by V. G. Lee
I said, ‘Now don’t forget, put aside Saturday March the 20th. You can stay over. There won’t be masses of guests, just close friends and family.’
Georgie’s mother said, ‘Any particular celebration?’
Georgie said, ‘Don’t worry, Ma, nothing definite.’
‘But of course it’s definite,’ I said. ‘Or have you got some secret, romantic plan tucked up your sleeve? Can you believe it, a decade together and still deliriously happy?’
Couldn’t stop burbling. Ma and Pa-in-law were looking uneasy, sending enquiring glances to Georgie, Georgie shaking her head at them and narrowing her eyes. Something was very wrong. I shut up.
Georgie said, ‘We’ll have to see.’
In silence we walked to where our car was parked. In silence we drove for nearly an hour. Georgie switched the radio on once, Eric Clapton singing about his darling looking wonderful that evening. She switched it off.
Georgie broke the silence. She said in a quiet, cold voice, ‘I wish you hadn’t gone on like that. Why must you always pre-empt a situation?’
Had no answer as not aware that I pre-empted situations.
‘All I’m saying,’ she continued, ‘is it’s not such a great idea making a fuss over one day in the calendar and anyway purely logistically, it’s not going to work out.’
‘Why are you talking to me as if I’m a client and you’re explaining a hitch in a business project?’ I asked, keeping my voice mild
‘I’m trying to bring you down to earth, that’s all.’
‘No, that isn’t it. You’re trying to tell me something unpleasant but wrapping it up in cold words.’
‘Better than turning everything into a bouncing, desperate cheerfulness,’ she said. ‘With you everything has to be a joke or... a whimper.’
Only I could know the effort it would take for Georgie to be so cruel. She wasn’t, isn’t a cruel woman. Those words of hers weren’t carelessly said.
Feb 27th
Sorry diary, no bouncing, desperate cheerfulness today.
What I mustn’t do is think that Georgie has stopped loving me. She says she loves me as much as ever but now it is a different love - as deep and long lasting but missing out on the excitement and maybe that will prove all we need to last out our lifetime. But only maybe.
Georgie has suggested and I’ve agreed to a trial separation of two months. She says she expects our time apart will revitalize our relationship. She is actually going to rent a flat off a friend in Edinburgh as that seems to be where most of her work is at the moment.
It will do us good, she says, to re-assess where we are going, where we want to go. Don’t be surprised, she says with a wry smile, if I come high tailing back to you within a fortnight.
I have to believe that at the end of two months Georgie will return. Not to the same old Margaret of the apron and marigold gloves, I’ll try to be a new, exciting Margaret. I’ll do what it takes even if it means me sitting every morning in front of the mirror and reciting Deirdre’s mantra, ‘I am fantastic. I am a sensual, sexual woman. I like what I see.’
Sunday Feb 29th
Georgie left this morning. Took Samson and Delilah with her. It is impossible to recite Deirdre’s mantra. I am not fantastic. I am not a sensual, sexual woman. I do not like what I see.
March
March 10th
Back with diary. However nothing worth noting has happened in my life over the last ten days. No word from Georgie.
March 12th
Wake up with a start. Tilly lying next to me also is awake. What is that noise? Surely not skateboarders trying to avoid the daytime traffic? (Our house is on the very summit of a hill and the centre of the road is popular with skateboarders, roller skaters, battery powered scooters and unicyclists.) The noise continues. It comes from nearer the house. Surely not Mr Wheeler busy on some nocturnal DIY job. Still sounds too near. It’s as if somebody is repeatedly rattling the side gate into the back garden. Get up. Find torch and lean out of bedroom window. Shine torch on back gate and area in front of the house. Nothing. No one. Noise stops for a few seconds and then continues.
I feel uneasy. Tilly looks uneasy. Put on dressing gown saying reassuringly, ‘You stay where you are, Tilly’. Secretly hope Tilly will accompany me. She stays, her green eyes wide and anxious. ‘Don’t worry, Mummy sort it out.’ I reach for my antique ski pole, an irresistible buy from a Methodist jumble sale circa 1984.
Go downstairs and through house switching on lights and singing the old Sandie Shaw hit, Always Something There to Remind Me. In my head I’m walking along the Bittlesea Bay streets that Georgie walked along with me.
Upsetting lyrics in the circumstances but the only song immediately suggesting itself. By the time I reach the kitchen my eyes are watering. I desperately need to blow my nose as I recall just how much in love we used to be.
Tear off a piece of towel roll. Stop singing. Cautiously and silently open the kitchen window which looks over the back garden side of the gate. Blow nose loudly.
Stunned silence then the scramble of something or someone completely invisible frantically breaching the fence between my garden and Mr Wheeler’s. The sky is filled with the cries of disturbed seagulls. Close window. Warm some milk. Sit at kitchen table.
How can I forget you, Georgie? At this precise moment you would be in your charcoal coloured towelling dressing gown, either telephoning the police or shrugging your shoulders and saying, ‘Don’t worry, it was probably just a rat.’
I thought how I’d never felt frightened of anything when Georgie was with me. How she’d reassure me as we made our way back up to bed, ‘Margaret, we’re quite safe. The two of us are big strapping women. We’re more than a match for burglars or rats.’
And I might say, ‘What if it’s a ghost?’
And she’d reply, ‘It won’t be.’
Took my glass of milk upstairs. Tilly fast asleep. I slept. In the morning woke to find my brain supplying more Sandie Shaw – the line about being born to love someone and never being free.
I didn’t want to be free of Georgie.
Thought about checking the back garden but incident of strangely rattling gate seems dim and distant memory put next to pain of song words.
March 13th
Deirdre unveils plans for her new garden layout. Quite a presentation. I am invited and also her other neighbours, two elderly sisters, Vera and Morag. Deirdre had made cakes, wedges of sponge covered in pink icing and acid green hundreds and thousands. She wore a peachy pink chiffon kaftan with matching bracelets, a pink feather in her hair. We were asked to sit down around the dining room table, asked what we wanted in the way of tea, coffee or fruit juice. Handed a small plate each with a pink paper serviette and told to ‘please get stuck into the cakes’. Our mouths full Deirdre began. She welcomed our attendance as if we’d come at least from as far away as an adjoining county, she told us that she felt it ‘absolutely crucial to keep her neighbours on side’.
Vera and Morag nodded while also looking mystified.
‘As you can see,’ Deirdre said, pointing with a plastic ruler at the plan laid out on the table, ‘what is now lawn and cuoy carp pool will become a decked terrace with seating for six persons in an ornamental gazebo.’
We nodded our approval. No, our admiration.
‘My entire new garden will be fenced in with willow panels painted alternate shades of sea green and sky blue obviously to mirror the effect of sea and sky.’
Morag asked, ‘How tall will the fence be?’
‘Brave woman!’ I thought and nodded more approval and admiration.
Deirdre tapped her perfect white teeth with the ruler and avoided Morag’s eyes, ‘Six foot give or take a foot or three.’
‘So it could reach nine foot?’
‘That is a possibility.’
‘We can’t have that,’ Vera gently murmured to Morag.
‘No we can’t have that,’ said Morag firmly.
Deirdre’s face a
nd body seem to dilate with pent up emotion - she hates her ambitions to be curtailed.
‘It probably won’t be quite nine foot,’ she snaps.
‘Better to know the exact height before the fence goes up. Nothing worse than neighbourly disputes. What do you think Margaret?’ Vera peers round the side of her larger sister.
Deirdre fixes me with a ‘Back me up here’ look.
Personally, at that moment I couldn’t care less if Deirdre built a life-size model of the Taj Mahal in her back garden but Vera and Morag didn’t seem two women who could easily stand up for themselves whereas Deirdre... did.
‘Legally I don’t think you can put up a fence over six feet without planning permission.’
Deirdre looks annoyed, anxious and betrayed, ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘I think you’ll find I’m right.’
The sisters look relieved. Vera says to Morag, ‘We don’t object to six foot do we Morag?’
‘But I object to six foot,’ expostulates Deirdre. ‘I’ll still be able to see your washing line and your prop.’ She shudders.
‘Surely that’s not so bad?’ I ask reasonably.
She turns her back on the sisters and mouths, ‘and their pants.’
Have discussed Deirdre’s neighbours’ pants before. Have stood in her back bedroom and surreptitiously viewed these pants. The sisters take a voluminous size and they wear and wash in bulk - most drying days there’s a line full of faded, large knickers flapping cheerfully in the breeze.
‘Now Deirdre,’ I appeal gently.
‘Oh for goodness sake, okay. Six foot but will you two promise not to set your prop at such a high setting. Would you accept a whirly line if I paid for it?’
Sisters look at each other, appalled at offer of whirly line.
‘Oh no, Deirdre, a woman in the local paper was almost garrotted by her whirly line. And anyway you don’t get a good air supply filtering between your washed items.’
‘Ever considered a tumble dryer?’ Deirdre asks silkily.
‘Never!’ the sisters say.
March 15th
All systems go next door. Deirdre is not a woman to hang about. Woman gardener arrived in a dilapidated lorry with two others and a cement mixer. As yet can’t pick her out as they are all swathed in concealing outdoor clothes. Weather quite mild yet they look ready to attempt Mont Blanc.
The fences on both sides of Deirdre’s garden are down and Martin’s taken the car and retired to the Corner Coffee Shop.
NB. Martin. Increasingly he can be found at the Corner Coffee Shop. Deirdre says, he says she and Lord Dudley are disrupting his home life with their various projects all of which require complete freedom from any sound or movement Martin might need to make. Do not believe that Martin blames Lord Dudley - this is just Deirdre making out she has the majority vote in the house.
In the Corner Coffee Shop, Martin’s set up an office space for himself in an alcove at the back. The staff are very good natured about this. In fact they seem pleased to have Martin monopolizing a four person table with his laptop, mobile, ashtray and half hourly intake of cappuccino and Danish pastry. It is almost as if he was Ernest Hemingway working on For Whom the Bell Tolls.
A couple of times I’ve popped in with Miriam. I am determined not to treat Martin as if he is Ernest Hemingway so call out, ‘Hello there, Martin.’ He ignores me or looks about the room as if expecting some other chap to respond.
Deirdre says when her new garden is well on its way to completion she’ll send the gardener over to discuss mine with me.
‘What’s the woman’s name?’ I asked.
‘I’ve no idea. I call her pet.’
March 16th
Not much going on in my life at the minute. Not sleeping very well and when I do sleep there seem to be noises at the back of my dreams. Apart from work I’m sticking close to home. Tilly is all the company I need. She’s getting very frail. Yesterday she didn’t make the jump between the table and the work top. Landed quite badly but got up and went to try again. I picked her up and set her back down next to her plate. There is nothing of her but skin and bone. It breaks my heart.
March 17
Laura rang this evening while I was eating.
‘But it’s only seven o’clock. In London nobody eats before eight, more like nine,’ she says.
I reply that everybody in Bittlesea Bay is asleep by nine and they need a couple of hours first to watch the local news and weather forecast on television while their food digests.
She says, ‘Okay, you eat - I’ll talk. First I’m no longer with Pam, I’m with Iris. Iris has a better figure. You know me; I’ve always been a breast woman.’
I swallow a piece of mushroom omelette and say, ‘I knew no such thing. Aren’t you being rather superficial? Isn’t Pam upset?’
‘No, Pam’s relieved. She says I was much too much of a good thing which is rather complimentary. Now I like Iris a lot. You might not like Iris so I’m going to keep her under wraps for a month or two. Shall I just say she’s controlling in the nicest possible way.’ Laura pauses as if some pleasant controlling memory has occurred to her.
We don’t talk much about me but that’s okay as I haven’t really anything I want to say.
In bed I think about Laura and how all her many emotional dramas seem to wash over her and leave no mark. I imagine her heart; pink, healthy, unblemished.
March 18th
Life seems unutterably dreary! This evening met Miriam from work and went with her to visit her mother. They have a seafront flat, unfortunately a basement flat. The sea isn’t visible, only shoes and ankles as pedestrians pass by on the pavement outside, however I exclaim enthusiastically at the sea’s proximity. Only a stone’s throw I say, how wonderful. Lucky you!
Expect to meet very old lady wrapped in shawls and genteelly irritable but no, Miriam’s mother looks about the same age as Miriam; maybe even a year or two younger. She is smart, petite and wears a skirt and matching boxy jacket with a large spray brooch of turquoise brilliants on her lapel. She looks ready for a royal garden party right down to her shoes, which are navy blue and cream with a small heel. Am amazed!
‘How do you do, Mrs Mason.’ We shake hands. Her fingers feel like a cluster of brittle twigs. Thinks; Miriam must have taken after her father as she is quite a reassuringly hefty woman.
I am led into a room off a dark hall. It is like stepping back several decades and reminds me of my grandmother’s house only furnished more lavishly. There is a comfortable three-piece suite and many occasional tables. Everywhere I look are pieces of crochet; chair backs, arm rests, doilies, crocheted rugs, even crochet framed in ebony and hung on the walls. While Miriam and her mother sort out sherry and nibbles from a large sideboard I dawdle from item of crochet to item of crochet making admiring noises.
‘This is beautiful, breathtaking. What workmanship, hugely accomplished.’ I draw the line at the ‘earth shatteringly stupendous’ teetering on the tip of my tongue.
‘Miriam’s a clever little puss,’ Miriam’s mother says fondly. Miriam, looking nothing like a ‘little puss’ grimaces.
‘Miriam did all this?’ I exclaim, looking at Miriam in a new light. Unsure at that moment whether a good light or a bad light.
‘It passes an evening,’ Miriam says with an apologetic shrug.
She and I take an armchair each while Miriam’s mother puts her feet up, crossing one neat, nylon ankle over the other.
‘Cheers,’ she says, holding up her crystal schooner. ‘Miriam, offer Margaret the Bombay Mix.’
I take a handful of Bombay Mix and try not to drop them on the immaculate pink carpet.
‘Cheers,’ I say.
‘Cheers,’ Miriam says. She looks suddenly dispirited. Her mother peers hopefully from me to Miriam as if we are bright young things who must have tales of debutante parties and dancing till dawn to relate. Cannot immediately summon up a single subject that might be interesting. Ask myself what I know about crochet and
the answer is nothing. Ask myself if I know anything about related subjects; knitting, dressmaking, tatting. Finally say loudly, ‘Do you remember French knitting?’
Miriam and her mother look blank.
‘You knocked four small nails into the top of a cotton reel, then wound wool round the nails, then over and eventually a long snake of French knitting came out through the cotton reel hole. People made bedside mats. I made a table mat.’
‘Did you? Did it take long?’
‘About a fortnight.’
Silence as they both digest taking a fortnight to produce a table mat then Miriam says energetically, ‘What books are you reading at present?’
My mind scurries over the books on my bedside table. Decide that Creating a Meadow Garden is of no interest, while Lesbians Sighted at Nine O’Clock - a World War II Romance inappropriate for sherry with Miriam’s mother so reply, ‘Annie Oakley, the Woman Behind the Buckskins.’
‘That sounds exciting,’ says Miriam’s mother. ‘I used to love those cowboy series in the fifties and sixties. Do you remember Range Rider - I think he wore buckskins - or fringed leathers?’
Miriam frantic - imagining I am about to disclose something about Annie Oakley that might shock her mother. She taps her nose, blinks her eyes and doubles up with a coughing fit. Finally splutters out, ‘I’ve almost finished The Testament of Youth. Vera Britain was an extraordinary woman.’
I agree that she was, particularly portrayed by Cheryl Campbell in the television series.
Miriam’s mother looks misty eyed, ‘Ah youth’, she says. ‘Fair and shining youth. That age might take the things youth needed not!’ Dear William Wordsworth.’
Miriam and I nod our agreement that William Wordsworth was indeed a dear man. I stay for another hour that seems like three. Miriam sees me out. ‘Come again,’ Miriam’s mother calls from the sitting room.