Diary of a Provincial Lesbian (6 page)

Georgie immediately welcomed as if she’s an old and dear friend of everybody. I stood behind her, my smile about level with her shoulder. Suddenly felt I had a deeper understanding of what HRH Prince Philip might have gone through. Obviously many of his ill-judged remarks were a form of attention seeking.

‘This is Margaret,’ Georgie finally remembered me. ‘Margaret, meet Rosemary, Sandra, Abi, Chris, Tanya, Lizzie, Jo Anne... ’

‘Nello,' I said. Damn!  Made ready to recount amusing story of Tilly’s extraordinary vocabulary but nobody had noticed, although fleeting frown flew across beloved’s brow.

As always when I came into London with Georgie to meet her friends I regretted my choice of clothes. Suddenly my charity shop refurbishments looked exactly that. My wide, flapping trousers which I’d seen as boho-chic looked ridiculous, everyone else wore boot leg jeans, the collar of my shirt was unfashionably huge and there wasn’t a patterned shirt in the room never mind a pattern of gaily wrapped toffees. How did I invariably get everything so wrong?

‘Hi, what do you do?’ I asked Lizzie or maybe Sandra.

‘I’m a choreographer - modern ballet and jazz dance.’

Swallowed ‘Crikey’ and ‘Well I never’, said instead, ‘So how do you know Georgie?’

‘She designed the lighting for our company’s last production:
Women on Women want Women on Women
. Georgie’s brilliant! How do you know her?’

‘I’m her partner. We’ve been together nearly ten years. Anniversary next month.’

‘Great,’ she said, making ‘great’ sound somehow like ‘dreary’. ‘Better get a drink. You’re ok, aren’t you?’ She nodded towards my almost empty glass.

‘Yes. Fine. This is more than a sufficiency.’ I kicked myself in the leg, hard.

Sandra or Lizzie disappeared into crowd around the bar. Could see Georgie at the crowd’s centre. I sighed. Drooped. Slumped. Suddenly my glass was whisked out of my hand and replaced with a full one.

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.

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘I’m Margaret.’

‘I know. I heard someone introduce you. I’m - ’ but she got no further, another woman grabbed hold of her hand and pulled her across the room. ‘Bye,’ she called out. ‘Take care.’

Which was nice. Which for a little while transformed the evening.

Met up with Georgie’s parents. Georgie adores them. I’d adore them if they’d adore me. They quite like me but ideally they want a much grander partner for their only daughter. I don’t mind. Or I didn’t mind. My happiness held right up till we left the restaurant. We stood on the pavement saying our goodbyes, buttoning up coats, kissing cheeks.

The parents looked fondly at me as if I was at least an endearing puppy. One with high spirits and boundless, bounding good nature. I didn’t mind that either.

I said, ‘Now don’t forget, put aside Saturday March the 20th. You can stay over. There won’t be masses of guests, just close friends and family.’

Georgie’s mother said, ‘Any particular celebration?’

Georgie said, ‘Don’t worry, Ma, nothing definite.’

‘But of course it’s definite,’ I said. ‘Or have you got some secret, romantic plan tucked up your sleeve? Can you believe it, a decade together and still deliriously happy?’

Couldn’t stop burbling. Ma and Pa-in-law were looking uneasy, sending enquiring glances to Georgie, Georgie shaking her head at them and narrowing her eyes. Something was very wrong. I shut up.

Georgie said, ‘We’ll have to see.’

In silence we walked to where our car was parked. In silence we drove for nearly an hour. Georgie switched the radio on once, Eric Clapton singing about his darling looking wonderful
that evening
.
She switched it off.

Georgie broke the silence. She said in a quiet, cold voice, ‘I wish you hadn’t gone on like that. Why must you always pre-empt a situation?’

Had no answer as not aware that I pre-empted situations.

‘All I’m saying,’ she continued, ‘is it’s not such a great idea making a fuss over one day in the calendar and anyway purely logistically, it’s not going to work out.’

‘Why are you talking to me as if I’m a client and you’re explaining a hitch in a business project?’ I asked, keeping my voice mild

‘I’m trying to bring you down to earth, that’s all.’

‘No, that isn’t it. You’re trying to tell me something unpleasant but wrapping it up in cold words.’

‘Better than turning everything into a bouncing, desperate cheerfulness,’ she said. ‘With you everything has to be a joke or... a whimper.’

Only I could know the effort it would take for Georgie to be so cruel. She wasn’t, isn’t a cruel woman. Those words of hers weren’t carelessly said.

Feb 27
^th

Sorry diary, no bouncing, desperate cheerfulness today.

What I mustn’t do is think that Georgie has stopped loving me. She says she loves me as much as ever but now it is a different love - as deep and long lasting but missing out on the excitement and maybe that will prove all we need to last out our lifetime. But only maybe.

Georgie has suggested and I’ve agreed to a trial separation of two months. She says she expects our time apart will revitalize our relationship. She is actually going to rent a flat off a friend in Edinburgh as that seems to be where most of her work is at the moment.

It will do us good, she says, to re-assess where we are going, where we want to go.
Don’t be surprised
, she says with a wry smile,
if I come high tailing back to you within a fortnight.

I have to believe that at the end of two months Georgie will return. Not to the same old Margaret of the apron and marigold gloves, I’ll try to be a new, exciting Margaret. I’ll do what it takes even if it means me sitting every morning in front of the mirror and reciting Deirdre’s mantra, ‘I am fantastic. I am a sensual, sexual woman. I like what I see.’

Sunday Feb 29
^th

Georgie left this morning. Took Samson and Delilah with her. It is impossible to recite Deirdre’s mantra. I am not fantastic. I am not a sensual, sexual woman. I do not like what I see.

March

March 10th

Back with diary. However nothing worth noting has happened in my life over the last ten days. No word from Georgie.

March 12
^th

Wake up with a start. Tilly lying next to me also is awake. What is that noise? Surely not skateboarders trying to avoid the daytime traffic? (Our house is on the very summit of a hill and the centre of the road is popular with skateboarders, roller skaters, battery powered scooters and unicyclists.) The noise continues. It comes from nearer the house. Surely not Mr Wheeler busy on some nocturnal DIY job. Still sounds too near. It’s as if somebody is repeatedly rattling the side gate into the back garden. Get up. Find torch and lean out of bedroom window. Shine torch on back gate and area in front of the house. Nothing. No one. Noise stops for a few seconds and then continues.

I feel uneasy. Tilly looks uneasy. Put on dressing gown saying reassuringly, ‘You stay where you are, Tilly’. Secretly hope Tilly will accompany me. She stays, her green eyes wide and anxious. ‘Don’t worry, Mummy sort it out.’ I reach for my antique ski pole, an irresistible buy from a Methodist jumble sale circa 1984.

Go downstairs and through house switching on lights and singing the old Sandie Shaw hit,
Always Something There to Remind Me.
In my head I’m walking along the Bittlesea Bay streets that Georgie walked along with me.

Upsetting lyrics in the circumstances but the only song immediately suggesting itself. By the time I reach the kitchen my eyes are watering. I desperately need to blow my nose as I recall just how much in love we used to be.

Tear off a piece of towel roll. Stop singing. Cautiously and silently open the kitchen window which looks over the back garden side of the gate. Blow nose loudly.

Stunned silence then the scramble of something or someone completely invisible frantically breaching the fence between my garden and Mr Wheeler’s. The sky is filled with the cries of disturbed seagulls. Close window. Warm some milk. Sit at kitchen table.

How can I forget you, Georgie?  At this precise moment you would be in your charcoal coloured towelling dressing gown, either telephoning the police or shrugging your shoulders and saying, ‘Don’t worry, it was probably just a rat.’

I thought how I’d never felt frightened of anything when Georgie was with me. How she’d reassure me as we made our way back up to bed, ‘Margaret, we’re quite safe. The two of us are big strapping women. We’re more than a match for burglars or rats.’

And I might say, ‘What if it’s a ghost?’

And she’d reply, ‘It won’t be.’

Took my glass of milk upstairs. Tilly fast asleep. I slept. In the morning woke to find my brain supplying more Sandie Shaw – the line about being born to love someone and never being free.

I didn’t want to be free of Georgie.

Thought about checking the back garden but incident of strangely rattling gate seems dim and distant memory put next to pain of song words.

March 13
^th

Deirdre unveils plans for her new garden layout. Quite a presentation. I am invited and also her other neighbours, two elderly sisters, Vera and Morag. Deirdre had made cakes, wedges of sponge covered in pink icing and acid green hundreds and thousands. She wore a peachy pink chiffon kaftan with matching bracelets, a pink feather in her hair. We were asked to sit down around the dining room table, asked what we wanted in the way of tea, coffee or fruit juice. Handed a small plate each with a pink paper serviette and told to ‘please get stuck into the cakes’. Our mouths full Deirdre began. She welcomed our attendance as if we’d come at least from as far away as an adjoining county, she told us that she felt it ‘absolutely crucial to keep her neighbours on side’.

Vera and Morag nodded while also looking mystified.

‘As you can see,’ Deirdre said, pointing with a plastic ruler at the plan laid out on the table, ‘what is now lawn and cuoy carp pool will become a decked terrace with seating for six persons in an ornamental gazebo.’

We nodded our approval. No, our admiration.

‘My entire new garden will be fenced in with willow panels painted alternate shades of sea green and sky blue obviously to mirror the effect of sea and sky.’

Morag asked, ‘How tall will the fence be?’

‘Brave woman!’ I thought and nodded more approval and admiration.

Deirdre tapped her perfect white teeth with the ruler and avoided Morag’s eyes, ‘Six foot give or take a foot or three.’

‘So it could reach nine foot?’

‘That is a possibility.’

‘We can’t have that,’ Vera gently murmured to Morag.

‘No we can’t have that,’ said Morag firmly.

Deirdre’s face and body seem to dilate with pent up emotion - she hates her ambitions to be curtailed.

‘It probably won’t be quite nine foot,’ she snaps.

‘Better to know the exact height before the fence goes up. Nothing worse than neighbourly disputes. What do you think Margaret?’ Vera peers round the side of her larger sister.

Deirdre fixes me with a ‘Back me up here’ look.

Personally, at that moment I couldn’t care less if Deirdre built a life-size model of the Taj Mahal in her back garden but Vera and Morag didn’t seem two women who could easily stand up for themselves whereas Deirdre... did.

‘Legally I don’t think you can put up a fence over six feet without planning permission.’

Deirdre looks annoyed, anxious and betrayed, ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘I think you’ll find I’m right.’

The sisters look relieved. Vera says to Morag, ‘We don’t object to six foot do we Morag?’

‘But I object to six foot,’ expostulates Deirdre. ‘I’ll still be able to see your washing line and your prop.’ She shudders.

‘Surely that’s not so bad?’ I ask reasonably.

She turns her back on the sisters and mouths, ‘and their pants.’

Have discussed Deirdre’s neighbours’ pants before. Have stood in her back bedroom and surreptitiously viewed these pants. The sisters take a voluminous size and they wear and wash in bulk - most drying days there’s a line full of faded, large knickers flapping cheerfully in the breeze.

‘Now Deirdre,’ I appeal gently.

‘Oh for goodness sake, okay. Six foot but will you two promise not to set your prop at such a high setting. Would you accept a whirly line if I paid for it?’

Sisters look at each other, appalled at offer of whirly line.

‘Oh no, Deirdre, a woman in the local paper was almost garrotted by her whirly line. And anyway you don’t get a good air supply filtering between your washed items.’

‘Ever considered a tumble dryer?’ Deirdre asks silkily.

‘Never!’ the sisters say.

March 15
^th

All systems go next door. Deirdre is not a woman to hang about. Woman gardener arrived in a dilapidated lorry with two others and a cement mixer. As yet can’t pick her out as they are all swathed in concealing outdoor clothes. Weather quite mild yet they look ready to attempt Mont Blanc.

The fences on both sides of Deirdre’s garden are down and Martin’s taken the car and retired to the Corner Coffee Shop.

NB. Martin. Increasingly he can be found at the Corner Coffee Shop. Deirdre says, he says she and Lord Dudley are disrupting his home life with their various projects all of which require complete freedom from any sound or movement Martin might need to make. Do not believe that Martin blames Lord Dudley - this is just Deirdre making out she has the majority vote in the house.