Free Stories by Doris Lessing Page A

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 livingroom. 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, “I say, 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 circle—Mrs. Baxter, Mrs. Justin-Smith, and Mrs. Jones—her voice conveyed the degree of difference. And Mrs. Baxter would say, kindly as always, “Ah well, we none of us know what’s in store for us when we’re young.”
    They were to leave towards the end of July. A week before, Tommy Rogers produced a piece of paper on which were set out certain figures. They were much lower figures than ever before. “Oh, we’ll manage,” said Mary vaguely. Her mind was already moving among the scenes of blue sea, blue sky.
    “Perhaps we’d better book at the Plaza.”
    “Oh, surely no need. They know us there.”
    The evening before they left there was a bridge party in the Baxters’ house for the jaunting couple. Tommy Rogers was seen to give his wife an uneasy glance as she said, “With air travel as cheap as it is now, I really can’t understand why …”
    For they had booked by train, of course, as usual.
    They successfully negotiated the Channel, a night in a Paris hotel, and the catching of the correct train.
    In a few hours they would see the little village on the sea where they had first come twenty-five years ago on their honeymoon. They had chosen it because Mary Hill had met, in those artistic circles which she had enjoyed for, alas, so short a time, a certain well-known stage decorator who had a villa there. During that month of honeymoon, they had spent a happy afternoon at the villa.
    As the train approached, she was looking to see the villa, alone on its hill above the sea. But the hill was now thickwith little white villas, green-shuttered, red-roofed in the warm southern green.
    “The place seems to have grown quite a bit,” said Tommy. The station had grown, too. There was a long platform now, and a proper station building. And gazing down towards the sea, they saw a cluster of shops and casinos and cafes. Even four years before, there had been only a single shop, a restaurant, and a couple of hotels.
    “Well,” said Mary bitterly, “if the place is full of tourists now, it won’t be the same at all.”
    But the sun was shining, the sea tossed and sparkled, and the palm trees stood along the white beach. They carried their suitcases down the slope of the road to the Plaza, feeling at home.
    Outside the Plaza, they looked at each other. What had been a modest building was now an imposing one, surrounded by gay awnings and striped umbrellas. “Old Jaques is spreading himself,” said Tommy, and they walked up the neat gravel path to the foyer, looking for Jaques, who had welcomed them so often.
    At the office, Mary enquired in her stiff, correct French for Monsieur