A Ripple from the Storm. Doris Lessing

      ‘That corporal or whoever he was.’

      ‘Yes, I’ve heard.’

      ‘If you’re going to let him down too I shall really wash my hands of you.’

      ‘Mother, I keep telling you, there’s no question of my marrying William.’

      ‘You left your husband for him.’

      ‘I did not. I left Douglas for …’ She stopped, knowing it was useless to explain to her mother why she left Douglas.

      Meanwhile, Mrs Quest, cold-eyed and hostile, was examining Martha’s naked shoulders. She said: ‘That nightgown is indecent. If some of your friends come in …’

      Martha, who at the first sight of her mother had thought: Thank goodness, she’ll look after me, now pulled the blankets up to her face, and said: ‘No one’s coming in. And I’m sleepy.’

      Mrs Quest went to Martha’s dressing-table, examined what was on it, and said: ‘So you’re using rouge now. Well, if you’re going to jazz about the way you do, I suppose you’ll need rouge at your age. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ She returned to the foot of the bed and said: ‘Mrs Carson’s worried about you.’

      ‘In what way?’

      ‘She says that you don’t keep your curtains drawn and the garden boy hangs about to get a sight of you.’

      ‘Oh, do shut up,’ said Martha, understanding with dismay that she was able to take this sort of thing from Mrs Carson, but not from her mother, to whom surely she owed much more patience and understanding? Guilt set in about this too, and added to her sick fever.

      Mrs Quest had retreated into apologetic embarrassment, and retreated hastily with: ‘Well, perhaps she’s got it wrong. I won’t disturb your beauty sleep any longer.’ She went to the door, exaggeratedly quiet. As she went out she said: ‘I hear Caroline isn’t well, poor little girl.’

      The image of Caroline rose to confront Martha, who said to herself tormentedly: I can’t think of her now, I really can’t. She sternly pushed Caroline into a region of her mind marked No Admittance. Yet as soon as she slept, Caroline emerged from this forbidden place, and confronted Martha: sometimes charming and childish, sometimes sick and plaintive, sometimes hostile to Martha her mother. Martha kept waking, afraid for the first time of the loneliness of this dark shabby hired room, despising herself for being afraid, hating her mother for evoking the image of Caroline.

      Another night passed and a slow hot morning. Flies buzzed against the curtains through which the glare beat in threads of yellow. Martha was thinking: If my mother would come in again, and just be kind, instead of hating me so much … the weak listlessness of this frightened her again. She thought: Just because I’m sick, I start crying for mother. And I’m probably not sick at all, just trying to get out of something? But what am I trying to get out of? I simply must not give in. And she got limply out of bed, brushed her hair and made up her face. She lay tidily back on her pillows thinking: If I make up my mind to it, I needn’t be sick. But almost at once she was back in sleep, and nightmare-ridden delirium.

      In the late afternoon she woke to see Anton seated by her bed. The sight of him was an exquisite relief.

      ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he said. ‘If people don’t look after themselves, they get sick.’ He held her wrist tightly: it was partly a brotherly caress and partly because of the necessity for taking her pulse.

      ‘So,’ he commented. ‘And what does the doctor say?’

      ‘I don’t need a doctor.’

      ‘So you don’t need a doctor. That may be so, but you must excuse me: I shall telephone your doctor and he will come and visit you.’

      He sat smiling at her. Martha could scarcely recognize him. She said to herself: Suddenly he’s human. She was also thinking: Suppose he is in love with me? The thought was half-exciting, half pure panic. Oh my God! she thought involuntarily, it’s just as bad as the others – just an accident, falling in love, if you can call it that. All the same, a pulse of excitement was beating in her. She looked through her fever at the stiff controlled face, now softened with a small paternal smile, and thought: He may not know it himself, but he’s attracted to me.

      And now Anton lifted himself up to his height, and stooping, kissed her on the forehead. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘And now you will lie quite still and the doctor will come.’ For a moment they were both embarrassed because of that kiss, and he said quickly: ‘I will come in again this evening and see you. It is Dr Stern, isn’t it? I will make the arrangements.’ And he went out on tiptoe stiffly, like a lean high-stepping bird.

      When I’m with him I feel safe? she wondered, remembering how he had said: women’s problems are not sufficiently considered, and how she had responded to the promise of understanding. Yes, he’s kind, she decided.

      Now she was looking forward to the doctor’s coming. If Anton took the responsibility for this act of weakness, the act of admitting one was ill, then it was all right, it was off her shoulders.

      She lay facing the door, where Dr Stern would come in. When she woke it was to see Jimmy, entering with the same exaggerated caution as Anton had used in leaving, absorbed in his caution. He carried a big bunch of pink zinnias in his large red hand and, thinking Martha was asleep, was looking for some place to put them. He went out again, leaving the door open, and Martha heard him talking to the servant in the kitchen. He was speaking with earnest friendliness, but the man was being nervously evasive: the contrast between Jimmy and Mrs Carson was too much for him. Jimmy returned with the stiff flowers stuck in a big ornamented green vase. Martha could see that he liked the vase, from the proud way he regarded it. She consciously suppressed a wince of disapproval at his bad taste, thinking: That’s snobbish, they are right to call us names, middle-class and the rest … When he had set the vase down beside her, he found her awake and smiled self-consciously when she thanked him.

      Although the sunlight on the curtains was now a pale yellow, and the heat no longer beat into the room, it was stuffy and Jimmy’s large bony face was scarlet. He was wearing the thick clumsy uniform issued for winter use.

      ‘Why don’t you take off your jacket?’ she asked, and all at once was embarrassed. She remembered her mother had said her nightgown was indecent; and she pulled the sheet up high to her chin thinking: I wasn’t conscious of it at all when Anton was here, but I am with Jimmy.

      It was true that he was frowning with hot disapproval of her. He undid the top button of his jacket, and set himself to improve her situation: having studied her face he said: ‘You don’t look too good, and that’s a fact.’

      With which he scientifically studied the arrangement of her bed until he had decided what should be done. ‘Now hold it a minute. I’m the boy for this.’ He put his hand under her head, lifted it, adjusted her pillows, pulled off a thick wodge of blankets which Martha was not aware were too heavy for her, and said with authority: ‘Now lie easy. No good twisting yourself up like that.’ Martha obediently unknotted all her limbs.

      ‘That’s better. You can take it from me. I’ve had it myself.’

      ‘Had what?’

      ‘I was in the san for ten months before the war. I know all the gen about being sick.’

      ‘You’re cured?’ she asked, looking how the red flared on his great bony cheeks.

      ‘I’m in the RAF, so I’m cured.’

      She laughed, but he did not. ‘That is why I came to see you. You should sweat. You have a temperature.’

      He was possessed by his role of nurse. ‘You’ve got a drop of something here? Brandy? Then I’ll wrap you up in the blankets and that’ll do the trick.’

      ‘But Jimmy, the doctor’s coming.’

      He said: ‘You don’t want to trust them. Pack you full of poison and lies