by V. G. Lee
‘Yes.’
September 24th
LC called me into her office this morning. Didn’t ask me to sit, so stood, hands folded over stomach, and fresh packet of J Cloths.
‘Shut the door please,’ she said.
Closed the door and resumed position. LC very interested in inner workings of mini-stapler, said, ‘Will you be going to my Supperette Club tomorrow? Membership tends to fall off in the autumn and I’m trying to keep the numbers up. If you want to bring anyone with you...’
This was said in pleasant, if distracted, voice - obviously mini-stapler of supreme importance.
‘I don’t think I’ll be going and why should I after last time?’ I said, and then more confidently, ‘Although if I wanted to, there is someone I could bring.’
Lorraine puts down stapler and gives me her full attention. ‘You surprise me. Word on the grapevine was that you’d been left high and dry months ago.’
‘Perhaps the word got it wrong. Look, Lorraine why don’t you give this Margaret baiting up? Let me just get on with the job I’m paid to do.’
She laughed carelessly. ‘Oh that, well you’re a lousy cleaner...’
‘No, I’m an excellent cleaner, considering the work I get through in an hour and a half. You’re lucky to have me as a cleaner.’
Her eyes looked mean. ‘I don’t happen to think so.’
My eyes looked reasonable. ‘That just isn’t true. What may be true is that you don’t like me, or perhaps you have a suppressed infatuation for me...’
‘Get out of my office!’
‘Certainly. We’ll think about the Supperette Club. Can’t make any promises.’
The stapler whizzed past my ear.
Laura rang to say she needed to talk about Iris. Camping had not been successful. Should she take ‘camping’ as a metaphor for life? Told her I didn’t have an opinion one way or the other. Laura sounded surprised. ‘But you must have an opinion. You’re my friend.’
‘Sorry, Laura, don’t want to talk or think at the moment.’
‘I’ll come down immediately.’
‘Please don’t.’
‘Please don’t? I’m Hurt and Offended of North London. Let me come down, I insist.’
‘No.’
September 25th
Georgie says I must carry on exactly as normal, that I mustn’t let her disrupt my newly fashioned life in any way. Which isn’t possible. Feel terrible. Oppressed. Everything I say sounds flat and commonplace. Sense of humour has gone awol and can’t imagine it ever coming back.
Went to Lorraine Carter’s Supperette Club with Georgie. I didn’t really intend to go but she’d seen it written on the calendar.
‘What’s this Margaret?’ she asked, trying to smile like she’d smile in the old days. ‘You haven’t let the grass grow under your feet.’
I tried to smile back. Replied in a light carefree voice, ‘I’ve only been once. It wasn’t too bad.’
‘Shall we go?’
‘Okay. Why not?’
On arriving, I was immediately cornered by the Samuel Pepys woman. By the time I got free, saw Georgie and Lorraine Carter on the far side of the room, chatting away like old friends. Didn’t feel confident enough to join them. Recognised a flicker of the old Georgie, how she lights up in the company of attractive women, and must admit LC can do attractive with anyone but me. Later asked Georgie, ‘Do you know Lorraine Carter?’
‘Yes. From years ago.’
Asked no more questions. Inside felt hot with all the jealousy of recent months. Caught Lorraine studying me with curiosity. What did I have to partner a woman like Georgie? But we are not partners. We are nothing. Hardly friends.
Realised something, or reaffirmed something, at the Supperette Club. I was carrying our plates of baked potato topped with chilli back to where Georgie was sitting in the smoking section, part of a group of women yet not taking part. She wore one of her lightish coloured suits from her time in Spain and unfamiliar leather loafers without socks. She smoked a cigarette, which she’d stopped doing at home. Although her head was quite still, her gaze was moving, sifting the crowd. I thought she was searching for me and I smiled - with pleasure and relief at being sought. She didn’t smile back. In fact she hadn’t noticed me at all. Her gaze passed over without seeing me. Georgie was searching the room for Stella or a woman who was like Stella. And if she’d seen someone, Margaret with her plates of steaming baked potato would have been forgotten. I doubt if Georgie would have even waited around to explain.
September 27th
Laura telephoned while Georgie was out and I told her what had happened. For once Laura seemed - quietened. Asked me how I felt? Said, just terrible. I want to go to sleep for a year.
She told me something interesting that she’d heard a character say in a film she’d seen with Iris. It had made her think about her own relationship. Surprisingly serious for Laura. That you can love somebody but if they always make you feel bad about yourself then you’re better off without them. And that is how Georgie makes me feel; like second best, or a stopgap or even a retirement home. I’ve thought back over our recent years together and I was feeling like that then, accepting her self absorption and reserve as the love a long-term relationship shakes down into.
I want to feel exciting, lovable, interesting - I want to feel that there’s still lots to find out about me, not as if I’m a book she’s read too many times. Am I ungrateful? I’ve prayed for Georgie to come back. Seen her as the missing piece of my life puzzle. But life isn’t a jigsaw with a finished picture at the end of it. The picture can change. Can renew itself. Can’t it?
September 28th
Miriam and the vicar called in.
Miriam said, ‘We’re all worried about you Margaret. You may not be aware of this but you missed the Harvest Festival, although I specifically reminded you about it on Friday lunchtime. Mum and Mrs Ferguson were hoping to see you. They’d arranged the flowers and they looked terrific. Really, we’re very disappointed...’
At this juncture the vicar touched Miriam’s arm and Miriam stopped talking.
‘What Miriam’s trying to express is her concern for you. She says you don’t look well and indeed you don’t. We were passing by and wondered if you might like a walk in the park with us?’
Outside I heard Georgie’s car draw up. I said dully, ‘Georgie’s come back.’
‘But that’s good news, surely?’
‘No, Miriam, it’s not that simple.’ And then Georgie was opening the front door and calling out, ‘Margaret, are you in?’
‘Front room,’ I said.
An awkward half-hour. I made tea. Produced biscuits. The four of us moved into the kitchen. Miriam, her vicar and myself sat down, while Georgie paced restlessly up and down, usually with her back to us so she could stare intently out of the window and patio doors. She didn’t join in the conversation, which was mostly about St Dunstan’s, TM Accountancy or Miriam’s mother.
Once, the vicar asked her, ‘Do you have any deeply held beliefs?’ and Georgie grinned, but not very pleasantly, and said, ‘I don’t think I do.’
After they’d gone she said, ‘What a pair of bores those two are.’
‘I admit they weren’t at their best but they’d come to see how I was. They weren’t prepared for you.’
‘Even at their best I couldn’t imagine they’d be scintillating.’
‘Well obviously not by yours and Stella’s standards, but then who would be?’
‘Don’t get annoyed. I wasn’t including you in with them.’
‘Well I do include me in with them - Miriam is my friend.’
I could tell from Georgie’s expression that she was getting irritated. She made me think of a wild horse desperate to shake off reins and rider.
‘Yes, Margaret, boring Miriam is your friend, daft Deirdre is your friend and lecherous Laura is your friend - a fine trio. Hardly one decent working brain between the three of them. Why surround yourself with these..
.losers?’
‘You’re the only loser I know,’ I said slowly; each word like a drop of freezing water.
Her head jerked back and she stared at me. I swallowed a bitter laugh. In our ten years together I had never been rude to Georgie. I’d withheld any critical opinion, smoothed over disagreements, gone along with her. She walked out of the kitchen. I heard the front door slam and then the roar of her car engine.
September 29th
Georgie back by the time I got home from work at lunchtime. She’d been away all night. Sitting up in bed waiting for her to come home I read through my diary from the very beginning. Not all painful reading; some of it even made me laugh, but not like I laughed over EM Delafield’s Diary.
An interesting discovery. From February 25th, the evening I began to realise that Georgie no longer loved me:
I stared into a rather sombre face. Tanned, but not like Georgie’s tanning booth tan. Tanned like someone gets when they work outdoors. The woman must have been at least ten years my junior. She was my height; brown hair cut short, steady brown eyes. Nothing really distinctive about her, and yet the thought sped across my mind that she was quite unique. Not in an immediate, physical attraction way, just an observation, a first impression. And I knew absolutely that this first impression was true.
Janice! All these months I’ve been puzzling over just why Janice looked so familiar and now I know.
Asked Georgie where’d she’d been all night. She said, ‘I slept in the car. A bit chilly but I’ve done it before.’
‘When you were with Stella?’
‘Yes. Towards the end we had some almighty rows.’
Now we are polite. We respond to each other over barriers of our own making. Somehow we have set each other free. I don’t quite understand how this has happened.
September 30th
I’ve asked Georgie to leave.
October
October 5th
Georgie left today. The third time, counting in February, April and now. Each leaving has been very different: shock, despair, miserable relief. She’s found a flat in Brighton, which is twenty miles away, not far from where she used to live. At this moment I can’t imagine we could ever be friends in the future.
Spent some time thinking that these last few weeks – how, as miserable as they’ve been, they’ve been good for me. I’ve seen Georgie objectively and realised that the woman I loved was in part a fabrication, part a memory. How I’d held on to the Georgie of our early years, been comforted by rare glimpses.
I remember seeing us both reflected in the supermarket window months ago, when we’d physically differed so much - see now that our outer differences were an (incarnation?) of our inner differences.
Thinks: in my imagination Georgie grew taller, more attractive, cleverer, sophisticated, while I dwindled into small, indistinct, boring, unattractive and finally worthless. Discussed this phenomenon with Laura rather than Deirdre, as Deirdre too blanket dismissive of unpleasant thoughts or considerations. Laura surprised me. Said she was aware that I’d come to see myself negatively in comparison to Georgie and hadn’t known how to deal with it. Said I became a shadow or the grey background to the colourful desirable woman I saw Georgie to be, enabling Georgie to become even more colourful and desirable. Laura felt that, in the months after Georgie had left, miserable old bat that I was, my old self had started to re-surface.
Laura reveals that she is now in therapy and finding it all very interesting, particularly information relevant to herself. Iris is also in therapy and they’re getting on better than they ever have before, discussing their mutual self-fascination.
Generously, Laura brought the conversation back to me saying, ‘Not laying down any hard and fast law here, Margaret, but I think with you the key thing is to feel the same size as any future partner. This in the abstract of course. If you feel small and worthless, take that as a sign that something’s going wrong.’
‘What about you? How do you think you and Iris suit each other?’
‘We are different faces of the same coin.’
‘Will I ever meet her?’
‘Hard to tell. You know me, I like to compartmentalize.’
October 7th
Meet Nic and Simone in town late night shopping. This time they don’t try to avoid me.
‘How you doing?’ Nic asks, putting her arms round my shoulders.
‘Ok.’
‘It didn’t work out then?’
‘No.’
Simone asks, ‘For the best, perhaps?’
‘I think so.’
‘Will you see her again?’
‘Too early to say.’
They treat me to fisherman’s pie and baked beans in Debenham’s.
October 9th
Lorraine Carter has been meek and mild to everybody for at least a week. Noreen says that she’s probably dating and getting ‘it’ regularly. Noreen complains that she’s not getting ‘it’ regularly at all. She really likes Peter, in fact if he wasn’t such a slow coach she thinks she could fall for Peter, but in the meantime she’s got to fill the vacancy any way she can.
‘What do you do when you’re frustrated, Margaret?’ she asks.
I tell her, ‘My partner left me recently so I’m not bothering too much about the lack of ‘it’ at the moment.’
‘Oh shame!’ says Noreen. ‘Did he go off with another woman?’
‘It’s painful, Noreen.’
‘Sorry. Must be awful. Did he go off with another woman?’
‘Too painful to talk about.’
October 11th
Feeling a bit better, although it is still easy to get shaky when anxious. Also back to normal with Miriam. We have resumed eating our sandwiches on the office step and Tom has retreated behind his closed door.
Miriam tells me that all is not well in the Tom and Barry camp. Tom has developed an aversion to Barry’s feet. Says he’s been over-exposed to them. Has told Miriam, ‘They stick out at the end of the bed even though we’ve got a king-size. Every morning I see them: long, white and bony. I’ve appealed to Barry not to wiggle his toes. His last partner found toe wiggling a turn-on. Believe me, Miriam, as far as I’m concerned there’s nothing worse than white, wiggling toes.’
The vicar suggested Barry wear socks in bed of a colour decided by Tom, but Tom says it’s too late for socks; his aversion has travelled right up Barry’s legs. Leg warmers perhaps?
However Miriam and I are relieved that it’s Tom going off Barry rather than the other way round. Miriam said, ‘I couldn’t stand anybody else with a bleeding heart in this office.’ As always her sympathetic self.
October 12th
Prune Tilly’s rose bush then stop for boiled eggs and toasted soldiers. From my position at the kitchen table I’m able to watch Deirdre’s Lord Dudley entertaining himself with a gigantic caterpillar. At least I think it’s a gigantic caterpillar. Very nasty looking: oily black, fat, about four inches long with a sort of hard carapace. Each time it curls up, Lord Dudley pokes it open with his paw. This scene, depicting nature red in tooth and claw, is distracting me from my soft boiled eggs. I go outside and find a plank of wood. Bat the bug behind the plant pots. Have uneasy thought that were Janice with me she would disapprove of my batting bug. Put Janice from mind. Return to eggs. As I settle down, the bug crawls back into view. Seems quite chirpy. Sort of ‘second round’. Lord Dudley delighted. Out I go again and bat bug firmly back behind the pots, while also registering what a fearsomely disgusting bug it is. Could not imagine what it will turn into; something slimy with scales and wings. Not a dragon. A small dragon would be okay. Surround bug with more pots. Return to stone cold eggs. One of my toasted soldiers a little blackened and curled, looks suspiciously like batted bug. Cannot eat any more. Bug again appears. Thinks: if this bug was a human being or a scruffy animal I would not keep batting it. Go out with old tea cup. Upend over bug. Slide piece of cardboard underneath. Feel queasy as I meet with invisible resistance. Carry teacup e
tc up slope and push cup, cardboard and bug through gap in fence into Mr Wheeler’s garden. Turn round to find Lord Dudley in hot pursuit. He also disappears through gap in fence.
October 14th
Find half-finished letter beginning Storm Force 8! and can’t think what it refers to. Have not read the Listening Ear for several weeks. In Deirdre’s having tea and muesli bar (Atkins has been deserted for muesli and okra diet). See this week’s issue. Deirdre follows my gaze and says, ‘Definitely not my kind of newspaper. Martin buys it for the letter page. Some daft correspondence with an A. Oakley. He’s convinced she’s a spinster, embittered, possibly retired or in part time work.’
‘Could almost be me.’
‘That’s what I said, but you’re off the hook. Martin says you’re too young and incapable of either base cunning or crass stupidity. Another muesli bar?’
‘No thanks. Should you eat five at a time?’
Deirdre nods her head. ‘Absolutely. I’m dieting, but no way am I going to starve myself. Anyway, now A. Oakley’s gone silent, Martin says she’s running scared or in a loony bin.’
Murmur that ‘loony bin’ rather an unpleasant term and also say ‘poor woman’.
‘Nonsense. It’s a fantastic word. I love it. She’s in a bin full of loonies. Completely gaga!’
Wince internally. Later, at home, reflect on why and how my letter writing has turned into an issue with Martin who I’m very fond of? Move on to, is Martin secretly enjoying the cut and thrust? Move on to whether I should send one last letter or stop this instant?