The Grandmothers. Doris Lessing
seemed to herself like a little helpless thing that had been buffeted about, by strokes of luck, not knowing what was happening, or why. But now she was not helpless, at last she had her wits about her. What did she want? Simply that Mary should be acknowledged by the Staveneys, and after that – well, they would all have to see.
Thomas was with a black girl in his room when his telephone rang. He heard, ‘I’m Victoria. Do you remember me?’ He did, of course he did. These days, when he thought of her, it was with curiosity: he could make comparisons now. The girl he was with had said to him, ‘In my country we say, laughing together, for making love.’ This made Thomas laugh and they did laugh together. But he would never have said of Victoria, We laughed together. Now she was saying, ‘Thomas, I have to tell you something. Now, listen to me, Thomas, that summer I got pregnant. I had a baby. It was your baby. She’s a little girl and her name is Mary.’ ‘Now, hold on a minute, don’t go so fast, what are you saying?’ She repeated it. ‘Then, why didn’t you tell me before?’ He didn’t sound angry. ‘I don’t know. I was silly’ She had been expecting anger, or disbelief, but he was saying, ‘Well, Victoria, I don’t think much of that. You should have told me.’ By now she was weeping. ‘Don’t cry, Victoria. How old is she? Oh, yes, I suppose she must be …’ And he did rapid calculations, while Victoria sobbed. ‘Now here’s a thing,’ he said. ‘She must be six? ‘Yes, she’s six.’ ‘Wow.’ And then, since the silence lengthened, she said, ‘Why don’t you come and see for yourself?’
For a bit, he kept the silence going. She thought, Oh what a pity she doesn’t look like him. What is he going to see? A little brown girl called Mary. But she’s so sweet … ‘I go to the park’ – she named it – ‘most afternoons.’ ‘Okay. I’ll see you. Tomorrow?’
She left Dickson with the minder, and took Mary, in a pink frilly dress, with a pink bow in her hair, done into a little fuzzy plait, and met Thomas on a park bench.
He was humorous, he was quizzical, as if holding scepticism in reserve, but he was pleasant. In fact, they were getting on more easily than during that summer when their relations had been defined by the bed. He was easy with little Mary, and actually said to Victoria that she had her grandmother’s hands.
Grandmother? He meant Jessy.
He bought Mary a lolly, gave her a kiss and went off, saying, ‘I’ll be in touch.’ He had the telephone number now and the address.
Victoria thought: Perhaps that’s the last I’ll see of him. Well, I’m not going to court! Either he does or he doesn’t.
That evening at supper he told his mother and his brother that he had a daughter and her name was Mary, she was a sort of pale milk-chocolate colour. Did they remember Victoria?
Edward said no, ought he to? His mother said she thought so, but there had been so many in and out.
Edward was now a handsome man, grave, authoritative, and he was tanned and healthy because of just having returned from fact-finding in Mauritius. He was a credit to his family, his school, and his university, not to mention the organisation for which he fact-found. Thomas was still a younger brother at university where he was studying – reading – arts and their organisation: he proposed to organise the arts, specifically, to found a pop group. All his choices were because of his being the younger brother of a paragon. How could Thomas ever catch up with Edward, who was married, as well, and with a child?
When Thomas told them, ‘I have a daughter and I’ve seen her and she’s a poppet,’ it was definitely in the spirit of one catching up in a race.
‘I hope you’ve considered the possible legal consequences,’ said Edward.
‘Oh, hell, don’t be like that,’ said Thomas.
Jessy Staveney sat brooding. The yellow, or golden, hair of Victoria’s imagination was now a great greying bush, tied back by a black ribbon whose strenuous efforts to cope left it creased and greying too. Her face was bony handsome, with prominent green eyes delicately outlined with very white lids. She was staring out into perspectives bound to be fraught with fate, if not doom. Her emphatic hands were in an attitude of prayer, or contemplation, and on them she rested her chin.
‘I have always wanted a black grandchild,’ she mused.
‘Oh, Christ, mother,’ said Thomas, affronted not by the sentiment, but perhaps by the fact she could have done well as a ship’s figurehead, staring undaunted into a Force Eight – at least – gale.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Jessy. ‘Do you want me to throw you out?’
‘Well, Jessy’ said Edward, humouring them both with a well practised smile, ‘this could be blackmail, have you thought of that?’
‘No,’ said Thomas. ‘Money has not been mentioned.’
‘This is a classic blackmail situation.’
‘Of course we should give her some money,’ said Jessy.
‘No, of course we shouldn’t, not until we know it’s true.’
‘I’m sure it’s true,’ said Thomas. ‘You don’t know her. She’s not the sort of person who’d do that.’
‘There’s an easy way of finding out,’ said Edward. ‘Ask for a DNA test.’
‘Oh, God, how sordid,’ said Thomas.
‘It certainly does introduce a belligerent note,’ said Jessy.
‘It’s up to you,’ said Edward. ‘But this family could be supporting anybody’s by-blow, for years.’
‘No,’ said Thomas. ‘She’s all right.’ And then he added, coming out at last with one reason for the pride which shone from him: ‘Dad’s going to be pleased.’
‘If he isn’t pleased he’s not very consistent,’ said Edward.
‘You can’t expect consistency, not from Lionel,’ said Jessy. She never spoke of her ex-husband except with a careless contempt. This was partly because of the manner of their parting, and partly because of the feminist movement which she energetically supported.
Lionel, very handsome, irresistible in fact, had been so unfaithful that at last she had to heave him out. ‘Love you, love your infidelities,’ she had screamed at him. ‘Well, I won’t.’ ‘Fair enough,’ he had equably replied.
They met often, and always quarrelled, describing this as an amicable divorce.
Lionel paid the school bills, and, given the precariousness of an actor’s life, his payments for clothes, food, travel and so forth had been dependable. The parents had quarrelled violently, about the boys’ upbringing, but less now. He was an old-fashioned romantic socialist and insisted on both boys going to ordinary schools, as then was common among his kind. ‘Sink or swim.’ ‘Do or die,’ his wife riposted. Although Edward had emerged from the junior school, Beowulf – the same as Victoria’s – pale, thin, haunted by the bullying, hardly able to sleep, and stuttering badly, this had not prevented his father from insisting on the same treatment for Thomas. His prescriptions for them had borne fruits, though unequally. Edward had learned a compassion for the underdog, or the other half, that burned in him like a tormented conscience. ‘You’d think you were personally responsible for the slave trade,’ his mother might shout at him. ‘You are not personally responsible for people being hanged for a loaf of bread or stealing a rabbit.’ As for Thomas, he had learned to love black girls and black music, in that order. No one could ever fail to admire Edward, but Thomas? And now here he was, in his last year of university, a father, with a child of six.
‘I think the best thing to do is to ask her here with the child, to meet us all – Lionel included,’ said Jessy.
This being considered too much of an ordeal, Victoria and Mary came one Sunday afternoon, when Edward was there, and Jessy.
It was indeed an ordeal, mostly because Edward was being so grand, so aloof. He