Sex and Other Changes (16 page)

She knew she'd scored a bull's-eye immediately. She realised afterwards that they probably thought she was issuing an unspoken threat. (She would have hated to have sued. She despised the culture of litigation. She didn't like lawyers and she liked their fees even less.)

All three men stared at her in silence for a moment, then exchanged looks for a moment, then went into a huddle for a moment, then whispered to each other for a moment. Then they nodded in unison, withdrew from the huddle in unison, and looked across the table at Nicola in unison.

‘ We believe that it is only fair, within the Cornucopia Code of Conduct,' said Sir Terence Manningham, and the other two men nodded in unison, ‘to give you a chance to prove what you have claimed today, viz – that your … er … transsexuality … that is, I believe, the term … will have no adverse effect upon the Throdnall Cornucopia. Thank you, Ms Divot.'

‘Thank
you
.'

On the first Saturday after Nicola had ‘come out', Alison went to their lawyers and instituted proceedings for divorce, on the grounds that Nicola had rendered them incompatible by changing sex. She had told Nicola that she was going to do it, and Nicola hadn't objected. It was inevitable.

She hadn't told Nicola that one day she would be changing sex and would want to be free to pursue a new life.

She knew that it was what she wanted, but she still didn't enjoy the visit to the solicitors. It was a sad moment.

Just after seeing them, she met Jane Collinson in the Saturday Market. This being Throdnall, there was no longer a market in the Saturday Market on a Saturday.

Jane looked embarrassed and said, ‘Oh, I'm so glad I've run into you, Alison. It saves phoning.'

‘What's happened?' asked Alison innocently.

‘I … we … I hope you'll understand, but … next Saturday's dinner party. We're not going to be able to invite you after all.'

‘What?'

‘Well … you know … and Andrew's very … how can I? … conservative with a small c, well as well as with a big one really … and … it'll all be couples and you coming together, both as women … well … it'd untidy the table.'

Alison's mind worked quickly when she was angry. She decided to avoid outright rudeness. Sweet sarcasm would be more stylish.

‘Of course I understand, Jane dear,' she said. ‘We've been good friends for … what is it? … must be the best part of ten
years. I'd always help you if you were in trouble, you know that, so of course I'd hate to untidy your table.'

Jane Collinson reddened and said, Tm sorry, Alison, but you know how it is', before escaping into the doorway of the nearest shop, only to discover that it was Woolworth's, in which she wouldn't be seen dead, so she had to come rushing out again past Alison in ever deepening embarrassment.

Nicola was upset when Alison told her the story.

‘Look what I've landed you in,' she said.

‘Don't even think like that,' said Alison.

Early in the new year, almost two months after Nicola had ‘come out', there came an event that she dreaded but refused to avoid. It was the first round of the Ladies' Knock-out, the Palmerston Cup, at Throdnall Bridge Club.

There was considerable opposition, within the club, to her participation in the event, but, since nothing could be found in the rules that actually prohibited such a thing, it was decided to allow her to take part ‘in the spirit of fair play and tolerance for which the club has always been noted'.

But who could she partner? It would have been easier, everyone felt, if she had partnered Alison, but Alison always played in the Palmerston Cup with Ann Pilkington, who was very easily slighted – she had no confidence, no woman could have any confidence if she was married to Philip Pilkington, so Alison felt that she couldn't let Ann down.

The solution was to pair Nicola with Hilda Neff. Hilda Neff was a dragon. Nobody wanted to play with her. It was an unspoken rule in the club that nobody should be forced to partner Hilda Neff two years in succession. She was running out of suitable partners and, faced with the stark choice of playing with Nicola or with nobody, she narrowly chose Nicola.

Nicola didn't enjoy the evening. She had a bit of a cold, which made her voice sound deeper and more masculine just when the
hormones were really kicking in and softening it. Hilda Neff frowned every time she sniffed or blew her nose, so she took to visiting the lavatory to blow her nose between hands.

Throdnall Bridge Club saw itself as a fortress of morality surrounded by swamps of decadence. There were no unisex toilets. A proposal to make the toilets unisex had been rejected by the committee as ‘giving out the wrong signal to our members'.

It might have been fine for Nicola to use the Ladies' in the hotel, but two lawyers, three wives of lawyers and four barrack-room lawyers were playing that night, and Nicola felt obliged to use the Gents' each time. This was very convenient, as there were no men present, but it incurred resentment because there was sometimes quite a queue for the Ladies'. ‘I was in a no-win situation,' she said to Alison after the event.

Hilda Neff didn't make one piece of small talk to her all evening, but she clearly wanted to win very badly. Nicola realised that she desperately wanted to lose. She had made her stand, but she couldn't have faced playing in the second round, so she bid two absurd grand slams, both of which failed dismally, to ensure that they did lose.

Hilda Neff never spoke to her again.

Shortly after that, Nicola faced similar difficulties at the Golf Club. It was her second visit since the article in the
Advertiser
. On each occasion she had played a competitive eighteen holes with Alison, winning once and losing once. On each occasion she had used the men's locker room, believing that it would embarrass the ladies (except for Jennifer Griffin, of course, whom nothing could embarrass) if she used the ladies' locker room, complete as she still was with prick and testicles.

On each occasion they had gone into the nineteenth hole for a drink afterwards. Arnold Willink had said, ‘Good on you, Nicola', rather spoiling it by adding, ‘I said to Phyllis, “I'd never
have thought he'd have the bottle”, but nobody else referred to the matter at all. The avoidance of it was like a constant shriek. One or two people snubbed them, others avoided them out of embarrassment, some clung to safe avenues of conversation, so that by the time they went home they felt qualified to become weather forecasters.

They were just finishing their second and last drink after their second eighteen holes when the PP entered, strode to their table and said, ‘Word in your ear if you don't mind, Mr Divot.'

‘I see no one of that name here,' said Nicola bravely. Alison felt that she had already shown more courage than she had ever shown as Nick.

‘You know what I mean,' said the PP.

‘Yes,' said Nicola. ‘I shall be there, don't you worry, wing commander.'

Wing Commander Miles Forrester, Secretary of Throdnall Golf Club, known throughout the club as the PP, which stood for Pompous Prat, examined Nicola's use of his rank for traces of sarcasm, wasn't sure if he could find any, nodded, said ‘Ten minutes?', didn't wait for an answer, and retired from the bar.

‘Oh dear,' said Nicola to Alison. ‘Crunch time.'

She presented herself at the Secretary's Office ten minutes late.

‘Do sit down,' said the PP.

Nicola sat down carefully and glanced round the PP's room. The walls were covered in photographs and there were several framed photographs on his desk. All of them were of the PP. There were so many of him in front of aeroplanes that Nicola suspected that he had never actually held a flying job in his career.

‘You have entered the men's competition and the ladies' competition,' said the PP. ‘That's what we used to describe in the RAF as hedging your bets.'

First reference to the RAF! The PP would have been
mortified if he'd known that people regularly had unhedged bets on how often he would refer to the service in a given time.

‘Well yes,' said Nicola. ‘I wasn't sure which one I should enter, so I entered both, awaiting your expert ruling.'

The PP failed to examine Nicola's remark for traces of sarcasm, and nodded modestly.

‘Thank you,' he said. He scratched his wig as he regularly did while summoning up his authority. It wasn't a bad wig, but, since everybody knew it was a wig, Nicola failed to see how it could make him feel better about his baldness. ‘The answer, I'm afraid, is neither. You cannot play in the ladies' competition because you are not technically a lady. Which tees would you play off? I think the ladies' tees would give you a most unfair advantage. None of the ladies would be happy to accept that. But how can one person in the ladies' competitions play off the men's tees? Surely you must see how impossible it is for you to play in the ladies' competitions.'

‘So what will happen when I've had the operation and am a woman?'

‘Shall we cross that horse when we come to it?' The PP had a disconcerting habit of muddling his metaphors.

‘All right,' said Nicola, ‘I accept that I can't play in the ladies' competitions, but why can't I play in the men's?'

‘Because you are claiming to live as a woman,' said the PP. ‘You have decided to give up your status as a man. I couldn't allow you to be untrue to your status as a man. I couldn't allow you to be untrue to your principles.' He smiled. His self-satisfaction erupted. ‘You have consigned yourself to a golfing limbo. Golf-wise, Nick … Nicola … you are temporarily stranded in no-man's-land.'

‘I think you mean no-woman's-land,' said Nicola.

‘You are more than welcome, of course, to continue to use the club's facilities.'

‘And you are more than happy to accept my subscription,'
said Nicola, ‘while not allowing me to participate fully in the club's activities.'

‘You are welcome to resign any time you wish,' said the PP. ‘I learnt in the RAF how important it is to run a happy ship.'

Even the PP looked slightly unhappy about that mixed metaphor.

These humiliations, little though each one might be, made Nicola's social life very wearing. She was in no-man's-land, and she was in no-woman's-land. The exhilaration of being able to live as a woman faded, as exhilaration does. She was still happier than she had been as a man, yet she longed not to
live
as a woman but to
be
a woman. How she yearned for the thing she dreaded – the surgeon's knife. She counted the days like a national serviceman longing for demob.

Life is short, Nicola, she told herself. Do not wish your life away. Relish these two years. Enjoy Alison's amazing support. Take comfort from your pleasant, desirable home. Enjoy the growing up of Gray, for all that ninety-seven per cent of it takes place in the privacy of his room. Take pride in how much prettier Em is looking, now that she has met François, even if the gamine, Parisian-waif look that she is adopting sits uneasily on her slightly heavy frame. Enjoy your family.

In the first three months after Nicola ‘came out', the bedrooms of the Cornucopia Hotel averaged an occupancy rate of 67 per cent. In the Kenilworth Brasserie, 23.2 per cent of the tables were occupied, on average, at lunchtime, and 36 per cent in the evenings. The Warwick Bar served an average of twenty-two meals a day, compared to its theoretical maximum of a hundred and twenty.

Be proud of these improvements, Nicola. Do not long for your time in the hotel to pass, she thought.

Nicola felt that it was churlish of Head Office not to make any comment, modest though the increase in business was. She
knew that at least some of it was the result of her sex change. People were curious to catch a glimpse of her. Businessmen wanted to see whether her legs were muscular or elegantly slim, and just how much or how little she had in the bust department. It was a shock to her to realise just how much of a sex object a woman was, but she had put herself into the public domain and she must live with it. Truth to tell, she was just a little excited to be an object of interest. She had never been an object of interest before.

Sometimes, though, it was thoroughly unpleasant. She could never be sure that she wouldn't be taunted, in the shops or the streets, by someone who suspected. One day a man lurched out of the betting shop in front of her and shouted, ‘Show us your prick, sweetheart.' She could never be certain who knew and who didn't. A man she'd nodded to several times over the years stood back in the newsagent's and said savagely, ‘I can wait. Serve the perv.' It happened rarely, but the threat was ever-present. On days when she felt weak she had to force herself to venture into the town. She became self-conscious about her large hands, tried to hide them, but you couldn't sign credit cards with your hands in your pockets.

On the staff front, things went on much as before. She found Paulo a little more difficult, a little less respectful, and she summoned him to her office.

‘Are you not respectful to women in Portugal?' she asked him.

‘But of course we are,' he said. ‘We are a romantic race.'

‘I don't want you to be romantic,' said Nicola, ‘but a bit of respect wouldn't come amiss.'

She didn't have any trouble with him after that.

Emrys, the Welsh commis chef, asked for an interview, at which he requested that there should always be a Welsh speciality on the menu. He suggested a rotation of Glamorgan sausages, and cawl, and of bara brith and butter pudding.

‘I'm sorry, Emrys,' said Nicola, ‘but I don't have the authority to change the menu. It's dictated by Head Office policy.'

‘You have Warwickshire specialities.'

‘Yes, but this is Warwickshire. You know as well as I do that the Cornucopia menu is standard with one local dish and one chef's signature dish. In any case, nobody ever orders the Warwickshire specials.'