Sex and Other Changes (27 page)

‘Nonsense. If you don't drink early it'll be too late,' he said.

‘Well if you insist,' she said. How very English. How terribly knees together. One day someone would say, ‘No, I don't insist. Goodbye', and she'd deserve it.

But
he
didn't. ‘I do. I do,' he said, and he led her into his flat, which was masculine, shabby and warm, and smelt of dog and urine and burning offal. ‘Must switch the dog's meat off. I can't abide dog food in tins. Rex is too good for tins.'

Rex, a golden labrador, raised his head slowly, and seemed to nod.

He had a battered, rather blotchy face, and was almost bald. The man, not Rex. He was quite tall, and slightly roundshouldered, and looked as if he ought to have a moustache. She
would have said that he was in his mid-fifties but found out later that he was forty-eight. Life had taken its toll. Life does.

There was nothing ugly about the man, though. He had a nice smile, which he flashed warmly as he said, ‘Now. Liquid refreshment. G and T?'

‘Please.'

‘Ice and a slice?'

‘Very nice.'

‘G and T, ice and a slice, coming up. Have no fear. I'm Lance, by the way. I have the Lafayette Gallery, in Biscuit Passage.'

Good. Nicola had never been in there. There was a chance that they had never met. She didn't want Lance to know, just yet.

‘I'm … I'm Nicola.'

She didn't add her surname. It sounded too formal. It might have struck a chord with something he'd read in the
Advertiser
. Nicola would do. Nicola was cosy. Nicola sounded fun. She could see it, on a little notice in the telephone box round the corner: Nicola, fun loving, gives French lessons. No. Stop.

‘Pleased to meet you, Nicola. Think my luck may have changed. Am I to assume, from your little van, that there is no longer a Mr Nicola, if indeed there ever was? Though surely there must have been, you're a little cracker.'

She didn't say that there had indeed been a Mr Nicola, and it had been her.

‘There you are, G and T, get your pretty lips round that.'

Well! Can you imagine? She knew that he was several sheets to the wind, but did she care on that bleak day?

Honesty compels me to record that Lance's G and T was not of classical proportions. It was all G and very little T.

At first he sat in one of his shabby old brown leather armchairs, from which he launched into a potted history of the disaster that was his life – his ex-wife, his estranged son, his ruthless bank manager, his business partner who had swindled
him, his wine business that had been destroyed through sabotage that he could never prove. ‘My life has been a chapter of accidents, but now I have an instinct, an instinct, Nicola, that my luck has changed. You really are extraordinarily lovely. You're the quintessence of femininity.'

Already he could barely say ‘quintessence of femininity', but she had to accept, with her history, that she might not find many men saying she was the quintessence of femininity until they were almost too drunk to say it.

When he brought her her second G with very little T, he of course took the opportunity to sit next to her on the sofa. She tried not to flinch as he put his nicotine-stained hand on her knee. She wasn't used to having men's hands on her knee. In fact it had only ever happened once, in Colchester, and he had been pretty firm with him. ‘You're supposed to be giving me a short back and sides, not seducing me,' he had said. ‘Any further nonsense and I'll have you drummed out of the National Union of Hairdressers.'

Well, now she was a woman and she ought to welcome a firm man's hand on her knee – or the firm hand of a man, rather. She forced herself to relax. Half an hour ago she had despaired of her looks and now she was the quintessence of femininity, it was better than her wildest dreams, and it was absurd to flinch. So she tried not to stiffen as he put his arm round her shoulders, and she tried to avoid his breath lest she sink into utter drunkenness. She tried not to drink her G and not much else too fast, but it was very pleasant, and she no longer felt sad and lonely and forty-three. This was a new and exciting life. It was lovely and cosy in the warm doggy masculine flat.

‘You're an absolute cracker, Nicola,' he said. ‘An absolute cracker. My faith in women had reached rock bottom, Nicola, thanks to my treatment by the cow.'

‘The cow?'

‘Forget the cow. I have. Bloody woman. Wish you hadn't
mentioned her. She can't hurt me now. Rock bottom, Nicola, and when I say rock bottom, I mean rock bottom. And then you come along. It's almost as if you were sent. It's tempting to believe that you were sent. Another G and T?'

‘No, please. Er … I mean … er … well yes, thank you, but less G and more T, please.'

‘Absolutely. Moderation in … something or other.'

She thought of just leaving. She looked at Rex and his deep, affectionate eyes and she felt that they were imploring her to leave, but the battle between this warmth and her bleak, as yet unlived-in flat was no contest.

‘T with very little G,' he announced, half collapsing at her side. ‘You're a corker, Nicola, and in the morning I shall paint you.'

‘You paint, then?' she deduced.

‘I dabble and daub. I supplement my income. Running a gallery in Throdnall is not easy, Nicola. In fact it's difficult. The artistic colony is not extensive. Phyllis … Phyllis …'

‘Philistinism?'

‘Phyllis Perkins. That's it. Perkins. She said to me, “Lance, you'll be barking up the wrong tree, opening a gallery in Throdnall.” Didn't listen. Thought I knew it all. At times I've felt so alone. So alone, Phyllis.'

‘Nicola.'

‘Absolutely. No mistake about it. Beautiful Nicola. Nicola?'

‘Yes?'

‘How about a little … er … to … er … to … er … welcome you to number eight?'

‘A little what?'

‘Let me ravish you, Nicola, because you are ravishing, as no man has ever ravished you before. Are you on for that?'

Oh God. Was she ready? She was still packing large pieces of plastic into her vagina every day to stop it from healing over and to stretch it to as great a size as possible. Was it ready for Lance?
She swallowed a large mouthful of G and T. Still more G than T. She choked. He banged her on the back and with one opportunistic movement slid his hand round to the front and felt for her tits. It would be quite a search. Did she …? Oh God. Was she …? Down, Rex, this isn't a game for you.

‘Down, Rex.' The dog obeyed Lance instantly. ‘Silly boy. He needs a walk. He wants to do wee-wees.'

‘Should we take him out?'

‘Later. Later. Oh, Nicola, oh my gorgeous Nicola, oh I … I feel … I don't … I …'

He collapsed. He collapsed in her lap on the nicotinecoloured sofa. She was staring down at his bald head to which a few tufts of hair adhered like weeds in a patio. She thought for an awful moment that he had died. What could she do? Then he shuddered like a room that is too near a tube line, and snored once, very loudly. Rex barked. Lance twitched in his sleep and snored again. She lifted him off her very carefully and with great difficulty, he was heavy, and then she lowered his head gently on to a cushion.

She felt an overwhelming sense of relief, but it was tinged, yes it was, it was tinged with just a touch of disappointment. Would it have mattered how drunk they both were if that enormous hurdle had been jumped on her very first day on her own?

She couldn't find the key to the flat and she needed to take Rex for wee-wees. She jammed Lance's little pouffe in his door and led Rex into the street, and then he led her down Lane Road, up Crescent Rise, turned right into Avenue Crescent, past the cemetery, right again into Road Grove and right again into Lane Road. She felt as if she too was a dog, sniffing out the boundaries of her new little world. A fine drizzle began to fall. Rex ignored twelve lamp posts, but utilised seven. She could see no difference between the ones he ignored and the ones he utilised and she began to feel drunker and drunker as the cool evening air hit her.

Rex led her safely back through the chill sodium gloom into the brown fog of the flat, and he gave her an adoring look which seemed to say, ‘Are you going to be my new mistress?' and she gave him a sad look which definitely said, ‘Somehow, Rex, I don't think so.'

She stumbled upstairs, fumbled the door open, and tumbled into the least threadbare of her unlovely chairs. It felt like midnight, but her watch told her that it was only five to eight.

When she woke up, still in the chair, it was seventeen minutes past three. She had a stiff neck, a thick head, a dead leg, and an undilated vagina. She could hear Lance's regular, shuddering snores.

Sunday morning in Throdnall. People had been known to go to the crematorium for a bit of life.

Nicola felt beside herself. Not beside herself with anything, it was as if she was outside herself, beside herself, observing herself on her first full day on her own as a woman. It felt very strange.

Ms Nicola Divot (43), wearing blue jeans and a big white chunky mohair sweater, strolled to the newsagent's on Street Lane, where she purchased the
Sunday Times
and the
Mail on Sunday
. Then she entered the Kosy Korner Kafé, North Throdnall's sole attempt at café life, where she ordered a Danish and a cappuccino. With a supreme effort and a sigh, she lifted the
Sunday Times
out of her carrier bag. She took one look at it, cringed from its comprehensiveness, put it back, and got out the
Mail on Sunday
. She slid the Financial Section back into the carrier bag, because she had no money to invest, then read the rest with intense interest for twenty-seven minutes, before sighing, muttering, ‘There's no news in it' and standing up.

She then strolled back to number eight by a different route.

As she approached her new home, she met Mr Lance Windlass (48), proprietor and owner of the Lafayette Gallery,
who was walking in the opposite direction with his dog Rex (9). Ms Divot was clearly feeling much the worse for wear, but Mr Windlass seemed unimpaired by the previous evening's activities.

They stopped to speak. It would have been rude not to.

‘We meet again,' said Ms Divot, who then cringed at the obviousness of her remark.

‘We certainly do,' replied Mr Windlass, perhaps out of a natural kindness which did not want to show up the paucity of imagination in her opening remark.

‘Thank you very much for the drinks,' she said rather dutifully.

‘That's all right,' he replied wittily. ‘It's not every day a new tenant arrives at number eight.'

Ms Divot did not particularly like the description ‘new tenant'. She rather preferred some of the terms used the previous evening, which included ‘extraordinarily lovely', ‘the quintessence of femininity', ‘absolute cracker' and ‘corker'. She sensed that none of these words would be used about her by Mr Windlass again.

Ms Divot, standing beside Ms Divot, felt that Ms Divot should not have been upset by Mr Windlass's omissions, or by the absence of such phrases as ‘We must arrange when I shall paint you', ‘We must do it again some time' and ‘How about a little dinner à deux at Le Flageolet?' After all, she did not say, ‘I must return the hospitality', ‘I make a mean cup of coffee' or ‘You must come up and dilate my new vagina some time.'

The truth was, she deduced, that she did not think that this charming disaster of a man was the answer to a transsexual's prayer. The truth was, she also deduced, that she had herself deduced that in sobriety the bald gallery owner did not feel the overwhelming attraction for her charms that he had felt in drink the previous evening. Indeed, he almost admitted as much when he said, ‘I think I must have had a bit of a skinful last night', to
which she made the unspoken addition of ‘to have thought you a corker'.

As she went into her little flat, she ceased to have that strange out-of-body experience. She had a little cry, actually. She missed Alan and Em and Gray and even Bernie. She was looking forward to Monday morning, and seeing Ferenc and Paulo and Emrys and Leonard Balby again.

How sad was that?

Six weeks after she had left the home where she had once been the man of the house, Nicola returned as a dinner guest. She felt uneasy about this. It didn't seem right. She felt self-conscious.

In those six weeks, she had developed quite a comfortable routine.

Every weekend she would prepare a luscious casserole to see her through the week, and before she drove to the Cornucopia each weekday morning she would place a portion of the Casserole of the Week in her new slow cooker, and it would gently steam all day.

After work she would go, every evening, to the Trumpet in Biscuit Passage. Lance had suggested that she should, and had introduced her to ‘the early evening crowd'. It was soon evident to her that her history was known, and, while one or two men flirted with her most pleasantly, they didn't mean it, and she knew that they didn't mean it, and they knew that she knew that they didn't mean it. It was a very masculine environment, the Trumpet. Women were welcome so long as they behaved like men. The paradox for Nicola was that she found it much easier to behave like a man now that she was a woman than she had when she'd been a man. She'd struggled with beer, felt selfconscious about drinking wine, and had dreaded dirty stories. Now she could enjoy her wine and even relish the occasional slightly risqué story in the safe knowledge that the really nasty ones wouldn't be tried on her.

There was no pressure on her to have more than two glasses of wine. Everyone knew that she couldn't afford to lose her licence.

When she got home she would prop a book on the table and read as she ate, very slowly, her Casserole of the Week. It simply was an enormous relief for her to be solitary, to be free to be herself, not to need to feel remotely guilty when she chose, in her very first week, to read … you've guessed it …
Tess of the D'Urbevilles
. What, again? Are you demented? There was nobody there to ask those questions. Now she no longer needed to be Tess. ‘Oh, Tess, Tess,' she said one night. ‘I am with you. I suffer with you. I am your sister.'