The Grandmothers by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online Page B

out into the desert, to places used by students for their picnics and excursions. In between the used ways almost invisible paths made their way between the odoriferous bushes that had butterflies clinging to them in the day, and at night sent out waves of scent to attract bats. Tom walked out on the tarmaced road, turned on to the dusty track, turned off that and found a faint path to a little hill that had rocks on it, one a big flat one, which held the sun’s heat well into the night. Tom lay on this hot rock and let unhappiness fill him.
    ‘Lil,’ he was whispering. ‘Lib’
    He knew at last that he was missing Lil, that was the trouble. Why was he surprised? Vaguely, he had all this time thought that one day he’d get a girl his own age and then … but it had been so vague. Lil had always been in his life. He lay face down on the rock and sniffed at it, the faint metallic tang, the hot dust, and vegetable aromas from little plants in the cracks. He was thinking of Lil’s body that always smelled of salt, of the sea. She was like a sea creature, in and out, the sea water often drying on her and then she was in again. He bit into his forearm, remembering that his earliest memory was of licking salt off Lil’s shoulders. It was a game they played, the little boy and his mothers oldest friend. Every inch of his body had been available to Lil’s strong hands since he had been born, and Lil’s body was as familiar to him as his own. He saw again Lil’s breasts, only just covered by the bikini top, and the faint wash of glistening sand in the cleft between her breasts, and the glitter of tiny sand grains on her shoulders.
    ‘I used to lick her for the salt,’ he murmured. ‘Like an animal at a salt lick.”
    “When he went back, very late, the house dark, he did not sleep but sat down and wrote to Lil. Writing letters had not ever been his style. Finding his writing illegible, he remembered that an old portable typewriter had been stuffed under his bed, and he pulled it out, and typed, trying to muffle the sharp sound by putting the machine on a towel. But Molly had heard, knocked and said, ‘Can’t you sleep?’ Tom said he was sorry, and stopped.
    In the morning he finished the letter and posted it and wrote another. His father, peering to see the inscription, said, ‘So, you’re not writing to your mother?’
    Tom said, ‘No. As you see. ‘Family life had its drawbacks, he decided.
    Thereafter he wrote letters to Lil at the university, and posted them himself.
    Molly asked him what was the matter and he said he wasn’t feeling up to scratch, and she said he should see a doctor.
    Mary asked what was the matter and he said, ‘I’m all right.’
    And still he didn’t go back ‘down there’; he stayed up here, and that meant staying with Mary.
    He wrote to Lil daily, answered the letters, or rather notes, she sometimes wrote to him; he telephoned his mother, he went out into the desert as often as he could, and told himself he would get over it. Not to worry. Meanwhile his heart was a lump of cold loneliness, and he dreamed miserably.
    ‘Listen,’ said Mary, ‘if you want to call this off, then say so.’
    He suppressed, ‘Call what off?’ and said, ‘Just give me time.’
    Then, on an impulse, or perhaps because he soon would have to decide whether to accept another contract, he said to his father, ‘I’m off.’
    ‘What about Mary?’ asked Molly.
    He did not reply. Back home, he was over at Lil’s and in her bed in an hour. But it was not the same. He could make comparisons now, and did. It was not that Lil was old - she was beautiful, so he kept muttering and whispering, ‘You’re so beautiful,’- but there was claim on him, Mary, and that wasn’t even personal. Mary, another woman, did it matter? One day soon he must - he had to … everyone expected it of him.
    Meanwhile Ian seemed to be doing fine with Roz. With his mother. Ian didn’t seem to be unhappy, or suffering, far from