Adore by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online

freeze, his face showed he was struggling with emotions, violent ones, and then it set hard. He muttered, ‘Oh, my God . . .’ He stared at them, Lil to Roz and back again. ‘My God,’ he said again. ‘You must think me a bloody fool.’ His voice was toneless: the shock had gone deep.
    â€˜I’m an idiot,’ he said. ‘So, that’s it.’
    â€˜What?’ said Lil. ‘What are you talking about?’ Her voice was timid, because of what he might be talking about. Roz kicked her under the table. Lil actually leaned over to rub her ankle, still staring at Saul.
    â€˜A fool,’ he said. ‘You two must have been having a good laugh at my expense.’ He got up and blundered out. He was hardly able to get across the street to his own house.
    â€˜Oh, I see,’ said Lil. She was about to go after him, but Roz said, ‘Stop. It’s a good thing, don’t you see?’
    â€˜And now it’s going to get around that we are lezzies,’ said Lil.
    â€˜So what? Probably it wouldn’t be the first time. After all, when you think how people talk.’
    â€˜I don’t like it,’ said Lil.
    â€˜Let them say it. The more the better. It keeps us all safe.’
    Soon they all went to Saul’s wedding with a handsome young woman who looked like Lil.
    The two sons were pleased. But the women said to each other, ‘We’re neither of us likely to get as good a deal as Saul again.’ That was Lil.
    â€˜No,’ agreed Roz.
    â€˜And what are we going to do when the boys get tired of us old women?’
    â€˜I shall cry my eyes out. I shall go into a decline.’
    â€˜We shall grow old gracefully,’ said Lil.
    â€˜Like hell,’ said Roz. ‘I shall fight every inch of the way.’
    Not old women yet, nor anywhere near it. Over forty, though, and the boys were definitely not boys, and their time of wild beauty had gone. You’d not think now, seeing the two strong, confident, handsome young men, that once they had drawn eyes struck as much by awe as by lust or love. And the two women, one day reminding themselves how their two had been like young gods, rummaged in old photographs, and could find nothing of what they knew had been there: just as, looking at their old photographs, they saw pretty girls, nothing more.
    Ian was already working with his mother in the management of the chain of sports shops, and was an up-and-coming prominent citizen. Harder to make a mark in the theatre: Tom was still working in the foothills when Ian was already near the top. A new position for Tom, who had always been first, Ian looking up to him.
    But he persevered. He worked. And as always he was charming with Lil, and as often in her bed as he could,considering the long and erratic hours of the theatre.
    â€˜There you are,’ said Lil to Roz. ‘It’s a beginning. He’s getting tired of me.’
    But Ian showed no signs of relinquishing Roz, on the contrary. He was attentive, demanding, possessive, and when one day he saw her lying on her pillows, love-making just concluded, smoothing down loose ageing skin over her forearms, he let out a cry, clasped her, and shouted, ‘No, don’t, don’t, don’t even think of it. I won’t let you grow old.’
    â€˜Well,’ said Roz, ‘it is going to happen, for all that.’
    â€˜No.’ And he wept, just as he had done when he was still the frightened abandoned boy in her arms. ‘No, Roz, please, I love you.’
    â€˜So I mustn’t get old, is that it, Ian? I’m not allowed to? Mad, the boy is mad,’ said Roz, addressing invisible listeners, as we do when sanity does not seem to have ears.
    And alone, she felt uneasiness, and, indeed, awe. It was mad, his demand on her. It really did seem that he had refused to think she might grow old. Mad! But perhaps lunacy is one of the great invisible wheels that keep our world