Flawed Red Silk Ch. 10

(Many of the conversations in this chapter should be in colloquial French but are shown in English. They are not a translation but a re-telling in English.) I had my hysterectomy exactly a year ago today. Physically I have recovered from the operation. Mentally, I haven’t. I don’t think I’m a woman any more now the important bits have been removed.

I know I’m being silly. I still have a vagina. I still have the breasts that my husband Simon loves. I still look like a woman and my body is in good shape for my age. I wouldn’t have wanted any more children but now I can’t.

Simon has been very patient and understanding but I know he is frustrated and occasionally irritated with me. We used to be active sexually. Since the operation I have rejected him. I can’t even hold hands with him. I can’t stand his verbal expressions of love.

I know Simon loves me. I know he wants my body. I don’t love my body or myself. I’m not female. I’m not male. I’ve been neutered.

I tried psychotherapy on the National Health Service but it was a disaster. Sitting around in a hospital waiting room made me feel that I was ill. I’m not. Physically I am fit. I walk, cycle, do all the things I used to do except anything remotely sexual. The conventions tell me that I should dress as a woman but I don’t feel like it. I rarely wear skirts or dresses now. I live in slacks and T-shirts with sensible shoes. My face is devoid of cosmetics; my hair is cut short so all I need to do in the morning is run a comb through it.

I’m not wholly depressed. I can laugh, cry, enjoy a good book or film and even have a meaningful conversation with Simon. I just can’t pretend to be the woman I’m not.

***

When I wrote that on the end pages of my diary that is how I felt. It wasn’t wholly true because I had left out the important bit. I was screaming desperately inside to find the desire to be a woman. I needed to find my essential female nature. I knew I did. I had lost it and couldn’t find it. I was afraid I never would.

The trigger that started my search back was ridiculous. I woke up on the fourteenth of February, St.Valentine’s Day, with a sense of foreboding. I knew that Simon would declare his love for me in some way or other and I just couldn’t face it. The twin bed he slept in was empty. I remembered that he had to go to a breakfast conference that always seems as if the employer just wants more from the staff than the hours that are paid for.

Simon wouldn’t return until seven o’clock in the evening so my worries were deferred until then. They came back with a rush when I saw that he had left a packet for me on the breakfast table. I didn’t dare to open it until after the second cup of coffee. Inside was a large padded envelope with a letter addressed to me. It wasn’t from Simon. The handwriting was vaguely familiar. I opened it gingerly as if it might be a bomb. I relaxed as I saw the address. It was from my university friend Joyce. She had married a Frenchman and lived in Pas de Calais where she practised as a doctor.

“Dear Hazel,

I am writing to you with an invitation to visit me in France for a few days. I have discussed it with Simon. He has agreed to look after himself and the children while you are with me so you can’t use them as an excuse.

I want you to come on Friday evening. The tickets are inside the packet, as is your up-to-date passport and travellers cheques. Simon arranged that with me.

Also inside is a smaller padded envelope. I want you to bring that to me UNOPENED. It isn’t dangerous or illegal. If the customs want to open it they can but if possible I want it to arrive with you as it is.

Please come. I haven’t seen you for years and I would like to speak some English again. I would like you to see my daughters and I hope you will enjoy some good French cooking, not mine! If you remember from University I was always a bad cook and you saved me from culinary disasters. I have a lady who cooks, and a Ukrainian Au Pair who helps with the daughters.

I will have time for your visit because I have a few days holiday from the doctor’s practice.

I will see you in Calais just beyond the customs hall on Friday evening. Be there.

Love from Joyce.”

I sat down on my chair with a thump. This was a surprise. A nice surprise and there was nothing from Simon that I could be worried about, no sickly Valentine Card, no expression of the love I knew he had for me, no present except an arranged trip to see an old friend. While I was in France I could forget Simon for a few days and relax my prickly guard against him.

Friday evening? This was Thursday morning. If I were going to be in Calais tomorrow evening I’d have to work fast. There was washing to do, meals to prepare, things to cancel – the whole works.

The rest of the day was a blur as I rushed around. I was actually enjoying myself and I gave Simon a peck on the cheek as he arrived home. He seemed surprised but didn’t over react as I’d feared he might as soon as I’d given him that kiss. I was the first one I given him for over a year.

He reassured me about the arrangements while I would be away. Only one daughter was still living with us but she wasn’t in often. She was studying at the local university and often came home late. She’d need less looking after than Simon. She might even help by ensuring that he ate proper meals. I’d rung her mobile phone at lunchtime and told her I’d be away. I don’t think she was surprised. I think she knew even if she didn’t say she did.

In bed that night I had difficulty going to sleep. My brain was whirling with all the things I still had to do. One thing in Joyce’s letter puzzled me. She had an Au Pair to help with the daughters? Surely they were as old as our youngest so why did Joyce need an Au Pair? Never mind, I told myself, I’ll find out tomorrow evening.

I drifted off to sleep happier than I’d felt for a long time. I even felt some gratitude to Simon. I’d give him a goodbye kiss before he left for work. It would be an effort but he deserved something.

I almost enjoyed that kiss. It had something of a happier past about it. If only I could get back the feelings I had then.

The journey was boring. Train from Victoria to Dover, lugging my suitcase on to the connecting bus, off the bus into the departure lounge and then it was checked in. I’d see it again in Calais. I had a shock when I saw that my return ticket wasn’t valid until after fifteen days in France.

I ate a Danish pastry with my coffee on the ferry. It was passable but didn’t have the real Danish taste. For a while I stood on the upper deck watching the White Cliffs of Dover recede astern and the two Caps getting larger ahead of us. The evening sun was shining on the sands of Calais Plage as we approached the port.

Another bus took us from the ferry to the terminal. The frontier police didn’t seem interested in my passport. I collected my suitcase and wheeled out into the arrivals area. Joyce and her daughters swamped me with an effusive French welcome kissing me on both cheeks. I had to respond – this welcome was for either sex.

As I had thought Joyce’s daughters were too old to need an Au Pair. I had forgotten that they were twins. These daughters were natural blondes, tall and elegant and very much Frenchwomen. They were female in a way that I had never been even when young. They looked as if they gloried in being young and female. Joyce was elegantly dressed as a mature but still attractive woman. I appreciated the art that went to their appearances. I felt even more asexual and just plain dowdy beside them.

The two daughters were named Jeanne-Marie and Anne-Marie normally called Jeanne and Anne. Anne drove the car from the ferry terminal with a quiet competence that stopped me being the nervous passenger I normally am.

We arrived at Joyce’s house and surgery in about twenty minutes most of it on the motorway. The house was set back from the road with a gated carriage drive. The gates were radio-controlled. To the side of the house, attached to it by a single storey link was a modern purpose built surgery block with a large car park.

The Au Pair came out to meet us. She was introduced as Katarina in a flurry of cheek kissing. Even though they had left her less than an hour ago, all four of us had to be kissed. Katarina was a real contrast to Jeanne and Anne. She was at least six-foot tall, with glossy black hair and an attractive olive complexion. She lifted my case out of the boot of the car as if it was as light as a balloon. I knew how heavy it was from the transfers in England. Katarina looked and moved like an athlete, but there was no doubt that she was a female athlete, with obvious heavy breasts swelling her dress.

I felt a fraud of a female compared with the four of them who were women who obviously delighted in being women.

Raoul, Joyce’s husband, was on duty in Calais in the hospital where he was a surgeon. He would arrive just before dinner, enough time for me to unpack and shower, Joyce told me.

Whether I wanted help or not, Katarina helped me unpack. Her English was very limited and my rusty French had to manage the communication between us. I managed to understand that she was studying in Lille with Joyce’s daughters. She was being an Au Pair to pay for board and lodging that she couldn’t have afforded otherwise. She had been Jeanne’s pen pal for years. In some way that I couldn’t really follow the three girls were working together and intended to start a business together when they qualified.

Joyce enlightened me as we sat around enjoying a sherry. The three girls were studying to be beauticians, each of them concentrating on a different aspect although they were all on the same course. Katarina’s speciality was massage and body tone. Jeanne and Anne were studying external appearance including cosmetics and clothing. The three of them wanted to set up a Salon in Calais. Their target customers were Englishwomen. They wanted to provide makeovers while the Englishmen did the beer supermarkets.

Would I help? Not just with their English although that would be important but as a subject for an extensive makeover?

How could I say no? I was stuck in France with Joyce for at least fifteen days. My brain was screaming “No! Non! Niet!” but my mouth said, “Of course, Joyce, I’ll be delighted to help.” Convention stops us from saying ‘No’ when asked politely.

The weekend showed that I’d been set up from the beginning. The girls needed an Englishwoman to demonstrate their skills on. I was to go with them on Monday to visit their tutor. There would be a photo and video session to record me as I am now. At the end of the two weeks there would be another photo session to show the contrast between the before and after.

It would be the ultimate makeover, lasting a whole two weeks with three women working on me full-time. On Sunday evening I rang Simon and moaned at him for getting me into this. He didn’t quite laugh at me. I think he was startled at the extent of what was proposed but he did tell me to relax and enjoy it. I wish it were that easy.

Late Sunday evening I sat with Raoul and Joyce. I spoke English most of the time. Raoul followed most of the conversation with a few requests to Joyce to translate things he hadn’t quite understood.

We had eaten a delicious meal with superb young wines. I was feeling physically comfortable but stressed by the thought of what would start tomorrow morning. I confessed as much to Joyce.

“Why? What is there to fear? Either the girls do what they hope to do, or they don’t. They should be stressed, not you. They have a lot to lose. If they fail then their business proposal fails as well and they might fail their examinations. Nothing they do can have an adverse effect on you. Their tutor wouldn’t allow them to make that sort of mistake.”

“But...” I started to say and then burst into tears to their dismay. Then it all came out about the hysterectomy and my feelings about my body. I let it all flood over them.

Joyce was horrified. Raoul was very angry with the UK National Health Service and the incompetence of the English medical establishment. Such feelings should never have been allowed to develop. If I had been treated properly... Raoul expressed himself in a torrent of interesting French swearwords that I hadn’t heard before. If nothing else my command of spoken French will be improved by the end of my stay.

Joyce cut him short.

“Hazel, those feelings are unnecessary and are hurting you where it really matters, in your inmost self. Simon tried to convey what was wrong but I thought I had misunderstood him or that he was exaggerating. Now I know what you feel all I can say is that he is in love with you and meant this visit to be a help to you.”

“I know he loves me,” I wailed “but I can’t love myself.”

Joyce hugged me. I think Raoul would have done too but he held back because he understood that I couldn’t bear to be touched by a man while I thought the way I did.

Joyce told me she would go with the girls and I tomorrow morning. She would stay with me, speak to the girls’ tutor and see how I reacted to the day. If it were to be too much for me the programme would stop. She hoped I would see it through because it might help rebuild my personality. She would contact a medical friend and see if she could help as well. I realised that Joyce meant a psychiatrist but if she was also a friend of Joyce’s the idea didn’t seem too worrying.

“What do we tell the girls?” Raoul asked.

“The truth,” I replied even though I was worried by the idea. “They deserve nothing less.”

“I agree,” said Joyce, “they have to know. Can you deal with them knowing, Hazel?”

“I hope so.”

The next morning over breakfast I told the three girls what I felt about my hysterectomy.

Jeanne and Anne were worried and concerned. At first they couldn’t see how I could think of myself that way but they accepted that it is a real problem for me. They had been brought up as most middle-class French girls are, to enjoy being female and to make the most of the assets they were born with.

Katarina’s reaction was very different.

“Simon loves you, he wants to make love to you, and yet he doesn’t because he knows it would hurt you, not in your body, but in your head?”

I nodded.

“And he hasn’t tried to force himself on you?”

My reaction showed that the idea was unthinkable.

“How long has it been like this?”

“Nearly two years,” I admitted.

“Then I want to marry an Englishman,” Katarina announced. “A man who is in love with his wife, who wants her physically and yet does not even attempt to express his love for two years because she wouldn’t like it? That sort of man loves with a passion almost inhuman. He thinks only for the happiness of the person he loves, not of himself. No Ukrainian could do that, nor any Frenchman. They think of their own happiness as well as that of the person who they say they love.”

She turned on Raoul.

“Could you do that?”

He shook his head ruefully.

“When can I go to England? I would like to meet Simon.” Katarina said half teasingly.

We all laughed with her. My laughter nearly turned to tears as I knew that Simon did love me that much.

“Don’t worry, Hazel, even if I met him I couldn’t tempt him,” Katarina said. “Not even if I were the Goddess Venus herself. You aren’t worried that you have left him alone in England, are you? You trust him.”

“With my life,” I answered seriously.

“And the French think that English are cold fish. The French are wrong. Hazel is worried that she is no longer a woman, doesn’t look or dress like a woman, and yet she knows her man will stand by her to the death even if she never allows him to touch her. I wish I were loved like that.”

She hugged me as tears flowed down my face. She had stated Simon’s love much better than he could or would.

Joyce drove us to Lille in the estate car. Now that I had admitted my problem to them I felt relieved of a weight. All my worries for the day were about the adequacy of my spoken French. If Joyce stayed with me she should be able to translate if I got stuck but when she wasn’t around…

Regine, the girls’ tutor, was a classic example of an elegant Frenchwoman. She carried herself with style and wore her beautifully tailored clothes as if she didn’t care what she was wearing. Her every movement was a lesson in deportment.

Joyce introduced herself and me. She launched into a detailed exposition of my problem. I had difficulty following her rapid French but she seemed to explain it with any criticism of me.

Regine’s initial reaction mirrored that of Joyce’s daughters showing that she too was a product of her environment. Katarina interrupted her and showed her own view that Regine accepted with some astonishment and apparent awe for Simon’s forbearance.

Then Regine spoke as the tutor. She spoke slowly and clearly so that I could follow what she said.

“This is an unexpected development. It makes my students’ task much harder than they had expected. Will you, Hazel, co-operate with them despite your misgivings?”

“Yes, Regine, I will even if I am just a mannequin for them to dress up. I will help them as much as I can and keep my emotions concealed.”

“I think that you will find that difficult. Thank you for your offer. I will consider your state of mind when I assess what the students achieve. Are you ready for the photo session?”

I nodded.

“Then we will start as if I had not heard this explanation. Go to it, girls. Record Hazel as she is. Remember that you should record her at her best and not try to cheat by making her stand awkwardly or in bad poses. You should aim to take the poses and camera angles exactly as you will want to do in a fortnight’s time.”

The photo session didn’t start until I had been through a shower, had my short hair dried and styled, and a basic bland make-up applied to cover skin blemishes on my face. The girls also recorded me on video walking, standing and sitting. They interviewed me in French. That was difficult because I didn’t always have the words I wanted to use.

They printed a portfolio of photos from the digital camera and copied the video. We all went back to see Regine after lunch. She looked through everything that had been done and suggested a few extra shots. When those had been taken to her satisfaction she dismissed Joyce and I to look round the campus while she discussed with her students the programme for the fortnight.

I enjoyed that stroll around with Joyce. We talked about the differences between living in England and France, caught up with gossip about mutual friends and relaxed in each other’s company as old friends do when they meet after a break. I was feeling much better about the girls’ project when we met them in the canteen as we had arranged.

They had work to do before they started on me tomorrow. They had to write up their proposals, agree them with Regine, book facilities, that sort of thing. Could we come back to collect them at five o’clock?

We could. Joyce and I went into Lille itself. She showed me the sights. Just before five we were back to collect the girls who were subdued by all the paperwork required. The ‘risk assessment’ had been the final straw because most of it just wasn’t appropriate.

On the way back they chatted to me. Even after only a couple of days in France my spoken French had improved significantly. Jeanne and Anne had visited England, Katarina hadn’t.

I won’t go into detail about the first week. I endured it but didn’t enjoy it. Jeanne and Anne worked on my hair and skin, Katarina worked very hard on my body. I had exercises to do and mud packs to accept. Throughout the whole process I talked with them in English so that they picked up the correct usage for the techniques they were using. I had to dig back more than two years to the time when I read women’s magazines and visited hairdressers and beauty parlours.