Herring Girl Page 3

  ‘Oh dearie mearie,’ sighs Laura at last, pouring more tea. ‘Let me gather my strength.’

  ‘When did you have your op?’ Ben asks, watching her fishing in her apron for a compact and sponging some fresh face powder under her eyes.

  ‘Only fifteen years back, but I always knew I was a lass. I had this vision of Sophia Loren in my mind, probably because I was a bit plump and my lips have always been pouty, so I thought right that’s me – hence the Laura, savvy? Loren, Laura?’ She shrugs. ‘Well it made sense to me at the time.

  ‘So anyway, there I was obsessed with la Loren, and I found this waspie in me nana’s drawer from when she was young, and I started wearing it at night to pull my waist in. Some hope, eh? And Veet had just been invented, so I went to town with that, because I was right hairy in them days, before I started on the hormones. And I was sneaking off to the cottages every Saturday to get changed, then on to La Continental to ogle up the sea-food and fruit. Then blow me, didn’t I go and fall for a lass?’

  Ben’s been checking out Laura’s chin while she’s been speaking: there’s no trace of stubble now. And her arms are just like Nana’s: a bit freckly, and wrinkly at the elbows, typical old lady arms.

  ‘It was before the op, so I sashayed straight into the closet and went back to being a lad. Anyway, we got married and had two lovely girls, then one day Jen comes home to find me prancing around in her baby-dolls. Give her credit, she tried to cope. And we went to Marriage Guidance and all that. But it was hopeless really. There was no way I was going to stop. And she was a Presbyterian, which put paid to any role-play hanky panky. So we staggered on for a few years, me trying to cut back, her turning a blind eye, till she took up with Harry the Crab and went off with the bairns.’

  Ben dunks a digestive in his tepid hot choc and sucks the soggy end while Laura ferrets in her apron again for a pack of Nicorettes and pops one into her mouth.

  ‘That’s why I started the business really. Because back then there was no one to go through the options with. I mean, are you gay or straight?’

  Ben sits up. He’s never thought.

  ‘See? You’re so caught up with getting the op, you haven’t thought about what it means for the future. Like, do you want to marry an adam or an eve? A molly or a dolly? At your age neither, most likely. Or maybe both, who knows?’

  Ben takes a bite of the digestive and tries to get his head round what she’s saying.

  ‘Sorry, duckie. Am I embarrassing you? I forget that people aren’t usually as forthright as moi. You will say if I’m going a bit OTT, won’t you?’

  ‘No, you’re all right,’ he says. Though she is totally embarrassing him, especially as she looks vaguely like his nana. Plus it’s hard to keep track, with all the weird words she keeps using.

  ‘I mean, what if you go ahead with the op and it turns out you’re a lesbian? You know about lezzies, I assume? Right, then, so what if you go to all that trouble only to find out that your meat and two veg would have come in quite handy after all?’ Laura tops up her cup and clicks in another sweetener. ‘Doesn’t mean you have to give up your maquillage and frocks. You can still slip in your falsies and mince up the Bigg Market of a Saturday night. Or get implants if you want to go the full dowry and live as your actual zelda. What I’m saying is, there’s different options. Right, where was I?’

  ‘Harry the Crab,’ Ben says. ‘Is he a big bloke with a beard; smokes a pipe? I think I met him once down the Seamen’s Mission with my dad.’

  ‘That’s the lad. Tell you the truth, it was a relief when Jenny left. I sold the house, spent a thousand smackers on zjoush and cossies, went on the hormones, got the riah sorted, and never looked back. Then I had the op and it all went horribly wrong. Not the op, that was textbook remould. But suddenly there I was cut like a lady, dressed like a lady, out on the town with lads like bees round a honeypot – I was still fairly young at that point, remember. But when it came to a clinch I wasn’t interested. What, rub that bristly chin against my ecaff? Excusez-moi, I’d say, I’m off home to the cat.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I shouldn’t have gone ahead with the op. There’s nothing like slipping on a Lycra one-piece in Lanzarote and not worrying about your lunchbox. Though talking of Lycra, you’d be amazed what they’ve come up with in the way of underwear these days, so you can hang onto your giblets and no one’s any the wiser.’

  ‘But I hate them.’ Ben bursts out. ‘I hate everything about being a boy. It’s not just what it looks like, it’s what it feels like inside. I’d just be pretending to be a girl if I had Lycra squashing everything flat.’

  ‘So, go and see Mary and get your assessment. Then—’

  This time it’s Ben who looks at his watch and jumps up in a panic. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he says. ‘Nana’ll be going nuts.’ He opens the door, then stops. ‘Can I – I mean, about them wigs and that…’ He feels his ears going red.

  ‘What about tomorrow? The caff’s shut all day and my first client’s not till three, so we won’t be rushed. How does ten o’clock sound? Right, I’ll be expecting you.’

  ‌Chapter Four

  2007

  Ben always looks forward to Dad coming home off the boat, and it’s always great for the first six minutes. But then the pressure will start up, all the macho stuff Dad goes in for, and Ben will start half wishing he’d go away again.

  So he’ll breeze in smelling of the sea, with this great gust of wind behind him. Because he’s a big bloke – not fat, because he’s always on and off that Atkins diet, and not exactly tall. But he takes up a lot of space, with beefy shoulders and tattoos, and a belly you can punch hard as you can and he doesn’t even flinch. And his sea boots are enormous, with thick socks folded over the top, and his jerkin’s thick as a bullet-proof vest, all zips and pockets for his gipping knife and tools and that. And he’s always carrying a load of creaky yellow oilskins and his ‘sea bag’, he calls it, packed with gloves and socks and weird long underwear – though they hardly ever change when they’re out, so he always niffs when you get up close.

  ‘If you think I’m bad, son, you should stick your nose down the cabin after a few days,’ Dad says, almost bragging. ‘Minging’s not the word for it.’

  It’s great to see him, though. And his first night back they always have an Indian and get out a DVD, it’s a sort of tradition; and sit on the sofa digging into greasy cartons, side by side, though it’s usually explosions and car chases, but sometimes Dad gets out something funny and they have a laugh together. Then later Dad goes out and gets hammered with the lads from the boat and Ben goes to his room and locks his door, gets out his nightie and Lily the Pink and goes to bed.

  This time, though, feels different. Ben’s always had his secret life, but since he’s met Laura he doesn’t feel so sad about it. It’s more a proper quest now; and even though he doesn’t know how it will turn out, he feels like he’s on the road to somewhere.

  This morning she showed him how to pluck his eyebrows – not so they were obvious, not so anyone would notice, but definitely more like a girl’s. She said there are loads of ‘tricks of the trade’, as she calls them, to make you look more feminine without people putting their finger on quite why. Like dyeing his eyelashes; they’re doing that next time.

  Tomorrow Dad’s borrowing a motor launch from Harry the Crab and they’re going diving, Ben and Dad and two of the lads from Deep Blue who taught them to dive. The visibility’s usually rubbish this time of year, with all the summer plankton, and the wind churning everything up, but it’s been calm all week so Dad reckons it’s worth a go.

  Ben’s always in two minds about diving. He loves being under water, the quivery green light, the dreamy way the weed sways; and he likes being with Dad, up to a point – but he hates all the macho talk about the gear and the wrecks and that. To Ben, a wreck’s just a place for fish to shelter from predators and storms; but to Dad it’s the HMS whatever, with X tonnage, sunk on X date with the loss of X men. Ben
wonders sometimes about all those lost men. Can ghosts haunt under water? Does it bother them being forever dived on and rummaged through by lads in wetsuits with metal detectors?

  They set off first thing and the water is flat as a mirror, and clear to ten fathoms, which is really unusual for the North Sea. They take it in turns going down, and the two Deep Blue lads go first – because you’ve always got to go down with a buddy, that’s the first rule of diving: in case something happens, like running out of air or your line breaking. Then it’s just Ben and Dad waiting on the boat, all togged up except for masks and fins, just rocking gently in the sunshine and sipping tomato soup from the Thermos.

  Dad throws him a smile that says, clear as you could write it, ‘Love you, son,’ and Ben’s just basking in it, and flashing the same message back, when the thought sneaks in like a shadow: ‘What if you’d seen what I was doing yesterday, Dad? Would you still love me then?’ And it dims everything a bit.

  When it’s their turn, Dad takes ages checking Ben’s gear – is the tank strapped on properly, are the pressures OK? When he checks his mask he’s right up close, so Ben’s looking up at his big white teeth, with the vampire incisors; and the scar on his lower lip from that bottle fight at the New Dolphin pub years ago. Ben remembers Dad kissing him when he was little – even more often than Mam did – and cuddling him on his lap when they were watching telly; but that all stopped when he came back from the hospital.

  When they go down everything seems to be in slow motion, because the gear’s so bulky you can’t turn quickly, and the fins make it feel like you’re kicking through treacle. And there’s always that moment when he panics at bit, when he puts in the mouthpiece – because it’s different from normal breathing; you have to pull the air in, like sucking on a baby’s bottle. However many times he’s done it, it freaks him out to have to suck in air all the time. And sounds are really weird under water too, so it’s like you’re deaf, and have to use a special sign language with your buddy; and if the boat engine’s going there’s a faint throbbing sound, but at the same time there’s this really loud roaring and hissing noise, which is the air from your tank.

  Once he’s got over that though, it’s brilliant, with the sunlight dappling down through the water near the surface. Then deeper down, once he’s switched his torch on, there’s loads of starfish, and crabs bumbling along through the weed; and it totally takes over his brain, so he doesn’t have to think about footie or school or pretending to be what he’s not. Then suddenly there’s this humongous blue lobster peering out from a cranny. This whole bit of sea is protected, so there’s always loads of shellfish, because they stick around where they’re spawned, mainly. But there’s hardly any proper fish, because they get caught as soon as they swim away – just a few little sand gobies darting about near the bottom.

  Afterwards Dad’s in one of his high-five moods, because they’ve done this ‘father-and-son activity’, like when he comes to watch footie practice and Ben’s done some really quick moves – which he’s practised over and over, because he knows Dad will worry that he’ll be ‘failing as a father’ if his son’s not interested in sports.

  And that’s the trouble really. The times that should be the best times, when they’re off with a bunch of lads to the match, or getting on their gear for a big dive, that’s when Ben feels saddest. Because Dad’s in his element, and full of pride, grinning at Ben. And you can tell he’s just praying that everything’s OK, and Ben’s got over what Dad always calls his ‘accident’ and is a normal boy after all.

  Ben wonders sometimes if his mam left because of him; because he didn’t know to hide it when he was little, and was always nagging at her to buy him Barbies and Polly Pockets.

  After she left, the flat looked pretty much the same, which was weird – even in Dad’s en-suite, because he didn’t dump her old moisturizers and shower gels for ages. It was only when Ben opened her side of the wardrobe that it really hit him. And there was just this one pair of beige pop socks balled together, all dusty in a back corner; and that floaty black negligee Dad gave her for their anniversary, on the matching padded hanger. Then one day they disappeared too.

  ‘It’s just you and me now, buddy,’ Dad says. ‘And buddies always stick together, right?’

  ‌Chapter Five

  2007

  Mary’s phone rings deafeningly in the hall. It’s a wall-mounted seventies contraption installed by the previous owners in a vain attempt to hear it from the fifth floor. It’s Laura, ebullient as ever: ‘Bonjour, duckie! How’s it diddling?’

  ‘Actually I’ve hit a bit of a setback,’ Mary says. ‘So I’ve been drifting about rather pathetically wondering what to do about it. You remember that paper I sent off to the BJCP? The one I was planning to use as an introduction to my book? Well they sent it out for peer review and one of my peers has reviewed it rather badly.’

  ‘Does that mean it won’t be published?’

  ‘She’s suggested I send it to the TPR instead – that’s the Transpersonal Psychology Review – because, and I quote, “this is exactly the kind of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo they like to publish”. Sorry, Laura, you’ve probably no idea what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Excusez-moi. I can speaka da English. You’ve sent a chunk of your magnum opus to a pukkah scientific journal and some miserable bint’s said it’s only fit for the cat’s litter tray.’

  ‘She’s accused me of endangering my clients too.’

  ‘Well there was that rampaging nutter last year,’ Laura reminds her, referring to a client who’d torn up his prescription – with rather florid results.

  ‘But that happens all the time. A client starts to improve then discontinues their medication. It’s a perennial problem, regardless of the type of therapy.’ Mary extends the telephone cord to its limit out into the porch and reaches for her Gitanes.

  ‘So why has this peer review bint—’

  ‘Professor Hester Griffin is a highly articulate, formidably intelligent—’

  ‘OK, this brainy peer review bint – why has she got it in for you?’

  Mary sighs. ‘It’s not me she has a problem with – it’s anything that smacks even vaguely of the paranormal. It’s a bit of a crusade for her. She assumes that because I can’t cite a physical mechanism for the transfer of memories from a past life, then that transfer can’t possibly occur – even though the documented evidence is overwhelming.’

  ‘So why is she still banging on about it?’

  ‘It’s so frustrating! In any other scientific field, if you encounter some evidence that doesn’t fit your current theory, you question the theory – not the evidence. It’s as though the whole quantum revolution never happened. I’ve had run-ins with her before, at various conferences. Cryptoamnesia’s her specialism, so I suppose I should have expected something like this.’

  ‘Pardonez?’

  ‘Cryptoamnesia. False memory. Where people remember things that didn’t happen. Hester’s published quite widely on the subject.’ Cleverly argued papers, Mary recalls, with a hint of rhetorical flourish.

  ‘So she reckons people who remember their past lives are making it all up.’

  ‘Yes, in a nutshell.’

  ‘But why would they? Why would I invent a toerag like Tom to explain why I wanted a sex change?’

  ‘She’d argue that there are alternative explanations that don’t involve reincarnation.’

  Laura snorts scornfully. ‘Hormones in the womb, you mean? They don’t explain all them nightmares though, do they? It was finding out about Tom that got rid of them.’

  ‘Hester would argue that you created your Tom persona as a post hoc rationalization – a way of making sense of the nightmares – and that I colluded with you.’ Is that what she’s been doing all these years, Mary wonders, constructing elaborate castles in the air with her clients?

  ‘Hey, you’re not taking this seriously, are you?’

  ‘Perhaps I’ve been working on my own for too long,’ m
uses Mary, cradling the phone under her chin to light her cigarette. ‘Most of my clients these days come fully expecting me to regress them to a past life. It’s not exactly an uncontaminated sample. Whereas if I was in some sort of group practice, or attached to a university, rubbing up against other opinions—’

  ‘You’d still be seeing the same clients,’ Laura reasons.

  ‘Yes, but perhaps I wouldn’t be so ready to look for a past-life explanation.’

  ‘Actually I’ve just found you a bona new one – totally uncontaminated too.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Mary says in dismay. ‘I’m sorry, Laura. I can’t face taking on anyone new at the moment – not with all this hanging over me. It wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘Oh, go on,’ Laura puts on a wheedling voice. ‘He’s only little.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Despite herself, Mary’s curious.

  ‘I mean he’s only twelve years old and if ever a lad needed your help it’s this one.’

  The boy sits on the very edge of the red sofa, trying not to sink into it. He’s jiggling his bony knees, rubbing a finger over a scab on his arm, obviously just dying to pick at it.

  Mary inherited this sofa from her aunt, but it’s served her unexpectedly well over the years, being unusually yielding and womb-like; even the most resistant of clients usually succumbs to its embrace eventually. In fact it’s such an effective way of inducing relaxation, that when it wears out she will immediately search for an identical replacement. She settles into her own chair, a far more upright and utilitarian item from the local Oxfam shop – known technically as a ‘cottage chair’, apparently – and adjusts her old cashmere cardigan around her shoulders. ‘So what can I do for you?’ she asks.