The Grandmothers

‘She’s come for Tom,’ said Tom’s mother.

‘Yes, I know,’ said Tom’s lover.

‘She’s nice enough,’ said Roz.

Lil said nothing.

Roz said, ‘Lil, I think this is where we bow out.’

Lil said nothing.

‘Lil?’ Roz peered over at her, and pushed up her dark glasses to see better.

‘I don’t think I could bear it,’ said Lil.

‘We’ve got to.’

‘Ian doesn’t have a girl.’

‘No, but he should have. Lil, they’re getting on towards thirty.’

‘I know.’

Far away, where the sharp black rocks stood in their white foam at the mouth of the bay, three tiny figures were waving at them, before disappearing out of sight to the big beach.

‘We have to stand together and end it,’ said Roz.

Lil was quietly weeping. Then Roz was, too.

‘We have to, Lil.’

‘I know we do.’

‘Come on, let’s swim.’

The women swam hard and fast, out and back and around, and then landed on the beach, and went straight up to Roz’s house, to prepare lunch. It was Sunday. Ahead was the long difficult afternoon.

Lil said, ‘I’ve got work,’ and went off to one of her shops.

Roz served lunch, making excuses for Lil, and then she too said she had things to do. Ian said he would come with her. That left Tom and Mary alone, and there was a showdown. ‘Either on or off,’ said Mary. ‘Either yes or no.’ ‘There were plenty of fish in the sea.’ ‘It was time he grew up.’ All that kind of thing, as prescribed for this occasion.

When the others came back, Mary announced that she and Tom were getting married, and there were congratulations and a noisy evening. Roz sang lots of songs, Tom joined in, they all sang. And when it was bedtime Mary stayed with Tom, in his house, and Ian went home with Lil.

Then Mary went back home to plan the wedding.

And now it had to be done. The two women said to the young men that now that was it. ‘It’s over,’ said Roz.

Ian cried out, ‘What do you mean? Why? I’m not getting married.’

Tom sat quietly, jaw set, drinking. He filled his glass with wine, drained it, filled it again, drank, saying nothing.

At last he said to Ian, ‘They’re right, don’t you see?’

‘No,’ yelled Ian. He went into Roz’s room and called her, and Tom went with Lil to her house. Ian wept and pleaded. ‘Why, what for? We’re perfectly happy. Why do you want to spoil it?’ But Roz stuck it out. She was all heartless determination and only when she and Lil were alone together, the men having gone off to discuss it, they wept and said they could not bear it. Their hearts were breaking they said, how were they going to live, it would be unendurable.

When the men returned, the women were tear-stained but firm.

Lil told Tom that he must not come with her that night and Roz told Ian that he must go home with Lil.

‘You’ve ruined everything,’ said Ian to Roz. ‘It’s all your fault. Why couldn’t you leave things as they were?’

Roz jested, ‘Cheer up. We are going to become respectable ladies, yes, your disreputable mothers are going to become pillars of virtue. We shall be perfect mothers-in-law, and then we shall become wonderful grandmothers to your children.’

‘I’m not going to forgive you,’ said Ian to Roz.

And Tom said to Lil, low, to her only, ‘I’ll never ever ever forget you.’

Now, that was a valediction, almost conventional. It meant – surely? – that Tom’s heart was not likely to suffer permanent damage.

The wedding, needless to say, was a grand affair. Mary had been determined not to be upstaged by her dramatic mother-in-law, but found Roz was being the soul of tact, in a self-effacing outfit. Lil was elegant and pale and smiling, and the very moment the happy pair had driven off for their honeymoon she was down swimming in the bay, where Roz, a good hostess, could not leave her guests to join her. Later Roz crossed the street to find out how Lil was, but her bedroom door was locked and she would not respond to Roz’s knocks and enquiries. Ian as best man had made a funny and likeable speech, and, meeting Roz in the street as she was returning from Lils, said, ‘So? Are you pleased with yourself now?’ And he too went running down to the sea.

Now Roz was in her empty house, and she lay on her bed and at last was able to weep. When there were knocks at her door which she knew were Ian’s, she rolled in anguish, her fist stuffed into her mouth.

As soon as the honeymoon was over, Mary told Tom, who told his mother, that she thought Roz should move out and leave the house to them. It made sense. It was a big house, right for a family. The trouble was financial. Years ago the house had been affordable, when this whole area had been far from desirable, but now it was smart and only the rich could afford these houses. In an impulsive, reckless, generous gesture, Roz gave the house to the young couple as a wedding present. And so where was she to live? She couldn’t afford another house like this. She took up residence in a little hotel down the coast, and this meant that, for the first time ever, since she was born, she was not within a few yards of Lil. She did not understand at first why she was so restless, sad, bereft, put it all down to losing Ian, but then understood it was Lil she missed, almost as much as Ian. She felt she had lost everything, and literally from one week to the next. But she was not reflective, by nature: she was like Tom, who would always be surprised by his emotions, when he was forced to notice them. To deal with her feelings of emptiness and loss, she accepted a job at the university as a full-time teacher of drama, worked hard, swam twice a day, took sleeping pills.

Mary was soon pregnant. Jokes of a traditional kind were aimed at Ian, by Saul, among others. ‘You’re aren’t going to let your mate get ahead of you, are you? When’s your wedding?’

Ian was working hard, too. He was trying not to give himself time to think. No stranger to thought, reflection, introspection, he felt that they were enemies, waiting to strike him down. A new shop was opening in the town where Harold was. They were waiting for their child. Ian did not stay at Harold’s, but in a hotel, and of course visited Harold, who had been like a father to him – so he said. There he met a friend of Mary’s, who had paid attention to him at the wedding. Hannah. It was not that he disliked her, on the contrary, she pleased him, with her comfortable ways, that were easy to see as maternal, but he was inside an empty space full of echoes, and he could not imagine making love with anyone but Roz. He swam every morning from ‘their’ beach, sometimes seeing Roz there, and he greeted her, but turned away, as if the sight of her hurt him – it did. And he more often took the little motorboat out to the surfing beaches. He and Tom had always gone together, but Tom was so busy with Mary, and the new baby.

One day, seeing Roz drying herself on the sand, the boatman, who had come into the bay especially to find her, stopped his engine, let the boat rock on the gentle waves, and jumped down into the water, tugging the boat behind him like a dog on a leash to say, ‘Mrs Struthers, Ian’s doing some pretty dangerous stuff out there. He’s a picture to watch, but he scares me. If you see his mother – or perhaps you …’

Roz said, ‘Well, now. To tell a man like Ian to play it safe, that’s more than a mother’s life is worth. Or mine, for that matter.’

‘Someone should warn him. He’s asking for it. Those waves out there, you’ve got to respect them.’

‘Have you warned him?’

‘I’ve tried my best.’

‘Thanks,’ said Roz. ‘I’ll tell his mother

She told Lil, who said to her son that he was playing too close to the safety margins. If the old boatman was worried, then that meant something. Ian said, ‘Thanks.’

One evening, at sunset, the boatman came in to find Roz or one of them on the beach, but had to go up to the house, found Mary, told her that Ian was lying smashed up on one of the outer beaches.

Then Ian was in hospital. Told by the doctor, ‘You’ll live,’ his face said plainly he wished he could have heard something else. He had hurt his spine. But that would probably heal. He had hurt his leg, and that would never be normal.

He left hospital and lay in his bed at home, in a room which for years had not been much more than a place where he changed his clothes, before crossing the street to Roz. But in that house were now Tom and Mary. He turned his face to the wall. His mother tried to coax him up and on to his feet, but could not make him take exercise. Lil could not, but Hannah could and did. She came to visit her old friend Mary, slept in that house, and spent most of her time sitting with Ian, holding his hand, often in sympathetic tears.