The Grandmothers

by Doris Lessing

  ‘Don’t go changing into a laurel tree,’ he said.

  She was impressed, though she had been hearing jokes about the laurel tree all her life.

  ‘No pyjamas,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’ He slowly took off his trousers and blue shirt, and stood in Joe’s underpants, which hung on him like a loincloth. He slid into bed where he lay, looking at her with the same smile, as at a marvel.

  ‘You’re English,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, like you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you going to be all right?’

  ‘I’m in a dream,’ he said, and reached up with both arms and pulled her down. He held her. He was strong, after all. He turned his head so his face was in her neck and her hair, and said, ‘Your hair smells so wonderful.’

  ‘You’re going to have to let me go,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ he said.

  This absurdity made her laugh, and she freed herself, but he found her hand and held it to his cheek.

  ‘Heaven,’ he said. ‘I’m in heaven.’

  And then he fell asleep and she went in, shaken, oh, yes, badly shaken, though she could not have said why. A poor half-starved waif of a boy, but smelling now of his proper smell, of man – and her heart was pumping. She sat by herself in her living-room, smoked a cigarette, another, and then rang Betty.

  ‘My lot are all asleep,’ she said.

  ‘So are mine. They are in a bad way.’

  ‘We’ll feed them up.’

  ‘Then back on the ship again. It’s a shame.’

  ‘What price the party tomorrow night?’

  ‘We’ll have it, and they can join in or not as they like.’

  Next morning she was up early as usual, and wandered in her wrap through the house where her charges were all lost to the world. Tom, Dick and Harry, she was calling them in her mind, for she was tending to confuse this lot with the last, of a few weeks before. She went around the garden, which tonight would be festive – it was already decked with lanterns and lights. Festive and crowded. She rang the base and got her husband and said the party would be tonight and tomorrow too, and he said he was sorry, ‘Things aren’t too … no, I’ll tell you when I see you.’

  She ate her breakfast, fruit and coffee, alone. Then she was in the kitchen planning for tonight with the maids and the gardener. This was their third troopship, and the four were like old campaigners.

  Not till mid-morning were there signs of life, but at last Tom, Dick and Harry – Sergeants Jerry, Ted and John – emerged yawning. She sat with them as bacon and eggs and fried tomatoes disappeared: they had their appetites back. Because of what Joe had said, she noticed they all had rough and reddened skins, in patches. They exposed torsos and thighs to her, red and rashy, and in some places beginning to suppurate.

  ‘I’ve called our doctor.’

  Next she went to where James was still asleep. He woke with a cry, then sat leaning on his elbow and smiling. She was sitting at a safe distance.

  ‘How’s your skin? The doctor’s coming.’

  Again she was looking at patches that were like measles or a heat rash. And his knee: it was swollen, with a scar in a puff of white flesh. And his feet were swollen and red.

  ‘We didn’t get our boots off much.’

  He took her hand and held it to his cheek, eyes closed, his face grave, lips trembling.

  ‘James,’ she said, as grave as he, ‘I have a husband.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said.

  This was certainly not the jest of the seducer, but a fair statement of the position.

  ‘But you do have to see the doctor.’

  He kissed her hand and let it go.

  One after another, the doctor examined the young men, and pronounced them all in poor shape. Libations of cold water would cure their skins: but soon they would be on the ship again. One had a cough. One had swollen glands. All had bad feet, and bruises where they had knocked themselves as the ship bucked and swung. ‘I take it you didn’t keep much down, from the look of you?’

  And he ordered them to walk a couple of streets to his surgery, for various treatments.

  Meanwhile Betty arrived and said to Daphne, ‘What’s up with you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You don’t look yourself.’

  ‘I’m not myself.’

  A confession from one and a warning from the other were preempted by Sarah in the kitchen calling, ‘Mary, Mary, where have you put the chickens, hey?’ And Mary answering, ‘Where have I put them – when they haven’t been delivered yet?’

  ‘There isn’t going to be enough food,’ said Daphne and they got into Betty’s car and drove out into the countryside to any shop or butcher or bakery they could find. But others had had the same idea: shop after shop had been cleaned out. At last they found shelves still stacked with bread, and a butcher with a sheep’s carcass. They returned, with this booty, to find their charges, all ten of them, under the tree in Betty’s garden, sprawling on rugs, being fed ham and chicken and salad by the maids.

  ‘We could drive you to see the sights,’ said Betty.

  ‘We could take you up Table Mountain,’ said Daphne.

  The young men agreed that nothing could be better than sitting here, looking down on their enemy, the sea, which today spread out glimmering like a peacock’s tail, looking like anything but what it was, a submarine-haunted killer.

  The two women and the baby sat near them on the grass, both with that maternal smile which is as good as a chastity belt. But this lot, unlike previous invasions off the troopships, looked too beaten up to be a threat. Daphne felt the gaze of the young man on her, saw his haunted hungry eyes, and then glanced at Betty, who of course would notice. He was already better, they all were: these young men were recovering as they breathed, and ate, and ate, and demolished piles of grapes. The air was heavy with the smell of liniments and ointments, there were dressings here and there on sore skins, but you would not think these were the scarecrows who had come off the boat yesterday.

  Then they confessed for a need to sleep, and all went off to their beds. It was early afternoon. All over the two gardens that were being made one by that night’s party, trestles were being set out, with piles of cutlery and plates and glasses, and smells of cooking meat came from the kitchens. Not only here, everywhere through the city, went on preparations and already men in uniforms were roaming these upper streets. There would be hundreds of them, hoping to be lucky, hoping for a welcome.

  The organisations that dealt with incursions from the troopships asked for volunteers for these parties, knowing that only the incapacitated would hold back. The lucky ones were chosen by lot: names taken from a pail. For days and weeks to come slips of paper with the names of Captain E.R. Baker, Sgt. ‘Red’ Smith, Corporal Berners, Rifleman Barry, Private Jones, hundreds of them, were all over the city, in gutters, clogged on windowsills, fluttering about as the winds blew, Tom, Dick and Harry’s names were everywhere, while they were on their way to – but it had to be India.

  Betty and Daphne had each put down for four hundred, knowing that the unlucky and the uninvited would be wandering up to stand like poor children at a shop window, looking in at festive gardens. And then they would be invited in: who could turn them away?

  The young men woke at five or so, and sleep had taken them another step towards their healthy selves. Their uniforms were clean and ironed now, and they were shaved and brushed.

  At six o’clock Betty went off to her house to dress and Daphne looked over the evening dresses in her long crammed wardrobe; she and her Joe had gone in for dancing, when she first came, the two couples had gone dancing often, and here were evening dresses pressed and ready for action.

  She took out the one she thought of as her cleverest, though it could be described, simply, as a white dress. It was of white silk piqué, stiff and glossy, but a world away from the white dress she would have worn as her English self: she could see it, limp white chiffon, with pink embroid
ery. She put on her white armour, described on the pattern as ‘a gown of classical simplicity’. She smiled at herself in the long mirror. She shone, gleaming shoulders, the glisten of the white stuff, her hair, her eyes. She snapped on shiny jet necklace and bracelets, her grandmother’s, a mourning set; jet for mourning but just look how it set her off! And now her hair, down it fell, her yellow triumphant hair, achieved by perms, not to wave it, but to make it heavy and straight. And she peered close into her face that was enclosed in the yellow frame, and then she was saying, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ She was trembling. ‘I’ve gone mad,’ she said to her reflection, but probably addressing her friend Betty. ‘Yes, I have.’ She pinned the hair up into the chignon, ageing herself by ten years into a young matron. Nothing like Ginger Rogers now (they said she was like Ginger Rogers, with her hair swinging about). Now she was the hostess, nothing more. Beside her was the English rose in her white chiffon, her invisible alter ego, the chrysalis she had discarded. A rosebud mouth smiled mistily: Daphne took her scarlet lipstick and obliterated it. Well defended, she went out, meeting Betty coming over. The two of them made a picture, and they knew it. ‘You do make a picture!’ And, ‘The dark and the light of it.’ Betty wore her dark brown silk dress. They had made their evening dresses from Vogue patterns, running them up on Singer sewing machines, side by side at a table in either house, as they felt. They were proud of their creations. ‘Dior, out of my way,’ ‘Norman Hartnell, here we come,’ they would sing to their own and each other’s reflections. Betty’s dress had lacked its finish, at first. They tried on it diamanté or ‘cluster’ brooches in strong colours. ‘Vulgar,’ they pronounced. ‘No, that’s not it …’ Daphne remembered that her English-rose self had a little necklace and bracelets of white daisies, that could have been made to go – or rather, go against – the formality, of that stiff brown gown, so apt that the two had fallen about laughing, pleased with themselves.

  Two young women, so recently girls in their fathers’ houses, had found themselves in their own houses, with indulgent husbands and servants. Time and space to spread themselves, then to discover that what was strongest in them was an appetite for accomplishment. They transformed rooms with colour and texture, changed their gardens, came upon new talents every day, were like conquerors in new lands, but what they liked best was transforming themselves, with the aid of their sewing machines. Often as they flung lengths of material about, or draped themselves, they broke into fits of laughter and collapsed into chairs, helpless. ‘Just as well no one can see us, Bets.’ ‘They’d think us lunatics.’ ‘Perhaps we are.’ And the giggles broke out again. These exuberances of healthy vitality, these festivals of self-discovery, innocent because of the flagrant enjoyment of their vanities, ended with Daphne’s miscarriage and Betty’s getting pregnant. The zest had gone and two sober young matrons looked back on giddy girls. Now they made baby clothes and shirts for their husbands. But in their cupboard hung the results of their early intoxications, and when they arrayed themselves in this dress or that, the other would signal: ‘Oh, Bets, that was a morning, wasn’t it!’ ‘Daphne, we were inspired that day.’

  Now they gave each other the swiftest of once-overs and got on to the serious business of the night. Already cars were delivering soldiers to the two houses, and to the others in the street, and groups of soldiers wandered up, clutching bits of paper with addresses. The gramophone, with its stacks of records, was on the stoep and beside it was the gardener, ready to wind it up and change the records. Dance music came from every house, music and voices.

  Daphne checked that the furniture in the living-room had been pushed back, leaving a clear floor, and that the drink was flowing. Betty went back to her house, and both women stood on their steps waving up men and girls: all the girls in the city were available tonight, for dancing at least, each worth her weight in gold. ‘You girls are worth your weight in gold.’ ‘Call your friends, everyone, we must have girls.’

  As she stood there, James came, put his arm around her, and they set off, on the stoep, cheek to cheek.

  ‘It’s all very well,’ she protested, trying to pull herself free.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he crooned, to the music, pulling her to him. And on and on they danced, and when she was interrupted, to be hostess, he came after her, and led her back again to the dance. Everyone was dancing: all that is, who had partners.

  The gardener had positioned himself and angled the gramophone so that he could stand and look over to where on Bettys stoep Lynda, her maid, was in a parallel situation by the gramophone. He had been pursuing Lynda, without success, and found ‘The Night is Young and You’re So Beautiful’ a perfect expression of his feelings. He put it on again, again, ‘The Moon is High and You’re so Glamorous’, and when some dancer complained there were other tunes, he did put on something else, but returned as soon as he could to ‘The Night is Young …’ Lynda, who told him she didn’t trust him (‘You say that to all the girls,’), played as often as she could get away with it, ‘Boohoo, you’ve got me crying for you, and everything that you do …’ He might riposte with ‘Oh, sweet and lovely, lady be good, oh, lady be good to me …’ And she ‘You left me in the lurch, you left me crying at the church …’

  This flirtation went on all evening.

  The evening was a triumph, as it was bound to be. Eight hundred? The two gardens between them and the street outside had held a good thousand. The drink held out, if the food didn’t. It was two or later before the cars that were taking some men back to their billets stopped swinging their lights up into the trees, and the shouts and the singing of soldiers died as they descended towards the sea.

  In the Wrights’ house the soldiers went off to their beds and Daphne to her room. The white dress had done her proud she told herself, full of the vainglory of an imagined victory. ‘My God, it’s as good as armour’ – stripping off jetty baubles and stepping out of the skirt which collapsed in white puffs and puckers around her legs. She went naked to bed, turned off the light, and then James arrived beside her, which she had known he would, while persuading herself he wouldn’t dare.

  In the very early morning she told him to go back to his room, and he said, ‘I won’t. I can’t.’

  ‘The maids will be here soon.’

  He did leave, and went to his bed on the stoep where already the sun was warming the glass of the bottles rolling about there. He woke to the sound of clinking glass, as the maids cleaned around him.

  Down in the garden, under the tree, Daphne was standing with Betty. They were wearing flowery wraps, and James thought he had never seen such lovely women. He told himself that after that voyage, that hell, he’d think any woman an angel, but he was not in the mood for common sense. Those two women in their gowns, in the greenery of the garden, they were a vision. And he stared, as long as they stood there, consciously storing it up in his mind, a picture he could look at later, keep, and hold.

  Betty was saying to Daphne, ‘For God’s sake, watch it.’

  ‘Is it really that obvious?’

  ‘Yes, it is. Of course, people were noticing.’

  ‘I can’t help it.’

  ‘But Daphne …’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Is there going to be another bloody party tonight?’

  ‘Of course there is. You know that. And tomorrow night too – if it’s four days.’

  ‘That’s what Joe said.’

  They looked down to where the great ship, ominous because of its associations, stood offshore, waiting.

  ‘Why don’t you take him off to the pondokkie?’

  ‘I had wondered if I should.’

  ‘You’ve got to get yourself out of sight.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The pondokkie was a little house, not much more than a shed, a couple of hours drive away, by the shore. Daphne went there with Joe, for weekends; Betty and her husband used it.

  ‘Where am I going to get petrol?’
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  ‘I’ve still got a bit.’

  ‘And then there’s the party, these men, what shall I say?’

  ‘I’ll tell them you heard someone was sick. We’ll all manage. Don’t worry.’

  ‘I’ll get James up.’

  ‘Is that his name?’ said Betty, bitterly. ‘Suddenly, there’s a James. Who is James? If Joe finds out? Someone will tell him, you know.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ said Daphne again.

  ‘I’ll say James has gone into a clinic for a couple of days. Well, he looks as if he could do with one. For God’s sake, Daphne, he looks like the walking wounded.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  The gardens were already being tidied for that night’s festivities. Soon, the stage would be set, again; the trestles scrubbed, the mounds of plates and cutlery gleaming. The skeins of paper lanterns in the trees were being re-hung and the scorched ones taken down.

  The soldiers, both Daphne’s lot and Betty’s, were asleep, but James was sitting on his bed when Daphne came to say: ‘Get on your civvies, leave your uniform, come with me. Yes, now, before anyone wakes.’ He did not argue, but obediently put on Daphne’s husband’s brother’s trousers and shirt. She put on slacks and a shirt and let her hair fall on her shoulders: this was like a statement of defiance, but to whom, she could not have said. In the kitchen they drank hasty cups of coffee, ignoring the maids. Daphne put some things into a box, and they set off in her car along the coast.

  Betty watched them go, from her windows. She was in a seethe of conflicting feelings but most of all she felt as if her friend had been struck by lightning. Black lightning – if there was such a thing.

  The streets ran smooth and citified through the suburbs, then they were on a rough road, the sea on their right hand, and what looked like farmland on their left. Vines and oak trees, a fair and smiling scene, but soon the land was unworked, with only a few scattered sheep. But James looked only at Daphne, until she put out a hand and touched his face with her knuckles. ‘Stop it, you’re making me nervous.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ he said, as she had earlier. She smiled and he said bitterly, ‘It’s not just an amusement for me.’ And then, ‘Stop the car, stop it now.’