Landlocked. Doris Lessing

That’s all right then.’ And he shut his eyes again.

      Wild self-pity filled his wife. She had not smoked through the war, except for those five days – could it be that Jonathan’s arm had taken so long to heal because – no, God could not be so unkind, she knew that. She felt it. Yet now her husband, whose every mood, gesture, pang, look she knew, could interpret, could sense and foresee before it happened – this man knew so little, cared so little for her, that he did not even remark when she had started to smoke again.

      There was a long silence. She sat on the bottom of her unmade bed, smoking deliciously, while her foot jerked restlessly up and down, and he lay, eyes shut.

      He said, eyes shut: ‘I’m sorry, old girl, I know you are disappointed about the Victory thing.’

      She said, moved to her depths: ‘It’s all right.’

      He said: ‘But they’re damned silly, aren’t they, I mean, Victory Parades … in the Great Unmentionable, medals, that sort of thing, it was all just … I don’t think I’ll risk haddock, old girl. Just let me have a boiled egg.’

      She immediately rose to attend to it.

      ‘Well, don’t rush off so. You’re always rushing about. And you’ve forgotten my injection.’

      ‘No, I haven’t. I’ve had a letter from Jonathan.’

      ‘Oh, have you?’

      ‘Yes. He says his arm is clearing up at last.’ She could not bring herself to say: He’ll be coming home soon, thus putting an end to her brief, and after all, harmless dream, about England.

      ‘He’s a good kid. Nice to have him back again,’ said Mr Quest, drowsily. He would be asleep again, unfed, if she did not hurry.

      ‘When is Matty coming?’

      ‘She was here last night, but you were asleep.’

      She boiled the egg, four minutes, took the tray in, gave him his injection, sat with him while he ate, chatted about Jonathan, gave him a cigarette and sat by while he smoked it, then settled him down for his morning’s sleep.

      She then telephoned Mrs Maynard: so sorry, but he isn’t well enough. Mrs Maynard said it was too bad, but reminded Mrs Quest that there was a committee meeting tomorrow night to consider the problems arising from Peace, and she did so hope Mrs Quest could attend. Mrs Quest’s being again sprang into hopeful delight at the idea of going to the meeting. She had managed to attend two of them: the atmosphere of appropriately dressed ladies, all devoted to their fellow human beings, ‘the right kind of’ lady, banded together against – but there was no need to go into what right-minded people were against – was just what she needed. But on the other evenings she had been invited, her husband had been ill, and she could not go.

      Mrs Maynard now said: ‘And how’s that girl of yours, what’s her name again?’

      ‘You mean Martha?’ said Mrs Quest, as if there might be other daughters.

      ‘Yes, Martha. Martha Knowell, Hesse, whatever she calls herself now – would she like to join us, what do you think?’

      This was casual, thrown away. And Mrs Quest did not at once reply. That her daughter was noticed, singled out, by the great Mrs Maynard, well that was pleasant, it was a compliment to herself. But that her daughter should be invited to work on this committee, with ‘the right sort of people’ – well it was cruel. It was crueller than ever Mrs Maynard could guess. For one thing, it was likely Matty would treat this invitation with the sort of ribald scorn that – well, which Mr Quest, in the days when he was more himself, would have used to greet invitations to Remembrance Days. But Mrs Quest did not wish to make this comparison. And for another thing, Mrs Quest felt with every instinct that the committee in Mrs Maynard’s silken drawing-room was a bastion against everything that Martha represented. She could not say this, of course, to Mrs Maynard, but she might perhaps hint …

      She said half-laughing, on a rueful note, one mother commiserating with another about the charming peccadilloes of the young: ‘Of course, Matty’s awfully scatterbrained, awfully wrong-headed.’

      Mrs Maynard said briskly: ‘All the more reason she should be given something useful to do, don’t you think? Well, I hope to see one or another of you, if not both, tomorrow.’ She rang off, leaving Mrs Quest with the most improbable suspicion which she could not make head or tail of – that Mrs Maynard would be even happier to see Martha than to see herself. It was unfair. It was brutal. Yes, it was really cruel – like the dream. It had the gratuitous, unnecessary cruelty of her dream. Mrs Quest, who had decided that the cigarette would be the last until Jonathan’s safe homecoming, now lit another, and sat by the radio patting the little white dog. On the flowered rug, which slipped about crookedly over polished green linoleum, lay the fragment of white bone. The little dog lay with his nose to it, in wistful remembrance of better bones, juicier morsels.

      ‘Disgusting,’ said Mrs Quest, in real revulsion from the clean, bleached fragment of skeleton. She said in a softer ‘humorous’ voice: ‘Really, Kaiser, you don’t bring bones into drawing-rooms!’ She flipped it out of the window with a look of disgust. The little dog rushed after it and brought it back, playfully, to lie at his mistress’s feet. But she, in a rush of anger, threw it right out of the window and over the veranda wall. This time the animal sensed that he, or at least his precious bone, was not wanted, and he vanished with it behind a shrub. Mrs Quest sat alone, listening to the radio. It seemed to her that for years, for all her life, she had sat, forced to be quiet, listening to history being made. She, whose every instinct was for warm participation, was never allowed to be present. Somewhere else people danced all night, revolving in a great flower-decked room, watching the Dancer revolve, her cruel smile concealed behind the mask of a beautiful young woman. Somewhere else, unreachably far away, a great chestnut horse rose like an arrow over the dangerous fences of half a dozen leafy English counties, and on the horse’s back was the masked Rider. Three red roses, three perfect red roses, with the dew fresh on them … Mrs Quest went to the bedroom to see if her husband was awake. He lay in a dead sleep, although he had had no drug since last night. Just as well he had not gone to the Victory Parade. The servants were cleaning silver, scrubbing potatoes, sweeping steps, snipping dead blooms off rose bushes. The big house, with its many rooms, was all ready for people, for the business of life; and yet in it was a dying man, his nurse, and the two black men and the black child who looked after them. Well, soon Jonathan would come home, and then he would get married, and his children could come and stay and fill these rooms. Or perhaps Martha would have another baby and she would need … Mrs Maynard wanted her on the committee.

      On the radio, the first stirrings of the Victory occasion could be heard. Horses’ hooves. Drums – real drums, not a tom-tom. The commentator spoke of the brilliant day, and of the slow approach of the Governor and his wife.

      Mrs Quest heard this, saw it even, with a smile that already had the softness of nostalgia. This little town, this shallow little town, that was set so stark and direct on the African soil – it could not feed her, nourish her … an occasion where the representatives of Majesty were only ‘the Governor and the Governor’s wife’ – no, it wouldn’t do. And the troops would have black faces, or at least, some of them would be black, and the dust clouds that eddied about the marching feet of the bands would be red … Mrs Quest was no longer in Africa, she was in Whitehall, by the Cenotaph, and beside her stood the handsome man who was her husband, and the personage who bent to lay the wreath was Royal.

      The short hour of ritual was too short. Mrs Quest came back to herself, to this country she could never feel to be her own, empty and afraid. Now she must go and wake her husband – because he couldn’t be allowed to sleep all the time, he must be kept awake for an hour or so. He must be washed, and fed again and soon the doctor would come. And for the rest of that day, so it would be, and the day after, and the day after – she would not get to Mrs Maynard’s committee tomorrow night, and in any case, Mrs Maynard did not want her, she wanted Martha.

      Mrs Quest went to the telephone and told Martha that Mr