Sex and Other Changes

by David Nobbs

  Something had been worrying Nicola for quite some time, and that was the business of Ferenc’s paintings. What did it matter whether she liked the man or not? Who was she to hold a creative artist back, especially in the imaginative desert that was Throdnall? It was on her conscience that she had never tried to encourage him about his paintings, as Lance had asked her to do.

  It was strange, perhaps, but she wanted a clean conscience before she went out with Gordon. She wanted no unfinished business hanging over her.

  She called Ferenc into her office. He looked slightly apprehensive.

  ‘I don’t expect you’ve any idea why I’ve called you in here, Ferenc,’ she said.

  ‘No. No, I did wonder.’

  ‘Yes.’ She paused, dangling him briefly on her line, she couldn’t resist it. ‘It’s your painting. I’m not at all happy about it.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘No, no. No particular painting. Your painting in general. Your painting as an activity.’

  ‘I never do it in working hours.’

  ‘I know. It’s a shame.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  His expressive face was alive with incomprehension. She was enjoying this.

  ‘Lance Windlass, who has the Lafayette Gallery in Biscuit Passage, tells me that you’re a much better painter than you believe.’

  ‘He does?’

  ‘He thinks you have a real talent. Minor, perhaps.’

  He frowned.

  ‘Minor?’

  ‘At present.’ Nicola smiled. ‘He believes it could become a major talent.’

  ‘I have so little time. Work. Mrs Gulyas. Sally’s a demanding woman.’

  I bet she is, Nicola thought. And then there are your bits on the side, if rumour is to be believed. Several bits on several sides, if only half of it is true.

  ‘The hotel needs paintings.’

  ‘Too right, but with the refurbishment …’

  They were reputed to have risen at last to second in the list of hotels to be refurbished.

  ‘No, no, Ferenc. I didn’t say “painting”. I said “paintings”. I think Mr Windlass would be prepared to give you a contract to produce paintings regularly – and so will I.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes. The refurbishment, now. That’s an idea. How about “before” and “after”? A record of the refurbishment. A record of an English hotel. Warts and all. Well, mainly warts, I suppose. A social document. In your style. I’m going to commission you.’

  ‘Do you have the authority to do that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, thank you very much.’

  ‘Please.’

  She stood up. He stood up. They shook hands. She went to open the door for him, and tripped: tripped over one of his shoes, almost fell, lurched across the room, clutched the hat-stand, fell slowly against the wall with it.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, disentangling herself, ‘I tripped over your shoe.’

  She looked down and noticed for the first time how large his feet were, for quite a small man.

  ‘I hadn’t noticed how large your feet are,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Sorry.’

  ‘Not at all. Er … Mrs Gulyas is a lucky woman.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The size of feet and … er … maybe it’s just an old wives’ tale.’ She couldn’t resist a little dig. The opportunity had opened up for her irresistibly. ‘Maybe, Ferenc, is it possible … not only Mrs Gulyas?’

  He went white. He looked embarrassed. Nicola Divot, you idiot. You’re a woman now. You can’t make such man-to-man insinuations.

  She was surprised that he was so embarrassed, though.

  Gordon picked her up in his pick-up, which was more suitable linguistically than stylistically, smelling as it did of dog and fuel.

  That Wednesday, in the Red Lion, she had rump steak, chips, peas, mushrooms, tomatoes and onion rings. Her partner, as they say in the food reviews, plumped for the mixed grill.

  She couldn’t remember, afterwards, what they talked about, for the simple reason that it wasn’t memorable.

  Yet she enjoyed it. That Wednesday evening was very ordinary indeed, but it was also one of the highlights of her life. She was the female partner on an evening out, and she felt comfortable with that.

  Gordon drove her back to Sunny Cottage, went round to usher her out of the pick-up as if it was a Rolls-Royce, and solemnly shook her hand.

  ‘Thank you for a nice evening, Gordon,’ she said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ve enjoyed it too. I can’t manage every Wednesday – Mother, you know – but I can do Wednesday fortnight.’

  A fortnight later they went out again. Gordon’s choice of venue on this occasion was the Red Lion. Nicola had lamb cutlets, chips and peas, with a choice of mint sauce and red-currant jelly on the side. Her companion, as they say in the food reviews, opted for the mixed grill.

  As he saw her into the cottage he kissed her on the cheek.

  The following Wednesday fortnight, Gordon suggested the Red Lion. ‘It’s very nice, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘The Green Man isn’t bad, but the food’s more imaginative in the Red Lion, and I wouldn’t take you, a lady like you, to the Black Bull. It’s as rough as a bear’s arse.’

  He reddened most charmingly at his choice of words, but Nicola didn’t mind. He’d paid her her first compliment: ‘A lady like you.’ Not exactly effusive, but Cluffield wasn’t Seville.

  She chose gammon, eggs, chips and peas. Gordon said, ‘Oh, I’d have had you down for the pineapple. I’ve noticed that women usually have pineapple with gammon, whereas men usually go for the egg, but you’ve chosen egg.’

  The waitress waited patiently, then asked Gordon for his choice. He puzzled over the many options for a moment, then said, ‘I think I’ll have the mixed grill.’

  As he saw her into her cottage he kissed her on both cheeks.

  The following Wednesday fortnight, Gordon’s preferred entertainment was a meal in the Red Lion. Nicola chose breaded haddock, chips and mushy peas. Gordon said, ‘Oh, I’d have had you down for the garden. I’ve noticed that men usually have mushy, but women prefer garden, but you’ve chosen mushy.’

  The waitress waited stressfully, then asked Gordon for his choice. ‘Do you know,’ he said. ‘I’m tempted by the mixed grill.’

  Nicola teased him – her first bit of teasing.

  ‘You always have the mixed grill.’

  ‘I do, don’t I? It’s good here.’

  She wasn’t kidding herself that she was dining with Oscar Wilde. Witty conversation isn’t everything, and Gordon was always pleasant to be with. Not a bad epitaph, that, in a turbulent world like ours. Always pleasant to be with.

  She noticed the Parkers, who used to live opposite in Orchard View Close, two tables away, and they noticed her, but they pretended not to have seen her, so she pretended not to have seen them.

  When he drove her back to Sunny Cottage, Gordon surprised her by kissing her on the lips and putting his tongue in her mouth.

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind my doing that?’ he said.

  ‘Not at all, Gordon,’ she said. ‘I liked it.’

  ‘Goodnight, then, Nicola,’ he said. ‘Sleep well.’

  The following Wednesday fortnight she couldn’t make, there was a Round Table do at the hotel, Ferenc was on holiday, and the Duty Manager was Toby Marchmont: all of twenty-two, minor public school, plum in his mouth, nothing in his trousers, never had a woman, never would have, be no use in a crisis, where did Head Office find them?

  She had a whole month, therefore, to think about Gordon’s tongue. By this time it was cold and wet. The weather, not Gordon’s tongue. Their relationship was so slow that the whole of the autumn had passed.

  She could see that Gordon was nervous, and things weren’t helped when he discovered that the menu had been changed and the mixed grill had been removed ‘because there’s no demand for it’. He ordered steak, lamb cutlets
, bacon, sausage, liver, chips, peas, tomatoes, mushrooms and onion rings.

  ‘Those are the exact ingredients of the mixed grill,’ he said, ‘so what’s different?’

  ‘Seven pounds fifty,’ said the waitress. ‘Cutting their own throats they are. Glenda’s seen the writing on the wall. She’s working at the Green Man now.’

  Nicola was certain that the reason for Gordon’s nervousness was that he had spent a month thinking about her mouth round his tongue, and he was hoping to go to bed with her. She was nervous too. She kept wondering how she would be in bed, whether her neo-vagina could really respond – well, you can imagine her anxiety, I should hope, it was awful, it was wonderful, it was the best and the worst evening of her brief life as a woman.

  Her slow countryman, her mother’s boy, her man of alternate Wednesdays, her mixed grill of a man was Adam incarnate that night to her in her position.

  He drove her back to Sunny Cottage. He didn’t speak. She didn’t speak.

  He lost his nerve and drove off.

  The following Wednesday fortnight, Gordon had a very different evening in mind – a meal at the Green Man.

  ‘It’s not that I’m mean,’ he said, ‘but that Red Lion business was a racket.’ He leant across and said, with a roguish tone, ‘I did think of the Disappointed Lady, but there’s a poor choice there.’

  ‘The Disappointed Lady?’

  ‘The Halfway Inn. Halfway Inn, Disappointed Lady, get it?’

  Nicola got it. She was amazed at his boldness, actually. She was also determined not to be the Disappointed Lady again.

  I need not detain you with their choice of meals at the Green Man. Let’s get straight to Sunny Cottage.

  ‘Would you like a nightcap?’ Nicola asked, determined to take the initiative this time.

  ‘A nightcap would slip down a treat.’

  She had a calvados, he a Bailey’s. (You want her to have a sophisticated lover? Sorry.)

  ‘I want you,’ he said simply, astonishingly, earthily, D.H. Lawrenceily.

  ‘Good,’ she said.

  They went upstairs. Upstairs, Sunny Cottage smelt damp. Well, to be honest, downstairs smelt damp too.

  She didn’t think she could go through with it. She didn’t think she dared show her body.

  ‘Don’t be shy,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I … oh God, Gordon, there’s something I have to tell you.’ She couldn’t go through with it unless she told him. She should have done, perhaps, but she couldn’t. ‘I … Gordon, I’ve had … the operation.’

  ‘What do you mean – “the operation”?’

  ‘I used not to be Nicola, Gordon. I used to be Nick.’

  The penny still didn’t seem to drop. Nicola would have been the first to admit that Gordon’s pennies didn’t always drop quite as swiftly as she would have wished.

  But it did drop eventually.

  ‘Sex change?’ he gasped.

  ‘Sex change. I used to be a man.’

  He said nothing. Nothing!

  ‘I had the operation several months ago. You’re … you’re my first, Gordon.’

  He put his trousers back on again, in silence.

  ‘Don’t think I can handle this,’ he said, when he was safely back in all his clothes. ‘Sorry, Nicola.’

  As he left he said, ‘No hard feelings?’ and she said, ‘It looks that way.’

  The following Wednesday fortnight, she cried. It was silly, she knew, but he was a nice man, Gordon, and she felt very flat in sunless Sunny Cottage. She found herself missing all the things about him that irritated her, so that she wished that they could have the chance to begin all over again and she could learn not to let them irritate her.

  Besides, she would have liked to find out why he couldn’t see her on Thursdays, Fridays, Mondays, Tuesdays and alternate Wednesdays. She thought he might have told her in a year or two.

  It was another of life’s unsolved mysteries. She didn’t have the heart to go to the Farm Shop ever again.

  26 The Long Silence

  Alan became increasingly worried about Nicola’s long silence. Was she all right?

  Today he might find out. It was the day of the Midsummer Dinner at the Golf Club. The air was still and sweaty. Throdnall throbbed with humidity. There was no bird song. Even the thrushes were sweating.

  ‘I hate the summer, me,’ said Bernie at breakfast. Alan gave him a look. He didn’t notice. ‘You long for it all through the winter and spring and what happens? The bastard lets you down.’ Now he did catch Alan’s eye, and he grinned sheepishly. ‘Well, take today,’ he said. ‘It’s like a boil waiting to burst.’ Then he gave a rueful little laugh. ‘Aye, I know,’ he said, ‘but you must let me have a little moan now and again. An addict can’t give up moaning overnight like.’

  The Midsummer Dinner was a new event – pedants were already complaining because it wasn’t actually being held at midsummer. It was the brainchild, if that isn’t an exaggeration, of the PP, the Pompous Prat, Wing Commander Miles Forrester. He said that its purpose was to celebrate the short northern summer, but its purpose was to raise more money. At twenty-five pounds a ticket, even though that included a half bottle of house wine, it would be quite a profit-making event and a touch on the steep side for Throdnall.

  Alan hadn’t intended to go – until he discovered that Nicola was booked in ‘with a party’.

  He hadn’t heard from Nicola since the day she left after caring for him – brilliantly once again – as he recovered from his hysterectomy and ovariectomy. It had involved a rather longer convalescence than the double mastectomy, being an altogether more invasive process.

  The operation had gone well; Nicola had visited every other day; Mrs Mussolini had seemed a little softer, as if she’d thought about why people called her Mrs Mussolini; Pat (who had been on holiday during the mastectomy) had forgiven Nicola for letting their little secret slip and embarrassing her greatly with the aforesaid Mrs Mussolini; Em and Gray, a year older, had been just a bit more comfortable about hospital visiting; Bernie had sent his usual message of apology – it would all have been quite a routine affair if it hadn’t been for Prentice.

  Just before he went into hospital, Alan received a letter from him.

  Dear Alan/Alison/Alan (you’re on your way to Alanhood and are more Alan than Alison, but you aren’t there yet!)

  I was devastated to learn from a colleague of yours at the carriage works that you had been for your mastectomy and I hadn’t known about it and hadn’t visited to cheer you up with a few laughs. So now, if you go to Gaza and strip (Gaza Strip, get it? They didn’t in Droitwich. Not a titter. O’oh. Titter! Sorry! Unintentional), you will not be ‘Eyeless in Gaza’ (Huxley novel – they hadn’t heard of it in Droitwich!) but ‘Breastless in Gaza’. And now it’s time for the removal of your womb, which was once a ‘womb with a view’ (another floperoonie in Droitwich!) for the deliciously lovely Em and the not deliciously lovely Gray. I hope your recovery wasn’t nippled in the bud (Oh dear! Who is this man?) by my absence.

  Well this time I will be there in glorious person, in full Technicolor, to cheer you and speed your recovery.

  Love and kisses

  Prentice ‘Fun with Flab’ Prentice

  The whole of Alan’s time in hospital was blighted by his expectation of Prentice’s visit, and he never went, just sent another letter a week afterwards.

  Dear Alan/Alison/Alan/Alan (more Alan than ever now – nearly there)

  So very sorry not to make it. Devastated in fact. Got invited for a free holiday in Crete, and you have to be selfish sometimes, don’t you? Hope you weren’t ovarily disappointed (they don’t get any better, but I hope you have).

  Love, hugs and wet kisses

  Prentice ‘Mirth with Girth’ Prentice

  Nicola had been rather quiet and self-contained as she went about the business of running number thirty-three while still coping at the Cornucopia. She had said that she was tired and Alan had allowed himself to
believe that that was all it was, but now he was worried. Three weeks had gone by without a phone call, and all he got when he rang Cluffield was the answer machine and sometimes not even that. He’d only left two messages; he didn’t want Nicola to know that he was anxious. It was for this reason that he hadn’t rung the hotel. Nick had never liked being rung at work.

  It had been getting to the stage when he thought he really would have to ring the Cornucopia, but then he had found out that she was going to the Midsummer Dinner, and he had decided to wait until then.

  He’d still been ringing Cluffield almost every day, and for a week at least the answer machine hadn’t been on, but now there was no need to ring, he would see her this evening – well, he hoped he would.

  ‘With a party’? That didn’t sound like Nicola.

  It was all a bit worrying.

  Usually, Bernie had breakfast on his own in the granny flat (making it helped him keep his hand in, and he’d even begun cooking the occasional meal for them, can you believe it? He had one recipe – Pork Normandy – which was truly excellent), but that Saturday Alan made him breakfast, two poached eggs on toast, because he suddenly felt that he would like his dad’s company.

  ‘Thanks, love, that were grand,’ said his dear neo-dad. He thought about all the times he’d had to quarry the praise out of his stony face, and he marvelled.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I think I’ll pop into town on t’bus. Pop into travel agent’s like.’

  ‘Travel agent’s? Why?’

  ‘I thought I might book one of these Short City Breaks I’ve been reading about.’