The Grandmothers

by Doris Lessing

  Lunch over, they all piled into cars and drove off some miles to a famous tea-room, where they parked, and everyone went walking again, but Victoria and Mary, who insisted on staying with her mother.

  ‘Poor Ma,’ said Mary, acutely, and her eyes were full of tears. ‘But I love you always.’

  Supper was the same. This time Jessy had cooked stew, which Victoria liked and a big fruit tart had been bought at the tea-room to bring home.

  Saturday night. Another night to go. By now Victoria was feeling like a criminal. They knew she was not enjoying herself, though had no idea just how much she was hating it, how she feared it. The spider was back on her wall and it had fled when she stamped her foot at it, into the crack, where it bided its time. She tried to keep her eyes on it, but moths had flown in, before she shut the window tight. A big moth crouched on a wall, making a shadow. She had last seen that hooded shape, a frightening shadow on a wall, in a film about Dracula.

  Next morning she went down early, with her suitcase. She did not know how she would get to the station but somehow she would. She found Alice, already up, drinking tea.

  ‘Do you hate it?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘I’m sorry’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘No, I wish I could live here for always, never leave.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Victoria feebly.

  ‘Yes, it’s true. Edward can’t leave London yet but we will buy a house in the country and then we’ll live in it.’

  ‘A house like this?’ Victoria looked incredulous.

  ‘No, bigger. More comfortable.’ She looked kindly at Victoria and said gently, ‘Don’t mind them. I know they are a bit overwhelming.’

  ‘It’s not them,’ said Victoria. ‘It’s this place.’

  Absolute incomprehension: Alice frowned and was perturbed. Victoria seemed about to cry.

  ‘I wish I could go home,’ said Victoria, like a child. And then, as an adult, said, ‘I would, only I don’t want Mary to be ashamed of me.’

  ‘She wouldn’t be. She’s a nice little girl, if there ever was one. Samantha adores her. I tell you what. I’ll drive you to the station and I’ll tell them you don’t feel well.’

  ‘That’s not a lie,’ said Victoria.

  And so Victoria got into Edward and Alice’s car and was driven through the early morning countryside to the station.

  Victoria had never driven, had never had to, and the skill and speed of Alice was depressing her. She was actually saying to herself, ‘But there are things I am good at.’

  At the station, Alice took the bag and went before to the booking office, bought a ticket, said, ‘There’ll be a train in half an hour.’

  The two stood together, waiting. Victoria had understood that this young woman, who so intimidated her, meant her well, but – did that matter? What mattered very much was that she liked Mary.

  ‘I feel a real fool,’ she said humbly. ‘I know what the Staveneys will think. I ought to be grateful – and, well, that’s all.’

  ‘Poor Victoria. I’m sorry. I’ll explain to them.’ And as the train came in she actually kissed Victoria, as if she meant it. ‘It takes all sorts,’ she added, with a little pleased smile at her attempt at definition ‘I don’t think they’d ever understand you don’t like the country.’

  ‘I hate it, hate it,’ Victoria said, violently, and got into the train that would carry her away – for ever, if she had her way.

  Mary came home a few days later. Victoria saw the child’s bleak look around the little flat, criticising what Victoria had greeted with such relief: a bare sufficiency, and what there was, in its proper place. And then Mary stood at the window looking down, down, into the concrete vistas and Victoria did not have to ask what it was she missed.

  Mary kept saying, rushing to embrace her mother, ‘You’re my Ma and I’ll love you always.’ Bessie and Victoria exchanged grim-enough smiles, and then Mary forgot about it.

  Thomas took Mary to concerts of African music, twice, but she thought they were too loud. Like her mother, she wanted things to be quiet and seemly.

  Then Victoria was invited to an evening meal at the Staveneys, ‘preferably without Mary – and anyway it will be too late for her, won’t it? ‘This, from people who had her up to all hours in Dorset. ‘Without Dickson’ could be taken as read. Victoria put on her nicest outfit, and found herself with a full complement of Staveneys, at the supper table. Undercurrents, some well understood by Victoria, others not at all, flowed about and around Jessy, Lionel, Edward, Alice and Thomas. Lionel at once opened with, ‘I wonder what you’d think if we suggested Mary went to a different school?’

  This was Lionel, who had insisted on both his sons going through the ordeal of that bad school, Beowulf.

  Victoria was not afraid of Lionel – she was of Jessy – and did not find it hard to enquire, ‘Then, you’ve changed your mind about schools, is that it?’

  At this Jessy let out a snort, of a connubial kind, meant to be noted, like putting up your hand at a meeting to register Nay.

  ‘You could say our father has changed his mind,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Yes, you could say that,’ said Edward.

  ‘I’m not saying I was wrong about you two,’ pronounced Lionel, flinging his silvery mane about while he speared roast potatoes judiciously on to his plate.

  ‘You wouldn’t ever admit it,’ said Jessy, confronting him, while the concentrated exasperation of years of disputation flared her nostrils. ‘When have you ever admitted you were wrong about anything?’

  ‘Isn’t it a bit late for this altercation?’ enquired Edward.

  ‘For better or worse,’ said Thomas. ‘But the birds in your nest couldn’t agree.’

  ‘Oh, worse, worse,’ said Jessy at once, ‘of course worse.’ But from her look at Thomas it could be seen that what she meant was her bitter acknowledgement that his highest ambition was to manage a pop group. ‘As for agreeing, no, we never agreed about that, never, never!

  ‘Okay,’ said Thomas, ‘I’ll accept your verdict. I am the worse and Edward is the better.’

  ‘At least the gap between you two was wide enough for you not to quarrel – that really would have been the last straw.’

  This spat ended here, because Edward was pouring wine for Victoria, which she didn’t much like. She put her hand over the glass, and then, since a few drops had splashed, licked the back of her hand.

  ‘There,’ said Lionel. ‘You do like wine.’

  ‘You should have some, it does you good,’ said Jessy. ‘The Victorians knew their stuff. At the slightest hint of wasting away or brain fever or any of their ghastly diseases, out came the claret.’

  ‘Port,’ said Lionel.

  ‘Best Burgundy,’ said Edward. ‘Like this. Best is always best. If I had been asked – for after all I wasn’t given a choice, was I, father? – I’d have said no. I do not have pleasant memories of that school. It was your school, Victoria, I know …’

  At this reminder to her that he did not remember the event which was so present and alive in her mind, tears came into Victoria’s eyes.

  She made her voice steady, and said, ‘Yes, it’s not a good place. And it’s worse since I was there. Since we were there,’ she addressed Thomas.

  ‘There was a stabbing there last week,’ remarked Jessy, aiming this at her ex.

  ‘Which brings me to my point again,’ said Lionel, addressing Victoria. ‘Suppose we send Mary to a good school? I have to say that there is disagreement in the ranks …’

  ‘When is there not?’ said Jessy.

  ‘Some of us think – I, for one – that Mary could go to a boarding school.’

  ‘A boarding school?’ And now Victoria was shocked. She knew that people like the Staveneys did send their children, when they were still little, to boarding school. She thought it heartless.

  ‘I told you,’ said Thomas.’ Of course Victoria says no to a boarding school.’

  ‘
Yes,’ Victoria bravely said, smiling gratefully at Thomas, who smiled back, ‘I say no to a boarding school.’ For a tiny moment the current between them was sweet and deep, and they remembered that for a whole summer they had felt two against the world.

  Alice broke in with, ‘I was at boarding school and I loved it.’

  ‘Yes, but you were thirteen,’ said Edward.

  Who then of the Staveneys, would agree to Mary being sent off to the cold exile of boarding school? Alice and Lionel.

  ‘Very well, then,’ said Edward. ‘No boarding school. Well, not yet. Meanwhile there’s a good girls’ school, not far, it would be a few stops on the Tube and a short walk.’

  Victoria was thinking, She’ll have a bad time. She’ll be with girls who have money and the things the Staveneys have, and she’ll come home to … it would certainly ask a lot of Mary’s kind heart: two worlds, and she would have to fit in to both of them.

  Victoria said to Lionel, who was the author of this plan, which in fact fulfilled her dreams for Mary, ‘I couldn’t say no, how could I? It will be such a big thing for Mary’ And now she dared to turn to Thomas, reminding them all that he was after all the child’s father. ‘What do you say, Thomas? It’s for you to say, too.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Thomas. ‘Yeah. That’s exactly right.’ Here his belligerent look at his father, and his brother, told them that he was feeling – as usual – belittled. ‘Yeah, it is for me to say too. And I say, Victoria should have the deciding vote. Providing Mary doesn’t go to Beowulf, that’s the main thing.’

  Victoria said, ‘If I say no, I could never forgive myself. But I’d like to talk it all over with – she’s not my sister, but I think of her as.’

  Bessie heard what Victoria had to tell her, nodding and smiling I told you so. She said, ‘They’ll get Mary away from you, but that’s not how they’ll see it.’

  A central fact was there, out in the open, still unvoiced, with its potentialities for pain and gain. Mary had spent a month with the Staveneys, and that experience had made it urgent for her to be rescued from her environment and be sent to a good school.

  ‘Well,’ said Bessie, ‘she’s going to come out the other end educated. Which is more than can be said about Beowulf.’

  ‘You went there and you do well enough,’ said Victoria.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  They were back at what was not being said. For one thing, it was Mary’s way of speaking, which was very far from the Staveneys’. Thomas might speak badly, his phoney American, or his cockney, as he called it, but she had never heard a cockney – who were they when they were at home? – talk like that. And the Staveneys spoke posh, and Thomas too, most of the time. Mary’s voice was ugly compared to theirs.

  ‘She’ll have a hard time of it,’ said Bessie. ‘There’s no pretending she won’t.’

  ‘I know,’ said Victoria, thinking that she had had a long hard time of it, and yet here she was, she had survived it. Bessie had had a better time, because of Phyllis being her mother, but she was having a hard enough time now – and she would survive it too.

  She wrote to Thomas, asserting his rights, ‘Dear Thomas, I agree to your kind suggestion. Please tell your father and your mother thank you for me. It won’t be easy for Mary but I’ll try and explain it all to her.’

  Explain what, exactly? And how?

  Mary must be thinking many things already that she might not want to say to her mother. She was kind – that was her best quality: she had a good nature. And she wasn’t stupid. Victoria could easily put herself back into herself at Mary’s age. Kids always know more than adults think, even if they know it the wrong way around, sometimes.

  And Victoria knew more than the Staveneys about the future.

  Mary would go to that good school where most girls were white. She would have many battles to fight, of a different sort from the rough-housing of Beowulf. The Staveneys would be Mary’s best support. Probably, when the girl was about thirteen, the Staveneys would ask if she, Victoria, could consider Mary going to boarding school. Neither they nor Mary would have to spell out the reasons why Mary must find things easier, for she would no longer have to fit herself into two different worlds, every day. Victoria would say yes, and that would be that.

  There was another factor, which Bessie was reminding her of. Victoria was an attractive woman, not yet thirty. She was going now every Sunday to church, because Bessie did, and there she enjoyed the singing. She had been noticed. She took the lead in some hymns, was no longer just one of the congregation. The Reverend Amos Johnson had taken a fancy to her. Her dead Sam, who with every year became more of a perfect man in her memory, could not be compared with Amos Johnson, who was twenty years older than she was. The incomparable lustre of Sam made it possible for her to consider Amos. She had visited his home, full of God-fearing and sober people, and while she was not particularly religious, liked the atmosphere. She had always been a good girl, Victoria had – like Mary now.

  If she married Amos she would have more children. Little Dickson, the child from hell, as he was known generally around and about the estate, would calm down, with brothers and sisters.

  And Mary? To match the Staveney world with the world of Amos Johnson – she even laughed about it despairingly, with Bessie.

  Yet if she married Amos she would be binding the two worlds together, even if both were careful never to get too close. And Mary, poor Mary, in the middle there. Yes, thought Victoria, she will be pleased to get out of it and into boarding school: she’ll want to be a Staveney. Yes, I have to face it. That is what will happen.

  THE REASON FOR IT

  Yesterday we buried Eleven, and now I am the only one left of The Twelve. Between Eleven and One in our burial place is an empty site, waiting for me, Twelve. All gone now, one by one. The night Eleven died I was with him. He said to me, ‘While The Twelve have been dying the truth has been dying. When you come to join us no one will be left to tell our story.’ He grasped me by the arm, pulling all his strength back into him to do it. ‘Tell it. Call The Cities together and tell it. Then it will be in all their minds and cannot disappear.’ And with that he fell back into dark and the Silence.

  His mind had gone, otherwise he could not have said, ‘Call The Cities.’ It is a long time since that has been possible. But the substance of his message has been burning inside me. Not that it is a new message. What else have we Twelve been talking about these very many years, always fewer of us. How long is it since we could have said: Let us call The Cities together? Nearly half my lifetime, at least.

  When I left Eleven I came home here and sat where the scents and sounds of a warm starry night could come wafting over me from the gardens and splashing waters, and I was challenging the indolence in myself, which I have always known was my worst enemy. You could call it – I have called it – many more flattering names, prudence, caution, the judiciousness of experience, even my well-known (once well-known) Wisdom: they call me – they used to call me – The Sage Twelve. The truth is it is hard for me to act, to gather up my energies behind a single focus and simply do. I see too many aspects of a situation. For every Yes there is a No, and so, through the long years, while The Twelve have one by one vanished away, I have thought, Is this the time to do it? Do what! I have never known, we, The Twelve have not known. We always ended by sending DeRod, our Ruler, yet another message. I remember right at the very beginning of his rule we jokingly called him by our nickname for him, The Beneficent Whip. Long thought, worry, have always ended in the same thing: a message. This was correct, was protocol, no one could criticise us, criticise me. At first casual, almost insultingly casual, messages came back. And then silence. It has been years since he replied, either to me, who am after all a relative, or to The Twelve.

  The Ruler he might be, but he has a Council, and in theory at least it is a collective responsibility. But so much has been theory that was meant to be substance and reality. Many times our cautious approaches to DeRod have seeme
d to me cowardice, but there was more: to feel the conviction that leads to good action means you must first believe in your efficacy, that good results may come from what you do. As the silence from DeRod persisted, and things went from bad to worse, there was a deadening of hope, of our hopes, which I secretly matched with the darkening mind of The Cities. A paralysis of the Will, I remember we called it in one of our gatherings. But we have met in the ones and twos of special friendship, as well as in the collective, we have met constantly – after all, we have known each other since we were born – and what have we always discussed, if not something which we refer to simply as The Situation. What we have slowly come to see as a kind of poisoning. What has been the constant theme of our talk, our speculation? We have not understood what was happening. Why? I suppose that word sums up our years-long, our decades-long preoccupation. Why? What is the reason for it? Why was it we could never grasp something tangible, get hold of fact, a cause? It is easy to characterise what has been happening. There has been a worsening of everything, and we have seen it as a deliberate, even planned, intention.

  That word, analyze … one of our sobriquets (The Twelve) was The Analyzers. It is some time since we would have dared use it, for fear of mockery. And so much have I (until so recently I could have said we) become infected by the time, that I confess that to me now the word has a ridiculous ring to it.

  Yet what have we always done, except try to analyze, understand? And since I wrote the above that is what I have been doing and as always coming up with a blank. My instinct is to send another message to DeRod. What is the use?

  Something must be done. And by me …

  When Koon, or Eleven, spoke last he said soon no one will be left to tell our story. That is how it seemed to him as he died. A story has an end. To him the story was finished. The story: well, our history was something told and retold – when we were still telling our history. And now as the familiar disinclination to do anything invades me I wonder if it is only a symptom of the poisoning. Poison? That was only one of the words we have used. But has our history all been for nothing? The excellence? The high standards? The assumption once shared by everyone in The Cities that the best was what we aimed for?