Diary of a Provincial Lesbian (11 page)

I respond by being vague, hoping that Deirdre will get the message that all I want is to be left alone. She doesn’t. Finally cite Kipling’s ‘the cat that walked by itself’.

After a pause for reflection she replied, ‘Lord Dudley can be a solitary cat but generally he can’t get enough of me and Martin’s company.’

‘What I mean is I’m a solitary cat.’

I can almost hear her wrinkling her nose as if I’d announced, ‘I’m a groovy chick.’

‘In what way?’

‘Sometimes I rather like my own company.’

‘Oh, me too.’ Her voice becomes dreamy. ‘I love staring up at the night sky imagining all those planets...’ She tails off as her imagination fails to provide an answer as to what all those planets might be doing.

April 19
^th

Janice the gardener arrives at 10am. Comes in round the back and taps on my kitchen window. I open the door and say, ‘Tea, coffee?’

‘Tea,’ she says.

When I turn round from plugging in the kettle I find Janice sitting at the kitchen table studying my television guide.

‘Just seeing what’s on,’ she says, turning the pages.

I notice her fingers are stained green. Is this a gardening marketing ploy?
Yes, I truly have got green fingers. No really.
Make tea and bring it and biscuits to Janice. Sit down opposite. Some green and blue in the crease of her chin and the fine lines each side of her nose.

Janice looks up and catches my curious stare.

‘Face painting.’ She reaches for a biscuit.

‘Oh. Do you have children?’

‘No. Why should I?’ she asks truculently.

Suddenly feel as if a huge chasm has opened up between me and Janice. There must be about ten years difference in our ages yet she is making me feel like her grandmother.

I try an impatient, worldly sigh, ‘Isn’t face painting generally associated with children?’

‘No.’

‘Well it is to me.’

She shrugs, ‘We had a druid party at the weekend.’

Note the ‘we’. ‘Was it fun?’ which seemed an inadequate question.

‘Yeah, it was. So, what’s on the agenda for this morning or should I go my own sweet way?’

In businesslike fashion I pick up my cup and march out into garden. Cannot imagine that Janice was as (offensively) laid back with Deirdre as she seems to be with me. For some reason my face, including my ears, feels hot. I’m certain they’re scarlet. Climb steps to the gravelled terrace and look up at the sloping area. A fair bit of heavy digging still to do. After several minutes Janice follows me up, no doubt having first made notes for her following week’s television viewing. I say firmly, ‘You’ve still got quite a bit of digging to do.’

‘That’s a killer on my back.’

‘I’m sorry about that, but it was a killer on my back.’

‘You can understand my point of view then.’

‘Janice if you don’t want to do the job...’

‘I just don’t want to do that bit of the job...’

‘But I can manage most of the other bits. I didn’t need any help with them.’

‘What if you helped me?’

‘But I’m paying
you
to do the job.’

She shrugged, ‘I better get on with it then. I can’t afford to lose the money.’

Which was awful. I couldn’t afford to pay the money. But could I afford it, more or less, than Janice could afford to lose it? In the past Georgie paid for food and many of the bills because she earned vastly more than me but I’d had no money from her during the whole time she’d been away. Janice walked dispiritedly down the steps, left her mug on the window sill and went round to the shed. I looked at my watch. I looked at the slope. It was steep. And yes, if I had a bad back, then why shouldn’t she have one as well, particularly after lifting all Deirdre’s sacks of cobble stones?

‘Get out both the forks,’ I shouted down to her.

She looked over her shoulder, ‘Why?’

‘Because...because it’s my garden and I want to be a part of turning that bloody slope into something fabulous.’

April 21st
:

Miriam very low. Has recently given up smoking. The day before yesterday in fact. This lunchtime stood on back step of TM Accountancy for ten minutes without saying anything.

I tried. Described plans for my hillside meadow in unnecessary detail. Finally Miriam cut loudly across my description saying, ‘It’s no good. I’m not interested. Your hillside meadow could be swept out to sea for all I care. The only words in my head are, I WANT A CIGARETTE NOW! If I can’t smoke, my life is not worth living.’

‘Then smoke.’

‘I can’t,’ she wailed. ‘Mrs Ferguson and my mother have rightly pointed out that I’m ruining my complexion and my voice is at least three octaves lower than it should be.’

Am amazed that Miriam worries about loss of complexion and personally rather envy her low voice. Wonder how many cigarettes I would have to smoke to lower my voice three octaves.

Miriam leaves me on the step and goes back to her desk where I hear her unwrapping another piece of Nicorette chewing gum.

Also a smoking ban in place at Corner Coffee Shop
.
Martin has been under siege. For several days Coffee Shop staff made allowance for him to continue smoking unobtrusively, keeping his cigarette concealed beneath the table top. Manageress arrives back from skiing holiday and says regretfully this can’t go on. Concealed cigarette is an increased fire hazard. It’s on the cards (what cards?) that either the table top will ignite or Martin’s trousers will.

Deirdre told me that Martin was ‘incandescent’. He’d penned a letter to the
Listening Ear
, copies to a government health minister whose name has gone completely out of her head. Talks of taking this issue to the highest court in the land.

Expect fuss to die down shortly but then see Martin’s polemic in the newspaper, headline:
Small town - small minds,
and outlined in red to denote fury of writer. Realise Deirdre’s Martin is
Martin J. Storm
of the ladies’ toilets correspondence. This inspires me to post off an immediate response, my headline,
Victory for Planet Clean Air!
As always sign myself A. Oakley but on a whim add Fire and Pollution Prevention Officer.

In meantime spot Martin standing in seedy outside niche between Smiths and the Corner Coffee Shop, puffing his cigarette and looking bitter.

April 24th

The Bittlesea Bay Cafe is packed with tourists all bearing bulging rucksacks. Deirdre wants them banned. (The rucksacks not the tourists, although she’s not too keen on them either). She says individual rucksacks take up as much space as a child or a small adult. Do not point out that Deirdre with her flowing scarves, various draperies, handbag, key purse and huge sheaf of hair takes up as much space as three medium sized adults. NB. Do not spend all my life shuttling between cafés although on re-reading previous entries it seems I do.

‘He’s coping...I think,’ she says, responding to my inquiry about Martin’s smoking ban. ‘However more to the point I’m worried about Lord Dudley.’ She looks worriedly towards the sea.

‘Why?’

‘I think he’s got ear mites.’

‘Not a big problem - better take him to the vet.’

‘Yes, but say I take him to the vet and the vet finds cancer or diabetes -  I’m in to the tune of minimum, three hundred pounds and a lot of heartache - then at the end of all that Lord Dudley still dies.’ Her pink lipsticked lower lip trembles, blue eyes fill with tears.

‘We’re only talking ear mites Deirdre.’

‘Could be cancer of the ear.’

‘Is he off his food?’

‘No way.’

‘Has he stopped sitting in his box lid?’

She smiles maternally, ‘Bless him, he loves that box lid.’

‘Then if it’s anything, it’s ear mites.’

‘He’s had such a hard life, poor lamb.’

‘Rubbish,’ I say brusquely. Lord Dudley is nothing like a lamb. He’s a spoilt fluffy cat with one or two winning ways, including using Martin and Deirdre’s white leather sofas as scratching posts. Deirdre has taped sheets of cardboard around the corners of each sofa so that now they look as if they’re still in the process of being unpacked.

‘You’ve changed,’ she says reproachfully. ‘Once upon a time you’d have been as worried as I am about Lord Dudley.’

‘Deirdre, how would you be feeling if Martin left you for two months?’

‘Relieved. No really, I’d make the most of my time alone. Put a positive slant on the situation. Tell myself, ‘hey dude, time waits for no man’. Woman in your case. Tell me,’ she hunches forward across the table and lowers her voice. ‘Why don’t your lot take more care of themselves? I’m talking cosmetically here. I’ve read about ‘lipstick lesbians’ but I never see any.’

‘You probably do see them but they look just, well almost the same as you.’

Deirdre sits back in her chair, appalled. ‘I hope not. No offence but I wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a lipstick lezzer. You know, certain things go with that territory and I’m not in the market for suck it and see.’

She waves her hands as if drying nail polish. As always find it difficult to be offended by Deirdre being offensive. An almost biblical phrase pops into my head;
she knows not what she says
.

‘Can we leave this discussion for another time, Deirdre?’

‘Whatever. Only throwing ideas up in the air, crunching the numbers, moving the goal posts. Keep your wig on.’

Have to laugh - or I’d cry.

April 25
^th

Antirrhinums are all up and jostling each other. Ditto cornflowers and foxgloves, although these are straggly. Have twenty-two tomato plants, at least as many courgettes, and my sunflowers are a foot high and beginning to block out the light from the bathroom window. Oh yes, sweetcorn also going great guns. Only fear is that I’ve planted everything at least a month too early. Janice said, ‘Pity you don’t have a greenhouse but then where would you put it?’ Told her ‘Non-supportive remarks don’t help!’

However as I trawl round Woolworth’s I spot the very last plastic mini-greenhouse in the store. Trudge home up hill as the funicular railway (my usual route back from Woolworth's) is not working because staff are having a training day behind locked doors. This happens at least once a month. Laughter and the clink of glasses can be heard as I stagger past carrying greenhouse.

Set it up and manage to fit tomatoes and sweetcorn inside. Wrestle paste table from shed and put that in spare room. Clear all my windowsills of seedlings so house looks half respectable in preparation for Georgie’s longed-for return at end of month. Still no word, she always leaves things to the last minute.

Spare room now looks a green and rather intimidating place to enter. Will have to enter it though as it also houses Tilly’s litter tray.

Laura rang from somewhere in the Cotswolds, ‘Iris recommends a covered litter tray.’

‘Does she?’

‘She reckons they’re more hygienic.’

‘Are they?’

‘You can get special liners for them.’

‘Can you?’

‘You’re a bit anti-Iris aren’t you?’

‘No, I’m anti-Iris’s recommendations. How’s the walking?’

‘Great!’ In the background I can hear Bonnie Tyler singing.

‘Where are you?’

‘Pub, look got to go. Iris alert.’

Nic telephones to confirm a date in May for afternoon tea. I tell her about my plastic mini-greenhouse. She tells me about her large glass greenhouse. Apparently, already she has produced a courgette the size of her thumb and she’s watching it with interest.

I ask her what else she’s growing.

‘The works,’ she replies.

She tells me a tale of how, years ago, about three girlfriends before she met Simone, she went out with a woman called Stevie. They shared an allotment. When they split up, Stevie got custody of the allotment and Nic was almost more heartbroken about losing the allotment than losing Stevie. I agree that losing an allotment could be very painful.

Nic finishes off with, ‘Heard anything?’

‘Not yet. Any day now.’

‘That’s the spirit.’

Somewhere in the room with her I hear Simone saying, ‘Did you say it?’

‘Say what?’ I ask.

‘We both wanted to say that although we know it’s going to be okay, whatever happens we’re here for you as well. You’re a good mate, Margaret.’

Am touched.

April 26
^th

Miriam still low. Says it makes her sick; her mother is spending all her pension on new clothes. Says mother is having late life crises. Says life at present, what with not smoking and feckless mother, is hellish. Reveals that our boss Tom Matthews has been a tower of strength.

‘Because Margaret, you’ve not really been there for me,’ she says reproachfully, which is true but in the circumstances unfair.

Consider Miriam’s unfairness while walking home. Reach conclusion that my cheerful, jokey exterior is perhaps too convincing but what can I do? Surely not in my best interests to walk round with a face similar to Miriam’s. I can almost guarantee that Miriam’s sour expression will not attract the younger women she so hankers after.

I am unhappy. Of course I’m unhappy but I can’t give in to it. Think irrelevantly about Tom Matthews being
a tower of strength,
which reminds me of Frankie Vaughan who’d had a hit with
A Tower of Strength
. He’d been Mum’s favourite singer till Frank Ifield came along with
I Remember You
and an ability to yodel, notwithstanding an extremely wide neck, oily hair and voice. Bring myself back to Tom Matthews and how little I know about him and that perhaps Miriam now knows more than I do and does that worry me? ‘Not really,’ I tell myself as I mount our front steps.

Unlock front door. Door pushes against the morning’s post. Bank statement, double glazing offer, also a small light blue envelope. My heart is truly in my mouth as I recognise Georgie’s sprawling handwriting. Carry letter into kitchen. Stroke Tilly who is lying fast asleep on the kitchen table. Tilly looks up sharply, forever surprised that it’s me and not the grim reaper.