Georgy Girl

by Margaret Forster

‘If you’re waiting for someone, please have a seat,’ said the receptionist. She waved a hand graciously to one of the mauve and white striped chairs.

  ‘Why should you think that?’ said George.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Why did you automatically think I was waiting for someone? Didn’t you expect me to be a customer myself?’

  The receptionist froze. Conversation didn’t come within the strictly marked limits of her role in life.

  ‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ she said severely.

  ‘Well, I am a customer.’

  ‘What do you wish?’ said the girl frigidly.

  ‘My hair done, of course.’

  ‘Done?’ echoed the girl, and then, surveying her fingertips, ‘What exactly did Madam want done with it? Shampoo and set? Cut? Styled?’

  ‘The lot,’ said George.

  ‘When would you like an appointment?’ said the girl disbelievingly.

  ‘Now,’ said George.

  The girl slammed the book shut.

  ‘I’m afraid we have nothing today,’ she said, ‘we’re booked a long way in advance.’

  George frowned. If she didn’t have it done now she never would. She stood uncertainly, swinging her bag and biting her lip. A young man with hair that looked as though a mouse had been at it came rushing in. The receptionist sat up, smartly.

  ‘Where’s my client? I’ve been waiting a whole two minutes and I’m getting just a teeny bit angry.’

  ‘She hasn’t turned up, Monsieur Herbert.’

  ‘I can see that dear – who is it? Anyone? Let me see – my God, I’ve never heard of her. For a regular I might wait an itsy-witsy bit, but for a casual . . .’

  Bert shuddered with distaste.

  ‘Can you take me instead?’ said George. Bert appealed to her. The receptionist looked horrified but Monsieur Herbert nodded and swept George with him into his salon, conjuring up a girl as he went to find her an overall. George had to take her coat off and struggle into a flimsy creation of be-frilled blue nylon that did up at the back. On George’s broad back the strings snapped. The junior giggled, and said she would have to leave Madam open. Open, George strode through the ranks of women to the empty chair indicated. She sat down and glared at herself in the mirror.

  She looked terrible. There was a long drop on her long nose and she didn’t have a handkerchief. Surreptitiously she glanced round and found the whole row looking at her. Their expressions were languid and bored but indescribably elegant. George drew a corner of her smock across the end of her nose and the last remaining string burst at the back.

  Herbert suddenly appeared in the mirror. George rehearsed what she would say about how she wanted her hair done, but he wasn’t interested. Solemnly, the maestro removed the grubby piece of black ribbon adorning her pony tail, and gravely unravelled the elastic band underneath. He held out his hand to the junior who stood at his side with a loaded tray. ‘Scalpel,’ thought George.

  ‘Comb,’ said Herbert.

  He combed George’s long hair, long enough to sit on. He combed it for hours, clearly thinking hard. George’s head ached as she sat watching the straw-like strands flutter between the teeth of the comb. At last, Herbert made his decision.

  ‘Scissors,’ he commanded.

  George froze. She didn’t dare interrupt, but she couldn’t bear the thought of having her hair cut – she would look a fright. But then she looked a fright anyway, that’s why she was there. Herbert’s scissors snipped and six inches fell to the ground, to be instantly whisked away by an invisible brush in case it got in the way of Herbert’s feet. He’d left a good twenty inches of hair.

  The hospital feeling continued as George was led away to have her hair washed. She ended up lying nearly flat on her back with her neck resting on what felt like a guillotine block. No one spoke to her. All around she could hear juniors and clients chattering happily but she had nothing to say. Herbert, when he re-appeared, wasn’t wasting much time. He got through a gigantic pile of rollers in about ten minutes, whisking hair round them and laying them against George’s scalp as though they were railway lines. When the last was rigidly in place he crowned the edifice with a length of net after spraying it with a solution that smelt vile enough to be an insecticide.

  The time under the dryer passed agonizingly slowly. George sat and thought about what she would look like. Stupid. Jos would laugh and make some crass remark that would make her cry and then spend all evening apologizing, while Meredith would look on her with her superior smile. Maybe not. Maybe she would be transformed and Jos would say he never knew she could look like that. She had to stop herself dreaming such slushy dreams. No miracles were to be expected. All she wanted was to look reasonable.

  Her heart pounded as Herbert undid the rollers and reached for a brush. He spent hours on the back and she could see nothing. Then he got going on the sides and swept a great wave down on to her forehead. Her face was flushed from the dryer. A big, red, farmhouse face with this absurd frizz on top, like a great slab of congealed butter.

  Everyone was laughing. She could feel them. The junior tittered when she tipped her and the receptionist’s face said ‘I told you so.’ In the street people looked at her and laughed, she knew they did. She put her coat collar up and tried to run her hands through the mound on top of her head, but it refused to be disarranged. It looked terrible, terrible. She had to do something, get rid of it before she met someone she knew. She dashed down into a lavatory and rushed across to the washbasin and turned the cold tap full on until the basin was full. Someone asked her if she was all right. She plunged her head into the water again and again until she could feel it giving way, the sticky mass parting and sagging. By that time she had an audience. When should she take the hat round? She seized a comb and drew it through the soggy mess until her own hair stared at her again – straight, lank and only a little shorter. She took two clips from her bag and clipped the whole lot back behind each ear. There was bound to be a Woolworth’s not far off where she could buy a ribbon.

  George’s flat was in a small, decadent square in Battersea, just off Battersea Park Road. There was a triangle of grass in the middle of the square, fenced in with iron railings and with no visible means of entry. Nothing grew there to make it so sacred.

  There were four flats in the house. George’s was at the top – two rooms and a kitchen which she shared with Meredith and where Meredith and Jos were planning to live when they got married, if they ever did. No one had worried yet about where George was going to go. George had found the flat and cleaned it up and decorated it and then Meredith had deigned to move in.

  Meredith’s real name was Mary, but she wasn’t having any of that. She needed something much more original and pretty, so she chose Meredith and it sounded suitably soft and caressing on the lips of her numerous boyfriends. She and George had nothing whatsoever in common, except music, but sharing a flat worked because George laboured under the illusion that Meredith was divinely beautiful, extremely witty and very clever and that she, George, was lucky to have such a light in her life.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ said Meredith as George came in with her sopping hair.

  ‘The baths,’ said George. ‘I’m training to be an Olympic swimmer. This man came up to me in the street – he was a Scotsman actually – and said, “By God, lassie, ye’ve a fine pair of shoulders on ye,” and I said –’

  ‘Oh shut up,’ said Meredith, ‘there’s no salt.’

  ‘Close your eyes and I’ll make some. Just give me time to get my bunsen burner –’

  ‘I’m going to be late,’ said Meredith.

  ‘What’s that got to do with salt?’

  ‘Nothing. The salt’s for the chips Jos is going to bring for our supper. He’ll be furious if there isn’t any.’

  ‘Get some on your way then.’

  ‘No time.’

  ‘All right. I’ll get some.’

  ‘Good. Took you long enough to offer. Here, hold m
y coat while I find my gloves. Ta. How do I look?’

  ‘Sensational.’

  ‘No, really.’

  ‘Sensational.’

  ‘Oh, George, you’re hopeless.’

  She dithered around while George’s huge bulk blocked the door. She supposed that to George anyone looked sensational compared with herself, but she wished she wouldn’t be so mournful about it. Jos said really, she wasn’t bad-looking, but then he was very kind.

  ‘What time’s Jos coming?’ shouted George as Meredith retreated down the stairs.

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘What time will you be back?’

  ‘Eight. Keep him happy.’ Meredith thought how nice it was to be able to say that sort of thing to one’s flat-mate and not worry about her carrying out the command too literally and snatching one’s man away.

  George went into the bedroom and started hanging up all the clothes Meredith had thrown on the floor. Most of them were very scruffy and creased and some were downright filthy. The hairbrush by the side of Meredith’s bed was thick with hairs and there were clips all over the place.

  When Jos came, she was still wearing her leather coat and her hair was dripping again because she’d decided there was still a bit of a wave left in it. Jos pushed the door open with one foot and stood there holding a great greasy newspaper parcel of chips.

  ‘You stink,’ George said.

  ‘Come and take them so I can get in,’ said Jos.

  George walked over and took them and marched through into the kitchen where she threw them in the wastebin with all the dirty cans.

  Jos started to hum pleasantly. He sat down in front of the fire, put his feet on the mantelpiece and his hands behind his head.

  ‘You naked underneath that coat?’ he asked.

  ‘Stark,’ said George.

  ‘Let’s ’ave a look then.’

  ‘It’s threepence.’

  ‘Too dear, dear.’

  George sat down on the rug and started to dry her hair. Jos stopped humming and there was dead silence. When her hair was dry, she went into the kitchen and started peeling vegetables to make some soup and cutting up meat to casserole it. It got hot with the oven on so she chucked her coat on to a chair. Jos jumped up and put it on and turned the collar up then leaned against the door chewing imaginary gum. George refused to laugh, so he took it off again and started helping with the vegetables.

  After a bit George said, ‘You humouring me?’

  Jos hesitated and then said, ‘Not exactly. You make me self-conscious.’

  ‘Good God, me?’

  ‘Yeh. I can’t stand people hating me.’

  ‘Don’t be mad.’

  ‘I’m not. You won’t even talk to me.’

  ‘I haven’t got anything to say. I’m not like Meredith with all her scintillating chat.’

  Jos squirmed and abruptly put down the knife he was using.

  ‘What you making anyway?’

  ‘Don’t change the subject. Why don’t you say what you’re thinking?’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Which was how could Meredith, such a pretty gay little girl, share a flat with a great clodhopper like me.’

  ‘Heh, this isn’t like you, George,’ said Jos.

  ‘No it isn’t, is it? Jolly back-slapping hockey stick George.’

  ‘Oh come on, George,’ said Jos.

  ‘My name is Georgina.’

  ‘Georgina then. What’s eating you? Don’t you feel well?’

  George threw the carrot she was peeling at him. It hit his spectacles and they fell on to the floor and broke and she sat on the floor beside them and cried. Blindly, Jos squatted down beside her and they both stared at the smashed lenses. Eventually, George stopped crying and started apologizing.

  ‘For God’s sake shut up,’ Jos said.

  They went next door and sat on the sofa. George closed her eyes and concentrated on letting the self-pity wash over her until the taste revolted her.

  ‘This is where I count my blessings,’ she said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Having two legs and arms and eyes and ears and so on, so it shouldn’t matter that I’m as ugly as sin.’

  Jos sighed and opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘No, don’t say anything. You don’t have to pretend I’m not.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to. You must know you’re just having some sort of seizure or something.’

  Having said it, he looked at her. Her mouth was too big and her jaw too heavy and that stupid pony tail didn’t help but she wasn’t ugly. Her figure was about fifty times better than Meredith’s.

  ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘you just miss being beautiful.’

  George smiled and then laughed and finally doubled up, until suddenly she felt Jos’s hands on her arms.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she snapped.

  ‘Christ,’ said Jos.

  He lit a cigarette and thought that if she had been naked under the coat he would have liked it. The trouble was you had to look at her so hard to see she was worth looking at and all the time he couldn’t make out whether she deliberately thought and tried to act as though she was ugly.

  Meredith came in at ten.

  ‘Kept the chips warm?’ she said.

  ‘Yeh. George put them where they’d keep hot.’

  ‘I threw them away,’ said George.

  ‘Well I hope you’ve got something else,’ said Meredith and sat on Jos’s knee where she kissed and cuddled him until George’s soup and casseroled steak were ready and on the table.

  When they were finished George said, ‘I’m going out.’

  ‘Good,’ said Meredith.

  ‘Where?’ said Jos.’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to? I mean, you’re not going because of us or anything?’ he said anxiously.

  ‘For God’s sake, don’t stop her,’ said Meredith.

  George left and they went to bed, or, at least, into the bedroom. Jos decided he didn’t really like Meredith and he didn’t know why he was there. He took his tie off and his shoes and sat on the end of the bed thinking what a little bitch she was and how good old George was worth ten of her. He realized ‘good old George’ wasn’t the way to think of her, and told himself to forget the leather coat and imagine a naked girl called Georgina. He vowed to call her Georgina from then on. He lay back and watched Meredith taking her stockings off. She had very hairy legs.

  ‘Why don’t you shave your legs?’ he said.

  ‘Why should I? They’re natural.’

  Jos smiled. She might have a moustache when she was older.

  ‘What you smirking at?’

  ‘I was just looking at the thin line of hair on your upper lip and wondering if you ought to have it electrically treated before it’s too late.’

  Because she was pretty and sought-after she just laughed. Jos watched with satisfaction what she thought were her sexy little ways, such as sliding out of her underslip by pulling the straps down instead of pulling the whole thing over her head. She was the most terrible exhibitionist.

  ‘Meredith,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How many times have you slept with me?’

  ‘Approx.?’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘Oh, six months on an average three times a week makes it seventy-two times. Heh, that’s pretty impressive. I’ve never slept that much with anyone else, bet you.’

  ‘Why do we go on when we don’t even like each other all that much?’

  ‘Because we’re sexy and like it.’

  She’d finished undressing.

  ‘Your toes are dirty,’ he said.

  She slapped his face, amiably, but hard, and then they made their usual tigerish love.

  Meredith slept and Jos lay awake. He’d met her in the orchestra when he took over the double bass for a two months spell while his friend, whose job it was, went into hospital for a stomach operation. She played one of the second violins. She looked a dr
eam with her wild mass of dark hair and her eyes closed in the delicate pale face. She played as if possessed. The entire male section of the orchestra was at her feet either musically, or sexually, or both, even though most of them knew she was a callous, cruel flirt. She’d slept around since she was seventeen and not a single one of the favoured knew what went on in her arrogant little head.

  At first, Jos remembered, he’d wanted to marry her, until after he’d known her about three weeks, when he decided nothing could be worse. She was so selfish it made his very straight hair curl with disgust. He’d tried reforming her but she resisted passionately, and now he just went on having this one-sided affair and satisfied his conscience by warning her repeatedly that any day now he would go off and leave her. She said she’d probably have gone first. Lately, he’d kept worrying about her having a baby. If they’d slept together seventy-two times, though, she must be sterile. He was sure he’d be crazy with worry if he was her. He would look after himself. The subject just didn’t interest Meredith.

  There was a rehearsal for the whole orchestra the next morning so Jos took Meredith down, then went for a walk along the river by himself. He had about five shillings to his name. There was a bitter east wind scudding along the river banks and grey clouds hung low and greedy over the Festival Hall. He started to walk down towards Westminster Bridge, holding himself rigid with cold and unable to relax inside his duffle coat. When he got there he stood at the bus stop and wondered whether it was worth going home if he was going to turn up for Todd’s party date. He’d said he would play though he hated one night stands. Todd would get paid, then share out the money about next Christmas, which did him a lot of good. Another few weeks of hanging on like this and then he’d have to go back to the bank, big joke.

  The party was, Todd said, a posh do. It was in Mayfair and given by the usual business tycoon with too much money and no taste. His name was James Leamington and it was a party for a particular reason so they had to practise a nauseating birthday tune. When they got there, they were shown into a large, gaudy room and hardly had time to unpack their instruments and get going before the usual types rolled up.

  Jos played mechanically, gazing aimlessly at the hordes around him, all twisting like nothing on this earth. There were big mirrors all round the room and he didn’t know how they could bear to watch themselves making such a bloody awful exhibition. There was one statuesque dame in particular, with an admiring throng all round, who made him sweat with embarrassment just to watch. She had a good sense of rhythm but she was overdoing it.