Herring Girl Read online

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she’s saying. ‘Laura always makes far too much.’

  So in he comes with his tin of Stella, and fetches a plastic Coke crate from around the side of the house, as though this is a regular arrangement, and sets it up a bit away from the table, and creaks down onto it as though he’s a leper trying not to infect anyone.

  ‘Howay, Paul’s lad,’ he says to Ben. ‘Your da all right?’ Then nods nervously, sort of sideways, to Laura as she passes him a hunk of warm bread and bustles off for more crocks.

  Ben sits on the bench next to the doctor then shuffles along so Laura can fit on the end, so they’re all in a row with Ben in the middle and the folding table in front of them loaded with soup bowls, so he has to serve everyone. And even though it’s really weird having lunch with an old artist bloke he hardly knows and two old ladies – though the doctor’s not that old really – he doesn’t feel like he has to be polite all the time. It just feels sort of normal and cosy, and the soup’s really good, though he hopes no one from school sees him or he’ll never live it down.

  The old bloke finishes his really fast, slurping up his soup and mopping bread round his empty bowl almost before the others have started. Two minutes later he scuttles off back to his painting.

  ‘Is he really a loony?’ Ben asks when he’s gone. He doesn’t seem like a loony, just a bit scruffy around the edges, though he’s obviously an alky so it’s hard to tell.

  ‘If by “loony” you mean schizophrenic, then yes, that has been his clinical diagnosis over the years,’ says the doctor. ‘Though I gather he’s always coped exceptionally well with his illness. But more recently it’s become overlaid with a touch of Korsakoff’s psychosis, which rather complicates the picture.’

  ‘What she’s trying to say is he is a loony, but his memory’s a bit shot these days because of the booze,’ explains Laura, ‘so it’s hard to tell what’s going on with the poor old fungus.’

  ‘Actually it’s only his memory for recent events that’s impaired,’ says the doc. ‘He has very clear and vivid recall of events in his past.’ She’s spooning her soup in a really weird way, tipping the bowl away from her and scooping it up from the far side.

  ‘What is schizophrenia?’ It’s a word Ben’s heard before and he’s always wondered.

  ‘It’s a mental illness where the person loses touch with reality and believes things to be different from how you or I would see them,’ says the doc. ‘So the schizophrenic might think his thoughts are being controlled by invisible rays emanating from the TV, or he might hear voices in his head that stop him from concentrating, or that berate him for what he’s doing. With Mr Skipper, auditory hallucinations – hearing voices – are the main symptom, though he does appear to experience visual hallucinations too, which he incorporates into his paintings. That’s rare in schizophrenia, but it can be associated with alcoholic brain damage. As I say, the picture is complicated.’

  It’s tricky to follow when she talks like a textbook, but Ben thinks he’s understood most of it.

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell Ben about your theory?’ Laura asks, slicing more bread.

  The doc sighs and puts down her spoon. ‘Given the current situation, I hardly think that’s appropriate,’ she says.

  ‘What theory?’ Ben asks.

  ‘Mary thinks that schizophrenics aren’t imagining the voices they hear,’ says Laura, butting in again as usual. ‘She reckons they’re hearing real voices from their past lives.’

  ‘Laura, please! That is exactly the sort of thing that gets me into trouble: people turning a purely speculative academic hypothesis into a tabloid headline.’ The doc jabs a crust into her soup; she seems really annoyed. ‘All I’ve ever suggested is that some instances of auditory hallucination may have their provenance in a previous incarnation – please note the caveats – and that once the habit of hearing voices is established this may burgeon, as it were, into a more pervasive hallucinatory condition.’

  Ben’s not sure he likes the idea of loonies being people who can’t block out their past lives. Does that make him a loony too? ‘Have you hypnotized him?’ he asks.

  ‘Has she ever!’ says Laura. ‘Poor old Skip was sat outside in the freezing cold crying his eyes out one day. Guy Fawkes night it was, or going to be later. Anyway, I was here doing the lunch and she invited him in to get warm. That was the first time we’d ever spoken to him, wasn’t it, Mary? Anyway, before you know it, he’s lying down on the sofa spilling the beans – and five minutes later he’s shrieking fit to blow the roof off.’

  ‘Laura, I’ve told you before. You mustn’t give out that kind of information. It’s a violation of client confidentiality.’

  ‘Well it wasn’t very confidential at the time. You could hear him in South Shields, for God’s sake.’ She turns to Ben. ‘People were knocking on the door to see if she was being attacked. Someone even called the police!’

  ‘Nevertheless, it’s up to Mr Skipper to decide who else knows about his illness,’ says the doc crossly. ‘Suffice it to say, that was the one and only time I attempted any regression therapy with him. But since then, well, he’s become rather a fixture.’

  ‘You encourage him,’ says Laura. ‘She says she just wants to make sure he eats properly, takes his vitamins and that, to stop the Korsakoff’s getting any worse. But you can see how she is with him, soft as putty.’

  ‘He remembered me from yesterday,’ says Ben. ‘So his memory can’t be that bad.’

  The doc smiles. ‘It’s a funny thing, memory,’ she says, rooting about in her cardigan for her tabs. ‘Some things pass through with barely a trace, but others leave a mark so deep we can’t forget them however much we try.’

  ‌Chapter Eleven

  2007

  Nana’s supposed to come round to make Ben’s breakfast when Dad’s away, but she stopped ages ago and told him to keep quiet about it, which was fine with Ben because she’s always going on at him about why doesn’t he wear the latest puffa jacket she’s bought him, and has he got any homework, and who his best friend is at school. Plus it means he can visit Laura without anyone knowing, because even though Dad’s found out about him wanting the sex change, he’s not exactly over the moon about it, so he might not be too chuffed about Ben practising walking in high heels at Salon Laura on a Friday morning.

  Laura says Ben’s got the knack. ‘Naturally graceful,’ she called him, which is not like most boys, apparently. She says that walking in heels is a dead giveaway if you’re a man trying to pass. You need to bend at the knees and ankles, and let your hips go loose, otherwise you get that stiff look, like a dog on its hind legs. Then there’s that other thing men do in high heels, which she calls mincing, which is basically the same as the dog look, but with shorter steps and flappy hands.

  Once she’s explained it, Ben can see what she means. Men move their legs completely differently. Either they’re striding along with their hips locked in position and their arms swinging, or they’re standing still, or sitting with their knees wide apart, which women never do, even if they’re wearing jeans. Women do more of a wander, as though their legs are made of rubber, or wiggle along quickly. It’s like dancing, Laura says. That’s how she teaches men to get into it. You’ve got to forget walking and think dancing instead.

  At Salon Laura there’s a whole room just for shoes, including an entire wall of stilettos, in boxes with a picture of the shoe on the end, because that’s what most TVs want: stilettos, to go with their evening dresses. TV is short for transvestite, which is a man who wants to dress up as a woman. But someone who wants an actual sex change is called a TS or transsexual, which are divided into MtFs (male to female), like Ben and Laura, and FtMs, who don’t need special shops because they can buy ordinary men’s clothes anywhere.

  The shoe room is off a long hallway Laura’s had fitted with a red carpet and a full-length mirror, ‘for those filmstar fantasies’. But the main room is a proper beauty salon, with a massage table and machines for
electrolysis and waxing and laser-zapping, plus a hair salon area with a proper hairdresser’s sink and dryer, and a manicure table and foot spa with a million different varnishes. Then there’s the sewing room with two sewing machines and an adjustable dummy; and a utility with washer and dry-cleaner. The other four rooms, on the floor above, are filled with racks and racks of clothes, mostly evening and fancy-dress, on two lots of rails right up to the ceiling, so you have to hook the top ones down with a special pole.

  But one of the rooms is just underwear. Most of it’s just things you might find in any shop: bras and panties and corsets and that, except in men’s sizes; but there’s a whole load of other stuff that looks like something you’d need a prescription for, with pads and buckles and elastic bits – Ben’s not even sure which parts of the body they’re meant for – which is really interesting but also a bit gross.

  They have a routine now, every time he visits. First they have a snack – tea and toast for Laura, hot chocolate and a KitKat for Ben – then he does his chores, like mopping the floor and topping up the bottles in the salon, while she does invoices and that on the computer. Then if there’s time before her first client, he’ll get a lesson, but if not he’ll check the returned stock to see if anything needs mending or stain-removing, or he’ll just hang out in the store rooms tidying the clothes and trying things on.

  Today he’s had a walking lesson, and he’s practising up and down the red carpet in some high heels he’s found in his size, when Laura gets a call on her mobile. It’s another client cancelling: the third in a row that morning.

  ‘“Oh, Laura, I’m coming down with the flu and I’d hate to give you my germs,”’ says Laura, imitating them in a fake squealy voice. ‘“Oh Laura, I have to wait in for the plumber.” Pull the other one, duckie, it plays I Believe. They’ve seen the weather forecast, haven’t they? And booked a session at the stand’n’tan for a top-up before the weekend.’

  Hands on hips, she turns to Ben. ‘Looks like I’ve got the rest of the day off. What say we drag Mary down to the Long Sands for a picnic?’

  The doc doesn’t want to go, of course – Ben could have predicted that. But Laura can be quite a bully when she sets her mind to it, and she marches straight up the stairs to the doc’s bedroom, something Ben would never dare to do, and clatters back down with a towel and one of those boring navy Speedo swimsuits, which seems a bit hopeful as the doc’s supposed to be scared of the sea.

  So off they go, down the ninety-five steps of High Beacon Stairs and across the Fish Quay to the sea wall that stretches from North Shields all the way along beside the river to Tynemouth. And the doc starts off complaining about how she hates sand and she’ll freeze to death on the beach. But soon even she has to admit that it’s a totally brilliant day, with the sun glittering on the river, which is just lapping gently around the Black Middens, making the seaweed shine, so it’s hard to believe how many boats have been wrecked on those rocks – so many, there’s a special plaque to commemorate them – because today they’re just basking quietly in the sunshine, with turnstones and oyster-catchers scampering over them, flicking bits of weed aside with their beaks, and cormorants sitting like statues staring into the bright water.

  And it’s as though the whole of Shields has taken the afternoon off and put on a T-shirt and flip-flops, and got out a stripy towel and baby buggy and is heading to the beach. And there’s a smell of summer in the air, of chips and suntan lotion and seaweed, and radios blaring and little kids zooming past on their bikes, and heat shimmering above the concrete of the sea wall, so the feet of people in the distance are transparent, as though they’re walking on a cloud.

  Laura’s evil plan is to get the doc in the sea. She explained it to Ben when they were getting the picnic ready; how she wants to start her off just sitting on the beach, then next time maybe paddling in the rock pools.

  ‘What about her hands and feet getting cold?’ Ben asks. He’s looked up gangrene on Google and it’s like something out of a zombie movie. Plus smoking makes it worse, so she should definitely give that up.

  ‘We’ve not got her on the beach yet,’ says Laura. ‘First things first.’

  The tide’s right out when they get to the Long Sands, which is a mile of yellow sand with clumps of people dotted about and vans parked along the road selling ice-cream and burgers. Laura spreads out a pink blanket near the rocks and they sit down; though Ben’s up again in a trice with his shoes off, racing down towards the sea and swerving side to side with arms out like an aeroplane, clearing the gulls off the beach and splashing though the shallows – then charging back again with his wet jeans rolled up to his knees.

  ‘Is it OK to swim in my boxers?’ he asks, peeling off his jeans and thanking God he’s not put on his lacy knickers. His boxers are plain grey, so that’s OK. Though who’s going to look at him when there’s Laura stripped off in her red and purple jungle-print tankini? She’s taken out a bottle of that fake-tanning suntan lotion and the doc’s smearing it on her back as though they’re an old married couple, which they are in a way.

  Seeing Laura lying in the sun, you’d never know she was a man. Even up close she just looks like anyone’s nana sunbathing on the beach. She’s doing that trick she taught him for bare feet, pointing them so they arch and it’s harder to see what size they are. Ben tries it with his feet and it really works, though it would be better if his toenails were painted.

  Looking at the doc’s thin white feet, those gangrene photos flash across his mind again, which makes him wish he’d never done that Google search. Somehow Laura’s managed to bully her into the navy swimsuit and she’s sitting with her knees up like a nerdy kid, all stiff and pale and shivery, smoking a tab really fast and sucking the smoke right down.

  ‘Do you want a towel round you?’ he asks, though it’s really hot in the sun.

  ‘I’ll warm up in a minute,’ she says. Then: ‘Pathetic, isn’t it? This is the first time I’ve been on a beach since I was a girl.’

  ‘Is it the waves that freak you out? Because they’re really tiny today.’

  ‘It’s more the size of the sea itself,’ she says, taking a last suck on her tab and stubbing it out in a little ashtray hole she’s dug in the sand. ‘Your “tiny waves” don’t seem tiny at all to me, because I know they’re part of an absolutely monstrous mass of water that stretches to the horizon and beyond, right around the planet.’ Her hands are shaking as she lights up again. ‘When I was a child I used to think the sea was actually higher at the horizon, because that’s what it looks like, doesn’t it? A towering wall of water. I was terrified it would come crashing down on me like a tidal wave.’

  ‘Dad says he’s been in seas where the waves are higher than a house, higher even than our flat. But the boat just sort of bobs over them.’

  He’s trying to cheer her up, but she winces. ‘I can’t help thinking of the sheer weight of all that water. Apparently there’s a part of the Pacific that’s over seven miles deep.’

  ‘It’s called the Marianas Trench,’ he says, and this is something he really knows about. ‘There are mud volcanoes down there, and loads of weird microbes that actually need the pressure and low temperature to survive. But no actual fish because under water the pressure increases one atmosphere for every ten metres you go down, so at the bottom of the Marianas Trench it’s well over a thousand atmospheres, which would crush you flat as a pancake.’

  She forces a thin smile. ‘I suspected as much.’

  ‘But you’d never get down that far,’ he adds quickly. ‘You need a really heavy weight-belt to make you sink even fifty metres. In normal sea water you just float on the surface like a boat.’

  ‘I know it’s irrational. That’s why it’s a phobia – thalassaphobia is the correct technical term, if you’re interested.’

  ‘Laura said it might be because you drowned in another life.’

  ‘Did she now?’ The doc sighs. ‘Oh well, I suppose therapeutic opacity was a bit much to hope for with
her involved.’

  ‘Is it true?’ he asks, ignoring the last bit because he has no idea what it means.

  ‘It’s possible, yes. Though I have only fragmentary recollections to go on. In my training we tended to concentrate on my most recent incarnation, a rather colourful character called Peggy, who died in unfortunate circumstances when she was in her thirties. But before Peggy it seems there was at least one fisherman – as you might expect, living where we do.’ She nods sideways towards the distant waves, as though she can hardly bear to look. ‘Before the First World War over ninety percent of boys in North Shields went to sea straight from school, either as fishermen or keelmen ferrying coal to the collier ships.’

  ‘Do you remember him drowning then?’

  ‘No, thankfully, though I have had some suggestive dreams. As with your Annie, the exact circumstances of his death are obscure, partly because my supervisor didn’t focus on that particular incarnation. As I say, we were more interested in Peggy at the time.’

  ‘But if you found out, maybe you’d be cured.’ It pains him to see her sitting there all hunched up and nervy, puffing away.

  ‘You’re right, of course.’ She sighs again. ‘And I’ve been intending for years to make the trip to deepest Dorset where my supervisor lives and ask her to hypnotize me again. But it’s such a terribly long way to go, and the trains don’t link up easily. And apart from situations like this, which are obviously ridiculous, my phobia’s not especially disabling.’

  ‘Do you remember anything else about him?’

  ‘I’m not sure. That’s why I suspect there may have been more than one fisherman. Because the details didn’t seem to cohere properly at the time. So I recalled one episode in a bar where a man was blowing smoke in my face, obviously taunting me for not being a smoker and trying to pick a fight. But in another episode I was fashioning tobacco into a roll-up cigarette, enjoying the sweet smell of it and really relishing the ritual. And I remember a tobacco tin with a sailor painted on it – I can see it so clearly – and the initials “T.H.” scratched on the side.’