The Golden Notebook. Doris Lessing

would you say that’s putting it too strongly, hmmmm?’

      Richard flushed, a dark ugly flush, and turned back to Molly, saying to her: ‘All right, I’m not saying you deliberately did something you shouldn’t.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘But what the hell’s wrong with the boy? He never passed an exam decently, he wouldn’t go to Oxford, and now he sits around, brooding and…’

      Both Anna and Molly laughed out, at the word brooding.

      ‘The boy worries me,’ said Richard. ‘He really does.’

      ‘He worries me,’ said Molly reasonably. ‘And that’s what we’re going to discuss, isn’t it?’

      ‘I keep offering him things. I invite him to all kinds of things where he’d meet people who’d do him good.’

      Molly laughed again.

      ‘All right, laugh and sneer. But things being as they are, we can’t afford to laugh.’

      ‘When you said, do him good, I imagined good emotionally. I always forget you’re such a pompous little snob.’

      ‘Words don’t hurt anyone,’ said Richard, with unexpected dignity. ‘Call me names if you like. You’ve lived one way, I’ve lived another. All I’m saying is, I’m in a position to offer that boy—well, anything he likes. And he’s simply not interested. If he were doing anything constructive with your lot, it’d be different.’

      ‘You always talk as if I try to put Tommy against you.’

      ‘Of course you do.’

      ‘If you mean, that I’ve always said what I thought about the way you live, your values, your success game, that sort of thing, of course I have. Why should I be expected to shut up about everything I believe in? But I’ve always said, there’s your father, you must get to know that world, it exists, after all.’

      ‘Big of you.’

      ‘Molly’s always urging him to see more of you,’ said Anna. ‘I know she has. And so have I.’

      Richard nodded impatiently, suggesting that what they said was unimportant.

      ‘You’re so stupid about children, Richard. They don’t like being split,’ said Molly. ‘Look at the people he knows with me—artists, writers, actors and so on.’

      ‘And politicians. Don’t forget the comrades.’

      ‘Well, why not? He’ll grow up knowing something about the world he lives in, which is more than you can say about your three—Eton and Oxford, it’s going to be, for all of them. Tommy knows all kinds. He won’t see the world in terms of the little fishpond of the upper class.’

      Anna said: ‘You’re not going to get anywhere if you two go on like this.’ She sounded angry; she tried to right it with a joke: ‘What it amounts to is, you two should never have married, but you did, or at least you shouldn’t have had a child, but you did—’ Her voice sounded angry again, and again she softened it, saying, ‘Do you realize you two have been saying the same things over and over for years? Why don’t you accept that you’ll never agree about anything and be done with it?’

      ‘How can we be done with it when there’s Tommy to consider?’ said Richard, irritably, very loud.

      ‘Do you have to shout?’ said Anna. ‘How do you know he hasn’t heard every word? That’s probably what’s wrong with him. He must feel such a bone of contention.’

      Molly promptly went to the door, opened it, listened. ‘Nonsense, I can hear him typing upstairs.’ She came back saying, ‘Anna, you make me tired when you get English and tight-lipped.’

      ‘I hate loud voices.’

      ‘Well I’m Jewish and I like them.’

      Richard again visibly suffered. ‘Yes—and you call yourself Miss Jacobs. Miss. In the interests of your right to independence and your own identity—whatever that might mean. But Tommy has Miss Jacobs for a mother.’

      ‘It’s not the miss you object to,’ said Molly cheerfully. ‘It’s the Jacobs. Yes it is. You always were anti-semitic.’

      ‘Oh hell,’ said Richard, impatient.

      ‘Tell me, how many Jews do you number among your personal friends?’

      ‘According to you I don’t have personal friends, I only have business friends.’

      ‘Except your girl-friends of course. I’ve noticed with interest that three of your women since me have been Jewish.’

      ‘For God’s sake,’ said Anna. ‘I’m going home.’ And she actually got off the window-sill. Molly laughed, got up and pushed her down again. ‘You’ve got to stay. Be chairman, we obviously need one.’

      ‘Very well,’ said Anna, determined. ‘I will. So stop wrangling. What’s it all about, anyway? The fact is, we all agree, we all give the same advice, don’t we?’

      ‘Do we?’ said Richard.

      ‘Yes. Molly thinks you should offer Tommy a job in one of your things.’ Like Molly, Anna spoke with automatic contempt of Richard’s world, and he grinned in irritation.

      ‘One of my things? And you agree, Molly?’

      ‘If you’d give me a chance to say so, yes.’

      ‘There we are,’ said Anna. ‘No grounds even for argument.’

      Richard now poured himself a whisky, looking humorously patient; and Molly waited, humorously patient.

      ‘So it’s all settled?’ said Richard.

      ‘Obviously not,’ said Anna. ‘Because Tommy has to agree.’

      ‘So we’re back where we started. Molly, may I know why you aren’t against your precious son being mixed up with the hosts of mammon?’

      ‘Because I’ve brought him up in such a way that—he’s a good person. He’s all right.’

      ‘So he can’t be corrupted by me?’ Richard spoke with controlled anger, smiling. ‘And may I ask where you get your extraordinary assurance about your values—they’ve taken quite a knock in the last two years, haven’t they?’

      The two women exchanged glances, which said: He was bound to say it, let’s get it over with.

      ‘It hasn’t occurred to you that the real trouble with Tommy is that he’s been surrounded half his life with communists or so-called communists—most of the people he’s known have been mixed up in one way and another. And now they’re all leaving the Party, or have left—don’t you think it might have had some effect?’

      ‘Well, obviously,’ said Molly.

      ‘Obviously,’ said Richard, grinning in irritation. ‘Just like that—but what price your precious values—Tommy’s been brought up on the beauty and freedom of the glorious Soviet fatherland.’

      ‘I’m not discussing politics with you, Richard.’

      ‘No,’ said Anna, ‘of course you shouldn’t discuss politics.’

      ‘Why not, when it’s relevant?’

      ‘Because you don’t discuss them,’ said Molly. ‘You simply use slogans out of the newspapers.’

      ‘Well can I put it this way? Two years ago you and Anna were rushing out to meetings and organizing everything in sight…’

      ‘I wasn’t, anyhow,’ said Anna.

      ‘Don’t quibble. Molly certainly was. And now what? Russia’s in the doghouse and what price the comrades now? Most of them having nervous breakdowns or making a lot of money, as far as I can make out.’