Rod:
82
Before he came over that evening, I made some notes. Quite a lot of notes. They encouraged me to do that, the people who purported to help me after my father died and my pink girlhood with him. And somehow I never lost the note-making habit. In fact, probably, it’s become slightly obsessive. Like keeping up a diary.
When we got back to the house, George had paid off and tipped Max, the obliging cabby, with an impressive amount of notes.
As Max helped us bring in the sheaves, as it were, bottle-clanking upstairs like a Roman legion on the march, I noted that the foul stench in the hallway had finally been attended to. Well, thank God anyway for that. I had, I admit, a suspicion the smell had already been gone when we first came down earlier, with Forrel in tow. But my thoughts had been slightly distracted.
They were distracted worse now. Not only by George’s bombshell about my flat and my subsequent musings on escape, but by the peculiar thing that had happened as he and I were walking back.
We’d taken the other, longer, route, for some reason, up around Wilchester Road. “Looks like snow,” George had remarked as we dawdled along. “Good to get a bit of a walk in before the siege.”
About half way along the curve of the street, a couple of youthful yobs came shambling out of a side alley, and seeing us, stopped short, staring as if never had they beheld a couple of men, older or old, before. And then both of these kids burst out in raucous laughter, pointing and hopping, with a sort of brainless yet threatening glee.
“Tol’ yah! Din I tell yah, man? It’s ’er. Dun I say?”
It was at me, incidentally, they pointed. Not at George. What had they said—“It’s ’er.” Or was it Kerr or Ayre–some name mangled by their sloppy mouths.
We walked sedately past, or George did. And the two creatures did drop back, piling to a garden wall as if scared we might confront them. Others would have, perhaps. Once we were past, however, one of them shouted, loud through his own giggling, “‘Ere, sir—great fucking coat, sir!” And the other gave what used, long ago, to be called a wolf whistle.
As their chortles died off behind us, (thankfully they hadn’t followed), one word jogged my memory. Coat. Forrel had made off with my spare one.
83
I got my small array of drinks out, including the original bottle of vodka; to my surprise Forrel hadn’t finished it off. He must have topped up his own bottle—from the tap.
In the kitchen I polished two spirit tumblers with paper towels, and brought them through.
All the time I kept on thinking about the yobs. No, it wasn’t a name, was it. The little prick had said: It’s her, or he would have, had he been able to pronounce it properly. Her. To and of me. Of course, it was plainly absurd. Or was it? Did I, from that first training long ago, still carry some vestige of the female? In my walk, perhaps, or certain gestures? I didn’t think so. I don’t think so. Without any doubt my voice is masculine, and so is the stubble I shave off every morning. Therefore, what had prompted such a particularised insult? The idea had begun to raise its head that somehow, in some entirely unforeseen and unfathomable manner; hints of my childhood had surfaced round about.
Putting down the glasses, my hands turned cold as ice. I thought. George. George who, after all, must know my history. George, now here, friendly and urbane, teenager at heart, easy-going, George, telling Max the Cabby in a burst of chat, as they rode somewhere or other, And Max incredulous—“What? For real—they dressed him like a girl?”
“Bows and all,” George would have answered.
And they would both commiserate with poor old Roderick. And then later Max would tell someone else. “Here, you’ll never believe what I heard the other day…”
What to do? Should I tackle George the minute he arrived in my sitting room? I could feel my blood boiling even as my hands and feet froze in their skins.
I’d break the bloody new vodka he bought me over the bastard’s head.
84
However. It wasn’t yet half past five. I had another vodka myself, calmed down and sat down, and thought, Look, you’re not used to so much booze. Don’t go rushing to conclusions—rushing at windmills because you think they’re giants. It’s almost certainly some mistake. Those cretins are no doubt on stuff, and they probably try that mindless trick on anyone over forty. Or over thirty-two. They think it’s witty. They probably shout ‘Look it’s ’im’ at older women. Let it go. Don’t fall out with George. He is offering you far more for this flea-pit than it cost you, or has ever, could ever be worth. Take the money and run. Wherever you go, it will be a brand new start. No one will know you, not even if you end up back where you started. That’s the irony. That’s the place they never could know you. Rosalind. Roderick. Rod.
After this I went to the bedroom and looked in the wardrobe. When I had got out the other coat for Forrel to borrow—and so go off with—I must have knocked the two curtains at the end. Must have, since when I pulled them both back, the dress had dropped off its hanger, and crumpled into a glittering pink-gold puddle on the wardrobe’s floor.
Somehow it looked—I can only put it this way—as if it had died. I was disconcerted. I picked it up, and hung it back up at once, smoothing it down, rearranging its fringes.
Of course there is this puzzle always, and I can’t answer it. Nor do I especially want or need to. I don’t hanker after my girlhood. I don’t miss it or want to recreate it. I have never, past the age of late
