Una had twelve happy boys and girls on the team. This team consisted, officially, of three heterosexual females, two lesbians, one transsexual, one transvestite, two gay men and three heterosexual males – or as thus self-defined; though to work for Una required them to be able and willing to move freely between at least three other gender subdivisions without protest or personal difficulty.
‘Personal difficulty’ could make itself evident mid-trick, that was the problem, and difficulties came in many forms. Maria’s problems with the other world were one kind – clients could be put off their stroke by ectoplasm. The man in the blond wig and high heels could have quite another. If not properly liberated for gender conditioning, he/she could upset him/herself, or worse, his clients, by suddenly shuddering, pulling back from some intimate activity and crying aloud in psychic pain, ‘But what is going on here? Does this make me a lesbian, or what?’ And doubt would even end in violence, as primitive, instinctive passions surfaced, with their mad insistence that seed should not be wasted, not spilt into infertile ground, making both men and women murderous. But such events, thank God, were rare. If the ambience was pleasant, the atmosphere good, civilisation and civility survived.
‘It’s all very well,’ said Una to Maria, on their return to Whitehall, ‘but it will cost the earth to convert Lodestar House, to bring it back to life, to give it back its atmosphere. I could do better renting some big house in Mayfair, converted already, the way other people do.’ ‘It will cost you heaven if you don’t,’ said Maria bleakly, and her little face was crumpled and wizened, as if she were her own grandmother. She was convincing enough, old or young: Una capitulated.
That evening in The Claremont bar where they were enjoying a pleasant, and purely social, evening, Maria nudged Una and said, ‘Look over there – she’s a split!’
Maria was speaking of a pretty blonde girl in a tight black dress, long-legged and giggly, leaning up against the bar, looking no different from many another of her kind, talking to the barman.
‘What do you mean? How can you tell?’ demanded Una.
‘I can tell by her aura. There’s two or three in there.’
‘Like you and your grandmother?’
‘Quite different,’ said Maria, patiently. ‘My grandmother just visits me when I need advice. Forget her. This girl has at least two female, one male, permanently resident. She could take my place on the team.’
‘I know who that is,’ said Una, thoughtfully. ‘She’s also Brian Moss’s ex-secretary.’
Later she asked the barman if he knew the girl. He replied, ‘She’s resident here. Name of Lady Rice. You’d never think it, would you, someone like her? But divorce affects some people like that. She’ll wake up murdered one morning if she’s not careful.’ He looked Una up and down. He’d seen a few like her in his time, his expression said, at work in the bar. But he warmed to her, as most people did.
‘Get her out of my hair,’ he said. ‘Save her from herself. She’d be better off going professional. She drinks too much.’