The Grandmothers. Doris Lessing
did let out another wail and then clamped her mouth shut with both hands. All these animals everywhere, she had never seen so many stuffed toys, they were heaped up in the corners, they loaded a table, and there were some teddies on her bed. She pulled a large teddy towards her, as protective shield against the looming lions and tigers and mysterious beasts and people, their eyes glinting from the light that came from outside. She couldn’t stay here, she couldn’t … perhaps she would creep down the stairs and go back to that place they called a kitchen and ask Edward if she might stay. He was kind, she knew. She could feel his arms tight round her, and she set herself to listen to his remembered voice in the story.
There was another fearful thing she had to contend with. Suppose she wet her bed? She did sometimes. Suppose she walked in her sleep and fell down the stairs. Her aunt Marion told her she did walk in her sleep, and she had been caught, fast asleep, out on the landing standing by the lift. If she wet the bed here, in this place, she would die of shame … and with this thought she fell asleep and woke with the light coming through a window she had not seen last night was there. She quickly felt the bed – no, she had not wet it. But now she wanted the toilet again. She crept out of the room, and in her little knickers and vest ran across the landing to the toilet. She felt like a burglar, and kept sending scared glances up the stairs and down. There were lights on everywhere. What time was it? Oh, suppose she was late for school, suppose … back inside her trousers and jersey, she went down the stairs and saw beneath her Edward at the table, eating toast. There was no sign of the woman with all that golden hair. Edward smiled nicely, made her toast, offered her tea, put the milk and sugar in the way she liked it, and then said he was going to take her to school.
She ought to have sandwiches or something, but did not like to ask. Perhaps Mr Pat would … she knew her lips were going to tremble again, but she made them tight, and smiled, and went off down the steps with Edward, leaving that house which in her mind was full of great rooms like shops. She scuttled along beside Edward through the lumps of wet leaves on the pavement. He took her to the great gate that last night had been so cruelly locked, and from there she ran to the classroom. On the way she saw Thomas.
‘I slept in your room,’ she announced proudly, superior and calm: she was her real age again and he was just a little kid.
‘Why did you?’
‘Your brother made me.’
‘Then, I hope you didn’t break any of my toys. Did you play with my Dangerman?’
She had not seen a Dangerman.
‘That’s all right, then,’ said Thomas, going off to his class.
She was thinking that this little boy, so much younger, had spent the night in a strange place but it hadn’t mattered to him. As for her, the night had been like a door opening into prospects and places she had not even known were there. She was thinking, ‘I want my own room. I want my own place.’ She did not dare to think, my own house, my own flat, that was far beyond her, but if she had her own room she could hide in it and be safe. Those wild animals with their gleaming eyes in Thomas’s room were dangers that could get to her, find her. If she had her own room she could go to bed any time she liked instead of having to wait for auntie Marion to get tired. She could have a light by her bed and turn it off. ‘My own place, my own …’ was what she brought into her own life from that night, which had been like a wonderland. But not entirely comfortable or even pleasant. She had behaved like a little girl instead of a big one, and she was ashamed to think what Edward must think of her. She had not missed his surprise when she had told him she was nine.
That afternoon, when the dark came, she stood near the gate to the street, waiting for someone to come and take her home. She was hoping that Edward would come for Thomas, and planned to smile at him, like a big girl, not all crying and stupid, and she’d say, ‘Hello Edward,’ and he would say, ‘Oh, there you are, Victoria, it’s you.’ But another woman came, who had a couple of older kids with her, and Thomas rushed towards them, shouting. Victoria was so hungry: at lunchtime she had gone over to Mr Pat’s, who would give her a big bag of crisps and let her pay tomorrow, but he wasn’t there, only a girl she didn’t know behind the counter. If her aunt’s friend Phyllis came perhaps she would buy her a bit of chocolate or something. But it was Phyllis Chadwick’s daughter Bessie, older than she was, and Victoria was ready with apologies for the mixup others had caused, but Bessie said, ‘Shame, poor little thing, your auntie’s very sick, you’re going to stay with us till she gets home.’
Running along beside the big girl Victoria said, ‘Please, please, have you got some chocolate or something?’
‘Didn’t they give you anything for lunchtime?’
‘They forgot – they didn’t know,’ Victoria begged, all apology for noble Edward.
Bessie swerved off into a fish and chips, bought chips for both of them, and they ate as they walked along.
Mrs Stevens, auntie Marion, came home from a stay in hospital an invalid, her formerly large body already gaunt. She was always being rushed back for treatments that left her sick and weak. Victoria looked after her. After school she did not go to other children’s homes to play, but came straight back to be a nurse. At school she was diligent and often praised. Victoria’s evenings were spent doing homework or watching television programmes that told her about the world.
One afternoon, she was sent by her aunt to fetch urgent medicine, and she took a wrong turning and found herself in a street she felt she knew. The house of that evening when the tall kind boy had looked after her was in a part of her mind that corresponded to her dreams of it, floating in another dimension, nothing to do with the quotidian, the ordinary. She remembered warmth and glowing colour, a room piled with toys. Sometimes she stopped in front of shops in the High Street and thought yes, it was like this, the richness, the abundance.
If that house had a geographical location, then it was far off, in a distant part of London. Her legs had ached – hadn’t they? Edward had pulled her along – oh, for ages. Yet wasn’t this the house, just in front of her, not ten minutes’ walk from her aunt’s flat? Yes, it was that one, that very one there – was it? – yes; and at that moment a child came running along the pavement towards her but he turned in at a gate and up the steps. Thomas. He was larger than he had been, no longer a little kid. He reached up to a bell and almost at once the door opened and he dashed inside. She had a glimpse of that room she now knew was a hall, from seeing them on films, full of light and colour. After that she often secretly went to the house and stood there, or walked up and down outside it, hoping no one would notice her, as much as she wished that someone would. This was not an area where black people lived, or not in this street. Once she saw Edward, who was even taller. He strode along not seeing her or anyone, passing so close she could have touched him. He bounded up the steps, letting himself in with his own key. Well, she had a key, Victoria did, tied around her neck on ribbon, so that her aunt wouldn’t have to get up and struggle to the door. More than once she saw the tall woman whose hair she remembered as being like Goldilocks, but now it was in a heap on top of her head. She was untidy. She was always worried, seeming in a struggle to keep hold of her bag, shopping bags, parcels. Victoria was critical, feeling that from this house only perfection should come. If she had hair like that, she couldn’t let it be in a great lump, with wisps falling down. Then, again, she saw Thomas. They did not recognise her. What Victoria told herself was. They don’t see me. Once, as Edward came striding along, no longer a boy, to Victoria’s eyes, but a man – he was sixteen – she was tempted to call out, Look, I’m Victoria, don’t you remember me? Then she told herself that if he and Thomas had grown out of what she remembered, then she must have too, tall for her age, shooting up, no longer in the junior school.
To her the most extraordinary thing was that the house, a dream, so far away she had never expected to see it again, was so close – only a short walk away.
In her aunt Marion’s flat she still slept on the day-bed in the lounge. On nights when her aunt was poorly, she pulled it into the bedroom so she could be there when the sick woman woke and called for water, or a cup of tea, or said in her frightened thick voice, ‘Are you there, Victoria?’ Victoria had broken nights, and was finding it hard