As the weeks of spring passed, Shaun's routine varied slightly. Plans which in the first few months after the removal of her tumour had seemed unchangeable, turned out to be temporary arrangements only. There were variations in the number of translation and guiding assignments, which for some reason Shaun did not know, had slowed considerably.
The percentage of her fees which she had decided to save every month for her gender operations in the new year had fallen behind. This worried her, and feeling she might not be able to cover the cost and expenses began to look for other agencies.
Macia wrote every day. Her letters of nine and ten pages long were full of childish cajolery, with a few lines of poetry at the beginning. Mostly they were boring. Sometimes they were about marriage, of her friends, all married, while she remained single.
When she went down to visit her, Macia asked her for money for her college fees. If Shaun refused there were arguments, with Macia telling her she should get more agencies. During the evenings she would ask Shaun if she were faithful, and when Shaun swore she was, as a reward Macia affected a sickening girlish modesty, taking off her clothes with absurd little movements, attempting to perform a kind of striptease.
Shaun was offered a guiding assignment. A large group of Japanese tourists had booked a month-long tour of Europe. The Agency had recommended her as translator. Shaun thought it was the chance of a lifetime and was promised a fee, which would be large enough to cover the cost of her gender surgery.
Unable to speak French or German, Shaun had to share the tour with a guide, who was Italian by birth, spoke French, German and English fluently and had just completed a European tour.
Confident of Macia's approval Shaun telephoned her and explained her reasons for accepting the assignment. But not wanting a jealous argument, neglected to tell her that the other guide was a single Italian girl of twenty-seven.
Macia sent Shaun a long letter, expressing her enthusiasm and love, adding that she had found a Minister who would marry them. That she would be able to go to Europe with Shaun as her wife. Disgusted with the suggestion, Shaun refused to even discuss it, Macia threw one of her tantrums, threatened to tell the Agency that their star translator and guide was a nothing, in fact, a neuter. Unable to pacify her Shaun went down to see her.
Macia was not at the coach station to meet her. Shaun assuming she had gone to church, or a meeting took a taxi across town to her flat. There were lights on in every room. The entrance door was wide open. Believing there might be intruders, that Macia might be harmed decided to call for help.
"Macia!" Shaun shouted as she went into the bedroom to use the phone. There were clothes strewn all over the floor. On the bed Macia lay naked, her head on the edge of the pillow, one arm dangling to touch the floor. Thinking she might have been attacked, or even raped by the intruder, Shaun picked up the phone to call for help. It was then she realized Macia was in a deep sleep.
She bent down and kissed her shoulders, ran her hand along her arm and gently brushed her face. Macia turned her head, the beginning of a smile coming to her lips, her eyes still closed. Shaun took off her jacket and closed the windows and doors, and tidied up the bedroom. Worried why Macia had not woken up she sat on the bed. This time Macia smiled at her, then laughed, oddly as Shaun brushed the hair from off her face.
"David! What's the time? Must be morning," Macia said her voice slurred as if she were drunk, "you better go, I'm,I think I'm going to meet that silly neuter, you know the one I told you about. Shaun, Mac, something, she's taking me to Paris."
Shaun wanted to walk out, leave her.
"It's ten o'clock," she told her, fighting to hold back the tears.
Macia laughed again. Rolled on her back. Took her breasts in her hands, pressing them together as if offering them to Shaun for her approval.
"Marry me Shaun Maclaren," she slurred.
Shaun tried to make her sit up.
"I know you've found someone else. That other guide-it's a woman. I found a Minister, who'll marry us for a few hundred bucks-you can afford it."
"No Macia!" Shaun shouted angrily, "you cannot be my wife."
Something about Macia's expression struck Shaun as being very odd. She seemed to be drunk, but there was no smell of liquor. Macia held up her arms and opened her mouth. Shaun pulled her up and held her. On the bed by the pillow was a syringe and a box of phials.
Shaun propped her up in the bed, looked into her eyes. The pupils were shrunk to tiny points.
"What's this?" she asked, holding up the syringe, "you've been taking something. What is it Macia?"
Macia giggled. Shaun laid her down in the bed and covered her with a sheet. Hurt and shaken she stood by the window. Tried telling herself that Macia's insults were of little importance. But drugs! The mere thought of them offended her.
"I suppose her doctor could have prescribed them," she said aloud.
She remembered it was Macia who helped her along the road to becoming a whole man, and wished she had kept her drug problem concealed. Wished with all her heart she had never seen Macia like this. It was absurd to blame her, Shaun argued with herself. What did indulgence of this sort really matter in the end?
Suddenly she realized that the drugs were the cause of change of moods in her letters. Of the phone calls in the middle of the night. Of her constantly asking for more money. It was a cry for help and she didn't listen. The memories of Laura came flooding back. Shaun knew she would not be able to cope with the trauma of drug withdrawal even though Macia desperately needed help. The only way, she decided, was to get her into a rehabilitation centre in the morning. Tonight she would stay at a nearby hotel.
Macia begged her to stay, pleaded with her to sleep beside her, but to sleep with someone on drugs abhorred her. Unable to sleep she stared into the darkness. Eventually she left the sleeping Macia and laid down on the lounge room settee.
She closed her eyes searching for sleep and began to dream that she was in a hall filled with people. It was a meeting that she, Shaun Maclaren had to address. She was nervous, her clammy white shirt sticking to her body. A voice in the distance called out "Mr Maclaren." At the rostrum she waited for the applause to end. She looked around the hall, it was enormous, echoing. The sea of faces waited, respectfully. Chairs scraped, as programs rustled. Then there were coughs. She glanced at the notes in front of her. The subjects, in bold print, Psychiatry and the Church.
She opened her mouth, not a sound came from it. She struggled, strained, still nothing. Everyone stared at her including the three doctors who sat behind the table at the psychiatric centre. She knew one of them, Dr Beauchamp, she felt panic and shame.
From the back of the hall came the first, soft, embarrassed, laugh, it spread like the echo. There were more coughs. Then tittering laughter, and like a gathering storm the cruel sound gained momentum as it ran wildly around the hall. In her dream Shaun saw Nicole, Mitchell, O'Donnell and Laura. With the others they were standing, jeering, laughing. "Stop! That's enough," Shaun shouted.
She woke up with a start; her body was wet with perspiration. Her heart was trying to pound its way out of her chest. She went back into the bedroom and sat watching the soundly sleeping Macia.
Lorraine was at the airport to meet Shaun and her party of tourists. She was dark-eyed, with black hair, a pretty face, full breasts, and good legs. Although she was similar in size to Shaun, she appeared to be taller because of the upright way she carried herself. She was short-sighted, refused to wear glasses, and to see better, particularly when outdoors, tilted her chin and looked through partly closed eyes. This gave her the appearance of being extremely self-confident. She walked with quick short steps, and this with the haughty angle of her head made her look invulnerable. Lorraine spoke almost perfect English which made it easy for Shaun to translate, and the party of tourists smiled as they called her Mr Shaun's newest assistant.
The next few days were spent touring the museums and galleries, with the Louvre at the top of the list. Lorraine gave a continuous commentary which Shaun translated with ease, much to the delight of the tourists.
On Sunday Shaun left her flock to their own choice of sightseeing, telling them she would be at the cafe outside the hotel or somewhere close at hand. With Lorraine she left the hotel at the north-east corner and turned into the square that took its name from the painter Jan Van Eyck. His statue stood in front of a blocked-off canal on the right of the square.
They followed the quays, turning right, crossing bridges until in front of them was the avenue of lime trees that led to Notre Dame. Lorraine led Shaun down a street only a few feet wide. They turned right through an arch and were in the heart of the tourist territory.
A young girl came out of a small cloister wiping tears from her eyes. Shaun wanted to stop, thought she might be able to help her, but Lorraine hurried Shaun along.
Because they were on their own Lorraine changed the usual order of sightseeing. She led Shaun through an open doorway. Although she had been in the enclosure many times, even to Lorraine it was still something of a shock. Shaun stood for moment in the doorway, she turned and wanted to run. In front of them through an archway was a figure, a red cloak loosely around it, held together at the neck. Its head bent forward. Eyes closed, one wrist over the other, bound with a rope. On the face a look of martyrdom, on the head, a Crown of Thorns.
"This is the crypt of the chapel of the Holy Blood," Lorraine explained, "that's the Ecce Homo, the portrayal of Jesus wearing the Crown of Thorns."
To the left was the blue-clothed figure of Mary Magdalene nursing the body of Christ. Lorraine led Shaun to the step, towards the other figures of Christ. For Lorraine it held a kind of fascination, but to Shaun this dungeon was filled with despair. The cold , bleak, dark bareness of the rough stone walls, the appalling hopelessness of the Weeping Christ, somehow, for Shaun it brought back memories of the convent.
Except for Lorraine and herself the crypt was empty. The solitude coupled with the distress of the girl Shaun had seen leaving, produced within her a bizarre sensation. The disturbing illusion of reality remained, even when their closeness to the figures showed Shaun, unmistakably as the images they were, and for the first time in years she remembered her book.
"No more sightseeing please," Shaun said with a shudder.
Lorraine insisted that Shaun should have the antidote by going up the stairs beside the cloister and visit the Basilica and adjoining museum. Here, everything was different from the atmosphere of horror and despair downstairs. There was light, colour, richness and space. Paintings, stained glass, silver and gold ornaments. A pulpit beautifully carved into a half globe that appeared to be resting on clouds. An Alter. A medieval scene of royalty. Of Christ on the Cross attended by angels in a landscape of the Holy Land, palm trees, Forts, sheep drinking from a river at the base of the picture. Three arches opened on to a chapel. There was an altar bearing a massive silver crucifix. At right angles to the alter an ornate pulpit which held a fascination for Shaun who felt a tense expectancy. The kind of expectancy she had experienced when she sat in a theatre, and the curtain went up on an empty stage.
They left the Basilica, an attendant showed them the way to the museum. There were many treasures. A superb container of gold, silver and precious stones. The windows of the museum were closed, and Shaun felt heady with the sweet, subtle odour of incense and hot wax that floated in when the door was opened.
With Lorraine she went to the gift shop near the square, bought coloured postcards of the museum, the Basilica and the Ecce Homo, which had none of the macabre scene of the crypt. In the picture the statue of Christ had been turned. The colour of the flesh had a tinge of brown and there was a blue haze on the wall behind, giving the picture an air of peace and quiet content.
Shaun knew she was exceptionally lucky to have been allowed to enter the crypt, but wished she had just bought the postcard.
They caught up with their group in a nearby street full of shops, selling the tourists lace and souvenirs. Shaun told Lorraine, she did not think it advisable to take them to the crypt, feeling that emotionally it could spoil the remainder of the tour for some.
The tour continued traveling across Europe in a special coach, ending with a visit to the Cathedral in Ghent. For hours the tourists studied the Van Eyck masterpiece. They argued about the twelve panels of the ' Adoration of the Lamb'. Unable to decide which brother painted which panel, finally persuading Lorraine, through Shaun's translation to settle the dispute.
Shaun marvelled at the lower panel that showed the 'The Lamb of the Revelation' worshipped by angels in the centre of a beautiful landscape. With Lorraine, who had seen it before she gaped in wonderment at the groups of martyrs, priests, laymen, the fountain of life in the front, and in the distance, the towers of Jerusalem.
They moved slowly to gaze at the side panels that depicted the just judges, knights, hermits, and saints, all advancing to adore. The magnificence of the upper panels of Christ as King. The Virgin. St John the Baptist. Choirs of singing, playing angels on either side. And in the wings, Adam and Eve. Each form modelled realistically and in detail.
The tour over Shaun went back to the coast and her flat. A letter from the hospital informed her that she was to be admitted for gender surgery in six weeks. Unable to contain her enthusiasm she worked with a fury that surprised the agency, and at times even her herself. The knowledge that she was to become a whole man consumed all her thoughts as she read the letter repeatedly. Gone were the fears that had lurked in the back of her mind, the letter had dispersed all her doubts.
Macia phoned, thanked her for helping her overcome the drug problem, that she was getting her life back together. She promised to write when Shaun told her gender operations were to begin soon.
The letter Macia had promised arrived. For days it sat on the table unopened. Shaun stared at it each time she passed, wanting to, not wanting to read it.
"It's only full of her silly nonsense," she said aloud with a grin.
The flight to Professor Gaisford's hospital had been arranged. The hospital fees paid in full and there was sufficient funds for at least a year of recuperation.
With two days to go, Shaun found it difficult to control her emotions. She passed the letter again, picked it up, toyed with it, threw it down onto the table.
"I'm just being stupid," she said softly, "it's only one of her silly letters."
In a bold move she tore open the envelope and pulled out all the pages.
At the top of the first page were the usual lines of a children's poem. The next few expressed her gratitude for helping her overcome the drug addiction.
Then, 'wanting to help you as you have helped me', Shaun read, ' I have made some inquiries about your forthcoming gender operations. I think you are expecting too much. I know, in fact I am sure you can never become a whole man. Remember Shaun dear, I am only trying to help.
"How could she!" Shaun screamed, tossing the letter aside, "all I needed was a word of encouragement, a word of hope-I will be a whole man."
Shaun lay on her bed, letting the tears to flow freely.
"Why am I crying?" she said suddenly, "I am-I will be a man. Why have I spoiled everything, allowing her to affect me like this?" Why, she wondered has Macia tried to discourage me from wanting to become that which I have longed for all my life. To hell with her, she thought, these supposedly church do-gooders, they're all alike. She remembered the words someone had told her, "Don't allow tears and fears carry you downhill. Have faith in yourself, and you'll win." She picked up the letter and continued to read, determined to fight off the fears that Macia had created. "The penile urethra tube is the problem." The letter continued, "which means Shaun you will have to urinate from the base of the penis. How can you go in and use a urinal? I'm only telling you so that you will not be too disappointed when you realize that you will never be a whole man. I thought it only fair to tell you all the things I have found out, knowing how obsessed you are with becoming a man. Perhaps you should lower your expectations. I don't think the prosthesis will look like a penis at all. I know you will never make love the way you really want to. Of course you are a person in your own right, and I am sorry I referred to you as a neuter. Perhaps you should forget all about sex-reassignment operations, which, I am told are extremely painful. You must know I'll love you forever, just as you are. With me by your side you have no need of any operation. Remember I love you, and take care Shaun Maclaren, take care."
Disgusted, hurt, Shaun tore up the letter and burnt it. But it remained with her, sleeping, waking, throughout the night, the following day, the echo of those written words, 'Take care Shaun Maclaren, take care.' She tried to smother everything that Macia had written, deciding desperately, they were not true, neither could they be - and yet? There was no one she could confide in, no one she could run to, no one to comfort her.
"I'm allowing my imagination to run away with me," she told herself sternly. To Shaun it was too incredible to believe that Macia, who had now been ordained as a Minister of the church wanted her to remain a nothing-neither male or female, nothing more than a neuter, and wanted her to give up trying. "Better, much better that I forget her, and that bloody letter," she said aloud, trying to suppress the cold fear in her heart.
Professor Gaisford clumped heavily in his rubber boots as he walked into the gleaming sterile theatre of his Middle East hospital. The anesthetist was already at work preparing Shaun Maclaren for the first part of her gender surgery.
Beyond the windowless theatre the Professor knew that early morning light was stealing into wards and rooms. Earlier he had looked out over the sleeping city as he sipped hot hospital coffee. This was the modern part of the city, laid out in wide streets. Not like the older section with it's famed mosques, palaces and city gates.
The preparation for this operation had been as exact as a blueprint. In the theatre there were X-rays in view boxes, drawings that showed the exact lines where the incisions would take place, and on Shaun Maclaren's body, the same tracings, clearly marked.
Back in her private room Shaun was aware that the penile pedicle had been raised. At last she was on her way to becoming a man. The nurses came in and moved her around. The agony of the sharp pain, almost unbearable. She asked the Sister, how long she had been asleep.
"Not long," Sister said with a smile, "a day in the recovery room, and two in intensive care."
When they left Shaun looked at the pedicle and gasped in amazement at its enormous size. "What woman would want a huge thing like that inside her," she murmured.
Shaun had known pain before, but never had she felt anything quite like this, so crucifying, so raw.
There was a moment when she understood that this kind of pain was a reservoir of hot tar, which she could only go down and down, round and round, drowning under a black surface. This time there were no dreams, no floating sensation. The pain had no specific location in her body. It simply consumed all of her.
The wound of the pedicle began to close. Shaun was given antibiotics to ward off infection and pumped up with Pethidine, so that this her sixth day was the most comfortable. But comfort in the circumstances was nothing more than relative; she was more glazed by drugs than really soothed, and when she thought the pain had subsided it would come rushing back to strike harder than before, causing her eyes to water.
She wanted to be discharged, wanted to get away from this boring room of charts, tubes and starched bed sheets. When the Professor came to see her, she asked to be released. With that impenetrable look all doctors must learn in medical school, he shook his head and mumbled, "that he would consider it."
Shaun turned to face the window. The sun shone on the dusty glass. A tree pressed against the windowpane, tantalizing her. There was a breeze outside, high spirited, the type of breeze her mother loved, especially on a Monday, wash day. Shaun wondered if Monday was their wash day out here.
The nights were the worse. The nurses came round to dispense sleeping pills with the persistence of drug dealers. 'Come along Shaun you must swallow this. It will do you the world of good. Be a good boy,' some called her, others, 'be a good girl.'
Shaun Maclaren didn't want to be a good anything. She wanted to get home to her flat. The next few weeks passed in a confused way. There was a letter from Macia. This time she did not bother to open it, ripped it into tiny pieces and threw it away.
Shaun Maclaren had changed. No longer did she feel part woman part man. The testosterone therapy had been increased, she knew and felt she was all man. Instead of being tense or anxious, Shaun was too busy asserting himself. Too busy to be neurotic or afraid. He'd take on the world if necessary. Shaun had arrived, and was entitled, now, more than ever before to be called Mr Shaun Maclaren.
He thought about changing his name. But he liked to be called Shaun, he thought it had a manly ring with a touch of Irish. Maclaren, he was sure, came from somewhere in Scotland. When Shaun went into a store, sometimes a girl would ask, "can I help you Sir." this gave him pleasure and a great sense of pride.
A letter from Professor Gaisford gave him a special feeling. It was addressed to Mr Shaun Maclaren, telling him he was due for the next stage of operations in just ten days time.