The Golden Notebook. Doris Lessing

having commandeered some of Stanley’s beer.

      ‘Isn’t that a sad sight, dear Anna?’ said Paul, indicating the group of young men with Maryrose. ‘There they are, every one positively hang-dog with sex frustration, and there she is, beautiful as the day, and with not a thought for anyone but her dead brother. And there’s Jimmy, shoulder to shoulder with her, and he has no thought for anyone in the world but me. From time to time I tell myself I should go to bed with him, because why not? It would make him so happy. But the truth is, I’m reluctantly coming to the conclusion that not only am I not a homosexual, but that I never was. Because who do I yearn for, stretched on my lonely pillow? Do I yearn for Ted? Or even for Jimmy? Or for any of the gallant young heroes with whom I am so constantly surrounded? Not at all. I yearn for Maryrose. And I yearn for you. Preferably not both together of course.’

      George Hounslow came into the hall and went straight over to Maryrose. She was still on her chair, supported by her gallants. They gave way in all directions as he approached. Suddenly something frightening happened. George’s approach to women was clumsy, over-humble, and he might even stammer. (But his stammer always sounded as if he were doing it on purpose.) Meanwhile his deep-set brown eyes would be fixed on the women with an almost bullying intentness. And yet his manner would remain humble, apologetic. Women got flustered or angry, or laughed nervously. He was a sensualist of course. I mean, a real sensualist, not a man who played the role of one, as so many do, for one reason or another. He was a man who really, very much, needed women. I say this because there aren’t many men left who do. I mean civilized men, the affectionate non-sexual men of our civilization. George needed a woman to submit to him, he needed a woman to be under his spell physically. And men can no longer dominate women in this way without feeling guilty about it. Or very few of them. When George looked at a woman he was imagining her as she would be when he had fucked her into insensibility. And he was afraid it would show in his eyes. I did not understand this then, I did not understand why I got confused when he looked at me. But I’ve met a few men like him since, all with the same clumsy impatient humility, and with the same hidden arrogant power.

      George was standing below Maryrose who had her arms raised. Her shining hair was down over her shoulders, and she wore a sleeveless yellow dress. Her arms and legs were a smooth gold-brown. The airforce men were almost stupefied with her. And George, for a moment, had the same look of stunned immobility. George said something. She let her arms drop, stepped slowly down off the chair and now stood below him, looking up. He said something else. I remember the look on his face—chin poked forward aggressively, eyes intent, and a stupidly abased expression. Maryrose lifted her fist and jabbed it up at his face. As hard as she could—his face jerked back and he even staggered a step. Then, without looking at him, she climbed back on her chair and continued to hang garlands. Jimmy was smiling at George with an eager embarrassment, as if he were responsible for the blow. George came over to us, and he was again the willing clown, and Maryrose’s swains were back in their poses of helpless adoration.

      ‘Well,’ said Paul. ‘I’m very impressed. If Maryrose would hit me like that, I’d believe I was getting somewhere.’

      But George’s eyes were full of tears. ‘I’m an idiot,’ he said. ‘A dolt. Why should a beautiful girl like Maryrose look at me at all?’

      ‘Why indeed?’ said Paul.

      ‘I believe my nose is bleeding,’ said George, so as to have an excuse to blow it. Then he smiled. ‘I’m in trouble all around,’ he said. ‘And that bastard Willi is too busy with his bloody Russian to be interested.’

      ‘We’re all in trouble,’ said Paul. He was radiating a calm physical well-being and George said: ‘I hate young men of twenty. What sort of trouble could you conceivably be in?’

      ‘It’s a hard case,’ said Paul. ‘First, I’m twenty. That means I’m very nervous and ill-at-ease with women. Second, I’m twenty. I have all my life before me, and frankly the prospect often appals me. Thirdly, I’m twenty, and I’m in love with Anna and my heart is breaking.’

      George gave me a quick look to see if this were true, and I shrugged. George drank down a full tankard of beer without stopping, and said: ‘Anyway I’ve no right to care whether anyone’s in love with anyone. I’m a sod and a bastard. Well, that would be bearable, but I’m also a practising socialist. And I’m a swine. How can a swine be a socialist, that’s what I want to know?’ He was joking, but his eyes were full of tears again, and his body was clenched and tense with misery.

      Paul turned his head with his characteristic indolent charm, and let his wide blue eyes rest on George. I could positively hear him thinking: Oh, Lord, here’s some real trouble, I don’t even want to hear about it…he let himself slide to the floor, gave me the warmest and tenderest of smiles, and said: ‘Darling Anna, I love you more than my life, but I’m going to help Maryrose.’ His eyes said: Get rid of this gloomy idiot and I’ll come back. George scarcely noticed him going.

      ‘Anna,’ said George. ‘Anna, I don’t know what to do.’ And I felt just as Paul had: I don’t want to be involved with real trouble. I wanted to be off with the group hanging garlands, for now that Paul had become a member of it, it was suddenly gay. They were beginning to dance. Paul and Maryrose, even June Boothby, because there were more men than girls, and people were drifting up from the hotel, drawn by the dance music.

      ‘Let’s get out,’ said George. ‘All this youth and jollity. It depresses me unutterably. Besides, if you come too, your man will talk. It’s him I want to talk to.’

      ‘Thanks,’ I said, without much grace. But I went with him to the hotel verandah which was rapidly losing its occupants to the dance room. Willi patiently laid down his grammar, and said: ‘I suppose it’s too much to expect, to be allowed to work in peace.’

      We sat down, the three of us, our legs stretched into the sun, the rest of our bodies in the shade. The beer in our long glasses was light and golden and had spangles of sunlight in it. Then George began talking. What he was saying was so serious, but he spoke with a self-mocking jocularity, so that everything seemed ugly and jarring, and all the time the pulse of music came from the dance room and I wanted to be there.

      The facts were these. I’ve said his family life was difficult. It was intolerable. He had a wife and two sons and a daughter. He supported his wife’s parents and his own. I’ve been in that little house. It was intolerable even to visit. The young couple, or rather, the middle-aged couple who supported it, were squeezed out of any real life together by the four old people and the three children. His wife worked hard all day and so did he. The four old ones were all, in various ways, invalids and needed special care and diets and so on. In that living-room in the evening, the four played cards interminably, with much bickering and elderly petulance; they played for hours, in the centre of the room, and the children did their homework where they could, and George and his wife went to bed early, more often than not from sheer exhaustion, apart from the fact their bedroom was the only place they could have some privacy. That was the home. And then half the week George was off along the roads, sometimes working hundreds of miles away on the other side of the country. He loved his wife, and she loved him, but he felt permanently guilty because managing that household would by itself have been hard work for any woman, let alone having to work as a secretary as well. None of them had had a holiday in years, and they were all permanently short of money, and miserable bickering went on about sixpences and shillings.

      Meanwhile, George had his affairs. And he liked African women particularly. About five years before he was in Mashopi for the night and had been very much taken with the wife of the Boothbys’ cook. This woman had become his mistress. ‘If you can use such a word,’ said Willi, but George insisted, and without any consciousness of humour: ‘Well why not? Surely if one doesn’t like the colour bar, she’s entitled to the proper word, as a measure of respect, so to speak.’

      George often travelled through Mashopi. Last year he had seen the group of children and one of them was lighter than the others and looked like George. He had asked the woman, and she had said yes, she believed it was his child. She was not making an issue of it.

      ‘Well?’