To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories Volume One. Doris Lessing

what you mean.’ ‘I ask you if you’re happy and you laugh – what’s funny about being happy?’ Now he was really resentful. Again she meditated about it, instead of responding – as he had hoped – with a laugh or some reassurance that he made her perfectly happy. ‘Well, it stands to reason,’ she concluded, ‘people who talk about happy or unhappy, and then the long words – and the things you say, women are like this, and men are like that, and polygamous and all the rest – well …’ ‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Well, it just seems funny to me,’ she said lamely. For she could have found no words at all for what she felt, that deep knowledge of the dangerousness and the sadness of life. Bombs fell on old men, lorries killed people, and the war went on and on, and the nights when he did not come to her she would sit by herself, crying for hours, not knowing why she was crying, looking down from the high window at the darkened, ravaged streets – a city dark with the shadow of war.

      In the early days of their love Jimmie had loved best the hours of tender, aimless, frivolous talk. But now she was, it seemed, always grave. And she questioned him endlessly about his life, about his childhood. ‘Why do you want to know?’ he would inquire, unwilling to answer. And then she was hurt. ‘If you love someone, you want to know about them, it stands to reason.’ So he would give simple replies to her questions, the facts, not the spirit, which she wanted. ‘Was your Mum good to you?’ she would ask, anxiously. ‘Did she cook nice?’ She wanted him to talk about the things he had felt; but he would reply, shortly: ‘Yes,’ or ‘Not bad.’

      ‘Why don’t you want to tell me?’ she would ask, puzzled.

      He repeated that he didn’t mind telling her; but all the same he hated it. It seemed to him that no sooner had one of those long, companionable silences fallen, in which he could drift off into a pleasant dream, than the questions began. ‘Why didn’t you join up in the war?’ she asked once. ‘They wouldn’t have me, that’s why.’ ‘You’re lucky,’ she said, fiercely. ‘Lucky nothing, I tried over and over. I wanted to join.’

      And then, to her obstinate silence, he said: ‘You’re queer. You’ve got all sorts of ideas. You talk like a pacifist; it’s not right when there’s a war on.’

      ‘Pacifist!’ she cried, angrily. ‘Why do you use all these silly words? I’m not anything.’

      ‘You ought to be careful, Rosie, if you go saying things like that when people can hear you, they’ll think you’re against the war, you’ll get into trouble.’

      ‘Well, I am against the war, I never said I wasn’t.’

      ‘But Rosie –’

      ‘Oh, shut up. You make me sick. You all make me sick. Everybody just talks and talks, and those fat old so-and-so’s talking away in Parliament, they just talk so they can’t hear themselves think. Nobody knows anything and they pretend they do. Leave me alone, I don’t want to listen.’ He was silent. To this Rose he had nothing to say. She was a stranger to him. Also, he was shocked: he was a talker who liked picking up phrases from books and newspapers and using them in a verbal game. But she, who could not use words, who was so deeply inarticulate, had her own ideas and stuck to them. Because he used words so glibly she tried to become a citizen of his country – out of love for him and because she felt herself lacking. She would sit by the window with the newspapers and read earnestly, line by line, having first overcome her instinctive shrinking from the language of violence and hatred that filled them. But the war news, the slogans, just made her exhausted and anxious. She turned to the more personal. ‘War takes toll of marriage,’ she would read. ‘War disrupts homes.’ Then she dropped the paper and sat looking before her, her brow puzzled. That headline was about her, Rose. And again, she would read the divorces; some judge would pronounce: ‘This unscrupulous woman broke up a happy marriage and …’ Again the paper dropped while Rose frowned and thought. That meant herself. She was one of those bad women. She was The Other Woman. She might even be that ugly thing, A Co-Respondent … But she didn’t feel like that. It didn’t make sense. So she stopped reading the newspapers, she simply gave up trying to understand.

      She felt she was not on an intellectual level with Jimmie, so instinctively she fell back on her feminine weapons – much to his relief. She was all at once very gay, and he fell easily into the mood. Neither of them mentioned his wife for a time. It was their happiest time. After love, lying in the dark, they talked aimlessly, watching the sky change through moods of cloud and rain and tinted light, watching the searchlights. They took no notice of raids or danger. The war was nearly over, and they spoke as if it had already ended. ‘If we was killed now, I shouldn’t mind,’ she said, seriously, one night when the bombs were bad. He said: ‘We’re not going to get killed, they can’t kill us.’ It sounded a simple statement of fact: their love and happiness was proof enough against anything. But she said again, earnestly: ‘Even if we was killed, it wouldn’t matter. I don’t see how anything afterwards could be as good as this now.’

      ‘Ah, Rosie, don’t be so serious always.’

      It was not long before they quarrelled again – because she was so serious. She was asking questions again about his past. She was trying to find out why the army wouldn’t have him. He would never tell her. And then he said, impatiently, one night: ‘Well, if you must know, I’ve got ulcers … ah, for God’s sake, Rosie, don’t fuss, I can’t stand being fussed.’ For she had given a little cry and was holding him tight. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I haven’t been cooking the proper things for you.’

      ‘Rose, for crying out aloud, don’t go on.’

      ‘But if you’ve got ulcers you must be fed right, it stands to reason.’ And next evening when she served him some milk pudding, saying anxiously: ‘This won’t hurt your stomach,’ he flared up and said, ‘I told you, Rosie, I won’t have you coddling me.’ Her face was loving and stubborn and she said: ‘But you’ve got no sense …’

      ‘For the last time, I’m not going to put up with it.’

      She turned away, her mouth trembling, and he went to her and said desperately: ‘Now don’t you take on, Rosie, you mean it nicely, but I don’t like it, that’s why I didn’t tell you before. Get it?’ She responded to him, listlessly, and he found himself thinking, angrily: ‘I’ve got two wives, not one …’ They were both dismayed and unhappy because their happiness was so precarious it could vanish overnight just because of a little thing like ulcers and milk pudding.

      A few days later he ate in heavy silence through the supper she had provided, and then sarcasm broke out of him: ‘Well, Rosie, you’ve decided to humour me, that’s what it is.’ The meal had consisted of steamed fish, baked bread and very weak tea, which he hated. She looked uncomfortable, but said obstinately: ‘I went to a friend of mine who’s a chemist at the corner, and he told me what it was right for you to eat.’ Involuntarily he got up, his face dark with fury. He hesitated, then he went out, slamming the door.

      He stood moodily in the pub, drinking. Pearl came across and said: ‘What’s eating you tonight?’ Her tone was light, but her eyes were sympathetic. The sympathy irritated him. He ground out: ‘Women!’ slammed down his glass and turned to go. ‘Doesn’t cost you anything to be polite,’ she said tartly, and he replied: ‘Doesn’t cost you anything to leave me alone.’ Outside he hesitated a moment, feeling guilty. Pearl had been a friend for so long, and she had a soft spot for him – also, she knew about his wife, and about Rose, and made no comment, seemed not to condemn. She was a nice girl, Pearl was – he went back and said, hastily: ‘Sorry, Pearl, didn’t mean it.’ Without waiting for a reply he left again, and this time set off for home.

      The woman he called his wife looked up from her sewing and asked briefly: ‘What do you want now?’

      ‘Nothing.’ He sat down, picked up a paper and pretended to read, conscious of her glances. They were not hostile. They had gone a long way beyond that, and the fact that she seemed scarcely interested in him was a relief after Rose’s persistent, warm curiosity – like loving white fingers strangling him, he thought involuntarily. ‘Want something to eat?’ she inquired at last.

      ‘What