London Observed. Doris Lessing

Full of hot tea and food, she felt herself letting go, letting herself slide … She began to yawn and could not stop. But they did not suggest she should go to bed, and this was because they simply could not believe they wouldn’t get anything more from her.

      But there was nothing she could say. She looked at her father, that cautious, greyish, elderly man, sitting heavily in his chair. At her mother, who seemed almost girlish as she sat upright there in her pretty pale blue dress with its nice little collar and the little pearl buttons down the front. Her grey curls were sprightly, and her blue eyes full of wounded and uncomprehending innocence. Julie thought, I wish I could just snuggle up to Mum and she could hold me and I could go to sleep. Surely this must have happened when she was small, but she could not remember it. In this family, they simply did not touch each other.

      Full of the clarity of her exhaustion, and because of what she had learned in the last months, she saw her parents and knew that – they cancelled each other out. Debbie would say there was something wrong with their chemistry. They did not disagree. They never raised their voices, or argued. Each day was a pattern of cups of tea, meals, cups of coffee and biscuits, always at exactly the same times, with bedtime as the goal. They seldom went out. They saw very few people, only each other. It was as if they had switched themselves off.

      They had been old when she was born, was that the trouble?

      At Debbie’s people shouted, kissed, hugged, argued, fought, threatened, wept, and screamed.

      There were two bedrooms in that flat. Debbie had given her the little one to herself. She was supposed to make herself scarce when Debbie came in with a man, a new one, but not when Derek was there, Debbie’s real boyfriend. Derek joked a lot and ordered Julie about. How about making me a cup of tea, getting me a drink, making me some bacon and eggs, what have you been doing with yourself, why don’t you get yourself a new hairdo, a new dress? He liked Julie, though she did not like him much. She knew he was not good enough for Debbie.

      Soon Debbie would get rid of him. As she had the man who once owned the flat and took a percentage of what she earned. But Debbie had found out something bad about him, had put the screws on, got the flat for herself, worked for herself. Julie had seen this man just once, and he had given her the creeps. ‘My first love,’ Debbie joked, and laughed loudly when Julie grimaced. Derek did not give her the creeps, he was just nothing! Ordinary. Boring. But the man Debbie had gone to New York with was a TV producer. He was making a series no one had heard about in England, not good enough to sell here, he said. This man was more like it, but Julie thought Debbie would get rid of him too, when something better came up.

      All these thoughts, these judgments, so unlike anything ever said or thought in her own home, went on in Julie’s mind quite comfortably, though they wouldn’t do for herself. Debbie had to be like this, because of her hard life. This included something bad that Debbie had never talked about, but it was why she had been so good to Julie. Probably, just like Julie, Debbie had stood very late in a railway station, pregnant, her head full of rubbish about how she would get a job, have the baby, bring it up, find a man who would love her and the baby. Or perhaps it had been something else to do with being pregnant and alone. It was not she, Julie, who had earned five months of Debbie’s love and protection, it was pregnant Julie, helpless and alone.

      Oh, yes, Debbie was fond of her.

      Sometimes she spent the night in Debbie’s big bed because Debbie could not bear to sleep alone. She got scared, she said. She could not believe that Julie wasn’t frightened of the dark. Debbie always crashed straight off to sleep, even when she hadn’t been drinking. Then Julie cautiously got up on her elbow and bent over sleeping Debbie, to examine her, try and find out … Debbie was a big handsome girl. Her skin was very white, and she had black shiny straight hair, and she made up her lips to be thin and scarlet and curving, just right for the lashing, slashing tongue behind them. When she was asleep her face was smooth and closed, and her lips were ordinary, quite pathetic Julie thought, and there was wear under her eyes. That face showed nothing of why Debbie said to people coming into the flat who might notice Julie the wrong way, ‘Lay off, do you hear? Lay off, or I’ll …’ And her scarlet lips and her black eyes were nasty, frightening.

      But if Debbie woke in the night, she might turn to Julie and draw her into an embrace that told Julie how little she knew about love, about tenderness. Then Julie lay awake, astounded at the revelations this big hot smooth body made, and went on making, even though Debbie was off to sleep again. She never actually ‘did anything’. Julie even waited for ‘something’ to happen. Nothing ever did. Just once Debbie put her hand down to touch the mound of Julie’s stomach, but took it quickly away. Julie lay entangled with Debbie, and they were like two cats that have finished washing each other and gone to sleep, and Julie knew how terribly she had been deprived at home, and how empty and sad her parents were. Suppose she said to her mother now, Mum, let me come into your bed tonight, I’m scared, I’ve missed you … She could just see her mother’s embarrassed, timid face. ‘But Julie, you’re a big girl now.’

      Anne and Len slept in twin beds stretched out parallel to each other, the night table between them.

      There were tears in Julie’s eyes, and she did not know it, but then she did and looked quickly at her mother, then her father, for they must not know she would give anything to cry and cry, and be comforted and held … But they weren’t looking at her, only at the television. They had switched it on, without her noticing. Now all three of them sat staring at it.

      On the screen a woman announcer smiled the special smile that goes with royalty, animals, and children and said, ‘At eight o’clock this evening a newly born baby girl was found in a telephone box in Islington. She was warmly wrapped and healthy. She weighed seven pounds and three ounces. The nurses have called her Rosie.’ Hot waves of jealousy went through Julie when she saw how the nurse smiled down at the little face seen briefly by Julie in torchlight, and then again through the sleet outside the shed. ‘The mother is urged to come forward as she might be in need of urgent medical attention.’

      It was the late news.

      Surely they were going to guess? But why should they? It was hard enough for her to believe that she could sit here in her pretty little dressing gown smelling of bath powder, when she had given birth by herself in a dirty shed with only a dog for company. Four hours ago, that was all!

      ‘Why don’t we have a dog, Mum?’ asked Julie, knowing what she was going to hear.

      ‘But they are such a nuisance, Julie. And who’s going to take it for walks?’

      ‘I will, Mum.’

      ‘But you’ll have finished school in July, and I don’t want the bother of a dog, and I’m sure Len doesn’t.’

      Her father didn’t say anything. He leaned forward and turned off the set. The screen went blank.

      ‘I often wonder what Jessie thinks,’ he remarked, ‘when she sees something like this on the telly, I mean.’

      ‘Oh, leave it, Len,’ said Anne warningly.

      Julie did not really hear this, but then she did: her ears sprang to life, and she knew something extraordinary was about to happen.

      ‘That’s why we were so worried about you,’ said Julie’s father, heavy, grief-ridden, reproachful. ‘It’s easy enough to happen, how were we to know you weren’t –’

      ‘Len, we agreed we wouldn’t ever – ’

      ‘What about Auntie Jessie?’ asked Julie, trying to take it in. A silence. ‘Well, what about her, Dad? You can’t just leave it like that.’

      ‘Len,’ said Anne wildly.

      ‘Your Auntie Jessie got herself into the family way,’ said her father, determined to say it, ignoring his wife’s face, her distress. His face was saying, Why should she be spared when she’s given us such a bad time? ‘She wasn’t much older than you are now.’ At last he was looking straight at Julie, full of reproach, and his eyes dripped tears all down his face and on to his tie. ‘It can happen easy enough, can’t it?’

      ‘You