‘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 it.
And then Mary arrived, and found the four preparing to go to the sea. Flippers and goggles were found for her, and a surfboard. Within half an hour of her arrival she was ready to embark with the two young men, on the wide, dangerous, bad sea outside this safe bay. A little motorboat would take them out. So this pretty young thing, as smooth and shiny as a fish, larked about and played with Tom and Ian, and the two older women sat on their chairs, watching behind dark glasses and saw the motorboat arrive and take the three off.
‘She’s come for Tom,’ said Tom’s mother,
‘Yes, [ know,’ said Tom’s lover.
‘She’s nice enough,’ said Roz.
Lil said nothing.
Roz said, ‘Lil, I think this is where we bow out.’
Lil said nothing.
‘Lil?’ Roz peered over at her, and pushed up her dark glasses to see better.
‘I don’t think I could bear it,’ said Lil.
‘We’ve got to.’
‘Ian doesn’t have a girl.’
‘No, but he should have. Lil, they’re getting on towards thirty.’
‘I know.’
Far away, where the sharp black rocks stood in their white foam at the mouth of the bay, three tiny figures were waving at them, before disappearing out of sight to the big beach.
‘We have to stand together and end it,’ said Roz.
Lil was quietly weeping. Then Roz was, too.
‘We have to, Lil;
‘I know we do.’
‘Come on, let’s swim.’
The women swam hard and fast, out and back and around, and then landed on the beach, and went straight up to Roz’s house, to prepare lunch. It was Sunday. Ahead was the long difficult afternoon.
Lil said, ‘I’ve got work,’ and went off to one of her shops.
Roz served lunch, making excuses for Lil, and then she too said she had things to do. Lil left Tom and Mary alone, and there was a showdown. ‘Either on or off,’ said Mary, ‘Either yes or no. “There were plenty of fish in the sea.’ ‘It was time he grew up.’ All that kind of thing, as prescribed for this occasion.
When the others came back, Mary announced that she and Tom were getting married, and there were congratulations and a noisy evening. Roz sang lots of songs, Tom joined in, they all sang. And when it was bedtime Mary stayed with Tom, in his house, and Ian went home with Lil.
Then Mary went back home to plan the wedding.
And now it had to be done. The two women said to the young men that now that was it. ‘It’s over,’ said Roz.
Ian cried out, ‘What do you mean? Why? I’m not getting married.’
Tom sat quietly, jaw set, drinking. He filled his glass with wine, drained it, filled it again, drank, saying nothing.
At last he said to Ian, ‘They’re right, don’t you see?’
‘No,’ yelled Ian. He went into Roz’s room and called her, and Tom went with Lil to her house. Ian wept and pleaded. ‘Why, what for? We’re perfectly happy. Why do you want to spoil it?’ but Roz stuck it out. She was all heartless determination and only when she and Lil were alone together, the men having gone off to discuss it, they wept and said they could not bear it. Their hearts were breaking they said, how were they going to live, it would be unendurable.
When the men returned, the women were tear-stained but firm.
Lil told Tom that he must not come with her that night and Roz told Ian that he must go home with Lil.
‘You’ve ruined everything,’ said Ian to Roz. ‘It’s all your fault. Why couldn’t you leave things as they were?’
Roz jested, ‘Cheer up. We are going to become respectable ladies, yes, your disreputable mothers are going to become pillars of virtue. We shall be perfect mothers-in-law, and then we shall become wonderful grandmothers to your children.’
‘I’m not going to forgive you,’ said Ian to Roz.
And Tom said to Lil, low, to her only, ‘I’ll never ever, ever forget you.’
Now, that was a valediction, almost conventional. It meant -surely? - that Tom’s heart was not likely to suffer permanent damage.
The wedding, needless to say, was a grand affair. Mary had been determined not to be upstaged by her dramatic mother-in-law, but found Roz was being the soul of tact, in a self-effacing outfit. Lil was elegant and pale and smiling, and the very moment the happy pair had driven off for their honeymoon she was down swimming in the bay, where Roz, a good hostess, could not leave her guests to join her. Later Roz crossed the street to find out how Lil was, but her bedroom door was locked and she would not respond to Roz’s knocks and enquiries. Ian as best man had made a funny and likeable speech, and. meeting Roz in the street as she was returning from Lil’s, said, ‘So? Are you pleased with yourself now?’ And he too went running down to the sea.
Now Roz was in her empty house, and she lay on her bed and at last was able to weep. When there were knocks at her door which she knew were Ian’s, she rolled in anguish, her fist stuffed into her mouth.