Georgy Girl

by Margaret Forster

  By Thursday afternoon, George had to concede defeat. Anyway, Meredith was being sick almost constantly and was in no fit state for a real celebration. So George went out and bought all the most extravagant and delicious foods she could think of and prepared in secret a sumptuous meal. She did more than that. She went out again and bought Meredith a wedding dress. She got some very odd looks when she braved the carpeted acres of the hushed Bridal Departments and asked to see simple, short dresses to fit size 34 inch bust and 36 inch hips. They brought her lace and satin creations which would have drowned Meredith and which she would, in any case, have torn into shreds. rather than wear. At seven p.m., with only half an hour to go, George strode into the teenage department of Fenwicks and lifted a straight, plain white silk shift from the rack. It had a small border of lace round the neck and armholes but otherwise it was strictly and severely unornamental.

  She took it home shyly, and unwrapped the delicate thing from its whispering folds of tissue paper. Gently, she laid it on Meredith’s bed, and rummaged around until she found the white satin shoes to go with it. They were slightly scuffed, like all Meredith’s shoes. She put them on the floor beneath the dress and waited apprehensively for Meredith and Jos to come in.

  When they did, George hovered excitedly around them until Meredith told her irritably to sit down and keep still and stop bumbling around like a fat old bee. Humbly, George sat and waited until Meredith would find a reason for going into the bedroom. In agony, she followed her to the door when she did and hardly dared to peep in to see what the reaction was.

  Meredith looked at the dress. She could almost hear George’s suspense. It was a very beautiful garment. She fingered it silently, and then, slipping off what she was wearing, pulled it over her head.

  ‘You look lovely,’ said George.

  ‘Yes,’ said Meredith. She stood looking at herself for a minute, then took it off and put her trousers and sweater back on again. It was impossible to say anything. If she enthused and thanked George it would all be too slushy for words. The deeper implications of the gift were something to shy away from.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘It was unnecessary but very nice of you. I’ll remember you in my will.’

  It seemed to satisfy George. She sang as she made supper for them all and then chattered incessantly while they ate.

  ‘Well Jos,’ she said, gaily, ‘tomorrow the secret will be out.’

  ‘Which one?’ said Jos.

  ‘Mrs what – what Mrs will Meredith be?’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ said Meredith, ‘she’s right. What’s your awful surname?’

  ‘That,’ said Jos, ‘is the most affected thing I’ve ever heard in my life. To pretend you don’t know my name when you’re going to marry me tomorrow is ludicrous.’

  ‘I know,’ said Meredith. ‘I might not be able to go through with it. It isn’t Grubb is it?’

  ‘No, it is not.’

  George clapped her hands. ‘It’s like Rumpelstiltskin,’ she exclaimed. ‘If you can’t guess his name by midnight you can’t marry him. You’ll have to send spies out all over the Kingdom to try to find out. This is me being a spy.’ She snatched the tablecloth and draped it round her and began slouching round the room hissing and shushing.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Meredith, ‘tell us it, quick.’

  ‘Jones,’ said Jos, solemnly.

  ‘You’re joking,’ said Meredith, aghast. ‘No you’re not. I remember now, you did tell me. Jos Jones. Mrs Meredith Jones. Jos, you’ll have to change it. I can’t give up Montgomery for Jones. You couldn’t ask me to.’

  It had the effect of making them all happy and close, George no less than the other two. The tension that Jos had felt disappeared, at least for an hour or so. It was a terrible mistake to marry Meredith and he knew this quite clearly. He didn’t think of it lightly. Even before the baby was born they would be like strangers most of the time, and afterwards he couldn’t imagine what disastrous results there would be. Already, he knew he must find a job, get out of George’s flat, reach some level of security. What the hell Meredith was doing he didn’t know. She said she wanted the baby and she wanted to marry him and no, she had no idea why. He kept trying to tell her what a momentous thing it would be to have a child, that she couldn’t just do it because she felt like it. She said she could think of no better motive.

  Jos forgot for a while and relaxed. George, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, was taking a great delight in the approaching wedding, if it could be called that. He’d expected her to be moody and sullen and, he supposed, consumed with envy – not because he was any great catch but simply the fact of a marriage that wasn’t hers and which emphasized her own single state even more heavily. He was sure no girl liked to see her friend get married, even if it was a marriage of haste and convenience. He watched carefully to see the cracks in George’s bright and cheery façade, but there were none. She was genuinely thrilled and excited.

  In the morning, they had to wait for Meredith to stop being sick before they could go to the Registry Office. She seemed to take an extra long time about it.

  ‘We’re going to be late,’ Jos announced. ‘Can’t you hurry up?’

  The only answer was a violent retch, followed by a curse. ‘You can go by your bloody self,’ yelled Meredith. ‘Do you think I can help being sick?’

  ‘Please,’ said George. ‘I’ll help you get dressed if you feel better.’

  ‘I don’t feel better and even if I did I’m not a half-wit. I can tie my own shoe laces now.’

  She came out of the bathroom, white and shaking, and lay on the bed. Nothing would move her. Jos settled in a chair and picked up the paper while George hovered miserably around offering coffee and toast and aspirins, but was refused with a snarl.

  ‘I think I’ll just go for a walk,’ Jos said.

  ‘A walk?’ said George, incredulous.

  ‘Yes. I’m not doing much good here am I? If she wants to get married she can meet me there at eleven. If not, see you later.’

  Tearfully, George watched him walk out and turned anxiously to Meredith.

  ‘You must go,’ she pleaded.

  Meredith went on staring at the ceiling.

  ‘For the baby’s sake,’ she added.

  Meredith closed her eyes. ‘George, you’re the bloody end,’ she said. ‘Just go away, anywhere.’

  George trailed into the kitchen. There didn’t seem much point in preparing her splendid lunch, but it was something to do. Unhappily, she washed the salad and made a dressing, then trimmed the three steaks and put them under the grill with a knob of butter on top of each one. All the time, she listened for any indication that Meredith was getting dressed, but she couldn’t hear a sound. She put the asparagus in a pan. They said unhappy marriages were worse than being left on the shelf. She shouldn’t push Meredith. But it would be so wonderful to be married to Jos.

  ‘Meredith please!’ she screamed, and then burst into noisy tears. She put her arms down on the formica top of the fridge and bawled.

  ‘What’s all the fuss?’

  Meredith had suddenly appeared, cool and beautiful in her white dress.

  ‘If you don’t hurry up and stop making such a disgusting exhibition of yourself we’ll certainly be late and it’ll be your fault.’ She picked some lettuce out of the bowl and crunched it noisily.

  ‘You’re going?’ stammered George.

  ‘Well, I’m not wearing this to be sick in.’

  They hurried out of the house, with George wanting to run, and Meredith refusing. Frantically, George tried to hail a taxi but none passed them. All the way to the Office she was holding Meredith, disbelievingly, with one hand, and fingering the ring in her coat pocket with the other. Jos had given it to her as she was best man and bridesmaid rolled into one. It felt icy and smooth under her finger tip. She kept glancing at Meredith and noticing the admiration she was attracting from passers by and she felt proud. In her old black leather coat she must look a peculiar com
panion.

  Jos was leaning nonchalantly against the stone wall outside. He smiled briefly at George and took Meredith by the hand. George stood back, tremulous, suddenly shy. They went up the steps and into a small ante-room, brown and dim with streaky grey lino on the floor.

  ‘Got a cigarette?’ said Meredith.

  ‘You can’t smoke now,’ said George, shocked out of the almost holy trance that the sight of Meredith and Jos walking up the steps had sent her into.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Meredith.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Jos. ‘You can have it when it’s over.’

  Meredith tried to snatch her hand out of his but he held it tightly. She was still struggling when the clerk appeared at the door and told them he would like to check their particulars if they would kindly follow him. Relatives and friends, with a pained look at George, could stay where they were.

  Jos stood up, Meredith remained sitting.

  ‘I’m not moving until I get a bloody cigarette,’ she hissed.

  Jos bent over her. ‘Look, you little whore, if you don’t behave properly I’ll give your backside such a belting that you’ll never sit again.’

  Meredith burst out laughing. The clerk stood waiting, crimson-faced and far from impassive.

  They followed him and he started to check the licence.

  ‘Your name, miss?’ he asked Meredith, averting his eyes.

  ‘Meredith Anna Montgomery,’ chanted Meredith.

  ‘And the names of your parents?’

  ‘Penelope and Charles.’

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘I think so.’

  The clerk smiled thinly.

  ‘What you smirking at?’ said Meredith. ‘That’s the absolute truth. I haven’t seen them for two years and they might very well be dead for all I know.’

  The clerk went puce-coloured again, and turned despairingly to Jos, who gave the necessary details and added firmly that his parents were most certainly alive.

  ‘How do you know?’ said Meredith.

  ‘Because I went to see them on Sunday and told them I was getting married and you were having a baby.’

  ‘What a bloody lie,’ said Meredith.

  Hurriedly, the clerk led them out and into another room to the registrar, collecting George on the way. Meredith acquitted herself with honour, except for a half-smothered ‘Oh God’ when George started to cry in the background.

  The registrar took his duty seriously for the registrar of a large London borough, where hundreds of couples were married, with little difference between them, and little interest in what the actual words of the ceremony were. His room was drab and colourless, but he had on his own account brightened it with what he considered the uplifting pictures of Rubens’ ‘Madonna and Child’ and an oil done by a friend of his of a cottage in Devon. He always had fresh flowers on the desk and kept himself very smart. Once the room was filled with brightly dressed, be-buttonholed onlookers it seemed to him a festive and jolly place and every bit as nice as a church, though it wasn’t his place to say that. But today was one of the sadder days when nothing kept the shadows and coldness at bay. The bride was pretty, but she looked cynical and ill, and the bridegroom had an air of rigid determination which showed he longed to walk out. There were no parents only a large beatnik sort of girl in a black coat who cried with despair rather than sentimentality. But they were 26 and 28, well above age, they must know their own minds. He hoped it wasn’t a baby on the way, but knew it was. It wasn’t his duty to tell them it still wasn’t worth getting married if that was how they felt about it, so he tried to smile and be extra attentive.

  They came out, relieved and hungry, to find it was sleeting. Again, no taxi appeared so they had to run all the way down the street and into the square and got soaked. Meredith took her dress off and got back into bed and Jos stripped his wringing clothes off and wandered around with a large bath towel tied toga fashion round him. George made her delicious lunch and they had it grouped round Meredith’s bed, then Jos got in beside her and George went to wash the dishes.

  Chapter Four

  THE ONLY PERSON George could talk to about Jos was Peg. She got into the habit in the weeks following the wedding of going down to Peg’s room last thing at night, or in the early hours of the morning, or whenever it was that Jos and Meredith had retired into her room for the night. It meant waking Peg from her deep and concentrated slumbers but it was unavoidable. All she required of her was that she should heave herself up in her green bed and listen. George would squat on the edge of the bed and pour forth the day’s analysis, slightly distracted by Peg’s large, round steel rollers that looked as though they gave her head hell.

  In the first month, Peg had been asked to believe that Jos was just about the most responsible person that ever walked God’s earth. Although his shining soul was tied up with music, he had without hesitation got himself a job in a bank. When pressed, George admitted he hadn’t actually given up any musical job to do this, but she explained most convincingly that what the job at the bank did to Jos harmed his musical talent, which was prodigious. He was also kind. He had absolutely insisted that George should accept some money each week, and he always offered to dry the dishes.

  Jos’s most outstanding virtues, however, were not really revealed until the third month of the ménage à trois, when George couldn’t wait for nightfall to go panting down to Peg.

  ‘Today,’ she said, ‘Jos came home with a – a cot. A cot, Peg!’

  Peg regarded her, stonily. Sarcasm was a thing unknown to her and she had no idea how to deal with George’s raptures effectively. She struggled for words.

  ‘He’s the father isn’t he?’ she said. ‘Well of course he came home with a cot. Has it a hair mattress? That’s what babies’ cots should have.’

  ‘Meredith hasn’t even thought about a cot,’ said George.

  Peg stayed rebelliously silent.

  ‘It’s white and he bought some transfers to stick on the side. I’m going to help him. You have to soak them first. Jos is very artistic. Do you know, the other day he told me I had a face like the Iron Soldier. Have you seen that painting?’

  ‘No,’ said Peg. ‘I wouldn’t like to look like a soldier made of iron, anyway.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you don’t,’ said George, scornfully. ‘Jos is very understanding. When I’m really fed up he doesn’t bother me. He just gets on with his meal and I can sort of feel him being sympathetic. And he’s got such a sense of humour.’

  Peg snorted. ‘Not very funny getting a girl into trouble. It’s the baby I feel sorry for,’ she said.

  ‘It was Meredith got herself into trouble,’ said George icily. ‘I think Jos behaved superbly. He knew what she was like and in the circumstances he needn’t have married her. He’s making the best of complete hell. He never complains.’

  ‘He hasn’t got much to complain about that I can see,’ said Peg, keeping her end up.

  ‘You don’t live with them,’ said George, grandly. ‘You don’t see what I see.’

  ‘I’d turn them out,’ said Peg, stoutly.

  ‘Turn out my best friend, six months pregnant, and her struggling husband? They’ve nowhere to go.’

  ‘They’d find somewhere quick enough.’

  ‘I think I’d better leave,’ said George.

  When she’d banged the door close, Peg snuggled down into the warmth of her bed. Their one-sided conversations always ended with George flouncing out, bitterly offended. Peg frowned and raised her eyebrows alternately in the darkness as she thought it all out. She sucked an end of one of the sheets in her mouth to help her, and when the wet, soggy taste no longer served to comfort her, spat it out. The way she saw it, when the baby was born, it would all work itself out.

  This view was shared by Jos, when he was in an optimistic mood. For one thing, it would definitely mean moving. He had a feeling that if he said as much to Meredith she would only say what she’d said in the first place, that she didn’t see why. George
enjoyed having them. She would adore the baby. Her dancing class hours would give her plenty of time to take it for long walks in the park in the afternoon and she would be indispensable as a babysitter.

  It was not that Jos disliked living with George. He hadn’t really had much idea how Meredith managed to live with her, especially since he’d only had one disastrous attempt at sharing a flat himself. But he hadn’t been there a week before he realized just how George manufactured the comforts of life for those who lived with her. Her organization was supremely efficient. She shopped, cooked and did the housework unobtrusively and apparently with enjoyment as well as without effort. It filled Jos with a sense of awe to find that his clothes were removed when they were dirty and reappeared a couple of days later immaculately ironed. He never had to wonder what he could fill his ravenously empty stomach with, partly because George saw that he never got really ravenous, but also because there were always things in the larder and fridge. Tins were never empty, bread was never stale. It was like living in a service flat without any of the bills.

  At first, he was so overcome with gratitude that he felt guilty and was always heaping praise on George and thanking her. He didn’t tell her she shouldn’t bother, though. Then he started to take it for granted, like Meredith, and even to feel that he was doing George a favour by being there for her to look after. She would be so lonely without meals to cook and clothes to wash.

  In the evenings and at the week-ends George carried out a policy of self-effacement. He and Meredith were, at first, out a lot. He hadn’t much idea what George did, but gathered she spent most of the time reading and planning lessons for her classes. This seemed to him dull but in keeping and he supposed that she liked it. But as Meredith grew bigger she lost all her energy, and they took to staying in. George was nearly always there, very carefully not intruding. She sat quietly in a chair by the window and got on with whatever she was doing.

  Out of sheer boredom, Jos was driven to talking to her. It started as a sort of teasing, but she took it so seriously that he had to stop. She seemed afraid to talk back to him, and would steal worried glances at Meredith, who couldn’t have cared less. It took weeks for her to unbend and actually volunteer remarks and opinions, but once this happened they were well away. Meredith might as well not have been there. He looked forward to seeing George in the evening just to talk to her, about nothing in particular. She was his ally. He hated the radio and so did she and together they thwarted Meredith’s desire to have it on all the time. It was the same with countless other things. In fact, Meredith found their combined company torture. She was used to George sitting for hours in moody silence, but when Jos did it too it drove her mad. No amount of taunting could break the cold front.