Highly Unsuitable Girl

by Carolyn McCrae

  She said I could do so well in life as long as I didn’t think leaving home would be the answer to all my problems. How could she possibly know I was trying to do that! She said I’d never stand on my own two feet unless I got qualifications and O levels would never be enough. She asked what I wanted to do with my life. Did I want to work in a shop or worse, have to find some man to keep me whether I loved him or not. I couldn’t think of anything to say so I said nothing. She said ‘Please don’t throw your life away.’ She really seemed to care.

  She didn’t tell me off, she didn’t threaten anything, she just said how disappointed she would be in me if I gave up now. She said I was an intelligent girl and should know better and I should understand that what I was doing was stupid. Stupid that was the word she used. not indecent or promiscuous or immoral. And then she stood up and told me to go with her, there was someone she wanted me to meet.

  It didn’t take long to work out we were heading for one of the blocks of flats by the docks. The lift was out of order so I followed her up three flights of stairs and along a stinking corridor before we stopped. A girl, my age or a little older, answered the door with a toddler on her hip. Miss Hill introduced us rather formally, she was Marion Whitehead. ‘You’re the really bright one?’ Marion said ‘You’re here to see what a mess you can get yourself into if you’re not careful?’

  She’d thought she couldn’t fall pregnant the first time. She’d just thought she was late and then she forgot she was late and then it was too late to get rid of it. As soon as they saw what was happening her parents had thrown her out of their house. They didn’t care what happened to her, she was no daughter of theirs. It had never occurred to me that a girl with proper parents would be chucked out because she’d made a mistake. I looked at Marion and wondered how she could have coped with learning her mum and dad cared more for their good name than for her. ‘They chucked you out?’ I asked her ’Just like that?’ She hadn’t heard from them since. ‘Why didn’t the bloke marry you? Couldn’t you have got rid of it?’ He’d said it was nothing to do with him and a woman who did that sort of thing said it was too late. ’What would she have done?’ I had to ask. ‘Made me sit in really really hot water, drink something foul and if nothing else worked something to do with knitting needles.’ Marion’s voice tailed off. Perhaps she was grateful she had left it too late. I asked her if she wished she was back living with her parents, going to school, taking exams. Then I realised, as she tightened her t-shirt over her stomach that she was pregnant again. She said there’d been no reason not to have another one and the money came in handy. It took me a while to realise what she’d meant.

  Miss Hill talked to me as if Marion wasn’t there. ‘You must recognise what you’ve been flirting with. There is a real stigma in being an unmarried mother, it’s less than it was but it is still insurmountable. One day there may be a more enlightened view about abortion as back street operations are so very dangerous, but that day is not here yet. Not long ago men took responsibility for their actions but they don’t anymore, they will always leave you to cope with the consequences, and it is so very difficult to get any financial support as a lone mother.’ And I’d always thought getting pregnant was the way out.

  So I’m going to stay on at school. I’ll just have to work out how to tell Mum that I won’t be earning for a couple more years.

  Anya glanced quickly through the entries for 1966 and 1967. They were all short, just neat litanies of work, and, as she read them from the distance of a year or more, they seemed very boring. She still found staying at home difficult, even when her mother had no man hanging around there was always too much noise from the television for her to be able to concentrate. But instead of heading to The Anchor every evening she walked in the opposite direction to the local library. Perhaps she hadn’t needed to work so hard but Anya soon realised she was enjoying herself; it had really been quite a happy time, not having friends somehow seemed less important than it had ever done.

  But Anya was not in the mood for thinking of happy times; she wanted to wallow in hard memories and self-pity. She turned back to her current diary.

  Wednesday 19th June 1968

  Exams over. It’s almost like she’s been watching me from a distance these past two years, never saying anything, just watching, waiting.

  As I walked out of the exam hall, well the gym, for the last time, the final A level exam finished, I felt an arm around my shoulders. ‘Well done my dear.’ Miss Hill spoke with her usual quiet voice, the one that makes you listen to what she’s saying. I was being summoned to her office again for another chat. We’d hardly spoken in two years. I asked how Marion was doing and heard the disappointment in her voice when she said that she hadn’t had a chance to take any exams as she was pregnant again, the third. Then she asked me if I was still having regular unprotected sex. I was tempted to suggest she asks her brother but she was trying to be kind so I said not nearly as often as before but yes, I still did it now and again. If she was going to talk about sex so would I, we’d see who got more embarrassed first. I couldn’t help wondering what this middle aged spinster was aiming at. Then she asked if I’d ever been pregnant. My reply ‘just lucky I guess’ must have seemed a bit flippant as I got one of her put down stares ‘I think it may be a little more than luck.’

  She then told me she was worried about me because she didn’t want my talent to go to waste as Marion’s had. She said she had admired how I had put up with so much from Miss Henrietta Hodge (she actually called her Miss Henrietta Hodge) and she said she’d admired the way I’d handled myself throughout my school years ‘coming from where you do it can’t have been easy’. The most surprising thing was she said she saw a bit of herself in me.

  She started talking about her own life. ‘I was your age when war broke out’ I did a quick calculation, 18 in 1939 makes her 47 now, somehow I’d always assumed she’d be much older than that. She told me how her brother and his friends had joined up as soon as war broke out, mostly into the Air Force. They all knew life would be short so they set out to make what time they had as much fun as possible, her words. She said that the young men she had been with had died, sooner or later, mostly sooner. I couldn’t help thinking how awful it must have been, how frightening not to know whether or not you were going to be alive the next day. I couldn’t begin to understand what that must have been like. It didn’t seem like I was talking to my headmistress, especially when she said she hadn’t got pregnant even when she’d tried. She sounded so sad. ‘I was in love with one of those young men and I so wanted his child. But it wasn’t to be.’ I didn’t have to ask whether he had survived. ‘Yes he died. Only one of the boys in our set survived and that was my brother. He became a doctor after the war.’

  I wondered why she was telling me all this. ‘After Michael I had lots more boyfriends, things were very different during the war, behaviour was acceptable then that wasn’t as soon as the war ended. But despite all that I never got caught as so many girls did. ‘It was my brother who persuaded me to get checked out.’ I asked her what she meant by ‘checked out’. She said to see if she had just been lucky or whether there was a reason she hadn’t ‘got caught out’. She said they’d found that she was barren, her word, barren. She could never have a child. That’s why she became a teacher and why she never married. She said she believed the only reason to marry was to raise children. She said it was very important not to trap a man into marriage with false hopes of a family. She thinks I should be checked out to find out if I’m barren. She thinks I need to know the truth so I can lead my life in the best possible way. For me and for any man I fall in love with. Somehow I feel years older than I did this morning.

  Anya looked down at the fading dark marks on the blue satin bedspread. She had agreed to the tests, the appointment had been made and two weeks later Dr Hill had given her the news. She could remember his face as he had told her the chances of her conceiving were nil. He hadn’t told her why, she hadn’t asked
. It hadn’t seemed important to know.

  Monday 1st July, 1968

  So that’s it. I can never have children. No need for the pill or Durex, no need to say no. I can have as much sex as I like and I’ll never have to face the consequences. I can’t ever have a baby. Never. I want to talk to someone about it but Mum is still locked in her room with the bloke she picked up on Saturday. Shit.

  Well, since she’s not around I’ll have to talk to myself. I suppose I can enjoy as much sex as I like. I can do what all men can do, have sex without worrying about anything. I know I’m good at it. Will I ever think this is a bad thing? I doubt it. Who’d want to bring a baby into this stupid world? We’ll all be blown up before long anyway.

  Anya picked up her pen, turned the pages to the words she had written an hour earlier Relief Fear Confusion Loneliness. In her neatest handwriting she wrote the last entry she was to make in her diaries for some years.

  Monday 19th August, 1968

  Went in to school to get results today. I should feel so proud of myself so why do I feel so depressed? Why does it seem like the end of everything? It should feel like a beginning. I should be excited not so overwhelmingly miserable. I’ve got into Liverpool and I can go there for three years, get a degree, open up a whole world but somehow that feels all wrong. How will I fit in? I don’t think I’ll be able to for one moment. I suppose I could just say fuck it all and get a job on the checkouts in the new supermarket. I’d probably be more suited to that. I have absolutely no idea what I really want to do.

  When I got home I told Mum how well I’d done but she was staring at the mirror on the hall wall finishing her make up. All she said was sorry honeybun, gotta run, catch up in the morning. She didn’t give a shit. She’s never given a shit.

  It shouldn’t have been an argument. I didn’t want an argument. I said I didn’t owe her anything, that I’d done it all on my own, that no one in my class had done as well as I had and they all had mothers and fathers to help them. She went to give me a slap but I moved and she missed. I was surprised how quiet she was. She didn’t scream and yell she just said what I did was none of her business now, I was 18 and as far as she was concerned I could do what I liked. I told her I’d been doing what I liked for years. She said as long as I kept my grubby little paws off her men I was free to fuck whoever I wanted. Fucking is all she ever thinks about. I shouldn’t have let her get to me. As soon as she’d gone I got dressed up and headed down to the ferry over to Liverpool and the Adelphi. Sitting in the bar it was easy to make a pick up. He wasn’t that old but he wasn’t worth the effort. He ended up kneeling on the floor by the bed crying. He tried to give me twenty quid. Pathetic.

  But as I headed home I’ve realised that it’s me that’s pathetic.

  Who are you Anya Cave?

  Are you that attractive, intelligent girl who will go to university and find how to be make a real success of your life or are you that promiscuous little tart who’ll end up throwing everything away?

  I wish I knew.

  Chapter 2: Independence

  Kent, August 1968

  “Liverpool?” Kathleen’s tone was one of melodramatic incredulity. ‘Liverpool? You want to go to Liverpool?’

  “I am going to Liverpool.” Geoff’s knew there was going to be an argument, at least he hoped there would be one, he had been trying to bring everything out into the open for months. Four years at university would allow him to escape the cloying over-security of his home.

  “I don’t think so.” There was a familiar finality in his mother’s voice.

  “Why not? What’s wrong with Liverpool?” He had known for years that one day he would have to fight and win if he was ever going to leave home.

  “Now where can I start with listing all the things that are wrong with Liverpool?” Kathleen frequently resorted to sarcasm. “Let me think. Perhaps the fact that it’s 200 miles from home?”

  “That’s actually a real plus point.”

  Kathleen was fighting too, to keep her son at home and under her control. She arched an eyebrow and looked at him as if he had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I don’t want to stay living here at home and I don’t want to join all those idiots commuting into town every day, I want to get away. That’s what university is all about Mother, it’s about leaving the nest, spreading wings, growing up.”

  “How wrong I must have been all this time! Here have I been thinking that going to university was about learning and getting a good degree from a respected institution. I must also be mistaken that a degree from a university in London is worth more than one from Liverpool.”

  “Yes Mother, you are wrong. The course in computing in Liverpool is the best in the country.”

  “But, darling, computing and in Liverpool!” Kathleen Philips spoke as if the city were beyond the pale. “Surely you don’t want to spend three years…”

  “Four.” Geoff corrected his mother so quietly she may not even have heard.

  “… in that God-forsaken city.”

  “But Mum…”

  “I’ve told you so many times Geoffrey.” she interrupted wearily. “Do not call me Mum.”

  He called her Mum because she called him Geoffrey. He was Geoff to everyone he knew, even his sister called him Geoff, at least when their mother was not around.

  “But Mother,” he put unnecessary emphasis on the formal title, “I don’t want to stay at home, I want to go somewhere new, meet new people, do new things.”

  Frequently in the two weeks since he had first told his mother that he had accepted the offer at Liverpool University they had touched on the issue but there had never been what Geoff always wanted, a no-holds-barred, out-and-out argument, that would resolve the issue in his favour. “But Mum… Mother, I’m 18. I’m not your little boy in grey shorts and knee length socks any more. I don’t want jelly for tea and a cuddle at bedtime, at least not from you.” He avoided his mother’s eye knowing the outraged look she would be giving him. “I want friends of my own whose families you don’t know and haven’t known since before I was born. It would be really nice to have a few minutes in every day when you don’t know where I am and who I’m with and I want to do things you don’t find out about through the spy network you call your friends.”

  “That’s enough Geoffrey.”

  “And that’s another thing Mum. Please call me Geoff. One single syllable. Geoff.” He knew that however many times he asked her she would never agree.

  “It was your father’s wish that you be called Geoffrey. It was one of the last things he ever said to me. That is your name and that is what I shall call you.”

  Geoff knew that any hope of further discussion was lost when his mother mentioned his father, as she invariably did when she decided one of their disagreements should come to an end. He watched unsympathetically as his mother ran through a familiar routine. The tone of her voice changed, her eyes filled with unnecessary tears which she dabbed exaggeratedly with the corner of the handkerchief she always kept handy for whenever she Remembered Her Loss. He always thought of it with capital letters. 18 years was a long time to be a widow but, as she made clear when it suited her, double that time would still be insufficient to soften the pain. Geoff knew the act was designed to make him feel guilt for upsetting his mother who had Suffered So Much. He insolently, silently mouthed the words as she spoke. ‘You were christened Geoffrey, as your father wished, and that is your name.’ He knew what she was going to say. It was what she always said.

  Kathleen was heavily pregnant and the last thing she wanted to do was sit on the cramped back seat of a sports car with five year old Margaret and be driven, uncomfortably fast, the 50 miles to the coast. She tried to persuade him that she didn’t feel well enough, but her husband had, as was usual, had his way. “It’ll be my last opportunity before Geoffrey Junior arrives” he said over the breakfast table as if that were the end of any discussion on the matter, which, of course, it was.

  “It might b
e another girl.” Kathleen rubbed her enormous bump praying silently that it would be a boy. She really didn’t want to have to go through the whole process again. The standard of living her husband provided was nice but it really wasn’t worth all that trouble.

  From the first evening they had met, at a tea dance in the summer of 1943, Kathleen had known Geoffrey Philips’ advantageous financial position. Perhaps it was that which had made the man who many warned her was an arrogant bully, so attractive. Even after they had married in the Spring of 1944, she had never asked him where his money came from. When she had asked why he wasn’t in the forces he had tapped his nose conspiratorially and said that he was more use on the Home Front. She was aware that there were many lines of work in wartime about which it was best not to know too much. Kathleen was happy to be securely married, to have a comfortable home and, within a few weeks of marriage, to be enjoying the attention her first pregnancy brought. When Margaret was born in January 1945 Geoffrey’s disappointment at not having a son was acute. It was her fault, Geoffrey said, that he only had a daughter and a plain daughter at that. He blamed Kathleen for not giving him the son who would carry on his name and join him in the business, a daughter could do neither.

  “If it’s another bloody girl then you’ll just have to have another until you give me the son I need and you’ll have to do it a bit quicker.” Geoffrey chose to forget the three miscarriages that had intervened between pregnancies. “We’ll leave in an hour, Kathleen.” He wiped his mouth on the linen napkin, folded it precisely and placed it on the table next to his empty plate.

  Twenty years younger than her husband, Kathleen had never been an equal partner in their relationship. The money was his, the house was his, every decision, whether it was about a holiday destination or the purchase of a car, was made by him. Nothing was shared, nothing was hers. As she watched him walk from the room she wondered in a rather disinterested way whether she had ever loved him at all. She was certain he had never loved her, she was in his life only to give him a son.