The Four-Gated City. Doris Lessing

would be no doubt at all of how she ought to behave, to dress. She had always resisted such a setting, or the thought of it. If she took this job, then it must be for a very short time. She felt attacked by the house – claimed. Besides, she was out of place. And so, she noted, was Phoebe, who was dowdy, seemed clumsy, where she, Martha, was strident.

      A man came down the stairs, half-seen until he turned on a light. He was dark, and of middle-height; but he was strongly built, and his face strongly featured, so that he gave, at once, an impression of force and of height. A presence: a strong one. But then he spoke, and what came over was anxiety, worry, even annoyance.

      ‘How very good of you … let me …’ here he took Phoebe’s coat over his arm, and Martha’s suitcase from her hand. ‘Now let me see. Really, Phoebe, it is so very kind of you to take so much trouble.’ He was giving them no more than the courtesy he felt that he should. Either something had happened since Phoebe had telephoned half an hour before, or he had taken a dislike to Martha on sight. At which Martha reacted – and saw herself doing it – with the childish: All right then, I don’t think much of you either! For she didn’t. The colonial in her named his politeness insincerity, since he was so clearly angry about something; and the worry that he radiated was alerting her nerves for flight. She wondered how quickly she could make excuses, while Phoebe reclaimed her coat, saying she had work to do and must leave at once.

      ‘No, do stay, do, Phoebe,’ he almost cried, his face anguished in his effort to smile. ‘Let me see now, where …’ He opened a door off the hall, displaying a drawing-room. ‘I’m sure Margaret wouldn’t mind my using …’

      Martha understood that she was about to be interviewed, by a man who had no taste, either for her, or for interviews, she could not decide which, and he was trying to decide on an appropriate place for it.

      ‘I’m very sorry,’ said Phoebe, reproving his lack of faith in her busy-ness. ‘Let me know how things go,’ she said to Martha. ‘Because if you and Mark don’t suit each other, then I’m sure there’s plenty of work that needs to be done.’ She went.

      Martha and Mark Coldridge stood in the hall, left to their own decisions.

      ‘You aren’t the young lady from Birmingham?’ ‘No, should I be?’

      ‘Oh, well then …’ He held the door open and she entered the long, subdued, beautiful room which looked as if no one had been in it for months.

      ‘For some weeks now Phoebe has been urging me on to some protégée of hers from Birmingham. Labour Party or something.’

      He was looking at her more closely. She stood, to be inspected; examining him. But all she felt was: here are claims. Not only from him, the man, very strong ones, though she did not know how to define them; but from the house, the furniture – even this area of London.

      ‘Look,’ said Martha, almost becoming ‘Matty’ in her desperation to escape. ‘There’s been a mistake. You’re in a false position. I’m so sorry – I’ll leave.’ And she was on her way to the door.

      ‘No. Wait. We’ll go upstairs,’ he said, thus making it clear that Margaret’s room, whoever Margaret was, had been chosen probably to put off, or intimidate, the young lady from Birmingham, or Phoebe – at any rate, the room was seen as a kind of no-man’s land or defensive area. She followed him upstairs to a small room on the first floor, which being full of books and papers and comfortable clutter, made it easier for Martha to sit down.

      ‘Who are you then?’

      She replied, giving him minimum information, resisting impulses to reply as she had done to other strangers, I’m Patty Jones, I’m Joan Baker, I’m the mother of twins or the sister of a sailor who …

      ‘And what kind of job did Phoebe say it was? What are you expecting?’

      This so far away from the suavity which was one of his inbuilt attributes, indicated so much anxiety, defensiveness, that again she was on the point of running away. She examined his face before replying: a dark, strong, well-featured face. Handsome? As handsome as it did: it was all clenched up with watchful tension.

      ‘You needed some sort of help with a book, but I don’t really think …’

      ‘I see.’ He was more relaxed. He smiled. ‘Well, but don’t go. Because I do.’ ‘What sort of help?’

      And now a look which, if he had not been a man to whom such devices were foreign, if he had been anybody else, Martha would have said was cunning. No: but here was something hidden, tucked away.

      ‘Well. I’ve a deadline – that’s the word they use for it. And I’ve got to …’ He let all that drift away. Sitting half-way on to a writing-table, his legs held up, as if they rested on a stool, or chair – but they rested on air, he looked at her as if around a corner. Everything was out of scale, disproportionate – discordant. Martha understood she was repelled, not by him, whom she could say she liked; but by a situation. There was one. Anything here, in this house, she understood, would be the absolute opposite of everything she had hoped to find.

      She rallied and said firmly: ‘I am looking for a job for a limited period. I don’t want to be tied down to anything. And I did hope, regular hours.’

      His face had remained steady during the first condition, but it definitely darkened at her last.

      ‘Oh, very reasonable of course. But I was rather hoping … you see I work irregularly myself. Mostly at nights. I’ve got an office to go to in the day …’

      Here there was a commotion outside, as of an entrance being set or arranged: then a firm knock, and then, before Mark could say anything, there came in a lady, holding a small boy by the hand.

      ‘Ah!’ said Mark, hopelessly. He got off the desk. To the small boy he said: ‘Well old chap?’ and the child, a round, dark, very pale boy with extraordinarily defensive dark eyes pathetically smiled. He looked around for somewhere appropriate to sit, and sat, while the woman watched to see if he did it right.

      ‘This is my mother,’ said Mark. ‘Margaret Patten. And this is my son, Francis. And this is Mrs Hesse.’

      Martha felt that she knew the lady only too well; since she was large, light, buoyant, and seemed much younger than she must be to be this man’s mother. She wore an ample flowered silk dress and carried gloves, which she now laid down on Mark’s desk and, without looking at them, patted and fitted into a finger-matching pair one above the other, as if they still lay on a display counter, or as if she wished they did. Meanwhile she took in a variety of physical facts about Martha, age, dress, presence, style, and could be heard thinking loudly: Hesse? German? A German name? She’s not German, no. But she’s not English either … Mark looked increasingly annoyed.

      ‘Well, I do so hope that you’ve found someone at last,’ she announced. ‘Won’t you sit down?’ she said to the child, who had got up, to come closer to his father. He sat again, promptly, his feet side by side, watching the hostile grown-up world from which, so those eyes said so terribly clearly, he could expect nothing that wasn’t painful. Martha found her heart was aching. That little boy Francis was unbearably painful. Meanwhile, Mrs Patten was most frankly summing her up; while her son Mark watched her do it and resented it.

      ‘Mrs Hesse has only just this moment arrived and we have not agreed about anything at all.’

      ‘Oh,’ said Margaret Patten, smiling at Martha across her son, as if behind his back.

      ‘In fact we are engaged in a sort of mutual interview.’

      ‘Oh well then, we must leave you to it, mustn’t we, Francis?’ She held out her hand and Francis instantly rose to grasp it.

      ‘If she does stay,’ said Mrs Patten, ‘it’s lucky the big room will be empty for a bit – that is, if dear Sally can bear to keep away!’

      He said nothing. Martha said nothing. She was angry for a variety of reasons: mostly pressures from the past, and strong ones. She resented Mrs Patten