Free To Room Nineteen by Doris Lessing Page B

full of blood. He tore off his goggles and a gout of blood went into the sea. His nose was bleeding, and the blood had filled the goggles.
    He scooped up handfuls of water from the cool, salty sea, tosplash on his face, and did not know whether it was blood or salt water he tasted. After a time, his heart quietened, his eyes cleared, and he sat up. He could see the local boys diving and playing half a mile away. He did not want them. He wanted nothing but to get back home and lie down.
    In a short while, Jerry swam to the shore and climbed slowly up the path to the villa. He flung himself on his bed and slept, waking at the sound of feet on the path outside. His mother was coming back. He rushed to the bathroom, thinking she must not see his face with bloodstains, or tearstains, on it. He came out of the bathroom and met her as she walked into the villa, smiling, her eyes lighting up.
    ‘Have a nice morning?’ she asked, laying her hand on his warm brown shoulder a moment.
    ‘Oh yes, thank you,’ he said.
    ‘You look a bit pale.’ And then, sharp and anxious, ‘How did you bang your head?’
    ‘Oh, just banged it,’ he told her.
    She looked at him closely. He was strained; his eyes were glazed-looking. She was worried. And then she said to herself, Oh, don’t fuss! Nothing can happen. He can swim like a fish.
    They sat down to lunch together.
    ‘Mummy,’ he said, ‘I can stay under water for two minutes – three minutes, at least.’ It came bursting out of him.
    ‘Can you, darling?’ she said. ‘Well, I shouldn’t overdo it. I don’t think you ought to swim any more today.’
    She was ready for a battle of wills, but he gave in at once. It was no longer of the least importance to go to the bay.

Pleasure
    There were two great feasts, or turning points, in Mary Rogers’s year. She began preparing for the second as soon as the Christmas decorations were down. This year, she was leafing through a fashion magazine when her husband said, ‘Dreaming of the sun, old girl?’
    ‘I don’t see why not,’ she said, rather injured. ‘After all, it’s been four years.’
    ‘I really don’t see how we can afford it.’
    On her face he saw a look that he recognized.
    Her friend Mrs Baxter, the manager’s wife, also saw the magazine, and said, ‘You’ll be off to the south of France again, this year, I suppose, now that your daughter won’t be needing you.’ She added those words which in themselves were justification for everything: ‘We’ll stay faithful to Brighton, I expect.’
    And Mary Rogers said, as she always did: ‘I can’t imagine why anyone takes a holiday in Britain when the same money’d take them to the Continent.’
    For four years she had gone with her daughter and the grandchildren to Cornwall. It sounded a sacrifice on the altar of the family, the way she put it to her friends. But this year the daughter was going to the other grandmother in Scotland, and everyone knew it. Everyone. That is, Mrs Baxter, Mrs Justin-Smith, and Mrs Jones.
    Mary Rogers bought gay cottons and spread them over the living room. Outside, a particularly grim February held the little Midlands town in a steady shiver. Rain swept the windowpanes. Tommy Rogers saw the cottons and said not a word. But a week later she was fitting a white linen sunsuit before the mirror when he said, ‘Isay, old girl, that shows quite a bit of leg, you know …’
    At that moment it was acknowledged that they should go. Also, that the four years had made a difference in various ways. Mary Rogers secretly examined her thighs and shoulders before the glass, and thought they might very well be exposed. But the clothes she made were of the sensible but smart variety. She sewed at them steadily through the evenings of March, April, May, June. She was a good needlewoman. Also, for a few happy months before she married, she had studied fashion designing in London. That had been a different world. In speaking of it now, to the women of her