The New Woman (18 page)

I rang the bell, and a young woman—discretion written all over her face—showed me into what looked like an upmarket dentist’s waiting room, but without that unsettling smell of mouthwash. She offered me coffee, which I declined, and gave me a form to fill in. My medical history, my families’ history, my GP’s address.

It was like visiting another country. The clinic was a tiny, secret principality in the middle of London where the normal rules didn’t apply. After a lifetime of being an alien who might at any moment be unmasked and deported, I’d arrived in a land where I belonged. I was welcome. I had a passport.

There was a carriage clock in the waiting room. It sat above the fireplace, busy with its tick-tick-ticking. We’d had one just like it when I was small. Every Sunday evening, while we were eating our leftover chicken sandwiches, Mum would put up her feet with a cup of tea and the
Radio Times
. Dad and I would reverently lift off the glass dome and wind the clock with a tiny gold key. He had such big hands, but he could do such delicate things.

See, Luke, the key goes into here . . . Now, we have to be careful not to wind it too far. Good boy. Good boy.

The receptionist gave a gentle cough. Mr Brotherton was free now, she said, if I would come this way. I was still thinking about Dad as I followed her.

I’d looked at the website and knew that Ian Brotherton was a clinical psychologist who’d pooled a group of colleagues to set up this clinic as a one-stop shop. The man who met me at the door of the room was perhaps forty, wearing a sleeveless sweater and a tie, and his shape was disarmingly teddy-bearish. I thought I detected a faint Lancashire accent. He motioned me into a leather armchair.

‘Now,’ he said, sitting down opposite and leaning towards me. ‘I have a letter from Dr Cameron, which is very helpful. I know you’ve already told your story to her, but let’s start again.’

I’d never talked about myself so much. Never in my life. It seemed narcissistic, but Brotherton was persistent. He started by
asking me about my childhood, my parents and my sisters, and the sort of family we’d been. He wanted minute detail, much of which didn’t seem relevant at all. We talked about my work. We talked about my marriage, with the usual embarrassing questions about sex. Perhaps I should get a card printed, I thought, to hand out to professionals:
Yes, I was faithful to my wife. No, sex isn’t especially important to me. No, I don’t want to have sex with men.
He asked about my general health, and my mental health, especially the episodes diagnosed as depression. Then he changed the subject again.

‘You and Eilish have two children?’

‘Three.’

His eyebrows went up. He looked again at Dr Cameron’s referral letter.

‘Two living,’ I explained. ‘Charlotte died immediately after her birth. It was a very difficult time.’

‘I think that’s an understatement.’

‘Yes. But this isn’t something I want to talk about.’

He leaned back in his chair, and it creaked under his bulk. I saw that this was something he
did
want to talk about, and sighed.

‘You never quite get over it,’ I said. ‘Eilish closed up for a long time. I went back to work after a fortnight, which I expected of myself and the world expected of me. But I had difficulty concentrating. I stopped sleeping. When I did sleep, I had dreams.’

‘Dreams?’

I looked at my hands. I really didn’t want to open this box. ‘A baby,’ I said shortly. ‘And a mother. Anyway . . . it’s all in the past. We managed. We had to take care of Simon, who was a preschooler at the time. Later we went on to have another daughter.’ I smiled. ‘Kate. She is very much alive.’

‘And what did you feel when those children arrived?’

I had my stock answer ready. ‘Joy, of course,’ I said. ‘Pure joy.’

It was another lie; just one among the thousands, but it was the one that made me most ashamed. My joy at becoming a
father wasn’t pure at all. It was poisoned. I’ll never forget holding Simon in the moments after he was born. His cheeks were round, and his fingers were perfect, and he was a miracle. The love and wonder seemed too much to fit into my body, and came spilling out of me in tears. I never wanted to let him go. Never. Suddenly a midwife’s hands were around him, taking him away from me, giving him to Eilish. ‘Come on,’ she said, not even looking at me. ‘Let’s see how Mum does with feeding this little cherub.’

Eilish seemed to know instinctively how to breastfeed a baby. The pair of them were warm in the glowing cocoon of mother and child, Simon gazing up at her face as though she were a goddess. I should have adored Eilish at that moment, but all I felt was envy. I’ve never felt such envy. It soured and sickened me as I drove home alone to make proud fatherly phone calls.
Mother and baby doing well; yes, nine pounds four! Yes, she’s tired but very happy.
I despised myself, I ranted at myself, but I couldn’t turn off the bitterness. I felt myself slipping into a trough. It wasn’t Eilish who came down with postnatal depression; it was me. I ended up on antidepressants, seeing a counsellor.

I didn’t tell anyone about that envy—not Eilish, not our doctor, not the counsellor. I didn’t tell Ian Brotherton either. After all, I was lucky to be a parent. Sometimes I wondered whether Charlotte’s death was punishment for my ingratitude.

At last, Brotherton came to the subject of gender. I heard my voice droning on and on, digging up the oldest memories. My childhood seemed closer than it had in years. I was young again. I was confused and lonely. It was my first day at school.

‘You felt the boys’ cloakroom was wrong for you?’ he asked. ‘Why?’

‘Because I knew I was a girl.’

I could hear the laughter. I feared the laughter. I was alone.

‘My elder sister was the only one who didn’t laugh. Oh no, not our Gail. She was livid. At break time she thumped me in the stomach. Doubled me right over. She said if I ever made fools of
our family again, she’d put me down the offal pit on our farm and block up the hole. She said I would die down there and nobody would ever find me. I believed her.’

‘How old was this gentle soul?’

‘Gail? Ten. I was four. She was very big, and I was very small. She knew the offal pit was my nightmare place. When Dad did a home kill he used to drop the heads and guts and skin down there. She said I would rot away.’

He looked sickened. ‘And how did you respond to this threat?’

‘With terror. From then on, I had to hide my real self. I think it was my first bereavement. It didn’t stop me sneaking into my sisters’ rooms to play dress-ups but it had become a frightened, dirty thing. I thought I was the only boy in the world to feel like this. I had no idea there were others. There was no internet.’

I got up out of my chair and wandered to the window. The glass was old; it distorted the sky. There was a tiny courtyard out there where a fountain played. The walls were unusually high. To keep out prying eyes, presumably; or perhaps to keep in the shame.

‘I’m not a man who likes to wear women’s things,’ I said. ‘I
am
a woman. I’m a woman who puts on a man’s clothes, and speaks in a deep voice, and slaps other men on the back, and pees at a urinal through tackle that shouldn’t even be there. All of which, I guess, makes me a freak.’

Behind me, I heard Brotherton put down his pen.

‘Where do you see all of this taking you?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘We both know that there’s a million websites on this subject. There are books. I’m sure you’ve researched. I’m sure you have goals.’

‘I do.’ I turned around to face him. ‘But I’m afraid of being thrown down the offal pit.’

He smiled, and waited for more.

‘I’ve used the boys’ cloakroom—literally and figuratively—for the past half-century,’ I said. ‘Now I look at the life I have ahead
of me and I see that it’s finite. My father died last year. My own generation are starting to go down with heart attacks and cancer. I’m running out of time.’

‘What would you like to do about it?’

I knew the answer. I’d known it for fifty years.

‘I’d like to walk through that other door,’ I said.

Nineteen

Eilish

It was such a beautiful summer. Beauty can be cruel, can’t it? Through August, right into September, the countryside around East Yalton was chocolate-box. Day after day I woke, alone, to indigo skies and fields already baking in the heat. The cool waters of the Thames reflected barges with gardens and bright paintwork, and riverside pubs were full of families making the most of the heatwave. Luke and I should have been doing the same.

It’s the future you mourn most; the road you always thought lay ahead. People say,
You never know what’s around the corner
, and they all nod sagely, but they don’t really believe it. I was just as smug. I thought I knew exactly what lay around the corner for me: a long and contented retirement with Luke by my side. I had such plans! Now I’d rounded the corner, and my road had dropped off a cliff.

Life goes on. It has to. We had a new headmaster at Cottingwith High: Walter Wallis. Why would parents with the surname Wallis call their son Walter? He was
innovative
and
energetic
and
dynamic
. At least, that was how he described himself in his CV, and the interview committee were obviously taken in, because we were now saddled with this megalomaniac. I’d have sworn the man had ADD. And one of the innovative,
dynamic things he did was to insist that all teaching staff come in at the end of the holidays for a day’s professional development. I couldn’t think of a good enough excuse to get out of it. So, at eight-thirty on a September morning that was already promising to be a scorcher, I was sitting in the staff car park, summoning the will to get out of my car. Jim Chadwick, who headed the science department, swung in and parked beside me. I was delighted to see him.

‘Hello, my friend!’ he cried, hopping out of his little green MG. His roof was down. ‘Isn’t this a waste of a glorious day? Shall we play hooky?’

‘That’s very tempting.’

He waited as I fished around for my bag. ‘We could hire a skiff, and I’ll row you down the river. Have lunch at The Lock.’ He was warming to his theme. ‘Or, if you prefer, we could sit in a classroom all day, get dehydrated, and listen to Wally Wallis’s sidekick telling us about learning outcomes.’

Some people question the course their lives have taken. They torture themselves with speculation about what would have happened if they had turned left that day instead of right. What if they’d taken that job they were offered, back in 1995? What if they’d caught that train, been in time for that interview? I know women who’ve ruined their marriages by imagining the idyllic lives they’d be leading if only they’d married that other man. The other one always seems so much more alluring—so much less likely to have a potbelly, or moan about the cost of petrol, or bite their nails—than their ageing, boring husbands.

I never used to play this game. I couldn’t see the point. When I was a young marketing guru, I went with friends to see
Giselle
at the ballet. My ticket was for row K, seat 20. A man called Luke Livingstone happened to be sitting in row K, seat 21. He was embarrassed because the little machine that dispenses opera glasses stole his money. I lent him my set. He bought me a drink during the intermission. If that machine hadn’t been faulty, we might never have spoken; but it was, and we did, and that was
the end of it. I had this old-fashioned idea that marriage was permanent.

If I had been the type to play the
what if
game, though, it would probably have involved Jim Chadwick. There was an unmistakable spark between us, from the very first time he’d walked into the staffroom at Cottingwith High. He was wearing a blue-and-white-checked shirt, I remember, and it intensified the marvellous colour of his eyes. He had energy. I remember thinking he was . . . well, sexy. We gravitated together immediately. I had no intention of acting on this magnetic attraction, but all the same it made me feel alive. It made me feel young.

Years had passed since then, and the spark had turned into an easygoing—if vaguely flirtatious—friendship. Jim had arrived when Simon was in the sixth form, and he’d had a bit to do with both him and Kate. He also played the odd game of squash with Luke, as they were both in a league that used our school courts. He was a natural teacher, popular and able to control classes that defeated everybody else. He championed children with special needs, because he had a brother with Asperger’s. He celebrated with me when Nico was born; I commiserated with him when his marriage came to an end. It doesn’t surprise me that people are tempted to have affairs with their work colleagues—of course they are! They’re the ones who share in our daily lives. They see us in our element, doing what we do best. Our spouses see us with bed hair, in our dressing-gowns, emptying the cat’s litter tray. Domesticity isn’t erotic.

‘How’s your summer going?’ Jim asked now.

‘Too fast.’

‘You and Luke been away? I haven’t seen him on the squash courts for a while.’

‘Nope.’

I’d begun walking, and he fell in beside me. ‘How is the young chap? Still working eighty hours a week?’

Fortunately I didn’t have to answer, because we’d reached the classroom where the training was to be held. A gangly man
was writing an agenda on the whiteboard. It began with
8.45: Welcome and introductions.
The room was full of teachers holding coffee mugs. We greeted one another gloomily; all except Mick Glover, who taught maths and was always unreasonably bouncy. He travelled to school on a powered skateboard.

‘Morning, Eilish,’ he called. ‘Jim. There are a couple of seats over here.’

Jim and I were just sitting down when the headmaster came bustling in.

‘Donald is our facilitator today,’ Wally said, grinning fondly at the gangly chap as though he were some kind of pet. ‘Let’s get started, Don.’

It was a bit like being in an evangelical church. Donald strode up and down, waving his hands around as he talked about ‘facing in one direction’ and ‘tapping energies’. There were around twenty of us in there, and the fan wasn’t up to the job. It was a relief when Donald broke us into pairs, giving out chunky pens and paper, and exhorting us to ‘workshop this one’ before ‘coming back to kick our ideas around.’ He gave each pair a made-up scenario. Ours was about a teacher who lost his cool and grabbed a third former by the ear.