The New Woman (10 page)

It was the worst moment of her life.

‘That went well,’ she said.

Eilish

Simon’s hurt seemed to shake the wooden floor beneath my feet. I heard a bellowed
Please tell me this is a hoax
; and, a little later,
You should’ve been drowned at birth.

Simon wished his father dead. His father, who had wept with joy when he was born, and never wanted to put him down; who paced the house with him all night when he was colicky; who didn’t want to send him to kindergarten (
but he’s so
little); who cancelled meetings to go to school plays; who got out of bed at two in the morning on countless occasions—without ever once complaining—to collect a drunken, truculent teenager from
parties. This was a father who’d loved his son without question, and never asked for anything in return. This was the father who’d betrayed us all.

Luke was speaking again, but quietly. I couldn’t hear his words. They didn’t matter. I turned away from the window and looked around the room. Our room. His chest of drawers dominated one wall, with the antique mirror standing on top. Beside that lay his ivory-backed hairbrush, a lint remover, cufflinks, a handful of loose change and a black deodorant spray. Lovely, familiar stuff. A man’s stuff.

That was when I began to wonder.

One by one, I opened his drawers and emptied their contents onto the floor. Sweaters. Weekend shirts. Socks. Boxer shorts. All his clothes were in muted colours: black, grey, burgundy, faun. Luke had excellent taste, and there was nothing ambivalent about the things strewn around my feet. These were masculine garments. I lifted the heavy drawers right out and piled them onto the bed, searching for hidden stashes. Nothing.

Outside, a car was fleeing down the drive with a crash of gears. Simon and family, presumably. Good. I was glad they were leaving. Simon and I would talk later, but at this moment I wasn’t up to carrying his fear and anger as well as my own.

When Luke and I had bought Smith’s Barn, it was just that, a barn, complete with old farm machinery and nesting pigeons. The renovation had been my project. Off one corner of our bedroom, under the eaves, I’d got the builder to make a walk-in cupboard. It’s eccentric, with a sharply sloping roof and plastered walls at crazy angles. I kept my shoes and evening dresses in there, and Luke his work clothes and cricket gear. I turned on the light and stood in the cramped space, looking along Luke’s rack: suits, ties and striped shirts in an ordered row. His shoes were lined up underneath, sober and polished. Then my gaze came to rest on his leather overnight bag, not yet unpacked from Norwich. He’d dumped it in a corner when he was grabbing things to wear today. I dragged it closer and peered inside: shirts, a tie, pyjamas. His
navy-blue jersey, smelling of lanolin and Luke. Oh, how I loved that smell. I buried my face in it, and allowed myself a moment of pretending this wasn’t happening.

A John Grisham.

Socks, neatly paired.

At the very bottom, I spotted a calico bag with a drawstring top. I couldn’t remember seeing it before but it looked innocuous; perhaps a hotel laundry bag. Later, I asked myself what the hell I’d expected to see in that bag. Laundry, I suppose; maybe damp swimming things. Luke had mentioned a pool at his hotel in Norwich, and he’s always liked a morning dip.

I loosened the string, tipped the bag upside down and watched the contents tumble to the floor. They seemed to fall in slow motion.

Kate

‘Whisky, gin, or brandy?’ she asked, riffling through the cupboard. ‘Oblivion is what’s called for after bad news. And this is bad news, Dad. This is very bad news, to be honest.’

His voice was muffled by his hands. ‘Tea, please.’

‘A nice cup of Earl Grey! How homely. See? You’re Mr Conventional, after all.’

He smiled: his hesitant smile, which always looked as though he feared he wasn’t quite welcome. ‘You can have no idea how much I wish that were true.’

One of Kate’s ex-flatmates had taken a course in counselling. She used to bang on about the stages of grief: disbelief, anger, bargaining and . . . well, some other things that Kate couldn’t remember. Simon seemed to have moved pretty quickly into anger, but she still held out hope that her father was going through some kind of male menopause and would soon snap out of it. She kept glancing at him as she made the tea.

‘Dad, this is too wacky. Even for me. And believe me, I’ve done wacky.’

‘I know. And I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but . . . have you talked to a doctor? I just wondered if Simon might have a point. Maybe your hormones are all screwed up.’

‘Actually, yes,’ he said. ‘I mentioned it to a doctor about five years ago.’

‘Not Dr Ryan?’ Kate squirmed at the idea of her father facing the family GP across his desk and announcing that he was really a woman.

‘Good Lord, no! Don Ryan’s a governor of St Matthew’s with me. No, I made myself an appointment with a private GP in London when I was going through a very bad patch. I didn’t quite come clean with her, but I dropped hints and she ordered blood tests. My hormone levels were just what you’d expect for a man of my age. She prescribed antidepressants. I took them because I was feeling bloody awful, and they got me through.’

Kate’s phone was vibrating. She pulled it out of her bra, where she generally kept it.

When r u going 2 collect ur stuff?

‘Tosspot,’ she spluttered, and turned off the phone.

‘Owen?’

‘Owen. Never mind him.’ She thought furiously as she poured boiling water onto tea. ‘This is the twenty-first century, Dad. All those male/female role things, all those stereotypes, they should be ancient history.’

‘I wish they were.’

‘They
are
. You’re not a chauvinist moron, you’ve always respected everybody equally.’

‘Of course.’

‘Well then! Gender shouldn’t even be relevant in this day and age. Why are you destroying our family for a non-issue? There’s no difference between the sexes. Not anymore. You don’t have to be a woman, you can be a feminine man.’

He shook his head. He looked exhausted. ‘From where I’m sitting, there are differences so fundamental that I’ve been torn apart.’

She gave him a mug of tea and sat down. ‘We all know how it works. Boys get given macho toys like Action Man—look at Nico with that little Jeep he carries around, a miniature version of his dad’s—what’s the message there? Girls get given bloody Barbie dolls, which tells them it’s cool to be bulimic and dress like a princess. They’re all forced into roles that may not suit them at all.’

‘That last sentence is certainly true. I’m a testament to that.’

‘Okay.’ Kate felt that she was getting somewhere. ‘Okay! Perhaps that’s what this is about? You just need to express yourself in ways you couldn’t when Grandad was still alive. Have you thought of that? You’ve been repressing your feminine side. Maybe you should take up . . . I dunno, painting? Drama? Tapestry?’

He didn’t reply for a while, which didn’t surprise her. Kate had never heard her father give an answer he couldn’t stand behind. He didn’t shoot from the hip. She wished she could say the same about herself.

‘You see,’ he said eventually, ‘this began long, long ago.’

‘How long ago?’

‘Before I knew what it was to be a boy, or a girl. I think I was about two when I first went into Wendy’s bedroom and got dressed in her clothes. They were too big for me. They trailed on the floor, tripped me up, but I loved them. She had skirts and dresses and lovely white tights. Bangles.’ He was almost smiling—a wonky, embarrassed grimace. ‘Ribbons for her hair. My family told me off, but I wouldn’t stop, so they locked me out of her room. I screamed the place down.’

Kate had been a tomboy, never out of jeans if she could help it, and couldn’t see what the fuss was about. She wouldn’t have been seen dead in white tights, at any age.

Her father seemed to read her thoughts. ‘Please, Kate, try to understand. I longed for those things because I wanted to be like other girls.’

‘Other girls? But you weren’t . . . Oh. I see. You were.’

‘I
was
. Inside me was a laughing girl, with long hair. I called her Lucia. Every time I went to sleep, I prayed that when I woke up I’d have become Lucia.’

‘How? You had . . . um.’ Kate rolled her eyes and pointed downwards. ‘You had a boy’s body. Boy’s bits.’

‘Which I hoped would drop off. One time, I even—well.’ Luke stopped and thought for a moment. ‘Never mind. I hated them more and more. I was faulty. I needed fixing.’

Kate wanted to shut her ears; she wanted to deny what was happening, to run away as Simon had done, but she couldn’t leave her parents in this mess.

‘So where do you go from here?’ she asked, fearing the answer.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Come on, Dad. You never do anything without thinking it through.’

He picked up a petal from the table and smoothed it on the palm of his hand. ‘I can’t go on as I am. I don’t think I’ll survive. Suicide’s pretty common among people like me.’

‘Don’t you dare. Even if you turned out to be a werewolf, you’re still
you
. We’d get used to you going all hairy, and baying at the moon and biting people.’

‘Werewolves are cool nowadays. So are vampires. Trannies are not.’

Together, they contemplated the waxy petal in his hand.

‘Where does that leave you?’ she asked.

Instead of answering, he put a finger to his lips. He was staring up at the gallery. Kate listened, and then she heard it too.

Eilish

The cries escaped me before I could smother them. For a time I was paralysed, staring in utter revulsion. Utter fascination. Utter desolation.

Silk and lace. A slip exactly like mine, but pale blue. A pair of sheer tights. An indigo dress with lace edging. Beautiful clothes, with beautiful textures.

Nausea surged through me. I threw down the calico bag and retched, covering my mouth with both hands. These things must have been hidden somewhere in our bedroom, perhaps for years. Every time we’d undressed one another, this secret stash—how far away? Fifteen feet?—was waiting for him. Did he imagine himself wearing these things when he was in bed with me?

I picked up the indigo dress, holding it away from my body as though it were a snake. He’d worn it. He’d slipped it over his head, and pulled up the zip, and twirled around. A faint perfume clung to its folds. Not his deodorant; something else. He must have a bottle of scent hoarded somewhere. Gritting my teeth, I took a fistful of fabric in each hand and tore it from one end to the other. I ripped and tore until the clothes were no more than a pile of rags. It didn’t take long; they were all made of delicate fabric.

I was destroying the slip when I heard a movement behind me, and looked around. Luke stood in the doorway, his eyes like craters in his white face. He looked at the rags on the floor, and then at me. He said nothing.

‘What did you see?’ I asked. ‘When you looked in the mirror. What monster did you see?’

‘I saw myself.’

I laughed at him. I laughed as loudly as I could. I don’t think I sounded sane. ‘You saw a man in a dress. For God’s sake, Luke, a man in a dress! Don’t you understand how ludicrous you must look?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why? Why parade around like a drag queen?’

‘Because it made me feel normal.’

I hated him. Right then and there, in that moment, I hated him. He was a stranger, a thief who’d cheated me out of everything that matters in this world. He’d taken my love, my youth,
my life. I snatched up the obscene remnants and hurled them at him. He didn’t move. They hit him in the face before fluttering forlornly around his feet.

‘Take your glad rags,’ I said. ‘And get out of my house.’

Ten

Luke

‘I can’t let you go off by yourself,’ said Kate.

‘I’m fine.’ I lifted my overnight bag and another suitcase into the car. ‘Please, darling. Stay with Mum for as long as you can.’

She was putting on a brave face, but I wasn’t fooled. My daughter isn’t quite as tough as she likes to pretend. Which of us is?

‘You said you were thinking of topping yourself, Dad.’

The noose was still waiting for me. As I’d packed my bags, throwing possessions haphazardly into suitcases, I’d heard the whispering of The Thought. My old enemy was delighted with the turn things had taken. It was still hoping to push me off that stool and into oblivion.

‘I wasn’t serious,’ I said lightly as I shut the car boot. ‘The damage has already been done, don’t you think? It’s a bit late to be bumping myself off.’

‘So you’ll be at the flat this evening?’

‘Yes.’

‘Alone?’

Again, the fear in her voice. I laid my hands on her shoulders. ‘My Kate. I’ve caused all this. I’m not the one who deserves your sympathy. Just drop me at the station, please, and come straight back. Mum is blameless, and she is
not
all right.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘I’ll be fine, I promise you. I feel terribly guilty, terribly sad, but I’m all right. I’ve told the truth—finally, after all these years. Now I have to live with the consequences.’

I’d seen Eilish again, just before I left the house. She was standing in the middle of the kitchen as I carried my bags downstairs.

‘So this is the end of our marriage,’ she said. ‘Death didn’t part us. Life got there first.’

I put down the cases and stepped closer to her.

‘Just go,’ she said, turning away. ‘You’re breaking my heart. Just go.’

Now, in these final moments, I looked up at the home we’d shared for thirty years. I thought I glimpsed her—a small movement, a shadow behind the kitchen windows. I hoped she might come outside. We’d never parted without saying goodbye.

Kate was following my gaze. ‘She isn’t coming, Dad.’

‘You’re right.’ I opened the driver’s door. ‘Let’s go.’

All the way to the station, Kate was tapping a frantic rhythm on her knees. She was doing her best to hide her horror, but I could see it in her fidgeting, in the wideness of her eyes—my militant child, who was once suspended from primary school for calling her bullying headmaster an arsehole. Kate had never been afraid of anybody, but she was frightened now.