The Grandmothers. Doris Lessing

what was he really like? She had no idea. He wasn’t Edward; for all of the summer that had been her strongest thought. Now she bent to peer at the little girl who was the result of that summer: she didn’t look like Thomas. Mary was a pretty, plump little thing, always smiling and willing. She was a pale brown, lighter than her mother by several shades, and much paler than the little boy, who was darker than Victoria. Sam had been a black black man, and she had liked to match skins with him – in the early days, before they had got used to each other. He used to call her his chocolate rabbit … and then he would eat her all up. ‘I’ll eat you all up,’ – but she did not like to think of their lovemaking, it made her want to cry. Not thinking of Sam was part of her holding herself together. But here was little Mary, and there, walking rapidly away down the street towards his home, was Mary’s father.

      She was so shaken by all this that she went home earlier than usual with the kids, made them sit quietly in front of the television, and thought until she expected her mind to burst. That little girl over there, staring at the telly and licking at a lolly – she was an extension of that house, that big rich house.

      Victoria knew the Staveneys were famous. She knew now. That was how she categorised them, famous, a word that meant they were far removed from the undistinguished run of ordinary people where Victoria belonged. She had seen Jessy Staveney’s name in the papers, and had made enquiries: that woman with her golden hair – so Victoria still thought of her – was famous in the theatre. Victoria thought of a musical, like Les Misérables, which the first of the photographers had taken her to see. She remembered that afternoon as she did the Staveney house, a vision into another world, beautiful, but she Victoria did not belong: she had never thought of going to a musical or the theatre by herself or with Bessie. And Edward, the fair kind boy – Victoria could still feel the warmth of those arms around her – he had been in the newspapers because he was a lawyer and had returned from somewhere in Africa, and had written letters about conditions. Phyllis Chadwick had cut out the letters, and kept them, not because of the connection with Victoria, but because in her social work she dealt with people from there – Ethiopia, was it? Sierra Leone? – and she found what was in the letters useful, to fight some battle she was having with superiors about housing refugees. And there was more. Lionel Staveney was famous because he was an actor, and she had seen him on television. It had taken Phyllis to say, ‘Is that the same Staveneys?’ The truth was, Phyllis had always been more interested in the Staveneys than she had ever been. Until now.

      And that too was so upsetting to think of, like something pricking into her side, or in her shoe, that she positively wriggled as she sat trying to rid herself – what had been the matter with her? What had got into her that she had cut the Staveneys so completely out of her mind? When Phyllis mentioned them she felt a sort of revulsion, and it was Thomas she had not wanted to think of. But surely that was unfair? An ordinary seventeen-year-old, pretending to be older, having his first real sex, and she had gone there most evenings for weeks. No one had forced her!

      Now Victoria had begun to think, she kept it up. She thought about the Staveneys and looked hard at little Mary. You can’t go wrong with Mary, Phyllis had said. You can’t go wrong with the Mother of God. She was Mary Staveney. Not Mary Bisley.

      She had a pretty good idea what the future of the two little children would be. The six-year-old, the two-year-old, would have to go to the same school she had, and she knew now what a bad school it was. Much worse now than when she had gone there. It was a violent school, full of drugs, fights, gangs, and these days the children who went to that kind of school were seen rather like wild animals who had to be kept restrained. It had been rough when she was there, she knew that now, though then she had not questioned anything. A good little girl, a star pupil, doing her homework – that was why they had made a fuss of her: she had liked to learn and do her lessons. Not like most. These days she would probably be wild and fighting, like the other kids now. And soon there would be Mary and Dickson, having to fight battles every minute, and they would come out the other end of it ignorant – worse even than she had been. She did know now how ignorant she had been, that pretty good little girl who owed everything to Phyllis, who had made her do homework, kept her at it. But in spite of the homework and the hard work, she had been ignorant. She was in that Staveney house most evenings for a summer and had not understood a thing. She had not been curious enough to ask questions. She had not known the questions to ask; not known there were questions to ask, and now, six years later, she could measure her ignorance then by what she had not asked or even wondered at. There was a father, Lionel Staveney, and so used was she to families that had mothers and no fathers, or fathers that came and disappeared again, she had taken it for granted there was no man around in the Staveney house. The truth was, she, Victoria, with her man Sam Bisley, had been better off than most of the women her age: he had not only married her but was sometimes there. A father; a father actually taking responsibility.

      She did remember Thomas had said his mother and his father did not get on. She seemed to remember that Thomas said his father paid for school fees ‘and that kind of thing’.

      And Jessy Staveney? She had never asked who Victoria was or what she did, was seldom there, and when she was accepted her presence, without a nasty word or look, though surely she must have sometimes wondered if she and Thomas … Retrospectively Victoria was a bit shocked. Surely Jessy Staveney should have said something?

      Seventeen: that meant Thomas was now twenty-three or twenty-four. Victoria was twenty-six. Edward who had seemed so unreachably above her in age as in everything else, when he was twelve to her nine, was almost thirty. Edward wrote letters to newspapers, which were published. No one would ever print a letter by her, and nothing she said could be considered important or even interesting.

      And these two children, Mary and Dickson, would emerge from school even more ignorant than she had been. Would Mary ever learn enough to be a nurse, like Bessie? And Sam’s son, if he didn’t have some music in him from his father, what would he be?

      Thomas’s children, when he had them, and Edward’s, they would be writing letters to the papers that would be printed. And they might turn out famous, like Jessy and Lionel and Edward.

      All these thoughts that should – surely? – have marched profitably through her mind years ago during that long lovemaking summer, were presenting themselves now. Now she believed that she must have been a bit simple, not merely ignorant, but stupid.

      She had never then thought, Thomas has a right to know. Now she was thinking: But it takes two to make a baby, a favourite saying of Phyllis who had often to deal with paternity cases, ‘I don’t think the idea even knocked at the door,’ Victoria thought. ‘Why didn’t it?’ And if it had been unfair to Thomas, then what about little Mary who had a father in that part of society where people’s names were known, and they had letters printed in newspapers. And children were sent to real schools. Thomas had been at the same school as her, she dimly remembered, because the father – Lionel Staveney – had said his children should know how the other half lived. So Edward and Thomas had both spent some years with the other half’s children before being whisked off to real schools where children learned. If she, Victoria, had been at a real school, then … but children who go to real schools don’t have to nurse sick mothers and fall out of the race – fall off that ladder that goes up – and become girls working in supermarkets or posing for dirty little photographers. If they are pretty enough.

      Suppose I didn’t have my looks? Fat Bessie could never have had that time in the West End, all those jobs I had, I could pick and choose. It was Phyllis who said to me, you just believe in yourself and just walk in, show you aren’t scared, and you’ll be surprised … and Phyllis had been right. But she, Victoria, was pretty. Luck. Luck – it was everything. Good luck and bad luck. What could you call it, that day, when they had forgotten her and her aunt was sick, and Edward had taken her home? Good luck – was it? She had lived for years in a dream, she knew that now, thinking about that house, all rosy golden lights and warmth and kindness. Edward. And Edward had led to Thomas. What sort of luck had that been? Well, she had got Mary from it, a solemn little girl with beautiful eyes – like her own. Mary was alive because of luck, a series of lucky or unlucky things happening because Edward Staveney had forgotten her that afternoon, leaving her alone and afraid in the school