The Grandmothers

by Doris Lessing

  ‘I used to lick her for the salt,’ he murmured. ‘Like an animal at a salt lick.’

  When he went back, very late, the house dark, he did not sleep but sat down and wrote to Lil. Writing letters had not ever been his style. Finding his writing illegible, he remembered that an old portable typewriter had been stuffed under his bed, and he pulled it out, and typed, trying to muffle the sharp sound by putting the machine on a towel. But Molly had heard, knocked and said, ‘Can’t you sleep?’ Tom said he was sorry, and stopped.

  In the morning he finished the letter and posted it and wrote another. His father, peering to see the inscription, said, ‘So, you’re not writing to your mother?’

  Tom said, ‘No. As you see.’ Family life had its drawbacks, he decided.

  Thereafter he wrote letters to Lil at the university, and posted them himself.

  Molly asked him what was the matter and he said he wasn’t feeling up to scratch, and she said he should see a doctor.

  Mary asked what was the matter and he said, ‘I’m all right.’

  And still he didn’t go back ‘down there’; he stayed up here, and that meant staying with Mary.

  He wrote to Lil daily, answered the letters, or rather notes, she sometimes wrote to him; he telephoned his mother, he went out into the desert as often as he could, and told himself he would get over it. Not to worry. Meanwhile his heart was a lump of cold loneliness, and he dreamed miserably.

  ‘Listen,’ said Mary, ‘if you want to call this off, then say so.’

  He suppressed, ‘Call what off?’ and said, ‘Just give me time.’

  Then, on an impulse, or perhaps because he soon would have to decide whether to accept another contract, he said to his father, ‘I’m off.’

  ‘What about Mary?’ asked Molly.

  He did not reply. Back home, he was over at Lil’s and in her bed in an hour. But it was not the same. He could make comparisons now, and did. It was not that Lil was old – she was beautiful, so he kept muttering and whispering, ‘You’re so beautiful,’ – but there was claim on him, Mary, and that wasn’t even personal. Mary, another woman, did it matter? One day soon he must – he had to … everyone expected it of him.

  Meanwhile Ian seemed to be doing fine with Roz. With his mother, Tom’s. Ian didn’t seem to be unhappy, or suffering, far from it.

  And then Mary arrived, and found the four preparing to go to the sea. Flippers and goggles were found for her, and a surfboard. Within half an hour of her arrival she was ready to embark with the two young men, on the wide, dangerous, bad sea outside this safe bay. A little motorboat would take them out. So this pretty young thing, as smooth and shiny as a fish, larked about and played with Tom and Ian, and the two older women sat on their chairs, watching behind dark glasses and saw the motorboat arrive and take the three off.

  ‘She’s come for Tom,’ said Tom’s mother.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Tom’s lover.

  ‘She’s nice enough,’ said Roz.

  Lil said nothing.

  Roz said, ‘Lil, I think this is where we bow out.’

  Lil said nothing.

  ‘Lil?’ Roz peered over at her, and pushed up her dark glasses to see better.

  ‘I don’t think I could bear it,’ said Lil.

  ‘We’ve got to.’

  ‘Ian doesn’t have a girl.’

  ‘No, but he should have. Lil, they’re getting on towards thirty.’

  ‘I know.’

  Far away, where the sharp black rocks stood in their white foam at the mouth of the bay, three tiny figures were waving at them, before disappearing out of sight to the big beach.

  ‘We have to stand together and end it,’ said Roz.

  Lil was quietly weeping. Then Roz was, too.

  ‘We have to, Lil.’

  ‘I know we do.’

  ‘Come on, let’s swim.’

  The women swam hard and fast, out and back and around, and then landed on the beach, and went straight up to Roz’s house, to prepare lunch. It was Sunday. Ahead was the long difficult afternoon.

  Lil said, ‘I’ve got work,’ and went off to one of her shops.

  Roz served lunch, making excuses for Lil, and then she too said she had things to do. Ian said he would come with her. That left Tom and Mary alone, and there was a showdown. ‘Either on or off,’ said Mary. ‘Either yes or no.’ ‘There were plenty of fish in the sea.’ ‘It was time he grew up.’ All that kind of thing, as prescribed for this occasion.

  When the others came back, Mary announced that she and Tom were getting married, and there were congratulations and a noisy evening. Roz sang lots of songs, Tom joined in, they all sang. And when it was bedtime Mary stayed with Tom, in his house, and Ian went home with Lil.

  Then Mary went back home to plan the wedding.

  And now it had to be done. The two women said to the young men that now that was it. ‘It’s over,’ said Roz.

  Ian cried out, ‘What do you mean? Why? I’m not getting married.’

  Tom sat quietly, jaw set, drinking. He filled his glass with wine, drained it, filled it again, drank, saying nothing.

  At last he said to Ian, ‘They’re right, don’t you see?’

  ‘No,’ yelled Ian. He went into Roz’s room and called her, and Tom went with Lil to her house. Ian wept and pleaded. ‘Why, what for? We’re perfectly happy. Why do you want to spoil it?’ But Roz stuck it out. She was all heartless determination and only when she and Lil were alone together, the men having gone off to discuss it, they wept and said they could not bear it. Their hearts were breaking they said, how were they going to live, it would be unendurable.

  When the men returned, the women were tear-stained but firm.

  Lil told Tom that he must not come with her that night and Roz told Ian that he must go home with Lil.

  ‘You’ve ruined everything,’ said Ian to Roz. ‘It’s all your fault. Why couldn’t you leave things as they were?’

  Roz jested, ‘Cheer up. We are going to become respectable ladies, yes, your disreputable mothers are going to become pillars of virtue. We shall be perfect mothers-in-law, and then we shall become wonderful grandmothers to your children.’

  ‘I’m not going to forgive you,’ said Ian to Roz.

  And Tom said to Lil, low, to her only, ‘I’ll never ever ever forget you.’

  Now, that was a valediction, almost conventional. It meant – surely? – that Tom’s heart was not likely to suffer permanent damage.

  The wedding, needless to say, was a grand affair. Mary had been determined not to be upstaged by her dramatic mother-in-law, but found Roz was being the soul of tact, in a self-effacing outfit. Lil was elegant and pale and smiling, and the very moment the happy pair had driven off for their honeymoon she was down swimming in the bay, where Roz, a good hostess, could not leave her guests to join her. Later Roz crossed the street to find out how Lil was, but her bedroom door was locked and she would not respond to Roz’s knocks and enquiries. Ian as best man had made a funny and likeable speech, and, meeting Roz in the street as she was returning from Lils, said, ‘So? Are you pleased with yourself now?’ And he too went running down to the sea.

  Now Roz was in her empty house, and she lay on her bed and at last was able to weep. When there were knocks at her door which she knew were Ian’s, she rolled in anguish, her fist stuffed into her mouth.

  As soon as the honeymoon was over, Mary told Tom, who told his mother, that she thought Roz should move out and leave the house to them. It made sense. It was a big house, right for a family. The trouble was financial. Years ago the house had been affordable, when this whole area had been far from desirable, but now it was smart and only the rich could afford these houses. In an impulsive, reckless, generous gesture, Roz gave the house to the young couple as a wedding present. And so where was she to live? She couldn’t afford another house like this. She took up residence in a little hotel down the coast, and this meant that, for the first time ever, since she was born, she was not within a
few yards of Lil. She did not understand at first why she was so restless, sad, bereft, put it all down to losing Ian, but then understood it was Lil she missed, almost as much as Ian. She felt she had lost everything, and literally from one week to the next. But she was not reflective, by nature: she was like Tom, who would always be surprised by his emotions, when he was forced to notice them. To deal with her feelings of emptiness and loss, she accepted a job at the university as a full-time teacher of drama, worked hard, swam twice a day, took sleeping pills.

  Mary was soon pregnant. Jokes of a traditional kind were aimed at Ian, by Saul, among others. ‘You’re aren’t going to let your mate get ahead of you, are you? When’s your wedding?’

  Ian was working hard, too. He was trying not to give himself time to think. No stranger to thought, reflection, introspection, he felt that they were enemies, waiting to strike him down. A new shop was opening in the town where Harold was. They were waiting for their child. Ian did not stay at Harold’s, but in a hotel, and of course visited Harold, who had been like a father to him – so he said. There he met a friend of Mary’s, who had paid attention to him at the wedding. Hannah. It was not that he disliked her, on the contrary, she pleased him, with her comfortable ways, that were easy to see as maternal, but he was inside an empty space full of echoes, and he could not imagine making love with anyone but Roz. He swam every morning from ‘their’ beach, sometimes seeing Roz there, and he greeted her, but turned away, as if the sight of her hurt him – it did. And he more often took the little motorboat out to the surfing beaches. He and Tom had always gone together, but Tom was so busy with Mary, and the new baby.

  One day, seeing Roz drying herself on the sand, the boatman, who had come into the bay especially to find her, stopped his engine, let the boat rock on the gentle waves, and jumped down into the water, tugging the boat behind him like a dog on a leash to say, ‘Mrs Struthers, Ian’s doing some pretty dangerous stuff out there. He’s a picture to watch, but he scares me. If you see his mother – or perhaps you …’

  Roz said, ‘Well, now. To tell a man like Ian to play it safe, that’s more than a mother’s life is worth. Or mine, for that matter.’

  ‘Someone should warn him. He’s asking for it. Those waves out there, you’ve got to respect them.’

  ‘Have you warned him?’

  ‘I’ve tried my best.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Roz. ‘I’ll tell his mother

  She told Lil, who said to her son that he was playing too close to the safety margins. If the old boatman was worried, then that meant something. Ian said, ‘Thanks.’

  One evening, at sunset, the boatman came in to find Roz or one of them on the beach, but had to go up to the house, found Mary, told her that Ian was lying smashed up on one of the outer beaches.

  Then Ian was in hospital. Told by the doctor, ‘You’ll live,’ his face said plainly he wished he could have heard something else. He had hurt his spine. But that would probably heal. He had hurt his leg, and that would never be normal.

  He left hospital and lay in his bed at home, in a room which for years had not been much more than a place where he changed his clothes, before crossing the street to Roz. But in that house were now Tom and Mary. He turned his face to the wall. His mother tried to coax him up and on to his feet, but could not make him take exercise. Lil could not, but Hannah could and did. She came to visit her old friend Mary, slept in that house, and spent most of her time sitting with Ian, holding his hand, often in sympathetic tears.

  ‘For an athlete it must be so hard,’ she kept saying to Lil, to Mary, to Tom. ‘I can understand why he is so discouraged.’

  A good word, an accurate one. She persuaded Ian to turn his face towards her, and then, soon, to get up and take the prescribed steps up and down the room, then on to the verandah, and soon, across the road and down to swim. But he would not ever surf again. He would always limp.

  Hannah kissed the poor leg, kissed him, and Ian wept with her: her tears gave him permission to weep. And soon there was another wedding, an even larger one, since Ian and his mother Liliane were so well known, and their sports shops so beneficial to every town they found themselves in, and both were famed for their good causes and their general benevolence.

  So there they were, the new young couple, Ian and Hannah, in Lil’s house with Lil. Opposite, Roz’s old house was now Tom’s and Mary’s. Lil was uncomfortable in her role as mother-in-law, and was unhappy every time she saw the house opposite, now so changed. But after all, she was rich, unlike Roz. She bought one of the houses almost on the beach, not a couple of hundred yards from the two young couples, and Roz moved in. The women were together again, and Saul Butler when he met them allowed a special measure of sarcastic comment into his, ‘Ah, together again, I see!’ ‘As you see,’ said Roz or Lil. ‘Can’t fool you, Saul, can we?’ said Lil, or Roz.

  Then Hannah was pregnant and Ian was appropriately proud.

  ‘It has turned out all right,’ said Roz to Lil.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Lil.

  ‘What more could we expect?’

  They were on the beach, in their old chairs, moved to outside the new fence.

  ‘I didn’t expect anything,’ said Lil.

  ‘But?’

  ‘I didn’t expect to feel the way I do,’ said Lil. ‘I feel …’

  ‘All right,’ said Roz quickly. ‘Let it go. I know. But look at it this way, we’ve had …’

  ‘The best,’ said Lil. ‘Now all that time seems to me like a dream. I can’t believe it, such happiness, Roz,’ she whispered, turning her face and leaning forward a little, though there wasn’t a soul for fifty yards.

  ‘I know,’ said Roz. ‘Well – that’s it.’ And she leaned back, shutting her eyes. From below her dark glasses tears trickled.

  Ian went off with his mother a good bit on trips to their shops. He was everywhere greeted with affectionate, respectful generosity. It was known how he had got his limp. As foolhardy as an Everest hero, as brave as – well, as a man outrunning a wave like a mountain – he was so handsome, so courteous, such a gentleman, so kind. He was like his mother.

  On one such trip, they were in their hotel suite, before bedtime, and Lil was saying that she was going to take little Alice for the day when she got back to give Mary a chance to go shopping.

  Ian said, ‘You two women are really pleased with yourselves.’

  This was venomous, not like him; she had not – she thought – heard that voice from him before.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s all right for you.’

  ‘What do you mean, Ian, what are you saying?’

  ‘I’m not blaming you. I know it was Roz.’

  ‘What do you mean? It was both of us.’

  ‘Roz put the idea into your head. I know that. You’d never have thought of it. Too bad about Tom. Too bad about me.’

  At this she began to laugh, a weak defensive laugh. She was thinking of the years with Tom, watching him change from a beautiful boy into a man, seeing the years claim him, knowing how it must end, must end, then should end, she should end it … she and Roz … but it was so hard, hard …

  ‘Ian, do you realise, you sound demented when you say things like that?’

  ‘Why? I don’t see it.’

  ‘What did you think? We’d all just go on, indefinitely, then you and Tom, two middle-aged men, bachelors, and Roz and me, old and then you two, old, without families, and Roz and I, old, old, old … we’re getting on for old now, can’t you see?’

  ‘No, you aren’t,’ said her son calmly. ‘Not at all. You and Roz knock the girls for six any time.’

  Did he mean Hannah and Mary? If so … the streak here of sheer twisted lunacy frightened her and she got up. ‘I’m going to bed.’

  ‘It was Roz put you up to it. I don’t forgive you for agreeing. And she needn’t think I’ll forgive her for spoiling everything. We were all so happy.’

  ‘Good night, I’ll see you at breakfast.’

&nb
sp; Hannah had her baby, Shirley, and the two young women were much together. The two older women, and the husbands, waited to hear news of second pregnancies: surely the logical step. And then, to their surprise, Mary and Hannah announced that they thought of going into business together. At once it was suggested they should work in the sports shops: they would have flexible hours, could come and go, earn a bit of money … And, it was the corollary, fit second babies into a comfortable timetable.

  They said no, they wanted to start a new business, the two of them.

  ‘I expect we can help you with the money,’ said Ian, and Hannah said, ‘No, thanks. Mary’s father can help us out. He’s loaded.’ When Hannah spoke, it was often Mary’s thought they were hearing. ‘We want to be independent,’ said Hannah, a trifle apologetic, herself hearing that she had sounded ungracious, to say the least.

  The wives went off to visit their families for a weekend, taking the babies, to show them off.

  The four, Lil and Roz, Ian and Tom, sat together at the table in Roz’s house – Roz’s former house – and the sound of the waves said that nothing had changed, nothing … except that the infant Alice’s paraphernalia was all over the place, in the way of modern family life.

  ‘It’s very odd, what they want,’ said Roz. ‘Do we understand why? What is it all about?’

  ‘We’re too – heavy for them,’ said Lil.

  ‘We. They,’ said Ian. ‘They. We.’

  They all looked at him, to take in what he meant.

  Then Roz burst out, ‘We’ve tried so hard. Lil and I, we’ve done our best.’

  ‘I know you have,’ said Tom. ‘We know that.’

  ‘But here we are,’ said Ian. ‘Here we are.’

  And now he leaned forwards towards Roz, passionate, accusing – very far from the urbane and affable man everyone knew: ‘And nothing has changed, has it. Roz? Just tell me the truth, tell me, has it?’

  Roz’s eyes, full of tears, did meet his, and then she got up to save herself with the ritual of supplying cold drinks from the fridge.

  Lil said, looking calmly straight across at Tom, ‘It’s no good, Roz. Just don’t, don’t …’ For Roz was crying, silently, allowing it to be seen, her dark glasses lying on the table. Then she covered her eyes with the glasses, and directing those dark circles at Ian, she said, ‘I don’t understand what it is you want, Ian. Why do you go on and on? It’s all done. It’s finished.’