This Much Is True

After that, I put the whole infatuation behind me. I didn’t fight the decision. I didn’t chase him. I’ve often wondered what happened to him. He’s not an important figure in my life, but in my memories he is unique. He would probably be astonished if he ever reads this, to think that I still hold a candle for him. Actually, I’ll rephrase that — carry a torch, albeit a very dim, flickering one.

Latin Lessons

My education was the focus of my home life: Mummy and Daddy desperately wanted me go to university. Ours was a Jewish household: academic achievement was considered important; it had always been a way to pull yourself out of the depths. In that city of academics, Mummy wanted me to belong to that social and intellectual elite to which they were clearly not given access. It wasn’t just any university Mummy wanted me to attend; it had to be Oxford or Cambridge, because, she said, ‘That’s where you meet the best people.’

For Mummy, the most important thing was that I should be educated, and the matter of my education was her decision; Daddy kept quiet. Mummy would talk over everyone and everything. She often said, ‘I know there are things that people will speak about and I won’t understand. That’s why I want you to go to university.’ She wanted me to be able to talk to anybody about anything. I hope she would be proud now, because although I know I disappointed her in some ways — I never took a pride in my appearance, I can’t sing, I can’t dance and I never gave her the grandchildren a child should — at least I can talk to anyone about anything.

Around the time I met Anton in the Lower Sixth, it was time for college entrance. We had an excellent Latin mistress, Miss Frisby. Her particular sartorial peculiarity were pockets outside her skirts. She would put her hands in those pockets and flap them up and down. She called people ‘deary’ when she was cross. I liked her but she thought I was a frightful show-off. I wanted attention, just like a child. I confess I have never lost that pathetic need to be the centre of attention.

Everybody knew that my Latin wasn’t strong enough and that it might be a stumbling block in my university ambitions, so Miss Frisby advised my parents that I should get extra coaching. They made some enquiries and arranged extra tuition with C. E. Stevens, the professor of Latin and Greek at Magdalen College, who was affectionately known as ‘Tom Brown’.

Tom Brown was a charming and interesting man who had got married late in life to a fierce Russian lady. He had a set of rooms in Magdalen College where I used to go every week. He was big and burly, smoked a pipe and wore the sort of clothes that a country gentleman would wear, including a good tweed jacket with leather-patched elbows. He would stand in front of the fire, puffing his pipe, and talk about the Greeks and Romans as if they lived around the corner.

One day, some months after I had begun my tutorials, we were sitting in his study, me tussling with my Latin exercises, and he said he wanted to tell me something.

Naturally I thought that he was going to say that he’d fallen in love with me, because that’s what you think when you’re a seventeen-year-old girl. Instead, he said, ‘I want to be a woman.’ I was flabbergasted. I had seen no sign of this and I couldn’t quite believe it. He then said, ‘May I go on?’ Of course I said yes. He said, ‘Do you know what I’m wearing under my trousers?’ He pulled up his trouser leg — he was wearing stockings. I showed my surprise, and he said, ‘Have you noticed how smooth my skin is?’ I said, ‘Well, no, not really.’ Though he did have a very good complexion.

He asked me to follow him. He took me to his bedroom, and showed me his dressing table, ‘Look at all my creams, that’s why I have such smooth skin, because I use all these lotions.’ His dressing table was like the vanity table of an actress. It was covered with emollients and perfumes and various unguents for the body, for the face, for the eyes, anti-wrinkle preparations, and every possible beauty formulation you could think of. I was astonished. Then he said, ‘Haven’t you seen how small my feet are?’ And he showed me his feet.

I didn’t quite know how I should respond to the sight of these perfectly normal-sized feet, so I said, ‘Well, honestly, Tom, I’ve never really thought about it.’ I wasn’t disgusted. I was fascinated and rather surprised — very surprised, in fact.

He replied, ‘I want to be a woman. I’ve always wanted to be a woman since I was a little boy. I used to go into my mother’s cupboard and take out her dresses and wear them and look at myself in the mirror. I know that I’m meant to be a woman. I shouldn’t be a man, it’s all wrong.’ He was practically crying. ‘I have this pole, which makes me a man, and I don’t want it. I want to cut it off. I don’t want it.’

‘May I tell you my real name?’ He told me his true name was Agatha.