Not Married, Not Bothered

by Carol Clewlow

  In the darkness, Archie’s mouth opened and closed again. He folded his arms across his chest.

  He said, ‘Actually, it wouldn’t have occurred to me, Riley.’

  * I once found myself at a car boot sale on a Sunday afternoon as a result of sex the night before (Alan). I’m still receiving counselling.

  * Although again, I’m forced to admit, it was this sort of thinking through which I came to grief with Lennie.

  * Even worse are the ones who want to co-opt your hobbies, want to go swimming just because you do (Michael), buy a mountain bike so you can go out together (hope you managed to get rid of the bike, Neil). Want to accompany you to the cinema or the theatre when really you’d much rather go with the Greek Chorus.

  † Eric. Jesus. Like I didn’t have enough problems with my own aged parent?

  T is for … Titles

  An important subject. You may wish to take notes.

  But first a short anecdote by way of illustration.

  I’m upstairs when the phone rings. I’m expecting Sophie to call so when it does I dash out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Three steps from the bottom I catch my foot in one of many holes in the stair carpet and at the same time on a tack holding it only mildly in place. It catches the soft flesh of the large toe on my left foot like it’s personal, like it’s seriously enjoying the experience. By the time I get to phone and grab the receiver the toe is bleeding profusely all over my pale Chinese washed silk rug – just about the smartest thing in my house and a present from Cass for my last birthday.

  ‘Mrs Gordon?’

  I know immediately the nature of this call. So would you had you heard it, and this because of the nature of the voice, which is always the same, a mixture of jauntiness and wheedling, the whole overlaid with a faint tinge of melancholy. But then you’d be melancholy too if you were working for a tenth of what you’d get doing the same job here, and furthermore had to do night school in Coronation Street and EastEnders just so you could convince your cold callees you were ringing from the West Midlands rather than New Delhi.

  ‘Mrs Gordon?’

  ‘No.’

  Because I’m not. I am, as we know, Miss Gordon.

  Which actually she knows, and this because she is familiar with everything about me. It’s all there down in front of her, which is why she’s calling me.

  She has:

  my full name

  my address

  my marital status

  my income

  quite possibly my spelling test results when I was ten, and for all I know the precise contents (number, colour and condition) of my knicker drawer.

  In short, whatever else she knows or does not know about me, she is perfectly well aware that this is indubitably, irrevocably, inextricably a spinster household.

  Yet still she asks …

  ‘Mrs Gordon?’

  Mrs Gordon, do you have:

  double glazing

  plumbing insurance

  electrical insurance

  life insurance

  loft lagging

  cavity-wall insulation

  broadband

  Or in this case:

  windows

  ‘Mrs Gordon, can I ask you? Do you have Windows?’

  For a moment I’m bemused. In fact I’m so bemused I do what I did above. I put a capital W on the windows, thinking it must mean Bill Gates’ Windows. And I’m about to answer in the negative (like Eve I’m an Apple girl) when it comes to me.

  It’s not Bill Gates’ Windows at all she’s interested in.

  It is. It really is …

  ‘You mean the square things made of glass, front and back, I look out of.’

  Look, here’s the way it goes (and check it out if you don’t believe me). When dealing with new female customers sales people always use the term ‘Mrs’, and they do this thanks to an error that occurred several million years ago when dinosaurs ruled the earth and a few of them went into marketing. Armed only with a flip chart and a slide rule they worked out that when cold calling, ‘Mrs’ was by far the safest option. As a one-size-fits-all courtesy title, its use would gratify those legitimately able to claim this form of address while at that same time flattering and gladdening the heart of those not so lucky.

  Ah, bless.

  In short, address Mrs Bun the Baker’s Wife as Miss Bunn and you’ll be down a snake before you start, without a hope in hell of flogging her that extremely dubious additional plumbing insurance. For what married woman wants to be considered a spinster? By contrast, compliment Miss Bunn the spinster daughter by addressing her as Mrs, and you’ll be up a ladder and signing her up before you can say Not Covered By The Policy.

  Now there’s a surprising thing about all this, and one I wouldn’t have learnt was it not for the windows episode, and in particular the torn toe, which took me into my health centre for a couple of stitches and afterwards into Hocus Pocus for some consolatory chocolate cake and coffee. And which is where Magda revealed she wished to be referred to as ‘Mrs’ following her marriage.

  ‘I’ve decided to take the title,’ this like it came with a castle and fishing rights and several thousand acres of prime Scottish upland.

  ‘Really. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well … isn’t it a bit … you know … unliberated?’

  ‘Not at all. I’m using it in its traditional form.’ (Magda always says the word ‘traditional’ in a hushed tone.)

  Because it turns out that all those cold callers have history on their side. Their blanket use of the term ‘Mrs’ does no more than bring the whole thing full circle. For pre-twentieth century, ‘Mrs’ was merely a title of respect, used by married and single alike. To differentiate between the two – this being an important matter for many a married women – the husband’s Christian name was adopted as well as his surname in formal address.

  It’s a habit that continues to this day among the older generation. You may have noticed it. I remember it particularly from my junior reporter years when Sophie and I would stand shivering at the church gate, collecting the names of the mourners at the funeral of some town worthy (Mervyn always somehow tied up writing his column), there, as likely as not, to be fixed by two pairs of steely eyes from each woman, a pair of their own and another of the dead fox complete with face and paws clasped about their shoulders. Their very expressions beneath their large black hats, and the way they gave their large bosoms an accusatory heave implied that the country was going to the dogs and a mere glance at Sophie and me would show why. They pronounced their names in severe, dictatorial tones, this in the manner of those who knew beyond a shadow of doubt that they were single-handedly holding back the wicked sweep of fashion:

  ‘Mrs John Smith …’

  ‘Mrs Harry Jones …’

  ‘Mrs Ernest Wilkins …’

  Indeed, my own dear mother still abides by the same old rule. In yet another swipe at all those damn spinsters, all letters that drop onto her mat come firmly addressed to ‘Mrs George Gordon’.

  ‘It’s the co-rr-ect form of address,’ she insists when I remark upon it, rolling out the r’s as she always does when co-rr-ecting me on matters of etiquette.

  ‘Anyway, it helps to keep his dear name alive,’ this last said with a dab at her eyes, adding yet another irony to that sum of all ironies, which I sometimes see in the form of a cone-shaped pile in that pine-fresh front room, rather in the manner of the one that Richard Dreyfuss built as he went steadily bonkers at the end of Close Encounters.

  Interestingly enough, however, there is one thing upon which my mother and I agree when it comes to titles. The utter absurdity on all fronts of the title ‘Ms’.

  ‘Like some bluebottle trying to get out of a window,’ according to Sophie.

  These days I’m more than happy to use ‘Miss’. Much, much more than happy – in fact I’m delighted. I love the soft sweet sibilan
t hiss of the thing, besides which I think it suits me. If I thought it would help, I’d pin my hair in a bun, this to fit in with the image, only, of course, I have no hair now, it being half an inch all over.

  Meanwhile, the interesting thing about the old Ms thing is that while this piece of feminist flummery never could have worked without the participation of the spinster, it never was of the slightest interest or use to her, she having no call to disguise her status. In retrospect it can be seen to have been coined merely for the benefit of her married sister, she for whom getting wed was still the ultimate ambition, and this so that she could use it to pretend that she might not be.

  ‘Go figure,’ as Sophie says, and I never heard it put better.

  It annoys me now, thinking about this, how we spinsters played along with all this, ignoring the distinguished and noble title already in our possession.

  Miss.

  A nom de guerre that could be worn with pride and which, this to my shame, sometime in the early seventies I began striking out along with everyone else, ticking that damn Ms box on every form put in front of me.

  ‘Not everyone.’

  This is true.

  Alone among our peers, and this I remember, Sophie would have no truck with ‘Ms’. But then Sophie would have no truck with any sort of title. Asked whether she was Miss or Mrs, even in the days of her youth she’d reply curtly, ‘Neither. Just Sophie. Sophie Aitchison.’

  Apart from anything else, there was the awkward ugly nature of Ms when we attempted to pronounce it.

  Mizzzzz. Exactly like the demented bluebottle identified by Sophie, those harsh zzz’s contrasting so sharply to the sweet sibilant sss’s of the Missss we’d surrendered.

  Another disadvantage was the way it laid itself open to mockery and insinuation, particularly with those zzz’s. I remember how Lennie would say it – ‘Mizzzz Gordon’ – lingering over it, those brown eyes full of scornful pleasure. Proving every time he said it the terrible irony of the thing: that the supposedly liberated Mizzzz Gordon was becoming more enslaved by him by the minute.

  One day, arriving unseen in the bar to pick him up, the sort of bar where I should never have been, where I would never have been had I not let my life descend to that level, I caught him, elbows on the bar, boasting to the men around him.

  ‘Yeah,’ blowing out a satisfied plume of smoke, ‘I reckon I’ve just about knocked her into shape.’

  A chill of shame went down my spine at the words, knowing who the ‘her’ was and just why all those men around him were laughing admiringly.

  Oh, yes, I got into some bad ways with Lennie, no question about it.

  But at least thanks to him I kicked the habit of Mizzzz Gordon.*

  * It’s an interesting fact that men have never shown the same interest in evolving a title system as women have. I suppose you could say that the now scarcely used Esquire was the equivalent of the generic Mrs in as much as it was used to denote social status. Master, now used only for boys, was once a title for a young man not yet married but would never have been used for an older bachelor (e.g., Farmer Boldwood in Far from the Madding Crowd). Thus, despite the presence of the bachelor, there has never really been a male equivalent of the spinster’s Miss. What is clear (and not to the credit of our sex) is that men have never shown the same need as women have to signal their marital status by means of title and/or form of address.

  ‘Oh, pleeeease. Get real.’ Sophie’s look is scathing when I mention it. ‘The average man’s interested in concealing his married status, not advertising it.’

  U is for … The Unsuitable Liaison

  If every spinster should have a lost love, according to legend, then for sure she should have an unwise liaison. It’s another staple of stage and screen and novel, the fey lonely spinster trying to recover her lost years by succumbing to the charms of the odd-job man, or the pool boy or some penniless old roué pretending to be a minor member of the Habsburgs she meets on a walking holiday. The vision is one of some hankie-clasping, sal volatile hysteric, ever at risk from the emotional effects of her unfulfilled state, in particular her empty womb (and thanks a bundle for that, Sigmund). All of which could be dismissed as an anachronism, a hoary old chestnut way past its prime if that vision didn’t continue to exert its influence, albeit in a watered-down version, even to this day.

  Take my mother’s paper (oh, if you would, if you only would, dear Reader). Only this morning it positively exulted in the news that a survey in the states showed the mental health of wives to be twice as good as that of spinsters (my mother’s paper, natch, being firmly of the Married Party). According to the figures, fifty per cent of wives interviewed claimed their general state of emotional health was good or excellent, as opposed to only twenty-five per cent of single women.* And I could mock all this. And indeed I do. Trust me. I’ve got that old Sword of Truth right here by my desk and even now my palm is itching to swing it in the air. I could say, and so I do, that to claim the spinster is at risk from every roving-eyed pool boy or renegade member of the Habsburg household is no more than an old wives’ tale (taking particular delight in that expression). I could say all that hysteria stuff is just another example of that enduring cliché-ridden thinking; that the spinster is as emotionally well-adjusted and as level-headed as the next woman. And indeed I do say that. I do. I do.

  However, in saying all this, constrained as I am, as always, by the need for absolute honesty, I none the less feel obliged to add a small caveat.

  Unfortunately the caveat goes by the name of Lennie.

  * * *

  ‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns,’ I hissed at Sophie, that first night she introduced me to Denis. Because it didn’t quite seem fair of fate that she should hand Denis a promotion that would bring him from the city to our small country town, and that having got him there she should then ensure he was thrown together with Sophie.

  ‘Never forget a face,’ he said, stroking his chin as Sophie was at the bar. ‘Remind me.’ But I never got the chance.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said, and now he was smiling broadly in that utterly amoral, we’re all friends together here/I smoke the odd joint myself way that CID men do.

  ‘So … whatever did happen to our good friend Lennie?’

  I read something once in Anna Karenina, never a favourite book of mine but still it struck a chord. It’s after she goes off with Vronsky. She begins to feel herself slipping down through society, through the strata and the layers she’d never noticed before. Which is how I began to feel, increasingly, during those two years with Lennie.

  It’s a scary thing the first time a law-abiding citizen comes face to face with the strong arm of the Law, particularly when it arrives in a police helicopter and half a dozen panda cars. I was working at my desk when I first heard the awful clatter, so loud it seemed to be landing on the roof, and the next thing I knew I was looking into the bright white beam of light coming in through my window. It seemed to cut through my life, dividing it up between that previous, unctuous law-abiding existence and what my life had become with Lennie.

  ‘Crap. You break the law all the time. Everyone does. What’s that in your hand, for a start?’ And, of course, he was right. Between my fingers as I discussed it was one of the long, thin, elegant joints he rolled with matchless dexterity.

  ‘And what about your accounts?’ Another man might have sneered but Lennie never sneered; instead there was that cool carelessness. ‘What about all those “expenses” you get as a writer? All those weekends in expensive hotels and health clubs you pretended was “research”.’

  ‘You came with me.’ But my voice was that of a mutinous child and I could hear it.

  I can still feel my stomach falling away at the thought of what my life became with Lennie. There were so few good times in the two years we were together, so little damn pleasure. A few dinners out, a night at the theatre, a few luxury weekends away, all of which I paid for. And all of this, on my part, in a sort of dream, as if I w
as being taught to make do with so little.

  One night, sad, stoned and full of careless courage, I said, ‘Sometimes I think you don’t even like me that much, do you?’

  He said, ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t like anybody that much, Riley.’

  It’s when I look back on a night like that, one of so many nights, wasted nights spent smoking, drinking, wrangling spikily, making love afterwards, that the whole affair seems more than anything else like one of Magda’s incarnations, as if that person curled up there on the sofa with that joint in her hand, trying to convince herself with every drag that this is a bona fide relationship, was someone else entirely.

  I find it hard too to plot the progress of the affair with Lennie, how in particular it came about that I moved so seamlessly from that first night when he represented no more than a source of that easy uncomplicated sex, to the moment where I found myself crawling on the ground at his feet amid the wreckage. Of all the characters in this drama, he’s been the hardest to pin down. One minute I think I’ve got him and then he’s slipped away from me.

  ‘I never really knew you at all, did I?’ I said on that last day. He looked up from snapping his briefcase closed. Gave me a long look.

  He said, ‘There’s nothing to know, Riley.’

  I guess he was right about that. There was a vacancy about Lennie, an emptiness where the real person should have been, which is how I came to create him, colour him in. Which is why I guess it’s so hard for me now to paint the ‘real’ Lennie, why his portrait seems to change from day to day, why, for instance when I use those broad brushstrokes, turning him into no more than the archetypal con man, I know that it’s too simple, and this because actually he wasn’t that good at it. In the old days, still angry about the loss of the money, I’d talk loosely about Lennie ‘ripping me off’ but all these years on, and with that old benefit of hindsight, I’m not even sure it’s the right term.