Human Remains (28 page)

It was, as Nigel frequently said, win-win.

I tried my hardest, but I couldn’t see how anything he said meant that I shouldn’t also consider using these techniques to seduce a woman. Surely that would be win-win?

I gave all of it a lot of thought. The idea grew and spread through me like treacle until it was all I could think about. I could find a woman who was reasonably attracted to me, and instead of saying the wrong thing and ruining my chances I could make her warm to me, make her like me. And maybe, yes, make her want to sleep with me. And after that, presumably, if we were compatible and I liked her enough to continue with it, maybe I could actually end up having that most dramatic and unexpected of things, A Relationship. I read voraciously around the topic, every book I could find and every internet page that discussed the Meta Model versus the Milton Model, mirroring, strategies, calibration, everyday trances. I practised at work, even though it felt uncomfortable; I struck up conversations with Martha and some of the others and watched their awkwardness change from wariness to a kind of reserved acceptance. It was undeniably fascinating. It worked, and the more I put into it, the more my confidence grew.

When I opened my eyes again he wasn’t there. I expected to feel something but there was nothing. I wasn’t afraid.

Time was passing because when I opened my eyes the next time it was daylight, and then it was dark again. Six pm had happened twice. I had answered the black phone and listened and spoken, although I couldn’t remember what about.

My mouth was dry, sticky, uncomfortable. That was the only thing that bothered me. And then even that passed.

The phone was by the bed. I plugged it in to charge, as he told me to.

I felt as if I was waiting for something.

When it comes I will know it
, I thought.
I will greet it, like an old friend
.

I take my responsibilities very seriously, although I must admit to being distracted since the newspaper article I read on Friday.

I stayed in most of Saturday, only venturing out after dark, and then only making one visit. After Friday’s trip to the house in Newmarket Street I resolved to leave her in peace until she transforms properly. It’s no fun being interrupted by the living. Instead I made my way to see Maggie. I often think she will be the very last to be found, which is ironic in a way because she was clearly the most wealthy person I’ve spent time with. You would think her friends and family would show her more respect, when she clearly has a lot to offer them. But as yet, months down the line, she is continuing her transformation uninterrupted. Her house is beautiful, and the rural setting means the scent is unlikely to disturb the neighbours as it often does in the urban areas.

I usually pay her a visit at weekends, and sometimes during the day, because I’ve never seen a soul down this road and I don’t worry quite so much about being seen. You’d think I wouldn’t worry about being seen, wouldn’t you? But really I’m quite a private person. If you met me in the street I dare say you would not be unduly worried by my presence, and that’s as it should be. Nevertheless, I do prefer not to be noticed.

You want to know what I do, on these visits? I thought you might.

I spend time observing the changes that have taken place since my last visit. I make notes, but more frequently this happens at home afterwards. I take pictures with my digital camera, which I then examine further, catalogue, and store when I get home. After a while, when I have noted everything I wish to note, I spend some time just sitting with them, watching them. I am always careful never to disturb anything in the environment, never to leave anything of myself behind.

I have to say with many of them the thrill is not as it once was. The excitement which was once highly erotic has gradually been replaced by a kind of fondness. I would say, even though I’ve never fully understood the meaning of the word, possibly even by love. After all, sometimes I spend months with them. I get to know them with the affection of a lover. I have seen their most private moments and I know their bodies more intimately than their husbands, partners, mothers. I see things they have never even seen themselves: the moment when the body reveals itself, piece by piece; when it opens like a flower to display the beauty within.

Sometimes I talk to them, although of course they can’t hear me. It’s a way of reminding myself that they are – or were – human beings, although of course from a purely scientific point of view they are rapidly becoming an object of decay. I think I am more aroused by them when they get to that point – wherever you choose to define it – that they cease to be a person. I wonder what it is in me that finds the idea of sexual intercourse with another human being to be so challenging, and yet can imagine it readily when that point is reached.

What about the smell? I hear you ask. Don’t they smell bad? I know you want to know, don’t you? That’s the first question I’d ask, if I were in your position.

They all smell different, of course, which is part of the charm. Although the smell is pervasive and lingers in the nostrils for a long time after I’ve left them, I’ve never found it intolerable. When you’ve been around them for a long time, you notice how the smell changes and develops as the decomposition progresses. At times it can be like rancid cheese, vomit, spoiled meat, even sweetish, like an exotic dessert you are almost brave enough to try. I object to the smell of decomposing food, of course. It’s similar, but has less appeal.

I wear the same clothes when I pay my visits, and wash them often. The scent clings to the fabric, as I imagine the scent of a lover would, and as much as I would enjoy smelling my own clothes I cannot risk others noticing it.

Actually, I haven’t told the complete truth there. I said I never found it intolerable, but there was one. Robin, I think he was called. An alcoholic, although I remember him being an intelligent man who would have been a witty and engaging conversationalist were it not for the tragedy of his life. I hadn’t realised the depth of his alcoholism until he began to decompose, and the odour that came from his fermented liver was quite unlike anything I’ve ever smelt. Even I found it difficult to bear. I went back to him less frequently, but each time it was worse, and after a couple of visits I stopped going.

I spent longer with Maggie yesterday evening than I have for a long time. Once I started talking, I found it hard to stop. She’s a very good listener.

In the end it was very late when I got home and consequently I slept late this morning.

After lunch I decided on a whim to go and visit my mother in the Larches. I thought it would provide some useful distraction from my worries about the police investigation.

She was asleep in an upright chair in the day room, her head resting at an awkward angle. A number of ladies were watching a football match on the large television, the sound turned up to prohibit conversation. I pulled up a footstool and sat next to my mother, hoping she wouldn’t wake up before I’d managed to stay the half-hour I’d decided was a reasonable amount of time. I watched the football, for want of something better to do, but it was unbelievably tedious.

When I next looked up at her she was awake and staring at me, even though she hadn’t moved her head at all.

‘Hello, Mother,’ I said.

She didn’t speak but continued to stare, unblinking. Some food was crusted in the corners of her open mouth.

I had a sudden recollection of a moment from my childhood – although my father was already dead, so I must have been a teenager – when she had forced me to eat a saucepan full of cabbage that I had allowed to boil dry. For some reason she believed she’d left me in charge of the dinner while she had gone next door to speak to her friend, and when she came back the kitchen was full of a foul-smelling yellow smoke, and the pan was crackling on the stove top. I was in the study reading a book, oblivious to it.

My dinner was put in front of me at the dining table shortly afterwards, a pan full of cabbage half-stuck to the burned bottom, and a fork with which to prise it loose. When I refused she left me sitting there for an hour, staring miserably at it. After that hour, she scraped a lump of the cabbage from the pan with her claw-like fingernails and pushed it into my mouth, while I struggled and cried and fought for breath.

‘You hate me,’ I whispered to the ghost of my mother in her wing-backed chair, ‘don’t you?’

Her eyes glinted back at me.

I left shortly afterwards, calling in at the Matron’s office on the way out to make sure she was fully aware of my presence and therefore not likely to phone me again for a few weeks.

It has crossed my mind more than once that my poor dear mother is in need of a merciful release. I can imagine, imprisoned in a body that’s now beyond her control, that she would quite possibly rather be dead, especially if, as they seem to suggest, her mind is still sharp. I have no doubt at all from the vile look in her eyes today that she’s entirely lucid. And, whilst it is within my powers to assist her with ending her miserable existence – should that be the path she chooses, of course – I find that I’m relishing the thought that I can hold even this back from her. Now the balance of power has shifted to me, and I choose to leave her as she is – humiliated, suffering, trapped.

It gives me immense personal satisfaction.

Back to work tomorrow. I wonder how Vaughn’s doing. I think I shall need a pint and some inane conversation by lunchtime.

I knew I was in the wrong body when I was much younger, probably before I knew anything else that was a solid fact. I played with girls all the time, my two sisters and all their friends, and until the age of about eight or nine I didn’t even really think of myself as different from them, as separate in any way. If it hadn’t been for my dad, we might have carried on as we were and my life would have been very different. But my dad was a man’s man, a former miner, who wanted me to play rugby and if I couldn’t manage that then he would settle for football; he wanted me to stand shoulder to shoulder with him as I grew up. He wanted someone he could take to the pub on a Sunday morning while my mam cooked us both a roast lunch and my sisters chirped and cooed over their babies.

I loved my father and hated him equally; he was never violent towards me when I was growing up, but his displeasure was bad enough. So I learned how to play the game, I learned how to change my voice to suit his conversation and how to sit on my hands and hold my head down.

When I passed my A-levels I was offered a place at art school in London. My father wanted me to study engineering if I was going to ‘waste time’ instead of going out to get a proper job. We had arguments about it and I thought that I wasn’t going to be allowed to go. My mother talked him round, in the end, and he gave in because he loved her and she was the rock upon which his life was built.

At last I set off for the big city. It was like being free when you’d been in prison for most of your life. I studied fashion and design, and every time I drew the female shape and dressed it in gorgeous fabrics and accessories I knew that that was what I was inside, not the lanky lad who everyone thought was obviously gay. By then I had friends, too, whom I loved and trusted. And an older man who taught me how it felt to be loved properly for who I was. I had no money but I started thinking seriously about gender reassignment. I even went so far as to see my GP to ask about the possibility of this being funded by the NHS.

Mam knew all about this, but we’d both agreed that the time wasn’t right to talk to my dad. It was something that was going to take a long time for him; acceptance was not going to come overnight. She wanted to tell him that I was gay, but that wasn’t the right thing. I wasn’t gay, I was a woman who fancied men the same way as my sisters did. My genitals were wrong; my hormones were wrong. For me it was as simple as having an illness, a physical handicap that meant my bits were malformed and malfunctioning. No different really from having diabetes or hyperthyroidism or any other illness related to the wrong sort of enzyme or hormone.

She didn’t tell him, in the end. She left it up to me to tell him at the right time.

Of course, that right time never presented itself until it was all too late. I started going to the gender identity clinic, and after that I started to live as a woman on a permanent basis. This was relatively easy in London, especially in the arty fashion circles I inhabited. Everything felt right for the first time – apart from my relationship with Derek, which faltered. While I wasn’t a gay man, he was, and, as much as he loved me, he wasn’t looking for a female life partner, after all.

I moved out of his London flat and back in with some friends from college.