Georgy Girl

by Margaret Forster

  Doris heard James come in and put her sewing away quickly. She went upstairs and into the dining room where he was pouring out a whisky. She thought he wasn’t looking well, a bit pinched around the jowls.

  ‘You’re back early, sir,’ she said. She never called him Mr James like Ted did.

  ‘I know,’ said James. ‘Is Ted in?’

  ‘He’s just gone to buy a paper,’ said Doris, ‘he won’t be a minute.’

  ‘What’s he been doing with himself?’ said James.

  ‘The usual things, sir,’ said Doris, surprised. ‘He’s been in the garden a lot and took the opportunity to give your clothes a good press.’

  ‘Yes,’ said James, ‘but hasn’t he got himself out? I told him to give himself a change.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Doris. ‘I don’t think he fancied going anywhere. He’s a home bird as you know sir.’

  James swallowed his impatience with the whisky.

  ‘Have you anything I can eat?’ he said.

  ‘Of course sir,’ said Doris. ‘I’ll have something ready in half an hour.’

  ‘Tell Ted I’m here when he gets back,’ said James. ‘Make something for him too. He can eat here with me.’

  Doris went to obey. She hadn’t expected him till the next day, and though there was plenty to give him it was a different matter including Ted. At short notice you could make something tasty for one, but two cut out half the things she had in mind. Still, it was better than if it had been Mrs L. arriving home with him.

  She was making a quiche lorraine when Ted came in.

  ‘You’re wanted in the dining room,’ she said. ‘James is back.’

  ‘And I was out,’ said Ted, pained.

  ‘You’re to go up at once and have supper with him,’ said Doris. It was like telling him he was to dine with the Queen. His face lit up and he couldn’t get there quick enough.

  ‘Good evening, Mr James,’ said Ted genially. ‘Did you have a pleasant trip?’ – as though he’d been away weeks.

  ‘Yes,’ said James, ‘but I’m glad to be back.’

  ‘Home’s home,’ said Ted, smugly. He took it as a personal compliment. ‘I felt just the same this afternoon and I was only out a few hours.’

  ‘Where were you?’ said James hopefully, but Ted had launched into a long description of how he hated leaving home and why and what he felt when he came back. By the time he’d finished, Doris was bringing in some soup and he knew she’d be in and out until she’d brought the main dish so he didn’t have a chance to ask again.

  When the quiche and salad had been put on the table he repeated his question, feeling exhausted at the thought that he might be side-tracked again.

  ‘Where were you this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Anywhere interesting?’

  ‘I went to see George,’ said Ted. James waited. ‘Couldn’t get much satisfaction out of her except that she was sorry about you-know-what.’

  ‘What?’ said James, tensely.

  ‘The funeral, not turning up.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I told you it would just be pure selfishness,’ went on Ted. ‘Said she didn’t like them. I told her, I said no one liked them –’

  ‘What’s she been doing with herself?’ said James abruptly. He didn’t care about the funeral.

  ‘Being a mug, as usual,’ said Ted.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Looking after this fellow.’ James raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Oh nothing like that,’ said Ted. ‘You can’t see anyone having our George can you? No, this chap is her flatmate’s husband. She just had a baby and George has been looking after her old man.’

  ‘What was his name?’ said James.

  Ted was taken aback. He expected Doris to ask such stupid questions but not James. He didn’t quite know what to say. It seemed a suddenly obvious failure on his part not to have asked.

  ‘I didn’t ask,’ he said, shame-faced.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said James.

  ‘He was a scruffy sort,’ said Ted, ‘but he worked in a bank, so he said.’

  ‘Was he staying there alone with George?’ said James, uneasily.

  Ted stared. It might be Doris sitting there.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But there wouldn’t be any hanky-panky, not with George. It’s her mate’s husband, he’s a friend of hers.’

  ‘You can never tell,’ said James, lowering his eyes furtively. ‘How did they seem together?’

  ‘Seem?’ said Ted, puzzled.

  ‘How did they act? Were they just friendly or could you see it had gone further? What did he call her? Has she two beds?’

  He heard himself asking these ridiculous questions feverishly and he could see Ted sitting there round-eyed with amazement, not knowing how to reply. Shakily, James picked up his fork and attempted to eat the neglected quiche, not commenting on Ted’s silence. He felt sure this young man was the one he’d seen with George that time. It didn’t matter if it was her friend’s husband, she’d liked him. He’d look if he was pipped at the post. But he was being silly. Ted’s expression and what he knew about George told him that. She wasn’t that sort of girl, but even as he thought that he remembered her over-passionate kisses and what she’d said, even jokingly, about being ripe for plucking. He’d been slow. He hadn’t offered her enough because it hadn’t occurred to him and anyway he couldn’t offer it. He had an ace card to play.

  ‘Ted,’ he said. ‘I’m getting married again.’

  Chapter Six

  MEREDITH STAYED LONGER than the normal ten days in hospital. She’d had so many stitches that it took her some time to get over the excessive soreness after they were removed and that kept her in an extra four days. It also turned out that the baby had been born with a twisted foot because of its cramped position in the womb, but they hadn’t told her, said the sister, for fear of upsetting her unnecessarily when she was in a weak state. It was really nothing to be anxious about. One out of twenty babies, large babies born of small mothers, suffered from this and with careful exercise were perfectly normal by the time they walked.

  The last person to be anxious was Meredith, although it took those who looked after her some time to appreciate it, and even then they fought shy of being too hard on her. She’d had a very bad time, even if a lot of it was her own fault, and her husband didn’t seem very keen on visiting her so all wasn’t well there. They waited for her to gain strength and start to take an interest in her lovely daughter, as they’d seen happen so many times. But Meredith didn’t develop according to pattern. She hardly gave the baby a cursory glance, and refused point blank to breast-feed it. Shown how to exercise its tiny, fragile, malformed foot she curled her lip and said it looked perfectly all right to her and anyway she didn’t feel like holding it.

  One by one, the big guns had a go at her. The Sister in charge of her ward, who’d a reputation for reducing patients to tears with a few irascible comments, but was capable of great compassion, tried at first to be kindly and patient, until Meredith read a book while she was being shown how to change the baby’s nappy. Then she let fly, and asked her just why she thought she was the only one who was entitled to do sweet nothing for her child. Meredith said she wanted it adopted. Shocked, the Sister said that was utterly cowardly and a desertion of her duty. Meredith said she could say what she utterly well liked.

  The Matron was more abrupt. She said, quite calmly, that it was not the job of the hospital to look after any baby entirely when the mother was fit and capable. She therefore told Meredith, after she’d been there ten days, that her baby would be put beside her and if she refused to feed it, no one would. The whole ward went through agony for twenty-four hours, except Meredith. She lay sleeping, ignoring the frenzied howls of the baby and the loudly-voiced contempt of her neighbours and the nurses. It didn’t seem to disturb her at all. Eventually, a poker-faced sister snatched the hysterical baby up and marched off with it. Meredith examined her dripping nipples with disgust, and settled down t
o being sent to Coventry, which both amused and suited her very well.

  The most disastrous effort to bring this recalcitrant mother to a full realization of her role in life from now on was made by the hospital clergyman. He was a Church of England vicar who enjoyed visiting and administering in the maternity ward very much indeed. It was all so nicely straightforward. The mothers, churchgoers or not, were usually eager to join in short prayers for their babies out of sheer happiness or relief that it was all over. Occasionally, there was a sad case of a baby dying, and then he had a heartbreaking time showing the mother, very gently, how God moved in a mysterious way. But on the whole it was a happy place.

  The minister noted that Meredith had two ‘A’s’ on her record card – A for Atheist and A for ‘Awkward’. The latter could mean anything from being five minutes late for her ante-natal appointments to refusing to take her iron pills, so he wasn’t too alarmed by it. When the position was explained to him by an icy-voiced sister, he looked also for a ‘U’, meaning unmarried mother, but there wasn’t one. He was used to a difficult time with ‘U’s. Kindly, he approached Meredith’s bed, smiling and shifting his glasses more securely up his nose to get a better look at her. She looked very small and pale to have two A’s. Meredith looked up and as quickly down again at the lurid paper-back she was reading.

  ‘I’m an atheist,’ she said. ‘You’ve got the wrong bed.’

  ‘Well, I’ve come to see you as a friend, not necessarily as a minister of religion,’ said the vicar gently.

  ‘Look,’ said Meredith, decisively. ‘I loathe chit-chat. I don’t specially want to be rude, but I’ve absolutely no desire to talk to you at all, so I’m afraid that you’ll have to respect that even if you want to talk to me. If you go on, I’ll simply put my ear phones on until you’ve gone and have a basinful of Mrs Dale.’

  The vicar tried to hold her gaze and said very sorrowfully, ‘My dear, what are you afraid of?’

  ‘Christ!’ said Meredith, and carried out her threat.

  The sight of the vicar shaking his head from side to side and voicing words of admonition and comfort that she couldn’t hear made her laugh for the first time since she’d come into hospital. At that, the vicar got up and left, looking like a long-eared, reproachful spaniel.

  They made a concerted attempt, of course, through Jos, but this was a most unrewarding experience. The sister caught him as he was about to go in one evening – quarter of an hour before the end, and only then because George insisted.

  ‘I’d like a word with you Mr Jones,’ she said, firmly.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Jos with alacrity, eager to escape even those few minutes with Meredith.

  He followed her into her office.

  ‘Your wife refuses to have anything to do with her baby,’ said the sister abruptly. ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘She’s a bitch,’ said Jos.

  The sister winced. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jos, ‘but that’s absolutely the long and short of it. God knows why she took it into her head to have it, but she did and now she’s just reverting to type.’

  ‘Did you know she wants it adopted?’ said the sister.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you think about that?’

  ‘It’s a shame,’ said Jos. The sister brightened. ‘But it’s probably the only solution.’

  ‘Haven’t you any feelings as a father?’ pleaded the sister.

  ‘Well, I did have,’ said Jos, ‘but not now. It would be difficult anyway. I mean, I haven’t told Meredith yet, but I’m living with someone else and I want to marry her so I’ll have to get a divorce. I don’t think having a baby around would make my marriage very happy.’

  The sister gave up in despair and disgust, and the bitter reflection that if babies went to those who deserved them, the world would be a lot better off.

  Jos knew, of course, that keeping his daughter might not make his proposed marriage to George happy, but it would be what she would insist on if she found out that she was to be given away for adoption. As it was, her devotion to a baby she’d never seen went almost beyond the bounds of decency. She knitted all the time for her, spent hours suggesting names, and kept pressing Jos to get more of the equipment she would need when she came out of hospital. Jos therefore found himself Meredith’s ally. He too wanted the baby removed to Dr Barnardo’s or somewhere as quickly as possible and with any hope of tracing it doomed to failure. His conscience gave him hell, which he miserably knew it ought to do. Confronted with the papers Meredith had somehow obtained, he thought wildly of taking the baby home to his mother, or Meredith’s mother, anyone’s mother. It didn’t seem such a bad idea to keep it and give it into George’s tender care. But at such signs of weakness, Meredith frothed at the mouth and screamed at him until she’d made him write his signature in the appropriate place.

  That over, there was left the problem of how to break it to Meredith that he wanted a divorce and by comparison signing away his child seemed nothing. She was cussed and vicious enough to refuse just for the hell of it, not because she really cared about him, and then there would be no getting round her. A meeting between George and her was what he most dreaded. She would pounce on all the conscience-stricken doubts that lay so nakedly on the surface and twist and direct them as she willed, until George would run away from him, forgetting how right it all seemed when they were together. Yet Meredith would go to the flat the minute she left hospital and George would still be there unless he did something very quickly.

  The day before Meredith was due to come out, he tried to do it.

  ‘I think we ought to leave London,’ he said to George in the middle of their supper. ‘Tomorrow – just pack our bags and go. Emigrate.’

  George went on eating.

  ‘What do you think?’ he demanded.

  ‘I think,’ said George slowly, ‘that must mean Meredith and the baby are coming home tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s purely incidental,’ said Jos.

  ‘Well, it can stay incidental. It isn’t going to help running away from them. What would poor Meredith do, left in the lurch with a poor baby like that? Don’t be a cad sir,’ said George.

  ‘If there was no baby, would you still feel the same?’ asked Jos, nervously.

  ‘As there is, there’s no point in thinking about it.’

  Jos sensed that was as good as admitting that it was Meredith’s plight as a mother which was weighing most heavily with George. He closed his eyes tightly, and tried to estimate, soberly and realistically, the pros and cons of telling her that the baby had been adopted. It was impossible to judge what reactions would follow her first emotional impulse, which was bound to be violent.

  ‘We must wait until Meredith and the baby are stronger,’ said George placidly, ‘then we must all have a serious conference and put our cards on the table.’

  ‘Sounds like a campaign to launch trading stamps,’ said Jos bitterly. ‘I’m really looking forward to it. Where are you getting the round table and the Happy Families pack?’

  ‘We must be fair,’ said George.

  ‘Oh, definitely,’ said Jos, ‘that’s most important. I wouldn’t like not to be fair. It would be jolly bad form.’

  ‘There’s no need to go on like that,’ said George.

  ‘What’s going to be the outcome of your little shareholders’ meeting?’ said Jos. ‘I suppose you expect Meredith to lift her chin bravely, and say you’re absolutely right old thing, you and Jos must get together, it was all a dashed awkward mistake. All I want is 2½d. a week to keep myself and the baby and what about its daddy visiting it Tuesdays and Thursdays. Best of luck, mates, and no hard feeling.’ He stopped for breath. ‘Is that what you expect?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said George, flushing slightly.

  ‘Good,’ said Jos, ‘because then you won’t be disappointed. I’ll tell you something else – you won’t get as far as laying cards on tables because before that Meredith will have bust us up good and proper. You seem to imagine we
can all live together, tra la, in a cosy little threesome while things miraculously sort themselves out. For God’s sake, George, don’t be so bloody stupid. The three of us couldn’t last together without tearing each other’s eyes out for more than five minutes.’

  ‘We did before the baby came,’ said George, defensively.

  ‘Like hell,’ said Jos, furiously, ‘and in any case you were the odd one out, on the surface. Do you think Meredith will sleep on this divan while you sleep with me? Do you?’

  ‘No,’ said George. ‘I thought you could sleep there at first.’

  ‘You did,’ said Jos flatly. ‘How many more cosy little arrangements have you been making secretly? Do I eat in the kitchen and wash in the sink?’

  ‘Oh Jos, don’t be so awkward,’ said George, ‘I’m only trying to make the best of it. What would you do, anyway? You wouldn’t really walk out the day she came out of hospital with a two weeks old baby. Think of all she’s been through.’

  ‘We’ve been over all this,’ said Jos wearily. ‘I’ve told you – Meredith got herself into this and there is no point in wasting any pity on her. Our marriage was a ridiculous mistake and the sooner ended the better. Even you admit we couldn’t make a go of it. Lastly, I love you and only you and I want to live with and marry you, but if you won’t do it because of scruples over Meredith that still wouldn’t make me stay with her. You’re no home-wrecker. I would leave Meredith anyway.’

  ‘But the baby,’ said George.