Georgy Girl Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Margaret Forster

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Georgy is young, gregarious and fun – she is also large, self-confessedly ugly and desperate for love. Georgy bears her fate bravely as she alternates between playing the fool and humbling herself before Meredith, her pretty, callous flatmate, although when James, middle-aged socialite and self-imposed ‘Uncle’, asks Georgy to become his mistress, she is tempted to accept. Then Meredith announces that she is pregnant and Jos, the expectant father, decides he is in love with Georgy –

  About the Author

  Margaret Forster is the author of many successful novels, including Lady’s Maid, Have the Men Had Enough? and The Memory Box, two memoirs, Hidden Lives and Precious Lives, and several acclaimed biographies, including Good Wives. Her most recent book is Diary of an Ordinary Woman.

  ALSO BY MARGARET FORSTER

  Fiction

  Dame’s Delight

  The Bogeyman

  The Travels of Maudie Tipstaff

  The Park

  Miss Owen-Owen is At Home

  Fenella Phizackerley

  Mr Bone’s Retreat

  The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury

  The Bride of Lowther Fell

  Marital Rites

  Private Papers

  Have the Men Had Enough?

  Lady’s Maid

  The Battle for Christabel

  Mothers’ Boys

  Shadow Baby

  The Memory Box

  Mother Can You Hear Me?

  Diary of an Ordinary Woman

  Non-Fiction

  The Rash Adventurer:

  The Rise and Fall of Charles Edward Stuart

  William Makepeace Thackeray:

  Memoirs of a Victorian Gentleman

  Significant Sisters:

  The Grassroots of Active Feminism 1838–1939

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Daphne du Maurier

  Hidden Lives

  Rich Desserts & Captain’s Thin:

  A Family & Their Times 1831–1931

  Precious Lives

  Good Wives:

  Mary, Fanny, Jennie & Me 1845–2001

  Poetry

  Selected Poems of

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Editor)

  For my mother and father

  Georgy Girl

  Margaret Forster

  Chapter One

  TED LAID OUT the suit on his bed. The trousers were creased, in spite of the new plastic coat hangers that were supposed to make sure they remained in the rigid folds he arranged with such loving care. Deftly, he whipped out the ironing board he kept in the bathroom for just such emergencies and propping it up, trotted off busily to the bed under which he kept the iron. Doris didn’t like him keeping it there, and neither of course did Mrs L., but James said he didn’t give a damn so it was all right.

  While the iron was heating, he examined the waistcoat and jacket of the suit. They were O.K. No buttons off and no specks of dirt. Nothing to be done there, so he had time to get a shirt out of the drawer and put the cuff links in. He chose a pair of silver ones. Mrs L. said there was a hint of silver thread in the suit which should be brought out by cuff links and tie. Personally, Ted couldn’t see any silver thread, but anything for the sake of peace.

  He pressed the trousers carefully. They weren’t to his taste. When finally rejected after a couple more wearings, he wouldn’t bother with them, they could be sent to some charity when the label had been cut out. This had to be done because they were very special labels with James’s name on them, and a little literature explaining that the garment was made for him to an approved design. Mrs L. said it wasn’t fair to the tailor to let his things be given to some refugee if it said inside that they were made for James Leamington. She thought it compromising.

  When he thought about it, which he was doing as he ironed, there weren’t really many of James’s suits that Ted did care for. It seemed funny somehow. James was a lot taller and a lot fatter, which maybe explained why he picked what Ted thought very quiet suits. They had no go in them at all, not like their owner. James was all go and always had been, which was why he went on being rich. But Ted and he were very alike in other ways, suits apart. They both liked football, cars, television and the music hall as it used to be.

  James picked Ted up at a music hall. He came to see a little blonde juggler and happened to sit next to Ted, who hadn’t come to see anyone in particular. He was what he called ‘on spec’. Ted noticed James, which wasn’t surprising as James was very imposing looking, and James noticed Ted, which was surprising because Ted was very ordinary. He was small, seedy and at that time thin because it was 1935 and he was out of work. James wore a beautiful fur coat and a rakish hat tilted over one eye. Ted didn’t have a coat of any sort and he had momentarily removed his hat because he had a fixation about not being able to hear properly with it on.

  They didn’t speak during the performances. Ted was too busy thinking what a wicked waste of money his seat was, and James was all keyed up waiting for the blonde juggler. But at the end they happened to go out together and Ted sort of followed the toff he’d been sitting beside partly because he’d nothing better to do and partly to see what sort of car he had. He looked rich enough and dashing enough to be a car man.

  The toff went round to the stage door and hung around a bit until he appeared to get fed up and handing a card to the doorkeeper walked briskly off. Ted followed. The car was round the side of the theatre, a big Rover with shiny red upholstery. Ted wanted the car so much that all the saliva rushed into his mouth with desire and he had to spit to get rid of it. It was a very noisy spit. The toff turned round and said ‘Are you spitting at me?’ and Ted almost said ‘Yes, what you gonna do abaht it’ but luckily changed his mind and said ‘No’. Instead he said what a lovely car it was and the toff was all agreeable and offered him a ride which Ted accepted without any ill feeling whatsoever.

  Ted finished ironing the trousers and laid them out flat beside the jacket. James was coming home to change after lunch before he went to the races and would be in a great hurry. Whether he would get an invite to the races or not Ted wasn’t sure. He wondered if he should go and get his own clothes ready, but decided that would be tempting fate. He checked everything was ready, then went to the kichen where Doris was shelling peas.

  ‘What you shellin’ peas for?’ he said.

  ‘To eat.’

  ‘What’s wrong wiv tins?’

  ‘You ask Mrs L.’

  ‘Get on, she don’t know the difference.’

  ‘Don’t she though,’ said Doris significantly.

  Ted took a few and settled himself in a chair beside the fire. It wasn’t a modern kitchen though it had all the latest equipment. Mrs L. liked cosy kitchens and was proud of all the copper kettles and the rocking chair and open fire and the red tiled floor and the Welsh dresser with its rows of willow pattern plates. He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up, smugly reflecting that there was nothing left for him to do except wait for James to come home. No wonder he’d got as fat as an old horse put out to grass, though not as fat as James. He squinted at the cuckoo clock – only eleven. Most mornings he was finished by eleven and then slept in front of the fire or went down to put a bet on.

  ‘Where’s George?’ he asked, looking for diversion. ‘I don’t
hear no thumping around.’

  ‘I don’t know I’m sure,’ said Doris, primly. Eleven in the morning was one of her bad times with the lunch just coming on. He didn’t expect her to be amiable.

  He wondered whether he had the energy to go upstairs and see if George was there and ask her why it was so quiet. But she’d only give him a short answer so what was the point. She got worse and worse, none of James’s charm at all.

  Sometimes Ted forgot Georgina was his daughter and not James’s. She was his gift to James in a way, his living sacrifice on the altar of gratitude he’d erected. When she’d been born Ted had been bitterly disappointed. It would have been so much more impressive to make over a son. Then of course there was the problem of names – he couldn’t call a girl Jamesa or even Jamesina. It sounded heathen. Nor did he want to call her Ellen after Mrs L. because it was really nothing to do with her, the homage was all James’s. Luckily, he discovered James had two other names – George and Charles – so he’d called his daughter Georgina Caroline and been very satisfied

  George hated her name. Sometimes Ted suspected she hated James too, which was dreadful because he’d done so much for her. Too much. He’d petted and spoiled her right from a little thing, and then sent her to a posh boarding school and lavished everything on her. When she left school – James picked her up in his Rolls – he’d sent her to Switzerland for a year then asked her what she wanted to do, the world was hers.

  ‘If you’ve nothing better to do,’ said Doris, ‘you could take that dog for a walk.’

  ‘I’ve been run off me feet all morning,’ Ted said in self-defence. ‘That suit of his was in a shocking state.’

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ said Doris, beginning to pant a little with exertion. She always panicked two hours before lunch was due on the table. ‘I want you out of my kitchen anyway. A kitchen’s no place for a man at this time of the morning, or any other time for that matter.’

  Ted let the implied insult roll off him. She was always trying to make him feel ashamed of his job, as though looking after James was anything to be ashamed of. Every now and again they would have a real row and she would scream at him that he’d never dirtied his hands since she married him. Well, he hadn’t. His job was a clean job. As James’s valet he looked after clothes and he had to be clean. He couldn’t make out why she should want him to go and get some filthy job, as though there was some sort of virtue in dirt. He knew when he was lucky, which was more than she did. He had a soft job, free accommodation, good wages, lifelong security and, above all, constant access to James.

  He decided he’d go and see if George was upstairs. She didn’t live there, she had what Ted privately thought a disgusting hovel over Battersea way. But she held her dancing and music classes upstairs in the front drawing room. It was a huge room with two floor to ceiling windows and James had had one whole wall made into a huge mirror so that the pupils learning ballet could watch themselves.

  He went up, ignoring Doris’s query as to where he was going, and at first he thought she’d been right, George hadn’t come. The room was empty, all the chairs neatly arranged round the side, and the curtains were half drawn. He walked across, preening himself sideways in the mirror, and pulled them back.

  ‘Do you mind leaving those curtains? It happens to be my room.’

  He turned and saw George sitting by the piano in her leather coat. She had her hair in a pony’s tail and her glasses on too.

  ‘You look a mess,’ he said, in a friendly way.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I don’t know why you wear that horrible coat. I don’t know why James let you spend his money on it, I don’t really.’

  ‘I happen to like this coat,’ she said, and let her glasses fall to the end of her nose, then slumped over the piano and began to play a nursery rhyme in a sprightly fashion. She pursed her lips, raised her eyebrows, and swayed to and fro in time to the staccato notes. Ted laughed.

  ‘You’re a proper comic,’ he said, chuckling.

  ‘I am, amn’t I?’ agreed George brightly. Then she stopped suddenly and said, ‘Got a cig.?’

  ‘Downstairs, not here,’ said Ted.

  ‘Well, nip into James’s room and get one of his.’

  ‘Now George, that’s enough of that,’ said Ted warningly. ‘If you want one that badly you can come down and get one.’ She didn’t move. ‘You’re a lazy faggot. Aren’t you going to go?’

  ‘No. I’m off actually.’

  ‘Haven’t you had a class this morning?’

  ‘Sent them all home.’

  ‘Did you ask James?’

  ‘No. What the hell has it to do with James?’

  Ted evaded that one. He recognized provocation when he saw it. Instead, he said he was going back to the kitchen where it was warm and he supposed he’d be seeing her.

  She waited until he’d gone, then got up and drew the curtains he’d just officiously parted. It was a dull March morning and there wasn’t much light. She pressed down all the white keys of the piano one by one, viciously, and then all the blacks. When she’d run through the keyboard several times, she slammed the lid down and started doing exercises in front of the mirror. Then, hands in pockets, she went to one of the windows and looked out.

  Her father was just going out into the street, at the double, to open the car door for James. It was his proud boast that he knew the sound of the engine when it was turning into the square and had never yet failed to be standing there to welcome his master home. James got out of the car, slowly because he was now a rather corpulent as well as a tall man and he took a lot of unpacking. He clapped Ted on the back, while making some remark about his faithful gun dog. They went into the house arm in arm, Ted’s neck glowing bright red.

  There was a chance James might come to have a snoop, so George picked up her bag and prepared to make a quick getaway. She listened at the top of the stairs until the two of them had left the hall then ran quickly down, keeping well into the wall. James came out of the dining room and back into the hall just as she reached the front door.

  ‘Heh, Georgy-porgy!’ he said loudly.

  ‘Hello, Jimsy-Wimsy,’ returned George stoically.

  ‘Come and have a drink.’

  It was a command. George followed him in. Her father was busy pouring out drinks.

  ‘Take your coat off then,’ said James. ‘My God, it’s like a suit of armour. George of England, eh?’ He roared.

  ‘I’d rather keep it on,’ said George. Ted frowned.

  ‘No, no – take it off. I want to see a bit more of my little girl. That’s better. Why hide a lovely figure in that old thing.’

  Underneath her beloved coat, George was wearing a brown pleated skirt and a green sweater, very long and loose.

  ‘What the devil are you losing yourself in that for?’ said James, fingering the sweater. ‘Why don’t you buy one the proper size? No man’s going to look twice at you hidden in that. Here, get yourself one five sizes smaller, show off your bust. What’s the matter, you’re not ashamed of it are you?’ He took some notes out of his wallet and handed them to her.

  ‘Thank James, Georgina,’ said Ted.

  ‘Thank you, James,’ said George.

  ‘Well, remember what I said,’ said James. He looked at his watch. ‘If we’re going to see the first race, Parkin, we’d better hurry into lunch, hadn’t we?’

  Ted glowed, and George realized he’d been fretting all morning about whether he would be asked or not. James liked to keep the whip hand.

  George walked to Knightsbridge tube, and then decided just as she was going under that she’d walk all the way home to Battersea Park. It was miles and would take her hours, especially as she would keep stopping to have cups of coffee. It would tire her out and make her feel she’d done something instead of just mooch around between the flat and home.

  She walked briskly past Harrods and Harvey Nichols, swinging her bag and bumping into as many of the smart shoppers as possible. One fragile sp
ecimen, teetering along on very spindly high heels and drawing a cloud of rose pink mohair round her, received a vicious slap in the region of the navel from George’s bag.

  ‘Sorry, old bean,’ said George, as heartily as possible. The woman was prepared to be angry, but when she connected the bag with George she contented herself with a derisive smile. George stood still and watched her go into the shop.

  There was a model in the window wearing a wisp of pale yellow chiffon – a backless and almost frontless cocktail dress with a tight narrow skirt and its own matching stole draped dramatically over one minute bare shoulder. The wig was a black bouffant style. It reminded George that she needed a new dress for James’s birthday party.

  As she strode on, she played with the image of herself in the yellow dress. It would undoubtedly bring the house down and settle once and for all her reputation for being the wag to end all wags. She could just see herself, one enormous Olympian shoulder rising in a great heave from out of the flimsy stole, and her back bulging in a freckled mass above the delicate folds of the waist. Before her would sail her be-ribboned bosom and to cap the lot she would sport a lorgnette and the most fearsome of buns – or perhaps, better still, have her hair loose in flowing waves.

  George laughed out loud, a great guffaw, the tears pricking behind her eyes. She didn’t see how she could ever stop looking like a caricature. It was something to do with her face being too long and big and her damned hair being the way it was. As ever, she struggled with herself not to give way to self-pity. She had to try to alter herself. Pushing to the back of her mind a vivid picture of all the other times she’d had a ‘Resurrect George’ campaign, she bit her lip, frowned, and wondered what she could do.

  She stood and looked in the window of a hair salon. It was very posh, and was called ‘Hair by Herbert’. A spindly receptionist, cool and aloof in mauve nylon, patted her own exotic coiffure and gazed contemptuously out at George, which did the trick.