To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories Volume One. Doris Lessing

at the letter and saw that Mrs Johnson had been killed as long ago as yesterday morning. At first he was too astonished to be angry; then he was extraordinarily angry. ‘What!’ he muttered, ‘why the hell – what’s she doing?’ He was a member of the family, wasn’t he? – or as good as. And she wrote him stiff little letters, beginning Dear George, and ending, Rose – no love, not even a sincerely. But underneath the anger he was deeply dismayed. He was remembering that there had been a listlessness, an apathy about her recently that could almost be taken as indifference. For instance, when he took her to see the two rooms that would be their home, she had made all kinds of objections instead of being as delighted as he was. ‘Look at all those stairs,’ she had said, ‘it’s so high up,’ and so on. You might almost think she wasn’t keen on marrying him – but this idea was insupportable, and he abandoned it quickly. He remembered that at the beginning, three years ago, she had pleaded for them to marry at once; she didn’t mind taking a chance, she had said; lots of people got married on less money than they had. But he was a cautious man and he talked her into waiting for some kind of security. That’s where he made his mistake, he decided now; he should have taken her at her word and married her straight off, and then … He hastened across London to comfort Rose; and all the time his thoughts of her were uneasy and aggrieved; and he felt as anxious as a lost child.

      When he entered the kitchen it was with no clear idea of what to expect; but he was surprised to find her seated at her usual place at the table, her hands folded idly before her, pale, heavy-lidded, but quite composed. The kitchen was spotless and there was a smell of soapsuds and clean warmth. Evidently the place had just been given a good scrub.

      Rose turned heavy eyes on him and said: ‘It was good of you to come over, George.’

      He had been going to give her a comforting kiss, but this took him by surprise. His feelings of outrage deepened. ‘Hey,’ he said, accusingly, ‘what’s all this, Rosie, why didn’t you let me know?’

      She looked upset, but said, evasively: ‘It was all over so quick, and they took her away – there didn’t seem no point in getting you disturbed too.’

      George pulled out a chair and sat opposite her. He had thought that there was nothing new to learn about Rose, after three years. But now he was giving her troubled and apprehensive glances; she seemed a stranger. In appearance she was small and dark, rather too thin. She had a sharp, pale face, with an irregular prettiness about it. She usually wore a dark skirt and a white blouse. She would sit up at night to wash and iron the blouse so that it would always be fresh. This freshness, the neatness, was her strongest characteristic. ‘You look as if you could be pulled through a hedge backwards and come out with every hair in order,’ he used to tease her. To which she might reply: ‘Don’t make me laugh. How could I?’ She would be quite serious; and at such moments he might sigh, humorously, admitting that she had no sense of humour. But really he liked her seriousness, her calm practicality: he relied on it. Now he said, rather helplessly: ‘Don’t take on, Rosie, everything’s all right.’

      ‘I’m not taking on,’ she replied unnecessarily, looking quietly at him, or rather, through him, with an air of patient waiting. He was now more apprehensive than angry. ‘How’s your Dad?’ he asked.

      ‘I’ve put him to bed with a nice cup of tea.’

      ‘How’s he taking it?’

      She seemed to shrug. ‘Well, he’s upset, but he’s getting over it now.’

      And now, for the life of him, he could think of nothing to say. The clock’s ticking seemed very loud, and he shifted his feet noisily. After a long silence he said aggressively: ‘This won’t make any difference to us, it’ll be all right next week, Rosie?’

      He knew that it wasn’t all right when, after a further pause, she turned her eyes towards him with a full, dark, vague stare: ‘Oh, well, I don’t know …’

      ‘What do you mean?’ he challenged quickly, leaning across at her, forcibly, so that she might be made to respond: ‘What do you mean, Rosie, let us have it now.’

      ‘Well – there’s Dad,’ she replied, with that maddening vagueness.

      ‘You mean we shan’t get married?’ he shouted angrily. ‘Three years, Rosie …’ As her silence persisted: ‘Your Dad can live with us. Or – he might be getting married again – or something.’

      Suddenly she laughed, and he winced; her moments of rough humour always disconcerted him. At the same time they pained him because they seemed brutal. ‘You mean to say,’ she said, clumsily jeering, ‘you mean you hope he gets married again, even if no one else’d ever think of it.’ But her eyes were filled with tears. They were lonely and self-sufficing tears. He slowly fell back into his chair, letting his hands drop loosely. He simply could not understand it. He could not understand her. It flashed into his mind that she intended not to marry him at all, but this was too monstrous a thought, and he comforted himself: ‘She’ll be all right by tomorrow, it’s the shock, that’s all. She liked her ma, really, even though they scrapped like two cats.’ He was just going to say: ‘Well, if I can’t do anything I’ll be getting along; I’ll come and see you tomorrow,’ when she asked him carefully, as if it were an immense effort for her to force her attention on to him: ‘Would you like a cuppa tea?’

      ‘Rose!’ he shouted miserably.

      ‘What?’ She sounded unhappy but stubborn; and she was unreachable, shut off from him behind a barrier of – what? He did not know. ‘Oh, go to hell then,’ he muttered, and got up and stamped out of the kitchen. At the door he gave her an appealing glance, but she was not looking at him. He slammed the door hard. Afterwards he thought guiltily: She’s upset, and then I treat her bad.

      But Rose did not think of him when he had gone. She remained where she was, for some time, looking vaguely at the calendar with the yellow roses. Then she got up, washed her hands, hung her apron on the hook behind the door, as usual, and went to bed. ‘That’s over,’ she said to herself, meaning George. She began to cry. She knew she would not marry him – rather, could not marry him. She did not know why this was impossible or why she was crying: she could not understand her own behaviour. Up till so few hours before she had been going to marry George, live with him in the little flat: everything was settled. Yet, from the moment she had heard the shocked voices saying outside in the street: Mrs Johnson’s dead, she’s been killed – from that moment, or so it seemed now, it had become impossible to marry George. One day he had meant everything to her, he represented her future, and the next, he meant nothing. The knowledge was shocking to her; above all she prided herself on being a sensible person; the greatest praise she could offer was: ‘You’ve got sense,’ or ‘I like people to behave proper, no messing about.’ And what she felt was not sensible, therefore, she could not think too closely about it. She cried for a long time, stifling her sobs so that her father could not hear them where he lay through the wall. Then she lay awake and stared at the square of light that showed chimney-pots and the dissolving yellowish clouds of a rainy London dawn, scolding herself scornfully: What’s the good of crying? while she mopped up the tears that rose steadily under her lids and soaked down her cheeks to the already damp pillow.

      Next morning when her father asked over breakfast cups: ‘Rosie, what are you going to do about George?’ she replied calmly, ‘It’s all right, he came last night and I told him.’

      ‘You told him what?’ He spoke cautiously. His round, fresh face looked troubled, the clear, rather childlike blue eyes were not altogether approving. His workmates knew him as a jaunty, humorous man with a warm, quick laugh and ingrained opinions about life and politics. In his home he was easy and uncritical. He had been married for twenty-five years to a woman who had outwardly let him do as he pleased while taking all the responsibility on herself. He knew this. He used to say of his wife: ‘Once she’s got an idea into her head you might as well whistle at a wall!’ And now he was looking at his daughter as he had at the mother. He did not know what she had planned, but he knew nothing he said would make any difference.

      ‘Everything’s all right, Dad,’ Rose said quietly.