DORIS LESSING
The Grandmothers Victoria and the Staveneys The Reason For It A Love Child
CONTENTS
Title Page
THE GRANDMOTHERS
VICTORIA AND THE STAVENEYS
THE REASON FOR IT
A LOVE CHILD
About the author
Reviews
By the same author
Read On
The Grass is Singing
The Golden Notebook
The Good Terrorist
Love, Again
The Fifth Child
Copyright
About the Publisher
THE GRANDMOTHERS
Baxters was now well planted with big trees that sheltered tables and attendant chairs, and on three sides below was the friendly sea.
A path wandered up through shrubs, coming to a stop in Baxters Gardens, and one afternoon six people were making the gentle ascent, four adults and two little girls, whose shrieks of pleasure echoed the noises of the gulls.
Two handsome
men came first, not young, but only malice could call them middle-aged. One limped. Then two as handsome women of about sixty but no one would dream of calling them elderly. At a table evidently well-known to them, they deposited bags and wraps and toys, sleek and shining people, as they are who know how to use the sun. They arranged themselves, the womens brown and silky legs ending in negligent sandals, their competent hands temporarily at rest. Women on one side, men on the other, the little girls fidgeting: six fair heads? Surely they were related? Those had to be the mothers of the men; they had to be their sons. The little girls, clamouring for the beach, which was down a rocky path, were told by their grandmothers, and then their fathers, to behave and play nicely. They squatted and made patterns with fingers and little sticks in the dust. Pretty little girls: so they should be with such good-looking progenitors.
From a window of Baxters a girl called to them, The usual? Shall I bring your usual? One of the women waved to her, meaning yes. Soon appeared a tray where fresh fruit juices and wholemeal sandwiches asserted that these were people careful of their health.
Theresa, who had just taken her school-leaving exams, was on her year away from England, where she would be returning to university. This information had been offered months ago, and in return she was kept up to date with the progress of the little girls at their first school. Now she enquired how school was going along, and first one child and then the other piped up to say their school was cool. The pretty waitress ran back to her station inside Baxters with a smile at the two men which made the women smile at each other and then at their sons, one of whom, Tom, remarked, But shell never make it back to Britain, all the boys are after her to stay.
More fool her if she marries and throws all that away, said one of the women, Roz in fact Rozeanne, the mother of Tom. But the other woman, Lil (or Liliane), the mother of Ian, said, Oh, I dont know, and she was smiling at Tom. This concession, or compliment, to their, after all, claim to existence, made the men nod to each other, lips compressed, humorously, as at an often-heard exchange, or one like it.
Well, said Roz, I dont care, nineteen is too young.
But who knows how it might turn out? enquired Lil, and blushed. Feeling her face hot she made a little grimace, which had the effect of making her seem naughty, or daring, and this was so far from her character that the others exchanged looks not to be explained so easily.
They all sighed, heard each other and now laughed, a full frank laugh that seemed to acknowledge things unsaid. One little girl, Shirley, said, What are you laughing at? and the other, Alice, Whats so funny? I dont see anything funny, and copied her grandmothers look of conscious naughtiness, which in fact had not been intended. Lil was uncomfortable and blushed again.
Shirley persisted, wanting attention, Whats the joke, Daddy? and at this both daddies began a tussling and buffeting of their daughters, while the girls protested, and ducked, but came back for more, and then fled to their grandmothers arms and laps for protection. There they stayed, thumbs in their mouths, eyes drooping, yawning. It was a hot afternoon.
A scene of somnolence and satisfaction. At tables all around under the great trees similarly blessed people lazed. The seas all around them, only a few feet below, sighed and hissed and lapped, and the voices were low and lazy.
From the window of Baxters Theresa stood with a tray of cool drinks momentarily suspended and looked out at the family. Tears slid down her cheeks. She had been in love with Tom and then Ian, and then Tom again, for their looks and their ease, and something, an air of repletion, as if they had been soaking in pleasure all their lives and now gave it out in the form of invisible waves of contentment.
And then the way they handled the little girls, the ease and competence of that. And the way the grandmothers were always available, making the four the six but where were the mothers, children had mothers, and these two little girls had Hannah and Mary, both startlingly unlike the blonde family they had married into, being small and dark, and, while pretty enough, Theresa knew neither of them was good enough for the men. They worked. They owned a business. That is why the grandmothers were so often here. Didnt the grandmothers work, then? Yes, they did but were free to say, Lets go to Baxters and up here to Baxters they came. The mothers too, sometimes, and there were eight.