Six

      When Susan Jarvis heard that her new author was coming into town for a celebration lunch she insisted that it should be at her expense and that Zelda should also meet the other people in the team who would work on her book. Troy, conscious of the mounting expense of entertaining Zelda, was relieved to hand over the cost to Justin and Freeman Press. Six people would sit down to lunch with Zelda Vere: the publisher David Quarles, the two editors Susan Jarvis and Charles Franks, the publicist, the marketing man, and the head of the sales team. They booked the large window table at the Savoy River Room, and the publicist notified the gossip columnists that the newest, hottest, and most expensive novelist of the year would be at lunch.

      Troy laid out Zelda Vere’s clothes with loving attention. This time she should wear the yellow suit, he thought. He unwrapped it from its cover and put the skirt on one hanger and the jacket on another to air. There was a neat satin bustier to wear beneath it, the lace could just be glimpsed at the neck of the jacket. He spread it out on the bed and felt his own response to the silk under his fingers. He put out the sandals, the thin-heeled gold sandals, and a pair of absurdly silky fine tights. ‘She’ll have to wear gloves to put them on,’ he said thoughtfully.

      He laid out the makeup on the dressing table: the foundation cream in its gold-topped bottle, the dusting powder, the blusher, the concealer pen, and then the jewel colours of eyeliner, eyeshadow, mascara, and lipsticks. He looked at them with a pang of conscious envy. It was so unfair that women should be able to change themselves so completely. Even on a bad day they could, with the skill and the equipment, make themselves look years younger, ten times happier. Artifice was part of their nature, their accepted social nature; whereas for a man to attempt to deceive was regarded as morally wrong.

      Troy seated himself at the table and looked at his own neat face over the gold tops of the bottles. His hair was golden brown, his skin very smooth and fair, no shadow of stubble, no darkness at the sideboards. Acting on impulse he reached forward and swept the wig on to his head, like a little boy playing at dressing up in his mother’s room. He held the front of the wig and pulled it down at the back as he had helped Isobel to do, and then he looked at himself in the mirror.

      He had expected to laugh at the reflection, he had expected to see a man absurdly dressed in drag, he had expected a pantomime dame. Instead he saw his twin, his sister, his anima. It was a pretty woman who looked back at him. A blonde woman with bouffant, wide hair but a narrow, interesting face. A strong chin set off a sensual mouth, narrow nose, wide blue eyes, high cheekbones. A beautiful woman, a woman like him, recognisably like him, but undeniably a woman.

      ‘Good God,’ he whispered. ‘I could be Zelda Vere.’

      The illusion of Zelda that he had created with Isobel was so much of a type that almost anyone could be her. She was characterised by the big blonde hair, by the good bones. The details of eye colour and expression were almost lost under the impact of the overall appearance.

      Thoughtfully he took up the lipstick brush and painted on the cherry-red lips, dusted his whole face with powder. He looked at his reflection again. He expected to see a grotesquerie. But it was not so. A woman looked back at him with a bright, confident smile, a shock of blonde hair, eyes which were more sparkling and bluer than before, enhanced by the even skin tone and the vivid lips.

      The door bell rang, Troy jumped; as guilty as if he had been caught stealing. He pulled the wig from his head and smeared the lipstick from his mouth. He was still rubbing at his face with a big tissue as he ran down the stairs to his front door. He whisked it out of sight and opened the door to Isobel.

      She was looking excited and fresh. Her mouse-brown hair was swept back off her face and held with two slides, not confined in a bun. She was wearing navy-blue slacks, a white shirt and a navy-blue blazer. She had been thinking ahead to this moment all the way up on the train. She had put her writer’s imagination to how she would look, how she would feel; how he would look and feel. She had even heard in her head the things that they might say to each other.

      But Troy just took her in, in one long, comprehensive gaze, and she looked back at him, her chin raised, her eyes unwavering. It was the one thing she had not predicted, that long, devouring look. As soon as she met his eyes she had the shock of encountering something she had not predicted, a man she had not imagined.

      ‘Come in,’ he said, stepping back into the hall.

      Isobel followed him in. He noticed a hint of perfume, the sweet smell of Chanel No. 5. She saw the tissue in his hand.

      ‘You’ll laugh,’ he said uncertainly. ‘I tried on the wig, Zelda’s wig. And then I put on some lipstick.’

      She did not laugh. ‘How did you look?’

      ‘I looked like her, I looked like … you, when you were her,’ he said. ‘It was extraordinary.’

      ‘Will you show me?’

      Troy opened the door to the spare bedroom, Zelda’s bedroom.

      ‘I don’t know if we have time …’

      ‘I should so like to see …’

      Troy tried to laugh away his embarrassment; but Isobel’s gaze was steady and unsmiling. He realised that her naivety protected them both from the farcical nature of this scene. Isobel would not laugh because she was genuinely engaged by the question of what he would look like, dressed as Zelda. She had no knowledge of the shady absurdities of transvestism, of cross-dressing, of transsexualism, of drag queens and pantomime dames. She was completely innocent of any speculation about that world and so she brought no preconceived ideas or prejudices to this experience. It was as pure for her as a first love, untainted by knowledge.

      And she was right. It was a different thing from anything anyone had ever done before. Their creation, Zelda, was not born out of a forbidden lust, or some private, secret perversion. She had come upon them quite innocently, quite unexpectedly. She transcended the boundaries of gender. She had been made by them both, both of them had an equal claim to her. Troy had coached Isobel in Zelda’s walk, he had painted Zelda’s makeup on Isobel’s face. Now it seemed perfectly natural and right that Isobel wanted to see Zelda as manifested by Troy.

      He paused for only a moment. ‘I must make it clear that I’m not into dressing in women’s clothes,’ he said, laying down a boundary as if he