The Transmigration Of Richard Brookbank Chapter 1
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Southern England, the late 1970s... When my vision clears I’m alone. And very much alive! But my euphoria is throttled in its cradle. Something is wrong... |
Malvolio: That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.
Clown: What thinkest thou of his opinion?
Malvolio: I think nobly of the soul, and in no way approve his opinion.
Clown: Fare thee well; remain thou still in darkness; thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits.
William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
CHAPTER 1
HM Naval Base, Portsmouth
November 24, 1978
Less than fifty yards from freedom, I watch the burly young sentry in charge of Marlborough Gate lower the barrier. He turns and walks into the middle of the road, his palm held upright.
Great. That’s all I fucking need.
The guards have instructions to stop vehicles at random, mainly for security purposes but also to discourage pilfering among the dockyard’s civilian workforce. If on this occasion my conscience is clear — I admit to having borrowed a spanner, a screwdriver and various other bits and bobs I found gathering dust in corners of the warehouse that looked as if they hadn’t felt the tread of a human foot in years, but I intend to return them as soon as my stint here is done — I know from bitter experience that in situations such as this docile servility is the only sane strategy to adopt. The slightest hint of dissent will almost certainly mean that the two or three minutes I’ll be hovering about twiddling my thumbs as I wait for him to finish rummaging through the boot, the glove compartment and wherever else the Official Secrets Act gives him permission to poke his nose will be extended to something in the region of a quarter of an hour — and that’s time I can ill afford to spare.
I pull my battered old Hillman Hunter to a halt, frowning at the loud knocking noises I’ve started hearing when I lose speed. I suppose I’ll have to cajole my mate Graham into taking a shufti under the bonnet before we head off on our regular pre-match pub crawl tomorrow; there may be small children living in mud huts miles from the nearest dirt track who are more familiar with the intricacies of the internal combustion process than Richard Brookbank, but even I can sense that my trusty chariot isn’t in exactly tip-top condition.
Right now I have more immediate concerns. It’s already ten past one, and unless I reach Gosport by two o’clock my boss is likely to eviscerate me with a claw hammer and make party decorations out of my intestines as a prelude to my real punishment.
Hoping for the best, I wind down the window. My free hand taps an impatient rhythm on the wheel.
Yeah, that’ll help. Why don’t you rev up a few times while you’re at it, see how far that gets you?
The face peering in at me could freeze the Nile in full flood. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that its owner had been given special training in the art of how not to blink.
“Your pass, sir.”
I fish the card from my jeans pocket and surrender it to grasping, white-gloved fingers. My mugshot and the details printed beneath it are examined with Schutzstaffel thoroughness. Each strand of my long, disobedient light brown hair, each photon reflected from the lenses of my glasses, each bristle of my moustache is subjected to the same rigorous scrutiny. A few more like this cunt at the airports and ferry terminals, and drug smuggling would be as obsolete as serfdom.
“Everything okay?” I ask in an effort to ease my growing frustration. “It’s just that I’ve been told to deliver this dead expensive piece of machinery to HMS Almandine. I can’t hang around ‘cause apparently the order came from as near to the top as you can get, and if I’m late I know for a fact my bollocks are going to end up nailed to that flagpole. You can ring Derek Graveney at 20 Store if you don’t–“
The sentry’s gaze wanders to the plastic bag resting on the front passenger seat. His expression becomes more glacial than ever.
“Please turn off the engine and step out of the car, Mr Brookbank. If you’d be so good as to leave the carrier where it is…”
Well, that worked a treat. Now he probably thinks I’ve got a bomb in there. The headline materialises before me as plain as day: DOCKYARD BROUGHT TO STANDSTILL BY SUSPICIOUS PACKAGE. It’s followed by an equally vivid image of a P45.
Long minutes later I’m in danger of eroding a trench in the tarmac as I continue to pace up and down outside the oversized dog kennel where he keeps his phone.
It’s my own fault, of course. As near to the top as you can get. I couldn’t have dreamed up a more idiotic sequence of words if I’d sat there until Waterlooville reached the final of the European Cup.
What precisely is it about the motto ‘engage brain prior to opening mouth’ I always find so difficult to put into practice? A lanky, bespectacled twenty-two year old, wearing a jumper so threadbare a tramp might have second thoughts about using it as a pillow, and driving a car for which any self-respecting scrap merchant would demand hard cash in return for allowing it to jeopardise the reputation of his yard, expects a member of the armed forces, on guard duty no less, to take it on trust that he’s involved in matters pertaining directly to the defence of the realm? I may as well have attempted to pass myself off as Lord Mountbatten travelling incognito.
This is rapidly getting beyond a joke. What’s Derek trying to do, describe me cell by cell? Surely all he has to say is ‘scruffy git with a trace of a north-east accent’ and he can go back to the racing pages in peace.
On the other hand, with it being the last Friday of the month maybe he’s left the receiver off the hook so he can hold one of his so-called production meetings. These invariably consist of everyone in the warehouse begging him to get B Lift seen to so we’re not constantly sitting on our backsides doing bugger all because a gang of skates has commandeered the one that’s working, in response to which Derek will assure us that he’s reported the problem and been told they’ll send an engineer over in a day or two. My money’s on the first manned mission to Proxima Centauri being launched before it budges an inch.
The sentry finally emerges at twenty past, sporting the supercilious smirk of a professional bastard whose primary source of enjoyment is making life as awkward for other people as he can. Either that or he’s decided to come across all chummy now he knows I’m on a bona fide errand and not running high explosives to the IRA.
“I’ve been on the blower to 20 Store, Mr Brookbank, and you’re free to proceed,” he announces, as though his stupid hat gives him carte blanche to control the every waking moment of anyone not in naval attire. “I assume you won’t be taking the car.”
“Won’t I? Why not?”
“Well, judging by the racket coming from it I’d say your big end’s gone.”
I haven’t the faintest idea what he’s talking about. It’s the kind of remark I’d expect Sid James to cackle to Hattie Jacques in Carry On Cabbie.
“My big end,” I repeat uselessly.
“It’s the bearing at the larger end of the connecting rod that…” He favours me with another patronising grin, like the one that might curl a mechanic’s lips as he slowly cottons on to the fact that his customer’s ignorance is so profound he can add as many superfluous items to the bill as he pleases and the poor sod will be none the wiser. “Put it this way, if you try and drive very much further you’ll be looking at a new crankshaft. It’ll save you a small fortune to have it towed in now, because believe me they don’t come cheap.”
My spirits sink faster than Labour’s standing in the opinion polls. They clutch at the only straw within reach.
“How much further?” I demand to know. “Think it’ll hold out till Gosport?”
It’s as if I’ve just asked him which was the quickest road to the Great Wall of China.
“Do what?” he guffaws. “Mate, you’d be lucky if you got as far as the Tricorn! Pompey to Gosport with a clapped-out big end, that’s a good ‘un!”
His attitude is beginning to rile me every bit as much as the idea of parting with hard-earned beer vouchers in exchange for a component I hadn’t heard of until a second or two ago.
“So how d’you suggest I get that box of tricks to Almandine by two o’clock?” I snap. “Tie a couple of lolly sticks and a hanky to it, and blow the bloody thing across?”
“I expect you’ll have to catch the ferry. Now you mention it, I’m not sure why you didn’t do that in the first place.”
It’s his turn to be annoyed, and I can’t really blame him. What does he care if my car has chosen this of all days to break down, or that there’s a good chance I’ll get the sack as a result? If I had a grain of common sense I’d be buttering him up in case I need him to put in a good word for me when the smelly brown stuff hits the blades.
“Yeah, well I only passed my test at the end of last month, and the novelty hasn’t quite worn off yet,” I explain. “I might’ve known something would go wrong. If it’s got moving parts it’ll conk out on me. It’s the same with anything electrical. You wouldn’t believe the bother I had with the telly I bought from that place on Albert Road. You know the one I mean, right next to the–“
He’s not listening. Instead his attention is focused on a trio of ratings so wet behind the ears it’s a miracle bulrushes aren’t sprouting from their temples.
“Oi, you three!” he bellows. “Yes, you! Get this heap of junk off the road!”
As I contemplate the doleful sight of the Hillman being pushed and steered onto a grass verge still sodden from last night’s rain, I remember that I have to be in Dorking on Sunday for mum’s birthday bash. That involves shelling out for a card and a present, not forgetting the train fare now I’m no longer independently mobile. To cap it all, the rent’s overdue. Looks like the old wreck will be staying put, for the foreseeable future at any rate.
Thinking of mum inevitably brings my stepfather Gerald to mind. No doubt I’ll spend most of the day fending off the by now customary barrage of sarcastic comments he loves to hurl at my failure to carve out a worthwhile career for myself in the sixteen months since I’ve been entitled to put letters after my name. Why is the pompous, opinionated prick incapable of understanding that when it comes to securing a well-paid job, a third-class degree in Geography is about as much use as a reference from a convicted bank robber? Or that if I lower my expectations and apply for less lucrative posts I’m consistently turned down on the grounds of being overqualified? And would he care to enlighten me as to how I can impress potential employers when I boast a CV replete with part-time bar work, punctuated by one delightful spell trimming grass and weeds around the graves in Highland Road cemetery, and another no less enchanting interlude sweeping the streets in the vicinity of Fratton Bridge clean of empty fag packets, chip papers, dead birds, dog shit and vomit?
It’s not that I resent mum for wanting to get married again as soon as her only child had flown the nest, nor does it require the combined intellectual prowess of Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Jacob Bronowski and Malcolm Muggeridge to work out why she began making plans to leave a godforsaken hole like Northcroft-on-Heugh on the cold, desolate Durham coast for the leafy Surrey lanes of her youth before she’d finished waving me off from the station platform. But did she have to tie the knot with a stuck-up, toffee-nosed management consultant — whatever one of those is — who plays squash twice a week with his insufferable true-blue cronies, proclaims that hunt saboteurs and secondary pickets should be shot on sight, and holds court every Friday from his corner of the Royal Oak harrumphing that the return of capital punishment, national service and the birch would solve all the country’s problems in one fell swoop?
So it’s seven or eight hours of Gerald’s scintillating company on Sunday, and the rest of the week either at work or incarcerated in a damp, draughty Campbell Road bedsit, feeding silver into a voracious electric meter and jamming my fingers into my ears as the cretin in the flat below regales me with his never-ending repertoire of ‘Three Times A Lady’, ‘Dreadlock Holiday’ and the interminable ‘Summer Nights’. Always nice to have plenty to look forward to.
Christmas shopping, for example. How I’ll be able to afford that and at the same time pay to have my car put right on the pittance I take home is a mystery that would have Sherlock Holmes hanging up his deerstalker and promising to attempt nothing more cerebrally challenging from now on than the Sun crossword.
First things first. If I miss my deadline I’ve a feeling I’ll be signing on at Wingfield House well before Santa gets round to redeeming his sleigh from the pawnbroker’s.
Determined not to offer a syllable of gratitude to the uniformed children sniggering at the Hillman’s mud-spattered number plate, rusted bodywork and cracked rear windscreen, I snatch up the carrier, slam the door shut, fasten my duffel coat and storm off along Admiralty Road wearing a scowl I suspect would stop a herd of stampeding buffalo in their tracks.
Arseholes, all three of them. One whiff of genuine action and those pristine white pants will be heading straight for the laundry.
A cigarette helps me put things back into perspective. Although the prison-high wall to my right acts as a conspicuous reminder that I work in one of the UK’s most important military installations, I feel confident that unlike my employment status the nation’s ability to defend its shores won’t be imperilled if I arrive at my destination a few minutes late. 20 Store deals with faulty and worn-out items of on-board electronic equipment such as oscilloscopes, transistor arrays and good old-fashioned diode valves. I open the boxes (thus making full use of my higher education), then the technicians test what’s inside them so they can decide whether or not it’s worth sending off for repair. According to Derek, the gadget I’ve been lumbered with was dispatched there in error — yet if it plays that vital a part in Almandine’s set-up wouldn’t they have arranged for one of their own staff to collect it rather than entrust its safe keeping to a casual labourer hired on a three-month trial?
At the corner of Queen Street and The Hard a light but persistent drizzle is falling. I hurry across the road towards the ramp leading up to Portsmouth Harbour station, its long, curved platforms and cramped concourse built on a pier they share with the landing stages used by the Gosport and Isle of Wight passenger ferries. As a busy transport interchange — many of the city’s bus routes also converge here — the area is normally thronged with shoppers making their way to or from Commercial Road, as well as day trippers down to visit the Royal Naval Museum and HMS Victory. Perhaps the deteriorating weather has got something to do with the relatively low numbers out and about this lunchtime.
The notice posted outside the station entrance puts forward a more plausible hypothesis. Due to unofficial industrial action, all train and ferry services have been suspended until approximately six o’clock. Anyone wishing to travel to Gosport is advised to purchase a ticket as usual and wait for one of the replacement buses scheduled to depart from The Hard on the hour.
Fan-fucking-tastic. What did I do in my previous life, break into orphanages and set fire to all the toys?
The first smidgen of responsibility Derek has given me, and I’ve gone and made a proper pig’s ear of it. Not even the most optimistic scenario my mind can conjure has me completing the fifteen-mile trek around the top of the harbour much before a quarter to three, especially with the delays the construction of the new link to the M27 is bound to cause. And after that I’ve got to trail all the way down Haslar Road, another ten minutes at least.
I briefly consider jumping into a taxi. The notion lasts as long as it takes me to envisage Derek’s reaction when I ask him to cough up the fare.
Calm down, Rich. What are you getting yourself into a lather for? You tried your hardest, didn’t you? What’s the worst that could happen? Are Almandine going to ring up at one minute past two insisting on your instant dismissal? Let the cunts. If even half the rumours surrounding the latest batch of MoD cutbacks are true, you’ve got more hope of becoming England’s next cricket captain than of being kept on in the New Year.
My watch tells me that it’s not quite twenty-five to two. I have enough time to buy my ticket, then go for another fag and a pint of HSB in the Ship Anson, which is conveniently situated just over the road from the bus stops. If I’m destined to be bored out of my skull looking at traffic jams all afternoon I don’t see why I shouldn’t indulge in a little liquid refreshment by way of recompense.
Silently cursing at the way fate seems once again to be conspiring against me, I walk up to the kiosk guarding the long, uncovered gangway that descends to the deserted pontoon. Naturally the attendant is nowhere to be seen. Yet it’s not all doom and gloom. The girl rapping a coin on the counter appears to be a bit of a stunner, from the back at any rate: an inch or two above average height; tousled, shoulder-length honey blonde hair, laced with an intriguing hint of ginger; studded leather jacket; tight, bleached jeans she fills to mouth-watering effect. It’s an outfit many would regard as quite dated now that punk seems to have lost its battle with retro ‘50s high society glamour for the plaudits of the style gurus, but with a profile as tasty as hers I reckon she’d turn heads if she was kitted out in a Saxon nun’s habit.
When she swivels towards me on her high-heeled ankle boots, her face comes as a bit of a disappointment. Her bone structure is too lacking in definition, her complexion too pale for her to be considered more than moderately pretty. Any shortfall in that department, however, is compensated for in spectacular fashion by the snug black sweatshirt bearing the slogan LUCIFER’S BITCH curved across her prodigious bust in letters the colour of fresh blood. No two ways about it, tits like that could launch armadas. Given the right circumstances, they could set off World War Three.
“They’re a heavy rock band from the States,” she says, pointing to her chest. “In case you thought I was a devil worshipper or something.”
The glow that suffuses my cheeks as it gradually dawns on me that I’ve been caught staring at her breasts threatens to transform the entire Solent into a vast cloud of superheated steam.
“Er, yeah...I mean, um...” I stutter, simultaneously praying to Yahweh, Allah, Krishna, Zeus, Odin, Ra, Marduk, Quetzalcá²atl and every other benevolent deity whose name I can recall that she might take my adolescent drooling as a compliment and refrain from denouncing me as a sex maniac.
Unfortunately divine intervention is not part of today’s special offer. I can tell by the swiftness with which those ingenuous aquamarine eyes have narrowed into feline slits. Then they slowly widen in recognition.
“Snapper...?”
What the fuck?
Snapper was a nickname Basher Howell thrust upon me during my first week at junior school when he claimed I was so thin he could snap me in two. It stayed with me until I bade my home town a less than fond farewell eleven years later. I thought I’d made damn sure no one down here knew about it.
“Snapper Brookbank! It is you!” she grins. “Don’t you remember me?”
With boobs that size? I bloody well ought to.
I shake my head, and she starts laughing.
“I’ll make it easy for you. Hart Street school. Miss Sutton’s class. She told us to sit together right at the back because you always came top in tests and I was always second. Ring any bells?”
I bang my head on the side of the kiosk three times as every cathedral clock west of the Iron Curtain chimes in unison. Although I recognise neither her face nor her voice, I know who she is at once.
“Ruth Pattison!” I exclaim. “Wow, talk about coincidences!”
“Actually I’m Ruth Hansford-Jones these days. I got married last May. He runs a restaurant over in Warsash.”
She shows me her wedding ring. It distracts me long enough not to see the two brick shithouses in black overcoats until they’re standing at my shoulders.
The lantern-jawed thug on my right prises the carrier from my hand before I realise what he’s doing.
“Hey!” I cry out. “That’s MoD prop–“
“Not any more it isn’t, sunshine,” growls his pug-faced associate, twisting my left arm behind my back.
“Careful,” Ruth admonishes him. “I don’t want any unnecessary damage.”
Jesus, she’s in on it!
And what does she mean by ‘damage’?
What have I blundered into?
Pug Face relaxes his hold, but doesn’t let me go. Meanwhile, Lantern Jaw removes the Almandine package and reads the serial number stencilled on the front.
“It’s the right one,” he says. “As far as I can tell it hasn’t been opened.”
“Excellent,” beams Ruth. “Use the tongs when you’re lifting it out. Don’t let it make contact with your skin.”
I catch a glimpse of something silvery and egg-shaped before my head is jerked around to face my former classmate.
“Are you ready, ma’am?” asks Pug Face.
Ruth looks me up and down with undisguised contempt.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Ma’am?
Who do they think she is? What the hell’s going on?
She pulls a revolver from her inside pocket and points it straight at my groin. When she releases the safety catch I’m as close to wetting myself as I’ve been since my mother taught me how to use a potty.
Her aim never wavers as she steps towards me, speaking so slowly and clearly it might be her life at stake, not mine.
“This needn’t end in tears, Richard, but you must do exactly as I say. Now walk over to the top of the gangway, lean your elbows on the railings and keep your eyes trained on the boatyard on the other side of the harbour.”
“Why?” is all I can force out, and even doing that defies more laws of physics than Scotty broke in five years on the Enterprise.
“Because if you don’t, my darling, I’ll blow your fucking balls off.”
Pug Face pushes me away from him. I walk over to the top of the gangway, lean my elbows on the railings and keep my eyes trained on the boatyard on the other side of the harbour.
By Christ, do I.
Seconds pass slower than ice ages. Have they gone yet? Dare I turn my head to find out? If I do, will that be the last voluntary movement I ever make?
What was in that package, for fuck’s sake? What’s so valuable she’s prepared to risk holding me up at gunpoint, and in broad daylight too? And how in the name of Beelzebub’s bumboy could a girl I haven’t seen since her family left the north-east when I was twelve have known I’d bring it here?
Oh shit...
I feel the hair at the back of my neck being parted. A feminine fragrance fills my nostrils. At the first touch of cold metal against my flesh it’s all I can do to keep the contents of my bowels in their current location.
Survival becomes my only wish. What would I not give, how many hours of unpaid charity work would I not perform, what humiliation would I not willingly endure in return for the sweet sound of her telling me I’m free to go?
The pressure at the top of my spine increases, and the watery scene in front of me swims sickeningly in and out of focus. Then everything coalesces into a brilliant yellow light. I don’t feel any pain, just an overwhelming sense of dissociation.
So this is dying. No choirs of angels. No glittering ladder climbing to heaven. No loved ones dressed all in white beckoning me to enter the afterlife. Silly to think there would be, really.
Just my consciousness shutting down to spare me the trauma of an agonising last few moments of existence.
When my vision clears I’m alone.
And very much alive!
But my euphoria is throttled in its cradle. Something is wrong.
Throughout my ordeal I was too terrified to move a muscle. How is it, then, that I’m looking not out at the harbour but in the opposite direction at the row of pubs and shops lining The Hard? Where are my glasses? Why can I suddenly see perfectly well without them? And why does Ruth’s scent seem stronger than ever?
“Are you all right, my love? You look a bit peaky, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
It takes me a few seconds to appreciate that the middle-aged woman in the Burberry raincoat and matching round-brimmed hat is addressing me, and not some confused old biddy who’d forgotten why she came here.
“I didn’t much care for those three young men,” she continues. “Had they been pestering you for very long?”
Those three young men? She can’t have mistaken Ruth for a guy, not if she was Mister Magoo’s more myopic sister. So where was the third one hiding himself?
Another bystander, an elderly lady wearing a pacamac and a transparent plastic headsquare, arrives to put in her twopenceworth. Where were these people when I thought I was about to have my brains scattered to the four winds?
“It was all very different in my day,” she huffs. “When I was your age a girl could count on being treated with some respect.”
Girl? What girl? Who are they talking about?
The rain begins to come down more steadily. I reach back to pull up my hood. That’s when I notice the sleeves of the leather jacket I seem to have acquired.
What’s that doing there? Ruth didn’t have time to swap coats with me, surely. Come to think of it, why the fuck would she want to?
Yet by the smell of it she’s given you her perfume, Rich.
And whoever’s eyesight you’ve got, it isn’t yours.
I look down at my hands. They’re not mine either. These are smaller, more delicate and dusted with tiny freckles. Unbelievably, one of the fingers is adorned by a gold ring.
You’ve got to be kidding.
You have got to be fucking kidding.
Trembling violently, I draw back the jacket’s lapels. What I see next freaks me out completely.
To Be Continued...
The Transmigration Of Richard Brookbank Chapter 2
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As a last resort I look up at the sky, hoping the clouds have turned green or that they’ll part to reveal a fleet of flying saucers piloted by bug-eyed monsters intent on enslaving the human race. But everywhere looks depressingly normal. The only thing out of kilter is me. How did she do it? Why did she do it? Why did Ruth pick me? Save the post-mortem for later, Rich. You’ve got a more urgent problem to deal with. The Good Samaritans are exchanging worried frowns. No doubt this is because for the last minute and a half the girl in front of them has been acting like she’s escaped from somewhere. And now it hits me... |
CHAPTER 2
No way.
Absolutely no fucking way.
None of this is real.
It can’t be.
It just can’t.
People don’t go around swapping bodies. It’s not fucking possible.
Simple as that.
It’s. Not. Fucking. Possible.
You’re dreaming, dickhead. Like the time you guzzled nine pints of rough cider in the Borough Arms and woke up on the kitchen floor convinced you were engaged to the dark-haired lass out of the New Seekers.
Maybe, but I only had a couple last night. One in the Kings Head and one in the Volunteer. I remember drinking up and leaving just as News At Ten was coming on.
A couple too many, obviously. Once this nightmare’s over it might be wise to think about climbing on the wagon for a month or two.
But I wasn’t drunk! I’m bloody sure I wasn’t. When I got back to the flat I did the washing up, and I can never be bothered with that when I’m three sheets to the wind. Afterwards I made myself a cheese sandwich. I was going to have pickle on it but the jar was empty. Then I read forty pages of The Sot Weed Factor before I went to sleep. And I did have a dream, something to do with a King Crimson LP I used to own. I woke up at half-six, right on the dot. I couldn’t find any clean socks so I rinsed a pair under the tap and walked around in them so they’d be reasonably dry when I left for work...
What sort of dream is it when you can recall everyday events in such clear-cut detail?
I pinch the freckled skin above my left wrist. It hurts.
Not a dream, then.
But it’s got to be some sort of hallucination. Because if it isn’t…
That’s it! Ruth drugged me or hypnotised me so I’d be in no fit state to chase after her and raise the alarm. The contraption she took from me must be worth even more than Derek was led to believe.
So why are my mental processes unimpaired? If there was a narcotic in my bloodstream I don’t think I’d still be able to reel off in my head the names of every king and queen since the Norman Conquest like I’m doing now, together with the dates marking the beginning and end of each reign. As for being in a trance, shouldn’t I have come out of it once I’d sussed what was going on?
Then there’s those two women. I’m not imagining them. I know I’m not.
I flex fingers that can’t be mine, but obey my mental commands as though they’d been doing that all my life. Every chromosome in this body feels like it belongs to me, and always has done.
Which is just fucking crazy.
As a last resort I look up at the sky, hoping the clouds have turned green or that they’ll part to reveal a fleet of flying saucers piloted by bug-eyed monsters intent on enslaving the human race.
But everywhere looks depressingly normal. The only thing out of kilter is me.
How did she do it?
Why did she do it?
Why did Ruth pick me?
Save the post-mortem for later, Rich. You’ve got a more urgent problem to deal with.
The Good Samaritans are exchanging worried frowns. No doubt this is because for the last minute and a half the girl in front of them has been acting like she’s escaped from somewhere.
And now it hits me.
I’m a girl.
I’m female.
I’ve got tits and a vagina.
I’m a she.
I’m a her.
I’m a girl.
She’s made me into a fucking girl.
Yeah, and one who doesn’t know her address, her date of birth or her own husband’s Christian name. You’d better scarper before that pair start to wonder if they should call for help.
Merciful God, it gets worse.
Ruth is a married woman.
This body has been fucked.
Bloody hell, she could be–
Don’t even look that road up in the index, Rich.
I’m a girl.
Girls have got feet, haven’t they? Use the damn things.
Get out of here! NOW!
I take a step forward and stumble as I fail to allow for the high-heeled ankle boots I’m wearing.
Inconsiderate cow. She might at least have put on a pair of trainers.
Why am I thinking like this? I’ve just changed sex, for fuck’s sake. It’s not as if I’ve walked out of a barber’s with a bad haircut. So why haven’t I gone stark raving mad?
I’m a girl.
One of the taxi drivers waiting beside his vehicle at the back of the line rushes across and extends a hand to steady me.
“Keep your fucking maulers to yourself!” I snarl at him.
Jesus Christ, was that really me?
Is that how I sound? Just like her?
I’m a girl.
I really am a fucking girl.
“No need to get your knickers in a twist, darlin’,” he says from what seems like several miles away. ”I was only trying to help.”
How can any of this be happening?
And here comes the icing on the cake, for my outburst has served no purpose but to attract the attention of everyone within hearing range. When will I learn to keep my mouth shut?
I’ve got to put as much distance between myself and this place as I can. Suppose a police car stops to see what all the fuss is about? How am I going to talk my way out of that one, feign amnesia? Brilliant idea — until I remind myself that Richard Nixon was a more convincing liar than Richard Brookbank.
I’m a girl.
Hold on to your hat, Rich, because the storm’s about to break…
“Are you on your own, dear?”
“I don’t think she’s very well.”
“Ooh, I know. Look, the poor thing’s white as a sheet.”
“Someone ought to ring for an ambulance.”
“I’ll go. There’s a phone in the café next to the Keppels Head.”
That settles it.
“I’m all right! Honestly, I am!” I shout over the hubbub, wincing at the girlish timbre of my new voice. “It’s only a hangover, nothing to worry about.”
Which has raised me right up in their estimation.
As if it matters! Just get the fuck away from here!
Acutely aware of the extra weight at my chest — to say nothing of the eyes boring holes in my back — I hobble past the taxi rank with no goal in mind but to reach the main road. My hips swing wildly as I move, and with my centre of gravity dragging me forward and down my arms dangle like some demented she-ape’s. I must appear to have all the style and grace of Dick Emery in drag.
I’m a girl.
Somehow I make it as far as The Hard without falling flat on my face or twisting an ankle. But my feet ache as though I’ve been on them for hours, Ruth’s bra straps are chafing my shoulders and I’m rapidly getting drenched. If this isn’t Hell it’s a bloody fine imitation.
Perhaps that explains it. She shot me after all, and now I’m condemned to wander the earth in the guise of my murderess until my sins have been expiated and my spirit can rest in peace.
How am I supposed to do that? Where do I start?
Use the tongs when you’re lifting it out. Don’t let it make contact with your skin.
Of course! It wasn’t a gun Ruth pressed against the back of my neck, it was that silvery object Lantern Jaw found in the Almandine package! It must have recorded my brainwaves and transmitted them into her body.
But that’s incredible. A machine small enough to be held in the hand, requiring no external power source, and yet it has the capacity to hold the entire contents of someone’s mind? To think that such an advanced piece of technology was lying around in 20 Store for days, and none of us knew.
To think that it exists at all.
Who made that device, and what’s their agenda?
Just as important, how many more of those things are out there? How many people aren’t who we think they are?
No point overloading my synapses trying to solve riddles like these when it’s bucketing down and I’m standing in the open with water streaming down my forehead into my eyes. If I don’t want to catch my death of cold and experience the hereafter for real I’d better find some shelter while I work out what on earth I’m going to do next.
I’m a girl.
I’m a fucking girl.
Two hundred yards or so to my right, the bridge carrying the railway over St George’s Road promises a temporary respite from the downpour. First I have to get there, and in these heels it proves to be no simple undertaking. But after four or five minutes of a balancing act that would have had Blondin applauding I’m out of the rain, and in my present predicament I’ll grab any small mercies that come my way.
Without thinking, I rake my fringe back from my face. The femininity of the gesture isn’t lost on me. Can my subconscious behaviour be adapting to my change of gender so soon? Or doesn’t it need to? Maybe the device only transferred my memories, leaving the rest of Ruth’s brain functions intact.
Is part of me actually her? Has part of me always been her?
If so, how big a part?
Get a grip, Rich. You’ve nothing to gain by wasting time pondering the cognitive implications of a scientific breakthrough you can’t begin to understand.
I’m a girl.
I fumble through my pockets, desperate to find something I can use to help get me out of this mess — or failing that, the cigarette I’d sell my soul for. The only item I come across is a small metal key.
The bitch has left me without a penny.
But wait a minute...
To the bole of the key is taped a piece of paper. Upon it, written in thin blue biro, is an address.
Flat 806, Belvedere House, Clarendon Road, Southsea
I know where that is! I passed it most mornings on my way to lectures when I was a fresher billeted at the Bembridge Hotel. Eleven stories high. Broad steps fringed with potted palms rising to the main entrance. 24-hour concierge. Floodlit rear car park. Close enough to the sea front, the South Parade Pier and Palmerston Road shopping centre for residents to take full advantage of the facilities there, yet not so near they’re in danger of being outpriced by unscrupulous tenants sub-letting the flats to holidaymakers. Ideal for young professionals climbing the management ladder — those who don’t swallow hard at the thought of paying upwards of £100 per month in rent.
But is it a trap?
Whatever reason Ruth had for stealing my body, it must have been a compelling one. Maybe she’s a gangster’s moll on the run from a mob of vicious hoodlums, or a spy being tailed by a Soviet agent who has orders to stab her with a poisoned umbrella.
Hang on, this is Ruth Pattison we’re talking about. The girl who used to copy the answers to long division sums. The girl who only won a prize for best scrapbook because she had an uncle stationed in West Germany who sent her dozens of photographs and magazine clippings. The girl who believed in all seriousness that the council employed a man to walk along Stockton Road every night to see which of the bulbs in the catseyes needed changing.
The girl who packs a revolver.
The girl who has at her beck and call two gorillas who look like they eat steel girders for breakfast.
The girl who knows how to operate a gizmo that can shift a person’s consciousness from one body to another.
But why switch with me? Why not a wealthy businessman or a politician, someone with power and influence? Let’s face it, the old codger selling newspapers on the corner of Edinburgh Road would have been a more astute choice than Richard Brookbank.
Unless I’m her patsy.
If she plans to rob a consignment of gold bullion or bump off a world leader all she has to do to escape the long arm of the law is swap back and leave muggins here to take the rap for any dastardly deeds she might have perpetrated. Any attempt on my part to tell the truth will be laughed out of court as the worst defence since Guy Fawkes pleaded that he was only trying to warm the Houses of Parliament up a bit.
In which case why didn’t she force me to go with her? It’s not as if I could have offered up much of a struggle. Wouldn’t it have made far more sense to leave me gagged and bound in the boot of a car while she went ahead with her nefarious wrongdoings rather than give me the key to her flat and trust I’d get there under my own steam? How did she know I wouldn’t run yelling and screaming down the gangway and end up falling into the harbour? Or make such a song and dance about being trapped in the wrong body the men in white coats would have carted me off to the funny farm before you could say Randle P McMurphy?
I’m a girl.
But if I cross Belvedere House off my list of options, what remains?
Go to the authorities?
Why not? They’ll probably put out an APB and start erecting road blocks the moment I’ve finished my story. They might even pay for me to stay in a 5-star hotel while they hunt her down. What they definitely will not do is shut me away for the rest of my life in a room with rubber wallpaper and bars on the windows.
Find a hostel for homeless women?
I wouldn’t know where to begin.
Sleep rough?
In this weather? Fuck that for a game of soldiers.
I could always sell her ring. The proceeds would keep the wolf from the door long enough to give me some breathing space.
Oh yeah? And what exactly do you think you’ll achieve by sitting around moping in a crappy B & B counting your freckles until the money runs out and you’re back to square one? Like it or not, you need Ruth to find you if she’s going to reverse the process — and there’s only one place she’ll know to look.
Belvedere House it is, then. The best part of two miles from here. In the pouring rain. With high heels.
Thanks, Ruth. Thanks a fucking bunch.
Another thought occurs to me. What if all that about a restaurant in Warsash was bullshit, and I open the door to find a hairy-arsed husband parading around in his birthday suit in anticipation of a spot of nookie before I cook his spag bol? How am I going to put him off, say I’m sorry but I’m really not feeling myself this afternoon?
Yet I’ve stared death in the eye today. I can handle some bloke waving his cock at me.
Gritting my teeth, I head back into the deluge. And with each halting step taking me half a yard closer to an unguessable future, the one fact about which there can be no debate reverberates ceaselessly inside my head.
I’m a girl.
I’m a girl.
I’m a girl…
Halfway along the corridor, the number I both yearn for and dread:
806.
This is the moment of truth, Rich. As they say, shit or bust.
I insert the key in the lock. My mouth is dry, and my nerves are torn to shreds. Anything could be waiting for me in there.
If ever I needed a cigarette it’s now.
The door opens on silence and darkness. I close it quietly, leaning back against the frame until my breathing becomes easier and my hands have stopped shaking enough for them to find the light switch and turn it on.
I can tell at once that no one lives here. The only items of furniture are the zebra-striped sofa, the velour armchair and the low coffee table in front of the gas fire. The plain white walls and polished hardwood shelves are free of paintings, ornaments or other accoutrements such as mirrors or posters. Impressions in the woodland green carpet betray the recent presence of a cabinet or a sideboard and perhaps a bookcase, whilst the faint tang of lemons suggests that the flat has been thoroughly cleaned at some point during the last few days.
This is the best result I could have hoped for.
But I can’t relax. During the long, arduous slog from The Hard — a journey made all the more protracted by my tendency to stand and gawp whenever I saw my reflection in a shop window, so that the clock in the foyer showed ten past four when I finally staggered in from the rain — I had plenty of time to analyse my situation. None of the conclusions I’ve drawn give me grounds for very much in the way of optimism.
It seems clear that Ruth stole the device she was later to use on me, then hid it in 20 Store until the heat died down and she was able to retrieve it without inviting suspicion. (That in itself rules out the possibility of her wanting my body so she could use my security pass to gain access to the dockyard, for she must have had at least one contact there already.)
Yet if her overall intentions remain obscure, where yours truly is concerned they’re much easier to predict. A machine that allows its operator to become anyone they meet has got to be pretty hot property. The people it belongs to aren’t going to leave many stones unturned in their efforts to get it back. That means Ruth will almost certainly have decided I know too much for her to risk the chance that I’ll talk; however ludicrous my story might sound to a judge and jury, if it reaches the ears of anyone connected with that thing they’ll be able to put two and two together straight away. Once we’re back in our own bodies Ruth’s best bet will be to tell her goons to do me in and make it look as if I’ve topped myself out of guilt. She’s probably already written my confession and suicide note.
What’s left of the Brookbank family name will end in notoriety and disgrace. For the first time since I watched the doctor pull a sheet over his face, I’m glad my father isn’t alive.
That’s the real crime you committed today, you thieving fucking tart.
Close to exhaustion, I limp over to the armchair and sit down to remove Ruth’s high-heeled ankle boots. Anger and resentment conspire to fling them into the farthest corner of the room.
How dare she do this to me?
How dare she?
It wasn’t much of a life: a job I hated; a squalid bedsit; no girlfriend nor any realistic hope of getting one; no sense of contentment I didn’t find at the bottom of a glass.
But it was mine to piss about with, not hers.
Cool it, Rich. You’re up to your ears in shit, and you won’t climb free of it by losing your temper. You’d be better off snapping out of this victim mentality and making a comprehensive inventory of the flat in an effort to find something you can use to turn the tables against her.
I take off the leather jacket, but decide to suffer the discomfort of my soaking wet jeans; the curvature stretching out the material of my sweatshirt is enough of a distraction without the addition of a stranger’s bare thighs, knees and calves. In any case, performing such mundane tasks as hanging clothes up to dry would imply a degree of acceptance I’m not ready to concede.
Feeling more comfortable now that I can place my feet flat on the floor, I pad through the open alcove I can see leads into the kitchen. As I suspected, it confirms that the flat is unoccupied. The cupboards, drawers and work surfaces are completely devoid of cooking utensils, cutlery, crockery or glassware. The refrigerator isn’t only empty, it hasn’t even been plugged in. As for consumables, there’s not so much as a digestive biscuit.
Interesting, and not a little unsettling. Since I can’t imagine Ruth wanting her body back half starved, I can only presume she doesn’t plan to be away all that long.
A sliding door gives access to the bathroom, which is in the same pristine condition. And now the nagging whisper in my bladder mutates into a full-throated roar.
Nothing for it but to take the plunge, Rich. When you’ve got to go...
I unbuckle my belt, pull down my zip and drag the moist denim over my hips.
“Oh, that’s the fucking limit, that is,” I complain out loud. “Pink? PINK? She woke up this morning thinking today’s when I swap bodies with Richard Brookbank, I wonder what colour undies I should wear?”
But my voice fails me utterly when I peel back the flimsy material to reveal the alien anatomy beneath. It makes no difference to me that half the adult population of the world see something similar every time they pass water. They were born with it — and except in a strictly academic sense none of them can imagine being constructed any other way.
My fingers thread the sparse gingery down at the base of my abdomen, but go no further. I have no desire to explore the secrets inside those puckered lips, no auto-erotic impulse propels me to probe for potential pleasure points. Show me a red-blooded male, deprived of regular sex, who says he hasn’t at one time or another dreamed about being a woman with a cunt he can poke about in to his heart’s content and I’ll show you a liar. Show me one who genuinely wants the fantasy to be made real and I’ll show you a guy who needs a therapist.
I remember to sit down before urinating, but still try to ease my non-existent cock and balls under the rim. It appears that some masculine reflexes are more ingrained than others.
I rinse my hands and shake the excess water from them — naturally there are no towels or soap — feeling increasingly uneasy. The bedroom is the only place left to investigate; if I draw a blank there I’m not sure what I’ll do.
Go out and root around in dustbins for sharp objects or lumps of wood? Bring back a heap of shingle from the beach? How can I have got to this age without knowing the first thing about defending myself?
Then I notice the mirror bolted to the wall above the washbasin. I fight it every step of the way, but there’s nothing I can do to prevent my eyes being pulled towards the glass.
“Jesus fucking Christ…”
The girl staring back at me moves her lips when I do. My hand pushes my fringe away from my forehead, and so does hers. We blink, and even breathe together.
That face is my face.
She is me, and I am her.
I’m a girl.
Shoving to one side an irrational fear that if I study my reflection for much longer it’ll become as familiar to me as the one I had until this morning, I head back through the kitchen to the living room. The bedroom door is to the right of the window. My bosom heaving, I grasp the handle.
This could be the last throw of the dice...
A single bed stands against the far wall. Upon the bare mattress rests a beige shoulder bag from which protrude a purse and an A4 manila envelope.
Is this the break I’ve been looking for? It’s got to be.
Don’t count your chickens, Rich. Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
The purse feels full! I twist it open, and pour out several pounds in loose change. There’s also a wad of £5 notes tied with an elastic band.
Hallelujah! At least I can buy some fucking cigarettes!
Yeah, and you might want to add a flick knife and a sawn-off shotgun to your shopping list.
Yet as I unroll the fivers and find to my astonishment that I’m holding nearly £300 in my hands — more cash than I’ve ever seen in my life — alarm bells are ringing, and they’re getting louder. This much money can’t have been left behind by accident. Ruth meant me to find it. The question is, why?
I stuff the notes and coins back in the purse, then turn my attention to the envelope. I’m not all that surprised to see the name RICHARD BROOKBANK written in small capital letters in the top right-hand corner.
This is it, Rich. Here’s the bit where she tells you what’s going on.
Or maybe not.
The first document I slide out is a copy of the lease to this flat, signed by Ruth and a certain A Wilson on November 20th. The agreement lasts until May 19th 1979, and the receipt stapled to the top of the sheet confirms that the rent for the whole period has been paid in full.
Six months? How many stunts like this one does she intend to pull, for Christ’s sake?
I empty the rest of the envelope’s contents onto the mattress. They include a passport, valid until 1983, in the name of Ruth Maria Hansford-Jones, born in Northcroft-on-Heugh, County Durham on September 2nd 1955. Her next of kin is her husband Timothy, of 11 Hollybush Lane, Sarisbury, Hants.
Timothy?
Give me strength…
I look closely at the photograph on the back page. The girl it features has straight, honey blonde hair; it’s several inches longer than mine, and the centre parting is much neater. But there’s no question that her face is the one I now wear.
She wasn’t an impostor.
She really was who she claimed to be.
And now she’s me.
Pity I won’t be there when she takes off my desert boots and sees those socks…
Ruth’s ‘O’ and ‘A’ level certificates, awarded when she was a pupil at Holbrook Girls’ School in Chislehurst, Kent. An unused cheque book sent out by the Guildhall Square, Portsmouth branch of Martin’s Bank, and an interim statement showing an initial balance of £1000 deposited yesterday. A Post Office savings account with funds totalling £485.57. A Visa card with a credit limit of £250. A full driving licence...
The truth smashes into me with the force of a runaway train.
Ruth has bequeathed to me her entire identity. She isn’t coming back at all. She’s provided me with everything I need to take up a new life as her.
What the fuck makes her think I can get away with that? Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t pretend to be a real girl for more than five minutes without being caught out.
Why is she doing this? What’s the point?
It’s too much to take in. I sit on the bed and put my head in my hands as it gradually sinks in that unless I find Ruth and persuade her to change her mind I’ll be stuck like this for good.
And I haven’t the foggiest idea where she might have gone.
After a few minutes I get up and walk over to the window. Outside, rain is still slanting across the glass, blurring the patterns of yellow-orange lights stretching towards Fratton and Portsmouth’s northern suburbs.
Two hundred thousand people in this city. Many of them will be heading home from work, thinking only of a hot meal, a favourite television programme, a few pints at the local pub or maybe a night on the town followed by a curry and a disco. Tomorrow there’s the weekend shopping to get in and the pools coupon to check. On Sunday they’ll have friends round for lunch, or go for a drive in the country if the weather improves. Boring, repetitive lives.
How I envy each and every one of the lucky bastards.
My freckled fingers reach for the catch. I could end this in the space of a few heartbeats. Eight floors should be more than enough to make tomato purée out of my vital organs.
Is that it, then? Did all those pledges you made at the top of the gangway mean nothing? Go on, take the easy way out, just like you always do. But remember this: when you’re lying on the ground in a pool of blood waiting to die — and it might not be as quick or as painless as you assume — the last thought to flutter through your head will be that you’ll never know why Ruth acted as she did.
Yet if I play along, it’ll mean that every morning for weeks or maybe even months to come I’m going to wake up and realise I’m a girl.
I can’t face that. I’ll go under.
Listen to yourself bleating on. You’ve got four fully functioning limbs and no obvious health problems. You’ve got a roof over your head for the next six months and not far short of two grand to spend. Best of all, you’ve got the intelligence and imagination to track her down. So you’ll be doing it without a dick. Big fucking deal.
I take a step back, ashamed at my lack of inner strength. Amputees, terminal cancer patients, those who’ve been disfigured by burns or have lost their sight, the vast majority of them manage by simply getting on with life. If they can cope, I should be able to.
Besides, I want to see Ruth’s jaw drop when I turn up out of nowhere.
Okay, now you’ve got that out of your system you can concentrate on figuring out where she’s taken herself off to.
And time is of the essence. She might be a couple of hundred miles away by now; she could be in the departure lounge at Heathrow preparing to board a flight to New York. Two thousand quid won’t last long if I have to jet around the globe in search of my body.
Think!
It all comes down to why she chose me. What can she do as Richard Brookbank that she can’t as Ruth Hansford-Jones? Which doors are open to him but closed to her?
17 Ladybank Grove?
Unlikely. All she had to do was turn up at the front door and tell mum she wanted to get in touch with me. From that moment on she’d have been treated as practically one of the family.
Where, then?
I’ll make it easy for you. Hart Street school. Miss Sutton’s class. She told us to sit together right at the back because you always came top in tests and I was always second.
Northcroft-on-Heugh. It’s the one thing that links us.
Except that I haven’t visited my home town in nearly three years, and there isn’t a single person living there I’d count as a friend or a close relative.
But where else am I to start looking for her?
God, what if when she’s finished being me she swaps again and dumps my body at the bottom of the North Sea? How will I react if I read my obituary in the local paper? Would I have the guts to go to my own funeral, loitering at the grave like a ghost?
This is no good. I need to make a decision, and fast. Do I set off for Northcroft now, knowing I’ll have to travel overnight and waste three or four hours kicking my heels in the buffet on Newcastle station waiting for the first train to New Stranton, or postpone my departure until tomorrow when I’m feeling less tired? Should I not limit this evening’s objectives to those I can more easily accomplish, such as a packet of fags and a bottle of something to put me to sleep?
And as I sink into alcohol-induced oblivion, how will Ruth be making use of her time?
Footsteps sound in the corridor outside. They fade, and I remember to breathe again.
That tips the balance. I can’t stay here a moment longer than is necessary. If I’m going to turn into a cowering wreck whenever anyone walks past the door I’ll be a basket case well before the morning comes. Then it won’t matter whose body I’m in.
Are you ready, ma’am?
As ready as I’ll ever be.
Why, Ruth? What’s so important it was worth changing sex for?
Only one way to find out.
To Be Continued...
The Transmigration Of Richard Brookbank Chapter 3
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THE TRANSMIGRATION OF RICHARD BROOKBANK
By Touch the Light
CHAPTER 3
“A man is following you. He’s armed, and he may be under orders to kill you.” I feel my whole body go rigid. I’ve heard that voice before, and not so very long ago... |
CHAPTER 3
“A man is following you. He’s armed, and he may be under orders to kill you.”
I feel my whole body go rigid. I’ve heard that voice before, and not so very long ago...
“Twenty Marlboro and a box of Swan Vestas, please.”
Much too posh. And they’re just ‘Swans’, for goodness sake.
“Have you such a thing as a pocket comb?”
Still sounds like I usually send the maid out for stuff like that. Try again.
“D’you stop anywhere near Fratton station?”
Better. Only just, though.
“How long do I have to wait at Southampton before the Newcastle train is due to leave?”
New-carsul? I don’t think so somehow.
The lift arrives at the ground floor, bringing my impromptu rehearsal to an end. The next time I use the lilting contralto and the middle-class suburban southern accent I seem to have inherited along with Ruth’s vocal cords I’ll be talking to a real person. The masquerade will have begun in earnest.
As the door opens I keep tight hold of my shoulder bag to stop it swinging into my hip when I move. This is the kind of habit girls pick up when they’re still children, and here I am having to learn the tricks of the trade one by one.
I should have told Derek where to stick that package. I really should.
I’m a girl…
Come on, concentrate.
The clock above the entrance to the concierge’s office reads a few minutes to five. If the trains aren’t going to be running again until six — and it may be another hour on top of that before they’re back to normal — that means I can take things at a steady pace and avoid making any more stupid mistakes like the scene I created at The Hard. I’ve got enough on my plate as it is without attracting unwanted attention.
I negotiate the steps leading down to the pavement carefully, treating each one as a potential plaster cast. The rain has eased, though that doesn’t lessen the sheer magnitude of the task upon which I’m about to embark.
Or the sneaking suspicion that Ruth’s made it a little bit too easy for me to follow her…
Focus!
You only have to walk a couple of hundred yards, then you’ll have reached the newsagent’s. The bus stop is right next to it. What could be more straightforward?
It’s going to be a disaster. I fucking know it is.
After a few deep breaths I turn on my heels and begin the first stage of my journey. Clarendon Road being one of the busier thoroughfares that criss-cross Southsea’s residential sector, the stream of headlights from passing cars and vans is more or less constant. Each one of them seems to be deflected right at me, as though the studs on my jacket spelled out the phrase ‘NOT REALLY A GIRL’ for everyone to laugh at. Just as disconcerting, I’ve lost seven or eight inches in height; everything looks that much bigger and therefore that much more intimidating. Only the thought of that first glorious injection of nicotine keeps me plodding on.
A woman overtakes me. Until earlier today it would have been the other way around. What was once a rarity will now become the norm. Then I encounter a young couple; my instinct is to step aside and let the girl pass, but her boyfriend has already paid me that compliment. I sense their unconscious reactions to my momentary intrusion: he wonders what it would be like to have sex with me; she warns me off. Something else I’ll have to get used to.
But suppose a bloke makes a pass at me? I can’t tell everyone who comes out with a chat-up line to piss off and leave me alone. How do I defuse the situation rather than make it worse? What experience can I draw on?
The tally’s getting longer, Ruth. One way or another, I’m going to see that you pay it in full.
At last I’m in sight of the Strand roundabout, from where avenues lined with guest houses and student flats diverge with varying degrees of haste to the sea front. The exception is Waverley Road, which heads north towards Fratton; at the corner begins the small row of shops I’m aiming for.
Stop at the kerb. Look right, look left, look right again. Don’t forget you’re taking shorter steps, so it’s going to take you half as long again to reach the other side.
Made it!
Not far now.
Twenty Marlboro and a box of Swans, please.
Twenty Marlboro and a box of Swans, please.
Twenty Marlboro and a box of Swans, please.
Have a bit of faith in yourself, Rich. It’s not as if you’ll be delivering a soliloquy from King Lear in front of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Trying hard to ignore the relentless rise and fall of my bust, I push the newsagent’s door open. To my unbounded relief there are no other customers. The proprietor, a stocky figure close to retirement age with thinning white hair Brylcreemed back from his forehead, gives me a look of less than wholehearted approval. This may be due to the fact that my wet jeans and stringy locks suggest I’ve spent most of the afternoon lying in a ditch.
“What can I do for you, miss?”
Miss?
No one came in behind me, did they?
Ah...
“Oh, right...yeah, uh...twenty, um, twenty Marlboro...and a box of uh...that’s it, a box of Swans. Please.”
It’s a good job I’m not in a general dealer’s ordering next week’s groceries. He’d be dead and buried before I got to the end of the list.
The shopkeeper turns to the display cabinet, shaking his head.
“Sorry, I don’t think I’ve got any left.”
Shit! What now?
“Okay, let’s see...uh, Winstons?”
Down there on the right. You’ve gone past them, you stupid old git!
Finally he places my cigarettes and matches on his pile of unsold copies of the Portsmouth News.
“Sixty-seven, please.”
I fiddle inside my bag for my purse. Just as I’m picking out the first of the two 50p pieces I’ve decided to hand over, the strap slides down my arm. Within moments I’m presented with irrefutable empirical proof that when coins fall to the floor they will roll as far from their point of impact as the available space allows.
At this juncture any normal girl might be expected to apologise for her clumsiness with the assistance of a tried and trusted phrase such as ‘all fingers and thumbs’. It’s a fair bet that the words ‘fucking’, ‘bastard’ and ‘nuisance’ wouldn’t be the first and only ones to escape from her lips.
How many times must I have watched a woman rest her bag on the counter while she pays for her purchases? There are reasons why they do these things.
The transaction at an end — which is more than can be said for my embarrassment — I lurch outside, almost ripping the packet to pieces in my haste to tear off the cellophane wrapping and the silver foil separating me from my first drag for more than three hours. I pull one of the Winstons free, pop it in my mouth, strike a match, hold it to the tightly rolled tobacco, inhale and...
“Oh my God.”
The blood drains from my face as the bus shelter reels at an insane angle, carrying the rest of the world with it. I totter into the reinforced glass, coughing so fiercely it would come as no surprise to see my lungs fly through the air and splatter onto the wet flagstones.
Ruth doesn’t smoke. The craving must only be in my mind.
A disheveled individual wearing an old brown raincoat leers at me as he walks by.
“You might want to think about giving those up, love,” he grins.
“Fuck off,” I wheeze, sounding as healthy as an aged miner struggling to climb a steep hill with a sack of potatoes on his back.
“Charming,” the cheeky bastard chortles as he disappears around the corner.
I toss the cigarette into the gutter, but put the rest of the pack in my pocket. I’m determined to persevere with them, if only to make fun of Ruth after I’ve talked her into swapping back and she discovers she’s addicted to the dreaded weed. When she complains I’ll tell her she’s lucky I didn’t have a giant penis tattooed on her chest.
After the nausea has subsided I remember that I still haven’t bought a comb. I wander up to the chemist’s at the far end of the shopping parade, and freeze as my eyes alight on the poster in the window. It shows a dark-skinned young woman in a spotless white T-shirt and shorts heading a football into a conveniently empty net; the legend at the bottom reads SANITEX — BECAUSE LIFE DOESN’T STOP ONCE A MONTH.
Didn’t see that one coming, did you? There’s more to being female than sitting down to piss.
How long do periods last? What are the symptoms? And what the fuck do you actually do with a tampon?
I’m so caught up in the vision I’ve created of people staring and pointing at the blood seeping through the crotch of my jeans that I fail to notice the long, brightly lit vehicle with a destination panel on the front until it’s sped right past the bus stop.
All things taken into account, it hasn’t really been my day.
I elect to walk the mile and a half to Fratton station. The rain has stopped altogether, and the atmosphere is starting to feel less oppressive. I’m also a lot more comfortable with these boots than I’d have believed was possible — I’ve had to adopt a more inefficient gait with a pronounced sideways element due to the motion of my hips, but I no longer fear I’m about to topple into the gutter every time I step off the pavement.
Which won’t prevent me raiding the first shop I find tomorrow that’s open for the sale of training shoes.
The metrical click of my heels competes with the ever-present swish of traffic as I press on into a district I recall so well from my days as an undergraduate. To my right the building known as the Pink Pit, and the balcony just under the roof where Nicky Benson sunbathed nude throughout the scorching hot summer of ’76, her lovely auburn tresses cropped above her ears and combed into a boyish side parting. Further on, the square known as Wimbledon Park, scene of my reported death after I was found lying in a rose bush with no discernible pulse, my corpselike condition the outcome of an ill-advised wager concerning the Empress of India and its monthly supply of Prize Old Ale. On the other side of the road stands the vermin-infested cesspit I inhabited once I’d broken free from the confines of the Bembridge, subsisting for two full terms on ham and tinned tomato sandwiches, Scotch eggs, toast toppers and Robinson’s barley water.
Nicky Benson...
Three years at Portsmouth Polytechnic, and one lousy shag on a weekend field trip to Torquay was all I could notch on the bedpost. I only got that because the staff at the hotel, who’d thought to save money by putting us all in double rooms, had assumed Nicky was a boy’s name and saw nothing amiss in having Benson snuggle up beneath the same set of sheets as Brookbank. Nicky didn’t mind either, not when she found out that the alternative was sharing with Pam Wright, who according to her flatmates farted all night like an elephant force-fed on curried sprouts if she drank more than two halves of lager.
Naturally the other students weren’t slow to take full advantage of a situation the writers of a Brian Rix farce would have rejected as too far-fetched, hurriedly organising a stag do and a hen party in two separate pubs, then holding a mock ceremony back at the hotel culminating in a very much the worse for wear Richard Arthur Brookbank exchanging slurred vows with a similarly inebriated Nicolette Jane Benson, the latter sporting a bath towel as a bridal veil and leaning heavily on the best man’s arm while the groom made heroic efforts to slide a curtain ring onto one of the extra set of fingers his intended had suddenly grown.
Did our attendants overstep the mark by ensuring we collapsed on the bed in suitable states of undress and juxtaposition to consummate our not so holy union? In mitigation it could be argued that as they turned off the light and crept from the room not one of them foresaw that Nicky would guide her new ‘husband’ inside her and keep him there until his nuptial duties were fulfilled — a job I’m pleased to say I carried out to our mutual enjoyment, even though the following morning she insisted we tell everyone we’d gone straight to sleep. Yet if I continue to look back with some pride on the escapade that led to the loss of my virginity, it gives me less satisfaction to acknowledge that my one and only sexual conquest to date came about as the result of a clerical error.
Thank God and all the Saints in Heaven she can’t see me now.
At Albert Road traffic lights I look straight ahead as I wait for the signal to change. I do not permit my eyes to stray left, past the school playground to the Volunteer Arms, where on any other Friday evening I’d be downing a pint or six of HSB, playing a few games of darts or maybe a round of crib, then joining in the sing-song that usually breaks out if Gladys goes upstairs early enough. What was it last week, Pink Floyd’s ‘Bike’, complete with duck noises? Tonight we could try–
Leave it, Rich. No one in there can help you.
I trudge on, past a characterless succession of dull red-brick houses with rectangular bay windows fronted by concrete palisades, unkempt hedges and old wooden gates. It comes to an end at the corner of Campbell Road, which pulls me up with a start as I’d forgotten all about my flat. The landlord will be calling round on Monday for the rent, and if he doesn’t leave with some promises from the Bank of England’s Chief Cashier to add to his collection there’s every chance I’ll be returning from my confrontation with Ruth to find the lock changed and my possessions stuffed inside a bin bag on the landing. If one of the other tenants lets me into the building I can push a few fivers under the door — and while I’m there it might not hurt to ask whether they’ve seen the lad from the top floor since he left for work this morning.
“A man is following you. He’s armed, and he may be under orders to kill you.”
I feel my whole body go rigid. I’ve heard that voice before, and not so very long ago. I don’t need to turn my head to know that it belongs to the sentry who stopped me at Marlborough Gate.
Though it’s what he said that should give me greater cause for concern. I’ve been so preoccupied with not making a fool of myself I’d banished from my mind the idea that people might be looking for me — with a view to taking more drastic action than merely having a quiet word or two regarding the whereabouts of their device.
Push has most definitely come to shove, Rich. Let’s see exactly how good an actor you are.
“What d’you want me to do?” I ask with as much self-control as I can muster.
“There’s a Rover outside the Lawrence pub. Nice motor, very reliable too. Nothing wrong with the big end — if you get my drift.”
A hand in the small of my back prods me forward. Without its help I couldn’t have moved from that spot if molten lava had erupted through the pavement.
He knows who I am. He knows what happened to me.
For the second time in just four hours, everything has changed.
The car is parked on Clarence Esplanade facing west, about half-way between Southsea Castle and the war memorial. Out of the left-hand window, across four miles of black water, I can make out the cluster of lights indicating the town of Ryde on the Isle of Wight. Ahead of me, closer at hand but just as inaccessible, the gaudy illuminations of Clarence Pier amusement park perform their endless choreography. On the other side of the road lies Southsea Common, acre upon acre of unrelieved darkness.
The man behind the wheel is square-jawed and clean shaven. His heavy yet athletic frame is clothed in a denim jacket, a red-and-black hooped rugby shirt and brown corduroy trousers. His grey eyes are shrewd and worldly, his mouth perpetually caught in the beginning of a sardonic grin. He has me in his power, and he knows it; even if I managed to kick off my boots, with this physique I wouldn’t get more than a few yards before he caught up with me.
I am trapped, I am in danger and I am helpless.
I’m a girl, and I’m just beginning to realise what that can mean.
I open my mouth to speak, but think better of it. He has asked that I remain silent, and I have given him no reason to reiterate his request. Until he tells me who he really is, and what he wants from me, my questions must wait.
He finishes rifling through my purse, grunts and tosses it onto the back seat to join my shoulder bag. I note that he hasn’t pocketed any of the money.
“I need to search you,” he says. “Don’t worry, I won’t try and cop a feel. I know who’s in there, and it’s a real turn-off.”
I stiffen as his hands invade the pockets of my jeans, then explore the inside of my jacket. When I feel them brush the sides of my breasts I have to suppress the urge to lash out.
Things cannot get any worse.
“Not very good at this, are you?” he laughs, leaning back with only the key to Ruth’s flat to show for his efforts. “There isn’t a woman alive who’d go out and forget to take a comb. I thought she’d have trained you better than that, to be honest.”
Outrage battles my trepidation and wins a crushing victory.
“What? You think we were in it together? That I wanted to be turned into...into a...?”
“Two thousand quid, a nice gaff and a fresh start as a juicy bit of crumpet. Seems fairly conclusive from where I’m sitting.”
“Whoa! I’m not gay!”
“I didn’t say you were. Desperate, maybe. Enough to consider chancing your arm as a lesbo. Plenty of them around, if you know where to look. Course it wouldn’t appeal to me, I don’t care how much dosh she was willing to put on the table. Then again I’m not three months behind with the rent, and my bank manager isn’t writing to me every fortnight promising he’ll take legal action if I don’t pay off my overdraft by the end of the year.”
“You’ve been reading my fucking mail?”
“There’s a lot at stake. Sorry, but your privacy came very low on our list of priorities.”
I close my eyes, trying hard to collect my thoughts. Nothing about this business adds up. What am I missing? What connections has the stress of having been thrust into someone else’s body stopped me from making?
I’ve been on the blower to 20 Store, Mr Brookbank, and you’re free to proceed.
“You knew I was carrying that thing,” I spit at him. “You let me pick it up and walk out with it. Why take such a risk? If you suspected I was in league with Ruth, why didn’t you switch it for a couple of burned-out circuit boards or a few old valves? I’d still have led you to her.”
“Assuming that was the object of the exercise.”
The sound of pieces falling into place is loud enough to drown out the headline act at the Reading festival.
“You wanted her to have it, didn’t you? Jesus, it’s so bloody obvious now I think about it. Her real target is whoever she tries to swap with next. That’s why you allowed her to get away. Yeah, I bet you watched the whole fucking show. So come on, who is she? Where did she steal that device from? Who taught her how to operate it? What was it originally supposed to be for? Infiltrate the Red Army or what?”
He chuckles softly to himself.
“You seriously think I’m going to tell you? Richard Brookbank, master box opener of 20 Store? Do me a favour.”
“Listen, it’s me this has happened to, not you!” I protest. “I’m the one who’s suddenly got tits the size of melons. Don’t I have the right to know why?”
“You have the right to know precisely what I decide you need to know — and at this particular moment in time what you need to know is that for the last three minutes and forty-five seconds there’s been a stationary S-reg Cortina a hundred and twenty yards behind us. The driver is the man who was tailing you. If you look round I’ll break your arm.”
The pressure exerted by the hand gripping my wrist leaves me in no doubt that he means what he says.
“Okay,” I sigh. “You’re the boss.”
“Penny’s dropped, has it?” He starts the engine. “Right, let’s set about saving your worthless skin. Fasten your seat belt, ‘cause this might not be the smoothest ride you’ve ever had.”
“Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to a facility about fifteen miles from here. After that you’ll be someone else’s problem, thank Christ.”
For the next few minutes the Highway Code might never have existed: taking Pier Road roundabout the wrong way; screeching into Kings Road against a red light; doubling back through a maze of side streets with as much regard for the one-way system as he has for the pedestrians shaking their fists at the reckless young lout who thinks he’s Portsmouth’s answer to James Hunt; swerving and splashing along St Andrews Road; tearing down another street, the speedometer touching fifty...
He can handle a car, I’ll give him that much.
We cross Lake Road and find ourselves in the high-rise wasteland to the north of the city centre.
“You must have shaken him off by now,” I say hopefully.
“Him, yes. But he’ll have radioed ahead.”
“There’s only two roads off Portsea Island. Suppose they’re watching them both?”
“Only two? Are you sure about that?”
Ninety seconds and one smashed barricade later we’re on the northbound carriageway of the as yet unfinished M275. For much of its length the road is raised above the shore of the harbour on stilts, so it feels like crossing a very long bridge. We’re cruising at a uniform speed with no sign of pursuit, and at last I start to relax — until the Rover hits the section still to be properly surfaced, enabling me to grasp the full meaning of the verb ‘to judder’.
The barrier on the slip road leading onto the M27 goes the way of its counterpart. A raucous fanfare of horns and hooters greets our unexpected entrance as we weave through the flow of vehicles rushing west towards Fareham and Southampton.
“I hope for your sake no one took your number back there,” I remark.
“It’s easily changed.”
The cunt’s got an answer for fucking everything.
He takes the first exit we come to, turning right to head away from the coast into what for me is uncharted territory. The darkness closes in after the first bend, broken only by tiny pinpricks of light shining from isolated farms and homesteads. My eyelids begin to droop as fatigue and anxiety take their toll; I try to read the signposts we pass, but they flash by too quickly.
“So where were you making for?” he asks me.
“Mmm...?”
“If you weren’t planning to meet Ruth.”
“Does that mean you believe me?”
“Look at the state you’re in. Then there was your car. Nobbled, without a shadow.”
I ought to feel encouraged by this. Instead I hate his guts even more for winding me up.
But I don’t rant and rave about it. The people at the ‘facility’ he spoke of might be more inclined to help me get my body back if he reports that I was willing to co-operate with him.
“Northcroft. That’s where I was going. We were both born and raised there, otherwise we’ve got nothing in common at all. I know it was probably a wild goose chase, but it was better than sitting in an empty flat waiting for the door to burst off its hinges. Funny she should have...”
“She should have what?”
Snapper Brookbank! It is you! Don’t you remember me?
“I didn’t recognise her at first. She went out of her way to tell me who she was. Why would she do that? It’s almost as if she was dropping hints on purpose so I’d go after her.”
“Which it seems you did.”
I don’t say anything because all that will come out is the sound of a braying donkey. A simple trick like that, and I fell for it.
We trundle through a small village, then ascend a steep hill that takes us back into the velvet veil enshrouding the countryside.
“How much further?” I mumble.
“Not long. A mile or two at the most.”
“What do I call you?”
“Cunningham. It’s an alias, of course.”
“Of course.”
Wanker.
A crossroads. A pub with a silly name, something to do with cricket. A narrow lane that climbs between thickly wooded slopes, their trackless fringes picked out by the headlights. We must be approaching the summit of the South Downs; what kind of establishment is he aiming for in such an out-of-the-way spot as this?
Don’t panic. If he was going to stove your head in and leave you by the side of the road he’d have done it well before now.
An abrupt turn to the left. A high chain-link fence topped with rolls of barbed wire. A gate and a sentry box. A hoarding.
HMS NEREID
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
UNAUTHORISED ENTRY PROHIBITED
A naval institution. Talk about coming full circle.
At least I seem to have fallen in with the good guys. After all, the MoD is a government department, run by officials accountable to elected politicians.
Yet I’ve been through too much today to take anything at face value.
Cunningham pulls the Rover to a halt in front of the gate. Although it can’t be long after six, there are no signs of activity in or around the low buildings beyond.
“Sorry about this,” he says. “Has to be done, I’m afraid. We don’t want you getting all hysterical once the GABA inhibitors start to wear off.”
“The gabba what?”
A sharp pain in the underside of my right wrist. The glint of a syringe.
“Oh, you fucking bastard,” I cry out, but the universe is already receding from my mind at the speed of light.
A slab of inanimate organic matter, I slump into Cunningham’s arms.
To Be Continued...
The Transmigration Of Richard Brookbank Chapter 4
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THE TRANSMIGRATION OF RICHARD BROOKBANK
CHAPTER 4
By Touch the Light "Less than fifty people in the world know of the transfer device. The list includes neither the Prime Minister of this country nor the President of the United States. To learn of our organisation is to join it. There’s no going back, Richard. You work for us now. You always will.” |
Insipid light bleeds through glass and fabric, bringing me awake in hesitant, confused stages. My freckled fingers grope for the alarm clock on the bedside table, but encounter only empty space.
My freckled fingers? Since when did I have freckles on my fingers?
Spots in front of the eyes, that’s what you’ve got. I don’t know, pissed again. And behaved like a complete prat, I shouldn’t wonder.
God knows what I was drinking, though. My mouth feels drier than a Jack Benny comedy routine.
Loose strands of hair, honey blonde mixed with ginger, fall across my face. I push them back, puzzled.
I’ve heard of being blind drunk — but colourblind drunk?
Maybe I passed out like I did at that twenty-first in London and somebody dyed it. That means we must’ve gone back to…
Fuck it, I’ll remember where I was and what I got up to sooner or later.
I let my head sink back against the soft, squashy pillow.
Saturday morning. I can stay here as long as I like.
Bliss.
Don’t cock this up, are you listening?
Stop worrying, Derek. It was their own fault it got sent here. They’re not going to make you walk the plank if I’m a couple of minutes late.
But I did cock it up. First my car broke down, then the ferries were on strike and I couldn’t get to Gosport in time. I wonder how I managed to worm my way out of that one?
They’re a heavy rock band from the States. In case you thought I was a devil worshipper or something.
Sarky cow. Fabulous tits, mind. Nice arse too.
Well, that’s this morning’s wrist exercises sorted out. Now where did I leave the kitchen towel?
Actually I’m Ruth Hansford-Jones these days. I got married last May. He runs a restaurant over in Warsash.
Ruth who?
Because if you don’t, my darling, I’ll blow your fucking balls off.
Oh no.
Are you all right, my love? You look a bit peaky, if you don’t mind me saying so.
Tell me it didn’t happen.
No need to get your knickers in a twist, darlin’. I was only trying to help.
Please.
Nice motor, very reliable too. Nothing wrong with the big end — if you get my drift.
I’ll do anything.
Sorry about this. Has to be done, I’m afraid.
Sweet Jesus...
I raise my right arm clear of the counterpane.
Only it’s not mine.
It’s plump, pale and covered in tiny freckles.
It’s a girl’s arm.
I’m still trapped in Ruth’s body.
This isn’t going away.
I’m still a girl.
Cold beads of sweat form on my forehead. I feel like smashing it against the wall until my brains start leaking from my ears.
Fight it!
I can’t. I don’t know how.
Then you’d better learn, because you don’t know why the fuck Cunningham brought you here. And whether it was that toerag or someone else who put you in this bed, not only did they strip you naked first, it looks like they took your clothes with them. You might whine about being imprisoned in a girl’s body, but at the moment it’s all you’ve got.
Very slowly, I claw back enough self-discipline to take stock of my new surroundings.
The room is tiny, no more than ten feet square. The only window is set high in the wall to my left. Most of the floor space is taken up by a tall aluminium cabinet, a wooden chair and a writing desk. On the back of the door there’s a poster showing two men standing at the summit of a snow-capped mountain. For some reason this makes me feel slightly less apprehensive.
Might as well try the handle. It’s probably locked, but you never know...
I sit up, my mouth falling open at the sight of the capacious globes protruding from my chest. This is the first time I’ve seen my bare breasts, and it alters my whole outlook. Yesterday they were merely appendages that might have been bolted onto my torso specifically to cause me inconvenience; now, watching them move as I breathe in and out, I have no choice but to recognise that they’re as much a part of the entity I call ‘me’ as the eyes I’m using to look at them.
I don’t think I can deal with this. I know there’s nothing inherently shameful about becoming female, but it’s too fundamental a change. A person’s gender is their single most important defining attribute. Until this ordeal ends — if it ever does — the first thing anyone will notice about me is that I’m a girl. Nothing else will matter to them remotely as much.
Fucking hell, here we go again. Call for the violins and pass round the paper tissues. You have no idea how well this has turned out for you. How would you feel if Ruth had been fat and ugly? Or it wasn’t her who pinched that machine but a sixty-odd year old geezer with arthritis and false choppers? What if you were black, and had the prospect of racial prejudice to add to your troubles?
And while we’re at it, a bit more honesty wouldn’t come amiss either. It’s not being female that’s bothering you so much as the thought of having joined the opposing side. All those girls you put on a pedestal for so many years instead of treating them like ordinary human beings, then ended up despising when they wouldn’t go out with an insecure, tongue-tied berk whose dress sense and general deportment made Albert Steptoe look like the embodiment of sartorial elegance, and now you’re one of them. What’s scaring the pants off you is that you might start to think the way they did and realise what a sad, inadequate tosser Richard Brookbank really was.
Perhaps that’s true — but it’s a harsh lesson that costs a lad his genitals.
It had to be me, didn’t it? Of all the snobs, spoiled brats, bullies, snivelling tell-tales and violent nutters I grew up with, it had to be me this happened to.
Appleton.
Sir!
Armstrong.
Sir!
Barker.
Sir!
Bradwell.
Sir!
Brookbank.
Sir!
Brown.
Sir!
All the way down to Watkinson, Wilkins and Young.
Some went to university, others left school with no qualifications at all and had to earn their corn shovelling shit. Some will live in mansions, others will rent poky little houses on rough council estates. Some will rub shoulders with the aristocracy, others will consort with burglars and drug pushers.
Only one of them managed to get himself turned into a fucking woman.
The door clicks open, and I shrink back against the wall like a rabbit mesmerised by the roar of an approaching juggernaut.
Not Cunningham.
Please, Lord.
I’ll go to church every Sunday. I’ll never take your name in vain again. I’ll write hymns.
Just let it be anyone but that cunt.
“Good morning, Richard. I trust you slept well?”
For once my prayer is answered. The speaker is a strikingly attractive woman in her middle to late thirties. She’s wearing a smart black jacket, a cream silk blouse, a calf-length pleated black skirt and black knee boots. Her glossy raven hair is cut in a fairly short bob, brushed forward into a fetching fringe. For a moment or two her exquisitely chiselled features and alluring, almond-shaped eyes put me in mind of Mademoiselle Malraux, the Saigon-born French assistant who worked at Westbourne Grammar School the year I sat my O levels — but of course it can’t be her, and in any case there’s no vestige of a foreign accent in that clear, crisp voice.
“Who are you?” I ask, clutching the quilt to my chest. “Why am I here?”
“My name is Mitsuoko Tatsukichi. You can call me Suki, it’s easier to remember. You’re in HMS Nereid on the South Downs, a few miles from Petersfield. As the base is closed for refurbishment at present, we have the premises to ourselves. Now we’ve a busy day ahead of us, so if you follow me I’ll take you to the shower area. I’ve found you some fresh clothes, and one or two other bits and pieces that will doubtless come in handy.”
“Why did Cunningham drug me?”
“As a precaution.”
“Against what?”
“The device Ruth used on you sends a signal that stimulates a certain region of the brain to produce natural mood stabilisers called gabba-aminobutyric acids, or GABA inhibitors as they’re sometimes known. They help to mitigate the psychological shock a transfer inevitably brings on, but their effectiveness diminishes rapidly after a few hours.”
She’s talking as if people exchange bodies every day.
“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”
“I’m afraid you haven’t been granted the necessary clearance.”
Typical of the Navy. They won’t give a civilian directions to the nearest phone box for fear it might be classified information.
“You don’t sound very Japanese,” I remark sullenly.
“You don’t sound very male,”comes the stinging reply. She claps her palms together. “Any more questions? Good. Well, what are you waiting for? Chop-chop!”
Yes, miss. Whatever you say, miss. Three bags fucking full, miss.
But an urgent need to use a lavatory ensures my compliance. Wrapping a sheet around my middle, I swing my feet to the carpet.
Suki leads me through an empty barrack room to a communal latrine block and promises to return in twenty minutes. I can’t let her leave without asking the question that I must have an answer to, no matter how unpalatable it turns out to be.
“Can you…I mean, the people you work for…are you going to, you know…?”
“Return you to your original body?”
“Well yeah…”
“I’d advise you not to raise your hopes too high. 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.”
She doesn’t pull any punches, does she?
“You’d kill her?” I gasp.
“It’s an eventuality for which you should certainly prepare yourself.”
Suki walks away, and as I stare after her the sheet falls from my useless fingers. I step over it, my cumbersome breasts bouncing and swaying.
This is how it might always be for me.
Every time I move.
Month upon month, year upon year...
No escape but the grave.
They’ll find a way to bring her in alive and in one piece. They have to.
Pushing my hair away from my face, I walk towards the line of benches set against the nearest wall. Here I find two large towels, as well as clean underwear, a thick-knit fawn jumper and a pair of khaki camouflage trousers. My leather jacket hangs from the peg directly above, and my high-heeled ankle boots stand to attention on the tiled floor. Next to them is a grocery box filled with all manner of toiletries and grooming aids, everything from shampoo and soap to sticking plaster.
As if I gave a flying fuck.
I just want to go back to bed, close my eyes and pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Instead I’m expected to function normally, as though all I had to contend with was a slight head cold.
I reach for my jacket. The cigarettes and matches are still inside. It’s not much of a silver lining, and too much has happened in too short a space of time for me to hope that it might be a turning point.
The pressure in my bladder reminds me that some tasks have to be seen to regardless of circumstances. Trying — without very much success — to yank my eyes away from the womanly curves of my waist and thighs, not to mention the unmistakeable lack of anything dangling from my crotch, I go about my ablutions.
The mess hall is deserted, apart from the long, Formica-topped table where Suki Tatsukichi has laid out a breakfast for two of cereal, toast, marmalade and coffee. I eat sparingly, my appetite dulled both by the warning I’ve been given and the intelligent oriental eyes that every so often glance up from the spiral-bound dossier they’re perusing to check on my progress — as if to make sure that the aberration facing her can perform such simple tasks as spooning corn flakes into her mouth.
I don’t know what she has planned for me, but I doubt if it includes a tropical island populated exclusively by beautiful young lesbians.
The moment I push my plate to one side, Suki lays the folder flat on the table. Printed on the front cover is RICHARD ARTHUR BROOKBANK, followed by a forward slash and an alphanumeric identification code. There’s one other word: BELLADONNA.
“You’re not wearing a bra,” she observes.
“Yeah, I’m a real slut. Mind if I smoke?”
“Is that because you had difficulty putting it on?”
“Couldn’t be bothered, to tell you the truth.”
She doesn’t get it. She can’t understand that slipping my arms through those straps and fiddling with the hooks at the back would have been acts of surrender.
“Where’s Ruth’s wedding ring?” she asks as I light up and inhale, careful not to take too much back this time.
“It was getting on my tits, so I flushed it down the pan.”
She looks horrified.
“What if her husband wants it returned?”
“He should’ve thought of that before he married a body snatcher.” I rest the cigarette in the saucer, then sit back and cross one sturdy thigh over the other. “Relax, it’s in her bag.”
Suki’s dark red lips curve in what I suspect is the nearest they ever come to forming a genuine smile. Evidently my decision not to introduce Ruth’s ring to the twists and turns of the local sewage system has qualified me for immediate membership of the great sisterhood who’d cut off their own thumbs rather than deliberately destroy another woman’s jewellery.
So much for staying on the outside looking in.
“To business,” she says briskly. “How do you feel?”
“What a stupid question. I’ve been turned into a woman and you ask me how I feel. Jumping for joy. How the fuck d’you think I feel?”
“I mean in yourself. Any headaches, dizzy spells, that kind of thing?”
“No...uh, should there be?”
“We don’t think so. The trials we were able to conduct produced little in the way of long-term effects.”
“Are you saying people actually volunteered to have this done to them?”
“Yes, and you owe them a great deal. Thanks to the data they helped us collect you’ve been cleared to undergo the remainder of your adjustment under my supervision.”
“The alternative being...?”
“An exhaustive programme of physical and psychological tests carried out in an underground laboratory, your movements monitored by closed-circuit television cameras twenty-four hours a day.” She sits forward, her bearing suddenly more confrontational. “But for better or worse the responsibility’s fallen to me — and part of my remit is to decide how you can best be of service to us in your current situation.”
“You’ve got a nerve,” I laugh. “You stood by and watched Ruth steal my body, then let her give you the slip. Doesn’t matter why, the damage is done. But the fact remains that you used me. To my mind you lot are every bit as much to blame for these jugs I’ve got to carry around with me as Ruth is. And now you tell me that getting your precious machine back is more important to you than whether I go back to my original body or stay stranded in this one. So in view of the fact that you’ve thrown away your only bargaining card, what the fuck makes you think I’ll lift a finger to help you?”
The glare radiating from the other side of the table could penetrate a concrete wall the thickness of a medium-sized county.
“What makes you think you have a choice? Do you really imagine that even if things turn out favourably we’ll allow you to return to your old life, as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred? Less than fifty people in the world know of the transfer device. The list includes neither the Prime Minister of this country nor the President of the United States. To learn of our organisation is to join it. There’s no going back, Richard. You work for us now. You always will.”
She pauses to give her words time to sink in. They absorb my false bravado like a black hole sucking in light.
“Doing what?” I croak, my voice weaker than a homework excuse.
“Ruth’s disappearance presents us with a serious problem. Like her husband, she was a technician attached to the team responsible for developing the device — in fact that’s how they met. Although Timothy Hansford-Jones can be relied upon to exercise the utmost discretion, the Pattison family are under no such obligation. Fairly soon they’re going to start wondering why she hasn’t been in touch with them.”
“What about my folks? I’m supposed to be in Dorking tomorrow for my mum’s birthday.”
“We’re aware of that. The matter is being attended to.”
“I bet it is.”
“Richard, listen to me. You have to trust that we’re acting in the best interests of everyone concerned. Not just those who are directly involved, but everyone. You’ve experienced at first hand what this machine can do. Look me in the eye and tell me you haven’t thought about what the consequences might be if it falls into the hands of a hostile government — or worse, a terrorist organisation. And what about the panic that would ensue if its existence became known to the general public? If the operation to get it back is to have any chance of succeeding — any chance at all — then it has to be carried out under conditions of extreme secrecy. Surely I don’t need to spell out how vital it is that we avoid the kind of publicity the search for one missing person will attract, let alone two.”
I feel my eyes narrow. It’s a quintessentially feminine trait, but I’m past caring. I know where this conversation is heading, and I don’t like the scenery one bit.
“You want me to impersonate her, don’t you? It’s not enough that every time I look in the mirror I’m going to be faced with the bitch who landed me in this hole, now I’ve got to pretend to be her?”
“It’s a challenge I’m confident you’ll rise to.”
“Oh yeah, I can just see myself on Christmas Day, sitting at the table scoffing turkey and mince pies with a load of relatives I’ve never met.”
“I’m glad to hear it, because that’s part of the plan.”
My God, she’s serious.
I open my mouth to object, but an even more disquieting thought floats in from the edge of my mind.
“What about the other crowd, the ones Cunningham had to shake off last night?”
“I saw nothing of that in his report.”
“You must’ve done! The bloke in the Cortina–“
If you look round I’ll break your arm.
The lying git.
He knew I’d make less of a fuss if I believed that someone was intent on ending my life.
The next time I bump into that prick I’ll leave him with exactly the same number of testicles Ruth left me.
Suki reaches into the black leather briefcase at her feet. She takes out a dossier similar to the one bearing my name, opens it and removes an assortment of papers.
“Ruth’s application form, her Curriculum Vitae and the results of her background check,” she says, passing them across. “You’re to study her biographical details and practise imitating her handwriting and signature. You shouldn’t have too many problems.”
“Oh? Any particular reason?”
“The device is currently configured so that only the episodic, or conscious memory is imprinted. By that I mean the–“
“Hold on a minute. Are you saying that subconsciously I’m Ruth?”
“Your mind has access to Richard Brookbank’s unique personal history up to the moment of the transfer.” She pats the top of her head. “Everything else that goes on in here was unaffected.”
“I don’t know if I like the sound of that. What’s the bottom line? Am I going to take on her personality as well?”
“Some aspects of it, yes. Most of her habits, tastes and preferences will eventually become yours. More importantly, your body has retained the skills and abilities it acquired from early childhood onwards.”
“Like knowing how to ride a bike?”
“That’s right. In layman’s terms, if Ruth was good at something then so are you. Or rather you have the aptitude for it. Had you exchanged bodies with a world-class soprano, you’d have her voice — but you’d still need hundreds of hours of training before you were ready to perform in front of an audience.”
“Is that why I’ve got her accent?”
“And quite a few of her mannerisms as well. With the right coaching you’ll be able to pull the wool over her family’s eyes for as long as you want. But at this stage all we require of you is a letter. In it you’ll explain that your marriage has broken down irretrievably, and that as a consequence you’ve resigned your position with the Ministry of Defence and gone away somewhere in an attempt to put the pieces of your life back together. We’ll work on the exact wording over the next day or two.”
“A bit impersonal, isn’t it? Won’t they think it’s strange that she didn’t at least phone them?”
“Not necessarily. Ruth’s parents never approved of Tim. I think it’s fair to say that at the moment she isn’t on the best of terms with them. And they know very well that she isn’t the type to run home in tears and admit they were right about him all along.”
“So I forge a letter. Then what?”
“We’ve your placement to consider. But first there’s the adjustment process I spoke of. You’re clearly uncomfortable with the idea of being female, and that has to change. You may have to spend a considerable amount of time as Ruth, possibly the rest of your life.”
I’m visited by an unwelcome vision of my body jerking about like a puppet as bullets tear into it from every point of the compass.
The only letter I should be writing is to Jimmy Savile.
Fix this fucker, Jim.
Twenty to three on a Saturday afternoon.
I ought to be in the Brewers Arms with Graham and the rest of the squad, sinking a last pint of HSB before beginning the short walk to Fratton Park for the FA Cup tie against Northampton. With Pompey lying fifth in the table, unbeaten at home after losing to Bradford City on the opening day of the season, and a crowd of between twelve and fifteen thousand creating an atmosphere most opposition players at this level have never experienced, a thumping victory is all but assured.
I should be there, cheering the lads on. It’s part of my life.
Instead I’m standing on a gravel forecourt outside a two-storey country house, watching the wintry sunshine gradually weaken, taking tentative drags from a Winston and trying not to grimace at the red stain my painted lips have deposited on the filter.
How the fuck did it come to this?
Less than five hours have elapsed since Suki Tatsukichi drove me the few hundred yards from HMS Nereid to Hayden Hall in her light blue Austin Allegro. In that time I’ve been given a thorough indoctrination into some of the more esoteric aspects of my new role as one of the fairer sex. I now know what foundation and blusher are for, and where to apply them. I’m alert to the benefits of moisturising cream. I’ve discovered which colours complement my hair and skin tones, and which ones clash with them. I can look at a photograph of a female celebrity in a magazine and judge whether her choice of accessories tends towards elegance or ostentation. I understand what the terms ‘38D’ and ‘matching separates’ mean. I’ve added words such as popsock, fascinator, slingback, choker and basque to my vocabulary. The only thing I haven’t been able to grasp is why women put up with all this shit in the first place.
I finish my cigarette and let it fall to the ground, then crush it with my heel. Behind me, a wide lawn dips from a paved terrace towards a thick belt of mixed woodland. It’s an idyllic setting, but one I won’t have the chance to enjoy for very much longer. Soon I’ll be back in Belvedere House, which Suki has earmarked as our headquarters while my tuition continues apace.
I’m sick of the sight of her now. What will I feel like after a couple of weeks stuck in the same flat as her?
More to the point, who will I feel like? Just because I’ve got a slit between my legs and boobs threatening to burst out of my jumper doesn’t mean I’m suddenly a different person. I realise I’m a girl now and it’ll make life a lot easier if I start thinking and behaving as one, but under all this powder and paint I’m still me.
And I’d like it to stay that way.
“Give me a hand with these things, would you?”
Suki is standing in the entrance hall beside half a dozen large suitcases. Closer inspection reveals that one of them is a folded-up camp bed.
No prizes for guessing which of us will be using it.
“What are we going to do for furniture and stuff?” I ask her as I pick up the nearest of the cases and struggle outside with it.
“It’s being delivered as we speak. Tim will be bringing over most of Ruth’s belongings this evening. He’s also agreed to put together a detailed account of their time together, including a list of her likes, dislikes and other personal habits. Don’t worry, I’ll make quite sure the two of you don’t meet.”
“Is that for my sake or his?”
“I think he’s suffered enough, don’t you?”
That gives me pause for thought. It seems mine isn’t the only life to have been turned upside down, back to front and inside out by what happened yesterday afternoon.
When the last of the luggage has been stowed in the Allegro’s boot I push back my fringe and wipe the perspiration from my forehead. Some things never change: if I was kidnapped by slave traders and sold into a sultan’s harem I can guarantee there’d still be shifting to do.
Suki lifts a set of keys from her bag.
“Hard work, isn’t it?” she says. “That’s what comes of having a higher fat-to-muscle ratio. Men have their uses, even in this day and age.”
“How very liberated of you,” I sniff.
“Oh, and from this moment on I’ll be calling you ‘Ruth’. As far as you or I, or indeed anyone we meet is concerned, that’s who you are. Now run a comb through your hair before we set off, there’s a good girl.”
I clench my fists, then leap into action. Something inside me has snapped, and I’m unable to contain my fury. Frothing at the mouth, I pull Suki back by the shoulder. She reels away from me, but my fingers are already entwined in her hair. Then it’s my turn to stagger backwards — and when I see what I’m holding, my legs give way completely.
Suki crouches to retrieve her wig. My lips part, not so much at the pale skin visible through the patchy stubble covering her scalp but the row of small, perfectly circular scars running from the centre of her forehead to her crown and beyond to the nape of her neck. Then I notice her eyebrows, each of which is adorned by a dozen or more tiny black gemstones.
“What happened to you?” I gasp.
“That is a story I shall never tell.” She smooths the strands down from the lattice they’re tied to, then fits the wig back in place. “Now if you’re quite finished taking out your frustrations on me, we have provisions to get in.”
I lever myself up from the gravel and follow her to the car.
You work for us now. You always will.
A life sentence.
To run concurrently with the unstipulated term I’ll spend locked in the prison of a female body.
And although I feel as if I’ve been behind bars for a decade or more, I know that my incarceration has only just begun.
Richard's story will be continued in the sequel to this tale, 'Death By Misadventure'.