The Grandmothers Read Free Page A

but artistic, and, by that law that says if you want to know if an area is going up, then look to see if those early swallows, the artists, are moving in, it would not be unfashionable for long. They were on opposite sides of the street.
    Lil was a swimming champion known over the whole continent and abroad too, and Roz not only acted and sang, but was putting on plays and began devising shows and spectacles. both were very busy. Despite all this Liliane and Theo Western announced die birth of Ian, and Rozeanne and Harold Struthers followed within a week with Thomas.
    Two little boys, fair-haired and delightful, and people said they could be brothers. In fact Tom was a solid little boy easily embarrassed by the exuberances of his mother, and Ian was fine drawn and nervy and ‘difficult’ in ways Tom never was. He did not sleep well, and sometimes had nightmares.
    The two families spent weekends and holidays together, one big happy family, as Roz sang, defining the situation, and the two men might go off on trips into the mountains or to fish, or backpacking. Boys will be boys, as Roz said.
    All this went on, and anything that was not what it should be was kept well out of sight. ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ Roz might say. She was concerned for Lil, for reasons that will emerge, but not for herself. Lil might have her problems, but not she, not she and H a raid and Tom. Everything was going along fine.
    And then this happened.
    The scene: the connubial bedroom, when the boys were about ten. Roz lay sprawling on the bed, Harold sat on the arm of a chair, looking at his wife, smiling, but determined. He had just said he had been offered a professorship, in a university in another state.
    Roz said, ‘Well, I suppose you can come down for weekends or we can come up.’
    This was so like her, the dismissal of a threat - surely? - to their marriage, that he gave a short, not unaffectionate laugh, and after a pause said, ‘I want you and Tom to come too.’
    ‘Move from here? And Roz sat up shaking her fair and now curly head so that she could see him clearly. ‘Move?
    ‘Why don’t you just say it? Move from Lil, that’s the point, isn’t it?’
    Roz clasped her hands together on her upper chest, all theatrical consternation. But she was genuinely astounded, indignant.
    ‘What are you suggesting?’
    ‘I’m not suggesting. I’m saying. Strange as it may seem…’ - This phrase usually signals strife - ‘I’d like a wife. A real one.’
    ‘You’re mad.’
    ‘No. I want you to watch something.’ He produced a canister of film. ‘Please, Roz. I mean it. I want you to come next door and watch this.’
    Up got Roz, off the bed, all humorous protest.

    She was all but nude. With a deep sigh, aimed at the gods, or some impartial viewer, she put on a pink feathered negligee, salvaged from a play’s wardrobe: she had felt it was so her.
    She sat in the next room, opposite a bit of white wall kept clear of clutter, ‘And now what are you up to, I wonder?’ she said, amiably. ‘You big booby, Harold. Really, I mean, I ask you!’
    Harold began running the film - home movies. It was of the four of them, two husbands, the two women. They had been on the beach, and wore wraps over bikinis. The men were still in their swimming trunks. Roz and Lil sat on the sofa, this sofa, where Roz now was, and the men were in hard upright chairs, sitting forward to watch. The women were talking. What about? Did it matter? They were watching each other’s faces, coming in quickly to make a point. The men kept trying to intervene, join in, the women literally did not hear them. Harold, then Theo, was annoyed, and die y raised their voices, but the women still did not hear, and when at last the men shouted, insisting, Roz put out a band to stop them.
    Roz remembered the discussion, just. It was not important. The boys were to go to a friend’s for a weekend camp. The parents were discussing it, that was all. In fact the