Iain Banks - Transition

I sigh, lift up the skirt of the girl doll – at least it is not embarrassingly anatomically correct, with only a little sewn line to indicate the female genital area – and point at its crotch. She holds the male doll up and asks do I want it as well? I nod and she hands me the male doll.

I indicate on it as well where I was touched, which seems to confuse her. She leans forward and seems as if she wants to take the dolls for herself and show me what she thinks must have happened, but then stops herself. I begin to use the two dolls to show her what actually occurred, then hold up the girl doll and ask – as slowly as she has been talking to me – if she has another male doll. She looks uncertain at first, then takes the girl doll away, swapping it for another male doll.

I use a box of handkerchiefs on her desk as a makeshift bed for one of the dolls and point from it to me a couple of times so that there is no ambiguity about what is going on; that’s me asleep in my bed. I even mime sleeping. Then I use the second male doll to indicate it walking along, entering my room and approaching the bed. At this point it occurs to me that I am not absolutely certain that the person who did the attempted interfering was indeed male. I did not see them clearly enough and could not tell from the touch of their hand, the feel of their skin or their smell what gender they might have been. I just assumed it was a man.

I show the second male doll reaching over the first, sleeping one and briefly touching it around its genitals, then the bed-bound one sitting up quickly and shouting while the second doll startles and runs away. I lay the second doll down on the desk and spread my arms, indicating that the little show is over.

The broad lady doctor sits looking thoughtful and makes some more soothing noises. She appears to be thinking. I pick up the second doll and sit it on my knee, crossing its legs as it sits there.

From what I can tell, the lady doctor seems to be questioning my version of events, although on what authority I am at a loss to tell. Is there another, conflicting account? I wouldn’t have thought so!

I take the doll on my lap in both hands. Is the doctor saying what I think she is? Is she saying that this did not, could not have happened the way that I say that it did? How dare she? Who does she think she is? She wasn’t there! I had hoped that at least I might be believed. Does she think I would bother to make something like this up? An injustice upon an assault! I can feel my hands tightening into fists.

Meanwhile, above our heads, there is the sound of some commotion: shouting and a series of small thumps followed by a large, ragged one. More distant shouting. It is a warm day and the window of the doctor’s room is lying half open. Outside, I can hear birdsong and leaves rustling in the wind. That and the shouting coming from upstairs.

You are sure it was another person doing this? the doctor appears to be asking. I nod and say “Yes!” with some considerable emphasis. Above our heads, some sort of alarm is going off and I can hear running feet. The doctor appears oblivious.

You know not who it was? she asks.

“No!” I tell her. “I know not!”

You might have dreamed it, she suggests.

“I might have but I did not! It happened!”

“You know not who it was?”

“No! No! How many more times? No!”

“Or could have been?”

“Anyone. Any person it could have been.”

“Not nurse,” she begins, then I lose the rest. Possibly something about duties, which would make sense.

“Not nurse,” I tell her. (Upstairs, more thumping.)

The broad doctor looks down at the doll in my hands. I am holding it rather tightly, squeezing its chest as though trying to throttle it by the lungs. She reaches over and takes it gently from my hands, placing it beside the other one, which is still reclining in its handkerchief-box bed.

Upstairs, the rhythmic thumping ceases and a weak cheer sounds.

“There is (something something) of doll,” the doctor says.

“What?” I ask.

Above our heads, the sound of something scraping, probably chair legs on the wooden floor of the day room. Is that clapping?

The male doll I was holding earlier slides off the edge of the desk and flops to the floor. There is a scream from somewhere outside and a white-clad body falls from above, past the window, hitting the ground outside the window with a thump and a roar of pain. I seem to feel that pain. I shiver, half closing my eyes. The room around me starts to dim.

I watch the doctor recede in my gaze, seeming to fall slowly horizontally away from me as the office disappears hazily around me, starting with the outskirts, spreading to the wall behind the desk and the desk itself and ending with just the doctor, an indeterminate dot somewhere in the far distance, looking round in horror at the window and then starting to her feet and dashing towards it.

I see no more. It is as though I am falling down a great dark pipe away from everything and eventually I’m too far away to make out anything at all.

Upstairs: more shouting, again. It too sounds like it is being heard from one end of a long pipe, very distant and echoey and strange. It fades quickly away to nothing.

Finally, I think, I faint.

What? Kennedy? Man on the moon? The Wall comes down? Mandela walking? 9/11? 7/7? Notable dates for your diary, end-of-an-era stuff like that? I’ll tell you one:

“What, to each according to their greed, is that it, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking about this. “Yeah, that’s a pretty fair what-do-you-call-it. Summation. Yeah, I should think.”

“Ho ho!” The girl just widened her eyes and shook her head and took a drink. “You are so fucked up.” She flashed a shit-eating smile and added, “Dude.”

We were in the Met bar, when it was still cool. I’d already seen one Gallagher brother. I was meeting some mates there; we were off to watch the F1 race the next day at Brands Hatch or Silverstone or wherever. The girl was there with a couple of old school friends, though the other two had gone off to the Ladies, one looking unhealthily pale and the other to hold her hair, I was guessing. Leaving this one. Called Chloë. Chloë with the diaresis, which is the two-little-dots thing, apparently.

The girl who was probably doing the hair-holding by now had volunteered their names earlier. In all the noise I didn’t think Chloë had caught my name and she hadn’t asked either. She was cute. Young enough to be a student, maybe: curly black hair, cheeky little face with big eyes. Nice top, great tits, designer jeans, red heels. Tasty, in other words. And a challenge. Patently.

“Greed gets a bad press,” I told her.

“Yeah. What, like fascism?”

I winked. “You’re an idealist, aren’t you?”

“I have ideals,” she agreed. Her voice was western Home Counties. Girls’ school. She was trying a bit too hard to sound bored. “Plus I’m human, so I’m a humanist.”

“And feminine,” I said. I’d got better at seeing how this sort of stuff worked.

“You’re catching on.”

I drank my lager, smiled. “Doing all right, am I?”

She raised her eyebrows. “I wouldn’t get too optimistic. I don’t fuck guys like you.”

“What sort of guys do you fuck?” I asked her, resting one elbow on the bar and leaning just a little closer to her, taking up more of her field of vision. I’d already got a semi. Just a girl using the f-word like that was usually enough. To be talking about fucking with a girl even when she was basically saying no, or at least was telling you she was saying no, was enough. Promising, know what I mean?

“Nice guys.”

“Nice,” I said, looking sceptical.