The Fifth Child. Doris Lessing

to be normal between the hours of four, when Helen and Luke ended school, until eight or nine, when they went to bed. The drugs did not seem to be affecting her much: she was willing them to leave her alone and to reach the baby, the foetus – this creature with whom she was locked in a struggle to survive. And for those hours it was quiet, or if it showed signs of coming awake, and fighting her, she took another dose.

      Oh how eager everyone was to welcome her back into the family, normal, herself: they ignored, because she wanted them to, her tenseness, her tiredness.

      David would put his arms around her and say, ‘Oh, Harriet, you are all right?’

      Two months to go.

      ‘Yes, yes, I am. Really.’ And she silently addressed the being crouching in her womb: ‘Now you shut up or I’ll take another pill.’ It seemed to her that it listened and understood.

      A scene in the kitchen: family supper. Harriet and David commanded the head and foot of the table. Luke and Helen sat together on one side. Alice held little Paul, who could never get enough cuddling: he got so little from his mother. Jane sat near Dorothy’s place, who was at the stove, ladle in her hand. Harriet looked at her mother, a large healthy woman in her fifties, with her bush of iron-grey curls, and her pink fresh face, and her large blue eyes ‘like lollipops’ – a family joke – and thought, I’m as strong as she is. I’ll survive. And she smiled at Alice, thin, wiry, tough, energetic, and thought again, These elderly women, look at them, they’ve survived everything.

      Dorothy was filling their plates with vegetable soup. She sat down, at leisure, with her own plate. Bread was passed around, a big basket of it.

      Happiness had returned and sat at the table with them – and Harriet’s hand, unseen below the level of the table-top, was held over the enemy: You be quiet.

      ‘A story,’ said Luke. ‘A story, Daddy.’

      On days when there was school tomorrow, the children had supper early and went up to bed. But on Fridays and Saturdays they ate with the grown-ups and a story was told during the meal.

      Here, enclosed in the hospitable kitchen, it was warm and steamy with the smell of soup. Outside was a blustering night. May. The curtains were not drawn. A branch stretched across the window: a spring branch, full of pristine blossom, pale in the twilight, but the air that beat on the panes had been blasted down south from some iceberg or snow-field. Harriet was spooning in soup, and broke hunks of bread into it. Her appetite was enormous, insatiable – so bad she was ashamed and raided the fridge when no one could see her. She would interrupt her nocturnal peregrinations to stuff into herself anything she could find to eat. She even had secret caches like an alcoholic’s hoards, only it was food: chocolate, bread, pies.

      David began, ‘Two children, a boy and a girl, set off one day to have an adventure in the forest. They went a long way into the forest. It was hot outside, but under the trees it was cool. They saw a deer lying down, resting. Birds flitted about and sang to them.’

      David stopped to eat soup. Helen and Luke sat with their eyes on his face, motionless. Jane listened, too, but differently. Four years old: she looked to see how they took in the story, and copied them, fixing her eyes on her father.

      ‘Do the birds sing to us?’ enquired Luke doubtfully, frowning. He had a strong, severe face; and, as always, he demanded the truth. ‘When we are in the garden and the birds sing, are they singing to us?’

      ‘Of course not, silly,’ said Helen. ‘It was a magic forest.’

      ‘Of course they sing to you,’ said Dorothy firmly.

      The children, first hunger appeased, sat with their spoons in their hands, wide eyes on their father. Harriet’s heart oppressed her: it was their open trustfulness, their helplessness. The television was on: a professionally cool voice was telling about some murders in a London suburb. She lumbered over to turn it off, plodded back, served herself more soup, piled in the bread…She listened to David’s voice, tonight the storyteller’s voice, so often heard in the kitchen, hers, Dorothy’s –

      ‘When the children got hungry, they found a bush covered with chocolate sweets. Then they found a pool made of orange juice. They were sleepy. They lay under a bush near the friendly deer. When they woke up, they said thank you to the deer and went on.

      ‘Suddenly the little girl found she was alone. She and her brother had lost each other. She wanted to go home. She did not know which way to walk. She was looking for another friendly deer, or a sparrow, or any bird, to tell her where she was and show her the way out of the forest. She wandered about for a long time, and then she was thirsty again. She bent over a pool wondering if it would be orange juice, but it was water, clear pure forest water, and it tasted of plants and stones. She drank, from her hands.’ Here the two older children reached for their glasses and drank. Jane interlaced her fingers to form a cup.

      ‘She sat there by the pool. Soon it would be dark. She bent over the pool to see if there was a fish who could tell her the way out of the forest, but she saw something she didn’t expect. It was a girl’s face, and she was looking straight up at her. It was a face she had never seen in her whole life. This strange girl was smiling, but it was a nasty smile, not friendly, and the little girl thought this other girl was going to reach up out of the water and pull her down into it…’

      A heavy, shocked, indrawn breath from Dorothy, who felt this was too frightening at bedtime.

      But the children sat frozen with attention. Little Paul, grizzling on Alice’s lap, earned from Helen ‘Be quiet, shut up.’

      ‘Phyllis – that was the little girl’s name – had never seen such frightening eyes.’

      ‘Is that Phyllis in my nursery school?’ asked Jane.

      ‘No,’ said Luke.

      ‘No,’ said Helen.

      David had stopped. Apparently for inspiration. He was frowning, had an abstracted look, as if he had a headache. As for Harriet, she was wanting to cry out, ‘Stop – stop it! You are talking about me – this is what you are feeling about me!’ She could not believe that David did not see it.

      ‘What happened then?’ asked Luke. ‘What happened exactly?’

      ‘Wait,’ said David. ‘Wait, my soup…’ He ate.

      ‘I know what happened,’ said Dorothy firmly. ‘Phyllis decided to leave that nasty pool at once. She ran fast along a path until she bumped into her brother. He was looking for her. They held each other’s hands and they ran out of the forest and they ran safely home.’

      ‘That was it, exactly,’ said David. He was smiling ruefully, but looked bemused.

      ‘And that was what really really happened, Daddy?’ demanded Luke, anxious.

      ‘Absolutely,’ said David.

      ‘Who was that girl in the pool, who was she?’ demanded Helen, looking from her father to her mother.

      ‘Oh just a magic girl,’ said David casually. ‘I have no idea. She just materialized.’

      ‘What’s materialized?’ asked Luke, saying the word with difficulty.

      ‘It’s bedtime,’ said Dorothy.

      ‘But what is materialized?’ Luke insisted.

      ‘We haven’t had any pudding!’ cried Jane.

      ‘There’s no pudding, there’s fruit,’ said Dorothy.

      ‘What is materialized, Daddy?’ Luke anxiously persisted.

      ‘It is when something that wasn’t there suddenly is there.’

      ‘But why, why is it?’ wailed Helen, distressed.

      Dorothy said, ‘Upstairs, children.’

      Helen took an apple, Luke another, and Jane lifted some bread off her mother’s plate with a quick, conscious,