GEORGE WOKE UP when it was still dark. Automatically, she groped for the cot and bent over it, but the baby was sleeping and making no sound. She got back into bed and pulled the covers up to her neck, staring round the room at the objects which took shape as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. The bed felt vast. She stretched out her arms on either side into cold nothingness, and drew them quickly in again to the warmth of her body. She wondered when Sara would be big enough to sleep with her.
Turning on her side, she put her left arm behind her back and curved the other round her head, and pulled her right knee as high as she could. She’d seen a diagram describing that position in the book of ante-natal exercises she’d bought for Meredith. The caption said it was the most relaxed position there was and that if you lay like that and breathed slowly and deeply, sleep would quickly follow. George breathed in and out, the out part sounding like a very sad sigh, and consciously let the tension out of her body. It was a long time since she’d had a sleepless night. She thought back, and could only remember the endless nights before Sara was born when she had lain awake rigid and squirming with longing for Jos. She couldn’t re-create the sensation. That part of her was satisfied, or dead. She smiled as she remembered her fears that she was a sex maniac. Some maniac. She hadn’t an atom of lust left after a bare three months, and somehow she couldn’t imagine ever feeling that way again, because she couldn’t love anyone as she had loved Jos.
I loved Jos. I love Jos. She gave up the relaxed position that only made her body ache, and turned flat on her back. She didn’t know if either was true. She’d wanted him, now she didn’t care. It wasn’t that she did not want him, anyway. She was just apathetic. She felt sorry for him, especially when she thought of how lonely he would be. He was supposed to devote himself to enjoying life, yet she didn’t think she’d ever seen him doing that for longer than a day.
It was a good thing they had never married, even for Sara’s sake. They really weren’t suited. Only in contrast to Meredith had she seemed the ideal girl for him, and he, in contrast to no one, had glittered. Their compatibility hadn’t stretched further than liking the same food. She had admired him for qualities he’d never possessed, and she would only have made them both miserable by trying to create them in him.
She thought how he had been against them taking Sara, something so right and natural and inevitable. He’d said she would always be between them, that she’d wreck their marriage almost before it had begun. He’d been right, but not because Sara was his daughter and not hers, but because she’d become part of her flesh and blood and not his. He had no feelings for the baby. No pride, no excitement in her, no devotion to the mere fact of her existence. She didn’t think he’d foreseen how Sara would become an extension of her, how she would adore and think and live and breathe this baby daughter of his. He’d thought she would look after her through a sense of duty, that she would come between them in the sense that she was a burden.
There was no point in lying on so wide awake. She put the light on, closing her eyes against the sudden orange brilliance. Beside the bed, she had a matinée jacket she was knitting for Sara. She took it up, examining the lumpy stretch of material anxiously. No one had taught her how to knit. The actual knitting and purling were easy, but casting on and off and increasing were giving her a lot of trouble. Still, Sara wouldn’t notice the mistakes and she liked doing it. It made her feel she was trying.
She thought she must look something like the grandmother in Red Riding Hood as she sat up in bed with one of Sara’s shawls round her shoulders and her big glasses slipping to the end of her nose because of the angle she was sitting at. Anyone would laugh if they came in, not that anyone was going to. She began humming a lullaby until she became too aware of why she was doing it. The slight noise didn’t drive anything out of her head, it only made her feel ridiculous and pathetic.
Really, she hadn’t guessed how she would react to Sara either, even though she had thought so much about her. She had never imagined love for a baby, especially a baby that wasn’t yours, could be so strong and emotional. When she’d held her for the first time, there was a physical sensation not unlike one of desire. The same weak feeling in her stomach, the same breathless anticipation. She hadn’t noticed how absorbed she had become in Sara and everything to do with her until she was her willing slave, bound hand and foot.
At the back of her mind, without knowing the exact day, she’d been vaguely conscious that she’d lost interest in Jos. He was an interruption in her relationship with Sara, a figure who came and went and didn’t share in anything. She’d probably wanted him to go for some time.
As she confessed this to herself, she felt uneasy. It was like speaking ill of the dead, bringing with it a superstitious dread that the words would rebound upon her disastrously. There was going to be a return to endless hours spent thinking as well as longing, she saw, so she had better get herself in hand. In the old days, before Jos and Sara or any of that, her broodings had always led to the same miserable conclusion, the unhappy realization that she was the unluckiest and most unfortunate girl in the world, and floods of tears. She couldn’t see all that returning. Her mind might slip back occasionally to Jos, the way it was doing now, but she felt placid about the prospect. She had Sara and a future. What was more, she had had and rejected all the other things she had ever wanted, like sex and a man and what was exactly the same as marriage. It just wasn’t true that to have and to lose, or give up, was worse than never having at all.
Coming to the end of one section of the pattern, she came on to something she couldn’t understand. The hieroglyphics meant nothing. She would have to take it down to Peg in the morning, even if she didn’t relish the prospect of actually seeking her company. Peg had nothing. So much had happened to her, and at the end of it all she had Sara, but nothing had happened to Peg. The same old nothing too. It wasn’t nice to have Peg around, not that it ever had been in one sense. It ought to make her feel happy because she was so well off and Peg so badly off, but it didn’t. She felt nervous in Peg’s presence.
She turned the light off and resolved to try to go to sleep again. There was a lot to be done when the real morning came. She had it all planned out. First, she would have to go round to James’s and ask her mother if Sara could be left downstairs in the kitchen while she taught upstairs. Then she would have to contact all her former pupils, or rather their mothers and schools, and try to explain her absence as best she could. With luck, they wouldn’t have bothered to find anyone else. She must also make very discreet inquiries about how she could become Sara’s legal guardian. If she gave too much information away, some busybody might turn up and take the baby away. That she refused to think about. It was a nightmare she must push right to the very back of her mind and pretend didn’t exist. She wasn’t used to such self-denial. All her nightmares previously had been seized on at regular intervals, gloated over masochistically, and not put back until every drop of pessimistic misery had been squeezed out of them. Now, this one must be treated quite differently, different from the thought of dying which before had been her most nervewracking one, never gone into too deeply. Neither Meredith nor Jos wanted, or would ever want, Sara. She had nothing to fear from anyone else. Full stop, full stop.
In the end, George did sleep, for a couple of hours. This time Sara woke her up, and she sprang to look after her, grateful for all the activity that would chase away any thinking. She followed the routine of feeding, bathing and changing with pleasure and satisfaction, and looked with pride on her charge when she was settled in her pram and ready to go out.
It was too far to walk all the way to James’s, so she had to invest in a taxi. The taxi driver was very helpful about taking the pram to bits and putting the carry cot part in the back seat. He said Sara was the spitting image of George. George said nothing, only hoping his gushing meant a reasonable fare. When they arrived at James’s, she asked him to carry the cot to the doorstep and lean the pram frame against the wall. There was no point in setting it all up again until they were inside. She rang the bell, even though she had her own key and could have let herself in, because she felt a bit of an intruder.
Doris looked up at George and down at the baby.
‘No,’ said George, ‘it isn’t. It’s Meredith’s.’
‘I didn’t think it was yours,’ said Doris. The relief showed plainly in her face. ‘Where’s Meredith then?’
‘Can I come in?’ George said. She pushed the frame into the hall and set it up. Doris helped her lift the cot on to it.
‘She’s a lovely baby,’ said Doris. ‘Are you going to put her in the garden?’
‘Yes,’ said George, and wheeled the pram through the hall and into the back. She put the hood up to keep off the wind, and went down the basement steps into the kitchen.
‘Well,’ said Doris.
‘I know,’ said George. ‘I forgot all about everything.’
‘What’ve you been up to?’ asked Doris. ‘Your father didn’t say much.’
‘There isn’t much to say,’ said George. ‘I’ve been looking after Jos, and the baby.’
‘Why couldn’t Meredith look after them,’ objected Doris, ‘she can’t have been in hospital all this time, surely?’
‘She left,’ said George. ‘I don’t know where she went, so it’s no good asking.’
‘Left? Left where?’ said Doris. ‘You don’t mean she left her husband and that baby?’
‘That’s right,’ said George.
‘Well,’ said Doris, and then, ‘How’s he going to manage with a baby?’
‘I don’t know,’ said George.
‘George,’ said Doris, ‘you haven’t let yourself be landed looking after them two?’
‘No,’ said George, ‘only the baby. Sara.’
Doris stared. ‘Not for keeps,’ she said, flatly.
‘Yes,’ said George.
‘Oh don’t talk silly,’ said Doris, in a sudden burst of temper. ‘You’ve had some daft ideas but this beats the band. I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous and – and stupid in all my born days. What do you know about babies? Think of its future – you’ve nothing to offer it, nothing.’
‘I’ve got myself,’ murmured George.
‘Don’t be soft,’ snapped Doris. ‘That’s soft talk, you’re not right in the head carrying on like that. I don’t know what you’re thinking of.’
‘The baby,’ said George simply.
‘Then it’s time somebody told you a few home truths,’ said Doris.
‘Such as?’ said George. She’d expected all this.
‘You’re not fit to bring up a child. You’re not married and never likely to be with a ready-made baby round your neck, apart from anything else. You haven’t any money, nor a proper home, and no security at all. You ought to be ashamed of yourself even thinking about it.’
‘I’d look after it better than a Dr Barnardo’s Home or somewhere,’ said George.
‘I’d like five minutes with its proper mother and father,’ said Doris.
‘That wouldn’t do much good. They don’t want it,’ said George.
‘They should have thought about that before they had it,’ said Doris.
‘Obviously,’ George agreed.
‘The poor little thing,’ sighed Doris. ‘It’s a shame.’
‘I know,’ said George. ‘I feel so sorry for her. None of this is her fault.’
They were silent for a minute, united in the heartbreaking thought of Sara’s pathos.
‘All the same,’ said Doris, though with a slight change of tone. ‘It wouldn’t be right for you to keep her. You mustn’t think of it.’
‘I can’t help it,’ pleaded George.
‘You’ll just have to help it,’ said Doris firmly, ‘you won’t get a man and a baby of your own that way.’
‘I don’t want a man or any other baby except Sara,’ said George. ‘There isn’t any point talking about it.’
‘What have you come here for then?’ said Doris, abruptly. ‘I’ll have no hand in it.’
‘I want you to look after Sara while I give lessons here,’ said George. ‘I’ll pay you.’
‘I don’t want to be paid,’ said Doris. ‘I don’t know how you could suggest it. I won’t, anyway.’
‘It would only be for a few hours,’ said George. ‘She’s no trouble, really.’
‘That’s nothing to do with it,’ said Doris. ‘No.’
‘All right,’ said George, ‘I’ll have to put her in a nursery. It doesn’t really make much difference, it would have been handier, that’s all.’
Doris set her lips, grimly. She wasn’t going to be got round. ‘They’ll ask questions at any nursery,’ she warned, ‘and then you’ll cop it. They’ll soon find out you’re not fit to bring up a child.’
‘What do you mean – “fit”,’ shouted George, ‘I’m sick of hearing you say it. I’m not a crook, or blind or anything. I don’t go around drinking or swearing or gambling. You’d think I was a prostitute the way you’re talking. I’m perfectly fit.’
‘It’s no good shouting,’ said Doris. ‘You’re not married.’
‘What’s so marvellous about being married?’ yelled George. ‘You’d think only married people were human, or had a prerogative on decency. Meredith was married and she didn’t even want her baby. There are some lousy married mothers and some wonderful unmarried ones.’
‘Exactly,’ said Doris. ‘That’s what people would think. They’d see a single girl with a baby and there you are.’
‘Oh God,’ stormed George, ‘Who cares what people think?’
‘Sara, or whatever you call her, might,’ said Doris. ‘People might say things to her. You haven’t thought of that.’
‘It wouldn’t matter,’ protested George. ‘It would be so easy to explain everything. Sara would know the truth right from the beginning.’
‘Would she?’ said Doris.
For some reason she didn’t understand, George’s heart began to beat very fast, as though she were afraid.
‘All she would understand,’ said Doris, ‘would be that everyone else had a father as well as a mother.’
‘Widows’ children have the same problem,’ said George. ‘It would be no worse than being in a home and having neither.’
‘Yes it would,’ said Doris. ‘There, everyone would be the same. That matters to children.’ George was silent. ‘You want to think of yourself,’ warned Doris.
‘I have,’ said George. ‘I’m not being noble. I know what it would mean, but it would all be worth it.’
‘Suppose a man came along when Sara was seven or eight,’ said Doris.
‘He won’t,’ said George. ‘And anyway even supposing, just to please you, that he did, I wouldn’t be interested in anyone who didn’t want Sara.’
‘That’s what you say now,’ said Doris. ‘I’ve heard that before.’
‘It’s no good arguing,’ said George, ‘I’ve made my mind up. I’m sorry I bothered you. Where’s the nearest nursery in this stinking neighbourhood? I bet they don’t have L.C.C. nurseries, they’re too bloody posh.’
‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said Doris. ‘Aren’t you moving a bit quick?’
‘Why?’ said George.
‘Things have changed here, though you may have been too busy to give a thought to that,’ said Doris sarcastically. ‘Mr James might not be willing to let you have that room for your classes. I suppose you hadn’t thought of that.’
George stared at her.
‘No, I hadn’t,’ she said blankly. ‘Why should he object?’
‘His new wife might not like it,’ said Doris.’
‘His new what?’ said George.
‘Wife.’
‘He can’t be married,’ said George. She was going to say that he would have asked her first, but thought better of it. ‘When did he get married? Nobody told me.’
‘Why should they?’ said Doris, tartly. ‘You haven’t shown any interest in his affairs up to now, not even coming to the funeral like that.’
‘What’s she like?’ asked George. ‘Where did he meet her? How long has he known her?’
‘It’s no good asking me,’ said Doris. ‘I’ve never even seen her and I don’t know anything about her. She’ll be like the last one, I expect. Whatever she’s like, it’ll be an end to the nice easy ways of the last few weeks that’s certain.’
‘Doesn’t she live here?’ said George. ‘I mean, if you haven’t seen her. Are they on their honeymoon?’
‘They aren’t married yet,’ said Doris. ‘He’s just told us, that’s all. He came out with it weeks ago and we’ve been waiting ever since. He can’t spend much time with her anyway, he’s never been out. Your father did ask him when the happy day was to be, but he never gave a proper answer. Real secretive, he is. Sits there and says “we’ll see” and that’s all.’
George felt a rush of relief, and was ashamed of herself. She hadn’t given a thought to James ever since her affair with Jos had begun. He belonged to a farcical episode in the past which one day she would laugh about with Jos. She hadn’t even bothered to give him the answer he had so dramatically demanded, because when she’d found Jos it had seemed so ludicrous that there was any answer to be given. Somehow she’d expected him to realize that. Now hearing about his intended new wife, she felt unreasonably annoyed, as though he had no right to be interested in any woman except her. It made even more of a fool out of her, somehow.
‘Is James in now?’ she said.
‘No,’ said Doris. ‘I don’t know where he is, but I don’t expect he’s gone far. Ask your father. He’s in the dining room polishing the silver.’
George wandered off to find Ted. He had all the silver spread out on a thick, green, baize cloth at one end of the table – one pile to his left, dull with the polish he’d put on, and another to his right, gleaming from the friction of his soft, yellow duster. He was wearing a dark blue apron, with the strings brought twice round his middle and tied in a bow at the front. She thought he looked very old and sulky.
‘Hello, dad,’ she said, and sat down at the table, idly picking up one of the polished forks and twisting it round and round to catch the light.
‘Give me that,’ said Ted, snatching it away. ‘I’ve just cleaned it. You don’t want to go making marks all over it.’
‘Sorry,’ said George. ‘Is this in honour of the new Mrs Leamington?’
‘I clean the silver once a month as you very well know,’ said Ted sharply. ‘This is my silver-cleaning morning, that’s all.’ He looked up. ‘If you’ve just come to make trouble,’ he said, ‘you can go away again.’
‘It was a joke,’ said George.
‘I don’t like them sort of jokes,’ said Ted, viciously polishing the handle of a knife.
George kept quiet, watching him. She could imagine his delight at Mrs L.’s death. He must have been in sole control of James all these weeks, relishing his dependence upon him. It was all to go. James would be a zealous and devoted husband for a time, and Ted couldn’t know what humiliations might lie ahead. James needing to get married he would see as a betrayal, some slight upon himself. There would be no question of leaving his service whatever the new Mrs L. was like, indeed no, that was what must make it all so worrying.
‘Never mind, dad,’ said George suddenly. ‘She might not be so bad.’
‘What you getting at?’ said Ted, furiously.
‘The new Mrs L.,’ said George, ‘she might not bas bad as the last one.’
‘I don’t know what you’re driving at,’ said Ted, ‘but you mind your own business. If Mr James chooses to get married again then it’s a very good thing. He’s in the prime of life isn’t he? What’s more natural? You just watch what you’re saying if you’re going to come round here again my girl. That’s all.’
George got up and went up to her music room. The key was on the outside, but the door was locked. She turned it, and went in. The room had an overpoweringly musty smell. The piano had a fine coating of dust and the mirror was covered with a thin film of dirt. She was surprised it had such a neglected air after so short a time.
She went over to the windows and pulled them both wide open, drawing back the curtains as far as they would go to let as much air as possible in. With her scarf, she dusted the piano and opened it. Instead of automatically thumping out some tune, her fingers hovered uncertainly over the keys, not knowing which notes to strike. The last time she had played was before Sara was born, when she’d had everything before her and not known it. She had played then, discontented and frustrated, thinking of all the empty, useless hours surrounding her. This room had seen her crying there in the mirror, dejected and miserable, full of a restlessness that she could find no outlet for. It was gone. She felt quiet, sad, but she wasn’t unhappy. Slowly, she began to play a lullaby for Sara, smiling slushily at herself in the mirror.
The sound of the piano was what James had been waiting for. He came in from his club in time for lunch, and heard the music from outside, standing on his doorstep. Gently, he let himself in, hoping Ted wouldn’t hear and come rushing out, spoiling everything. He’d known that sooner or later she would come back, without him asking or doing anything to make her. Whatever she’d been doing would come to an end and she would be driven back to that room.
He opened the door very quietly and stepped inside, pushing it to behind him. She looked up immediately.
‘Don’t stop playing,’ he said.
George felt herself blushing violently. ‘I wasn’t really playing anything,’ she said. She was afraid he would make some heavy joke about her answer.
‘It sounded very nice to me,’ said James. And then, ‘you look different. What have you been doing to yourself?’
‘Nothing really,’ said George, peeking at herself in the mirror. She looked exactly the same. ‘Oh, by the way,’ she said, ‘I was very sorry to hear about your wife’s death.’
‘Were you?’ said James steadily.
‘Of course,’ said George, ‘it was just that I was very busy at the time. That’s no excuse, but really I was sorry.’
‘I wasn’t,’ said James. He walked over towards her, and stood beside the piano with his arms clasped behind him. ‘It was a shock at first, naturally,’ he said, ‘and I don’t like death and all that business. But I wasn’t sorry, not when I realized it meant I was free.’
‘My mother told me,’ said George. ‘I didn’t know you were getting married again.’
‘You should have done,’ said James.
‘Why, do I know her?’ said George, frowning and trying to recollect the silly women who had fluttered around James.
‘Come off it,’ said James. ‘You’re the one I’m going to marry.’
George felt that every atom of scarlet blood in her had rushed into her face, into every nook and cranny. She gasped, as though she was choking, and put her hand up to her mouth.
‘You never gave me an answer,’ James was saying. ‘Well of course I see now it was a damn silly proposition for a girl like you. I think it’s very much to your credit that you didn’t lower yourself by replying. I’d have done the same. Mind you, I’m still sure it would have worked out, but it wouldn’t have been ideal. You’re the sort that wants the ideal, no half measures or messing about. It’s all or nothing, isn’t it, even if it looked as though nothing was more likely? I’ve had a lot of time to think it all out in the last few weeks and I can see my mistake was never mentioning that I might marry you. You couldn’t know I was serious without me doing that. Well, it’s all quite straightforward now, we can get married when you like.’
George turned away from him, unable to take in quite what he was saying with his dominating body bang in front of her. He’s got a kink, she thought, he really has. He talks as though we had been passionate lovers, as though we’d had some longstanding affair. She wondered if Mrs L.’s death had turned his brain.
‘A lot’s happened to me too,’ she said, ‘since I saw you. It’s not as if things were the same, even.’
‘I sent your father round,’ James said. ‘I thought something was going on.’
‘I had an affair,’ said George, shyly. ‘You might not think it, but I did. A love affair.’
‘It didn’t work out,’ stated James.
‘No. It didn’t, but it changes everything.’
‘Why?’ said James.
George thought that a few months ago she could have told him brutally why, she could have said that the only reason she’d shown any interest in him, such as it was, was because she was man mad. She wanted somebody of her own, to make love to her, she was that desperate, or she would have laughed in his face.
‘I’ve got a baby to look after, my friends’,’ she said. ‘Her parents didn’t want her.’
‘That’s all right,’ said James. ‘You know how I feel about children. She’ll give our family a good start, the more the merrier.’
Looking up at him, George thought how that was the reaction she’d wanted from Jos, but it never came. James had some feeling then. She believed he really did welcome Sara and wasn’t just saying it to persuade her. He would make a good father. She wasn’t likely to fall in love with anyone, after Jos. She didn’t have any illusions to get rid of.
It was a good solution to her problem, if only James wasn’t so repulsive. She said the word to herself and tried to analyse why she didn’t like him. Perhaps it was just the backlog of all the years of that false relationship her father had foisted on to them. In any case, all her emotions except her love for Sara seemed dulled and unimportant. She could get over dislike.
Still playing with the idea, only toying, she said: ‘I don’t love you.’
‘I never expected you to,’ said James, ‘I told you that.’
‘I’m not interested in sex any more either,’ said George. ‘Gone right off it, I ’ave,’ she added, trying to pick up the threads of her old bitter, bright little cracks.
‘We’ll see about that,’ said James.
‘I don’t think I can have children either,’ said George. ‘I think I’m sterile, or barren to put it in biblical terms.’
A shade of caution passed over James’s face.
‘How do you know?’ he said.
‘That’s put you off,’ said George. ‘I don’t know, I only think. I didn’t become pregnant all those weeks with Jos, and he’s not sterile.’
‘Doesn’t prove anything,’ said James.
‘No. Do you want me to be examined?’ said George. She suddenly thought she would like to be examined and know.
‘Not yet,’ said James, ‘give it a chance first.’
George closed her eyes self-consciously and tried to tell herself the whole thing was utterly pathetic. He was marrying her now out of loneliness, not for any twisted psychological reason. She was handy and accessible. And she was marrying him for security and ease and babies, babies she would probably never have. It would be the most negative marriage of all time.
She didn’t ask for time to think about it. There wasn’t much thinking to do. The alternatives were well known to her, she’d been over and over them ever since Jos walked out, and she didn’t like them. So much of what her mother had said was true, she had no right to bring up Sara to the sort of narrow life she would be able to offer. It would be awful having to live with a sentimental, self-pitying spinster who used you as a vicarious substitute for the love and marriage and children she’d never had. I might even keep telling her how grateful she ought to be, George thought. It would be better to be the adopted child of a business marriage, definitely. The pretence of normality would be so much easier.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘it’s a deal.’
‘Good,’ James wasn’t offended by the way she’d phrased it. ‘Good,’ he said again, and smiled. ‘You won’t regret it,’ he promised.
They stayed where they were. It was difficult to know what to do. James took a deep breath.
‘We’ll have a white wedding,’ he said, ‘in a church. People can say what they like.’
‘Anything you like,’ said George, ‘but I’ll look a bloody sight tarted up in white.’
‘You’ll look beautiful,’ said James. ‘I’ve often imagined how you would look. Don’t you worry.’
‘I’m not worried,’ said George. ‘I’m just warning you, mate.’
‘We’ll go to the Bahamas for our honeymoon,’ said James.
‘I can’t leave Sara,’ said George. Defensively, she waited for him to ask who Sara was, or to remonstrate about taking a baby on a honeymoon.
‘We’ll take her with us,’ said James, ‘and a nanny to look after her if you like.’
‘I don’t like,’ said George, frowning. ‘I look after her.’
‘Right,’ said James. ‘That’s settled. We’ll get married in a month’s time, give us time to do things properly.’
‘One thing,’ said George. ‘My mother and father. I don’t want them around when we are married. You can sack them.’
‘Ted?’ said James, perturbed. ‘What would he do?’
‘That’s something he should have found out for himself a long time ago,’ said George.
‘I’ll pension him off, handsomely,’ said James.
‘You can do what you like, as long as he isn’t here to kow-tow to you when we get back,’ said George firmly.
‘He’s my friend,’ said James.
‘I’ll be your wife,’ said George. ‘You don’t need both. Anyway, he isn’t your friend. He loathes your guts, and so does Doris.’
‘I can’t believe that,’ said James.
‘Of course you can’t,’ said George. ‘You’re much too conceited and weak.’
James chuckled, and then laughed loudly. ‘That’s my Georgy girl,’ he roared, slapping George on the shoulder.
‘It is indeed,’ said George, dryly.
Eventually, they went into the garden so that George could display Sara to her prospective father. It was a highly successful meeting. James picked her up and made a fool of himself, and Sara gurgled appreciatively and slightly sarcastically. Then they went inside and George told her mother and father, who were having their lunch in the kitchen, that she was going to marry James. She said it straight out, without any preamble. They couldn’t tell her not to be stupid or disrespectful because James was standing at her side, beaming his approval.
Ted had to sit down very quickly.
George knew nothing would be said until she was on her own. She made James sit down, there and then, at the kitchen table and told Doris that as he was now one of the family he could eat with them. James thought that was a very good joke. Ted was nearly sick with horror and embarrassment. When they’d finished an almost silent meal, George thought it time she got it over and sent James off to take Sara for a walk in the park. He departed docilely, even proudly.
‘You can start,’ George said, the minute he’d gone, ‘who’s going to shoot first?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Doris, tightly. ‘We’ve nothing to say except what’s been said. We hope you’ll be very happy.’
‘And dad?’ said George.
‘Leave him alone,’ said Doris.
‘I bet he doesn’t hope we’ll be happy,’ said George. ‘I bet he hopes I rot in hell and James comes running back to him.’ Ted still said nothing. ‘Come on, dad. Say Mr James can’t be wrong, whatever he does is wonderful.’
‘You don’t care about him,’ said Ted slowly, without looking up from the empty table.
‘No,’ said George. ‘I don’t. I’m marrying him for sheer security and because I can’t be bothered to do anything else. We can’t all love him like you – but then I don’t hate him either.’
‘Who said anything about hate?’ said Doris fearfully.
George ignored her. ‘It will be the best thing that ever happened to you both, me marrying James,’ she said. ‘He’s going to pension you off, I asked him to. You’ll have to move away and make your own life and you’ll only see him once a week when you come to tea. Then maybe you’ll both get straightened out and won’t have wasted absolutely all your lives.’
She wanted Ted to get very angry, to shout at her. A first class row would show him up for what he was. But he didn’t rise to her taunts. He remained at the table, head bowed, not even telling her to be quiet. As soon as she saw his submission, she felt sorry. He was too weak and useless to attack, he was just a prop.
Doris kept her argument to herself. She didn’t know if it was true about being pensioned off, and, after wanting such a break for years, she now found that she didn’t care. Her words to George about not being capable of bringing up Sara, and never finding a man, came back to her. Perhaps they’d goaded her daughter into accepting James. She, too, couldn’t understand this new situation, but not, like Ted, because she couldn’t understand a marriage without love on at least the woman’s part. She understood that very well. It was what must have happened in the past that mystified her. James wasn’t a man of impulse, everything was always planned. She tried to remember any occasion on which he’d shown a partiality for George, but could conjure up none. He’d always treated her scrupulously like a daughter, of that she was sure. It was disgusting of him to marry her. It made a mockery of all those past years. George, of course, didn’t care. He was a husband. She was taking what she could get, and she was lucky at that.
George left all the arrangements to James. She went for dress fittings where and when she was ordered and glowered at herself in the mirrors of the establishment he chose. She would look an absolute clown, but that was his affair. He pleased her, however, by insisting that Sara should be formally adopted by them. She had no idea how to go about this, but James told her to leave it all to his solicitor. The only part she played was giving him Jos’s poste restante address. She didn’t think he would object.
The day before she was married, she finally moved out of her flat. Peg moved in. She couldn’t understand why Peg should want to do this, but from the minute she’d announced her departure, Peg had said she would like her flat.
‘Why?’ George asked, blankly.
‘It’s bigger,’ said Peg.
‘But there’s only you,’ said George. ‘What do you want a bigger flat for? What will you do with all the space?’
‘Spread out,’ said Peg, promptly. ‘I’m cramped down there.’
‘It’s twice your rent,’ said George. ‘How will you afford six pounds instead of three? It’s ridiculous.’
‘T’isn’t,’ said Peg. ‘I don’t spend much. I don’t go out or buy clothes. I’ve just got my rent and food and something for a rainy day. There’s no point in saving for nothing.’
George shrugged. She didn’t want Peg in her flat. She wanted to leave it bare and empty and see a stranger move in.
‘You could always come back,’ said Peg. George stared at her blankly. ‘If you leave that man,’ said Peg, ‘you and Sara could move in with me.’
‘Why should you think I’d leave him?’ said George. ‘I haven’t even married him yet.’
‘You might have married Jos,’ said Peg, ‘and you left him.’
‘He left me.’
‘Same thing. You were alone anyway. That’s all I meant. If you end up alone there’s always a place for you here.’
‘Thanks,’ said George, choking. It sounded like her epitaph.
When Peg’s prize curtains were up and her massive bed in place, the flat had changed completely. George felt bound to help her make the move, and patiently toiled up and down the stairs with her goods and chattels. If Peg was wild with delight, none of it showed.
‘We’ll have a cup of tea,’ said Peg at five o’clock. ‘You’ll have to go now I expect.’
‘Yes,’ said George. ‘I suppose I’d better.’
‘Is your wedding dress nice?’ said Peg, filling the kettle.
‘Oh, ravishing,’ said George.
‘I never thought you’d get married,’ said Peg. ‘It seems funny somehow.’
‘Have a good laugh, then, for God’s sake,’ said George.
‘I thought you’d be like me,’ said Peg. ‘Funny how it’s turned out you getting two men.’
‘You mean in spite of my ugly mug?’ said George, savagely.
‘Well, you know,’ said Peg. ‘It seems queer. Do you like this James?’
‘No,’ said George.
‘He’s old enough to be your father, isn’t he?’ said Peg.
‘Madam, he is my father,’ said George.
‘You’re joking,’ said Peg, uncertainly.
‘No, I’m not,’ said George, ‘he’s my father and Jos was my brother so you see it’s all explained.’
‘I shall enjoy the wedding,’ said Peg.
‘It will be good entertainment,’ agreed George, ‘ices in the interval and everything. Mind you’re early and get a seat in the stalls. You don’t want to miss any of the best bits.’
Peg was early. She arrived at the church half an hour before anyone else, wearing a new blue hat and her Hebe costume. George’s side hadn’t many guests so she was the fourth row, nearest to the aisle, with a splendid view of everything. She settled down comfortably, reading her favourite hymns and sucking a mint very discreetly in time to the music in her head. She didn’t think much of George’s choice of hymns. You could tell the bride hadn’t been in a church for years when she chose ‘O Perfect Love’ which had a rotten tune. She’d have chosen something easy and rousing, herself.
When the guests began to arrive, Peg put down her hymn book and swallowed the last bit of her mint. She didn’t know any of the people, of course, which spoiled it a bit, but she enjoyed staring at everybody with no one knowing who she was either. It was obvious who George’s mother was. She was wearing floral blue silk and had a very stiff face. Peg felt sorry for her. She could feel there was no proper wedding atmosphere, nobody whispered or smiled or nodded at anyone else. It was more like a funeral.
She studied James carefully when he took up his seat on the right hand front side. She was surprised he’d turned out so good looking. He was a bit fat, but not so that you couldn’t call it heavy built. He was very straight backed with black hair, grey at the temples, and she thought he had a kind face. He was very smart.
Peg was the only one who turned right round to stare blatantly at the bride as she started on the long walk down the aisle. She looks ever so nice, Peg thought. They’d done something queer with her hair, twisted it all in coils on top of her head. Regal looking, that was the phrase. The dress was beautiful, high necked, long sleeved and masses of skirt. Easy ten yards in that skirt alone.
She came past Peg, on her father’s arm, and Peg could see she was quite flushed. Not what you’d call red, but sort of pink. It was becoming. Peg was very impressed, she’d never thought George would turn out so well.
After the services, which went off very nicely, Peg went home. She’d decided not to go to the reception because she wouldn’t know anybody and it would be awkward. Better to go home and have some tea by herself, and a quiet think about how nice George had looked and how happy she must be and about her honeymoon and house and Sara and perhaps other children, and how there was no knowing what might turn up for oneself.