Carol Clewlow - Not Married, Not Bothered

CAROL CLEWLOW

An ABC for Spinsters

Spin-ster(spinsta) n. 1. an unmarried woman regarded as being beyond the age of marriage. 2. Law (in legal documents) a woman who has never married. Compare feme sole.3. (formerly) a woman who spins thread for her living. [C14 (in the sense: a person, esp. a woman, whose occupation is spinning; C17: a woman still unmarried): from SPIN-STER] –

spinster-, hood n, – spinsterish adj.

Title Page CAROL CLEWLOW A Is For … Attitude B Is For … Bridesmaid (As In Three Times A …) C Is For … Cliché D Is For … Death, Divorce And Moving House E Is For … Eleutherophobia F Is For … Finances G Is For … Gamophobia H Is For … Heroines I Is For … The Importance Of Aunts J Is for… Jane K Is For . . . Kinder L Is For … That Old Lost Love Story M Is For … Marriage N Is For … Nature Or Nurture? O Is For … An Old Maid P Is For … Philophobia Q Is For … A Question Of Sex R Is For … Regret S Is For … Solitude (Or Sunday In The Park With Riley) T Is For … Titles U Is For … The Unsuitable Liaison V Is For … Values (I.E., Family) W Is For … Weddings X Is For … Y Is … For That Old Yellow Brick Road Z Is For … Zing Zing Zing (Went My Heartstrings) About the Author Also By Carol Clewlow Copyright About the Publisher

If you ask me how all this got started, I’d say it was with Magda deciding to marry herself.

You may wish to read that line again.

She was packing up one of her Spells for Beginners for a customer when she caught me.

‘RILEY! IMAGINE! JUST THE PERSON!’

Magda used to be in television, which is why she speaks in one of those loud overenthusiastic TV researcher’s voices. Then one day she found her hair was too high and her fingernails too long. Now she runs Hocus Pocus at the bottom of the High Street.

Deciding to get married was a big thing for Magda.

‘After all, I’ve been single all my lives.’ (She was previously a vestal virgin and after that a witch. Obviously this was before she went into television.)

Magda got the idea of marrying herself from some Weirdo of the Day paragraph in her morning paper. Except, of course, being Magda, she didn’t think it was weird at all.

‘I THINK IT’S WONDERFUL. TOTALLY EMPOWERING .’

Apparently the woman who married herself said she’d lived with herself for forty years. She felt she knew herself. She felt ready for the commitment.

‘Um … where did this happen exactly?’

‘California.’

Only in California.

Only in the loony tune town of my birth.

Over cappuccinos in her coffee shop, I said, ‘So how will it work, Magda? Will you promise to obey? Will you have a joint account? You’re a woman of substance. I hope you’ll insist on a prenup.’

She said, ‘I’m sorry you feel the need to mock, Riley. I’m surprised you don’t see it. I’m making a statement. For all of us.’

‘Us?’

‘Single women.’

And then she said it: ‘ Spinsters , Riley.’

And that was where it started. Because it was like I was hearing it for the first time. That much-maligned, charming, noble, splendid old word.

Courtesy of Magda MacBride. Spinster of this parish.

Magda said, ‘It’s time for a new attitude, Riley.’

‘Damn it, she’s right,’ I said later to Danny.

This after I found the spinster sites on the Net: Be at peace with your singleness. Do not apologise for your chosen life-style …

‘For God’s sake. It’s all so goddamn craven.’

It was after that I started noticing things. What things? Well, this for instance, from one of those ‘Things I Wish I’d Known’ columns by some doyenne of the women’s movement.

I wish I’d known that breaking off my engagement didn’t mean resigning myself to eternal spinsterhood …

‘ Resigning herself?’ I said. ‘ Excuse me.’

And this too, from a celebrity journalist (female, to her shame) interviewing a hot-shot female film producer.

Despite, perhaps because of, what they are, a certain air of loss, of sadness will always cling to such women …

‘A certain air of loss and sadness …’ My Ss spat out on to the table. ‘Ssssimply because she can’t produce a husband and children.’

So that all of a sudden I’m beginning to get that old Jonathan Aitken feeling, that whole If it falls to me thing. I want to swish that old Sword of Truth in the air. And why? Because the more I think about it, the madder I am, and this because as far as I can see, it’s spinsters that have kept this damn country going. Teachers, civil servants, nurses, secretaries, plus a hundred other occupations, years of faithful service from the single woman and not just after World War One either. And for what? To go on being patronised and condescended to, to have her life considered so much of less worth than that of her married sister. Worse – and this in the new millennium – to continue being the subject of grubby jokes and prurient conjecture, to be caricatured as fey, grey and miserable on stage and screen and in all those fey, grey miserable novels.

‘We’re the last minority group,’ I said to Danny. ‘We suffer from prejudice. We need a campaign. T-shirts. Car stickers.’

Look. Once upon a time, spinsters were just that – women who spun for a living.

‘See …’ I said, jabbing a finger down on the dictionary, open like a Bible. ‘Once spinsters were just ordinary working girls.’

‘Still are,’ Danny said, diving a hand into his pocket. ‘Here’s your gas bill, Spinning Jenny. They stuck it through my door by mistake.’

From all this you will deduce that Danny is my neighbour. He’s also my workmate, both of us being employed – me as reporter, he as a photographer – on our weekly newspaper. More importantly, however, he’s my Obligatory Gay Male Friend and I am his …

‘What am I to you, Danny?’

‘My help in ages past, my hope for years to come …’

Danny comes from good Methodist stock and sometimes the past comes back to haunt him.

Over the years of our friendship (ten), and over many bottles of wine and/or the odd joint, Danny and I have debated all the major questions – whether there’s a God, if Keanu Reeves can act, if Google really is the only search engine. *

Gay men and spinsters will always be natural allies, according to Danny.

‘Gay men look at spinsters and know that’s pretty much where they’re going to be.’ He lays a hand on his heart. ‘Take me, for instance. Without you, I would never have known how truly rich and fulfilling life could be for the single person in their twilight years.’

Yes. Thank you, Danny.

Still, you can pretty much bet that any single woman of uncertain years these days will have a friend like Danny. Not that my years are remotely uncertain.

I was born at the turn of the decade, the year of Korea, the year they gave the Nobel Prize to Bertrand Russell, principally for his book on marriage (with three of his own he’d been able to research it closely), the year George Bernard Shaw died, who wrote, among other things, ‘All great truths begin as blasphemies’ (something to bear in mind, dear Reader). Also the year in which Peggy shcroft played Beatrice and to much acclaim at Stratford. Beatrice, that great spinster heroine, a woman with serious attitude, not curst like Kate, who also I love, but zot half as much as Beatrice, who was just so much more damn merry about the whole thing.