Barry Maitland - The verge practice

‘I really do feel very tired, Luz,’ Kathy said. ‘Can you call me a cab?’

‘It’s not necessary. George will take you home. We owe you that. I’m only sorry that we had to talk so late, but I think you understand now. Good luck tomorrow.’

‘Thanks.’ Kathy got to her feet and moved towards the stairs, Luz and George ahead of her. As she passed the glass table she stooped briefly, took the cigarette butt from the ashtray and dropped it into her pocket. As she started up the stairs behind them, George turned and took hold of her arm. He then gently slipped his hand into her pocket and produced the stub, holding it up for Luz. The other woman stared down, puzzled.

‘What is that?’

‘She took your fag-end, Luz. She wants to check your DNA.’ He turned to Kathy. ‘Right?’

Kathy said nothing, watching the expression go out of Luz’s face.

‘Oh.’ Luz’s voice sounded flat. ‘That’s too bad.’ She took a deep breath and began to descend once more. ‘We’d better go down to the lower floor. It seems it will be necessary for you to spend the night here, Kathy.’

With George close at her back, Kathy followed the other woman to a hallway near the foot of the staircase. Luz took a key from her pocket and opened a door, reached in to switch on a light, and led them into a small sitting room. There was no picture window outlook down here, but rather a scatter of small windows, like irregular portholes, on the external wall, which was formed of blocks of rough stone. From the outside, Kathy imagined, this storey would look like a rock plinth on which the light glass and steel pavilion above was raised. There was an alcove with an unmade bed, and another with a small kitchen. The furnishings were spartan, as if the room had recently been stripped and scoured.

Luz gestured to a chair. ‘Sit down, Kathy. George, I’d like you to wait outside in the hall while I have this conversation with Kathy. Stay close to the door in case I need you, okay?’ The Spanish accent had faded.

George nodded and left, closing the door gently behind him.

‘That’s the only way out, Kathy. George is armed, in case you hadn’t noticed. He is very loyal to me, and would kill you without hesitation if he felt it necessary. You understand?’

Kathy nodded and sat. Luz pulled another seat in front of her, so that they were face to face, intimately close within the bare room.

‘How long have you known?’

‘I saw what kind of operations Dr Lizancos does, Luz.’ Kathy felt her throat dry. ‘He keeps videos of his finest work. I have actually seen him cutting off your balls.’

‘Oh…’ Luz’s mouth turned down in a grimace. ‘I didn’t know that.’

She sat back and lit a cigarette, the flame trembling a little as she held it to the tip. ‘You find the idea grotesque, do you? What Lizancos did to me?’

‘I think it’s rather extreme to change your gender so as to evade the law.’

‘Actually, it was more the other way around.’

Kathy frowned. ‘You murdered in order to change your sex?’

‘Yes, that’s what it amounts to.’ She leaned closer to Kathy and her voice dropped to an urgent whisper, as if she didn’t want George to hear. ‘I want you to understand, Kathy. I thought from the very first time I met you, here in this house, that if anyone could understand, it would be you-a young, independent woman, making her own life.’

Kathy felt a shiver of distaste creep up her spine. The other woman was so intense, little flecks of spittle flying from her mouth as she spoke, her perfume too strong at close quarters, that Kathy felt an overpowering desire to back away, but she could only hear the words if she bent her head close.

‘You must understand that this is not some kind of desperate last-minute ploy, Kathy. I have felt that I was really a girl from my earliest years. My first memory is of lying in my bedroom with a woman nurse, and feeling certain that I would grow up to be like her. As I grew older and became aware of human sexuality, the idea didn’t fade away. It grew stronger, more certain. I didn’t want to imitate a woman-I was a woman, locked inside the wrong body.

‘I told no one, but I read everything I could about my condition. When I read Jan Morris’s book Conundrum it was an inspiration to me. I remember the year it came out, 1974, the same year I returned to England with my new American wife and began work on this house. Here was a man who had frankly, publicly, discussed his innermost thoughts, his decision to surgically change his body to that of a woman. He had confided in his wife and family, who supported him, and had walked out into the world without shame, a free woman.

‘But I didn’t have the courage to follow her example. I kept my feelings secret, and the more successful I became, the more I shrank from the idea of going public. I had a young man come to work for me once, a brilliant draughts-man, sensitive designer. He had much the same problem as me, and one day, it being the liberated eighties, he came to work in a frock. The others goggled, then pretended not to notice. They smirked and sniggered behind his back, of course, but he stuck to his guns. He seemed quite self-possessed when he saw the faces of the trade reps and building inspectors and clients turn red when he walked into a room. Then the day came when he had to go out onto a building site. The men had heard about him, and they weren’t so polite. That night he hanged himself.’

Kathy’s back was stiff from crouching forward to catch Luz’s words; she straightened, stretched, and wondered how long this pitiful story was going to last. ‘I don’t see how this accounts for murdering your wife,’ she said.

‘It’s important you understand the background. I was trapped in a situation I couldn’t change, and I hated myself for it. I began to detest Charles Verge. I despised him for his paranoia and egomania. I didn’t want to be him. So I invented this other person who I wanted to be: Luz Diaz, the Spanish artist. It turned out to be the most satisfying design project I’d ever done; I created her life story, constructed her career, fabricated catalogues for her brilliant exhibitions long ago. It gave me a secret thrill to mention her to people: “Oh, and I bumped into that Spanish painter the other day in New York. You know, Luz Diaz, who did that big abstract in our flat. She was very sad, her mother died recently, so we had a drink together at the Hyatt and she cheered up a little.” It was a harmless fantasy, I thought, except that it became addictive. More and more I yearned to be Luz. And after my marriage to Gail collapsed I finally rented Luz an apartment in Barcelona and began to act her part, living her life for whole days at a time.

‘Then, about two years ago, I met Dr Lizancos at a lunch in Barcelona. He had been a boyhood friend of my father, and one of the other people at the table mentioned to me that he was an expert in reconstructive surgery- cosmetic, but also, more discreetly, transsexual surgery.

After the lunch I asked Dr Lizancos if I could have an appointment with him. That was how I began to believe that I might turn Luz Diaz into a reality.

‘I was married to Miki by that stage, of course, and the hope that my new wife might cure me of my obsession had not materialised. I decided to go ahead with Dr Lizancos’s program of drugs in preparation for future surgery. I envisaged that I would retire from the practice and disappear to Spain, to live Luz Diaz’s life, with Miki as my companion. It was a tremendous burden, this secret, especially when the drugs began to take effect. My sex drive diminished, I lost weight, and the whole shape and texture of my body began to alter. Miki began to make comments about how I had changed. Finally I told her everything, about Luz Diaz and Dr Lizancos, about my plans.