Mantrapped

by Fay Weldon

  So I found a house to rent in Rothwell Street, No. 5, which backed onto 3 Chalcot Crescent and was similar in every way, except it was not ours. We left the concrete house empty and moved in. My mother, my sister and the children moved in to take our place. From Rothwell Street I could see right through our old house to the Crescent beyond. It was so nearly home. But Ron said he did not like here either, he could never feel at home in such a place, the paintings on the walls were bad and of the African veldt, he would stay in the shop. Three months passed: I fretted and grieved; Tom and I walked into a lamppost on our way to school and we both knocked ourselves unconscious. It was snowing so hard I could not see. Indeed, I could not see. I went on with the book. We are all of us nice, charming enough people, I wrote, until tried by circumstances and hard times, and then, and only then, do we find out what we really are.

  But I still did not find out. I wore a watch fashionable at the time. It defined your mood. I consulted it as if it were a charm. If you were unhappy or depressed the face was black: if you were cheerful it turned green or blue. I would go down to the shop and spend the night with Ron on the futon on the floor between the refectory tables and the marble washstands and the face of the watch would turn from black to bluey green. I liked to see that. I took it as a clue from fate that true love would win out in the end.

  I caught a glimpse through two sets of windows of a white shape sitting on the Chalcot Crescent pavement and ran round to No. 3 as fast as I could. It was our white cat, toothless and thin and ragged: he had found his way home over railway lines and busy roads. I held out my arms and he leapt into them. I took him back to Rothwell Street. But he kept trying to get back into the Chalcot Crescent house, where he was now not wanted.

  I could see Ron would never come to Rothwell Street, because of the bad paintings, so I rented the top floors of a house only six doors down from No. 3 Chalcot Crescent, where the cat consented to stay but Ron did not. Now I was paying one mortgage and two rents. I could no longer avoid it: it was nothing to do with any of the houses, I was the one Ron did not want to live with: I had just been very slow in realising it. I shut my eyes to dawning realisation. I went on with the novel. I give Elsa a happy end. She escapes from would-be murderers.

  Elsa walks a good half mile down the road, unkempt, barefoot, and distraite, before a garage van going in to London picks her up. She is home by half past eleven, in time for the epilogue on television, and cocoa with her brothers and sisters.

  But where was home? I'd told a story in Down Among the Women of a ship's magician on the Titanic. Every day he gives a children's party, does his tricks, makes a parrot disappear.

  'Where did the parrot go?' cry the children. 'Here!' cried the magician, and there the parrot is, on his wrist. The Titanic strikes an iceberg and sinks, the magician and the parrot drift alone on a raft, day after day. For three days the parrot says not a word. On the fourth day it speaks. 'All right. I give in. Where'd the bloody ship go?' I was the parrot. Ron, Ron, I finally said, where'd the bloody home go?

  Had he planned it in advance? How to unhook yourself from a clinging wife, old style? He told me once a friend said the way to let a woman down gently was to be so horrid to her she'd finally be glad to leave of her own accord. That shocked me so greatly I had wicked Angie and her even nastier lover Clifford do just that to sweet Helen in The Hearts and Lives of Men. In The Heart of the Country the antique-dealer has a room at the back of his shop where he entertains passing lovers. Easier to write it than to live it. In retrospect I see I spent a lot of time writing missives to myself which I then failed to read. 'Oh,' I say, 'I never go back to any of my books after they're written.' Pity.

  Yet though often suffering acute fits of jealousy, they were, as it were, unspecific. I believed in Ron's fidelity, in his good sense, and in his standards. I thought that the normal rules of conduct did not apply to me, and that I was somehow special and would be saved. That once you have found true love it will be yours for ever. I was like a girl who chooses to believe, because she wants to believe it, that you don't get pregnant 'if you do it standing up'. I believed that all the fame stuff - and it was after all a very minor fame, and you were only ever as good as your last book - was of no real importance to anyone and that Ron would see it the same. That he had married me for better or for worse anyway, and if his musician friends addressed him as Mrs Weldon, and they would do that, meanly, sometimes, he would simply ignore it, because it couldn't be helped and what I did earned our living. And actually I was right.

  Come August, and Ron wrote to say he had found an old farmhouse on the side of a hill, and had bought it, and needed my signature, and would I and the children come down and join him. The house was called Orchardleigh, it had a garden and fields and was in Somerset, and you could see Glastonbury Tor large and clear if you lay on your back on the attic floor and craned your neck to see past the roof ridge to the skyline. His choice. That was all it needed.

  Twenty-five years later, in Worst Fears, I was to raze the house to the ground. Passing it a month or so back I was surprised to see it was still standing. I had thought I would see nothing but a rectangle of charred ground, with a garden and fields. But real life is stubborn: its nature is to persist. Worst Fears was only a book, words on paper, for once about what had happened, not what was going to.

  Temptation

  That night Doralee had trouble sleeping. She looked in on the Peter body where it lay sleeping, just as usual, on its back, arms flung wide and welcoming. The Trisha body lay curled foetus-like on the office sofa, making snuffling noises. Doralee sat at her desk and found the Internet and kept the volume down. The Trisha body did not wake. She looked up the nature/nurture debate on Google as it related to gender and found all kind of interesting things about the hard wiring of the species nature, about woman the nestbuilder and man the protector of the nest, and how human babies are the only creatures along with birds who call the parents back to the nest when in need, and at what time gender-specific behaviour cuts in - and made a note or two of background information for the book that would make her fortune and career. But there was nothing directly to the point. How could there be? Vast masses of ill-digested and agonised guff on transexualism, and transvestites, and rather more lucid stuff on hermaphroditism, all on the nature side, totally ignoring nurture; and how babies can be born without the mother's DNA because they have absorbed from a lost twin's inheritance, not the mother's. But a whole personality transfer, memories and all, and only the sympathetic nervous system left, as if the actual brains had shifted from one body to another - nothing. It was in no one's experience. She marvelled. Peter and Trisha might indeed be the only people in the world to whom this had happened, even if you included the vast populations of China. It was a frightening feeling, thus to be the lone witness to the future, walking on glass in a kind of drug psychosis which would never end, and yawning chasms of nothingness underneath, yet awesome. She would be on so many TV programmes it didn't bear thinking about. The cover of Time, even - of course they might try to use Peter and Trisha but they wouldn't get much sense out of them, and she, Doralee, was certainly more photogenic than Trisha.

  She got through to alien abductions: perhaps sometimes people were swept up as one sex, and returned as the other? But there was nothing there either. A note came up on her e-mail. It was from Dr Otterman. He was sorry he had been unable to help but he had passed on the relevant details to the Department of Neurology at UCH, where there was a specialist department devoted to phenomenology and the study of consciousness, and giving her a phone number. Doralee deleted the message. Later, when the book was published, when she was the one who knew everything, and the whole world was aware of it, others could investigate all they liked. She would not be dog-in-the-mangerish. She opened a new file. Doralee/ Soul Switch/ Work in Progress.

  Her body was restless, full of vague desires; it missed Peter's body, even if she didn't. There was no real Peter. But she kept flicking back to wanting him,
as the caps lock key on an overused keyboard will flick into uppercase unasked. She could join him on the bed easily enough. It was her bed. But was this a permitted exercise? Because it was Trisha really and would count as lesbianism. It would be being unfaithful to the real Peter, who was stuck in Trisha's body. They had none of them really discussed the matter of sex, just skirted it. She couldn't think why: it was enthralling.

  If she were Trisha and had a man's body the first thing she would do would be to try it out: if she were Peter he could be excused for wanting to see what it felt like to be a woman. Perhaps in this new state of existence the sexes didn't get together: they did it to themselves, like snails, which everyone knew were hermaphrodite.

  Doralee heard a female voice talking from the bedroom. Had someone broken in? She hurried in but the Peter body was sitting up in bed, bare-torsoed, and seemed to still be asleep, other than that he was talking in a high, chattery little voice. 'I'm not the kind to take advantage,' the Trisha voice was saying out of the Peter body. 'You know what I'm like. I'm just going to see it as a holiday, do all the things I want to do, eat what I want to eat, stop feeling bad about little Spencer, not worry about going with other women's husbands, be a man, in fact. I might go and beat up Rollo because he's a complete shit.'

  Doralee ran her hand over her partner's familiar shoulders and felt the tenseness in them, and dug her thumbs into knotted muscles to relax them.

  'That's lovely,' said the Trisha voice. 'Don't stop. Do you know what I think happened? I think that man who hangs around Kleene Machine, and Mrs Kovac says is her husband, comes from werewolf country, and there is a full moon. I reckon he's put some kind of spell on us, and it might be wearing off. But I suppose it's better than white slavery.' 'Just because people are immigrants doesn't mean they're white slavers,' said Doralee, primly. 'I hope you learn a thing or two from Peter while you're in there, Trisha. You've got some really odd ideas.'

  It was obvious now to Doralee that Peter's penis, familiar though with a new driver, was rising and making a little peaked mountain under the sheet. She made a movement to lift the fabric but the Peter body pulled it down again and said in the female voice 'No, I'm sorry, Doralee, I don't want you to do that. And you'd better stop the massage. Why won't this thing just do as I ask? I don't want it to stand up and twitch like that. It's stupid. How can a man stop himself being a rapist? No wonder such terrible things happen in the world.'

  'But I'm your body's partner,' said Doralee, seeing a chapter in danger of vanishing. 'And there's an almost full moon, and it was such a fabulous evening. We ought to celebrate.' 'Peter wouldn't like it,' said the Peter body, and the vocal cords were back in his charge. Another change was settling in, hardening, not weakening. The voice was even deeper and louder than Peter's own. Another flood of testosterone, presumably. 'Just go away and leave me to sleep, for fuck's sake.' This from Peter, who never swore.

  The sound of the TV came from the living room and Doralee was glad to get away from the bullying stranger in her bed. The Trisha body sat with her short arms clasped round her legs, dinky little toes with the chipped orange varnish matching the henna hair. She was wearing one of Peter's white T-shirts, in which Doralee thought she looked very fetching, and watching a ball game on TV. Doralee felt twin surges of affection. One because the Trisha body suddenly seemed soft and kind and a source of comfort, and she wanted to be close to it, and the other because the expression on the Trisha face as she raised it to Doralee's was so like the Peter she remembered and loved. But also because she wanted to write her book and must not miss these opportunities. 'Tell you what,' said the Trisha body, 'I have to redo these toenails. Do you have any varnish? Can you show me how? I don't suppose for one minute it's easy.'

  Doralee sat close to the Trisha body so their bodies touched, and she picked up the little Trisha foot - it was white and pretty in spite of the little cluster of fine varicose veins at the ankle - and admired it. Feet are so personal, she thought. They contain all the character of the owner. She would write an article on the subject of feet: there were probably people out there who read soles as well as people who read palms.

  Doralee made a quick note in what she now in her head called her SSS (Switched Soul Syndrome) notebook, then went to the bedroom, removed the T-shirt she wore to bed, found the cream silk negligee with lace trimmings Peter had, rather to her surprise, bought her the previous Christmas. It was just not her kind of thing. Now she understood better why it hung near the front of the cupboard, and why although allegedly never worn there were a couple of coffee stains down the front. The Peter body watched from the bed, scene of so many passionate couplings, without apparent affect.

  Doralee, seductive (she hoped) in cream silk, returned to the office with her little box of nail accessories - remover, pale pink varnish, clear second coat, cuticle cream, scissors, clippers, cotton buds - and sat at the end of the couch. The Trisha body stretched a leg flirtatiously but went on watching the ball game, as Peter would sometimes do if he woke in the night and not even sex could get him back to sleep. Doralee took the little foot in her hand and stroked it. Trisha took no notice. Doralee took one of the big toes in her mouth, and gazed up at Trisha, using the sort of gawping, goggling expression that girls used in the porno films she and Peter would watch in foreign hotels.

  Trisha did not react, other than to seem vaguely irritated, but Doralee felt hurt, rejected and humiliated. She made herself try some more, hoping for a response, taking the flesh of the nipple between thumb and forefinger and tweaking, but there was no denying it, the breasts against her forearm felt flabby and collapsed and old, not full and firm, as her own were. She felt revolted by herself, rather than by Trisha. Trisha was just human.

  Doralee gave up and went back to bed, taking off the negligee so it fell to the floor, a pale silk circle of fabric which bore witness to thwarted hopes and lost love. Trisha went on watching TV, having lost interest in her toenails. Doralee cried softly under the bedclothes, but then got up and made notes on her iMac. She must not let personal humiliation stand between her and her future. Tomorrow she would put Peter and Trisha in the same bed. It would hurt but it had to be done. It might be that Soulcrossers - was that a good word to describe this new breed of people? could she compare the first switchings to the arrival of humans in the Neanderthal world? - were hard wired for fidelity and could only do it with each other. They only mated and bred with their own kind. If so, as more and more of them evolved, or transpired, or came from outer space, or whatever they did, and took over, the planet could look forward to a more tranquil future. But it would, she supposed, be the end of art. That could be a chapter to itself.

  The next morning everyone behaved themselves. The Peter body refrained from smoking. The Trisha body ate the vitamin spread and abjured the lemon curd. They laughed and joked about mediums and hypnotists, but seemed prepared to make the outings, to wear conventional clothing, and even to hope that the treatments would work. No mention was made of Doralee's nightly visit. The morning sun shone from a clear sky: it seemed a day without pollution, and the city spread out below was sharp and clear and detailed, like an aerial photograph developed just right. Doralee called the domestic agency to say she did not need a cleaner that day: she was told she would have to pay for the missed appointment, since so little notice had been given, but for once she did not argue. She would be rich enough, soon enough, not to worry.

  She nipped out for the morning paper and saw the Kleene Machine was open again, and the customers coming and going. That was good. She went back up and settled down with the paper. Unplanned time off like this was precious and rare and she meant to make the most of it.

  George the porter called up from downstairs. He had the driver from Kleene Machine there. He'd left a pink shirt for Mr Brandon at No. 5. But George was sure it was one of Peter's. Could Ms Thicket check her cupboards to see that she didn't have No.5's shirt by mistake? A Canadian plaid? Not George's favourite, but dear to Mr Brandon. Then ever
ything went to pieces. The Trisha body grabbed the phone and squeaked, 'That bastard from Kleene Machine! Do you know what he did to my wife's dress? Don't let him get away! I'm coming down!' And the Peter body lurched to his feet with a roar, spilling the coffee all over Doralee's supplement so that she squealed in surprise.

  The Trisha body leapt for the door and the outside world and Doralee could almost feel the sudden burst of energy which went with her like a current in the air, leaping from the Trisha body to the Peter body, and back again, like short-circuiting electricity. The Peter body followed. Doralee could see she should follow, though oddly, as their energy increased, hers seemed to deplete, as lights will dim all over a city when there is a sudden call on power.

  She could see she needed to follow them down, but she was reluctant to do so. She could not face any more trouble. She mopped up the spilt coffee and checked that she had her key before she left the room. She dreaded what she would find. Perhaps they would trash the lobby as they had trashed the Kleene Machine. Then she would certainly sell up and move house. Another chapter, perhaps. Soulcrossers, berserkers and me.

  She took the lift down and came out on the lobby and was met by a tableau which was to be engraved in her memory long after the notes for the book which was never written had been deleted from her computer. George stood beside the desk, as if paralysed, holding a shirt on a wire hanger in his hand. It was pink and button-down, with red splashes down the front, and was not Peter's. Half the plastic wrapping had been torn away. Mr Kovac was lying on his side on the floor, a splodge of red growing on his very white shirt, the friendly smile still on his face. Perhaps it was painted on, thought Doralee. But he was dead. You could tell, though she had never seen a dead body before. They had a kind of completed, over, look about them. Unmistakeable. The Trisha body was dead too. She lay on her back, hands flung up above her head, in the same position Peter slept at night. Half of her head had been blown away. Bits of red spattered George's desk as well as the shirt. A van was driving off. A shudder of bullets clattered across the tall, wide windows of High View's lobby, bursting and exploding glass. The Peter body stood next to George, with his mouth wide open, swaying. The crashes, pings and tingles of falling debris died away. The three left living were untouched.