Georgy Girl

by Margaret Forster

  ‘My mother told me,’ said George. ‘I didn’t know you were getting married again.’

  ‘You should have done,’ said James.

  ‘Why, do I know her?’ said George, frowning and trying to recollect the silly women who had fluttered around James.

  ‘Come off it,’ said James. ‘You’re the one I’m going to marry.’

  George felt that every atom of scarlet blood in her had rushed into her face, into every nook and cranny. She gasped, as though she was choking, and put her hand up to her mouth.

  ‘You never gave me an answer,’ James was saying. ‘Well of course I see now it was a damn silly proposition for a girl like you. I think it’s very much to your credit that you didn’t lower yourself by replying. I’d have done the same. Mind you, I’m still sure it would have worked out, but it wouldn’t have been ideal. You’re the sort that wants the ideal, no half measures or messing about. It’s all or nothing, isn’t it, even if it looked as though nothing was more likely? I’ve had a lot of time to think it all out in the last few weeks and I can see my mistake was never mentioning that I might marry you. You couldn’t know I was serious without me doing that. Well, it’s all quite straightforward now, we can get married when you like.’

  George turned away from him, unable to take in quite what he was saying with his dominating body bang in front of her. He’s got a kink, she thought, he really has. He talks as though we had been passionate lovers, as though we’d had some longstanding affair. She wondered if Mrs L.’s death had turned his brain.

  ‘A lot’s happened to me too,’ she said, ‘since I saw you. It’s not as if things were the same, even.’

  ‘I sent your father round,’ James said. ‘I thought something was going on.’

  ‘I had an affair,’ said George, shyly. ‘You might not think it, but I did. A love affair.’

  ‘It didn’t work out,’ stated James.

  ‘No. It didn’t, but it changes everything.’

  ‘Why?’ said James.

  George thought that a few months ago she could have told him brutally why, she could have said that the only reason she’d shown any interest in him, such as it was, was because she was man mad. She wanted somebody of her own, to make love to her, she was that desperate, or she would have laughed in his face.

  ‘I’ve got a baby to look after, my friends’,’ she said. ‘Her parents didn’t want her.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said James. ‘You know how I feel about children. She’ll give our family a good start, the more the merrier.’

  Looking up at him, George thought how that was the reaction she’d wanted from Jos, but it never came. James had some feeling then. She believed he really did welcome Sara and wasn’t just saying it to persuade her. He would make a good father. She wasn’t likely to fall in love with anyone, after Jos. She didn’t have any illusions to get rid of.

  It was a good solution to her problem, if only James wasn’t so repulsive. She said the word to herself and tried to analyse why she didn’t like him. Perhaps it was just the backlog of all the years of that false relationship her father had foisted on to them. In any case, all her emotions except her love for Sara seemed dulled and unimportant. She could get over dislike.

  Still playing with the idea, only toying, she said: ‘I don’t love you.’

  ‘I never expected you to,’ said James, ‘I told you that.’

  ‘I’m not interested in sex any more either,’ said George. ‘Gone right off it, I ’ave,’ she added, trying to pick up the threads of her old bitter, bright little cracks.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ said James.

  ‘I don’t think I can have children either,’ said George. ‘I think I’m sterile, or barren to put it in biblical terms.’

  A shade of caution passed over James’s face.

  ‘How do you know?’ he said.

  ‘That’s put you off,’ said George. ‘I don’t know, I only think. I didn’t become pregnant all those weeks with Jos, and he’s not sterile.’

  ‘Doesn’t prove anything,’ said James.

  ‘No. Do you want me to be examined?’ said George. She suddenly thought she would like to be examined and know.

  ‘Not yet,’ said James, ‘give it a chance first.’

  George closed her eyes self-consciously and tried to tell herself the whole thing was utterly pathetic. He was marrying her now out of loneliness, not for any twisted psychological reason. She was handy and accessible. And she was marrying him for security and ease and babies, babies she would probably never have. It would be the most negative marriage of all time.

  She didn’t ask for time to think about it. There wasn’t much thinking to do. The alternatives were well known to her, she’d been over and over them ever since Jos walked out, and she didn’t like them. So much of what her mother had said was true, she had no right to bring up Sara to the sort of narrow life she would be able to offer. It would be awful having to live with a sentimental, self-pitying spinster who used you as a vicarious substitute for the love and marriage and children she’d never had. I might even keep telling her how grateful she ought to be, George thought. It would be better to be the adopted child of a business marriage, definitely. The pretence of normality would be so much easier.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘it’s a deal.’

  ‘Good,’ James wasn’t offended by the way she’d phrased it. ‘Good,’ he said again, and smiled. ‘You won’t regret it,’ he promised.

  They stayed where they were. It was difficult to know what to do. James took a deep breath.

  ‘We’ll have a white wedding,’ he said, ‘in a church. People can say what they like.’

  ‘Anything you like,’ said George, ‘but I’ll look a bloody sight tarted up in white.’

  ‘You’ll look beautiful,’ said James. ‘I’ve often imagined how you would look. Don’t you worry.’

  ‘I’m not worried,’ said George. ‘I’m just warning you, mate.’

  ‘We’ll go to the Bahamas for our honeymoon,’ said James.

  ‘I can’t leave Sara,’ said George. Defensively, she waited for him to ask who Sara was, or to remonstrate about taking a baby on a honeymoon.

  ‘We’ll take her with us,’ said James, ‘and a nanny to look after her if you like.’

  ‘I don’t like,’ said George, frowning. ‘I look after her.’

  ‘Right,’ said James. ‘That’s settled. We’ll get married in a month’s time, give us time to do things properly.’

  ‘One thing,’ said George. ‘My mother and father. I don’t want them around when we are married. You can sack them.’

  ‘Ted?’ said James, perturbed. ‘What would he do?’

  ‘That’s something he should have found out for himself a long time ago,’ said George.

  ‘I’ll pension him off, handsomely,’ said James.

  ‘You can do what you like, as long as he isn’t here to kow-tow to you when we get back,’ said George firmly.

  ‘He’s my friend,’ said James.

  ‘I’ll be your wife,’ said George. ‘You don’t need both. Anyway, he isn’t your friend. He loathes your guts, and so does Doris.’

  ‘I can’t believe that,’ said James.

  ‘Of course you can’t,’ said George. ‘You’re much too conceited and weak.’

  James chuckled, and then laughed loudly. ‘That’s my Georgy girl,’ he roared, slapping George on the shoulder.

  ‘It is indeed,’ said George, dryly.

  Eventually, they went into the garden so that George could display Sara to her prospective father. It was a highly successful meeting. James picked her up and made a fool of himself, and Sara gurgled appreciatively and slightly sarcastically. Then they went inside and George told her mother and father, who were having their lunch in the kitchen, that she was going to marry James. She said it straight out, without any preamble. They couldn’t tell her not to be stupid or disrespectful because James was standing at her side, beaming his approval.
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  Ted had to sit down very quickly.

  George knew nothing would be said until she was on her own. She made James sit down, there and then, at the kitchen table and told Doris that as he was now one of the family he could eat with them. James thought that was a very good joke. Ted was nearly sick with horror and embarrassment. When they’d finished an almost silent meal, George thought it time she got it over and sent James off to take Sara for a walk in the park. He departed docilely, even proudly.

  ‘You can start,’ George said, the minute he’d gone, ‘who’s going to shoot first?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Doris, tightly. ‘We’ve nothing to say except what’s been said. We hope you’ll be very happy.’

  ‘And dad?’ said George.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ said Doris.

  ‘I bet he doesn’t hope we’ll be happy,’ said George. ‘I bet he hopes I rot in hell and James comes running back to him.’ Ted still said nothing. ‘Come on, dad. Say Mr James can’t be wrong, whatever he does is wonderful.’

  ‘You don’t care about him,’ said Ted slowly, without looking up from the empty table.

  ‘No,’ said George. ‘I don’t. I’m marrying him for sheer security and because I can’t be bothered to do anything else. We can’t all love him like you – but then I don’t hate him either.’

  ‘Who said anything about hate?’ said Doris fearfully.

  George ignored her. ‘It will be the best thing that ever happened to you both, me marrying James,’ she said. ‘He’s going to pension you off, I asked him to. You’ll have to move away and make your own life and you’ll only see him once a week when you come to tea. Then maybe you’ll both get straightened out and won’t have wasted absolutely all your lives.’

  She wanted Ted to get very angry, to shout at her. A first class row would show him up for what he was. But he didn’t rise to her taunts. He remained at the table, head bowed, not even telling her to be quiet. As soon as she saw his submission, she felt sorry. He was too weak and useless to attack, he was just a prop.

  Doris kept her argument to herself. She didn’t know if it was true about being pensioned off, and, after wanting such a break for years, she now found that she didn’t care. Her words to George about not being capable of bringing up Sara, and never finding a man, came back to her. Perhaps they’d goaded her daughter into accepting James. She, too, couldn’t understand this new situation, but not, like Ted, because she couldn’t understand a marriage without love on at least the woman’s part. She understood that very well. It was what must have happened in the past that mystified her. James wasn’t a man of impulse, everything was always planned. She tried to remember any occasion on which he’d shown a partiality for George, but could conjure up none. He’d always treated her scrupulously like a daughter, of that she was sure. It was disgusting of him to marry her. It made a mockery of all those past years. George, of course, didn’t care. He was a husband. She was taking what she could get, and she was lucky at that.

  George left all the arrangements to James. She went for dress fittings where and when she was ordered and glowered at herself in the mirrors of the establishment he chose. She would look an absolute clown, but that was his affair. He pleased her, however, by insisting that Sara should be formally adopted by them. She had no idea how to go about this, but James told her to leave it all to his solicitor. The only part she played was giving him Jos’s poste restante address. She didn’t think he would object.

  The day before she was married, she finally moved out of her flat. Peg moved in. She couldn’t understand why Peg should want to do this, but from the minute she’d announced her departure, Peg had said she would like her flat.

  ‘Why?’ George asked, blankly.

  ‘It’s bigger,’ said Peg.

  ‘But there’s only you,’ said George. ‘What do you want a bigger flat for? What will you do with all the space?’

  ‘Spread out,’ said Peg, promptly. ‘I’m cramped down there.’

  ‘It’s twice your rent,’ said George. ‘How will you afford six pounds instead of three? It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘T’isn’t,’ said Peg. ‘I don’t spend much. I don’t go out or buy clothes. I’ve just got my rent and food and something for a rainy day. There’s no point in saving for nothing.’

  George shrugged. She didn’t want Peg in her flat. She wanted to leave it bare and empty and see a stranger move in.

  ‘You could always come back,’ said Peg. George stared at her blankly. ‘If you leave that man,’ said Peg, ‘you and Sara could move in with me.’

  ‘Why should you think I’d leave him?’ said George. ‘I haven’t even married him yet.’

  ‘You might have married Jos,’ said Peg, ‘and you left him.’

  ‘He left me.’

  ‘Same thing. You were alone anyway. That’s all I meant. If you end up alone there’s always a place for you here.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said George, choking. It sounded like her epitaph.

  When Peg’s prize curtains were up and her massive bed in place, the flat had changed completely. George felt bound to help her make the move, and patiently toiled up and down the stairs with her goods and chattels. If Peg was wild with delight, none of it showed.

  ‘We’ll have a cup of tea,’ said Peg at five o’clock. ‘You’ll have to go now I expect.’

  ‘Yes,’ said George. ‘I suppose I’d better.’

  ‘Is your wedding dress nice?’ said Peg, filling the kettle.

  ‘Oh, ravishing,’ said George.

  ‘I never thought you’d get married,’ said Peg. ‘It seems funny somehow.’

  ‘Have a good laugh, then, for God’s sake,’ said George.

  ‘I thought you’d be like me,’ said Peg. ‘Funny how it’s turned out you getting two men.’

  ‘You mean in spite of my ugly mug?’ said George, savagely.

  ‘Well, you know,’ said Peg. ‘It seems queer. Do you like this James?’

  ‘No,’ said George.

  ‘He’s old enough to be your father, isn’t he?’ said Peg.

  ‘Madam, he is my father,’ said George.

  ‘You’re joking,’ said Peg, uncertainly.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ said George, ‘he’s my father and Jos was my brother so you see it’s all explained.’

  ‘I shall enjoy the wedding,’ said Peg.

  ‘It will be good entertainment,’ agreed George, ‘ices in the interval and everything. Mind you’re early and get a seat in the stalls. You don’t want to miss any of the best bits.’

  Peg was early. She arrived at the church half an hour before anyone else, wearing a new blue hat and her Hebe costume. George’s side hadn’t many guests so she was the fourth row, nearest to the aisle, with a splendid view of everything. She settled down comfortably, reading her favourite hymns and sucking a mint very discreetly in time to the music in her head. She didn’t think much of George’s choice of hymns. You could tell the bride hadn’t been in a church for years when she chose ‘O Perfect Love’ which had a rotten tune. She’d have chosen something easy and rousing, herself.

  When the guests began to arrive, Peg put down her hymn book and swallowed the last bit of her mint. She didn’t know any of the people, of course, which spoiled it a bit, but she enjoyed staring at everybody with no one knowing who she was either. It was obvious who George’s mother was. She was wearing floral blue silk and had a very stiff face. Peg felt sorry for her. She could feel there was no proper wedding atmosphere, nobody whispered or smiled or nodded at anyone else. It was more like a funeral.

  She studied James carefully when he took up his seat on the right hand front side. She was surprised he’d turned out so good looking. He was a bit fat, but not so that you couldn’t call it heavy built. He was very straight backed with black hair, grey at the temples, and she thought he had a kind face. He was very smart.

  Peg was the only one who turned right round to stare blatantly at the bride as she started on the long
walk down the aisle. She looks ever so nice, Peg thought. They’d done something queer with her hair, twisted it all in coils on top of her head. Regal looking, that was the phrase. The dress was beautiful, high necked, long sleeved and masses of skirt. Easy ten yards in that skirt alone.

  She came past Peg, on her father’s arm, and Peg could see she was quite flushed. Not what you’d call red, but sort of pink. It was becoming. Peg was very impressed, she’d never thought George would turn out so well.

  After the services, which went off very nicely, Peg went home. She’d decided not to go to the reception because she wouldn’t know anybody and it would be awkward. Better to go home and have some tea by herself, and a quiet think about how nice George had looked and how happy she must be and about her honeymoon and house and Sara and perhaps other children, and how there was no knowing what might turn up for oneself.

  Also available in Vintage

  Margaret Forster

  DIARY OF AN ORDINARY WOMAN

  ‘I rushed through this novel and enjoyed it enormously . . . what she experienced in her very “ordinariness” was shared by thousands of real women of her generation’

  Val Hennessey, Daily Mail

  Margaret Forster presents the ‘edited’ diary of a woman, born in 1901, whose life spans the twentieth century. On the eve of the Great War, Millicent King begins to keep her journal and vividly records the dramas of everyday life in a family touched by war, tragedy, and money troubles. From bohemian London to Rome in the 1920s her story moves on to social work and the build-up to another war, in which she drives ambulances through the bombed streets of London.

  Also available in Vintage

  Margaret Forster

  MOTHERS’ BOYS

  ‘Margaret Forster has the gift of making you care deeply about what happens to her characters’

  Scotsman

  The attack on fifteen-year-old Joe Kennedy was particularly squalid and vicious. Sheila Armstrong’s grandson Leo, usually a quiet, well-behaved boy, was found holding a knife. Harriet Kennedy cannot cope with her son’s continuing pain; Sheila, who reared Leo, cannot bear the lasting guilt. In a powerful and moving tale of suffering and forgiveness, the two women confront the complex range of emotions that motherhood entails.