The Grandmothers. Doris Lessing

      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 letters, 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