As soon as the honeymoon was over, Mary told Tom, who told his mother, that she thought Roz should move out and leave the house to them. It made sense. It was a big house, right for a family. The trouble was financial. Years ago the house had been affordable, when this whole area had been far from desirable, hut now it was smart and only the rich could afford these houses. In an impulsive, reckless, generous gesture, Roz gave the house to the young couple as a wedding present. And so where was she to live? She couldn’t afford another house like this. She took up residence in a little hotel down the coast, and this meant that, for the first time ever, since she was born, she was not within a few yards of Lil. She did not understand at first why she was so restless, sad, bereft, put it all down to losing Ian, but then understood it was Lil she missed, almost as much as Ian. She felt she had lost everything, and literally from one week to the next. But she was not reflective, by nature: she was like Tom, who would always be surprised by his emotions, when he was forced to notice them. To deal with her feelings of emptiness and loss, she accepted a job at the university as a full-time teacher of drama, worked hard, swam twice a day, took sleeping pills.
Mary was soon pregnant. Jokes of a traditional kind were aimed at Ian, by Saul, among others. ‘You’re aren’t going to let your mate get ahead of you, are you? When’s your wedding?’
Ian was working hard, too. He was trying not to give himself time to think. No stranger to thought, reflection, introspection, he felt that they were enemies, waiting to strike him down. A new shop was opening in the town where Harold was. They were waiting for their child. Ian did not stay at Harold’s, but in a hotel, and of course visited Harold, who had been like a father to him - so he said. There he met a friend of Mary’s, who had paid attention to him at the wedding. Hannah. It was not that he disliked her, on the contrary, she pleased him, with her comfortable ways, that were easy to see as maternal, but he was inside an empty space full of echoes, and he could not imagine making love with anyone but Roz. He swam every morning from ‘their’ beach, sometimes seeing Roz there, and he greeted her, but turned away, as if the sight of her hurt him - it did. And he more often took the little motorboat out to the surfing beaches. He and Tom had always gone together, but Tom was so busy with Mary, and the new baby.
One day, seeing Roz drying herself on the sand, the boatman, who had come into the bay especially to find her, stopped his engine, let the boat rock on the gentle waves, and jumped down into the water, tugging the boat behind him like a dog on a leash to say, ‘Mrs Struthers, Ian’s doing some pretty dangerous stuff out there. He’s a picture to watch, but he scares me. If you see his mother - or perhaps you …’
Roz said, ‘Well, now. To tell a man like Ian to play it safe, that’s more than a mother’s life is worth. Or mine, for that matter.’
‘Someone should warn him. He’s asking for it. Those waves out there, you’ve got to respect them.’
‘Have you warned him?’
‘I’ve tried my best.’
‘Thanks,’ said Roz. ‘I’ll tell his mother.’
She told Lil, who said to her son that he was playing too close to the safety margins. If the old boatman was worried, then that meant something, Ian said, ‘Thanks.’
One evening, at sunset, the boatman came in to find Roz or one of them on the beach, but had to go up to the house, found Mary, told her that Ian was lying smashed up on one of the outer beaches.
Then Ian was in hospital. Told by the doctor, ‘You’ll live,’ his face said plainly he wished he could have heard something else. He had hurt his spine. But that would probably heal. He had hurt his leg, and that would never be normal.
He left hospital and lay in his bed at home, in a room which for years had not been much more than a place where he changed his clothes, before crossing the street to Roz. But in that house were now Tom and Mary. He turned his face to the wall. His mother tried to coax him up and on to his feet, but could not make him take exercise. Lil could not, but Hannah could and did. She came to visit her old friend Mary, slept in that house, and spent most of her time sitting with Ian, holding his hand, often in sympathetic tears.
‘For an athlete it must he so hard,’ she kept saying to Lil, to Mary, to Tom. ‘I can understand why he is so discouraged.’
A good word, an accurate one. She persuaded Ian to turn his face towards her, and then, soon, to get up and take the prescribed steps up and down the room, then on to the verandah, and soon, across the road and down to swim. But he would not ever surf again. He would always limp.
Hannah kissed the poor leg, kissed him, and Ian wept with her: her tears gave him permission to weep. And soon there was another wedding, an even larger one, since Ian and his mother Liliane were so well known, and their sports shops so beneficial to every town they found themselves in, and both were famed for their good causes and their general benevolence.
So there they were, the new young couple, Ian and Hannah, in Lil’s house with Lil. Opposite, Roz’s old house was now Tom’s and Mary’s. Lil was uncomfortable in her role as mother-in-law, and was unhappy every time she saw the house opposite, now so changed. But after all, she was rich, unlike Roz. She bought one
of the houses almost on the beach, not a couple of hundred yards from the two young couples, and Roz moved in. The women were together again, and Saul Butler when he met them allowed a special measure of sarcastic comment into his, ‘Ah, together again, I see!’ ‘As you see,’ said Roz or Lil. ‘Can’t fool you, Saul, can we?’ said Lil, or Roz.
Then Hannah was pregnant and Ian was appropriately proud.
‘It has turned out all right,’ said Roz to Lil.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Lil.
‘What mote could we expect?’
They were on the beach, in their old chairs, moved to outside the new fence.
‘I didn’t expect anything,’ said Lil.
‘Hut?’
‘I didn’t expect to feel the way I do,’ said Lil. ‘I feel …’
‘All right,’ said Roz quickly. ‘Let it go. I know But look at it this way, we’ve had …’
‘The best,’ said Lil. ‘Now all that time seems to me like a dream. I can’t believe it, such happiness, Roz,’ she whispered, turning her face and leaning forward a little, though there wasn’t a soul for fifty yards.
‘I know,’ said Roz. “Well - that’s it.’ And she leaned back, shutting her eyes. From below her dark glasses tears trickled.
Ian went off with his mother a good bit on trips to their shops. He was everywhere greeted with affectionate, respectful generosity. It was known how he had got his limp. As foolhardy as an Everest hero, as brave as - well, as a man outrunning a wave like a mountain - he was so handsome, so courteous, such a gentleman, so kind. He was like his mother.
On one such trip, they were in their hotel suite, before bedtime, and Lil was saying that she was going to take little Alice for the day when she got back to give Mary a chance to go shopping.
Ian said, ‘You two women are really pleased with yourselves.’
This was venomous, not like him; she had not - she thought - heard that voice from him before.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘It’s all right for you.’
‘What do you mean, Ian, what are you saying?’
‘I’m not blaming you. I know it was Roz.’
‘What do you mean? It was both of us.’
‘Roz put the idea into your head. I know that. You’d never have thought of it. Too bad about Tom. Too bad about me.’
At this she began to laugh, a weak defensive laugh. She was thinking of the years with Tom, watching him change from a beautiful boy into a man, seeing the years claim him, knowing how it must end, must end, then should end, she should end it … she and Roz . , . but it was so hard, hard …