by David Nobbs
‘Alan,’ he said. Alan was amazed. He had only once used his first name before, in the old Alison days. ‘You don’t mind my calling you Alan in this context, do you?’
‘Not at all, Mr –’
‘Call me Clive.’
‘Oh. Well … Thank you …’ Gulp. ‘… Clive.’
‘I have an apology to make, Alan.’
‘Oh? … Clive.’
‘Yes, Alan. I have not responded to your sex change in as sympathetic a way as I should have done. Since you’ve been away I’ve spoken to the Almighty and He has told me that I have been small-minded.’
‘Oh. Well … thank you … Clive.’
‘Don’t thank me, Alan. Thank Him.’
‘Right. I … er …’ Alan was going to say that he wasn’t actually a believer, but it was too weighty a subject to touch upon at this early stage in his recuperation. ‘Right. I will.’
‘Good. He’ll be pleased. Don’t look so sceptical. God has time for everybody. What God has shown me is that you and … er … your ex-husband … your divorce is complete, isn’t it? … have done no harm to anyone but yourselves.’
‘Exactly, Mr … Clive.’
‘The world is full of people doing the most dreadful harm to other people – sex offenders, paedophiles – and things not connected with sex, hardly even worth a mention. The grinding everyday cruelty of humanity, almost always towards those weaker than themselves.’
‘I could let such thoughts get to me if I didn’t have a stream of visitors to cheer me up and take my mind off things.’
‘Precisely. Our job precisely.’
There was silence then, deep and loud as only a hospital silence can be.
Suddenly Mr Beresford brightened. He had thought of something else to say.
‘Had your supper?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you have?’
Well, it passed the time. He spun it out as best he could, even made him smile as he described their attempts at creme brulee. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Mr Beresford smile before, and he wasn’t sure that he ever wanted to see him smile again, there was something unconscionsably mirthless about his smile. Alan had the absurd thought that he looked like the Old Testament. He longed for him to leave.
‘Yes, well,’ said Mr Beresford at last, ‘beastly old tempus has done his rotten old fugiting again.’ He stood up. ‘Alan, take as much time as you need to get well, but come back soon. With Mrs Walsh, it isn’t the same, it just isn’t.’
Mrs Walsh. It took Alan a moment to realise that this was Connie. He didn’t think he’d ever heard her called Mrs Walsh before.
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that, Alan, and I’d not like it repeated. I wouldn’t want you to think she isn’t doing her best, and really she’s not doing too badly at all but … well … there just isn’t any substitute for quality.’
That was easily the nicest thing Mr Beresford had ever said to him. In fact it was the only nice thing he had ever said to him.
Or ever would say to him, come to that.
29 A Hungarian Masterpiece
Alan was discharged from hospital two days before Bernie went off on his cruise.
His cruise! He had booked a fortnight on the Oriana, on his own.
Nicola slept on the Zed-bed in the lounge for those two nights, and their time was spent almost entirely in getting Bernie ready. Alan sat in an armchair in his bedroom and shouted instructions – ‘Don’t forget his cufflinks’ etcetera.
‘Leave it to me,’ Nicola called out. ‘You are no longer the woman of the house.’
‘Nor are you,’ shouted Alan.
Two things disturbed the calm of Alan’s convalescence, one involving Em, one Gray. Both were important. One was serious.
The one that was only important first. Em.
She said to them early one evening (a Thursday), ‘I won’t be in this evening. I should have told you earlier. I’m going out with my lover.’
Alan thought that she looked quite slim that night, almost ethereal, certainly beautiful, paradoxically feminine, his … their … chameleon of a daughter.
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘A shame to miss Nicola’s curry, but … I’m glad you have a lover. I guessed that you had, but you’ve been unusually quiet about it.’
‘I had cold feet. About telling you.’
‘Good heavens. What’s wrong with him?’
‘Nothing. She’s a chiropractor. That’s how we met.’
This shouldn’t have been a surprise at all, it was utterly logical. Of course it would just about ring their death knell in Throdnall society, but from their perspective as transsexuals it could hardly be described as shocking.
Nevertheless, it has to be said that neither Alan nor Nicola welcomed Em’s news wholeheartedly. It’s difficult even for loving parents, perhaps especially for loving parents, to accept that a child of theirs is gay.
Some of the reasons for this are creditable. They know that life will be at least a bit more difficult for the child in question. They know that the child in question will never have children of his or her own. This could, and often did, lead to a lonely old age, and the fact that they would be dead didn’t stop Nicola or Alan from worrying about Em and Gray in old age.
Some of the reasons are less creditable. There will be remarks in the pubs, comment in the shops, sympathy from the complacent, explanations to the neighbours. There will not be the patter of grandchildren’s tiny feet.
Nicola and Alan’s disappointment did not run deep and, once they had met Clare, was less than they would have felt had Em married her Greek waiter, or her American control freak, or her oversexed French egotist, or her Italian overburdened with charm and style at the expense of content.
Clare was slim, quietly elegant, always immaculate, and seemed rather cool towards all the world except Em. Some men found it disturbing that it was so impossible to deduce that she was a lesbian. They felt that it was an affront to their sex that somebody so pretty and so well-balanced should prefer her own sex.
Two foolish remarks were made, however, about Em’s relationship with Clare – one of them merely foolish, the other foolish but rather more fundamental.
The merely foolish remark was made by Gray. No surprise there, then. ‘I’ve always hated lesbianism,’ he said to Em. ‘I like homosexuality, but hate lesbianism.’
‘How on earth can you justify that attitude?’ asked Em indignantly, rising to the bait like a suicidal salmon.
‘Because two gay men are rivals I don’t have to bother about, while two lesbian girls are two opportunities I’ll never have the chance to have.’
‘I might have guessed your comment would be trite, trivial, stupid and self-centred,’ snorted Em, and she stormed out, slamming the door violently behind her.
The more fundamental error, sadly, was Alan’s, and it came two days later, over Nicola’s lasagne – creditable, but not a patch on Alan’s.
‘I hope you don’t think it’s our fault,’ he said to Em.
‘I suppose I should have anticipated that as you become a man you’ll start to become utterly and totally crass,’ Em retorted. ‘The word “fault” is deeply offensive to me. Since there is absolutely nothing “wrong” with lesbianism the use of the word “fault” is intolerably narrow-minded and falsely judgemental.’
‘You’re talking like a debating society, not a human being,’ said Gray.
‘Oh, fuck off,’ said Em.
‘That’s better!’ said Gray.
‘I apologise,’ said Alan. ‘I apologise utterly and totally. But you must realise that your moth … your father and I … God, I’m getting muddled now! … are quite naturally extremely sensitive to the possibility that our sexual confusion and subsequent unusual though not confused behaviour may not have been a great example to you.’
‘You’re talking like a pamphlet,’ said Gray. ‘What’s got into everybody?’
‘Arrogance,’ said Em. ‘Patronising arrogance. I make up my o
wn mind. I deeply resent the suggestion that you’re responsible for my actions, not me.’
‘Ted Jackson,’ said Gray.
He flinched and held his hands over his ears as the door crashed shut behind Em.
‘Ted Jackson?’ echoed Nicola.
‘He makes doors,’ said Gray with a grin, luxuriating in the rare experience of being the better behaved of the siblings.
And the other thing to disturb the calm? The one that was serious? Gray.
Well, the fault was Ferenc’s. Alan thought that a grown, mature man, even if he was Hungarian, would have had more sense. Later he understood.
Nicola’s encouragement of Ferenc had borne fruit. He had begun to take his painting more seriously. He had had seven pictures exhibited at the Lafayette, and five of them had already been sold, and for good prices, by the Windlass man, whom Alan thought to be as nutty as a fruitcake, not to mention as fruity as a nutcake. So Ferenc had given Nicola a present as thanks, and Nicola had brought it home from the hotel and unwrapped it, and there it was, a portrait of the family, with Alan and Nicola in their sex change roles, and a wonderfully vivid portrait of Em, and there beside her, Gray.
It was good. It went beyond the surface of their characters. It captured them. And Gray was Ferenc’s son. It leapt from the picture, as it didn’t in life.
They stared at it in silence – a terrible silence. A family struck dumb. Thank goodness Bernie wasn’t there to blow their reticence out of the window.
Oh Ferenc, you prick, you great prick, thought Alan with accuracy on two counts. How could you have done this?
The next morning, after Nicola had left for work, Gray went into Alan’s bedroom, where he was still accepting breakfast in bed. Alan didn’t think he’d ever seen their … his … son so ashen. A very grey Gray indeed.
‘That picture, Mum,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Ferenc’s my father, isn’t he?’
‘I’m afraid so, yes.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘Oh, Gray, I’m so sorry.’
‘I mean, I knew it the moment I saw the picture, but, I don’t know, hearing you say it … it’s … it’s hit home.’
Alan patted the duvet, inviting Gray to sit. He became his mother’s little boy again. It made no difference now that he was grown up and his mother was a man.
Alan wrapped his dressing gown firmly round his chest. He’d grown used to the scars after two years, but he was still uneasy about his children seeing them. He told Gray all about Nick and his troubles, and the isolated affair, and how he’d felt pregnant and had known instinctively, and how he’d had to make love to Nick, so that Nick would never suspect. He told him how he’d always seen little bits of Ferenc in him, and had always been amazed that Nick hadn’t seen them too.
‘Did Dad ever know you’d slept with Ferenc?’
‘I’m sure he didn’t.’
‘Then the possibility of my being Ferenc’s simply wouldn’t have occurred to him, because the impossible can’t happen.’
Alan thought that very perceptive of Gray. He wondered if he had been underestimating him.
‘But he’ll see it now,’ he said.
‘He may not, Mum. Not if it’s still an impossibility.’
‘But won’t he see the resemblance?’
‘Who knows? We can never be exactly sure that what other people see is the same as what we see. I mean it’s still me, and she may just see me as he’s so used to seeing me. I mean she was never exactly observant, was he?’
Alan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Gray sounded so level-headed about it, so analytical.
‘How can you be so analytical about it?’ he asked. ‘Doesn’t it … I don’t know … devastate you? I’d have been devastated if I’d found out something like that about my father.’
‘It was a terrible shock last night, Mum. My blood ran icy. Luckily it was such a shock that it struck me dumb. I’ve hardly slept. But I’m used to being on my own and thinking things through on my own, and I’ve decided … I’m not saying it was easy, Mum, and I’m not saying I’m not disturbed by it … but I mean, in the end, it doesn’t really make all that much difference, does it? To me, I mean. It would to Dad. I mean, to Nicola.’
‘You really mean that?’
‘Well, I haven’t got much choice, have I? It happened, and a long time ago. No point in resenting you now.’
‘Thank you.’
‘May as well try to be cool about it.’
‘Being cool’s fine. Burying traumas isn’t.’
‘And I’ve talked to Juanita.’
‘Talked?’
‘Well emailed, but to my generation that’s like talking, we think of it as talking, that’s what you don’t seem to understand when you think I’m a freak. Juanita’s very mature for her age.’
‘How old is she?’
He blushed.
‘Eighteen. Well, almost. She says it makes no great difference, because I’m still exactly the same person as I was yesterday, and a better person because I have one less delusion.’
‘Phew!’
‘Exactly. She’s very bright, Mum. Actually …’ he looked a little embarrassed,‘… she and I quite like the idea of my being Anglo-Hungarian. One more blow for multi-culturalism. Quite cool, really. And let’s face it, Mum, it does help that Dad’s a woman. I mean I have sort of lost him as a father already.’
‘Oh, dear – and do you feel you’ve lost me?’
‘As a mum, obviously, but not as a person. You’re still here for me. She isn’t. I still love you, Mum, and I’m still yours.’
Alan hugged him. There, in Throdnall, an Englishman hugged his son!
It would have been more extraordinary still if it had been an Englishman who hadn’t previously been an Englishwoman.
‘Can we go for a walk?’ said Nicola that evening, having returned early from the hotel.
‘Of course.’
There wasn’t any need to ask why.
‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’
‘Well, I’m supposed to have gentle exercise.’
They went down Orchard View Close and turned right into Badger Glade Rise, retracing the route Alison had taken on the night on which Nick had told her of his intention to change sex.
At the end of Badger Glade Rise they turned left into Spinney View.
At the end of Spinney View stood the Coach, weighed down by hanging baskets. There were only four cars in the car park, and at least two of those would belong to staff.
‘Pub?’ said Alan.
‘People will speculate,’ said Nicola.
They retraced their steps down Spinney View, continued into Elm Copse Crescent, and went down the ginnel to the back end of the golf course, which was almost deserted as evening took hold.
At last Nicola spoke.
‘Gray’s not mine, is he? He’s Ferenc’s.’
‘Yes.’
‘You worked on me that night, that night you were so very affectionate, that night I’ve remembered through all this as the most genuine moment of passion between us. It wasn’t genuine at all.’
‘No.’ Alan’s reply was hardly even a whisper, more like a rustle in the undergrowth.
‘It seems absurd to worry, now that I’ll be leaving for good in a few days’ time, but it hurts, Alan. It hurts a lot.’
‘Yes. I suppose it’s absurd to defend myself now that I’m a man about my unfaithfulness as a woman when you were a man but it was the only time, Nicola.’
‘The only time? Just one time and Gray was created. What virility. What sperm. What eggs.’
‘I mean, Ferenc was the only man.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I hated being unfaithful.’
‘You know what I mean. I meant, “Why did you do it?” ’
‘Does it matter now?’
‘Yes it … the Fergusons. Smile. Look casual.’
They smiled at the couple drifting in the opposite direction, hand i
n hand, normal, happy (as far as they knew).
‘Evening.’
‘Evening.’
‘Nice night.’
‘Very.’
‘We’re lucky.’
‘We are.’
The Fergusons moved on.
‘Yes, it does matter. I’d like to leave not hating you.’
‘We were young and our marriage wasn’t working for reasons we were too ignorant and inexperienced to understand. I was unhappy. I did something I regret. Except.’
‘Except?’
‘I can’t really be angry with Ferenc and I can’t really regret that it happened because if it hadn’t happened Gray wouldn’t exist.’
‘That’s a very rational view. It leaves the emotional side out altogether.’
‘It was twenty years ago. I can rationalise it now. And it’s a fact which must perhaps help to define our emotional response. Are you happy that Gray exists?’
‘Well of course I am. That’s a very unfair argument.’
‘Happy even though you know you aren’t the father?’
‘Well … well, yes, of course I am. I’m not a monster.’
‘Well then. Beside that, does it all matter now? After all these years?’
A skylark began to sing, high above the par three eleventh. They hadn’t had skylarks on the golf course for some years. They looked up, trying to see it in the fading light. Nicola slid her hand very briefly into Alan’s and straight out again so quickly that Alan was never absolutely sure that he hadn’t imagined it.
Juanita arrived two days before Alan was considered fit enough to be left by Nicola.
Gray went to Gatwick to meet her. It was a tense day for them all, but for him most of all. It was the beginning of his real life test. ‘I’m terrified,’ he admitted and he added, in that way of his that made them wonder if he had inherited any of Ferenc’s artistic talent, ‘I’m bloody shitting myself.’
Alan hugged him, and Nicola kissed him.
‘Good luck, darling,’ Alan said.
‘Good luck, son,’ Nicola exaggerated.
Later that day the text messages began to arrive. ‘Plane landed. Shitting myself.’ ‘She’s lovely.’ ‘On the Gatwick Express. Ha ha. At a standstill. I lied about her being lovely. She isn’t. She’s gorgeous.’ ‘Limping towards Throdnall. She’s a queen.’ ‘Due Throdnall 19.15 hours. ETA 19.59.’