Sex and Other Changes (15 page)

‘Terrific,' said Nicola. ‘Thank you for that, Gray. You've made my evening.'

And then Bernie came in very upset and said, ‘I've just been to the loo in Garibaldi Terrace.'

‘What do you mean?' asked Nicola.

‘I know what Dad means,' said Alison. ‘It's obvious. He went where the loo would have been in Garibaldi Terrace because he got confused.'

‘That's right,' said Bernie. ‘I were snoozing. I woke up. I said to her, “I'll just pop to t'loo”, and I went there and it were the broom cupboard.'

‘I hope you didn't pee on the brooms,' said Gray.

‘Gray!' shouted Nicola edgily. ‘That's no way to speak to your grandfather.'

‘No, but what I mean is, me mind's beginning to go,' said Bernie.

‘Your mind isn't beginning to go,' said Alison, putting her arm round him. ‘I never heard such nonsense.'

‘Of course it isn't,' said Nicola. ‘Why, I myself went to the Gents' in the hotel the other day by mistake. Force of habit.'

‘Aye,' said Bernie. ‘That's different, is that. Force of habit, I can understand that in your case, Nick.'

‘Nicola.'

‘You what?'

‘I'm calling myself Nicola now, Bernie. I did tell you.'

‘You see. Me mind's going.'

‘Your mind is
not
going, Dad,' said Alison. ‘You'd been asleep and you woke up and your mind played a trick … a wish-fulfilment if you like. You wanted to be back in Garibaldi Terrace. You wanted Mum to still be alive.'

‘Oh aye. I wanted that right enough.'

Alison was last to bed as usual, because she had to clear everything away and switch off all the lights.

She was so desperately tired, too tired to sleep. She knew that Nicola, lying beside her, was pretending to be asleep. She thought of all the long hours that he had spent like that, over the years, never knowing that she didn't feel let down, that she had dreaded their inappropriate sexual fumblings just as much as he had. She suspected that they both imagined that everyone else in the street was doing it fifteen times a night, followed by a quickie on the breakfast table.

As she lay there, she wished that she had understood, years ago, why they didn't want sex with each other. She would never have embarked on her little affair if she had.

And it had been a little affair. Just three times she had gone to bed with her ‘lover'. He was an attractive and persuasive man, and she had felt lonely and pleased to be wanted, so pleased to be wanted. Three agonies of hope and despair and fulfilment and disgust. It was on the third occasion, as he thrashed around like an elephant in Chester Zoo, that she had suddenly wished that she was a man and he a woman. God, what a shock. And that had been the time that she had conceived! One in the eye for those sentimental fools who said that you had to be in the right mood to conceive. That had been the day when she had understood that her childhood regret at not being a boy was the central fact of her existence. And nine months later she had given birth to Gray. What a secret to carry to the grave.

She had sensed that she was pregnant almost immediately. She couldn't be certain, but she couldn't risk it, so she'd had to get Nick to make love to her very shortly after that. With the compliments she paid him the night it happened, the fervency with which she told him how much she loved and admired him, success was sudden and joyous. Gray was born eight months and seven days later, and Nick never worked it out sufficiently accurately to suspect anything.

All this went through her mind in the long reaches of the endless night, as she lay next to Nicola, listening to her pretending to be asleep.

The carriage clock in the dining room struck three. Only three! They couldn't lie there like this all night, pretending to be asleep. It was farcical.

It's very hard, at three in the morning, to be up-beat, but Alison was nothing if not a fighter, and there in that bed in the middle of the long, slow night she forced herself back into a spirit of strength and resolve. Suddenly she knew that Mr Beresford would not defeat them, Cornucopia Hotels would not defeat them, Gray's warnings would not deflect them.

She longed to tell Nicola of her plans, but it was too soon – too soon to tell Bernie, she had to give him more time to grieve, and so she couldn't burden Nicola by telling her in secret.

She must offer some support, though, so she pretended to wake up, stirred, groaned, grunted, stretched, sighed. Moments later, Nicola began to pretend to wake up, groaned, stirred, stretched, sighed, grunted.

‘Are you awake?' whispered Alison.

‘Yes,' whispered Nicola. ‘Just woke up. I was having a terrible dream.'

‘Nicola?'

‘Yes?'

‘There are bound to be moments of doubt, but we mustn't let them defeat us.'

We! What a give-away! But Nicola didn't seem to have noticed.

Alison felt a great wave of love for Nicola. Instinctively, her fingers felt for her prick.

Nicola gasped.

‘Alison!' she whispered. ‘What are you doing? Please don't touch that. It's a dead thing, waiting to be removed.'

So much love to give, and no way of giving it. Hours later, the carriage clock struck four, and some time after that, eventually, they both fell asleep.

Nicola presented herself at Cornucopia House, that inelegant glass box, that beacon of budget architecture, ten minutes early.

She was looking as smart as she knew how to be, not too blatantly feminine but not remotely masculine either. She'd chosen a grey pin-stripe trouser suit which she wore with a white blouse. Her shoes and handbag were black. She looked the essence of a well-groomed businesswoman. Alison had helped put the finishing touches to her make-up, and now, as she titivated in the Ladies', she felt that she really didn't look at all bad.

She sat in the ante-room to the Board Room, facing a large photograph of the Amsterdam Cornucopia, their first venture into Europe. She opened a copy of
Hotels and Hoteliers
and thumbed through the Situations Vacant.

Manageress required for elegant seaside hotel. Transsexuals preferred. The successful candidate must be requiring three months off for a major operation in the near future.

Some chance.

She hunted for a bridge column. There wasn't one. Pity. She felt starved of bridge. She hadn't yet dared go to the bridge club and tell them that she wanted to transfer to the ladies' team.

She tried to concentrate on an article entitled ‘Tomorrow's Food?'

Will the day come when hotel chains will cook their food centrally in powder form and send it to their individual hotels to be reconstituted? The savings could be enormous and Sebastian Snodgrass of the Instant Gourmet Group believes it could soon become a viable option.

She snapped the magazine shut. That sort of thing was only going to depress her. She recalled an astonishing word that Alison had used in bed the other night. She had said, ‘We mustn't let them defeat us.' We! What an amazing word for her to use. What a woman. She was so involved in Nicola's sex change, so supportive of it, that she thought of it as a joint project. Nicola mustn't let her down.

A secretary, neat enough but rather shown up by Nicola's smartness, approached uncertainly.

Nicola stood up.

‘I'm sorry,' said the secretary. ‘I was looking for Mr Divot.'

‘I am Mr Divot.'

The secretary hid her amazement most professionally. Nicola sympathised with her for her slight discomfiture. She should have been warned.

‘Ah.'

‘Quite.'

‘This way.'

‘Thank you.'

She opened the door of the Board Room and ushered Nicola in. She found herself in a large, long room dominated by a huge table, oblong with shallowly rounded ends. At one side of the table sat three men. At the other side, all the chairs had been removed except one.

Along the wall behind the men there was a huge picture
window. Along the opposite wall were paintings of leading Cornucopia hotels. The Throdnall was not among them.

‘Good morning … er?' said the man in the middle.

‘Ms Divot.'

‘Do sit down, Ms Divot.'

Nicola sat down very carefully indeed. She was beginning to get more practised at not squashing her genitalia in her tights, but you couldn't be too careful.

She felt very isolated in her solitary chair. That, of course, was the idea.

There was silence as she arranged herself, and the silence continued after she was settled. It made her feel uneasy. That, of course, was the idea.

It is said that one's whole life flashes past one as one is drowning, and at that moment every aspect of the Throdnall Cornucopia flashed through Nicola's mind. She realised, to her amazement, that she loved that crappy old hotel. She loved the worn, stained carpets, the dusty chandeliers, the creaking, achingly slow lifts, Paulo's sad limp as he struggled across the barn-like restaurant with their over-priced wine list, the synchronised dome lifting to reveal the pitiful creations of Leonard Balby from Goole.

Behind the three men Nicola could see a great expanse of crisp blue sky criss-crossed by widening vapour trails. London's skyscrapers were glinting in bright sunlight.

‘Ms Divot,' began the man in the middle, a large, crumpled man with a paunch and a double chin. ‘I am Sir Terence Manningham, Chairman of Cornucopia Hotels. On my right is Mr Jeremy Barnstorm, OBE, Managing Director.' He indicated a neat, dapper man with an elegant suit, an expensive haircut and a well-groomed smile. ‘On my left is Mr Brian Jukes, Personnel Officer.' He pointed towards a tall, untidy man wearing a lurid tie and an expression of anxiety.

Nicola felt an absurd pride. They had brought the heavy mob in for her.

‘We have a board meeting this afternoon, so I'm afraid you've got the heavy mob,' said Sir Terence Manningham. He switched on a smile, but only in order to switch it off abruptly. ‘We have been sent faxes of an article in the
Throdnall Advertiser?
He invested deep contempt for local newspapers into those last two words. ‘Do you have any comment?'

‘Not really,' said Nicola, trying to make her voice sound soft and feminine. ‘Pretty accurate on the whole.'

‘Why didn't you inform us that you were planning a sex change?' asked Brian Jukes.

‘I didn't think it relevant.'

‘You didn't think it relevant,' said Jeremy Barnstorm, OBE in recognition of services to himself. ‘It's hardly a minor detail.'

‘Not to me, no, but I fail to see how it could affect my ability to do my job.'

‘You fail to see how it could affect your ability to do your job!' Jeremy Barnstorm had come to hotels via steel, from where he had received a substantial settlement on his dismissal for poor results. He had gone to the steel industry from electricity, from where he had also received a substantial settlement on his dismissal for poor results. Clearly someone clever enough to receive repeated payments for failing must be the ideal man to run Cornucopia Hotels, especially as he was completely ignorant of hotels and would therefore come unencumbered by ideas. Nicola had to admit to a feeling of disappointment that, on the evidence of this interview, the brilliant man's technique of repeating everything she said seemed rather basic.

She thought of saying, ‘Yes, I do. I fail to see how it could affect my ability to do my job', but then she thought that if nobody moved the conversation on the interview might go on for ever.

‘Yes, I do,' she said. ‘After all, I'm still the same person with the same brain, the same principles and the same experience. I must point out that I am not so much turning into a woman as
accepting that I should always have been one and ironing out a few minor details.'

‘Ironing out a few minor details,' said Jeremy Barnstorm, OBE for services to repeating things. ‘That sounds a bit of an understatement for a sex change.'

‘Yes, I like understatement. I'm very British.'

Nicola thought, afterwards, that she was being guided by her feminine intuition, the intuition that had so influenced her in deciding to become a woman. She hadn't intended to adopt so bold an attitude. She'd had no tactical plans as she entered the room.

‘You wouldn't deny, I presume, that your sex change might affect how you're perceived?' asked Brian Jukes.

‘Absolutely not,' she said, ‘but that's other people's problem, not mine. I would also point out that in the nature of my work I don't have a great deal of day-to-day contact with the general public. They meet our waiters, our head waiter, our sommelier, our porters, our receptionists, our bar staff, but not me. If a manager does his or her job well enough, he or she is invisible.'

‘Well now,' said Sir Terence Manningham, ‘in considering whether you are one Divot that needs to be replaced – huh! …'

‘Ha ha ha ha,' laughed Jeremy Barnstorm.

‘Her her her her,' laughed Brian Jukes.

Oh God, thought Nicola. You'd think these people in these positions would be bright enough to realise that an adult has heard every possible joke about his name several hundred times at least. But she smiled, thinking as she smiled how callous it was of Sir Terence to joke about her possible dismissal in front of her.

‘… we have to consider the publicity angle,' continued Sir Terence complacently. ‘Publicity of this kind …' He waved the fax. ‘… is not helpful. This sort of thing could lose you the Rotary. Bit of a disaster, I would have thought, in Throdnall, if you lost the Rotary Club.'

‘If publicity worries you,' said Nicola, ‘I hope you'll reflect on the kind of publicity you might receive from the sexual equality lobby in these politically correct times if you sacked me almost immediately after I'd decided to become a woman.'

Think her naive if you must (and when she looked back with hindsight she was astounded by her naivety), but she hadn't even thought of this line of approach. It only occurred to her as she listened to Sir Terence.