The Golden Notebook. Doris Lessing

after all.’

      ‘No, I’m not. Those words don’t mean anything to me. I’m not interested in politics at all.’

      At which he laughed, but said, with an affection that touched her: If you had your way, building the new Jerusalem, it would be like killing a plant by suddenly moving it into the wrong soil. There’s a continuity, some kind of invisible logic to what happens. You’d kill the spirit of people if you had your way.’

      ‘A continuity isn’t necessarily right, just because it’s a continuity.’

      ‘Yes, Ella, it is. It is. Believe me, it is.’

      This was so personal, that it was her turn to glance, surprised, at him, and decide to say nothing. He is saying, she thought, that the split in himself is so painful that sometimes he wonders if it was worth it…and she turned away to look out of the window again. They were passing through another village. This was better than the last: there was an old centre, of mellow rooted houses, warm in the sunshine. But around the centre, ugly new houses and even in the main square, a Woolworth’s, indistinguishable from all the others, and a fake Tudor pub. There would be a string of such villages, one after another. Ella said: ‘Let’s get away from the villages, where there isn’t anything at all.’

      This time his look at her, which she noted, but did not understand until afterwards, was frankly startled. He did not say anything for a time, but when a small road appeared, wandering off through deep sun-lit trees, he turned off into it. He asked: ‘Where’s your father living?’

      ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I see what you’re getting at. Well he’s not like that at all.’

      ‘Like what, I didn’t say anything?’

      ‘No, but you imply it all the time. He’s ex-Indian army. But he isn’t like the caricatures. He got unfit for the army and was in the administration for a time. And he’s not like that either.’

      ‘So what is he like?’

      She laughed. The sound held affection which was spontaneous and genuine, and a bitterness which she did not know was there. ‘He bought an old house when he left India. It’s in Cornwall. It’s small and isolated. It’s very pretty. Old—you know. He’s an isolated man, he always has been. He reads a lot. He knows a lot about philosophy and religion—Buddha, for instance.’