The Grandmothers

by Doris Lessing

  ‘So, you don’t understand,’ said Ian.

  ‘Stop it,’ said Lil, beginning to cry too. ‘What’s the point of this? All we have to do is to decide what to tell them, they want our support.’

  ‘We will tell them that we will support them’ said Ian, and added, ‘I’m going for a swim.’

  And the four ran down into the waves, Ian limping, but not too badly.

  Interesting that in the discussion that afternoon, with the four, a certain key question had not been mentioned. If the two young wives were going to start a business, then the grandmothers would have to play a part.

  A second discussion, with all six of them, was on this very point.

  ‘Working grandmothers,’ said Roz. ‘I quite fancy it, what about you, Lil?’

  ‘Working is the word,’ said Lil. ‘I’m not going to give up the shops. How will we fit in the babies?’

  ‘Easy,’ said Roz. ‘We’ll juggle it. I have long holidays at the university. You have Ian at your beck and call in the shops. There are weekends. And I daresay the girls’ll want to see their little angels from time to time.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting we’re going to neglect them?’ said Mary.

  ‘No, darling, no, not at all. Besides, both Lil and I had girls to help us with our little treasures, didn’t we, Lil?’

  ‘I suppose so. Not much, though.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Mary, ‘I suppose we can hire an au pair, if it’s like that.’

  ‘How you do flare up,’ said Roz. ‘Certainly we can get ourselves au pairs when needed. Meanwhile, the grannies are at your service.’

  It was a real ritual occasion, the day the babies were to be introduced to the sea. All six adults were there on the beach. Blankets had been spread. The grandmothers, Roz and Lil, in their bikinis, were sitting with the babies between their knees, smoothing them over with suncream. Tiny, delicate creatures, fair-haired, fair-skinned, and around them, tall and large and protective, the big adults.

  The mummies took them into the sea, assisted by Tom and Lil. There was much splashing, cries of fear and delight from the little ones, reassurance from the adults – a noisy scene. And sitting on the blankets where the sand had already blown, glistening in little drifts, were Roz and Ian. Ian looked long and intently at Roz and said, ‘Take your glasses off.’ Roz did so.

  He said, ‘I don’t like it when you hide your eyes from me.’

  She snapped the glasses back on and said, ‘Stop it, Ian. You’ve got to stop this. It’s simply not on.’

  He was reaching forward to lift off her glasses. She slapped down his hand. Lil had seen, from where she stood to her waist in the sea. The intensity of it, you could say, even the ferocity … had Hannah noticed? Had Mary? A yell from a little girl – Alice. A big wave had leaped up and … ‘It’s bitten me,’ she shrieked. ‘The sea’s bitten me.’ Up jumped Ian, reached Shirley who also was making a commotion now. ‘Can’t you see,’ he shouted at Hannah, over the sea noise, ‘you’re frightening her? They’re frightened.’ With a tiny child on either shoulder he limped up out of the waves. He began a jiggling and joggling of the little girls in a kind of dance, but he was dipping in each step with the limp and they began to cry harder. ‘Granny’ wailed Hannah, ‘I want my granny’ sobbed Shirley. The infants were deposited on the rugs, Lil joined Roz, and the grandmothers soothed and petted the children while the other four went off to swim.

  ‘There, my ducky,’ sang Roz, to Hannah.

  ‘Poor little pet,’ crooned Lil to Shirley.

  Not long after this the two young women were in their new office, in the suite which would be the scene of their – they were convinced – future triumphs. ‘We are having a little celebration,’ they had said, making it sound as if there would be associates, sponsors, friends. But they were alone, drinking champagne and already tiddly.

  It was the end of their first year. They had worked hard, harder than they had expected. Things had gone so well there was already talk of expanding. That would mean even longer hours, and more work for the grandmothers.

  ‘They wouldn’t mind,’ said Hannah.

  ‘I think they would,’ said Mary.

  There was something in her voice, and Hannah looked to see what Mary was wanting her to understand. Then, she said, ‘It’s not a question of us working our butts off – and their working their butts off – they want us to get pregnant again.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mary.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ said Hannah. ‘I told Ian, yes, but there’s no hurry. We can get our business established and then let’s see. But you’re right, that’s what they want.’

  ‘They,’ said Mary. ‘They want. And what they want they intend to have.’

  Here Hannah showed signs of unrest. Compliant by nature, biddable, she had begun by deferring to Mary, such a strong character, but now she was asserting herself. ‘I think they are very kind.’

  ‘They,’ said Mary. ‘Who the hell are they to be kind to us?

  ‘Oh, come on! We wouldn’t have been able to start this business at all without the grandmothers helping with everything.’

  ‘Roz is so damned tactful all the time,’ said Mary, and it exploded out of her, the champagne aiding and abetting. She poured some more. ‘They’re both so tactful.’

  ‘You must be short of something to complain about.’

  ‘I feel they are watching us all the time to make sure we come up to the mark.’

  ‘What mark?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mary, tears imminent. ‘I wish I knew. There’s something there.’

  ‘They don’t want to be interfering mothers-in-law.’

  ‘Sometimes I hate them.’

  ‘Hate,’ Hannah dismissed, with a smile.

  ‘They’ve got them, don’t you see? Sometimes I feel …’

  ‘It’s because they didn’t have fathers – the boys. Ian’s father died and Tom’s went off and married someone else. That’s why the four of them are so close.’

  ‘I don’t care why. Sometimes I feel like a spare part.’

  ‘I think you’re being unfair.’

  ‘Tom wouldn’t care who he was married to. It could be a seagull or a … or a … wombat.’

  Hannah flung herself back in her chair, laughing.

  ‘I mean it. Oh, he’s ever so damned kind. He’s so nice. I shout at him and I pick a fight, anything just to make him – see me. And then the next thing we’re in bed having a good screw.’

  But Hannah didn’t feel anything like that. She knew Ian needed her. It was not only the slight dependence because of his gammy leg, he sometimes clung to her, childlike. Yes, there was something of the child in him – a little. One night he had called out to Roz in his sleep, and Hannah had woken him. ‘You were dreaming of Roz,’ she told him.

  At once awake and wary, he said, ‘Hardly surprising. I’ve known her all my life. She was like another mother.’ And he buried his face in her breasts. ‘Oh, Hannah, I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

  Now that Hannah was standing up to her, Mary was even more alone. Once she had felt, there’s Hannah, at least I’ve got Hannah.

  Thinking over this conversation afterwards, Mary knew there was something there that eluded her. That was what she always felt. And yet what was she complaining about? Hannah was right. When she looked at their situation from outside, married to these two covetable men, well-known, well-set-up, well-off, generally liked – so what was she complaining about? I have everything, she decided. But then, a voice from her depths – I have nothing. She lacked everything. ‘I have nothing,’ she told herself, as waves of emptiness swept over her. In the deep centre of her life – nothing, an absence.

  And yet she could not put her finger on it, what was wrong, what was lacking. So there must be something wrong with her. She, Mary, was at fault. But why? What was it? So she puzzled, sometimes so unhappy she felt she could run away out of the situation for good.

  When Mary found the bundle of let
ters, forgotten in an old bit of luggage, she had at first thought they were all from Lil to Tom, conventional, of the kind you’d expect from an old friend or even a second mother. They began, Dear Tom and ended Love, Lil, with sometimes a cross or two for a kiss. And then there was the other letter, from Tom to Lil, that had not been posted. ‘Why shouldn’t I write to you, Lil, why not, I have to, I think of you all the time, oh my God, Lil, I love you so much, I dream of you, I can’t bear being apart from you, I love you I love you …’ and so on, pages of it. So, she read Lil’s letters again, and saw them differently And then she understood everything. And when she stood on the path with Hannah, below Baxter’s Gardens, and heard Roz’s laughter, she knew it was mocking laughter. It mocked her, Mary, and she understood everything at last. It was all clear to her.

  VICTORIA AND THE STAVENEYS

  Cold dark was already drizzling into the playground; the voices of two groups of children told people arriving at the great gate where they must direct their gaze: it was already hard to make out who was who. By some sort of sympathy, children in the bigger group were able to distinguish their own among the arrivals, and by ones or twos they darted off to be collected and taken home. There were two children by themselves in the centre of the space, which was surrounded by tall walls topped by broken glass. They were noisy. A little boy was kicking out or pummelling the air and shouting, ‘He forgot, I told her he’d forget,’ while a girl tried to console and soothe. He was a large child, she thin, with spiky pigtails sticking out, the pink ribbons on them dank and limp. She was older than him, but not bigger. Yet it was with the assurance of her two extra years that she admonished, ‘Now Thomas, don’t do that, don’t bawl, they’ll be here.’ But he wouldn’t be quietened. ‘Let me go, let me go – I won’t, he’s forgotten.’ Several people arrived at the same time at the gate, one a tall fair boy of about twelve, who stood peering through the gloom. He spied his charge, his brother Thomas, while others were already reaching out hands and stepping forward. It was a little scene of tumult and confusion. The tall boy, Edward, grabbed Thomas by the hand and stood while the little boy kept up his thrashing about and complaint. ‘You forgot me; yes, you did,’ and watched while the other children disappeared out into the street. He turned and went off out of sight with Thomas.

  It was cold. Victoria’s clothes were not enough. She was shivering now that she did not have the recalcitrant child to keep her active. She stood with her arms wrapped about her, quietly crying. The school caretaker emerged from the dark, pulled the gates together, and locked them. He had not seen her either. She wore dark brown trousers and a black jacket and was a darker spot in the swirling gloom of the playground: the wind was getting up.

  The awfulness of that day, which had begun with her aunt being rushed off to hospital, and had culminated in her being abandoned, now sank her to her knees, and she rocked there, eyes blank with tears until fears of being alone opened them again, and she stared at the big black locked gates. The bars were set wide. Carefully, as if engaged in some nefarious activity, she went to the gate to see if she could wriggle between the bars. She was thin, and told often enough there wasn’t enough flesh on her to feed a cat. That had been her mother’s verdict, and the thought of her dead mother made Victoria weep, and then wail. She had a few minutes ago been playing big girl to Thomas’s baby boy, but now she felt she was a baby herself, and her nine years were dissolving in tears. And then she was stuck there, in the bars. On the pavement people passed and passed, not seeing her, they were all hunched up under umbrellas; the playground behind was vast, dark and full of threat. Across the street, Mr Pat’s sweet and newspaper shop and cafe was all a soft shine of light. The street lights were making furry yellow splashes, and, just as Victoria decided to make another effort to wriggle free, Mr Patel came on to the pavement to take some oranges from the trays of fruit out there, and he saw her. She was in his shop, but usually with crowds of others, every school day, and she knew he was to be liked because her aunt, and her mother too, before she died, had said, ‘He’s okay, that Indian man.’

  Mr Patel held up his hands to stop the traffic, which was only a car and a bicycle, and hastened over to her. As he arrived her wrigglings freed her and she fell into his hands, large good hands, that held her safe. ‘Victoria, is that you I am seeing?’

  Saved, she abandoned herself to misery. He hoisted her up and was again holding up his hand – only one, the other held Victoria – to halt another car and a motorbike. Having arrived in the bright warmth of the cafe, Mr Patel set her on the high counter and said, ‘Now, dear, what are you doing here all by yourself?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ wept Victoria, and she did not. A message had come to her in class that she was to be picked up in the playground, with Thomas Staveney, whom she hardly knew: he was two classes down from her. There were customers waiting for Mr Patel’s attention. He looked around for help and saw a couple of girls sitting at a table. They were seniors from the school refreshing themselves before going home, and he said, ‘Here, keep an eye on this poor child for a minute.’ He set her down carefully on a chair by them. The big girls certainly did not want to be bothered with a snotty little kid, but gave Victoria bright smiles and said she should stop crying. Victoria sobbed on. Mr Patel did not know what to do. While he served sweets, buns, opening more soft drinks for the girls, as usual doing twenty things at once, he was thinking that he should call the police, when on the pavement opposite the tall boy who had dragged off his fighting little brother, suddenly appeared, like a ghost that has lost its memory. He stared wildly about, and then, holding on to the top bars of the gate with both hands, seemed about to haul himself up to its top. ‘Excuse me,’ shouted Mr Patel, as he ran to the door. ‘Come over here,’ he yelled, and Edward turned a woeful countenance to Mr Patel and the welcoming lights of the cafe and, without looking to see what traffic might be arriving, jumped across the street in a couple of bounds, just missed by a motorbike whose rider sent imprecations after him.

  ‘It’s a little girl,’ panted Edward. ‘I’m looking for a little girl.’

  ‘And here she is, safe and sound,’ and Mr Patel went in to stand by the counter where he kept an eye on the tall boy, who had sat himself by Victoria and was wiping her face with paper napkins that stood fanned in a holder. He seemed about to dissolve in tears himself. The two girls, much too old for this boy, nevertheless were making manifestations of femininity for his sake, pushing out their breasts and pouting. He didn’t notice. Victoria still wept and he was in an extreme of some emotion himself.

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ Victoria burst out, and Mr Patel handed across a glass of orange crush, with a gesture that indicated to Edward he shouldn’t dream of thinking of paying for it.

  Edward held the glass for Victoria, who was indignant – she, a big girl, being treated like a baby, but she was grateful, for she did badly want to be a baby, just then.

  Edward was saying, ‘I’m so sorry. I was supposed to pick you up, with my brother.’

  ‘Didn’t you see me?’ asked Victoria, accusing him.

  And now Edward was scarlet, he positively writhed. This was the burning focus of his self-accusation. He had in fact seen a little black girl, but he had been told to collect a little girl, and for some reason had not thought this black child could be his charge. He could make all kinds of excuses for himself: the confusion as the other children were running off to the gate, the noise. Thomas’s bad behaviour, but the fact was, the absolute bottom line, he had not really seen her because Victoria was black. But he had seen her. All this would not have mattered to a good many people who came and went in and out of those big gates, but Edward was the child of a liberal house, and he was in fact in the throes of a passionate identification with all the sorrows of the Third World. At his school, much superior to the one here, though he had attended it, long ago, ‘projects’ of all kinds enlightened him and his fellow pupils. He collected money for the victims of AIDS and of famine, he wrote essays about thes
e and many others of the world’s wrongs, his mother Jessy was ‘into’ every kind of good cause. There was no excuse for what he had done and he was sick with shame.

  ‘Will you come home with me now?’ he enquired, humbly, of the pathetic child, and without a word she stood and put up her hand for him to lead her.

  ‘Poor little kid,’ said one of the girls, apparently touched.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, she’s doing all right,’ said the other.

  ‘It’s not that far,’ said Edward to the child, who was half his height. He bent down to make this communication. And she was stretching herself up, so sure was she that she ought to be behaving like a big girl, while she whimpered, like catches of her breath, staring up at his face which was contorted with concern for her.

  ‘Goodbye, Victoria,’ said Mr Patel, in a stern, admonitory way, that was directed at this white boy, who was reminding him of those summer insects, all flying legs and feelers, called Daddy-Long-Legs. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he shouted after the couple, for he was remembering he knew nothing about this boy, who should be informed that Victoria was not without friends. But the couple were already in the street, where their feet made sturdy progress through clogs of wet leaves, and puddles.

  ‘Where? Where to?’ the child pleaded, but in such a little voice he had not heard: he was bending continually to send her smiles he had no idea were agonised.

  Just as Victoria thought they would be trudging until her feet dropped off, they turned in at a gate and were walking up into the face of a house whose windows blazed light, in a cliff of such houses.

  Here Edward inserted a key and they were in a big place that seemed to Victoria like a shop, of the sort she sometimes gaped at in the High Street. Colour, light and warmth: she was cold now, for the wind had cut through her, and in a great mirror on a stand where Edward was, all touzled by the wind, was herself, yes, that was her. Victoria, that frightened thing, with her mouth open, staring, and then Edward was bundling her jacket off her and throwing it over the arm of a red chair. He was going on ahead and she ran after him leaving herself behind in the surface of the mirror. And now they were in a room larger than any she had seen, except for the school hall. Edward reached out for a kettle, which he filled at a sink, and Victoria thought that this part of the room was like a kitchen. Toys lay about. It occurred to her that this was where Thomas lived, so where was he?