The Grandmothers

by Doris Lessing

  Back on deck, they saw that a low line of cloud on the horizon marked land: that was Table Mountain they were seeing. So it really was over … no, not yet, the rumour went around that a U-boat was known to be in the area.

  Sergeant Perkins stood in front of his hundred men with their corporals, and said to them, ‘Right, lads. It’s over. Time and the hour runs through the roughest day. Yes. Nothing was ever better said than that, eh, lads?’

  Of the men there looking at him perhaps two or three knew how to attribute the quotation, but every face showed how the words described what they had been through. As for Sergeant Perkins, he had seen them on a calendar, long ago, and they had so perfectly said what he needed at a bad time in an unsafe adolescence that he had used the philosophy offered to him, and indeed, on many occasions since.

  Now, as they watched, he reflated himself with the stuff of command and shouted, ‘Right, that’s it. Playtime over. No more fun and games. Private Payne, your belt’s askew. God, what a load of shirkers. Attention. Now, take your turn behind A Platoon for disembarkation.’

  Two young women reclined on deck-chairs on a verandah high on a slope of Table Mountain where they could overlook that part of the sea where the troopship would arrive, today or tomorrow. They were positioned so that the pillars of the stoep did not obstruct their view: ships when they appeared could be mistaken for a mote in the eye, a whale, even a seabird. They knew the troopship was coming because their husbands, both at the base in Simonstown, had told them. They had not been told the name of the ship or its destination. They had not passed on the enticing information. But surely the maids and the men who looked after their gardens would have noticed food arriving, not to mention the wine and the beer?

  Both women were hostesses, known for their parties and their largesse. This would not be their first troopship, nor, it was certain, the last. Cape Town, for the period the troops were on leave while the ship was refuelled and restocked with food and clean water, was not itself, was transformed into a city of soldiery in search of food, drink, and girls. Of course black or brown flesh was out of bounds, but this is not to say that the rules were kept.

  The women, Daphne Wright and Betty Stubbs, had plans for festive days, at the very least two, with luck four or even five.

  Under a tree in the garden the Coloured nanny sat with a pretty child of about eighteen months, who began to grizzle. ‘Okay, bring her to me,’ called Betty, and the nanny, a big brown girl in a pink dress and a white apron, came to deposit the child on her mother’s body, where she lay sprawled, and at once fell asleep. The nanny returned to her place under the tree, where she could watch for when she would next be needed. She began to knit.

  Daphne watched the scene from under the hand that shielded her eyes from the glare, and said, ‘I’m getting as broody as hell, Bets.’ She stroked her flat stomach. She was wearing a scarlet skirt and white shirt and with her yellow hair looked like a girl on an advertising poster for a happy holiday.

  ‘Hell, give me a break, eighteen months is too soon. We’ll start together and keep each other company.’

  ‘Joe doesn’t want us to start until after the war.’

  ‘That could be years.’

  ‘He says he doesn’t want me to be a widow with a kid. I say I’d like something to remember him by.’

  Both husbands went off on hush-hush trips to various bits of Africa, and the wives suffered till they got back.

  ‘Bertie told me that Henry …’ – her husband – ‘had to make a forced landing in the bush last month. They nearly pranged. It was a close thing,’ remarked Betty.

  ‘Henry didn’t tell you?’ Daphne knew, because her husband had told her, but not knowing if Betty had been told, was careful not to mention it.

  ‘No, he didn’t. I always say it’s a lot worse, when he doesn’t tell me.’

  ‘There’s a lot they don’t tell us.’

  Betty was stroking her little child’s soft back, exposed by a scrap of white shirt, and Daphne said again, ‘But I am broody, I’m broody as hell. I think I’ll get pregnant and then he’ll have to like it.’

  ‘Of course he’ll like it.’

  They resumed their watch on the innocent-seeming sea, where submarines might be lurking at that moment. No sign of the troopship, not a ship in sight, only the blue plains of the sea.

  ‘If it’s three nights, we’ll be broke for months,’ said Betty.

  ‘And if there’s a fourth we’ll run out of food and everything.’

  ‘We can drive out and see what we can get from the farms.’

  ‘And the petrol?’

  ‘I’ve got a little stashed away.’

  This exchange, on a comfortable grumbling note, had sent Betty to sleep. She lay, her infant on top of her, her long brown arms, long brown legs, extended, her dark hair loose across her face.

  Daphne raised herself on an elbow and looked at the charming scene. Tears were not far off. She did want a baby. She had lost one in a miscarriage and now greeted the regular appearance of her monthlies with a feeling that she was a failure: yet they took precautions, or, rather, Joe did: yet they both wanted a baby.

  She thought that Betty was the only person among a pretty large circle of acquaintances she could ‘really’ talk to. They knew everything about each other. This happy state of affairs had begun from the moment she, Daphne, had arrived in Cape Town to marry Joe.

  Daphne had been an English girl, in an English country town, when handsome Joe Wright arrived to visit a school friend. He was on leave from Simonstown in South Africa. It was 1937. They had danced all night at the Summer Ball, and he had swept her off her feet. ‘He swept you off your feet.’ Well, he had. ‘Marry me,’ he said, or commanded, and she followed him on the next Union Castle ship to Cape Town. The Stirling Castle.(Perhaps the same ship that they were expecting now.) There was a fancy wedding. Joe was one of an old Cape family. Daphne, with her narrow experience, could have been overwhelmed, but she was not. The girl who arrived in Cape Town was not the Daphne who had embarked. On board were a group of South African girls returning from good times and trips around Europe. At first she had been shocked, and then envious. They were different in style from English girls, free and easy, loud, assertive, and wearing clothes she had at first thought showy. She had overheard one say to another, about herself, ‘She’s English, you know, baby-blue English. Little Miss Muffet.’

  Daphne, a blonde, with blue eyes and a pearly complexion, did wear baby blue a lot. ‘It is your colour.’ She wore charming dresses in crêpe de chine with lace collars and little buttons down the front; she wore hats and little white gloves. ‘A lady is known by her gloves.’ Now she knew herself to be insipid and timid.

  No sooner had she arrived in Cape Town, than she jettisoned her trousseau and wore strong colours, and her pale gold hair with its little puffs and tendrils became a heavy yellow chignon; her voice loudened and she lost the shy soft ways she had been taught. She bloomed into a Cape Town hostess, gave parties that were written up in the gossip columns and was generally a credit to her husband.

  And what did he think about all this? He had fallen for her because of those qualities she had discarded. A refreshing change from the South African girls, he had said, playing with those girlish pale gold wisps, commending her English skin and her rosebud mouth which she now kept slashed with red lipstick. In fact she out-did the South African girls who had despised her; she was more daring than they. Joe protested once or twice during the transformation, ‘Come on Daff! Isn’t that overdoing it a bit?’

  Did he mourn that timid girl-bride? But they were good pals, that’s what he told her and everyone. How could he not be proud of her, overtopping the wives of his fellow officers, for dash, style; and, too, she was funny and brave in everything.

  Betty, the South African wife of Captain Henry Stubbs, lived in a house similar to this one, next door, was the same age, twenty-four; the two husbands were the same rank: they were Simonstown wives. That they shou
ld have ‘known’ each other had been inevitable, but they became friends. Real friends. Only friends. Best friends.

  Daphne lay propped on her elbow watching that friend of hers, lovely Betty Stubbs, lost to the world with her infant spread on top of her, both mysterious in sleep, and she thought, feeling cold and frightened, that she had her good pal Joe and her good pal Betty beside her in this alarming continent, but apart from them she was alone, without them she would be adrift. Alone, far from home and with a war on. ‘There’s a war on.’ ‘Don’t forget, there’s a war on.’ Funny how people liked saying that; no one was likely to forget, were they?

  If I had a baby I’d have something of my own, she thought, forlorn and vulnerable and as if she were a bit of flotsam washed up at Cape Town all the way from England. A ‘baby-blue’ English girl with a bold front who had learned to enjoy shocking people. Just a little, just enough.

  ‘I’m in a mood,’ she thought, lying back, but turning her head so she could see the two faces, the woman’s and the babe’s. She did get moods. When she had her first, and wept and shivered, Betty told her she was homesick and the housegirl made her strong coffee and said, ‘Poor medem, you are far from home.’ Yet she thanked her luck daily that she was not in Britain, where they were having such a bad time. Yes, she did miss her mummy and her dada and her little brother but she was now so different from that Daphne who had been a daughter and an elder sister. A young man who had been besotted with her had told her she was like a trembling flower. She had laughed at him, but now she thought, well, trembling flower will do for me today.

  ‘But I do want a baby, yes, I do, I do,’ and she allowed tears to trickle down and lose themselves in the mass of her chignon. ‘I’m going to talk to Joe again.’ And she, too, fell asleep. When the two young women woke, because the infant had let out a yell, the nanny was bending to take the child, and indicating that a big ship was coming fast towards the shore.

  ‘There’s the ship, medem,’ said she. ‘So now we can have a nice party.’

  As the ship docked, alien in its camouflage, lines of cars were already creeping down the hilly streets towards it. All had been issued with an extra petrol ration, because this cause, giving the British troops a good time, overrode the need to save petrol. Daphne was in her car, and behind her Betty was in hers. Both women were known to the welcoming committees, who trusted them to entertain as many men as hospitality would stretch to. The sad truth was, there were too many men, not enough hostesses, and a lot of women whom normally these Cape Town matrons would not look at were being smiled at today. Somewhere a little band was playing but the bustle and sounds from the ship and the shouting of orders were too much for it.

  Joe had telephoned Daphne to say, ‘They’ve had a rotten time, I’m afraid. And a sub nearly got them but they don’t know that. They deserve everything we can give them. Tell Betty her old man’s down with the Welcome Committee. And we’ve got to get a couple of hundred of them into hospital – see what we can do in four days.’ ‘Oh, so it’ll be four days?’ ‘Yes, but don’t spread it abroad. And don’t you get sick, because the hospitals’ll be full. Every spare hospital bed for miles … Don’t expect us home tonight.’

  When the soldiers began to descend the gangplank, it was evident they had had a bad time. They were more like invalids than soldiers. They held on to handrails, they stared about, they were gaunt and unwell. The first of them had their hands shaken and had to stand unsteadily at ease while speeches of welcome were made. On they came towards the waiting cars, hesitated, and then, invited by welcoming waves and opening car doors, piled in, as many as could cram. Officers first. Last troopship Daphne had entertained officers, and had told Joe that this time she would take what came. And on they did come, no end to the lines of soldiers, and the ground was clearly unsteady under them; one man actually fell and had to be helped up. Daphne opened her car door to non-commissioned officers, who got in the back, five of them, and then she saw a tall lanky, awkwardly moving soldier who was reaching out his hand as if he wished there was something to hold on to. She opened the door to the seat beside hers, and he turned and blundered towards the car, held on to the door’s edge to steady himself, and collapsed into the seat. He was sweating and pale.

  ‘It’s been a bit of a rough voyage,’ she heard in a familiar accent from the back seat. That was a West Country voice.

  ‘So we’ve heard,’ said Daphne, feeling that her clean and sweet-smelling self must be dismaying these men who stank, that was the only word for it. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be sick. From this young man beside her – he seemed a boy, no more – came wave after wave of smell.

  ‘If there’s a chance of a wash?’ came from the back seat.

  ‘Or even a bath?’ came a voice from Scotland.

  ‘Can do,’ said Daphne, driving smartly up towards her home. On the steps stood her two maids, and the man who did the garden, and on Betty’s stood her maids and gardener. From their faces could be seen what they felt, looking at these ghosts of men.

  The boy beside her woke, stumbled out of the car and up the steps and fell on to the deck-chair she had been sitting in that morning, where he crouched, his head on his knees, his arms enfolding his head.

  ‘Baths,’ she commanded. ‘And a lot of towels.’

  On Betty’s steps was the same scene.

  ‘We haven’t anything to change into,’ said one of the men.

  ‘Get all the dressing-gowns you can find – anything you can find,’ Daphne told the maids.

  She looked through Joe’s clothes for something they could wear, these survivors, and one after another they emerged clean from baths and the shower, in her husband’s dressing-gowns and one in an old wrapper of hers. Normally there would have been jokes about the big man in a Japanese kimono of pink and mauve flowers. They were served tea and cakes and coffee, it being teatime. Meanwhile the young man who seemed worse off than any of them lay in a deck-chair and seemed disinclined to move.

  A big party was planned for tonight, here. These men were not in any state for a party. She asked them and they said they would be happy to sit still and let the earth stop swaying. Besides, there would be four days.

  She left them while she telephoned to stop events going forward and went to the sick youth. He seemed in a daze or a trance. She knelt beside him and asked his name.

  ‘I’m James,’ he said.

  ‘Well, James, how about a bath and we’ll get your clothes washed.’ He tried to sit up, and she put her arm behind him and felt the pressure of thin bones.

  ‘You need to put a bit of flesh on you,’ she said, trying to heave him up.

  ‘We were sick most of the way,’ he said, in a normal voice, smiling. She had got him up, and now stood holding him. She progressed with him to the bathroom. There it was evident he was not up to a bath.

  ‘Your mates seem to be in a better state than you.’

  ‘They’re sergeants,’ he said.

  This meant nothing to her yet. She ran the bath and asked the housegirl, Sarah, to help him into the bath and wash him. She could have done it herself, but for some reason was reluctant. While he was being washed, she thought about how to get clothes that would fit this starved young man. She telephoned her husbands brother’s house and asked if there were any clothes for a tall thin man. The brother, who was in North Africa fighting Rommel, was thin, and tall.

  A maid brought over an armful of clothes.

  She handed them in through the bathroom door, and after a few minutes the youth came out, supported by Sarah, in clothes that fitted, more or less.

  Now Daphne had to get these piles of stinking uniforms clean. She set the maids to work: on the lawns in front of Daphne’s house and Betty’s the four maids knelt on sacks to scrub the uniforms with scrubbing brushes on wash boards. Foam flew everywhere.

  Beds were then made up all over the house. Supper was served with wine and beer, but the men were nervous of the alcohol. The frail boy, James, sat at the table w
ith the four sergeants. Rank was abolished for the duration of this stay, the sergeant from Devon said. They were looking at roast pork and vegetables. ‘Come on, lads,’ said the Scottish sergeant, ‘we’ve got to build ourselves up.’ They did try, but the big bowl of fruit salad went down better.

  It was still early. The men sat about the living-room listening to a radio news made anodyne by censorship. There was a troopship in, was allowed, but nothing was said about for how long. Did she mind if they went to bed? Off they went to their various beds, but James sat on.

  Joe telephoned to find out how things were going on. She told him and he said she should ask their doctor to come up and look over the lads.

  James was staring at her.

  ‘You’re like a vision. You can’t imagine … you forget there are lovely women, when you’re with all those men, on the ship.’

  ‘And so it was very bad?’

  ‘Yes. It was.’ The impossibility of communicating it to her kept him silent, and then he put out his long thin hand, in the sleeve of Joe’s brother’s blue shirt, and touched her hand. ‘You’re real,’ he said, frowning, ‘I’m not imagining you.’ He peered into her face, serious, then smiled. ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he concluded.

  The maids were standing around, ready to serve coffee.

  Daphne said to them, ‘Okay, that’s it, no coffee tonight.’

  She went to help him up, but he managed by himself and without holding on to anything followed her to the stoep, where a bed had been made, with plenty of blankets. He sat on it and said, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Daphne,’ she said.

  ‘Of course, a goddess’s name for a goddess.’

  ‘Not a goddess, just a little ordinary nymph.’