Doris Lessing - The Sun Between Their Feet - Collected African Stories Volume Two

‘But how do you know, Molly? You could live next to someone for fifty years and still not know. Perhaps he’s got something that gives him hell when he’s alone, like all the rest of us?’

‘No, I don’t think so, Mr Farquar.’

‘Molly,’ he said, appealing suddenly, and very exasperated. ‘You’re too hard on yourself, Molly.’ She didn’t say anything.

He said: ‘Listen, why don’t you get away for a while, get yourself down to the sea, this altitude drives us all quietly crazy. You get down off the altitude for a bit.’

She still said nothing, and he lowered his voice, and I could imagine how my mother’s face would have gone stiff and cold had she heard what he said: ‘And have a good time while you’re there. Have a good time and let go a bit.’

‘But, Mr Farquar. I don’t want a good time.’ The words, a good time, she used as if they could have nothing to do with her.

‘If we can’t have what we want in this world, then we should take what we can get.’

‘It wouldn’t be right,’ she said at last slowly. ‘I know people have different ideas, and I don’t want to press mine on anyone.’

‘But Molly -’ he began, exasperated, or so it sounded, and then he was silent.

From where I sat I could hear the grass chair creaking: she was getting out of it. ‘I’ll take your advice,’ she said. ‘I’ll get down to the sea and I’ll take the children with me. The two younger ones.’

‘To hell with the kids for once. Take your old man with you and see that Emmy Pritt doesn’t go with you this time.’

‘Mr Farquar,’ she said, ‘if Mr Slatter wants Emmy Pritt, he can have her. He can have either one or the other of us. But not both. If I took him to the sea he would be over at her place ten minutes after we got back.’

‘Ah, Molly, you women can be hell. Have some pity on him for once.’

‘Pity? Mr Slatter’s a man who needs nobody’s pity. But thank you for your good advice, Mr Farquar. You are always very kind, you and Mrs Farquar.’

And she said goodbye to my father, and when I came forward she kissed me and asked me to come and see her soon, and she went to the station to get the stores.

And so Mrs Slatter went on living. George Andrews bought his own farm and married and the wedding was at the Slatters’. Later on Emmy Pritt got sick again and had another operation and died. It was a cancer. Mr Slatter was ill for the first time in his life from grief, and Mrs Slatter took him to the sea, by themselves, leaving the children, because they were grown-up anyway. For this was years later, and Mrs Slatter’s hair had gone grey and she was fat and old, as I had heard her say she wanted to be.

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