To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories Volume One. Doris Lessing

that she showed no sort of emotion at the death of the woman, her friend. ‘Hasn’t the kid got a dad?’ he asked. ‘He’s in North Africa,’ she said. ‘Well, he’ll come back after the war, he might not want you to adopt the kid.’ But she was silent, and her face was hard with determination. ‘Why this kid in particular?’ he asked. ‘You’ll have kids of your own one day.’

      She said evasively: ‘She’s a nice kid, you should see her.’ He left it. He could see that there was something here too deep for him to grasp. Again he suggested: ‘Come to the pictures and take your mind off things.’ Obediently she rose and placed herself at his disposal, as it were. Walking along the streets she turned this way and that at the touch of his hand, but in spirit she was not with him. He knew that she sat through the film without seeing it. ‘She’s in a bad way,’ he said helplessly to himself. ‘It’s time she snapped out of it.’

      But Rose was thinking only of Jill. Her whole being was now concentrated on the thought of the little girl. Tomorrow she would find out where she was. Some nosy parkers would have got hold of her – that was certain; they were always bossing other people. She would take Jill away from them and look after her – they could stay in the basement until the house got rebuilt … Rose was awake all night, dreaming of Jill; and next day she did not go to work. She went in search of the child. She found her grandmother had taken her. She had never thought of the grandmother, and the discovery was such a shock that she came back to the basement not knowing how she walked or what she did. The fact that she could not have the child seemed more terrible than anything else; it was as if she had been deprived maliciously of something she had a right to; something had been taken away from her – that was how she felt.

      Jimmie came that night. He was asking himself why he kept returning, what it would come to; and yet he could not keep away. The image of Rose, the silent, frightened little girl – which was how he saw her – stayed with him all day. When he entered the basement she was sitting as usual by the candles, staring before her. He saw with dismay that she had made no effort to clean the place, and that her hair was untidy. This last fact seemed worse than anything.

      He sat beside her, as usual, and tried to think of some way to make her ‘snap out of it’. At last he remarked: ‘You ought to be making some plans to move, Rose.’ At this, she irritably shrugged her shoulders. She wished he would stop pestering her with this sort of reminder. At the same time she was glad to have him there. She would have liked him to stay beside her silently; his warm friendliness wrapped her about like a blanket, but she could never relax into it because there was a part of her mind alert against him for fear of what he might say.

      She was afraid, really, that he might talk of her father. Not once had she allowed herself to think of it – her father’s death, as it must have been. She said to herself the words: My father’s dead, just as she had once said to herself: My mother’s dead. Never had she allowed those words to form into images of death. If they had been ordinary deaths, deaths one could understand, it would have been different. People dying of illness or age, in bed; and then the neighbours coming, and then the funeral – that was understandable, that would have been different. But not the senselessness of a black bomb falling out of the sky, dropped by a nice young man in an aeroplane, not the silly business of a lorry running someone over – no, she could not bear to think of it. Underneath the surface of living was a black gulf, full of senseless horror. All day, at the factory (where she helped to make other bombs) or in the basement at night, she made the usual movements, said the expected things, but never allowed herself to think of death. She said: My father’s been killed, in a flat, ordinary voice, without letting pictures of death arise into her mind.

      And now here was Jimmie, who had come into her life just when she needed his warmth and support most; and even this was two-faced, because it was the same Jimmie who made these remarks, forcing her to think … she would not think, she refused to respond. Jimmie noticed that whenever he made a remark connected in any way with the future, or even with the war, a blank, nervous look came on to her face and she turned away her eyes. He did not know what to do. For that evening he left it, and came back next day. This was the sixth day after the bomb, and he saw that the crack in the ceiling was bulging heavily downwards from the weight on top of it, and when a car passed, bits of plaster flaked down in a soft white rain. It was really dangerous. He had to do something. And still she sat there, her hands lying loosely in front of her, staring at the wall. He decided to be cruel. His heart was hammering with fright at what he was going to do; but he announced in a loud and cheerful voice: ‘Rose, your father’s dead, he’s not going to come back.’

      She turned her eyes vaguely towards him; it seemed as if she had not heard at all. But he had to go on now. ‘Your Dad’s had it,’ he said brightly. ‘He’s copped it. He’s dead as a doornail, and it’s no use staying here.’

      ‘How do you know?’ she asked faintly. ‘Sometimes there are mistakes. Sometimes people come back, don’t they?’

      This was much worse than he had thought. ‘He won’t come back, I saw him myself.’

      ‘No,’ she protested, sharply drawing breath.

      ‘Oh, yes I did. He was lying on the pavement, smashed to smithereens.’ He was waiting for her face to change. So far, it was obstinate, but her eyes were fixed on him like a scared rabbit’s. ‘Nothing left,’ he announced, jauntily, ‘his legs were gone – nothing there at all, and he didn’t have a head left either …’

      And now Rose got to her feet with a sudden angry movement, and her eyes were small and black. ‘You …’ she began. Her lips shook. Jimmie remained seated. He was trying to look casual, even jaunty. He was forcing himself to smile. Underneath he was very frightened. Supposing this was the wrong thing? Supposing she went clean off her rocker … supposing … He passed his tongue quickly over his lips and glanced at her to see how she was. She was still staring at him. But now she seemed to hate him. He wanted to laugh from fright. But he stood up and, with an appearance of deliberate brutality, said: ‘Yes, Rosie girl, that’s how it is, your Dad’s nothing but a bleeding corpse – that’s good, bleeding!’ And now, he thought, I’ve done it properly! ‘You –’ began Rose again, her face contracted with hatred. ‘You –’ And such a stream of foul language came from her mouth that it took him by surprise. He had expected her to cry, to break down. She shouted and raved at him, lifting her fists to batter at his chest. Gently holding her off he said silently to himself, giving himself courage: ‘Ho, ho, Rosie my girl, what language, naughty, naughty!’ Out loud he said, with uneasy jocularity: ‘Hey take it easy, it’s not my fault now …’ He was surprised at her strength. The quiet, composed, neat little Rose was changed into a screaming hag, who scratched and kicked and clawed. ‘Get out of here you –’ and she picked up a candlestick and threw it at him. Holding his arm across his face, he retreated backwards to the door, gave it a kick with his heel, and went out. There he stood, waiting, with a half-rueful, half-worried smile on his face, listening. He was rubbing the scratches on his face with his handkerchief. At first there was silence, then loud sobbing. He straightened himself slowly. I might have hurt her bad, talking like that, he thought; perhaps she’ll never get over it. But he felt reassured; instinctively he knew he had done the right thing. He listened to the persistent crying for a while, and then wondered: Yes, but what do I do now? Should I go back again now, or wait a little? And more persistent than these worries was another: And what then? If I go back now, I’ll let myself in for something and no mistake. He slowly retreated from Rose’s door, down the damaged street, to a pub at the corner, which had not been hit. Must have a drink and a bit of a think … Inside the pub he leaned quietly by the counter, glass in hand, his grey eyes dark with worry. He heard someone say: ‘Well handsome, and what’s been biting you?’ He looked up, smiling, and saw Pearl. He had known her for some time – nothing serious; they exchanged greetings and bits of talk over the counter when he dropped in. He liked Pearl, but now he wanted to be left alone. She lingered and said again: ‘How’s your wife?’ He frowned quickly, and did not reply. She made a grimace as if to say: Well, if you don’t want to be sociable I’m not going to force you! But she remained where she was, looking at him closely. He was thinking: I shouldn’t have started it, I shouldn’t have taken her on. No business of mine what happened