Herring Girl Read online

  She stubs out her cigarette and returns indoors to her consulting room. She was due to see Mrs Hargreaves at eleven and Mr Barnard at two, but she’s just cancelled them both, claiming a sudden migraine: which is a blatant lie, and something she heartily disapproves of. But how can she concentrate on clients with this occupying her mind? ‘This’ being the two envelopes that came in the post this morning: one a much-recycled brown Jiffy bag addressed in shaky biro capitals; the other slim and white, professionally typed.

  She extracts a single folded sheet from the white envelope and rereads it, though she already knows every word by heart. It’s from the editors of the British Journal of Clinical Psychology rejecting a paper she’s submitted for publication.

  We have now received the peer reviews of your manuscript, ‘Past Life Experience as an Heuristic Principle in Psychopathology’, and we are sorry to tell you that, on balance, they are not favourable. We therefore have no choice but to decline publication.

  The fact that it’s a pro forma letter makes it more humiliating, somehow. But it’s the contents of the jiffy bag that have really destabilized her: three closely typed pages – plus a copy of her own manuscript, liberally underlined and annotated in bold spiky writing. The package has been sent to her by Karleen Bryce – Mary’s old supervisor and one of her staunchest academic supporters – who was on the committee that rejected the paper.

  ‘Mary dear, I’m so sorry about this,’ wrote Karleen in her covering note. ‘I argued till I was blue in the face, but the others wouldn’t be swayed. Anyway, I’m enclosing a copy of Hester’s report. Totally against the rules, of course, but I thought you ought to see what you’re up against. I’m here, as ever, if you want a chat. A lutta continua! K.’

  Sighing, Mary sits down at her desk and leafs through her rejected manuscript again. She knew she was going out on a limb with this paper – about how certain clinical phenomena, such as phobias, false memory syndrome and schizophrenic hallucinations, might be the result of past life memories intruding. But she had been so tentative in her conclusions – some instances in some patients was all she was suggesting. And she had supported every hypothesis with reputable experimental research, along with evidence she herself had painstakingly amassed during twenty-five years of helping clients access memories of their past lives as a way of resolving their current neuroses. Her plan had been to use the paper to spark a debate in the literature, which she would then incorporate into an introduction to the four-hundred-page book about past life regression she’s been working on for the last three years. The book would then be published to resounding critical acclaim and her reputation secured. Spit, spat, spot, as Mary Poppins would have said. How could she have been so naive?

  Mary leans back in her chair. It never occurred to her that others might find her latest hypotheses preposterous. Challenging, certainly, and unorthodox – but derisive? Dangerous? Why, Hester’s report practically accuses her of malpractice: ‘How many schizophrenics are walking around without medication because Dr Mary Charlton has convinced them that their hallucinated voices are simply emanations from a prior incarnation?’ she had written. ‘How many sex abusers have escaped prosecution because Dr Charlton has persuaded the victims that the molestations they remember occurred in a previous life?’

  Unable to settle, Mary gets up and wanders into her tiny back kitchen where she enacts the comforting ritual of grinding fresh coffee beans and loading up the two espresso attachments of the Gaggia. The bulky chrome-and-black contraption dominates the gloomy little room. Like almost everything she owns, this machine has a previous incarnation – in this case, donated by Laura when she was renovating the café.

  Setting out a cup and saucer, she thinks she really ought to eat something: boil an egg, perhaps; put some toast in the toaster. But her appetite’s vanished – not that she ever had much of one. The kitchen is rather dank and unfrequented as a result. Investigating an intermittent smell here a few years back, the plumber had lifted a floorboard and discovered a puddle of water glinting far below in the foundations. On closer examination, it turned out to be a small sluggish spring that rose briefly beneath the kitchen, then seeped back underground to meander its way down to the river.

  ‘You should have the whole place tanked,’ the plumber had said. ‘Your walls are wringing wet.’

  But when he outlined the process – replacing the wooden floor with layers of polythene and concrete – Mary couldn’t face it. It seemed like an insult to a building that had been standing unmolested for nearly three centuries. And she found she quite liked the idea of the spring being there, a relic of the site as it once was. Did someone dig a hole there once to create a small pool, she wondered, and line it with pebbles until the water welled up clear? And scoop it up with a tin jug and set it to boil on a cooking fire? She envisaged a barefoot woman squatting down to tend the fire, feeding twigs of kindling into its hot yellow mouth.

  That would have been long before her house was built, of course – at least in its current form. But old maps reveal that there has been a dwelling on this site for over five hundred years: first an unremarkable two-room cottage (beside, it would seem, a small spring); then an irregular five-storey tower made of ships’ timbers and sandstone blocks pilfered from Hadrian’s Wall. When Mary considers those sandstone blocks, how they were hewn and by whom – and how very very long ago – she feels something akin to awe at the Heath Robinson structure in which she lives.

  The tower was built to house the light-keeper, who tended a candle beacon in the cupola above the fifth floor to guide vessels navigating through the sandbanks at the mouth of the Tyne. In 1808 an elegant new bespoke Georgian lighthouse was constructed further along the bank, and the light in Mary’s tower was snuffed out for good. The building was then pressed into service as an almshouse for the wives and children of fishermen lost at sea. She pictures them crowded into her rooms, these family groups, with their pathetic bundles of worldly goods – the women perhaps stoical and in shock, the children whimpering or whingeing. She pictures them laying out their blankets, their one suitcase, their few tin cups and spoons.

  Occasionally Mary finds herself drawn to the window of her bedroom and transfixed for one, two, hours at a time, gazing down at the river. Why she chose that particular room, of four bedrooms, she can’t explain. It’s up three flights, which is a damn nuisance; but there’s something familiar about the view from just that height that tugs at a memory at the back of her mind. For Mary the past is a series of chambers, along a corridor lined with doors that can be opened at any time. One day, she promises herself, she will investigate that part of her past that once looked down from her bedroom window at the river viewed from exactly that height.

  ‌Chapter Three

  2007

  Ben’s not sure what he was expecting: an anonymous door, maybe, with a subtle little sign and one of those buzzers that let you in and straight up the stairs. Not this noisy brightly-lit caff, with ‘Café Laura’ in big curly pink writing above the window, and lace netting half way up like at Nana’s so you can’t see inside. Hanging inside the netting on the door there’s a smaller sign saying, ‘When café closed, please ring bell for Salon Laura’, with the cross-dressing website address underneath, so he knows he’s come to the right place.

  But the caff’s obviously not closed. The windows are all steamed up and the door’s got one of those old-fashioned bells, which keeps dinging as old ladies and mams with prams keep shuffling in and out, nattering away like they all know each other. Ben hovers about vaguely outside, trying to pluck up the courage to go in. There’s obviously no kids his age, so he’s going to stand out like a sore thumb. Maybe he should come back later, when it’s less crowded – but then he’ll stand out even more.

  He edges nearer, trying to see inside. It looks cosy, more like someone’s house than a caff; with cakes and sandwiches on a pine table instead of a counter. There are two women serving: a young waitress in a black skirt and white pinny, and an o
ldish lady in one of those big flowery aprons with a frilly top bit that goes round the neck and a big bow tied at the back.

  It’s her, Ben realizes, that Laura from the website; he’d know her face anywhere. He takes a step closer – next thing he knows he’s been jostled inside by a fresh surge of old ladies and steered towards a small table by the young waitress, who thrusts a menu at him and swoops crumbs away briskly with a J-Cloth.

  Ben asks for hot chocolate and picks up a newspaper someone’s left on the chair beside him so he doesn’t have to look at anyone. The table’s a bit rickety, so he keeps one elbow on it, but once his drink’s arrived and he’s found the Sudoku page, he feels a bit less like a sore thumb and his heart settles back down in his chest. If anyone asks, he’ll say he’s waiting for Nana, but no one does – they’re all spreading jam on scones and fiddling with baby bottles – and at five-thirty the waitress takes off her pinny and there’s just him left, and Laura helping the last two old ladies into their coats.

  He’s been sneaking looks at her, to see if you can tell. The feet are the hardest to disguise, but she’s in ankle boots with heels, so you can’t work out how big they are. And men’s necks are thicker, but she’s a bit jowly and old so it doesn’t really show there either. And if that hair’s a wig, it’s a good one: reddish brownish curls heaped up on top with some kind of clip. If anything, she looks like a thinner version of Nana, if Nana was a bit more colourful and arty, because she’d never wear those big dangly earrings and magenta tights; she’s more of a fleece and leggings type.

  ‘Want a top-up, pet?’ Laura’s shut the door after the old ladies and she’s standing right there by his table.

  ‘I’m all right.’ Ben’s heart starts going nineteen to the dozen again and his chest aches, like it’s filling with concrete. He’s scared to look up in case she thinks he’s staring. Her hands are all freckly and covered with rings and her nail varnish matches the roses on the apron, which match the tights.

  ‘Go on, no charge. I’m making a fresh pot anyway.’

  ‘OK, thanks,’ he says, then wants to kick himself because that means he’s got to stay.

  She bustles off on her high heels round the tables, straightening doilies and cruet sets, then turns her back and gets busy with cups and saucers. She’s got a bit of a waist – not much, but old ladies never do really – and the high heels make her bum stick out, which helps the overall shape of her.

  ‘There you go,’ she says, setting down a tray. ‘Hot chocolate with whipped cream and a couple of chocolate digestives for luck.’

  ‘I saw you on that website,’ Ben blurts out before he can stop himself.

  ‘Well now you can see me in the flesh.’ She does a little twirl and stands there, with her knee cocked and sort of swaying, one hand on her hip and the other behind her head. ‘All me own riah, touch wood, in case you were wondering,’ she says. ‘Though it’s getting a bit thin on the top now. Hence la bouffant styling.’

  She turns the sign on the door to ‘Closed’ and plonks herself down opposite with one of those little sighs old people do when their feet are killing them. ‘No one will come in now,’ she says, ‘but it’s not locked, so you can leave any time.’

  She’s smiling at him. Waiting.

  She knows why he’s there.

  As soon as he realizes, all the concrete that’s been building in Ben’s chest dissolves and there’s a sudden embarrassing hot prickle of tears at the back of his eyes.

  ‘You look like your photo,’ he says, ‘only different.’

  ‘What, fatter? Uglier?’

  ‘Not as pink,’ he says, then wants to kick himself again. Why did he say that?

  She laughs. ‘It’s because of the green background. I keep meaning to get that photo changed.’

  ‘Does it cost a lot?’ Somehow she’s made it OK to ask. ‘The operation, I mean.’

  ‘Depends what you want to have done.’ She looks at him closer, more seriously. ‘It’s for you, is it?’

  He nods. ‘I tried to do it myself when I was little, but I made a mess of it. So I’ve been saving up to get it done properly.’ He sees her flinch and the table rocks suddenly, slopping hot chocolate into his saucer. Why did he tell her about that? He never talks about it to anyone, not even Dad.

  ‘What did you do to yourself?’ she asks – of course she asks; he’s mentioned it so she has to ask.

  Ben can hear the blood pumping in his ears. He can’t look at her. ‘I tried to cut everything off,’ he says quietly, almost whispering. ‘I got a knife and just sort of sawed, but I passed out before I could finish.’

  ‘How long ago was this, pet?’

  ‘When I was seven. Dad says I could have died. I was in hospital for ages.’

  ‘Did you realize you were risking your life?’

  ‘I didn’t care. I just wanted it all off.’ He looks up. ‘I still want it all off.’

  ‘You do know that’s not what happens at Salon Laura, don’t you?’ she says carefully. ‘I just make clothes for men who want to look like women. And do depilation and make-up and that; a bit of voice coaching and deportment. Advice and support, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to, like, pass as a girl,’ he explains. ‘But there’s no way I can turn up at school like that. But they say I’ve to pass for up to two years before I can even go on a waiting list, and I’m twelve already.’

  She nods. ‘So you’re worried about puberty.’

  ‘I thought if I could get some hormones, it would give me a bit more time.’

  ‘And what does your mam think about all this?’

  ‘There’s only my dad,’ he says. ‘He’s at a meeting today.’

  ‘You mean he doesn’t know you’re here.’

  ‘Your website said “strictly confidential”,’ he says, begging her to understand.

  Laura sighs, as though she’s heard it all before. ‘Look, I won’t tell your father, and that’s a solemn cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die promise. But even if I had them, I couldn’t just hand over hormones to an underage—Hey, wait a sec—’

  Ben’s scraping back his chair, slopping more hot chocolate. He was mad to think someone he’s never met before would help him get hormones without telling his dad.

  Laura puts a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t run off yet. I know what it’s like, being in the wrong body, with everyone treating you as a lad.’ Ben hesitates and sits down again on the edge of his chair, half turned to the door ready to leg it. ‘That was me for years,’ she’s saying. ‘I kept thinking I’d grow out of it—’

  ‘I’ll never grow out of it,’ he says, and the tears are back, but spilling out this time. ‘And it’s just going to get worse and worse. I’ll have, like, hair growing everywhere and my voice will break. I can’t wait two years. That’s all the time I’ve got before I start turning into a man.’

  Her lipsticked mouth goes soft and sort of sags, so he knows she understands. ‘So let’s work out how I can help.’

  Ben wipes his eyes with the serviette. ‘There’s loads of sites selling hormones, but they’re all big drug companies, or for body builders, or sort of mixed up with porno.’

  Laura pulls a face. ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘I think I’ve got the right name of the puberty drug, but—’

  ‘Hey, hold on, hinny! Do you realize how dangerous it is ordering drugs off the internet? You’ve no idea what they’re putting in them packets.’

  ‘But it’s got to be better than being in a panic the whole time about leaving it too late, and growing into totally the wrong shape, with a beard and big feet like Dad’s.’

  She hands him a fresh serviette. ‘Have you talked to anyone else about this?’

  Ben shakes his head.

  ‘Look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ she says. ‘But you’ve got to promise not to run away again, OK? I’m going to send you to a doctor I know. Now she’s not a surgeon—’

  ‘Is she a hormone expert?’ he asks hopefully.

&nb
sp; ‘No, she’s a psychoanalyst.’

  ‘Oh, a therapist,’ he slumps again. ‘Dad’s taken me to therapists. They’re useless. All they do is talk about getting me to feel “comfortable in my own body”.’

  Laura smiles, as if to say ‘tell me about it’. ‘Mary’s not a normal kind of therapist. She won’t try to stop you wanting a remould. She’s more about trying to work out why you want it so much.’

  Ben eyes her doubtfully.

  ‘You’ll need a report from someone like her anyway,’ she adds. ‘You need someone to declare you’re in your right mind before they’ll accept you for surgery. I had to go six rounds with a shrink before my op.’

  Alarm sweeps through him. How could he have forgotten that? It’s on every website he’s ever looked at: the need for some kind of ‘psychological assessment’. He’s been so worried about ‘passing’ and getting hold of the right hormones that he must have pushed it to the back of his mind.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Laura asks.

  ‘OK,’ he says, weak with relief. Maybe if this Mary’s a doctor, she can get him a prescription for the puberty hormones too.

  ‘Bona. At least that’s one thing sorted,’ she says, tearing a page off her order pad and scribbling down an address and phone number. ‘Here’s her details. Say Laura sent you.’ She glances at her watch, and Ben starts to get up.

  ‘No, you’re all right,’ she says. ‘I was just seeing if I had time to take you upstairs for a tour of La Salon. Try on a few wigs maybe, show you a few tricks of the trade.’ She winks at him. ‘If you like, that is. No obligation.’

  Yes he would like, more than anything. He tries to smile and say so, but the tears are there again, clogging his throat so he can’t speak.

  ‘Go on, you daft filly,’ says Laura, handing him a whole wodge of serviettes. ‘You’ll start me off.’ And sure enough she’s dabbing away under her mascara. Then they’re both laughing and blowing their noses and Ben feels himself relaxing for the first time since he got there.