The Grandmothers

by Doris Lessing

  ‘But you are better now,’ said Ian, and went red.

  ‘Oh, you are charming,’ said Roz, accepting the compliment for herself.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the clown, Tom, pretending to compare the old photographs with the two women sitting there, in their bikinis. ‘I don’t know. Now? –’ and he screwed up his eyes for the examination. ‘And then.’ He bent to goggle at the photographs.

  ‘Now has it,’ he pronounced. ‘Yes, better now.’ And at this the two boys fell to foot-and-shoulder wrestling, or jostling, as they often still did, like boys, though what people saw were young gods who couldn’t take a step or make a gesture that was not from some archaic vase, or antique dance.

  ‘Our mothers,’ said Tom, toasting them in orange juice.

  ‘Our mothers,’ said Ian, smiling directly at Roz in a way that made her shift about in her chair and move her legs.

  Roz had said to Lil that Ian had a crush on her, Roz, and Lil had said, ‘Well, never mind, he’ll get over it.’

  What Ian was not getting over, had not begun to get over, was his father’s death, already a couple of years behind, in time. From the moment he had ceased to have a father he had pined, becoming thinner, almost transparent, so that his mother complained, ‘Do eat, Ian, eat something – you must.’

  ‘Oh, leave me alone.’

  It was all right for Tom, whose father turned up sometimes, and whom he visited up there in his landlocked university. But Ian had nothing, not even warming memories. Where his father should have been, unsatisfactory as he had been with his affairs and his frequent absences, was nothing, a blank, and Ian tried to put a brave face on it, had bad dreams, and both women’s hearts ached for him.

  A big boy, his eyes heavy with crying, he would go to his mother, where she sat on a sofa, and collapse beside her, and she would put her arms around him. Or go to Roz, and she embraced him, ‘Poor Ian.’

  And Tom watched this, seriously, coming to terms with this grief, not his own, but its presence so close in his friend, his almost brother, Ian. ‘They are like brothers,’ people said. ‘Those two, they might as well be brothers.’ But in one a calamity was eating away, like a cancer, and not in the other, who tried to imagine the pain of grief and failed.

  One night, Roz got up out of her bed to fetch herself a drink from the fridge. Ian was in the house, staying the night with Tom, as so often happened. He would use the second bed in Tom’s room, or Harold’s room, where he was now. Roz heard him crying and without hesitation went in to put her arms around him, cuddled him like a small boy, as after all she had been doing all his life. He went to sleep in her arms and in the morning his looks at her were demanding, hungry, painful. Roz was silent, contemplating the events of the night. She did not tell Lil what had happened. But what had happened? Nothing that had not a hundred times before. But it was odd. ‘She didn’t want to worry her!’ Really? When had she ever been inhibited from telling Lil everything?

  It happened that Tom was over at Lil’s house, across the street, with Ian, for a couple of nights. Roz alone, telephoned Harold, and they had an almost connubial chat.

  ‘How’s Tom?’

  ‘Oh, he’s fine. Tom’s always fine. But Ian’s not too good. He really is taking Theo’s death hard.’

  ‘Poor kid, he’ll get over it.’

  ‘He’s taking his time, then. Listen, Harold, next time you come perhaps you could take out Ian by himself?’

  ‘What about Tom?’

  ‘Tom’d understand. He’s worried about Ian, I know’

  ‘Right. I’ll do that. Count on me.’

  And Harold did come, and did take Ian off for a long walk along the sea’s edge, and Ian talked to Harold, whom he had known all his life, more like a second father.

  ‘He’s very unhappy,’ Harold reported to Roz and to Lil.

  ‘I know he is,’ said Lil.

  ‘He thinks he’s no good. He thinks he’s a failure.’

  The adults stared at this fact, as if it were something they could actually see.

  ‘But how can you be a failure at seventeen?’ said Lil.

  ‘Did we feel like that?’ asked Roz.

  ‘I know I did,’ said Harold. ‘Don’t worry’ And back he went to his desert university. He was thinking of getting married again.

  ‘Okay,’ said Roz. ‘If you want a divorce.’

  ‘Well, I suppose she’ll want kids,’ said Harold.

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘She’s twenty-five,’ said Harold. ‘Do I have to ask?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Roz, seeing it all. ‘You don’t want to put the idea into her head?’ She laughed at him.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Harold.

  Then Ian was again spending the night with Tom. Rather, he was there at bedtime. He went off to Harold’s room, and there was a quick glance at Roz, which she hoped Tom had not seen.

  When she woke in the night, ready to go off to the fridge for a drink, or just to wander about the house in the dark, as she often did, she did not go, afraid of hearing Ian crying, afraid she would not be able to stop herself going into him. But then she found he had blundered through the dark into her room and was beside her, clutching at her like a lifebelt in a storm. And she actually found herself picturing those seven black rocks like rotten teeth in the black night out there, the waves pouring and dashing around them in white cascades of foam.

  Next morning Roz was sitting at the table in the room that was open to the verandah, and the sea air, and the wash and hush and lull of the sea. Tom stumbled in fresh from his bed, the smell on him of youthful sleep. ‘Where’s Ian?’ he asked. Normally he would not have asked: both boys could sleep until midday.

  Roz stirred her coffee, around and around, and said, without looking at him, ‘He’s in my bed.’

  This normally would not have merited much notice, since this extended family’s casual ways could accommodate mothers and boys, or the women, or either boy with either woman, lying down for a rest or a chat, or the two boys, and, when he was around, Harold with any of them.

  Tom stared at her over his still-empty plate.

  Roz accepted that look, and her look back might as well have been a nod.

  ‘Jesus!’ said Tom.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Roz.

  And then Tom ignored his plate and possible orange juice, leaped up, grabbed his swimming-trunks from the verandah wall, and he sprinted off down to the sea. Usually he would have yelled at Ian to go too.

  Tom was not around that day. It was school holidays, but apparently he was off on some school holiday activity, generally scorned by him.

  Lil was away, judging some sports competition, and was not back until evening. She came into Roz’s house and said, ‘Roz, I’m whacked. Is there anything to eat?’

  Ian was at the table, sitting across from Roz but not looking at her. Tom had a plate of food in front of him. And now Tom began talking to Lil as if no one else was there. Lil scarcely noticed this, she was so tired, but the other two did. And he kept it up until the meal was over and Lil said she must go to bed, she was exhausted, and Tom simply got up and went with her into the dark.

  Next morning, lateish for them all, Tom walked back across the street and found Roz at the table, in her usual careless, comfortable pose, her wrap loose about her. He did not look at her but all around her, at the room, the ceiling, through a delirium of happy accomplishment. Roz did not have to guess at his condition; she knew it, because Ian’s similar state had been enveloping her all night.

  Now Tom was prowling around the room, taking swipes as he passed at a chair arm, the table, a wall, returning to aim a punch at the chair next to hers, like a schoolboy unable to contain exuberance, but then standing to stare in front of him, frowning, thinking – like an adult. Then he whirled about and was close to his mother, all schoolboy, an embodied snigger, a leer. And then trepidation – he was not sure of himself, nor of his mother, who blushed scarlet, went white, and then got up and deliberately slapped
him hard, this way, that way, across the face.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ she whispered, trembling with rage. ‘How dare you …’

  Half crouching, hands to his head, protecting it, he peered up at her, face distorted in what could have been a schoolboy’s blubbering, but then he took command of himself, stood and said directly to her, ‘I’m sorry,’ though neither he nor she could have said exactly what it was he was sorry for, nor what he was not to dare. Not to let words, or his face, say what he had learned of women in the night just passed, with Lil?

  He sat down, put his face in his hands, then leaped up, grabbed his swimming things and was off running into the sea, which this morning was a flat blue plate rimmed by the colourful houses of the enclosing arm of the bay opposite.

  Tom did not come into his mother’s house that day but made a detour back to Lil’s. Ian slept late – nothing new in that. He, too, found it hard to look at her, but she knew it was the sight of her, so terribly familiar, so terribly and newly revelatory, it was too much, and so he snatched up his bundle of swimming things and was off. He did not come back until dark. She had done small tasks, made routine telephone calls, cooked, stood soberly scanning the house opposite, which showed no signs of life, and then, when Ian returned, made them both supper and they went back to bed, locking the house front and back – which was something not always remembered.

  A week passed. Roz was sitting alone at the table with a cup of tea when there was a knock. She could not ignore it, she knew that, though she would have liked to stay inside this dream or enchantment that had so unexpectedly consumed her. She had dragged on jeans and a shirt, so she was respectable to look at, at least. She opened the door on the friendly, enquiring face of Saul Butler, who lived some doors along from Lil, and was their good neighbour. He was here because he fancied Lil and wanted her to marry him.

  When he sat down and accepted tea, she waited.

  ‘Haven’t seen much of you lot recently, and I can’t get any reply at Lil’s.’

  ‘Well, it’s the school holidays.’

  But usually she and the boys, Lil and the boys, would have been in and out, and often people waved at them from the street, where they all sat around the table.

  ‘That boy, Ian, he needs a father,’ he challenged her.

  ‘Yes, he does,’ she agreed at once: she had learned in the past week just how much the boy needed a father.

  ‘I’m pretty sure I’d be a father to Ian – as much as he’d let me.’

  Saul Butler was a well-set-up man of about fifty, not looking his age. He ran a chain of artists’ equipment shops, paints, canvases, frames, all that kind of thing, and he knew Lil from working with her on the town’s trade associations. Roz and Lil had agreed he would make a fine husband, if either of them had been looking for one.

  She said, as she had before, ‘Shouldn’t you be saying this to Lil?’

  ‘But I do. She must be sick of me – staking my claim.’

  ‘And you want me to support – your claim?’

  ‘That’s about it. I think I’m a pretty good proposition,’ he said, smiling, mocking his own boasting.

  ‘I think you’d be a good proposition too,’ said Roz, laughing, enjoying the flirtation, if that was what it was. A week of love-making, and she was falling into the flirtatious mode as if into a bed. ‘But that’s no use is it, it’s Lil you want.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve had my eye on Lil for – a long time.’ This meant, before his wife left him for another man. ‘Yes. But she only laughs at me. Now, why is that, I wonder? I’m a very serious sort of chap. And where are the lads this morning?’

  ‘Swimming, I suppose.’

  ‘I only dropped in to make sure you are all getting along all right.’ He got up, finished his tea standing, and said, ‘See you on the beach.’

  Off he went and Roz rang Lil, and said, ‘We’ve got to be seen about a bit more. Saul dropped in.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Lil, her voice heavy, and low.

  ‘We should be seen on the beach, all four of us.’

  A hot morning. The sea shimmered off light. The sky was full of a light that could punish the eyes, without dark defending glasses. Lil and Roz, in loose wraps over their bikinis, slathered with suncream, made their way behind the boys to the beach. It was a well-used beach, but at this hour, on a weekday, there were few people. Two chairs, set close against Roz’s fence, were faded and battered by storm and sun, but serviceable, and there the women sat themselves. The boys had gone running into the sea. Tom had scarcely greeted his mother; Ian’s look at Lil slid off her and away.

  The waves were brisk enough for pleasure, but in here, in the bay, were never big enough for surfing, which went on outside, past the Teeth. For all the years of the boys’ childhood they played safe, on this beach, but now they saw it as good enough for a swim, and for the serious dangerous stuff they went out on to the surfers’ beaches. The two were swimming well apart, ignoring each other, and the women’s eyes were behind the secretive dark glasses, and neither wanted to talk – could not.

  They saw a head like a seal’s quite far out grow larger, and then it was Saul, and he came out of the sea, waving at them, but went up through the salty sea bushes and past the houses up to the street.

  The boys were swimming in. When they reached the shallows they stood up and faced each other. They began to tussle. Thus had they fought all through their growing-up, boy fashion, but soon it was evident that there was nothing childlike about this fight. They were standing waist deep, waves came rushing in, battering them with foam, and streamed away, and then Ian had disappeared and Tom was holding him down. A wave came in, another, and Lil started up in anguish and said, ‘Oh, my God, he’s going to kill Ian. Tom’s going to kill …’

  Ian reappeared, gasping, clutching Tom’s shoulders. Down he went again.

  ‘Be quiet, Lil,’ said Roz. ‘We mustn’t interfere.’

  ‘He’s going to kill … Tom wants to kill …’

  Then Ian had been down a long time, surely a minute, more …

  Tom let out a great yell and let go of Ian, who bobbed up. He was hardly able to stand, fell, stood up again, and watched Tom striding through the waves to the beach. As Tom stepped up on to the sand, blood flowed from his calf. Ian had bitten him, deep under the waves, and it was a bad bite. Ian was standing swaying in the water, choking gasping.

  Roz fought with herself, then ran out into the waves and supported Ian in. The boy was pale, vomiting sea water, but he shook off Roz and went to sit by himself on the sand, his head on his knees. Roz returned to her place. ‘Our fault,’ whispered Lil.

  ‘Stop it, Lil. That’s not going to help.’

  Tom was standing on one leg, to examine his calf, which was pouring copious blood. He went back into the sea and stood sloshing the sea water on to the bite. He came out again, found his swimming towel, tore it in half, and tied one half tight around his leg. Then he stood, hesitating. He might have gone back into his house and through it to Lil’s. He might have stayed in his own house, claiming it from Ian? He could have flopped down where he stood near the fence, not far from the women. Instead he turned and stared hard, it seemed with curiosity, at Ian. Then he limped to where Ian sat, and sat down by him. No one spoke.

  The women stared at these two young heroes, their sons, their lovers, these beautiful young men, their bodies glistening with sea water and sun oil, like wrestlers from an older time.

  ‘What are we going to do, Roz?’ whispered Lil.

  ‘I know what I am going to do,’ said Roz, and stood up. ‘Lunch,’ she called, exactly as she had been doing for years, and the boys obediently got up and followed the women into Roz’s house.

  ‘You’d better get that dressed,’ said Roz to her son. It was Ian who fetched the box of bandages and Elastoplast and put disinfectant on the bite, and then tied up the wound.

  On the table was the usual spread of sausages and cheese and ham and bread, a big dish of fruit, and the four sat
around the table and ate. Not a word. And then Roz spoke calmly, deliberately. ‘We all have to behave normally. Remember – everything must be as usual, as it always is.’

  The boys looked at each other, for information, it seemed. They looked at Lil. They looked at Roz. They frowned. Lil was smiling, but only just. Roz cut an apple into four, pushed a quarter each at the others, and bit juicily into her segment.

  ‘Very funny,’ said Ian.

  ‘I think so,’ said Roz.

  Ian got up, clutching a big sandwich stuffed with salad, the apple quarter in his other hand, and went into Roz’s room.

  ‘Well,’ said Lil, laughing with something like bitterness.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Roz.

  Tom got up, and went out and across the street to Lil’s house.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Lil asked her friend, as if she expected an answer, there and then.

  ‘It seems to me we are doing it,’ said Roz. She followed Ian into her bedroom.

  Lil collected up the box with the medicaments and bandages, and walked across to her house. On the way she waved to Saul Butler, who was on his verandah.

  School began: it was the boys’ last year. Both were prefects, and admired. Lil was often in other towns and places, judging, giving prizes, making speeches, a well-known figure, this slim, tall, shy woman, in her pale perfect linens, her fair hair smooth and neat. She was known for her kind smile, her sympathy, her warmth. Girls and boys had crushes on her and wrote letters that often included, ‘I know that you would understand me.’ Roz was supervising productions of musicals at a couple of schools, and working on a play, a farce, about sex, a magnetic noisy woman who insisted that her bite was much worse than her bark: ‘So watch out; don’t make me angry!’ The four were in and out, together or separately, nothing seemed to have changed, they ate their meals with windows open on the street, they swam, but sometimes were by themselves on the beach because the boys were out surfing, leaving them behind.

  Both had changed, Ian more than Tom. Diffident, shy and awkward he had been, but now he was confident, adult. Roz, who remembered the anguished boy when he had first come to her bed, was quietly proud, but she could never of course say a word to anyone, not even Lil. She had made a man of him, all right. Look at him … never these days did he clutch and cling and weep, because of his loneliness and his vanished father. He was quietly proprietorial with her, which amused her – and she adored it. Tom, who had never suffered from shyness or self-doubt, had become a strong, thoughtful youth, who was protective of Lil in a way that Roz had not seen. These were no longer boys, but young men, and good-looking, and so the girls were after them, and both Lil’s house and Roz’s were, they joked – like fortresses against delirious and desirous young women. But inside these houses, open to sun, sea breezes, the sounds of the sea, were rooms where no one went but Ian and Roz, Tom and Lil.