Low life | 12 November 2015

My sister has a new man in her life: Henry, 60. He lives in a gay hotel. Or rather, it was a gay hotel in the era when homosexuality was illegal; now the Victorian seaside villa is empty save for my sister’s new boyfriend, my sister sometimes, and a transvestite maid called Rita. Sometimes he is a porter called Stan. One never knows from day to day whether he is going to appear as a male or a female, and one has to be careful not to make any rash assumptions because he becomes apoplectic if one addresses him as Stan when he is Rita, for example. But when he is Rita, says my sister, it is usually blindingly obvious, because he wears a microskirt, black net stockings and suspenders.

I didn’t get to meet my sister’s new boyfriend immediately. For about a month I only heard her talking about him. Clearly, she was very taken with the guy because she thinned down, glammed up, and her mood switched somewhat startlingly from depression to elation. She was a different person. All she wanted to do was sing Henry’s praises. He was her sun, moon and stars. Oh, I’d like him, she said. Such an interesting, well-travelled guy and such fun. He has lived abroad most of his life: Peru, Laos, Mexico, Colombia, Thailand. And these are just his favourites. Name a country — any country — and he’s been there. Because he infringed the law in some unspecified but perhaps easily guessable way, he is no longer allowed into the United States. He returned to the UK two years ago to punt the hotel, which he inherited from his father. This is proving more difficult than he imagined. He is missing abroad and restless, she said. But he really wants to meet you.