The Sun Between Their Feet: Collected African Stories Volume Two. Doris Lessing
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I can tell you, because Mom was very fat, and she wore proper corsets these days, except just before the rains when it was so hot. I remember the first time the corsets came from the store, and she put them on, Moy had to lace her in, and Mom laughed so much Moy couldn’t do the laces, and anyway she was cross because Mom laughed, and she said to me afterwards, ‘It’s disgusting, letting yourself go – I’m not going to let myself go.’
So it would have been more than my life was worth to tell her she was looking a bit fatter already, or to tell her anything at all, because she sat smiling on the edge of her bed, and when I said, ‘What did he say, Moy?’ she just turned her head and made her eyes thin and black at me, and I saw I’d better go to sleep. But I knew something she didn’t know I knew, because she had some dead jacaranda flowers in her hair, so that meant she and Greg were at the water-tanks. There were only two jacaranda trees at our station, and they were at the big water-tanks for the engines, so if they were at the water-tanks, they must have been kissing, because it was romantic at the tanks. It was the end of October, and the jacarandas were shedding, and the tanks looked as if they were standing in pools of blue water.
Well next morning Moy was already up when I woke, and she was singing, and she began ironing her muslin dress that she made for last Christmas, even before breakfast.
Mom said nothing; Dad kept rustling his newspaper; and I wouldn’t have dared open my mouth. Besides, I wanted to find out what Greg said. After breakfast, we sat around, because of its being Sunday, and Dad didn’t have to be at the station office because there weren’t any trains on Sundays. And Dad kept grinning at Moira and saying: ‘I think it’s going to rain,’ and she pretended she didn’t know what he meant, until at last she jumped when he said it and turned herself and looked at him just the way she did the day before, and that was when he got red in the face, and said: ‘Can’t you take a joke these days?’ and Moira looked away from him with her eyebrows up, and Mom sighed, and then he said, very cross, ‘I’ll leave you all to it, just tell me when you’re in a better temper,’ and with this he took the newspaper inside to the bedroom.
Anybody could see it wasn’t going to rain properly that day, because the clouds weren’t thunder-heads, but great big white ones, all silver and hardly any black in them.
Moy didn’t eat any dinner, but went on sitting on the veranda, wearing her dress that was muslin, white with red spots, and big puffed sleeves, and a red sash around her waist.
After dinner, time was very slow, and it was a long time before Greg came down off the Jacksons’ veranda, and came walking slowly along the gum-tree avenue. I was watching Moy’s face, and she couldn’t keep the smile off it. She got paler and paler until he got underneath our veranda, and she looking at him so that I had goose-flesh all over.
Then he gave a jump up our steps to the veranda, and said: ‘Hoy, Moy, how’s it?’ I thought she was going to fall right off the veranda wall, and her face had gone all different again.
‘How are you, Gregory?’ said Moira, all calm and proud.
‘Oh, skidding along,’ he said, and I could see he felt awkward, because he hadn’t looked at her once, and his skin was all red around the freckles. And she didn’t say anything, and she was looking at him as if she couldn’t believe it was him.
‘I hope the rain will keep off for the braavleis,’ said Mom, in her visiting voice, and she looked hard at me, and I had to get up and go inside with her. But I could see Greg didn’t want us to go at all, and I could see Moy knew it; her eyes were blue again, a pale thin blue, and her mouth was small.
Well Mom went into the kitchen to finally make the sausage rolls, and I went into our bedroom, because I could see what went on on the veranda from behind the curtains.
Greg sat on the veranda wall, and whistled, he was whistling, I love you, yes I do; and Moira was gazing at him as if he were a Christmas beetle she had just noticed; and then he began whistling. Three little words, and suddenly Moira got down off the wall, and stretched herself like a cat when it’s going to walk off somewhere, and Greg said, ‘Skinny!’
At this she made her eyebrows go up, and I’ve never seen such a look.
And he was getting redder in the face, and he said: ‘You’d better not wear that dress to the braavleis, it’s going to rain.’
Moira didn’t say a word for what seemed about half an hour, and then she said, in that lazy sort of voice, ‘Well, Greg Jackson, if you’ve changed your mind it’s okay with me.’
‘Changed my mind?’ he said, very quick, and he looked scared; and she looked scared, and she asked: ‘What did you say all those things for last night?’
‘Say what?’ he asked, scareder than ever, and I could see he was trying to remember what he’d said.
Moira was just looking at him, and I wouldn’t have liked to be Greg Jackson just then, I can tell you. Then she walked off the veranda, letting her skirts swish slowly, and through the kitchen, and into our room, and then she sat on the bed.
‘I’m not going to the braavleis, Mom,’ she said, in that sweet slow voice like Mom when she’s got visitors and she wishes they’d go.
Mom just sighed, and slapped the dough about on the kitchen table. Dad made the springs of the bed creak, and he said half aloud: ‘Oh my God preserve me!’
Mom left the pastry, and gave a glare through the door of their bedroom at Dad, and then came into our room. There was Moira sitting all lumped up on her bed as if she’d got the stitch, and her face was like pastry dough. Mom said nothing to Moira, but went on to the veranda Greg was still sitting there looking sick.
‘Well, son,’ Mom said, in her easy voice, the voice she had when she was tired of everything, but keeping up, ‘Well, son, I think Moy’s got a bit of a headache from the heat.’
As I’ve said, I wasn’t sweet on Greg that holidays but if I was Moy I would have been, the way he looked just then, all sad but grown-up, like a man, when he said: ‘Mrs Hughes, I don’t know what I’ve done.’ Mom just smiled, and sighed. ‘I can’t marry, Mrs Hughes, I’ve got five years’ training ahead of me.’
Mom smiled and said, ‘Of course, son, of course.’
I was lying on my bed with my stamps, and Moira was on her bed, listening, and the way she smiled gave me a bad shiver.
‘Listen to him,’ she said, in a loud voice, ‘Marry? Why does everyone go on about marrying? They’re nuts. I wouldn’t marry Greg Jackson anyway if he was the last man on a desert island.’
Outside, I could hear Mom sigh hard, then her voice quick and low, and then the sound of Greg’s feet crunching off over the cinders of the path.
Then Mom came back into our room, and Moira said, all despairing, ‘Mom, what made you say that about marrying?’
‘He said it, my girl, I didn’t.’
‘Marrying!’ said Moira, laughing hard.
Mom said: ‘What did he say then, you talked about him saying something?’
‘Oh you all make me sick,’ said Moira, and lay down on her bed, turned away from us. Mom hitched her head at me, and we went out. By then it was five in the afternoon and the cars would be leaving at six, so Mom finished the sausage rolls in the oven, and packed the food, and then she took off her apron and went across to Jordan’s house. Moira did not see her go, because she was still lost to the world in her pillow.
Soon Mom came back and put the food into the car. Then Jordan came over with Beth from the store and said to me, ‘Betty, my Mom says, will you and Moy come in our car to the braavleis, because your car’s full of food.’
‘I will,’ I said, ‘but Moira’s got a headache.’
But at this moment Moira called out from our room, ‘Thanks, Jordan, I’d like to come.’
So Mom called to Pop, and they went off