The Grandmothers

‘As a single mum I’ll be entitled to my own place,’ said Victoria. She knew all about it because she had heard it from her aunt and from Phyllis: girls got pregnant because they wanted to escape from their families, most often their mothers.

‘I hope that is not why you let yourself get careless?’

Careless? Thomas used condoms and she had no idea if he had been careless or not. ‘No. But when I knew, that was when I thought I can have my own place.’

‘I see.’

‘I can work in the music shop till the baby. They like me there.’

‘And so I should think, that they like you. You’re such a good girl.’

‘And they said I can go back when the baby’s old enough.’ Phyllis was smiling, but there was something there that made Victoria slip off her chair and crouch beside the older woman like a child needing to be held. Phyllis held her, and Victoria began to cry. What she was crying for Phyllis could not possibly guess: if Edward, if that tall fair kindly boy, had been the father of this child, then Victoria would have told him.

‘We’ll start seeing about your own place,’ said Phyllis. ‘I’ll speak to the housing officers.’

There were waiting lists, but when the baby was three months old Victoria moved into a flat in the same building, four floors up. You could say she had a perfect situation. Phyllis, who would help with the baby, was so close. Bessie, a nurse, would be on hand too. The two boys, growing up fast, tearaways and bad lots, were delighted with this baby, ‘A penny from heaven,’ they said, and promised to babysit and teach her to walk.

When Mary was a year old, Victoria, again a slender pretty young woman, still not quite twenty-one, went back to work. There was a child minder in these buildings, one known to Phyllis. At weekends Victoria took Mary to the park and wheeled her around and played with her and there the two were noticed by a handsome young man, who turned out to be a musician, a singer in a pop group. He thought Victoria with her little girl the prettiest thing he had seen in his life, and said so. Victoria could not resist. Phyllis Chadwick had feared the man who would be Victoria’s doom; the unknown white progenitor of little Mary had turned out not to be him, but she had only to take a look at this one to know the future. Phyllis had told Victoria to hold out for a good man, who would stick; yes, there weren’t many of them around, but Victoria was pretty and clever enough to be worth one. This man, she told Victoria, would be all spice and sugar, but ‘You’ll not get much more out of him than that.’

But Victoria got her way and her man, for she married him and became Mrs Bisley. Now there were real difficulties because he moved in to live with her and the little girl, and there wasn’t room enough, and besides, Victoria got benefits as a single mother, which she now had to forfeit. Sam Bisley was out every night, playing gigs all over London and other cities, he came and went, and while Mary had a father, which was more than most of the other black kids did, she scarcely saw him. And he didn’t see all that much of Victoria either, working at his music seven days a week. Then Victoria was pregnant again and Phyllis mourned. She had not seen the man who had impregnated her with her two boys since the night the deed was done. ‘Now you’ve done it,’ she told Victoria. ‘Well, we’ll have to manage.’

And was this tragic sympathy really necessary? Yes, Sam Bisley was hardly the perfect husband and father, but she loved him, and knew the little girl did too. And when there was his baby, he’d be around more and … so she reasoned, trying to calm Phyllis.

Her job in the music shop must end, though they valued her. Two small children – no. She would stay at home for a while and be a mother, and then later … she did get money from Sam, if not much. She could manage. Her life had become the juggling act familiar to all young women with small children. She found herself a few hours a week working for Mr Pat and he was pleased to have her: he was getting on. She took one babe to the minder and another to nursery school, looked after other women’s children in return for their helping her, and knew that the real theme of her life was waiting: she waited for Sam, who was always coming back from somewhere. Sometimes he brought friends who had to sleep on the sofa and the floor. She cooked for them and put their clothes into the washing machine with Sam’s and the kids’. She could scarcely remember the free young woman who was a bit of a pet in the music shop, let alone the girl who had had all those glamorous jobs in the West End. But it all went on well enough, she was holding her own, the babies were fine – only they already were not babies, but small children, and Phyllis Chadwick was there, four floors down, always helpful, kind and ready with advice, most of which Victoria did take. And then Phyllis died, just like that. She had a stroke, a bad one. She didn’t linger on, as her grandfather had done. Now Bessie was responsible for the boys, and could not help Victoria as much as she had. Perhaps who missed Phyllis most was Victoria. ‘What’s wrong with you and your long face?’ Sam wanted to know, not unkindly, but he was not a man for the miseries. But he did go to the funeral, and the two little children stood between Victoria and Sam and saw earth thrown down over the woman whom they had called Gran.

Soon after that Sam Bisley was killed in a car crash. He was always on the road to and from somewhere, and he drove – as she had told him often enough – like a madman. She was afraid to drive with him, and when the children were in the car she begged, ‘Drive more slowly – for the kids, even if you won’t for me.’ He was smashed up with a friend, one who had spent the night sometimes, on the sofa, or on the floor, and for whom she had cooked plates of fried eggs and fried bananas and bacon.

Victoria took hold of herself, rather like picking up the pieces of a vase that has fallen, and sticking the bits together. There were the children to consider. They depended on her now, and she knew to the roots of her being what depending on someone could mean: the absence of Phyllis Chadwick was as if behind there had been warm rock, where she had leaned, and now there was space where cold winds wailed and whistled. Victoria had to beat down waves of panic. Bessie told her she would find another man. Victoria did not think so. She had loved Sam. Long ago Edward had marked her for his own, and then there had been Sam. Thomas had not come into it. For better or worse, Sam had been her man.

One afternoon she saw Thomas in the street. He had not much changed. He was with a black girl, and they were laughing, arm in arm. Victoria thought: That was me. If she had bothered to consider Thomas at all, she would have decided that he would go on with black girls. ‘I like black best,’ he had joked. She remembered how he had brought forth a photograph of her – by the second photographer – nude, posing and pouting, and had said, ‘Go on, Victoria, do that pose for me now.’ She had refused, had been offended. She was not like that. Maybe that girl there across the street …? A smart girl she was, not like Victoria now, who did not have time for doing herself up.

Thomas was walking towards his home with the girl. Victoria followed them, on the other side of the street. If Thomas did look up and see her, he would wave – but would he? He would see a black woman with two kids: he wouldn’t really see her at all.

And now she stopped dead on the pavement, and the thought hit her, but really taking her breath away: she stood with her hand pressed into her solar plexus. She was crazy! Thomas’s child was here, sitting beside Sam Bisley’s son, Dickson. So far and so completely had she shut out any thought of Thomas as a father, it was as if she was in possession of a completely new idea. She had made a good job of that, all right – cutting Thomas out of her mind. Why had she? There was something about that summer that made her uncomfortable. She knew she didn’t really like Thomas – but he had been a kid, seventeen: what was he really like? She had no idea. He wasn’t Edward; for all of the summer that had been her strongest thought. Now she bent to peer at the little girl who was the result of that summer: she didn’t look like Thomas. Mary was a pretty, plump little thing, always smiling and willing. She was a pale brown, lighter than her mother by several shades, and much paler than the little boy, who was darker than Victoria. Sam had been a black black man, and she had liked to match skins with him – in the early days, before they had got used to each other. He used to call her his chocolate rabbit … and then he would eat her all up. ‘I’ll eat you all up,’ – but she did not like to think of their lovemaking, it made her want to cry. Not thinking of Sam was part of her holding herself together. But here was little Mary, and there, walking rapidly away down the street towards his home, was Mary’s father.

She was so shaken by all this that she went home earlier than usual with the kids, made them sit quietly in front of the television, and thought until she expected her mind to burst. That little girl over there, staring at the telly and licking at a lolly – she was an extension of that house, that big rich house.

Victoria knew the Staveneys were famous. She knew now. That was how she categorised them, famous, a word that meant they were far removed from the undistinguished run of ordinary people where Victoria belonged. She had seen Jessy Staveney’s name in the papers, and had made enquiries: that woman with her golden hair – so Victoria still thought of her – was famous in the theatre. Victoria thought of a musical, like Les Misérables, which the first of the photographers had taken her to see. She remembered that afternoon as she did the Staveney house, a vision into another world, beautiful, but she Victoria did not belong: she had never thought of going to a musical or the theatre by herself or with Bessie. And Edward, the fair kind boy – Victoria could still feel the warmth of those arms around her – he had been in the newspapers because he was a lawyer and had returned from somewhere in Africa, and had written letters about conditions. Phyllis Chadwick had cut out the letters, and kept them, not because of the connection with Victoria, but because in her social work she dealt with people from there – Ethiopia, was it? Sierra Leone? – and she found what was in the letters useful, to fight some battle she was having with superiors about housing refugees. And there was more. Lionel Staveney was famous because he was an actor, and she had seen him on television. It had taken Phyllis to say, ‘Is that the same Staveneys?’ The truth was, Phyllis had always been more interested in the Staveneys than she had ever been. Until now.

And that too was so upsetting to think of, like something pricking into her side, or in her shoe, that she positively wriggled as she sat trying to rid herself – what had been the matter with her? What had got into her that she had cut the Staveneys so completely out of her mind? When Phyllis mentioned them she felt a sort of revulsion, and it was Thomas she had not wanted to think of. But surely that was unfair? An ordinary seventeen-year-old, pretending to be older, having his first real sex, and she had gone there most evenings for weeks. No one had forced her!

Now Victoria had begun to think, she kept it up. She thought about the Staveneys and looked hard at little Mary. You can’t go wrong with Mary, Phyllis had said. You can’t go wrong with the Mother of God. She was Mary Staveney. Not Mary Bisley.

She had a pretty good idea what the future of the two little children would be. The six-year-old, the two-year-old, would have to go to the same school she had, and she knew now what a bad school it was. Much worse now than when she had gone there. It was a violent school, full of drugs, fights, gangs, and these days the children who went to that kind of school were seen rather like wild animals who had to be kept restrained. It had been rough when she was there, she knew that now, though then she had not questioned anything. A good little girl, a star pupil, doing her homework – that was why they had made a fuss of her: she had liked to learn and do her lessons. Not like most. These days she would probably be wild and fighting, like the other kids now. And soon there would be Mary and Dickson, having to fight battles every minute, and they would come out the other end of it ignorant – worse even than she had been. She did know now how ignorant she had been, that pretty good little girl who owed everything to Phyllis, who had made her do homework, kept her at it. But in spite of the homework and the hard work, she had been ignorant. She was in that Staveney house most evenings for a summer and had not understood a thing. She had not been curious enough to ask questions. She had not known the questions to ask; not known there were questions to ask, and now, six years later, she could measure her ignorance then by what she had not asked or even wondered at. There was a father, Lionel Staveney, and so used was she to families that had mothers and no fathers, or fathers that came and disappeared again, she had taken it for granted there was no man around in the Staveney house. The truth was, she, Victoria, with her man Sam Bisley, had been better off than most of the women her age: he had not only married her but was sometimes there. A father; a father actually taking responsibility.

She did remember Thomas had said his mother and his father did not get on. She seemed to remember that Thomas said his father paid for school fees ‘and that kind of thing’.

And Jessy Staveney? She had never asked who Victoria was or what she did, was seldom there, and when she was accepted her presence, without a nasty word or look, though surely she must have sometimes wondered if she and Thomas … Retrospectively Victoria was a bit shocked. Surely Jessy Staveney should have said something?

Seventeen: that meant Thomas was now twenty-three or twenty-four. Victoria was twenty-six. Edward who had seemed so unreachably above her in age as in everything else, when he was twelve to her nine, was almost thirty. Edward wrote letters to newspapers, which were published. No one would ever print a letter by her, and nothing she said could be considered important or even interesting.

And these two children, Mary and Dickson, would emerge from school even more ignorant than she had been. Would Mary ever learn enough to be a nurse, like Bessie? And Sam’s son, if he didn’t have some music in him from his father, what would he be?

Thomas’s children, when he had them, and Edward’s, they would be writing letters to the papers that would be printed. And they might turn out famous, like Jessy and Lionel and Edward.

All these thoughts that should – surely? – have marched profitably through her mind years ago during that long lovemaking summer, were presenting themselves now. Now she believed that she must have been a bit simple, not merely ignorant, but stupid.

She had never then thought, Thomas has a right to know. Now she was thinking: But it takes two to make a baby, a favourite saying of Phyllis who had often to deal with paternity cases, ‘I don’t think the idea even knocked at the door,’ Victoria thought. ‘Why didn’t it?’ And if it had been unfair to Thomas, then what about little Mary who had a father in that part of society where people’s names were known, and they had letters printed in newspapers. And children were sent to real schools. Thomas had been at the same school as her, she dimly remembered, because the father – Lionel Staveney – had said his children should know how the other half lived. So Edward and Thomas had both spent some years with the other half’s children before being whisked off to real schools where children learned. If she, Victoria, had been at a real school, then … but children who go to real schools don’t have to nurse sick mothers and fall out of the race – fall off that ladder that goes up – and become girls working in supermarkets or posing for dirty little photographers. If they are pretty enough.

Suppose I didn’t have my looks? Fat Bessie could never have had that time in the West End, all those jobs I had, I could pick and choose. It was Phyllis who said to me, you just believe in yourself and just walk in, show you aren’t scared, and you’ll be surprised … and Phyllis had been right. But she, Victoria, was pretty. Luck. Luck – it was everything. Good luck and bad luck. What could you call it, that day, when they had forgotten her and her aunt was sick, and Edward had taken her home? Good luck – was it? She had lived for years in a dream, she knew that now, thinking about that house, all rosy golden lights and warmth and kindness. Edward. And Edward had led to Thomas. What sort of luck had that been? Well, she had got Mary from it, a solemn little girl with beautiful eyes – like her own. Mary was alive because of luck, a series of lucky or unlucky things happening because Edward Staveney had forgotten her that afternoon, leaving her alone and afraid in the school playground. And Thomas walking into the music shop? No, that wasn’t anything, he was mad about music from Africa and that was the shop for it. But he could have taken his tapes and stuff to the other girl working there that afternoon, black too, and smart and well-dressed, just as she had been.

Victoria 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.