I had a real go at Jan and June today. There they are sitting at the workbench waiting on the phone. There’s me sweating over an alignment problem with one of those sets that Marlowe’s Furniture in Gatewell sells under their house brand. Cheap and nasty! Absolute bloody junk! Nothing to identify the maker and so no service information. It would be a waste of time me ringing Marlowes. They don’t like me. I’ve told them in the past that their sets are junk. I’ve been right through Rider’s hoping to find something under a maker’s brand name that looks the same, even vaguely the same, but no luck. I am far from happy.
I am paying no attention to the conversation until,
“I hear that that girl from the baker’s has gone over to Gatewell,” this from June.
“Yes. So they say,” that was Jan. I couldn’t let that go.
“ For a start, her name is Millie Guest not ’that girl’. And for seconds, I know Millie’s aunt. I’ve met her and she is sick. Probably dying. That’s where Millie is. And how could you think even for a moment that a coat-rack of a girl like that could conceal a pregnancy. Unless, of course, you’re so determined to think the worst. You women are just Piranhas. You’re worse than Piranhas. Every single one of you in this town. You won’t defend your own kind. No! It’s got to be straight in to rip off your own piece of flesh.”
Poor Millie. The worst place for a Crothall girl to have a sick aunt is in Gatewell. In Crothall ‘she’s gone to Gatewell’ is the equivalent of saying that a single girl has managed to get herself pregnant. I imagine that over in Gatewell the saying is ‘she’s gone to Crothall’.
There is a charitable organisation that operates in the valley to look after girls in trouble and to later have their babies adopted. The girl keeping her baby is not to be thought of. It farms the girls out during their pregnancy to families needing home help and, for their confinement, there is a lying-in home in each town. The one here in Crothall, over on Lee Street, pretends to be a normal family home which fools no-one.
And for every girl here who has to give her baby up there is the baby’s father who refuses to step up to the plate: who says, “There’s no way that I could know if it was mine. I was only one of the many.” This poor-excuse-for-a-human-being having got the girl pregnant then brands her a slut. And his mother is angry at the girl for seducing her saintly son and making it possible for people to point the finger at him. Everyone knows it’s the woman who seduces the man and it’s been that way right from the beginning. In this town the stigma belongs to the girl and she will wear it to her dying day and beyond.
I have always liked Millie. She is the reason that I choose the one bakery over the other in the town. There is really nothing to choose between their breads and their other baked goods. Millie is always friendly and helpful. Admittedly, she always tries to sell me more than what I have gone in for but that is more a joke between us rather than any sort of sales pressure. I do tend to buy more though.
June was defensive and possibly as angry as I was.
“I didn’t say she was pregnant. Did I now!”
“No. Not in so many words you didn’t but that was what you implied. You know what ‘she’s gone over to Gatewell’ means in this town. It’s a way of saying that a girl has gone away to have a baby while leaving the one saying it with an out. If it proves clear that the girl hasn’t had a baby after all it’s possible to say ‘Well I didn’t say she was going to have a baby. Did I now!’ and that indignantly, of course.
June stalked out with her whole body saying what she thought of me. It was a performance that had no need of words.
“And what about you? Are you going to go too?”
“No. Someone’s got to stay and run tonight’s program.” Jan seemed to be more amused by it all than otherwise.
“They’ll talk. You being alone with me”
“I’ll get over it.”
“I must apologise. I was getting a bit over the top. But I feel that women get a raw deal and they not only accept it but actually abet it. How many Millies, and I have to think of them as Millies, for how many has it been implied wrongly that they have gone astray and had it solidified into a permanent stain. Their supposed sisters being the mordant that fixes those stains.”
“Now you didn’t hear this from me. Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Once upon a time there was a young girl, a very worried young girl. She had mis-carriage and she thinks herself lucky to have kept it a secret for more than forty years.” I gave her a hug.