‘If you’re pregnant—’ began Beverley.
‘I’m not. Wilkes doesn’t believe in ejaculating inside a woman. He calls it a form of colonial ingress.’
‘The other news is important, yes,’ said Wilkes. ‘But so is this. It would just mean the world to us if, from now on, everyone could make an effort to get our pronouns right.’
‘What’s he talking about now?’ asked Beverley, turning to her husband and making the hand signal that she always employed when she wanted a large glass of wine. He opened a new bottle, suspecting that she’d need a lot of it before the night was over, and poured an extremely healthy measure.
‘As of today,’ continued Wilkes, ‘we are officially non-binary.’
‘Non-whattary?’ asked George.
‘Non-binary. We no longer identify as male or female.’
‘Oh, Christ on a bike,’ muttered George, filling a second glass with whisky.
‘If it’s helpful at all,’ said Beverley, ‘I’ve always had trouble identifying you as either. I’ve never been entirely sure that you’re even human.’
‘We do love your sense of humour, Bev,’ said Wilkes, sitting back on the sofa and placing a cushion behind his back. George, watching, made a mental note to have the cushion incinerated later. ‘But you see—’
Before he could continue his sentence, Beverley had leapt from her seat, charged across the room and, ignoring the foul odour that wrapped itself around her like an Edwardian greatcoat, pointed her index finger in his face. ‘Do not ever – ever – call me Bev,’ she shouted. ‘My name is Beverley Cleverley. You can call me Mrs Cleverley, or Beverley, if you must, but never Bev. And, all being well, after the new year, it will be Lady Cleverley, if my husband hasn’t managed to mess that up too.’
‘Beverley,’ said Wilkes, holding his filthy hands in the air in an act of surrender. ‘We only meant that we no longer wish to be associated with the heteronormative constraints of traditional male and female identities. We don’t want to be labelled.’
‘I labelled you as a complete moron from the moment I met you,’ said George.
‘So, it would be great if you could bear this in mind from now on. That’s all we’re asking.’
‘I don’t care what you call yourself,’ replied Beverley, sitting down again, confident that she’d got her point across. ‘You can call yourself Ozymandias, King of Kings, if it makes you happy. Just don’t ever call me Bev.’
‘Non-binary,’ mused George. ‘When you think about it, isn’t that a label in itself?’
‘No,’ said Wilkes. ‘On the contrary.’
‘Well, what is it, then?’
‘It’s a … it’s a term we use to express who we are.’
‘So, a label, then.’
‘No, it’s less labellic, you see.’
‘It can’t be, since labellic is not actually a word.’
‘Non-binary is like being gender fluid. It—’
‘I didn’t ask for synonyms. I asked whether it’s also a label.’
‘Well, perhaps,’ admitted Wilkes, sounding a little crestfallen, as if he’d been told that the Tooth Fairy didn’t exist just after he’d lost a particularly impressive molar. ‘But either way, it doesn’t have the societal or sociological implications that other phrases have.’
‘I don’t even know what that means,’ said George with a shrug. ‘I suspect it means nothing at all.’
‘Actually, I’ve read about this,’ said Beverley. ‘So, you’re saying that, from now on, if we find ourselves in the unfortunate position of having to refer to you in conversation, then we should say they rather than he, as if there are two of you.’
‘We’re not suggesting that there are two of us,’ said Wilkes.
‘Good,’ said George. ‘Because one is bad enough. Two would be insupportable.’
‘You don’t want to be labelled with a conventional pronoun that has been in common usage since the English tongue was first established,’ continued Beverley. ‘And so, instead, you’d like to be labelled with an equally conventional pronoun that has been in common usage since the English tongue was first established. Simply the pluralized version. That’s it, isn’t it?’
Wilkes frowned, the tiny mind in that vast Grand Canyon of a head scrambling to think of an answer. On the table, sensing that this conversation was going to continue for some time, Ustym Karmaliuk allowed his own head to retreat a little further into his shell, giving him the appearance of Anne Boleyn or King Charles I in their latter moments.
‘He’s changed his Twitter profile to they/their,’ said Elizabeth, who had been tapping away at her phone for the last minute or two.
‘They have,’ said Wilkes, correcting her.
‘What?’
‘You said, “He’s changed his Twitter profile.” You meant, “They’ve changed their Twitter profile.”’
‘Oh yes. Sorry.’
‘It’s fine. We totally forgive you. And we still appreciate you.’
‘And we appreciate you too. I mean, I do. I’m staying binary for the time being.’
‘I have a question,’ said Beverley. ‘What do you do when you’re in France?’
Wilkes stared at her, wondering why she was asking such a thing. ‘We don’t … we’re sorry, we don’t understand what you mean.’
‘Well, here in England, we employ just one form of the third person plural. They. But in France, of course, they employ two. Ils and elles, the former for men and the latter for women. So, what do you do when you’re in France? How do you define yourself there? Do you pretend that you’re two men or two women?’
Wilkes looked down at the ground, his forehead crinkling so deeply in confusion that Beverley was sure that she could see some of the filth squeezing its way out of his pores, like the last globules from a tube of murky russet oil-based paint.
‘Actually, we don’t know the answer to that,’ he replied. ‘We haven’t been to France since the pandemic, so the issue hasn’t arisen. But we’ll look into it and get back to you.’
‘Oh, please do,’ said Beverley, placing her hands together as if in prayer. ‘I’ll be on tenterhooks until I know. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll get a wink of sleep.’
For a few moments, no one in the room spoke. George found that he quite enjoyed the silence, and if it hadn’t been for the stench of his daughter’s boyfriend wafting through the air like the waste pipe of a sewage works, it would have been the most enjoyable part of his day so far.
‘Anyway,’ said Elizabeth finally. ‘If we can move on—’
‘I’d be delighted if you did,’ said George.
‘We wanted to discuss something with you.’
‘Oh yes,’ replied Beverley. ‘What was it? Are you going to find your own flat? That’s fine. We totally support your move towards independence, don’t we, George?’
‘Absolutely. I’ll even pay for the Uber.’
‘We’re planning a trip to Indonesia,’ said Wilkes.