Sex and Other Changes (10 page)

Nick couldn't be bothered to tell him about all the second opinions and consultations and analysis sessions and hormone treatments and painful bouts of electrolysis that he'd had. He
was a little hurt, actually, that Bernie hadn't noticed the admittedly slight but definitely detectable ‘feminizing of the hips', the softening of the voice and skin, the fact that he was only shaving about once a week now. For Nick these were great victories, but all he said was, ‘No. I haven't changed my mind. I … er … I need to begin what's called my Real Life Test now. Dress as a woman. Go to work as a woman. I just wanted to … well … run it past you … hope that you … er … at this time … because it's a difficult time for you … hope that you … that I … won't upset you.'

He really didn't think that he could have put it much more delicately than that. Tact? It was positively oozing out of him.

‘I couldn't give a sod now she's gone,' said Bernie. ‘Couldn't give a sod. You can have a face transplant and a nose job and such like and call yourself Barbra Streisand for all I care.'

Nick took that as getting the green light.

He tried to buy Bernie another pint, and that offended him.

‘I'm not a bloody pauper,' he said.

There's no winning with some people, thought Nick. He did manage to buy a packet of pork scratchings, but that gesture went sour on him. Bernie lost a filling on one of them.

‘It's the bloody dentists what come round and sell the pubs pork scratchings,' Bernie said. ‘They're fiendish bloody things.'

‘You didn't have to eat them,' Nick pointed out.

‘You bought them for me. There's such a thing as manners in my book.'

There was no pleasing him, the way he was feeling, and Nick sympathised. They played a couple of rather desultory games of dominoes and that didn't go down too well either.

‘You're a bad sport, you,' said Bernie.

‘What? Bad sport? It doesn't worry me a bit, losing.'

‘Exactly. So there's no fun in hammering you. No point at all.'

Nick didn't mind all this, but when they got home Bernie
couldn't wait to tell Alison. ‘He bought me pork scratchings. They've buggered me second left incisor,' and she gave Nick a look which said, unmistakably, ‘You and your little chats!'

And then she screamed, ‘My God! Look at the Axminster! Who had that on his shoe?' (It was the carpet when she dirtied it, the Axminster when Nick did.)

It was Nick, of course. It always was. He suspected that dogs lay in wait until they heard him coming and then slunk forward and shat all over the pavements in front of him because they knew he didn't like them, as a result of which he liked them a whole lot less.

They drove into town on the Saturday morning. Nick hated shopping at the best of times, and this was the worst of times. He had to buy a complete wardrobe of women's clothes. He'd been putting it off and putting it off and now he could put it off no longer. He made for Castlegate Long Stay (there hadn't been a gate for ninety years, there hadn't been a castle for three hundred, if Throdnall saw anything old it shuddered and pulled it down, goodness knew how they had the cheek to put up those new signs ‘Throdnall – Historic Market Town').

‘Use your reserved space, for goodness sake,' said Alison.

‘No. That's my work space. If I'm not working, I don't use it.'

‘Oh for goodness sake. Who's going to know? Is somebody going to ring Head Office? I mean, it's yours, it's there, nobody else can use it, it's ridiculous.'

‘There's a principle.'

‘Oh for goodness sake.'

‘Well I'm not using it today, anyway. I'll never live it down if Ferenc sees me coming back piled with bras and knickers.'

‘He'll see you wearing bras and knickers on Monday.'

‘That's different. I'll be prepared. I'll do it with dignity.'

They walked to the High Street from Castlegate Long Stay. There were crowds of the most horribly dressed people. Throdnall
isn't Paris, not by a long chalk. In fact it's the World Capital of Leggings. The sky was the colour of old men's skins, and there were the faintest specks of rain on the prowling wind. Winter was coming. Nick felt very depressed. This should have been his first brave step towards womanhood, and he was hating it.

‘We could try Next first,' said Alison, ‘and Dorothy Perkins next.'

‘I can't do it,' he said. ‘I can't go through with it. It's too horrendous.'

She squeezed his arm.

‘You must!' she said. He found her fervour strange. ‘You must! You've set your heart on it.'

‘Oh, I wasn't talking about the sex change,' he said. ‘I was talking about shopping in Throdnall. I just can't do it here. I'll see people I know.'

‘You'll see people you know when you go to work.'

‘I know, but then I'll have to face them. I don't have to now.'

They decided to shop in Stratford. It upset Nick to leave several hours of a parking ticket unused, it went against the grain, but there was nothing else for it. Stratford is full of tourists, so nobody they knew would be seen dead there, and, as Alison pointed out, Shakespeare made cross-dressing very respectable. (In his plays. As far as we know he didn't visit Anne Hathaway in twinset and pearls.)

There were some great challenges ahead, but Nick was beginning to realise that it was the little things that were going to be the hardest. He found that he just couldn't go into shops and say, ‘Good morning. I am going to have a sex change and before that I have to live in society as a woman for two years, so I need a complete wardrobe suitable for working as General Manageress of a leading hotel in Throdnall, plus assorted leisure wear for a middle-class lady of forty with a wide range of cultural and sporting interests, including golf and bridge.'

He knew that if he had been able to say all that, he would have
mounted the first hurdle with ease, but if he could mount hurdles with ease he wouldn't have been Nicholas Divot Esquire.

What he actually said, amazing Alison even more than the assistant, was ‘I want some clothes for my sister. She can't get out as she's severely agoraphobic'

Oh God. A great new adventure, one man's heroic journey into womanhood, and they were straight into farce. Nick had never been at ease with shop assistants. In Austin Reed in London an assistant had once said to him, apropos of collar size, ‘Are we fifteen?' and he had said, rather wittily he'd thought, ‘I wish I was', and the man had flattened him by saying, without a flicker of amusement, ‘Sir is a wag.' In Dobson's, Throdnall's own family department store, long gone, an assistant not only measured his inside leg, but stroked it, and Nick couldn't say anything: the assistant knew his mother, she went in every Thursday lunchtime for a cheese omelette and a glass of sauvignon blanc.

There was no stopping the agoraphobic sister, once she'd been invented. When Alison said, ‘She'll need a full outfit for work', the assistant said, ‘Will she be able to go to work if she's agoraphobic?', and Nick had to improvise with ‘No, but luckily her work comes to her. She's a consultant', and Alison said, teasing him with just a touch of irritation at his stupidity and weakness, ‘But we do hope to persuade her to go out, don't we, darling, and if she's got nicer clothes that she feels good in she might find it easier.'

Then the assistant said, ‘What size is your sister?', and Nick had to say, ‘Er … much the same size as me, funnily enough. Quite tall, flat-chested, slim hips, big feet.'

He really did think that Alison was going to giggle. He went red and began to perspire. Oh God, if this went on he'd make the clothes sweaty as he tried them on.

He tried a fairly sober skirt suit and the assistant said, ‘Oh, yes, sir. It's … her to a tee.'

He almost confessed. Wanted to. Couldn't.

They bought a few oddments – bras and knickers and tights and a handbag, and as she packed them the assistant said, ‘Funnily enough I have a cousin who's claustrophobic. It's a small world, isn't it?', and Nick said, ‘I hope it isn't if she's claustrophobic. It certainly is if you're agoraphobic.'

He couldn't wait to get out into the street. The air smelt so soft and sweet. He didn't know if he'd ever smelt air as sweet as on that November day in Stratford.

They took their purchases back to the car and went for a reviving coffee in Ye Olde Falstaffe Coffee Shoppe.

Alison gave him a warning frown as he said to the waitress, ‘I'll have ye olde toastede tea-cakey, pleasy.'

‘Nick,' she said very seriously, after the waitress had scurried off with some relief.

‘That's an ominously serious tone,' he said.

‘Well I'm being serious,' she said. ‘I think you just have to start telling them the truth. That sister of yours is grotesque. You have to jump your first great hurdle. You have to think of yourself as Nicola. You are Nicola now. You're wearing men's clothes because you're odd. This afternoon you are going to begin to cease to be odd. You are Nicola, not Nick or Nicholas. Concentrate on that.'

‘Right. I am no longer sick Nick who gets on your wick. Ah, waitress, I am not Nicholas and I am definitely not knickerless. I am knickerful Nicola.'

The waitress gave them their coffee and toasted tea cake as rapidly as she could, and beetled to the safety of the kitchen.

‘Don't be so silly, Nicola,' said Alison severely.

‘I can't help it. This is frightening.'

‘It won't be frightening once you've faced it.'

It helped that the clouds had been blown away, and it was a gusty but sunny afternoon, mild and soft with just a hint of invigorating crispness.

Nick – he couldn't see himself as Nicola yet, not in his Nick clothes – barged into the first women's clothes shop he saw, he didn't even know which one it was.

‘Good afternoon,' he said. ‘I'm going to have a …' He swallowed.‘…a sex change.' There! He'd said it. What a relief. ‘Before I have the operation I will have to live as a woman for two years. I need quite a lot of clothes.'

‘I'll take your measurements, sir,' said the assistant calmly.

While she went for a tape-measure, Alison said in a low voice, ‘You see. No problem. She didn't bat an eyelid.'

‘What does that mean?' asked Nick. ‘How do you bat an eyelid? Have you ever seen anyone batting an eyelid? Have you ever heard anyone say, “Oh look. There's a man over there batting an eyelid”?'

Alison was happy to let him waffle on. She realised that in his nervous, self-conscious state he needed the outlet.

By half past five he was the proud possessor of bras, panties, underskirts, blouses, tights (not stockings – he wasn't going to titillate men with glimpses of his marble thighs), smart jackets, skirts, medium-heeled shoes for work, low-heeled shoes for home, outdoor coats, scarves, woolly gloves (couldn't find any other sort to fit – large male hands – problem), handkerchiefs, high-heeled boots, low-heeled boots, ankle-length skirts, twinsets, cardigans, skirt suits and an evening outfit with evening bag.

‘Why do I need an evening outfit?' he had asked.

‘For evenings. When we go out.'

‘Out? Where will we go?'

‘Well, the Collinsons'.'

‘They'll drop us when this comes out.'

‘The golf club dinner.'

‘Oh God. I can't go to the golf club dinner.'

‘I'll support you to the hilt, Nicola, but I am not going to become a hermit. Real Life Test, not skulking in corners.'

He bought an evening outfit.

As they staggered back to the car with their purchases, Nick said, ‘Well at least that's over.'

‘Till the spring,' said Alison.

‘What?'

‘Till the spring fashions come out. You'll need light clothes. Fine cottons and silks for summer. And there'll be new styles. New colours. Summer colours. And next winter these colours that you've just bought won't be
the
colours any more. There'll be new winter colours. Mauve's tipped for a dramatic comeback.'

‘My God,' he said. ‘I don't know if I can afford to become a woman.'

‘And you always thought I was extravagant,' said Alison.

They got home just in time for his appointment with Karen. Karen was Alison's hairdresser at ‘A Cut Above' (Throdnall's Premier Hair Stylists) and she'd agreed to come and do his hair at home, partly to save him embarrassment and partly for security reasons. (They didn't want the story breaking before Em got her exclusive, which would give her CV such a boost when she applied to the Nationals.) Karen did a very good job, using Nick's slight natural curls to create a soft, wavy look. He'd let his hair grow longer than he'd liked over the last weeks, at Alison's suggestion, even though towards the end he'd begun to feel very uncomfortable and unmanagerial and positively un-Cornucopian. But he saw why now. Cut in a bob with a side parting, and falling over the face to one side, it softened his features enormously. It made him look quite feminine, it really did.

He woke up feeling extremely excited, sexy even. To his horror, with an insensitivity that shocked him to the core, his prick had one of those semi-erections that even he got very occasionally,
first thing in the morning. He gave it a little smack, and said, silently, ‘Get down, you insensitive fool. Oh well, I suppose I'd better forgive you. After all, your days are numbered, you sad little person.'

Alison felt the movement as he smacked it and said, ‘What's up?' and he said, ‘I thought I'd been bitten.' He wanted to take her in his arms, but then it might have led to a very rare bout of sexuality and to say that this would have been mistimed would be an understatement. Anyway, the shock of this thought shrivelled his rebuked organ back into its habitual insignificance.