Georgia

  Knowing Brian had raped Georgia was the worst thing that she’d ever been faced with. In the early days when Georgia lay in her bed refusing to speak, she kept that thought with her. Whatever came next had to come down on the scale of shock. Yet when she went into the kitchen and found Georgia’s note saying she’d left, Celia went to pieces.

  The empty bed, half-eaten meal, a holdall gone from the cupboard. When she threw herself down on the little bed and smelled her daughter on the sheets she thought her heart would break.

  Even now, months later the pain was still acute. All the things she once held so dear, gone for ever.

  Two grubby little rooms were her home now, sharing a bathroom with four strangers. Belmont Road in Lewisham wasn’t that far from Blackheath in miles, yet it felt as if she were on another planet.

  The rooms were at the top of a large house, divided into a rabbit warren of bedsitters. Cold, draughty, threadbare carpets, dirty bathrooms and continual noise from the other tenants.

  It had been less than a week after Georgia left that Celia arrived home to find Brian back. He was hunched up in a chair, a blanket round him. The expression on his pale face one of a cringing dog who fully expects to be whipped.

  ‘What on earth!’ she exclaimed in horror.

  ‘You didn’t know I was coming home then?’ he said, his eyes cast down, hugging the blanket tighter around him.

  If she’d had some warning of his discharge she would have made plans, at least prepared a speech to make her feelings quite plain. She wasn’t prepared for the feeling of nausea that washed over her, or the terror at being alone with him.

  ‘Look, Celia,’ he said, mistaking her silence for weakness. ‘I know you believe the worst of me, but it wasn’t like that at all.’

  ‘You louse,’ she spat at him, pulling her coat tightly round her, wanting to walk right out again if it meant sharing the same air as him. ‘Don’t try to wriggle out of what you’ve done. Nothing will persuade me to forgive you, but don’t insult my intelligence by lying!’

  ‘I knew you’d be like this,’ he said in a petulant tone, a crocodile tear dripping down his cheek. ‘That girl’s the liar and you are a fool if you believe her.’

  ‘She said nothing to anyone,’ Celia shook with rage. ‘I saw the evidence myself remember. I know what happened as if I’d seen it on a film. You’ve ruined her life and I can’t even bear to be in the same room as you.’

  It would have been far better if she’d packed her bags and left that night. Only the certainty that Georgia would telephone kept her there a further two weeks. But two weeks was long enough for Brian to see it as compliance and she brought on herself that last ugly scene.

  Looking back, that period seemed like months. Sleeping in Georgia’s old room, going through old diaries and address books, hoping for a lead. She didn’t speak to him, not one word. She went out daily, knocking on doors, meeting old friends of her daughter, walking the streets till exhaustion and the prospect of a telephone call drove her home.

  Brian shuffled between the sitting room and the kitchen. He cooked food when she was out, leaving the dishes.

  Celia did nothing for him. She let the dishes pile up, his clothes stay where he dropped them. She bought no food, she didn’t even pick up his mail.

  She knew she was not behaving rationally. It would be better to scream abuse at him, hurt him as he’d hurt her. It was like an abscess that needed to be lanced. Ignoring it just prolonged the healing process, letting the poison slowly spread through both of them. But Celia remained trapped in a silent world, just as Georgia had been.

  She barely noticed the house getting dirty. The dead flowers still sitting in vases and the kitchen bin full to overflowing. Brian was drinking, she couldn’t avoid seeing the endless empty bottles, or miss the smell of whiskey gradually permeating round the house. She guessed that many nights he passed out in the chair downstairs, and she hoped he would drink himself to death.

  Georgia was on her mind from the moment she opened her eyes in the morning till sleep finally closed them.

  She could be in some awful tenement, hungry, cold, and in shock. Worse still she could have turned to someone who would betray her trust even more than Brian had.

  ‘Let’s talk?’ Brian came out into the hall when he heard her key in the door one evening.

  He looked old, dishevelled and desperate, with several days’ growth of stubble on his chin.

  Celia looked no better. She had lost weight, her once rounded rosy cheeks, sunken and grey. Hair in need of a trim, her tweed coat suddenly too large.

  ‘We can’t go on like this,’ he said, one hand on his stomach as though in pain. ‘Tell me what you want of me and I’ll do it.’

  ‘Kill yourself!’ All the venom she ought to have released on him earlier came gushing out. ‘But you aren’t even man enough to do that!’

  ‘Don’t Celia!’ he begged. ‘Come in the sitting room, we can’t talk out here.’

  She knew now it was foolish to hope he was going to make a full confession of his guilt, yet in that moment she believed he was.

  A stale smell of food and body odour filled the room. She sank onto a chair as far from Brian as possible and averted her eyes from a photograph of Georgia on the mantelpiece.

  Brian sat down by the fire and picked up a glass of whiskey.

  ‘Come on then, talk,’ she said. ‘Start with why you had to rape a fifteen year old, then go on to what you are planning to do about it.’

  ‘I’ve already told you I did no such thing,’ his faded blue eyes looked hurt. ‘Think about it again Celia. Why would she run away if she was innocent?’

  ‘You liar,’ Celia hissed. ‘How can you sit there and continue to make yourself believe that? Do you think you’re talking to some half-baked office junior?’

  ‘If you think so little of my integrity,’ his tongue flickering across his lips with nervousness, ‘perhaps you’d better leave this house now.’

  ‘I will,’ she snapped back at him. ‘As for your integrity, you’d better stop all that drinking before you forget yourself and go and rape some other young girl on her way home.’

  ‘How dare you!’ His face flushed with anger she’d never seen before. ‘You are so self-righteous. If I’m drinking now it’s because I can’t bear you to think these things of me. We’ve been together for twenty years, yet you’d let the word of some nigger brat come between us.’

  ‘Don’t Brian,’ Celia got up to leave. She was sickened more by the insult to Georgia than his lies. ‘I remember other pointers to your strange sexual tastes. If I have been self-righteous, it’s about those. I actually believed I’d cured you!’

  He leapt up, barring her way.

  ‘Cured me?’ He caught hold of her arms, whiskey-soaked breath making her wince. ‘You stupid, frigid cow! All men look at dirty books, there’s nothing strange in that. It’s you who’s weird, not me. You cheated me, made out you married me for love, but all you wanted was this house. I found that out on our so-called honeymoon!’

  ‘Maybe that was your fault?’ she said weakly.

  ‘My fault, eh?’ he squeezed her arms tightly. ‘I let you have everything your own way. I even came rushing back here when you said you were leaving to keep you on any terms. No wonder we never had a child of our own, you never gave it a chance. But even then I said nothing, I even let you steam-roller me into having that kid here.’

  ‘I did no such thing,’ she retorted. ‘You agreed to have Georgia quite readily.’

  ‘I went along with it to make you happy,’ he shouted, his face growing flushed. ‘You call yourself a social worker, dig into other people’s problems, yet you can’t see ones under your own nose.’

  ‘So you bottled up your lust to save it for her?’

  She tried to push him away.

  At that moment she knew he had got to a danger level. His pale eyes turned dark and a vein was ticking in his forehead.

  ‘I didn’t bottle anything up,’ he
snarled. ‘I’ve had plenty of women. Pretty, tarty girls, ones that like to be fucked and they were all more fun than you.’

  Celia was stunned, yet somehow she knew this much was true.

  ‘You sicken me,’ she said, attempting to shrug off his hand. ‘Let me go this instant and I’ll pack and get out.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ his voice deepened with menace and his fingers caught her hair, pulling her head back. ‘Don’t think you can walk out of here and then try to get my money or this house.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about this house,’ she screamed at him. ‘I don’t want anything that reminds me I brought a helpless child into a house with a pervert!’

  His fist hit her cheekbone like a sledgehammer, knocking her backwards over an armchair. He reached out and pulled her back up as if she weighed nothing.

  ‘I’ll help you pack,’ he hissed. ‘Let’s go through your clothes together, look at the thick knickers you wear, the great big ugly bras and corsets. You aren’t a woman at all Celia, you are a man without a cock. I must have been mad to marry you!’

  If she had ever had the slightest doubt Brian had raped Georgia it vanished that night. He was so strong and brutal, dragging her upstairs, pulling things out of her wardrobe and taunting her with everything from her sensible flat shoes to her choice of underwear.

  Time and time again she tried to make a run for it. But each time he blocked her way, slapping her again and again.

  In the back of her mind she could remember telling women at work how to cope with violent men, yet now it was happening to her she was unable to defend herself.

  Just after eleven he eventually left her to return to the sitting room. Quickly she stuffed her clothes and personal belongings in a couple of suitcases.

  ‘I’m leaving now,’ she returned nervously to the sitting room for her handbag and car keys, poised to make a dash for it if he attempted to hit her again.

  ‘Don’t think I’ll let you back in,’ he said more calmly than she expected.

  ‘There is nothing here to bring me back,’ she said proudly. ‘I want you to spend the rest of your life reflecting on what you’ve done. I hope you never have one moment of peace or happiness again.’

  The rooms in Belmont Park were the cheapest she could find. The rickety old furniture didn’t bother her, she could wash the soiled blankets and buy new sheets. It was only the little things she missed, photographs, her sewing basket and dainty china teacups.

  It was pure spite that made her write to the head office of the bank in Lombard Street. She laid out coldly and clearly the case against Brian and allowed his employers to consider whether they could trust him amongst young girls.

  It didn’t stop the pain of losing Georgia, but revenge had its own kind of sweetness.

  Peter made the tea and handed a cup to Celia. She had aged dramatically since the night of the party, not just more lines and grey hair, but that confident bossiness seemed to have vanished.

  There had been times when he felt angry at Georgia. Not for running out on him, but for what her actions were doing to Celia. Surely she knew her mother better than to suppose she’d turn her over to the authorities?

  Yet even in anger he ached for her. She was under his skin, in his head and heart. Just those few lines on a postcard made him tremble with longing. Nothing would make him give up on her, even if he had to continue his double life indefinitely.

  The ugly scene with his parents soon after Georgia ran away had slammed home their prejudice and inadequacy. If it wasn’t for Celia’s deep understanding, he too might have been tempted to run off.

  ‘Damn little nigger slut,’ his mother shouted at him when he tried to explain how frightened and miserable he was. ‘That girl’s made a laughing stock of you and now you tell me you’re worried about her!’

  Until he met Celia Anderson he’d never thought about his own mother’s shortcomings, but that night he saw them all in close-up. Not one ounce of compassion in her thin, stringy body. Jealous of anyone who had more than her, suspicious of everything. The only time she was loving was when she had a few drinks inside her, a slut and an evil gossip.

  He’d tried to reason with her, standing there in the living room, the table still strewn with the leftovers of breakfast even though it was tea-time, the fire concealed by steaming washing hanging to dry.

  ‘What makes you so bitter you have to take it out on Georgia?’

  ‘I’ve worked hard all my life,’ she raved, her mouth wet with spittle, eyes screwed up with hatred. ‘Cleaning offices, scrubbing floors when you were little, just to pay the rent. Your father pisses away every penny he earns down the pub. I was banking on you helping us later on.’

  It was the last sentence that cut him to the quick. She was afraid that somehow Georgia would prevent him getting a degree. A degree to her meant nothing more than a well-paid job at the end of it.

  ‘You’re best out of it, son,’ his father said when his mother tried to drag him into it. He sat by the fire, still in mud-caked boots from the building site raising weary blue eyes towards his wife. ‘My dad told me not to marry her. I wish I’d heeded his words, sometimes older people know best.’

  It all came out that night like slugs leaving a trail of slime where they’d passed over a floor. His father’s family were well-to-do, Josie’s from a slum in Deptford. She faked pregnancy to force Geoffrey to marry her, but the plan backfired when his parents cut him off.

  Peter saw both sides of it as his parents shouted at one another. His weak but intelligent father, matched with an avaricious, cold woman. Disappointment and greed had killed any love. Geoffrey turned to the pub for friendship, Josie kept a tight rein on her son hoping he’d fulfil the expectations her husband hadn’t lived up to.

  It was safer to keep quiet about Georgia. He did his homework, ate his tea then made an excuse to get out to see Celia. It was ironic that his parents preferred to think he was down the snooker hall in Lewisham, rather than singing in the choir, or seeing a girl. They didn’t guess he was knocking on doors, going in pubs and clubs brandishing a photo of the girl they hated.

  Peter put his coat on and wrapped a scarf round his neck.

  ‘It’s Easter next week,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to Manchester?’

  Celia got up from her chair and shuffled wearily across the floor to him.

  ‘Don’t pin your hopes on finding her,’ she reached up and kissed his cheek to soften her words. His eyes were shining with excitement, the way they had when Georgia first brought him home. ‘It’s almost as big as London!’

  Celia sighed deeply as they approached Manchester.

  ‘Why the big sigh?’ Peter said softly.

  ‘I thought you were asleep,’ she smiled round at him. ‘I guess I’m thinking how it looks for a forty-plus woman to be running off with a handsome young lad like you.’ She had to make jokes about their predicament, she had seen the looks people gave them, wondering if he was her son, or lover. Once they got out the pictures of Georgia the looks became even odder. His parents would hit the roof if they found out he wasn’t really youth hostelling. How would she feel if the situation was reversed?

  Peter sat up and took the map out of the glove compartment.

  ‘I’m happy for them to think you’re my mother,’ he smiled. ‘But it isn’t really that is it? You feel guilty.’

  One of the things she liked most about Peter was his perception. He understood Georgia’s reasons for running, his own parents, the emptiness inside her and no doubt if he’d talked to Brian he would almost begin to understand him too. But it was this deep understanding of other people which could be his downfall. He had to make a life of his own, he was too young and clever to give up his own needs and education.

  ‘Will you promise me something?’ She turned her eyes away from the road, reaching out to touch his hand.

  He stiffened. Every muscle in his face and neck was strained, his eyes scanning the streets as they entered Manchester.

  ?
??Depends,’ he smiled faintly, returning the squeeze of her hand.

  He was wearing jeans, a pale blue sweater under the denim jacket and his hair was creeping over his collar.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Whether you want me to abandon the search,’ he said, fixing those bright blue eyes on the side of her face as if trying to read her mind.

  ‘Not exactly,’ she said choosing her words carefully. ‘But I want you to promise me you will go on to university. I really do believe that Georgia will get in touch again as soon as she’s sixteen. You’ll only add another burden of guilt to her shoulders if you’ve found a job in London and not used your ability because of her.’

  He frowned.

  ‘Maybe,’ he stared out the window for a moment, thinking about Celia’s words. ‘All right, I promise,’ he said. ‘But you’ve got to promise me something too.’

  ‘Go on,’ she half smiled.

  ‘That you’ll get yourself sorted out too,’ he said earnestly. ‘Georgia won’t write to the old house again, she’d ring me. So there isn’t a great deal of point in you hanging around waiting. You look ill, you must look after yourself for her sake. Just as you said it wouldn’t do for me to put another burden on her shoulders, neither must you.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ she nodded. ‘You’ve got a deal. After this weekend I’ll rethink my life too.’