The Four-Gated City. Doris Lessing

talk would at some time in the near future be met, was prepared to go on as before? At any rate, after three hours or so he left, smiling, with the remark that the foreman had said he’d like to see Mark sometime, to give him his assurance that he and the men thought he had been shockingly treated – they were going to stand by him.

      Martha wrote on a piece of paper: ‘I don’t understand your Jimmy Wood. But he says the foreman wants to stand by you. I think Jimmy will leave if you don’t go and talk to him soon.’ This she pushed under the door of the study.

      The financial problems had not been solved.

      One thing could be done at once: which was to let the basement.

      Martha pushed another note under the door saying that Mark must at once write to Lynda’s hospital asking for time to pay: the last account had been peremptory.

      Mark telephoned. The doctor suggested that perhaps Mrs Coldridge might come home for the week-end: she had a plan for her future which would involve Mark’s co-operation, and which might help Mark financially. For his part, said Dr Lamb, he was prepared to say Lynda was better; not cured, but better.

      Lynda came home for the week-end. She was like a guest. Mark came out of his study and was like a host. She said she wanted to leave the hospital, and live in the basement. No, she was not well enough to be by herself but she could share it with a friend from the hospital. She said with a laugh that she did not think Mark would like her friend, who was called Dorothy. Sometimes she didn’t like her either. But they got on.

      Mark said he would of course do anything she wanted.

      A moment later she took up her little box of pills and went up to bed.

      Later, when Martha was ready for bed, her sense of things that were waiting to be said was strong enough to send her down to the kitchen. There sat Lynda in her dressing-gown with a spread of cards in front of her.

      ‘If I came to live here,’ said Lynda, continuing the conversation, ‘it wouldn’t cost so much, would it? Oh – I don’t mean I want to be Mark’s wife, I couldn’t be that. But if I were here in the house, then it would be better, wouldn’t it? Then they couldn’t say you were taking him away from me?’

      ‘Why, are people saying that?’

      ‘They are bound to be saying something, aren’t they?’

      ‘I suppose so. We’ve been too busy about this other thing.’

      ‘Oh, politics. Oh well, I don’t care about that. That’s just nothing at all. But Dorothy’s got some money of her own. She could pay some rent. It would help, wouldn’t it?’

      She shuffled the cards, humming cheerfully for a time. ‘Of course, there’s Francis. But he hasn’t a mother anyway. I thought it would be better to have me in the house, than not at all – for what he has to say to his friends, I mean.’

      More shuffling of cards, more humming.

      ‘And about clothes. I’ve all that money for clothes in my bank account. You must make him take it. That’s what he wants you see – that I shall be beautiful all the time.’

      ‘Yes, but I don’t think he’d take it.’

      ‘I wouldn’t mind if he divorced me. I know that would be best really. But he wouldn’t ever divorce me. I know that.’ ‘No, he wouldn’t.’

      ‘I don’t care about all that – all that’s not what I care about.’

      And now she looked, very close, at Martha, studied her. She leaned forward, her chin in her hand, looking. As if she were trying to find out something? Was it that she wanted to know if Martha could guess what she did care about? She looked disappointed. She even sighed, and made a small pettish gesture of disappointment as she returned to the cards.

      ‘You can go to bed, if you like,’ she said. ‘I’m all right by myself, you know.’

      That was on the Friday. Next morning early Paul’s new headmaster telephoned to say that he would consider it a good thing if the child came home for the week-end: he and the staff thought it might help him.

      His name was Edwards. He sounded very competent. He sounded in control. Martha felt that he and the staff would have every reason not to feel in control, with Paul in the state he was. She felt he might well have been entitled to say more than, ‘Paul seems rather confused.’

      Paul was put on the train at the village station fifty miles away, and was met by Mark. When Paul got out of the car, a pale, spiky, black-eyed waif, he was already in the uniform of a progressive school – jeans and sweater. He came into the drawing-room where Lynda sat, like a visitor in her pale fur coat, smoking and guarding her little box of pills.

      She studied Paul, for a while, while he wriggled about in a chair opposite her. Then she smiled at him, her wide, beautiful smile. He, slowly, smiled back, a rather tentative offering. Slowly he approached Lynda, sidled around her, then tried to climb on her lap. But she held him off.

      ‘I don’t like being touched,’ she said. ‘But you can sit here.’ She indicated the patch of sofa beside her. He sat close, snuggling, as he would have done with his mother. But Lynda, at the touch, shrank from him. He felt it, and moved away, examining her face as a guide to how far he must go. Side by side they sat, a space between them.

      Martha and Mark were busy with tea things. This ought probably not to happen at all. But then nothing of this ought to be happening.

      ‘Why don’t you like being touched?’

      ‘Because I’m ill.’

      ‘My mother liked it.’

      ‘But I’m not like your mother.’ ‘She’s dead.’

      ‘She killed herself,’ said Lynda. ‘Why did she?’

      ‘Some people don’t like living.’ ‘Didn’t she like me?’ ‘Very much,’ said Lynda.

      ‘I don’t think she liked me. Or she wouldn’t have killed herself.’

      ‘That doesn’t follow.’ ‘Yes it does.’

      Lynda had moved where she sat, so that she was looking at Paul with a direct, cool smile. And he was leaning forward, gazing up into her truth-telling face.

      ‘Didn’t my daddy like living?’

      ‘You say that because you think he is dead.’

      ‘Yes, he’s dead.’

      ‘No, I don’t think he’s dead.’

      ‘He is! He is! I know he is!’

      Tears were imminent, but Lynda made no attempt to stop them. ‘No. Perhaps he is, but we don’t think so. And he may come back.’

      ‘He won’t come back, because he doesn’t like me.’

      ‘You are making yourself much too important,’ said the sick woman to the desperate child. ‘Your daddy had work to do. It was important. If he went away it wasn’t because of you and your mother.’

      ‘Did my mother kill herself because he went away?’ ‘No. He went away and she killed herself – the two things at the same time.’ ‘How did she kill herself?’ ‘She made herself stop breathing.’ ‘Could I?’

      ‘Yes, if you wanted to.’ ‘Do you want to?’ ‘Sometimes.’ ‘Are you going to?’ ‘No.’

      ‘Why aren’t you?’

      ‘Because every time I think I will, then I decide to stay alive and see what happens next. It is interesting.’

      He gave a scared laugh, and snuggled closer. His hand, meeting hers, felt hers go away. He put his two hands carefully on his knees.

      ‘At the school, the other children have mothers and fathers for the holidays.’ ‘Well, you haven’t.’