Diary of a Provincial Lesbian
Diary of a Provincial Lesbian
V G Lee
Published by Ward Wood Publishing
6 The Drive
Golders Green
London NW11 9SR
www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk
First published by Onlywomen Press Limited 2006
This edition published by Ward Wood Publishing 2013
The right of VG Lee to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988.
Copyright © 2013 VG Lee
ISBN: 978-1-908742-41-4
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A CIP record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publishers. This book may not be lent, hired out, resold or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior consent of the publishers.
Designed and typeset in Palatino Linotype by
Ward Wood Publishing.
Cover design by Mike Fortune-Wood.
Artwork: Flowers and Diary by Csourav
supplied by Dreamstime.com
January
Jan 3
rd
Georgie away working for a few more days. Am woken at 5am by Tilly’s plaintive cry. I peer over the edge of the mattress. Tilly (small, elderly black cat) is addressing the drawer of our divan bed - nowadays she thinks this is where I live when I’m upstairs. I pat her head and she starts back as if I’ve struck her with a rolled newspaper. Since going deaf everything is a surprise to her. She’s become disorientated and wakes every two hours imagining its dinner time again.
For such a frail old cat Tilly manages to beat me down the stairs. I have a bird’s eye view of her hurrying along the hall and into the kitchen. Feel a pang because she used to be plump with thick soft fur. However she is still an extraordinary cat. She can say ‘hello’ and ‘good morning’, or at least she can say ‘mellow’ and ‘nood norning’. Were she younger and finer looking I could have carved out a career for her in advertising. As elderly cat she might be able to follow in the late Thora Hird’s footsteps advertising stair lifts and step-in baths. Small raddled feline disappears into step-in bath; ‘Nood norning’ is heard above the sound of rushing water.
Tilly remains surprising athletic, managing to jump from floor to chair, to table, then the leap of four foot between table and work top where her empty plate waits. ‘Nood norning,' she says cheerfully as if she’s only just spotted me.
By the time I’ve fed Tilly, Georgie’s cats, Samson and Delilah, have appeared looking bemused by the early hour. Feed them as well. Take two Nurofen. Go back to bed. Hear Tilly scrabbling in her litter tray. Put pillow over my head.
NB.1 Sometimes need to resort to two pillows over my head.
NB.2. Follow on from this reflection with further reflection that one day I will be discovered smothered by pillows over head. Who by? Probably not Georgie as she will be at a hotel in the Outer Hebrides. The front door emergency key holders. Mr Wheeler, DIY neighbour (left hand side), wanting to know if I have any wire for his Strimmer; Deirdre, neighbour (right hand side) wanting to know if I feel up to a full English breakfast anywhere; Miriam (work colleague) wanting to know how she goes about meeting younger women. The police will be called.
‘No sign of forced entry. She must have known her killer.’
All key holders have watertight alibis. Deirdre telephones our local paper, the
Listening Ear.
‘I’m devastated’, neighbour and close friend sobs, ‘Margaret will be sorely missed. She leaves behind three motherless cats.’
Lesbian woman
(this for those reading local paper unsure what sex a lesbian might be)
found murdered. Neighbour discloses that she saw women coming in and out of lesbian love nest, morning, noon and night. Multiple arrests expected.
Radio Four:
The sleepy seaside town of Bittlesea Bay was rocked today by the news that...’
Samson tentatively inserts his paw under pillow and finds my chin. Taps gently, then unsheathes claws and gives chin a playful scratch, ‘What the devil is that under the pillow?’
I emerge. Samson looks delighted.
‘Yes?’ I challenge.
‘Grub up,’ Samson telepathises.
Look at clock. Still only five thirty-seven. Get up. Empty litter tray. Feed everybody again.
Make tea. Help myself to a chocolate digestive. Take tea back to bed. Search for
Farming Today
on the radio. Finally find a farmer using an emasculator on an unknown animal; ‘You need to be careful how you use it,’ he says to the presenter. ‘Remember nuts to nuts.’
‘I’ll certainly be careful to remember that,’ I tell the radio and switch the farmer off.
Downstairs I hear the cat flap bang three times. Peace at last. Will sleep. Cannot sleep. Am wide awake. Get up and open the curtains. Red clouds streak the huge sky - a bad omen for the day but impressive. It is too early in the year for the seagulls cries to be really raucous - I can only just hear them like the sound of protesters on a distant march. Down below, at the edge of the town, a train trundles along taking the very first of the morning’s commuters into London. Slowly Bittlesea Bay begins to waken.
Jan 5
th
Georgie home tomorrow. Georgie, Georgie, Georgie! Normally I wouldn’t be so Georgie fixated but we parted on an acrimonious note. It began on the morning she was setting off to Edinburgh, when she called down to me, ‘Margaret, another cup of coffee wouldn’t go amiss.’
I experienced an increasingly familiar sensation of being a housekeeper and Georgie my employer. This was not the same sensation that Jane Eyre felt in the company of Mr Rochester. Initial thought that I must stop wearing aprons and marigold gloves because they were becoming something of a uniform bedded down into a feeling of resentment that she would be away in Scotland on business from the 29th of December to the 7th of January. When I’d said, ‘But that means I won’t see you over New Year,’ she’d replied, ‘But you saw me over Christmas.’
Should have asserted immediately that surely women who were about to celebrate their tenth anniversary expected to spend all major holidays together. As always said nothing while fuming inwardly.
Made fresh coffee which in our house means
Instant
but with newly boiled water.
‘I could murder a couple of digestives.’
Was reminded of deceased mother whose response to any childhood requests to do something had been, ‘What did your last servant die of? Exhaustion?’
Put several biscuits on to side of saucer. Carried coffee and biscuits upstairs. Georgie attempting to close suitcase in the middle of the landing nodded in the direction of her study desk. The words I hoped to hear were ‘Thank you’ or ‘You’re an angel.’
Georgie said, ‘You’re not still sulking over me being away, are you?’
Vigorously denied sulking for any reason at all however Georgie’s departure was tight lipped on both sides. Every day since have wished that Georgie was home so that any unpleasantness could be ironed out.
NB. (Unsure of what NB stands for. Will ask Georgie on her return. Seems appropriate to diary entries.) For Christmas Georgie gave me this diary - a large leather covered desk diary with four pages for each day. Also as a complementary gift, a copy of
Diary of a Provincial Lady
by EM Delafield, which is a gently funny book made up of articles written in the nineteen thirties about the provincial life of a married woman and her family. Georgie said, ‘I’m sure you could write something light and amusing - you often make me laugh.’
Am going to try. Will not let Georgie read it till the end of the year. Will not even let Georgie see that I’m writing it. As I write keep before me image of next Christmas Eve, me in festive dressing gown (not yet purchased) as I appear like Eamonn Andrews with my big book. Sometimes in my daydream, we sit either side of a roaring fire, sometimes Georgie sits one side of the roaring fire and I sit at her feet, but always we drink Ovaltine (our Christmas Eve night cap) as I read out hilarious Diary extracts.
Jan 6th
Visit my neighbour Deirdre which entails sliding open a section of our back fence. Deirdre is sitting at her computer, Lord Dudley next to her on the table sprawled in a cardboard box lid. (We are a cat loving street, dog lovers next street up the hill near the dog walking areas.) Neither Deirdre nor Lord Dudley look up.
‘
She
back tomorrow?’ Deirdre asks, her eyes fixed on the multicoloured pattern on her computer screen.
‘Yes.’
‘You pleased?’
‘Very.’
‘What you doing later?’
‘Cleaning.’
‘Fancy going to the caff?’
‘Not today.’
‘Why not?’
‘Cleaning.’
I make tea in Deirdre’s immaculate kitchen; do not in any way feel like Deirdre’s housekeeper. Deirdre already has a cleaner, someone to do her ironing as her partner Martin has to have two clean shirts every day, and a laundry van which is another story and proving problematic.
Sit opposite Deirdre while I drink my tea. She is an impressive woman, big, strong bodied, with a very pretty, doll-like face and masses of yellow curly hair. Small but bright blue eyes. She is a successful packaging designer. That is what she calls herself. Or a successful woman. Or a happy woman. Or sometimes with a sensual swivel of her shoulders, ‘I’m just great! Stupendous! FANTASTIC!’
She has advised me to also talk this way about myself.
Go home. A message from Georgie saying she can’t get home till tomorrow; the roads are blocked by snow. Not to bother trying to ring back - her mobile’s still not working.
Day not completely wasted. Deirdre and I go up to the Bittlesea Bay Café for a full English breakfast which lasts from 11am till 4pm. Came home, snoozed, watched the last half of an early Gregory Peck film set in Burma, finished stripping the banister, fed the cats, emptied Tilly’s litter tray. Watched forecast. As always it was wrong, showing Scotland undergoing a freak spell of spring-like weather. Blonde, vapid weather woman predicts:
A mild night in the northern parts of Britain
. Slept fitfully.
Jan 9
th
Georgie got back yesterday looking tanned. It’s amazing the difference these all over tanning booths make. There are several down here in Bittlesea Bay but yes, I appreciate that she wanted her top-up tan to be a surprise for me. She looks terrific. Out food shopping together in the supermarket caught a glimpse of us reflected in the store window and it was rather disconcerting. I mean, we’ve always looked quite different, but suddenly our differences seem much more marked and at odds. Georgie is tall, well built, (all the hotels she stays at have a gym), has dark hair with quite a bit of distinguished grey - in fact Georgie looks as if she might be a celebrity. I am a Margaret. I look like the worst sort of Margaret; middle height, middle build, middle coloured brown hair, middle coloured brown eyes.
To be more specific; we are a case of Pierce Brosnan going out with the actress Frances de la Tour. Yes, I realise Frances de la Tour is an extremely attractive woman. In just about every department she’s more than a match for Pierce Brosnan, only physically, and I suppose I’m talking about glamour here, there’d be a disparity. And I’m definitely the Frances de la Tour character, only there’s not even a hint of show bizz about me.
Did not discuss this with Deirdre who has adopted Martin’s habit of chanting ‘Loser, loser,’ whenever somebody makes a negative statement about themselves, decided to take problem in to Miriam at work on Monday.
Jan 12
th
This afternoon I walked along the seafront on my own. Georgie collating information accumulated while on business trip. It was freezing cold. The rain had turned to a fine sleet. Even so I sat on a bench and tried to pick out Beachy Head which was a faint and distant shadow. Sea a murderous grey. Watched a fishing boat tack out past the pier then change its mind and race back towards the haven of the fishing fleet end of the beach. Finally, frozen, I turned in from the sea and made my way to the Bittlesea Bay funicular railway. By the time I came out on the brow of the cliffs, the fishing boat had been dragged up onto the shingle. Stood and watched before going in the café. Inside, enveloped by muggy warmth, I nursed a hot chocolate and reflected on who I would like to look like given the choice. Came up with a line drawing of a cowgirl.