Sex and Other Changes (4 page)

I must say we are lucky. Em is lovely and Gray is very bright.

She didn't think Jen was clever enough to deduce from that that Gray wasn't at all lovely, and they weren't sure if Em was bright.

Things are going very well at the hotel. Nick was very bucked this week. The local rag called it ‘The jewel in the Throdnall crown'. The manager has to retire next month, he'll be sixty-five, and Nick has high hopes of promotion. We'll see.

Sorry this is so brief. Where does all the time go?

Lots of love from us all to you all.

Alison (and Nick, of course)

Jen didn't send letters, just cards and an odious round robin at Christmas. ‘Craig is the best outside half Mr McWilliams has ever seen at seven years old. We gave Kelly a violin for her fourth birthday. Mrs Carstairs says you can't hold a prodigy back.'

She dreaded the day when Craig and Kelly would turn up on their gap years with their gap teeth and their outdoor smiles and their irritating suntans and their bloody violins and rugby balls.

Well, she'd have a shock for them. She'd be their Uncle Alan.

She tried to make the table look stylish with flowers and candles, although she knew that on the rare occasions when he cooked Nick did that sort of thing much better.

The room still looked bare, without any pictures on the walls,
and that scratty sub-Laura Ashley wallpaper would have to go, and it was a pity there still weren't any curtains to draw, but never mind, they'd make their own atmosphere.

Nick brought roses, lovely roses, kissed her on the cheek, said, ‘Nice day?', and she found it so difficult to resist replying, ‘Not bad. Bought some blouses. Decided to change sex. You?', but all she said was, ‘Quiet. How about you?'

‘Not bad. Brian remembered it was our anniversary and asked me what we were doing. I said, “We're eating in the best restaurant in Throdnall.” '

This was so untypical of Nick that it fooled Alison for the moment, and she said, ‘Oh. You should have told me. I've gone and got fish.'

‘Idiot,' he said affectionately. ‘That's what I meant. Your cooking makes it the best restaurant in Throdnall.'

‘Oh. Well, thank you.'

‘Not that there's much opposition in Throdnall.'

‘Oh. Terrific. I thought you meant it.'

‘I did. Oh, darling, I did. I didn't mean that your cooking isn't worth a compliment. I meant that the way I put it wasn't exactly a compliment since there's nowhere good to eat in Throdnall.'

‘Oh Nick.'

‘What?'

‘You have a wonderful way of spoiling the nice things you try to do.'

‘Oh. Terrific.'

‘Oh, don't worry. It's one of the things I like about you.'

‘I see.'

‘Were they selling the flowers off cheap because they were closing?'

‘No! They weren't. I'd have told you if they had been.'

‘See what I mean!'

Em went to bed as good as gold, and said, ‘Have a lovely
anniversary dinner, Mum, Dad,' and they spent a few happy minutes with her. You have to cherish the moments when your children are sweet, they won't last for ever.

Gray was demanding. Just one more story. How can I get to sleep? I'm not tired. It's not a crime not to be tired, is it? Little bugger, master of the double negative already, and he knew they were longing to get him to sleep. Six years old, and already you couldn't fool him.

At last peace reigned. Nick took a sherry into the lounge, and Alison cooked the sole. Everything else was ready in the hostess trolley. She was glad Nick wasn't in the kitchen. She could enjoy her massive new secret. She knew that when she was with him she would begin to feel uneasy at having to keep it secret.

She hated the kitchen with its hideous cheap units with shiny blue doors, but it was because of things like that that they'd got the house cheap. As she cooked she was planning the changes she would make. She would pour into their new home all the frustration she felt at having no artistic outlet. Should she have tried the stage? ‘Why didn't you, Mum?' Em had asked when she'd talked about her school plays. She didn't like to say, ‘Because I always got the male parts, so as a pro I'd have got no parts.'

Everything came back to gender all the time.

The sole was done to a turn. The Pouilly-Fuissé was delicious.

What a job she had to keep her exciting news to herself.

Nick went slightly pink and she realised that he was going to say something important.

‘I've an interview at Head Office next Tuesday.'

‘Oh!!'

‘Brian says he's recommended very strongly that they give it to me.'

‘Is that good news or bad news?'

‘That's the trouble, I don't know; but I mean I did run the
hotel for a week when Brian had flu, and I think I steered a pretty good course between the Scylla of Authoritarianism and the Charybdis of Laissez-Faire.'

‘I hope you won't put it like that to Head Office,' said Alison drily.

‘Why? I thought it was rather good.'

‘Oh, Nick, you're so unworldly. They won't share your knowledge of Greek mythology. They'll think you're talking about Cilia Black and some band they've never heard of.'

‘If I do get made manager, and with your new job, it's going to be quite a time of change.'

Oh Nick, thought Alison. Don't give me cues like that. She had to grit her teeth to remain silent. Then she thought, Why should I remain silent?

‘I went to Marks and Sparks today,' she said.

‘And?'

‘I … bought some blouses.'

‘Ah.'

‘Sober and subtle.'

‘Good.'

She let out a deep sigh very slowly, so that he wouldn't notice. The moment of danger had passed.

They settled down with a celebratory Armagnac at either side of the log-effect fire. He buried his nose in a book. Opposite him, in the Parker Knoll, she studied interior design ideas.

The sitting room was still bleak too. They had not yet fully occupied their new home. They only had one painting, of dahlias, by his Aunt Jessica. It had been a house-warming present. There were ghastly little lantern lights on the walls, reminiscent of a pub with a Tudor theme. They'd have to go.

‘Do you mind if I go on up?' she asked, shortly after eleven o'clock.

‘Not at all,' he said. ‘Do you mind if I try and finish my book?'

‘Of course not,' she said. How polite they were, she thought with a grimace, for their anniversary. ‘What are you reading?'

‘Tess of the D'Urbevilles
. I really want to know how it ends. Spins a good yarn, Hardy.' Well, she didn't know that he'd read it eleven times before he was sixteen.

She went upstairs with a silent yelp of relief, stripped off, washed between the hated breasts, washed around the loathsome crutch, crept into bed and dreamt of manhood.

She was only vaguely disturbed when he slid carefully in beside her. She dropped off again almost immediately, but it was an uneasy sleep, and in the morning she realised that she must have been dreaming at a very shallow level, because she seemed to recall that he had been sobbing his heart out there beside her, and that must have been imagination.

‘Alison?'

There was something in Nick's tone that made Alison's heart beat much faster. She straightened up from the dishwasher. They'd had vegetarian moussaka. Em was going through a veggie phase, and there was no reason why Alison should cook a separate meal for her, so quite often they all had a veggie meal. Gray moaned … well, he moaned for Warwickshire … but there was never anything left on his plate.

‘Yes, Nick?'

‘Could we … go through and have a chat?'

What could he be on about? He sounded ominously serious.

‘Let me finish the dishwasher and get a coffee. Do you want a coffee?'

‘No, no.' He waved the question away as intolerably trivial, then realised that sounded rude, so he added, ‘No. No thanks. Sorry.'

He went through, and she finished loading in her own good time. Whatever Nick's crisis was, it could wait. It was his fault she was taking so long. He knew her back was stiff, but he never offered to do the dishwasher. ‘I don't like this new one. It's badly designed,' he'd said. ‘I just can't get the hang of the top shelf.' Excuses excuses.

Em was out with her boyfriend as usual, this one seemed serious. Gray was surfing the net as usual, that was serious, they'd lose him to the world if they weren't careful. Bernie was sitting in the granny flat with poor old Marge as usual. Everything was as usual, except Nick's tone of voice.

She made the coffee and took it through, handed Nick his, put
hers on the garden bird coaster on the smallest table from the nest of tables, and sat in the Parker Knoll. It was well past its sit-by date, but they were reluctant to let it go; they'd had it at Cranbourne Gardens and at Eckersley Crescent.

This scene would be etched in Alison's memory for a very long time. Their cool, cream sitting room looked so placid. The log-effect fire was burning merrily. There were four pictures now, Aunt Jessica's dahlias having been joined by three more originals, which made it pretty stylish for Throdnall. One was a bold, bright Scottish landscape by John Morrison Lowry, who signed his name Jolomo. Another was a windswept picture of Bernie's beloved Dales by Richard Bolton. The fourth was a Hungarian landscape by Ferenc Gulyas, Nick's assistant manager. It was too tortured for a sitting room, but he had come round with it as a surprise present for their twentieth anniversary, and he might come round again, so they felt they had to hang it.

‘I've something to read to you, old girl,' said Nick.

Alison hated that phrase. She was only thirty-nine, for God's sake, and soon she would begin the process of ceasing to be a girl. She knew that it was a reflection, probably unconscious, of something his father used to say, but oh Lord it was patronising, it was so slippers and leather patches on the elbows, so oldest member of the public school common room, so coated with the dust of a blessedly forgotten England.

He picked up a broadsheet, cleared his throat, and began to read.

‘ “Hope for sex change whelks”.'

She gawped at him. She felt that she must have looked like a mullet that has got stranded on the North York Moors. Her first thought was that he had discovered that she was planning a sex change; maybe he had found one of the books that she had borrowed from the library. She'd thought they were safe enough in the dark cupboard behind the flour and the bicarbonate of soda – he never baked – but he must have discovered them.

‘ “Spare a thought for the sex-change dog whelks”,' he read. ‘ “Tomorrow will decide their fate.” '

‘How long have you known?' she asked.

‘Known?' he said. ‘I don't quite know what you mean. About the whelks? Only since last week when I read about them and, I don't know, I thought maybe if I introduced the subject via whelks, because this isn't at all easy for me, Alison, and I know it's not going to be easy for you, that it might make it a little easier. I think you can guess what I'm driving at. Don't make it too difficult for me, Alison.'

Fury followed her amazement. It hadn't taken her long to realise that he was telling her that
he
was planning to change sex. She just couldn't believe it. Her mind was in a whirl. She felt outraged that he could have so little understanding of what she had been thinking, so little knowledge of her. She was damned if she'd make this easy for him.

‘Go on,' she said grimly.

‘Go on?'

‘About those poor whelks.'

He didn't want to go on. The whelks had served their purpose, or rather they had failed to serve their purpose. They hadn't made things easier. He wanted to get it all over and done with.

‘Read on,' she commanded. ‘It's interesting.'

‘ “Representatives of the world's governments are meeting to decide whether to ban a chemical used to coat the bottoms of ships which is causing female dog whelks to grow penises, thus endangering the species. The chemical is also building up in other sea life and has been found in people who eat fish.” '

‘I'll never go to the Throdnall Whaler again.'

‘Alison! Take this seriously! Please!'

‘I
am
taking it seriously, Nick. I'm devastated for those poor whelks. Go on. You can't stop now. I'm riveted.'

What could he do?

‘ “Dog whelks, which mainly live on beaches between the high and low tide marks, have long been one of Britain's commonest seaside creatures. But they have disappeared from large areas because of their bizarre transformation.

‘ “Scientists collecting whelks discovered to their surprise that they could only find male ones. Close inspection revealed that half were females who had unaccountably grown penises.

‘ “The scientists suspected that tributyltin, the anti-fouling paint most widely used on the hulls of boats and ships, was to blame. Sure enough, when they painted the shells of unfortunate females with the chemical, penises sprouted and grew to alarming lengths.

‘ “The sex change females cannot mate, and die painfully if they do before the transformation as their new penises block the ovary ducts where their eggs go on growing inside them until they explode.” '

Alison stood up.

‘This is terrible,' she said.

He realised that it was. He'd only intended to use the first paragraph. As he read on, he realised that it was an utterly disastrous introduction to the advantages of having a sex change.

She went to the window, which afforded an excellent view of number thirty-eight opposite, its mock-Tudor frontage glowing in the sad sodium light of an autumn evening in Throdnall. She noticed that the window frames needed painting. She wondered if the Parkers were over-stretching themselves financially. Anything to give her emotions a breathing space as they fought to respond to this extraordinary development.