At the end of her first day of freedom, Georgia Kennedy looked back upon it with slight regret at having frittered it away without having done anything very spectacular at all except to go into the Town Hall in response to an appeal for women voluntary workers, and to buy a half-bottle of Gilbeys. Gin, to her chagrin, she liked, even though, as Hugh had pointed out, gin was such a common drink compared to Scotch. Scotch and Soda… Whisky Mac… Scotch on the rocks, but gin and orange… Mother’s Ruin.
‘Gin, Georgia? That’s a drink for a shop-girl on the razzle. If you must drink gin, at least learn to drink it with tonic.’
‘But it has such a bitter taste, Hugh.’
‘Try it. Scotch for me and a Gee and Tee for my good lady here.’
Presumably, because of its ‘common’ associations in Hugh’s mind, they never had gin in the house, even at Christmas when he always got in a supply of port and lemon for the ladies.
It was early evening, and she sat in the garden drinking gin – and tonic, which she had learned to like – and wondering what she could do with all this freedom. The weather was exceptionally good, almost like July.
Hugh had been very put out when she had made her own suggestion.
‘Georgia! Go out to work? For God’s sake… officers’ wives don’t go out to work any more than managers’ wives do.’
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘Of course you damned well see why not, they just don’t.
As a kind of marzipan on the basic cake of her girlhood training in ‘niceness’, Georgia Kennedy had spent the last two years learning what women like herself ‘just didn’t’. Lately, she had begun to wonder why, instead of marrying a secretary with countrified origins, Hugh had not gone for one of the girls who were always so eager to partner him at tennis, or who at cricket pounced upon him with plates of sandwiches and cakes. They were his type – off-the-peg Officers’ and Managers’ wives. They knew unfailingly the etiquette of taking paid or charitable work, and the social position of a gin and orange, and what their set just didn’t.
‘Forget it! It’s ridiculous! If you want something to do with your spare time, you take over my place on the Tennis Club Committee.’
‘Oh Hugh! You know I can’t stand them, and I didn’t mean spare time… I meant…’
‘If you can’t stand the Committee, how do you think you’d fare with a room full of clerks?’
‘I used to stand them all right before I married… and I didn’t mean…’
‘That was different. You worked in my office then.’
‘It was just an office full of clerks and I…’
‘And I was Manager.’
As in the past it had been with her mother, so her arguments with Hugh always ended with Georgia shutting up, silenced by their self-assurance and her lack of it.
She picked up the writing-pad and read over the four pages she had written to her parents, every line of which was what they wanted to hear.
Could I tell you, Dad, that I hadn’t been married a week before I realized that I had made a mistake?
Could I explain to you, Ma, how hungry for something I always feel? That I’m not satisfied as I’m supposed to be with bed-linen Mondays, polishing Tuesdays, baking Wednesdays, cleaning Thursdays, shopping Fridays, Sports Club Saturdays and Cricketing Sundays, but starved of something filling and full of flavour?
I wish I could write and ask you things that really matter. I should ask you to tell me why you’ve always seemed ashamed of coming from country families, why you’ve kept the Honeycombes and the Gracelands at arm’s length, why you are never satisfied and don’t seem to be able to settle down. But their family wasn’t like that, they never said the things that counted.
Georgia sealed down the letter, addressed it to Mr and Mrs Honeycombe, Widdershins Guest House, Cults, Aberdeen, and sat thinking of them, hoping that they felt rewarded now by their small guest house in Scotland, for all the years of budgeting to save minute amounts from the small profits of running the village pub.
Georgia poured herself a refill. Freedom from Ma, freedom from Dad, freedom from Hugh, freedom from their ideas of what is best for Georgia. It’s my last chance to do… something.