Sex and Other Changes (24 page)

Dear dear Pat. How you cheered Nicola up by giving her a shared secret. It made her feel human.

Mr McWhinnie breezed in at eleven.

‘Well, Nicola, how are you feeling?' he asked in an urgent, low voice.

‘Not so bad,' she said bravely.

‘The operation was a complete success,' he said. ‘I'm very pleased with the way it went. I took great care over you.'

‘Thank you.'

‘I don't need thanking – it's my job – but I do deserve, and need, proper answers. Come on. Nobody, after what you've had done to you, feels “not so bad”. How are you really feeling?'

‘Very, very sore. Moving is agony. Lying still is purgatory.'

‘It will never be worse than it is now, and it will pass, but slowly, I'm afraid. How do you feel … psychologically?'

‘Confused.'

He nodded sympathetically.

‘Depressed.'

He nodded solemnly.

‘Great sense of anti-climax.'

He nodded resignedly.

He was a versatile nodder.

‘Doctor, I don't really feel … a woman. Am I a woman?'

‘It's hardly the moment to debate the philosophy of it,' he said. ‘You no longer have a penis or testes. You do not have female chromosomes. You do have a very nice vagina, though I say so as shouldn't. You even have a very passable attempt at a clitoris.'

‘Thank you. Thank you very much.'

‘My pleasure. I wouldn't specialise in this if I didn't believe it worked, Ms Divot, I can assure you. Relax. Help your body to heal itself and I believe that you will eventually feel good about it all. But you're going to have to be strong. This is only the beginning.'

‘I thought it would be the end.'

‘Every end necessitates another beginning. It never ends. It cannot end, except in death, and, we hope, not even then. That is the nature of life. You'll be just fine, Nicola. Just fine.'

*

The next day, when Alan came in, Nicola asked if they had gone to the Komedy Klub.

‘We did, yes. We didn't know how to get out of it.'

‘What was it like?'

‘Awful. Three-quarters empty, and not one laugh from start to finish.'

‘How did Prentice react?'

‘Smiled broadly and said we'd been a wonderful audience. Oh, and he sent his love. Said he'd always liked you, but now you were a woman – wow!'

‘Oh God.'

Gray telephoned to check that it would be all right for him to visit.

Nicola didn't really want to see him. The last time, he had been lying naked on top of his bed with a Tottenham Hotspur away shirt round his pudenda. This was something that she didn't feel well enough to comment on, but she wasn't sure if it would be possible to ignore it. She had only had the operation five days ago. She hadn't been allowed to get out of bed yet. She was weak.

She couldn't hurt him, though, and it had been very considerate of him to phone.

She prepared herself carefully for his visit, so that she would be able to cope. She sensed that the visit was hugely important for their relationship. It was too soon – too soon – but that was life, it wasn't a neatly packaged commodity.

She had been very moved by Em and she sensed that she was going to be very moved by Gray. I've been lucky in my children, she thought.

Her children! She felt surprised when she reflected that, despite her inadequacies as the male she never really was, she had managed to produce two children. Especially Gray. He was their little miracle, really. By that time their sex life was
becoming very spasmodic, yet she vividly recalled the actual night when he was conceived as having been quite a passionate occasion. Alison had been exceptionally aroused and romantic and had said some wonderful things about him and her love for him, and they had risen to a rare joyous orgasm in a tide of words and compliments. Call me a sentimental fool if you must, she told herself in her hospital bed with the creased sheets and the crumbs, but Fm utterly convinced that it was that depth of positive emotion that enabled Alison to conceive.

She could see all this so much more clearly, now that she was no longer a man, as if she was looking down on it from the best seat in the house. She looked at Gray, on his one and only visit to the hospital, as if she had never seen him before. He took after his mother more than after her. In fact she could hardly see any of her in Gray at all. Perhaps, because of the level of emotion that his mother put into her love-making that night, in a sense Gray was more hers than hers, or, to put it another way, Nick had only been the conduit. Perhaps, though, it was an indication of a certain conceit in her that she'd never thought their gawky offspring to be very good-looking!

All this was flashing through her mind as they steered their way through the first shoals of their conversation. What did you have for lunch? What essays are you writing at the moment? How are Arsenal doing?

She shouldn't have asked that, partly because Gray was scornful of her pathetic attempts to show an interest in football, but mainly because it made it difficult for her not to refer to the affair of the Tottenham Hotspur shirt. (Alan had explained that Arsenal and Tottenham were intense rivals, and that Gray, a keen Arsenal supporter, had managed to enjoy sexual pleasure while also inferring that the hated Tottenham were wankers, a joke possibly cleverer and certainly funnier than anything Prentice had ever managed.)

Well, she would have to refer to it now.

‘Er … Gray?' she said. ‘I'm sorry I barged into your room without knocking.'

‘It's something everyone does sometimes, Dad.'

‘Well it's still wrong. I should have knocked.'

‘I wasn't speaking about that, Dad.'

‘Oh.'

‘I feel ridiculous calling you Dad, Dad.'

‘Em is just going to use Nicola.'

‘That makes it sound as if you're not my dad.'

‘I am your dad. You know I am. I know I am. We'll still know all that, even if you call me Nicola. I think you should try calling me Nicola.'

‘I'll try, Dad. Oh, sorry. Er … Nicola?'

‘Yes, Gray.'

‘The world's full of horrible people who abuse other people in all sorts of disgusting ways.'

‘Absolutely right, sadly.'

‘What I was doing, you know, when you saw me, I wasn't hurting anybody but myself. I mean they call it self-abuse, don't they?'

‘They do, yes.'

‘Well …' He expelled a deep breath. Nicola could see that he was finding all this agonisingly embarrassing. ‘… I've been thinking. It's the same with you.'

‘In what way, Gray?'

‘You're only hurting yourself. Via the surgeon, I mean, but you know what I mean. Other people who are sexually …'

He ran out of acceptable words. Nicola prompted him.

‘Odd? Deviant? Sick?'

‘No! Well …' Nicola could see Gray's brain working overtime to find an acceptable word. He wasn't exactly what you'd call literate.‘… unusual.' Not bad. ‘Other people who are sexually unusual hurt other people. You only hurt yourself.'

‘True.'

‘So what I'm saying is, it doesn't upset me any more. I can live with it.'

‘Good.'

‘I can accept you fully as you are.'

‘Good. I'm glad, Gray.' She felt that she sounded insincere. ‘No, I mean it. I'm very glad, Gray.'

‘Thanks. Nicola?'

‘Yes, Gray.'

‘Please promise not to come to speech day or anything like that, though.'

Bernie didn't go at all. Afterwards he told her, ‘Hospitals! I would have come, but it's me chest.'

Nicola longed to call The Starchy One Mrs Mussolini to her face. She became terrified that she would give way to the delicious temptation.

She didn't, but she did give way to an almost uncontrollable urge to be confrontational.

‘You don't like me, do you?' she asked.

Mrs Mussolini stared at her in astonishment.

‘It doesn't come into it,' she said. ‘I haven't even considered it.'

‘You don't approve of “The Operation”.'

She went even redder than normal. Nicola was pleased to see that. She'd got through to her.

‘I suppose I don't, no.'

‘How would you like it if you had a prick and balls?'

She was outraged, appalled, terrified, out of her depth.

‘I … I couldn't have,' she spluttered. ‘I am a woman.'

‘Exactly,' said Nicola, ‘and so am I, and always have been. So how do you think I've felt all these years?'

‘If you're unhappy with my level of care,' said Mrs Mussolini, ‘you should make a complaint. There are procedures.'

Nicola realised that Mrs Mussolini would have led a happier
life if there were procedures for existing – preferably with an instructional booklet in five languages.

She realised something about herself too. She had come to expect too much from her transformation. The ending of confusion. The removal of trauma. The banishment of what was inappropriate. That was all she had a right to expect, and it was enough. It was everything.

Ferenc presented her with a vast Get Well card signed by every member of the staff. It was a surprise to her, in one or two cases, that they were prepared to put their names to such a message. It was a surprise to her, in one or two other cases, to find that they could write.

The sight of Ferenc made her uneasy. By this time she was walking up and down the ward – very gingerly, very slowly – and even sitting in the day room occasionally – but she happened to be in bed when he came, and she wished that she hadn't been, it made her feel rather defenceless.

‘Now we all agree that you are not to worry,' said Ferenc. ‘The hotel is in good hands.'

He knew that that was exactly what was worrying her.

‘None of us want you to rush back,' he said, and then he tried to make it look as if he'd just realised that he'd said something tactless. ‘Oh, that sounds awful, but you know what I mean. Your health is paramount, and we can cope. I'm sorry about that. My English, it is …'

Nicola finished his sentence for him.‘… faultless and subtle.'

‘I have some news that will cheer the cockles of your heart.'

‘Good Lord. That good!'

‘That good.' He smiled again. ‘Takings last week were 2.7 per cent up.'

Nicola felt as if she'd been struck to the heart with a dagger.

‘That's wonderful news,' she said. ‘That'll certainly speed my recovery.'

‘That's what we thought,' he said. ‘How
is
your progress? Is there much pain?'

‘A great deal,' she said, ‘but gradually less, and I can cope. We Divots are made of stalwart stuff.'

‘Now what else can I tell you? Oh yes. You remember Emrys, the Welsh commis chef?'

A tremor of fear passed through Nicola. What had happened to Emrys?

‘How could I forget him? I've only been away ten days. Thrown another wobbly, has he?'

‘Not at all. No wobbly.'

‘Good. That's good.'

Pat came in to check her blood pressure.

‘Ferenc, meet Pat, my helper and angel. Pat, this is Ferenc Gulyas, my assistant manager, currently holding the fort with distinction and aplomb.'

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Gulyas.'

Pat's second glance revealed that she found Ferenc interesting – what was it about him and women? – while he gave her a quick once-over, face, breasts, crutch, thighs, expertly concealed but not quite expertly enough for Nicola.

‘Please call me Ferenc,' he said, which was Hungarian for ‘I wouldn't say no if you offered me your body.' He turned back to Nicola. ‘No, Nicola, no wobbly. He asked me if he could put a few Welsh specialities on the menu – just one each week, but rotating – Glamorgan sausages, cawl, cockle bisque, sea bass in laverbread sauce.'

‘Oh he's asked me time and time again. I've explained that it's impossible till I'm as blue in the face as a bottle of Welsh water.'

‘I've agreed to let him try it.'

Nicola met his eye and held it. She wasn't going to say anything more about this in front of Pat.

‘That's funny,' said Pat. ‘Your blood pressure's up.'

‘That
is
funny,' she said. ‘I can't think why that can be, can you, Ferenc?'

Ferenc shrugged. He could even make a shrug seem sexy. When Pat had gone, he said, ‘You're upset. You think I have exceeded my powers.'

‘Well, yes, frankly. I want to encourage Emrys, but there's no rhyme or reason for having Welsh specialities in Warwickshire.'

‘Or Hungarian ones?'

‘What??' Nicola's heart was beating much too fast. Thank goodness Pat wasn't there to monitor it. ‘What have you done?'

‘I shouldn't have mentioned it. I'm exciting you. That is bad.'

‘What do you mean: “or Hungarian ones”? What have you done?'

‘Just one Hungarian speciality each week,' gleamed Ferenc. ‘That's all. This week, duck goulash.'

‘This week
! You haven't let the grass grow under your feet, have you?'

‘We have a saying in Hungary: Don't wait till it rains before buying an umbrella.'

‘We have a saying in England: When the cat's away the mice will play. No, I'm sorry, Ferenc, but I can't see duck goulash catching on in Throdnall.'

‘Mr Summers thought it tasty. He's going to recommend it to his members for the next Rotary.'

She was being manoeuvred into an impossible position. She was going to appear petty and jealous, and all because … all because …

All because she was petty and jealous – and she mustn't be. She just mustn't be. She forced herself to calm down.

‘Well, that's all wonderful,' she said, trying hard to sound sincere (always one of her problems, even when she was sincere, in fact possibly a greater problem when she was sincere than when she wasn't, and therefore not so much of a problem at the moment).