Authors: Doris Lessing
About the tenth day, they realized that half of their time had gone; and Tommy showed his restlessness, his feeling that there should be more to it than this, by diving into one of the new and so terribly expensive shops and emerging with a mask, frog’s feet, and airtube. With an apology to Mary for leaving her, he plunged out into the bay, looking like – or so she rather tartly remarked – a spaceman in a children’s comic. He did not return for some hours.
‘This is better than anything, old girl, you should try it,’ he said, wading out of the sea with an absorbed excited look. That afternoon she spent on the beach alone, straining her eyes to make out which of the bobbing periscopes in the water was his.
Thus engaged, she heard herself addressed in English: ‘I always say I am an undersea widow, too.’ She turned to see a slight girl, clearly English, with pretty fair curls, a neat blue bathing suit, pretty blue eyes, good legs stretched out in the warm sand. An English girl. But her voice was, so Mary decided, passable, in spite of a rather irritating giggle. She relented and, though it was her principle that one did not go to France to consort with the English, said: ‘Is your husband out there?’
‘Oh, I never see him between meals,’ said the girl cheerfully and lay back on the sand.
Mary thought that this girl was very similar to herself at that age – only, of course,
she
had known how to make the best of herself. They talked, in voices drugged by sea and sun, until first Tommy Rogers, and then the girl’s husband, rose out of the sea. The young man was carrying a large fish speared through the back by a sort of trident. The excitement of this led the four of them to share a
square yard of sand for a few minutes, making cautious overtures.
The next day, Tommy Rogers insisted that his wife should don mask and flippers and try the new sport. She was taken out into the bay, like a ship under escort, by the two men and young Betty Clarke. Mary Rogers did not like the suffocating feeling of the mask pressing against her nose. The speed the frog feet lent her made her nervous, for she was not a strong swimmer. But she was not going to appear a coward with that young girl sporting along so easily just in front.
Out in the bay a small island, a mere cluster of warm, red-brown rock, rose from a surf of frisking white. Around the island, a couple of feet below the surface, submerged rocks lay; and all over them floated the new race of frog-people, face down, tridents poised, observing the fish that darted there. As Mary looked back through her goggles to the shore, it seemed very far, and rather commonplace, with the striped umbrellas, the lolling browned bodies, the paddling children. That was the other sea. This was something different indeed. Here were the adventurers and explorers of the sea, who disdained the safe beaches.
Mary lay loose on the surface of the water and looked down. Enormous, this undersea world, with great valleys and boulders, all wavering green in the sun-dappled water. On a dazzling patch of white sand – twenty feet down, it seemed – sprouted green grass as fresh and bright as if it grew on the shore in sunlight. By reaching down her hand she could almost touch it. Farther away, long fronds of weed rocked and swayed, a forest of them. Mary floated over them, feeling with repugnance how they reached up to her knees and shoulders with their soft, dragging touch. Underneath her, now, a floor of rock, covered with thick growth. Pale grey-green shapes, swelling like balloons, or waving like streamers; delicate whitey-brown flowers and stars, bubbled silver with air; soft swelling udders or bladders of fine white film, all rocking and drifting in the slow undersea movement. Mary was fascinated – a new world, this was. But also repelled. In her ears there was nothing but a splash and crash of surf, and, through it, voices that sounded a long way off. The rocks were now very close below. Suddenly,
immediately below her, a thin brown arm reached down, groped in a dark gulf of rock, and pulled out a writhing tangle of grey-dappled flesh. Mary floundered up, slipping painfully on the rocks. She had drifted unknowingly close to the islet; and on the rocks above her stood a group of half-naked bronzed boys, yelling and screaming with excitement as they killed the octopus they had caught by smashing it repeatedly against a great boulder. They would eat it – so Mary heard – for supper. No, it was too much. She was in a panic. The loathsome thing must have been six inches below her – she might have touched it! She climbed on to a rock and looked for Tommy, who was lying on a rock fifty feet off, pointing down at something under it, while Francis Clarke dived for it, and then again. She saw him emerge with a small striped fish, while Tommy and Betty Clarke yelled their excitement.
But she looked at the octopus, which was now lying draped over a rock like a limp, fringed, grey rag; she called her husband, handed over the goggles, the flippers and the tube, and swam slowly back to shore.
There she stayed. Nothing would tempt her out again.
That day Tommy bought an underwater fish gun. Mary found herself thinking, first, that it was all very well to spend over five pounds on this bizarre equipment; and then, that they weren’t going to have much fun at Christmas if they went on like this.
A couple of days passed. Mary was alone all day. Betty Clarke, apparently, was only a beach widow when it suited her, for she much preferred the red-rock island to staying with Mary. Nevertheless, she did sometimes spend half an hour making conversation, and then, with a flurry of apology, darted off through the blue waves to rejoin the men.
Quite soon, Mary was able to say casually to Tommy, ‘Only three days to go.’
‘If only I’d tried this equipment earlier,’ he said. ‘Next year I’ll know better.’
But for some reason the thought of next year did not enchant Mary. ‘I don’t think we ought to come here again,’ she said. ‘It’s quite spoiled now it’s so fashionable.’
‘Oh, well – anywhere, provided there’s rocks and fish.’
On that next day, the two men and Betty Clarke were on the rock island from seven in the morning until lunchtime, to which meal they grudgingly allowed ten minutes, because it was dangerous to swim on a full stomach. Then they departed again until the darkness fell across the sea. All this time Mary Rogers lay on her towel on the beach, turning over and over in the sun. She was now a warm red-gold all over. She imagined how Mrs Baxter would say: ‘You’ve got yourself a fine tan!’ And then, inevitably, ‘You won’t keep it long here, will you?’ Mary found herself unaccountably close to tears. What did Tommy see in these people? she asked herself. As for that young man, Francis – she had never heard him make any remark that was not connected with the weights, the varieties, or the vagaries of fish!
That night, Tommy said he had asked the young couple to dinner at the Plaza.
‘A bit rash, aren’t you?’
‘Oh, well, let’s have a proper meal, for once. Only another two days.’
Mary let that ‘proper meal’ pass. But she said, ‘I shouldn’t have thought they were the sort of people to make friends of.’
A cloud of irritation dulled his face. ‘What’s the matter with them?’
‘In England, I don’t think …’
‘Oh, come off it, Mary!’
In the big garden of the Plaza, where four years ago they had eaten three times a day by right, they found themselves around a small table just over the sea. There was an orchestra and more waiters than guests, or so it seemed. Betty Clarke, seen for the first time out of a bathing suit, was revealed to be a remarkably pretty girl. Her thin brown shoulders emerged from a full white frock, which Mary Rogers conceded to be not bad at all and her wide blue eyes were bright in her brown face. Again Mary thought: If I were twenty – well, twenty-five years younger, they’d take us for sisters.
As for Tommy, he looked as young as the young couple – it
simply wasn’t fair, thought Mary. She sat and listened while they talked of judging distances underwater and the advantages of various types of equipment.
They tried to draw her in but there she sat, silent and dignified. Francis Clarke, she had decided, looked stiff and commonplace in his suit, not at all the handsome young sea god of the beaches. As for the girl, her giggle was irritating Mary.
They began to feel uncomfortable. Betty mentioned London, and the three conscientiously talked about London, while Mary said yes and no.
The young couple lived in Clapham, apparently; and they went into town for a show once a month.
‘There’s ever such a nice show running now,’ said Betty. ‘The one at the Princess.’
‘We never get to a show these days,’ said Tommy. ‘It’s five hours by train. Anyway, it’s not in my line.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Mary.
‘Oh, I know you work in a matinée when you can.’
At the irritation in the look she gave him, the Clarkes involuntarily exchanged a glance; and Betty said tactfully, ‘I like going to the theatre; it gives you something to talk about.’
Mary remained silent.
‘My wife,’ said Tommy, ‘knows a lot about the theatre. She used to be in a theatre set – all that sort of thing.’
‘Oh, how interesting!’ said Betty eagerly.
Mary struggled with temptation, then fell. ‘The man who did the décor for the show at the Princess used to have a villa here. We visited him quite a bit.’
Tommy gave his wife an alarmed and warning look, and said, ‘I wish to God they wouldn’t use so much garlic.’
‘It’s not much use coming to France,’ said Mary, ‘if you’re going to be insular about food.’
‘You never cook French at home,’ said Tommy suddenly. ‘Why not, if you like it so much?’
‘How can I? If I do, you say you don’t like your food messed up.’
‘I don’t like garlic either,’ said Betty, with the air of one
confessing a crime. ‘I must say I’m pleased to be back home where you can get a bit of good plain food.’
Tommy now looked in anxious appeal at his wife, but she inquired, ‘Why don’t you go to Brighton or somewhere like that?’
‘Give me Brighton any time,’ said Francis Clarke. ‘Or Cornwall. You can get damned good fishing off Cornwall. But Betty drags me here. France is overrated, that’s what I say.’
‘It would really seem to be better if you stayed at home.’
But he was not going to be snubbed by Mary Rogers. ‘As for the French,’ he said aggressively, ‘they think of nothing but their stomachs. If they’re not eating, they’re talking about it. If they spent half the time they spend on eating on something worthwhile, they could make something of themselves, that’s what I say.’
‘Such as – catching fish?’
‘Well, what’s wrong with that? Or … for instance …’ Here he gave the matter his earnest consideration. ‘Well, there’s that government of theirs for instance. They could do something about that.’
Betty, who was by now flushed under her tan, rolled her eyes, and let out a high, confused laugh. ‘Oh well, you’ve got to consider what people say. France is so much the rage.’
A silence. It was to be hoped the awkward moment was over. But no; for Francis Clarke seemed to think matters needed clarifying. He said, with a sort of rallying gallantry towards his wife, ‘She’s got a bee in her bonnet about getting on.’
‘Well,’ cried Betty, ‘it makes a good impression, you must admit that. And when Mr Beaker – Mr Beaker is his boss,’ she explained to Mary, ‘when you said to Mr Beaker at the whist drive you were going to the south of France, he was impressed, you can say what you like.’
Tommy offered his wife an entirely disloyal, sarcastic grin.
‘A woman should think of her husband’s career,’ said Betty. ‘It’s true, isn’t? And I know I’ve helped Francie a lot. I’m sure he wouldn’t have got that raise if it weren’t for making a good impression. Besides you meet such nice people. Last year, we made friends well, acquaintance, if you like – with some people who live at Ealing. We wouldn’t have, otherwise. He’s in the films.’
‘He’s a cameraman,’ said Francis, being accurate.
‘Well, that’s films, isn’t it? And they asked us to a party. And who do you think was there?’
‘Mr Beaker?’ inquired Mary finely.
‘How did you guess? Well, they could see, couldn’t they? And I wouldn’t be surprised if Francis couldn’t be buyer, now they know he’s used to foreigners. He should learn French, I tell him.’
‘Can’t speak a word,’ said Francis. ‘Can’t stand it anyway – gabble, gabble, gabble.’
‘Oh, but Mrs Rogers speaks it so beautifully,’ cried Betty.
‘She’s cracked,’ said Francis, good-humouredly, nodding to indicate his wife. ‘She spends half the year making clothes for three weeks’ holiday at the sea. Then the other half making Christmas presents out of bits and pieces. That’s all she ever does.’
‘Oh, but it’s so nice to give people presents with that individual touch,’ said Betty.
‘If you want to waste your time I’m not stopping you,’ said Francis. ‘I’m not stopping you. It’s your funeral.’
‘They’re not grateful for what we do for them,’ said Betty, wrestling with tears, trying to claim the older woman as an ally. ‘If I didn’t work hard, we couldn’t afford the friends we got …’
But Mary Rogers had risen from her place. ‘I think I’m ready for bed,’ she said. ‘Good night, Mrs Clarke. Good night, Mr Clarke.’ Without looking at her husband, she walked away.
Tommy Rogers hastily got up, paid the bill, bade the young couple an embarrassed good night, and hurried after his wife. He caught her up at the turning of the steep road up to the villa. The stars were brilliant overhead; the palms waved seductively in the soft breeze. ‘I say,’ he said angrily, ‘that wasn’t very nice of you.’
‘I haven’t any patience with that sort of thing,’ said Mary. Her voice was high and full of tears. He looked at her in astonishment and held his peace.
But next day he went off fishing. For Mary, the holiday was over. She was packing and did not go to the beach.
That evening he said, ‘They’ve asked us back for dinner.’
‘You go. I’m tired.’
‘I shall go,’ he said defiantly, and went. He did not return until very late.
They had to catch the train early next morning. At the little station, they stood with their suitcases in a crowd of people who regretted the holiday was over. But Mary was regretting nothing. As soon as the train came, she got in and left Tommy shaking hands with crowds of English people whom, apparently, he had met the night before. At the last minute, the young Clarkes came running up in bathing suits to say goodbye. She nodded stiffly out of the train window and went on arranging the baggage. Then the train started and her husband came in.