Sex and Other Changes

Meet the Divots. They seem a happily married couple, in their cosy suburban home in a cosy suburban town. Then, one day, everything begins to change. Nick drops his bombshell. He wants to become Nicola. Alison is extremely upset, naturally. But she has more reason than most to be upset, because she has a secret too. She wants to become Alan. Nick has pulled the rug from under her. However, she's always been the supportive type and she'll wait her turn.

Will Nick become Nicola? Can Alison become Alan? Can both partners in a marriage change sex and save their marriage? What effect will this have on their children, the sexy Emma and the hi-tech loner Graham? There are dramatic changes in store for them too â and for Alison's father, Bernie.

In the spirit of David Nobbs' acclaimed novel
Going Gently
,
Sex and Other Changes
is a funny, touching and compassionate study of what being a man and a woman really means.

About the Author

David Nobbs was born in Kent. After university, he entered the army, then tried his hand at journalism and advertising before becoming a writer. A distinguished novelist and comedy writer, he lives near Harrogate with his wife Susan.

Also by David Nobbs

FICTION
The Itinerant Lodger
A Piece of the Sky is Missing
Ostrich Country
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
The Return of Reginald Perrin
The Better World of Reginald Perrin
Second From Last in the Sack Race
A Bit of a Do
Pratt of the Argus
Fair Do's
The Cucumber Man
The Legacy of Reginald Perrin
Going Gently

AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I Didn't Get Where I Am Today

DAVID NOBBS

Sex and Other Changes

For Susan

Acknowledgements

I cannot emphasise too strongly that this book is an entertainment and not a documentary. However, I have tried to get the facts about sex changes right, and in this connection I am greatly indebted to Dr D.H. Montgomery, MB ChB (Otago) FRANZCPsych FRCPsych, Consultant Psychiatrist, who worked for many years at the Gender Identity Clinic of Charing Cross Hospital. Any errors are due to my misinterpretation and not to his misinformation. (I must point out that my psychiatrist and my Gender Identity Clinic are totally fictional.)

I am also grateful to Roz Kaveney, who read the manuscript from the point of view of a transsexual and made several suggestions which I found very helpful.

I must also thank Geoffrey Lean and the
Independent on Sunday
for giving me permission to quote the article on sex changes among whelks which he wrote as Environment Correspondent of the paper in 1998.

I also owe a great debt to my agents, Jonathan Clowes and Ann Evans, and to my publisher and editor, Susan Sandon, for their trenchant but extremely constructive criticisms of my first draft.

1 Two Different Uses for Trees

People were shocked when it all happened. Afterwards, though, they claimed that they hadn't been surprised. That is so very Throdnall. The town's main products are railway carriages and hindsight.

âI always thought there was something
not quite right
about that marriage,' commented an osteopath's wife in the Warwick Bar of the Cornucopia Hotel in Brindley Street.

Where does the story of Nick and Alison Divot begin? In the womb, Alison would say, but we won't go back that far. Too much speculation and not enough action.

In childhood, then? Certainly Alison felt that her childhood was deeply significant. Her mum had told her, so many times, oh so many times till she was sick of it, how, when she was two, at tea, at Granny Huddersfield's, she had said, âWhy haven't I got a willy like the other boys?' How everyone had laughed. âI wish I was a boy' became fourth in her top twenty childhood sayings, behind, âMummy, I'm bored', âMy tummy hurts' and âAre we nearly there?'

Marge had never seen anything particularly significant in that remark at Granny Huddersfield's. She wouldn't have told the story if she had. Even Alison didn't realise its full significance. âI wish I was a boy.' Well, a child has many wishes, a child has many heartaches and disappointments and learns to live with them, and Alison never said, âI'm going to be a boy when I grow up.'

They weren't well off. Her father, Bernie, was a guard on the railways, and they lived on the wrong side of the tracks in the
South Yorkshire town of Thurmarsh. Marge âdid' for a couple of families on the posher side of the town. She cycled to work.

They had two daughters. Alison was the elder by two years, and ruled Jen with a rod of iron. Alison was brighter than Jen. Jen was prettier than Alison. All the motives for civil war were there.

Jen was blonde, gorgeous, delicate, fluffy, self-righteous and devious, with the attention span of a hyper-active newt. Alison was dark, intense, passionate, tough, rough, gruff, hot-tempered, straightforward and an utter tomboy. Her greatest pleasure in life was hitting Jen. When her mother rebuked her, she retorted indignantly, âBut, Mum, that's what sisters are for.'

Alison believed herself to be utterly charmless. Tall, gawky, awkward, she was all of these, but no, she was not charmless. She loved the theatre, appeared in all the school plays. Her charm was in the passion in her eyes as she brought other people to life. Of course she was often cast in the male parts, to her mother's fury. âWhy couldn't Andrea Houseman have played Richard the Third? She's got a hump already.' Her charm was in the toss of her head as she climbed the scratty trees that lined the River Rundle. Her charm was in her honesty.

How lucky that her mother didn't âdo' for the Divots, in genteel, middle-class Upcot Avenue. How could Nick have fallen for his charlady's daughter?

Nick was an only child. His father, like Alison's, was in transport, but his transport was the stuff of Bernie's dreams. Daniel Divot was a purser on the cruise ships. Barbara Divot hated the sea. Nick was a mother's boy.

Nick and Alison saw each other once, actually, when they were both aged eight. It was a lovely summer's day. An artist had dotted the sky with just the right number of puffy white clouds. There was no breeze at all in the Divot garden, and just a faint zephyr up on the top of the sycamore that Alison had climbed.
She had trespassed into the garden of the house next to the Divots. Nobody in Thurmarsh was better than Alison Kettlewell at climbing trees. She stood right at the top, like an overgrown stork, holding on with one hand. She was Queen Boadicea. She scanned the horizon for enemy troops. Nothing. The only person she could see was a thin, sandy-haired child in the next door garden, who was doing something very earnest and very boring with a book. She gave a great cheery holler and saw the child jump.

Nick was just about to press an oak leaf into a notebook when the holler startled him. He looked up and saw Alison. His eyes widened in amazement. He waved. To his horror she waved back so vigorously that she almost fell, clutched the top branch, and swung on it so violently that it seemed it must break. He was terrified that she would fall and he would have to do something. She wasn't frightened at all. Gradually, she regained her equilibrium, but not before he had broken out in a fine sweat.

A homing pigeon, en route from Hyde Park to Featherstone, flew past Alison. She reached as if to grab it, and gave a bloodcurdling yell. Startled, it shat itself. A white stream descended into the Divot garden and fell plop all over the cover of Nick's notebook, on which he had written, in a careful childish hand, blissfully unaware of his spelling mistake, âThurmarsh and Evnirons â Summer 1964'.

The pigeon flew on, unaware of the tenuous initial link it had provided for the unusual love story of Nick and Alison.

Nick spent much of his childhood reading. His mother thought that he was literary, but he read because he preferred other people's lives to his own. His favourite book was
Tess of the D'Urbevilles
. He was drawn to its miseries like a gambler to the tables. He read it eleven times. His mother disapproved; she wanted him to read different books, she found his obsession unhealthy, so he had to read it in secret, which added to its appeal.

âNick,' she said one day, âI hope you aren't reading
Tess
again.'

âOf course I'm not,' he lied.

âYou should find a real girl to be friends with.'

He looked at her in astonishment. How could somebody as experienced as a grown-up get something as wrong as that?

He had the sense not to tell her that he didn't keep reading the book because he loved Tess, that he read it because he was Tess.

He always used his father's postcards as bookmarks. âI was so sad you weren't beside me as we steamed into the heart of Venice. Your trip to Filey sounded fun.'

It's hardly surprising that he was a late developer. One speech day, when he was sixteen â¦ âI'll be with you in spirit, old son. I'll think of you as I hunt out a little trinket for your mother in the souks' â¦ as he was walking towards the hall with his embarrassingly overdressed mother, they overheard a boy say, âNick's so retarded he thinks Wanking is a town in China.' He met his mother's eye and blushed. âI always was bad at geography,' he said. He had no idea whether she'd understood. He had no idea about anything, really.

Three weeks later, in the last week of term, he met Alison properly.

A fine summer's evening in Thurmarsh. In the cricket pavilion there was a meeting of the Thurmarsh Grammar School Bisexual Humanist Society, to debate the rather ambitious proposition âIs unselfishness impossible?'

Nick's friend Prentice, a thickset, plump youth with a round face, had urged him to join. As they'd approached the pavilion for the first time, Nick had said, âWhat am I doing here? Why are you bringing me here?'

âI want you to speak,' said Prentice. âI want you to take part. I want to draw you out of yourself.'

âWhy?'

âBecause I'm your friend. Incidentally, it's about time you called me by my Christian name.'

âWhat is your Christian name?'

âPrentice.'

âWell, it'll be just the same as calling you by your surname.'

âIt won't. I'll know. Will you do it, Nick?'

âAll right then â¦ Prentice.'