being sped across the town with the aid of a police siren, traffic at a standstill on and around the Colton roundabout and all because of him!) he thought that it might be worth asking a few more questions. Maybe this officer would be less discreet when not accompanied by his colleague.

  ‘Can’t you tell me anything about what kind of thing you’re investigating? If you leave me in the dark, I may imagine things that are worse than the truth. That’s how damaging
rumours start.’

  ‘Let’s just say that the company accountant has discovered a huge black hole in the company accounts. We’re talking millions.’

  ‘My God! Do we have any idea where it’s gone?’

  ‘None whatsoever, sir. A prostitute in Peckham has purchased a Porsche.’ The officer frowned, perhaps at the severity of his attack of alliteration, perhaps in recognition that he was being excessively indiscreet. ‘That may be nothing to do with it, of course. However, the same lady of the street has been seen recently in Throdnall and Mauritius with Mr Beresford. It would be indiscreet of me to say more than that, sir.’

  ‘But what about Mrs Beresford?’

  ‘What indeed, sir? That is the question.’

  ‘And what’s the answer?’

  ‘I think it would be very foolish of me to speculate on that before we’ve dug up his new patio on Monday morning.’

  ‘Good God.’

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  They drove the rest of the way in silence. The officer was worried that he had said too much, and Alan was absolutely shaken. He knew that such things happened, of course, but one didn’t expect them to happen to people one knew.

  As Alan bedecked himself in his hired morning suit, and as he saw Peggy and Bernie give each other’s hands a quick little stroke, he strove to put the morning’s dramatic events behind him. He began to emerge from the dark tunnel into which Mr Beresford had (deliberately?) plunged him.

  The sky was blue, the sun was shining, he would not let any more shadows spoil his great day.

  The reason for their marrying in church, incidentally, was that the vicar of Throdnall, the Reverend Simon Phillips, got in touch with them to tell them that they would be most welcome.

  ‘We aren’t believers,’ Alan had told him.

  ‘God understands,’ he had said. ‘He gave you free will. He hopes that by marrying in church you may be helped to become believers. I must come clean. I am a passionately liberal Christian. I would welcome not only women priests, but gay priests and lesbian priests, so long as they are good people. I believe that the battle between human good and human evil will be decided for ever – I was going to say “for good” but I can’t be that confident! – during the twenty-first century. Weapons are now so terrible that man must be destroyed if he doesn’t destroy the evil in him. You will be pawns in my political game, sending a message of tolerance to the world.’