DEATH BY MISADVENTURE The sequel to 'The Transmigration Of Richard Brookbank' Chapter 1 By Touch the Light The girl on the other side of the dressing-table mirror returns the world-weary smile I throw at her. We’ll see this out somehow. If only I didn’t identify with her more and more completely with each day that goes by. How long do I have left before I’m unable to imagine any reflection but the one in front of me now? Scary? I’ll say. And there isn’t a thing I can do about it.

Northcroft-on-Heugh, County Durham
April 17, 1979

Every Tuesday the evening meal at the Gladstone Hotel is exactly the same. A bowl of reconstituted Scotch broth so thin and colourless an enterprising drinks manufacturer would have no trouble advertising it as the latest thing in still mineral water is followed by a stodgy chunk of corned beef pie, a miserly helping of crinkle-cut oven chips and a rather more generous portion of mixed vegetables — the tinned kind that despite having had all the flavour processed out of them somehow contrive to leave a disgusting aftertaste it invariably takes hours, if not the rest of the night to lose.

I’d stand up in a court of law and testify under oath that I detest tinned mixed vegetables more than any other combination of proteins, carbohydrates and fats nature has evolved and western civilisation has perverted in its unending quest for cheap, no-nonsense nourishment. In terms of their ability to kill a healthy appetite stone dead I rate them right up there alongside the greasy mutton stew and lumpy mashed spuds that passed for nutrition at Westbourne before the new dining hall was built, a prefect ready to take a spoon to the knuckles of any boy who didn’t look like clearing his plate. The revulsion I feel for the putrid, fluorescent mush the tiny cubes turn into when I try to pick them up with my fork is equalled by a burning desire to creep downstairs when everyone’s asleep, then locate and if possible incinerate the hidden storeroom I’m fairly sure must be stacked to the ceiling with colossal drums of the stuff, TO BE CONSUMED ON TUESDAYS ONLY stamped on the side of each one in enormous black letters. Maybe then I can sit down and eat without having to flick gobbets of bright orange gunk off my jumper where it swells out over my left tit, or brush them from the front of my last tolerably clean pair of jeans.

What does old Norah fear might happen if she ever decides to go out on a limb and change the menu around once in a blue moon? Did she chance upon an ancient scroll inside a bottle washed up on the Block Sands warning her that by dishing up baked beans at any time other than when the football results are being read out on Sports Report she risks bringing fire and brimstone raining from the skies? Is she under the influence of a clairvoyant who has foretold the advent of war, famine, flood and pestilence on a scale that promises to obliterate all life down to the humblest microbe should she open so much as a single packet of frozen peas on the wrong day?

Not that she has to deal with very many complaints. To describe Norah Russell as a formidable woman is like saying Greta Garbo enjoys a bit of privacy now and again, or that Scott of the Antarctic was partial to the occasional long walk. She’s especially intimidating first thing in the morning; those guests rash enough to ask her if their eggs might be left in a little longer, or who wonder aloud what has become of the extra rounds of toast they ordered twenty minutes ago usually only do so once. The sight of her immense frame towering above the table, arms akimbo in her lurid hospital green housecoat and the robust net stretched almost to breaking point across her rigid, battleship grey perm, garish pink lips parted in a feral scowl to reveal the ill-fitting dentures between them is an experience no one of sound mind would care to repeat.

There she goes, drifting towards the two elderly spinsters near the fish tank, an upended barrage balloon in brogues. I can all but hear the tuba playing in the background as she moves.

“Ish everything all right, ladiesh?”

The pair pause in mid-swallow. They both look absolutely petrified.

“Lovely, thank you!”

“Yes, very nice!”

They aren’t the only ones tucking in as though they were being treated to freshly caught sea bass garnished with Jersey new potatoes and succulent baby carrots, or prime fillet steak marinated in red wine, grilled over a charcoal flame and smothered in a creamy pepper sauce. Beside the window, Mr and Mrs Sourface and their three odious children are doing their utmost to mimic a family who have just watched a news flash announcing that the Home Secretary has called for the immediate reintroduction of rationing, whilst at the next table the buxom refugee from the halcyon days of glam rock with the asymmetric multicoloured hair and skin-tight black leather pants resembles a she-bear awakening from hibernation in a salmon farm. Apart from myself, the one individual in the room seemingly immune from the collective delusion that the miserable fare in front of him is a feast to be devoured as fast as his jaw muscles will allow is the living skeleton in the shabby tweed jacket and shiny cavalry twill trousers, who’s picking at his dinner with all the enthusiasm of an emperor’s personal food taster carrying out his duties amid rumours of an impending palace revolution.

He has the good sense to wait until Norah has gone back into the kitchen before clearing his throat in an attempt to catch my attention.

“Er, excuse me, miss...could I have some tomato ketchup?”

I shrug aside the frisson of irritation I still sometimes feel when I’m addressed in this way. It isn’t his fault, of course; lacking psychic powers as I’m sure he does, I can’t expect him to have divined that the girl he saw hauling bales of clean linen out of the laundry van when he was signing the register yesterday afternoon isn’t quite what she appears. My honey blonde hair, now increasingly going over to ginger, hangs in tousled lumps to my shoulders, framing unremarkable yet distinctly feminine features enlivened by childlike aquamarine eyes and soft, full lips. The figure-hugging, faded jeans for which I exhibit a lingering fondness that flies directly in the face of current fashion trends only emphasise my wide hips and strong, well-rounded thighs; nor is there anything remotely androgynous about the contours even a pullover as baggy as the one I’m wearing at the moment fails miserably to conceal.

“Over there, on the shelf with the spare cutlery,” I tell him.

Destiny may have cast me in the role of hotel dogsbody, but I’m buggered if I’ll let it turn me into a waitress.

This admittedly offhand response elicits a baleful stare from Norah, who has returned carrying a tray laden with slabs of treacle sponge pudding that would fulfil a far more useful function as foundation stones. It’s my cue to beat a hasty retreat; although I don’t think she’d bawl me out in front of paying customers, I’m not betting my eardrums on it.

Her unadventurous approach to the culinary arts notwithstanding, for some peculiar reason Norah has always been able to rely on a steady stream of visitors to the Gladstone throughout the year. There are indications, however, that the flow might soon diminish to no more than a trickle. In the eighteen months since the closure of its port, Northcroft-on-Heugh has undergone such a rapid depopulation that of the eleven thousand inhabitants crammed onto the narrow limestone peninsula to the north of the harbour when the dock gates were padlocked shut for the final time nearly a quarter have upped sticks in search of regular employment elsewhere. I’ve even heard talk of an amalgamation with the neighbouring borough of New Stranton, so calamitous are the financial straits in which the revenue-starved council finds itself.

It’s difficult to blame anyone for wanting to leave. Northcroft isn’t so much at death’s door as hanging up its hat and coat in the passage. If St Hild’s church, distinguished by four splendid flying buttresses, and the elegant terraces lining the medieval sea wall together lend the headland a certain outward grandeur, tangible evidence of prolonged economic decline rears its unsightly, maggot-ridden corpse at every turn. Makeshift barricades block street after dreary street, the smashed windows, missing slates and charred entranceways a measure of their success in keeping vandals away from the derelict buildings behind them. The original High Street fell victim to the bulldozers when I was in my pram, torn down at the behest of a planning committee with no coherent idea as to how the area should eventually look, so that the Borough Hall now faces a nondescript rock garden and the town centre as a whole has acquired a barren, austere aspect foreshadowing the mass clearances to come. On Northgate Street, its replacement as the principal shopping thoroughfare, a clear majority of the retail outlets are vacant; the dozen or so that soldier on either restrict their trade to low-level convenience goods or else display so tawdry a range of cut-price and second-hand clothes, furniture, household items and electrical appliances an unreformed Scrooge might have wept for the poor wretches with no option but to buy them.

It’s a similar story everywhere else. Tarmac has been laid on the site of the former indoor market, to what purpose no one can say. Burned to the ground by an incendiary bomb in 1942, the Empire theatre has become a grandmother’s tale, a memory besmirched by the seedy public house of the same name that rose from the embers. The Gaumont cinema, which for so many years rang with the strident voices of Hollywood’s finest, today echoes the monotonous nasal whine of bingo callers. But perhaps most telling of all is the fate of Ingram’s department store: once renowned all over north-east England for its rooftop restaurant and the Christmas grottos guaranteed to have adults and youngsters alike gazing in wide-eyed admiration at the inventiveness of their designers, the recession has seen to it that during the last festive season the only articles on sale were supplied by the discount hardware firm occupying the ground floor.

This is the town, murdered by a lethal concoction of political chicanery, gross incompetence and unadulterated greed, where I must bide my time waiting for a summons that may never come.

Fourteen weeks I’ve been here.

The snow’s disappeared. The clocks have been turned forward. Easter’s come and gone.

Fourteen weeks, and no word.

My hearing intact for the time being, I climb the three flights of stairs to my studio flat — it’s an attic with a WC and a shower unit plumbed in, but you’ve got to have some pride in your pad — and sit on the bed to light my first cigarette since half-past two. Here, in my Fortress of Solitude, I can loosen the mask I’ve worked so hard to construct. Nobody minds if I belch, pick my nose, or break wind in a loud and offensive manner. Of course I don’t do any of these things deliberately, but it’s nice to know there are a few square feet in this dilapidated old red-brick building where I’m free to be myself.
Whoever that is.

For the Richard Brookbank who trudged, bowed and defeated, behind Suki Tatsukichi into Tower House nearly five months ago is just a memory. She’s as much a part of the past as the Richard who adored his toy London bus, the Richard who wrote execrable love poems to Trisha Hodgson knowing that if they should ever fall into her hands he wouldn’t dare set foot outside the house again, the Richard who took to the student lifestyle like a koala to a eucalyptus grove, his prowess on the dartboard, the pinball machine and the bar billiards table far outshining his ability to complete essays on time, and the Richard who was in danger of frittering away his most productive years in a succession of menial jobs watched over by gruff, ignorant foremen and surrounded by infantile louts with no more idea of how to take part in an intelligent conversation than a knot of lobotomised toads. The latest version speaks with an educated southern accent, shaves under her armpits every other day and gets decidedly tetchy when her periods are coming on. She answers to the name of Ruth Hansford-Jones, and all she knows for sure is that she wants what none of the other Richards had, the confidence to exert a degree of control over her future.

You work for us now. You always will.

Serving the loftiest of causes, if my mentor was telling the truth.

Or swept neatly under the carpet if she wasn’t.

Fourteen weeks, and not a dickie bird from her.

I take another drag, surveying the cramped space that houses the sum total of my worldly possessions. The majority I brought with me from Belvedere House: the posters of wildlife and prints of works by Monet, Cézanne and Renoir; the skirts, dresses, blouses, jumpers, shoes, boots, accessories and jewellery I inherited from the previous Ruth; the array of powders, paints, lotions and other beauty aids set out on the dressing table; and at the bottom of the drawer where I keep my tights and clean underwear, the sealed envelope giving me access to my savings. I’ve added a small collection of paperbacks picked up from New Stranton market — The L Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks lies open on the bedside table — and a cheap Dansette record player next to which resides a rack filled with albums by the likes of Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Paul Simon, Helen Reddy and Stevie Wonder. I’d rather listen to some Soft Machine or Gabriel-era Genesis, but I don’t know if playing air guitar to Selling England By The Pound is the best way for me to maintain my cover.

I have no idea why I miss progressive rock so much. If my hands turn automatically to the TV listings and the fashion pages rather than the football section when I pick up a newspaper, developing a genuine liking for MOR and soul should have been a doddle.

Tonight I’m happy to settle for side one of Tapestry. As the earth moves under my feet and the sky comes tumbling down I sit at the dressing table to begin the tedious business of putting my face on in preparation for yet another three-and-a-half-hour shift behind the counter Norah, with considerably more imagination than she devotes to her cooking, calls a bar.

You couldn’t make it up. I get indoctrinated into a shadowy government organisation only a few hundred people on the planet have heard of, and I’m still pulling pints for a living. If I dropped dead this instant and my soul descended to Hell I’d probably spend eternity as a demon barmaid torturing the damned by holding glasses of sparkling bitter shandy forever beyond their reach.

When I think of the crap I have to take from some of the Neanderthals who drink here, it would be just what they deserve.

But I didn’t object when Suki said she’d found me this position. It meant my training was over, and for that I offered up my most heartfelt thanks. There would be no more humiliating deportment lessons, no more gruelling runs to Fort Cumberland and back, no more shopping trips to Southampton wearing a skirt with a hem so wide I was afraid the slightest gust of wind would lift me up like Mary Poppins and waft me across the Solent to the Isle of Wight. Now I could adjust to being female at my own pace and in a secure environment, working in a modest yet profitable concern owned by a widow and her unmarried daughter. Nor did the prospect of returning to my home town hold any fear for me: there was no reason to think that anyone in Northcroft would recognise Ruth after so long an absence, and the relatives her family left behind eleven years ago had either passed away or moved to other parts of the country. As for taking my place in the outside world once again, I knew that if I could spend the best part of a week playing the prodigal daughter without giving the game away, performing in front of people who’d never met me before wouldn’t pose too many problems.

The reality turned out to be somewhat less cosy than I’d anticipated. Norah and Sylvia were delighted with the strapping young lass the ‘agency’ sent along, and proceeded to delegate to her all the chores they deemed too time consuming, too physically demanding or too plain distasteful to bother with themselves. If they wanted the windows cleaned, a lavatory bowl or a sink unblocked, a banister painted, the guttering cleared out or some nauseating slime scraped from the most inaccessible corner of the kitchen then Ruth Hansford-Jones could count on being first in line for the assignment. The few crumbs of satisfaction I’ve been able to glean — and a meagre mouthful they make — come from running the bar, where in addition to pouring drinks practically every night I’m required to order in new stock and keep the books up to scratch. It’s just as well I don’t hanker after a social life; I’d have more chance of being gifted Halley’s comet on a stick than a few days off.

You work for us now.

I understand that, Suki. You’ve got me by the short and curlies. I can hardly hand in my notice and fuck off out of here when you and your colleagues are my only hope of getting my body back.

But why keep me in the dark? What’s wrong with sending me a short message of encouragement from time to time? Is it so much to ask?

While we’re in the process of mounting an operation to apprehend Ruth Hansford-Jones with the aim of placing her under military arrest, the recovery of the device she stole from us is and will continue to be our uppermost priority. If in order to achieve that objective we are forced to employ extreme measures, then you can be certain those measures will be taken.

Would you even tell me, Suki?

Fourteen weeks...

The girl on the other side of the dressing-table mirror returns the world-weary smile I throw at her. We’ll see this out somehow.

If only I didn’t identify with her more and more completely with each day that goes by. How long do I have left before I’m unable to imagine any reflection but the one in front of me now?

Scary? I’ll say.

And there isn’t a thing I can do about it.

The irony of it is, I quite like being in this body. I could have wished for a smaller bust and less ginger in my hair, but on the whole it hasn’t been too bumpy a ride. Becoming a girl has taught me a lot, and in a world where people could change their sex at will I might be tempted to spend the majority of my time as one. It helps that my male inhibitions seem to have disappeared along with my meat and two veg, so that I’m able to put on make-up or step into a skirt without wanting the ground to open up beneath my feet. I can also tolerate a much higher degree of physical contact from both sexes, though any illusions I might once have had about dabbling in the sapphic arts vanished as my libido gradually dwindled to the point of non-existence; the island of lusty lesbians I fantasised about during the initial stages of my adjustment has long since lost its allure. Whether this is a permanent condition or merely a transitional phase which will end with my predecessor’s sexuality reasserting itself is a question I’m praying remains unanswered.

Most of her habits, tastes and preferences will eventually become yours.

Thanks for the warning, Suki. Now when the hell are you going to get me out of here?

Fourteen weeks, and still no–

Pack it in!

You’re not going to change anything by fretting over it.

I rise from the chair, push back my fringe and check the contents of my bag before plodding down to the foyer. Sylvia, presumably as a reward for completing the back-breaking task of setting out tomorrow’s breakfast things, is hunched over the reception counter immersed in an edition of Au Courant, Paris Femme or one of those innumerable other glossy publications with a pretentious French title. Looking at her now, it’s difficult to believe that she gained a reputation as something of a tearaway in her younger days. But the camera doesn’t lie. I’ve seen one photograph of her taken in the mid ‘60s when she was working in London, all flowing chestnut tresses, white pop-art minidress and black leather knee boots, hanging on the arm of a dandified youth who looks for all the world as though he’s about to audition for a part in the sequel to Blow Up, and another snapped in Hyde Park during the Rolling Stones concert held there in the summer of ’69 which features her wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt, smiling inanely at her hirsute boyfriend and holding the kind of cigarette she probably didn’t want the pigs to see her smoking. If at thirty-six she now worships at the shrine of Abba, and her wardrobe is packed with well-tailored suits, embroidered blouses, pastel cardigans, pleated skirts and fashionably wasp-waisted, wide-hemmed cocktail dresses such as the jaunty, off-the-shoulder emerald number she’s sporting this evening, the passing of the years has done nothing to dissuade her from fluttering her false lashes at any unaccompanied guest who takes her fancy. I’ve become adept at identifying her prey from the way in which she likes to linger beside them, one beringed, scarlet-nailed hand toying with the long strings of beads dangling upon her stiff bosom whilst the other pats the gossamer veil protecting her neat, hennaed curls — though I can’t help feeling her victims might not respond with quite the same alacrity had they witnessed her rushing hither and thither after two drunken rugby supporters from Gloucester had accidentally set off the burglar alarm at a quarter to one in the morning, her hair in rollers and so much goo plastered over her cheeks and forehead she made Medusa look like a Page Three girl’s prettier friend.

Time to make sure my own mask’s securely bolted on.

“Hi, Sylv. Any famous actresses or international tycoons booked in while I was getting ready?”

I make the enquiry with my tongue very firmly in my cheek. As far as I’m aware, the only ‘celebrity’ ever to have stayed at the Gladstone was a ventriloquist who had once appeared on The Mike And Bernie Winters Show, sharing a bill with those cultural icons Clodagh Rodgers, Norman Collier and Russ Conway.

“Have a look for yourself,” mumbles Sylvia, adjusting her new horn-rimmed reading glasses but keeping her eyes fixed to the page. “I’m positive mam said something about Roger Moore wanting a double for this Friday and Saturday.”

I open the register anyway, if for no other reason than to find out where the chick with the massive boobs and the weird rainbow hair is from. I realise it’s probably a waste of time; if Suki had sent her surely she’d have made herself known to me by now.

“’Ms C A Latimer. 113 Woodford Road, Cosham, Hants’,” I read out loud. “That’s only a few miles from where I…uh, where Tim and I used to live. What’s she doing all the way up here, I wonder?”

“What’s who doing all the way up here?”

“You know, the one who looks a bit like the new girl on Magpie, only she isn’t a blonde.”

“Mmm...? I don’t think we’ve got any blondes stopping with us, have we?”

I force myself to count to ten. I should have expected this. I’ve been here long enough to know that once Sylvia becomes engrossed in a life-or-death struggle to choose which of seventeen shades of lipstick goes best with her complexion, talking to her is like trying to hold a conversation about batting averages with a bridesmaid on the morning of her twin sister’s wedding.

“Room 7,” I persist. “Single for three nights. White Volkswagen.”

At least this time Sylvia makes a face.

“Oh, you mean her.”

“Did she say why she was here?”

“Not to me she didn’t. ‘A personal matter’ was all I could get out of her. She’s in the kitchen talking to mam if you think you can do any better.”

“Maybe later.”

No one’s that interesting.

The clock above the pigeon holes reminds me that I have less than ten minutes before the bar is due to open, so I walk into the lounge to catch the end of Look North. Over grainy footage of yesterday’s dispiriting 1-0 home defeat at the hands of relegation-haunted Blackburn Rovers, Sunderland manager Billy Elliott strikes an optimistic note, explaining that his team can still win their last four matches and thereby reclaim their position in the top flight of English football. The camera pans to the supporters massed behind the Fulwell End goal, and my mood immediately sours. An afternoon at Roker Park — preceded, of course, by pilgrimages to the Grapes, the Alexandra and the Fort — would be the perfect pick-me-up if it didn’t clash so blatantly with my cover story and I had the bottle to launch myself into a social situation where as a lone female I’d be fair game for any beer-swilling yob keen to demonstrate his pulling power to his mates. I get more than enough of that working behind the bar.

The final item in the programme has Luke Casey waxing lyrical on the scenery outside a hostelry somewhere in the wilds of upper Teesdale. He could be floating past the rings of Saturn dressed as a ballerina for all I care.

The two old ladies, however, are glued to the screen.

“Double Or Quit’s on next!” one of them trills. “I think he’s lovely!”

“I liked the first one better,” says her companion.

“Ooh no, Doris! He’s a nancy boy. It was in all the papers.”

“Not in the one I get it wasn’t.”

Shaking my head, I move towards the window. What mortal sin did I commit to be punished like this, marooned in a glorified boarding house on a bleak, windswept headland that makes the middle of nowhere seem like Trafalgar Square on New Year’s Eve, listening to a couple of geriatrics arguing about whether or not a former quiz show host is a poof?

I look out across Marine Parade to the Town Moor, a featureless expanse of grass made more unwelcoming by the chicken-wire fence put up to prevent people straying too close to the disintegrating cliffs. Beyond them extends the flat, grey horizon only a wordsmith with less insight than a retarded woodlouse could fail to equate to the repetitive, routine-led tedium my life has become.

Will I be standing in the selfsame spot six months from now, the summer over, my hopes of becoming male again fading like the dim October twilight?

Why haven’t you been in touch, Suki? What’s gone wrong? Why does it feel like you’ve left me here to rot?

I need something to distract me from this interminable waiting.

Anything.

When the weather forecast comes on I sit down to light another cigarette and glower at the prat in the preposterous yellow suit gesticulating at a map where Lowick, Lobley Hill, Lartington and Lingdale are preferred as points of reference to places viewers might actually have heard of. The upshot of all this frenetic activity is that it’s due to bucket down tomorrow afternoon.

That’s fine by me. I won’t lose a minute’s sleep if it rains until the sun exhausts its store of hydrogen or Norah runs out of tinned mixed vegetables, whichever happens later.

On the stroke of seven I get up to fetch the till from the office at the back of the reception area. I’m crouching to unlock the safe when I hear Sylvia’s voice through the doorway.

“Oh, I nearly forgot. A bloke called Egerton rang up earlier asking for two singles. Didn’t know how long for, so I’ve put them in 4 and 5. He said they might not get here till quite late.”

I place the tray on the desk where she keeps the unpaid bills and invoices.

“Let me guess...you’re telling me this ‘cause you want me to run a sweep to see what time he finally decides to swan in?”

“Less of your lip, young lady. You know Tuesday’s my coffee evening.” She emits an indulgent sigh. “Look, just make them feel welcome. Show them to their rooms at the very least. And for goodness sake smile. It might be well worth the effort. He sounded posh enough.”

“Yeah, I bet he’s loaded if his budget runs as far as  £5.50 a night.”

He could be a tramp smelling of piss as long as he utters the codewords that will set me free.

But I mustn’t permit myself to dwell on such things. It’ll happen when it does, and not before.

Taking care to avoid squashing my tits, I carry the till through to the bar.