The Four-Gated City. Doris Lessing

you suggest?’

      Another short laugh. ‘As things stand, your mother, my wife, is the mother of a man who has escaped behind the Iron Curtain, suspected of being a spy, and of another who refuses to dissociate himself from him.’

      ‘But he happens to be my brother,’ said Mark. Again, he sounded incredulous. It was precisely here: what he could not believe was happening, or could happen – to him.

      ‘But what can they expect me to do?’ he asked Martha again. And he listened with his wide fascinated look as if this time he might understand what previously he had failed to understand.

      She said, again: ‘They expect you to make a public announcement that you repudiate your brother and all his works. And to make a public affirmation of loyalty to this country.’

      ‘But good God,’ he said softly, ‘I mean – but they can’t – but this is this country, it’s not … I mean, the Americans or the Russians or people like that, but not He was looking at her with dislike.

      ‘Don’t tell me that’s what you think I should do! He’s my brother,’ he insisted. As if it were she who was his enemy. ‘You keep asking me what they want.’

      His eyes were hot and dark with refusal. He sat locked in himself. Then he understood he was making an enemy of an ally, smiled, though stiffly, and poured her a brandy.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

      Next morning Margaret rang. It was very early. Mark was half-asleep. He came up to Martha’s room to say that he thought his mother had gone mad. She had telephoned about the basement and about Mrs Ashe.

      They could not understand it. Martha said that this was perhaps Margaret’s way of preserving normality. She was probably right: to worry about letting basements was better than what they were all doing. It was even reassuring of her.

      As they spoke, the telephone rang again. Mark went to it. Mark did not come back, so Martha went down to him. He was sitting, looking very white, by the telephone.

      Margaret’s second call was hysterical. She had shouted that Mark was ruining her life. The very least he could do was to have Mrs Ashe. On being asked please, to explain Mrs Ashe, Margaret had muttered, after a silence, something about Hilary Marsh – restoring confidence in that quarter. And at last it had all become clear to Mark, but so suddenly that he had simply put down the receiver.

      Hilary Marsh, the correct unnoticed gentleman from the election party, had been Margaret’s friend for many years. He was in the Foreign Office. Weeks ago he had been to Margaret, to ask what she knew about her son Colin’s connections. Margaret knew nothing. She had said that Mark did, but Mark would never talk to her, he was always so wrong-headed, always had been. Hilary Marsh had suggested that it might be a good idea if a very old friend of his, Mrs Ashe, lived in the basement. She was a sensible sort of woman, and could keep an eye on Mark for both of them.

      Mark having digested this, he rang back his mother to ask how she proposed to explain this attempt to spy on him. She said, cold: ‘You have no right to talk to me about spying!’ Then, as he remained silent, she had screamed: ‘You’ve ruined my life. You’ve ruined John’s career!’ And had rung off.

      It turned out that John Patten, in his capacity as representative of British Culture, had been going on a lecture tour to America. But the Americans had not been happy about this, since he was the husband of the woman who had given birth to Colin Coldridge. They had made unofficial and tactful representations to the body who employed John Patten. This body had been excessively apologetic and had quite understood America’s feelings in the matter. After a long committee meeting, someone had suggested that it would be better if nothing were made public, but that the lecture tour on Contemporary British Literature might be postponed. Everyone agreed. The chairman telephoned John Patten while the meeting was still in progress. He asked them to wait while he thought it over – which would only take a few minutes. He asked Margaret what she thought. Margaret rang her old friend Hilary Marsh, who thought this procedure would be best for everyone concerned.

      Mark offered these facts to Martha; sat waiting for her to explain them. He looked extremely ill. He was trembling. He kept dropping his cigarettes. The gap between what a Coldridge believed was possible, and what was happening, had widened to the point that he was in a kind of collapse. Martha suggested he should go back to bed and stay there that day. He went.

      It was time to get Paul up. He was sitting cross-legged on his pillow, waiting for her. He said: ‘Am I going to live here now?’

      ‘Yes, I think so.’

      ‘I don’t want to.’

      ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to, Paul.’ This was almost cool: her mind was with Mark, so near a breakdown. It was not a tone anyone had used with Paul before.

      He gave her a very long thoughtful stare. Then he got out of bed. Sally’s child had not been good at dressing himself. He dressed himself, slowly but competently, while she sat and watched.

      ‘Now we’ll have breakfast,’ she said. Obedient, he came down to the kitchen. He sat, obedient, while she cooked. He was looking at the window, which showed nothing. Martha went to see if the attendant journalists were there. But no, only a box of groceries left on the step by the delivery people.

      She was about to open the door to fetch them in when Paul said: ‘I want to go for a walk.’

      ‘We can’t go for walks yet,’ said Martha.

      ‘You don’t want them to tell me my daddy is dead,’ he said. Then he pushed the plate of eggs off the table, laughed as it crashed, and ran upstairs crying to his bedroom.

      Martha opened the door to get in the groceries, and found Miles Tangin there.

      ‘Good morning,’ he said affably.

      She tried to shut the door, but his foot was in it.

      ‘Nothing new to tell me?’ he inquired.

      ‘Nothing.’

      ‘May I ask who you are?’

      ‘Certainly, I’m working for Mr Coldridge.’

      ‘Living here?’ he inquired. There were two expressions on his face, superimposed, as it were. At any rate, he managed to convey simultaneously a camaraderie of understanding for her situation: he was a man of the world, after all! – and the salaciousness with which he proposed to tell the story to the public. ‘What’s your name?’

      ‘Find out. It’ll give you something to do.’

      ‘Come, come,’ he said. ‘You’re not in any position to use that tone, you know.’

      He was now propped against the door-frame, holding the door open. He was looking past her at the mess of broken eggs and bits of china on the floor.

      ‘His wife’s in a loony-bin, I hear?’

      She remembered that on the stove was the frying-pan, with hot fat in it. She fetched the frying-pan and stood facing him.

      ‘In your face if you don’t get out,’ she said.

      ‘Temper, temper, temper!’ he said softly. He was arranging on his face the smile that says: I admire a woman of spirit. Then, seeing she meant it, he looked ugly. She came nearer, with the pan poised.

      ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘while you’ve been chasing this juicy story, have you ever thought of that child?’

      And now a great wash of sentiment: the blond, goodfellow’s face was all soft and sad. ‘But I’m only doing my job,’ he said. ‘But I can tell you, that poor little chap keeps me awake at nights.’

      ‘And I shall do mine if you don’t get out.’

      He went, and she locked the door.

      That evening the Coldridge story acquired a new element, in a piece by Miles Tangin. The previously mentioned sinister female figure now appeared as