Herring Girl Read online

  ‘Not really. Mary’s going to be arguing that someone’s suffering in their current life is often caused by unresolved issues from a previous life. So people are going to wonder what kind of suffering Ben’s been going through recently.’

  ‘So? Let them wonder. It’s none of their business.’ It comes out with more aggro than Paul intends.

  The Ian bloke leans forward. ‘Paul, I’m going to be honest with you,’ he says, sort of charming and threatening at the same time. ‘I really want Ben to be in this film. He’s a great lad, very bright and photogenic, and this flat’s bloody fantastic. And the Annie connection is perfect, especially given the fact that you’re a fishing family, going way back. So I’m dead keen to film you on the boat, and contrast that with what it was like in 1898. From a filmic point of view it couldn’t be better.’

  He pauses with a ‘but’ hanging in the air. And in that split second, Paul can see it all: Ben wandering along the quayside, waiting for the boat to dock; himself at the helm of the Wanderer as she butts through the waves.

  ‘But if I can’t explain what’s been worrying Ben, and how this therapy with Dr Charlton is supposed to help him, I’m afraid I’ll have to see if she can suggest someone else for me to film.’

  ‘Dad!’ Ben grabs his sleeve.

  Paul rounds on him. ‘Don’t you understand?’ he hisses. ‘He wants to tell the whole story. About the accident and everything.’

  ‘What accident?’ Ian asks and you can almost see the bloke’s ears prick up.

  ‘Ben was messing about with a knife when he was little,’ Paul says vaguely, trying to play it down. ‘And it slipped and cut him, so he had to go to hospital.’

  ‘And that reminded him of some kind of knife trauma in a previous life, is that it?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Except it wasn’t really an accident,’ Ben pipes up.

  ‘Shut it, Ben,’ Paul snaps. ‘Let me deal with this.’

  ‘What, you cut yourself on purpose?’ The bloke’s talking directly to Ben now, all cosy and nice.

  ‘I wanted a sex change—’ Ben starts to explain.

  The Ian bloke sits back and sucks air through his teeth. ‘So that’s what this is all about.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, Ian,’ Paul butts in. ‘This isn’t going to work.’

  ‘I can completely understand your hesitation,’ says Ian. ‘But this is BBC2, not Channel Five. I’m not some sleazy tabloid hack out to make a schlock horror doc. I’m a serious documentary film-maker with a reputation to maintain.’

  ‘Please, Dad!’ The lad’s almost in tears.

  Paul puts a hand on his thigh. ‘Think about it, buddy,’ he says gently. ‘What’ll your friends say? The lads at school, in the team – they’ll crucify you. Once a thing like that’s out, you’ll never live it down.’

  The Ian bloke gets up. ‘Look why don’t I leave you to think it over?’ he says. ‘And I’ll pop back tomorrow morning. As I said before, if you decide to go ahead, that would be great. Better than great.’ He smiles at Ben. ‘Fantastic. If you don’t, no hard feelings. I’ll go and look for someone else.’

  ‌Chapter Nineteen

  2007

  After the Ian bloke’s gone, Dad phones out for some pizzas and goes off to the Low Lights for a quick pint.

  Ben stares out at the river from the living room window, thinking about the film. He really wants to do it, but Dad’s right – he would get total grief about it at school. There’s no way Gareth and his crowd would let it alone; they’d probably call him Annie for the rest of his life. Though right now, that’s all Ben wants: to have the operation and be called Annie for ever.

  His mobile rings; it’s a number he doesn’t recognize.

  ‘Hi, Ben?’ It’s the Ian bloke, sounding serious. ‘Listen, I’ve just been talking to Dr Charlton about our meeting earlier, and she’s worried that you might take the wrong decision.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well this documentary’s really important to her. She’s run into a bit of stick recently, with people criticizing her work—’

  ‘She never said.’

  ‘Well, she wouldn’t tell you, would she?’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  ‘Anyway, like I said, she really needs this film to repair her reputation, so she’s worried she might have put some pressure on you without realizing it.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Letting me go to the library with you, getting you all excited about being on telly. Anyway, she’s really working herself up into a state about it. So she’s asked me to make sure you don’t feel under any pressure to agree. She knows it could be tough for you at school when the film comes out—’

  ‘What kind of criticism has she been getting?’

  ‘I’m not sure I should say. She’d hate it if you knew.’

  ‘I won’t let on. I promise.’

  ‘Well, some people would argue that she’s put all these memories about Annie into your head herself, as part of the hypnosis process.’

  ‘But that’s daft. I was going on about Annie for years before I even met the doc, and I knew loads about her.’

  ‘See? That’s exactly why you’re so important for the film. That kind of evidence, coming from you, would make all the difference to her reputation.’

  ‘Will she have to stop working?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose it’s a possibility.’

  ‘But she’s brilliant. Laura says she’s helped tons of people.’

  ‘I don’t expect it will come to that.’

  ‘But the film will help.’

  ‘Yes, but she says to make sure you understand that it’ll be fine without you, and we can easily start again with someone else.’

  Ben clicks off and stares out the window. He never thought the doc might need him to be in the film. He never thought how the film would affect her at all, until now. The sun’s setting over Gateshead and the river’s glinting with orange light. Is she looking out of her window too? They worked it out once, that her bedroom was probably at exactly the same height as his flat, but just around that bend in the river so they can’t quite see each other. But they can both see the old Roman fort over the river in South Shields, and the street lights coming on along the far bank. He thinks of her tucking her blanket around him, and wiping his eyes with her white hanky. And holding him, when no one else ever holds him, ever. And no one’s ever talked to him like she does, as though he understands, even when he doesn’t all the time – but she makes him believe that he could.

  And those funny-smelling cigarettes with the blue gypsy twirling on the packet. He’s come to really like that smell; and the smell of her enormous coffee machine.

  Ben stares down at the ferry, all lit up, churning across to the other side of the river. Maybe it wouldn’t be so awful at school. Maybe being cool and famous on TV would sort of cancel out the wanting-a-sex-change stuff. Plus, if he’s cured, he’ll be really hard anyway like a proper boy, and he’ll have loads of new hard friends, so Gareth and his crowd won’t dare tease him about it. Except that’ll never happen overnight, will it? Which means he’ll have to put up with loads of grief in the meantime.

  But if he’s not in the film, what will happen to the doc? He sighs. Maybe if he just keeps his head down and ignores them – Like, how bad could it be?

  Dad gets back just as the delivery lad’s unzipping the pizzas.

  ‘I want to be in the film,’ Ben says when the lad’s gone.

  ‘Well you can’t, so that’s that.’

  ‘Dad, please. Listen, I’ve worked it all out. The doc’s supposed to cure me, right? So on the film it’ll just be like I had this weird problem and now I’m cured. So all that stuff will be in the past, won’t it? So there’ll be nothing to tease me about.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll find something, don’t you worry.’

  ‘What I mean is, it’ll be over. So they’ll have to let it go, won’t they? Plus I’ll have been on telly, whic
h is totally cool, so that will like cancel it out.’

  ‘I don’t know—’

  ‘And you’re always saying I should toughen up. So this will be my chance.’

  Dad looks surprised – maybe even a bit impressed. ‘Bit of bullying never did me any harm, I suppose,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘I used to get it in the neck about my packed lunches. Nana used to put in all sorts of weird stuff. And she never got the right size uniform.’

  Ben laughs; he can just imagine it. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I can’t remember. Nicked money from her purse, probably, and bought my own gear.’ Dad pulls off a long slice of pepperoni pizza and folds it into his mouth.

  ‘Didn’t it bother you, though? I mean, weren’t you scared of going to school?’

  ‘Of course,’ Dad shrugs. ‘But you just get on with it, don’t you?’

  Ben bites into his chicken and sweetcorn. ‘What about the lads on the boat?’ he asks. ‘With the film and that, I mean. Won’t you be embarrassed about them finding out?’

  ‘Forget about me. It’s you I’m bothered about.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I suppose I can always wade in if it gets too rough.’

  ‘I told you, I’ll be fine,’

  ‘And you’re sure you want to do this?’

  Ben nods his head. He feels scared and excited all at the same time, but good too, because it would be him and Dad in it together.

  ‘OK. Good lad. Well, I’d better get in touch with that Ian bloke.’

  It’s the next day and Ben’s freediving off the causeway that leads to the lighthouse below the Priory. He was supposed to go proper diving with Dad, but his business mobile went just as they were getting the gear ready and he had to rush out ‘to see a man about a dog’, which means he’s doing something he doesn’t want Ben to know about.

  Ben had all his kit out, his wetsuit and tank and that, all ready to go, when the call came. So he decides to go anyway, but leave the heavy gear behind. He’s done this quite a few times this summer, ever since he saw a programme about a woman diving with dolphins, zooming around underwater in just a mask and fins. She said people have been swimming underwater for millions of years, diving for mother-of-pearl and oysters and that. You just have to learn how to hold your breath. The woman could hold her breath for eight minutes if she was just hanging in the water, or four and a half minutes finning along – which seemed ages when Ben timed it with his diving watch.

  The amazing thing is, you can go down just as deep freediving as you can with all the gear on. But it’s not nearly so dangerous, because of something called the ‘dive reflex’, which slows the heart down and diverts the blood to your vital organs to stop you wasting oxygen. But it only happens when you hold your breath under water; if you try it on land it doesn’t work. Plus there’s another thing called ‘blood shift’, which stops your lungs from collapsing when you go deeper. Because the air in your lungs compresses as you dive further down, so at fifty metres it’s only one-seventh of its volume, which should suck your intestines into that space. But with blood shift, your blood goes in there instead to compensate for the pressure. But when you’re breathing air from a gas tank none of that happens, because the tank keeps the air going in and out of your lungs like on dry land.

  Ben bought a freediving book on Amazon and he’s been doing breathing and relaxation exercises every day – when he remembers – to open up his ribcage and move his diaphragm to let more air in. The relaxation is to help stop you panicking when your oxygen’s running out, because that makes you use it up even quicker.

  When he tried it at first he couldn’t do it at all. He was OK in his room at home, but soon as he was in the sea, he’d start frantically sucking in air, just like when he had his tank on. But after a while he began to get into it, just floating on his front, rocking on the surface looking down, doing his relaxation exercises and watching the kelp swaying far below.

  Once he’d managed two minutes doing that, he started finning – really gently at first, so he didn’t use up too much oxygen; then a bit stronger once he’d got used to it. And now he’s started actually diving, which takes a bit more effort, so today he’s brought along his weight-belt to keep him under. And it works brilliantly, and he can stay under that much longer because he doesn’t have to fin to stay down, though obviously the weights make it harder to come up again.

  Afterwards, sitting on a rock and tugging off his fins, he thinks that maybe if the doc tried freediving she’d stop being so scared. If she was actually under the water, looking around, instead of staring at it looming in the distance, maybe she’d start to feel more at home. She’d have to stop smoking first, though. Freediving’s all about increasing your lung capacity and her lungs must be in a shocking state.

  Shoving his wetsuit in a bag, he picks his way over the rocks to the sea wall and heads for home. Laura says the doc has never even tried to stop smoking. She reckons that if she had children she might have made the effort, but because she’s on her own it doesn’t matter. Ben’s googled what smoking does to your lungs, and it’s disgusting. It’s mad that she can be scared of drowning, which is basically your lungs filling up with water, but keep on doing something that fills them up with black gunge instead.

  He’s googled drowning too, and what it feels like, from interviews with people who’ve nearly drowned and been saved at the last moment. And they say the only bad part is when you try to hold your breath at the beginning; because you go into a wild panic, and thrash around trying to get to the surface, which makes it worse, of course, because you’re using up all your oxygen, which makes you even more desperate for air. But if you just give in and inhale the water instead, then the panic stops and you get a floaty peaceful feeling, which is what happens when the brain is starved of oxygen. Then you drift down to the sea bed – because it’s the air in your lungs that keeps you on the surface – and just loll to and fro with the seaweed. So it’s quite a good way to die really.

  The flat’s empty when he gets back. He locks the door to his room and, as he’s leaning back against it, this thought comes into his head: that if the doc actually cures him, he won’t have to lock his door any more. If he’s cured, he can stop hiding Lily the Pink and all his girlie things. And it would be like just relaxing and going with the flow, like breathing in water and sinking down gently to the sea bed.

  He takes Lily out and holds her on his knee. She’s not as pink as she was, and her fur’s flat and bobbly, but she smells the same: like old sheets, and that perfume he borrowed from Mam years ago, that’s gone off now really, but still reminds him of her.

  If he’s cured, he thinks, he’ll have to stop sleeping with Lily. If he’s cured he won’t even want to sleep with Lily – that’s what being a boy is; wanting different things. So he’ll probably just bundle Lily up with his nighties and take her to the Oxfam shop.

  Ben stares at Lily and she stares back, with that crooked smile where her mouth stitching’s a bit wonky. What he can’t get his head round is how finding out about Annie will stop him loving Lily, and feeling comfy at night from just smelling her ear and rubbing it against his cheek in the dark. Maybe proper boys don’t need to feel like that.

  But it doesn’t matter either way. Because the way Ben sees it, he can’t really lose. Either he’ll find out about Annie and she’ll stop haunting him, and he’ll turn into a proper boy. Or it won’t work and Dad will have to let him get a sex change. Because after he’s been on TV everyone will know about him wanting to be a girl anyway, and, like Dad said, there’ll be no going back.

  And if it gets too bad, and the kids at school really won’t leave him alone, then he’ll get Dad to move the boat to Eyemouth or Fraserborough or some other fishing port. Then Ben can start living as a proper girl, in a place where no one knows who he is, with specs as a disguise for the first year, maybe, and his hair dyed so people don’t recognize him from the TV. Which has been his dream for ages anyway, though until now he’d alw
ays thought he’d have to run away and do it on his own. Because the main thing that’s changed is Dad knowing about Annie – even though they haven’t really talked about it, because Dad never really talks about anything. But it still makes a difference.

  Later, Nana turns up to get his lunch, which she never usually does without phoning first and trying to get out of it, saying, ‘Do you need me?’ as if she really cares, which she does in a way, as long as it doesn’t interfere with her knitting club and her Bingo. So he knows it’s because she wants to find out about the film.

  She’s had her hair done a new colour, blonder with a sort of pink tint, and she’s brought some cheese-savoury stotties, which she plonks on the table. ‘You get stuck in, lad,’ she goes. ‘I’ve just got a couple of calls to make.’

  Dad says he doesn’t know why she bothered having the phone installed at her flat, when she uses theirs all the time. It really narks him that she’s such a scrounger, but Ben thinks it’s really funny and it’s not as though she’s phoning New Zealand, though he wishes she would sometimes, so he could talk to his mam casually, without having to make a big thing out of it every Sunday morning with Dad handing him the phone and pretending not to listen.

  So Nana’s bustling around the living room with the cordless, moving cushions around and peering at herself in the big mirror, nattering on to her friends, telling them where she is and how she thinks she should stick around in case she’s needed, and apologizing for letting them down, and can they manage without her – which is really her way of rubbing their noses in it about the film. Then, right in the middle of eating his stottie, Ben’s mobile rings and it’s Dad.

  ‘The home number’s engaged,’ he says, in a sort of whisper. ‘Is Nana there?’

  ‘Yes – shall I get her?’

  ‘No!’ Dad hisses. ‘Don’t let on it’s me. Listen, that Ian bloke’s just phoned and he wants to film a trial session with you and Dr Charlton this evening. Get you both used to having other people in the room. Is that OK?’