Diary of a Provincial Lesbian (24 page)

‘Will you continue seeing her?’

She shook her head. ‘She’s met someone else. Someone more flexible.’ Then she bowed her head and started crying.

At first I was frozen, could not even stretch out my hand to touch her. But she was so sad, so heartbroken that her sobs physically hurt me, forced me out of my chair. I put my arms around her and held her head against my breast saying, ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Georgie.’ All the time inside I was crying as well,
Why should I be sorry? Why should I?

September 22
^nd

This is all so odd. I can’t get a grip on the situation. When I imagined Georgie coming back - and hundreds of times I had imagined it - I’d

seen her asking forgiveness, admitting to making a terrible mistake. Stupid stuff,
You are the only one, Margaret. It’s taken this time apart to make me realise what my true feelings are.
And then a period of adjustment. Perhaps a better relationship built on new knowledge and reawakened emotions. In every daydream I’d never once thought I’d be sharing my home with a woman I hardly knew, who loved someone else but had nowhere else to go.

She’s in such a fragile state of mind. I watch how she touches the furniture: the corner of the table, the arm of the settee, a bookshelf, as if reassuring herself that they’re solid. She was never a talker, now she’s almost silent. She looks beaten down and inside I’m furious with this Stella person for reducing Georgie. It would be easier if I was furious with Georgie as well but I’m not. Which doesn’t mean...which doesn’t mean my feelings are the same as they were. Every morning I wake with a sinking sense in the pit of my stomach at another difficult, unresolved day to get through. Can’t make even the smallest plans.

 This evening Janice rang from a call box in the Lake District.

‘Margaret, I’m thinking of coming back early,’ she said. ‘Will you be around at the week-end?’

Told her that Georgie was home, that I couldn’t talk. There was a silence, apart from what I think was the sound of rain.

Then Janice sighed. She said, ‘Ok. You take care of yourself.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I will.’ But the line was already dead.

September 23
^rd

Met Deirdre in Debenham’s tea shop. Deirdre surrounded by shopping. Tells me with a wide smile that she can’t help being a Debenham’s girl, then sees my face and says, ‘Ok, sit down. I’ll get the drinks. Carrot cake or Danish?’

‘Carrot cake please,’ I say dully.

Sit with my head in my hands till Deirdre returns. She has bought hot chocolate to take away and cake in a bag; says, ‘Come on, we can’t talk in here.’

I follow her out to the car park. We get in the car and she drives down to the seafront. It is a vile wet day and we have the seafront to ourselves. I sit and stare at the waves pounding the beach only yards away, while Deirdre takes the tops off the Styrofoam cups.

‘Choccy’s boiling hot so go steady,’ she says. ‘Now spill the beans.’

Say, ‘It’s not working. It’s an appalling situation.’

‘Whatcha going to do?’

‘What can I do? Can’t turn on her while she’s so miserable. She needs support, affection, care.’

‘Oh give it a rest. Are you a prize mug or what? She dumped you, Margaret. Georgie was doing the dirty on you. Of course she’s miserable - because she can’t get what she wants. She’s not miserable because she’s let you down, made you unhappy for the best part of a year and is still making you unhappy. Let’s get a reality check here.’

Bow my head over cup. Feel it warm my face and tired eyes.

‘Do you still love her?’ Deirdre asks.

‘I don’t know. No, I do know. I want to make her happy again...’

Deirdre interrupts, ‘You haven’t made her happy in years. You can’t. You don’t have what she wants for her to be happy.’

Almost smiled. ‘Don’t pull any punches, Deirdre.’

‘I’m trying to make you see sense. Georgie is bad news. In less than a week she’s transformed you from a woman in recovery to a tearful wreck. You’re my friend. You’re Laura’s friend. You’re our friend. I want us to go out and have laughs like we’ve always done. I don’t want you doing the anxious chicken bit over a woman who only half-knows you’re alive. Sorry if that sounds cruel. Do you know, you’ve completely spoilt my Debenham’s Day? I’ve a good mind to take the stuff back.’

Whether I want to or not, Deirdre invariably makes me smile. ‘What did you buy, and I’m not a chicken?’

‘Hen, chicken. Whatever. I bought jersey bedding in cream and white. Molds to your body or that’s what it says on the wrapper. And an autumn raincoat; pea-green with a pink and pea tartan lining. Fabulous. Definitely won’t see another one like it in Bittlesea Bay. Ready for your cake?’

‘Yes.’

September 24
^th

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 25
^th

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 27
^th

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 28
^th

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 29
^th

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
.