To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories Volume One. Doris Lessing

‘Yes, but I can’t get used to it.’ ‘Then you’d better get used to it,’ he complained, and then kissed her to make amends for his resentment. When this had happened several times he let out: ‘Anyway, the basement’s fallen in, I passed today, and it’s filled with bricks and stuff.’ He had intended not to tell her. She shrank away from him and went quite white. ‘Well, you knew it wasn’t going to stay for long,’ he said. She was badly shaken. She could not bear to think of her old home gone; she could imagine it, the great beams slanting into it, filled with dirty water – she imagined it and shut out the vision for ever. She was quiet and listless all that day, until he grew angry with her. He was quite often angry. He would protest when she bought things for him. ‘Don’t you like it?’ she would inquire, looking puzzled. ‘Yes, I like it fine, but …’ And later she was hurt because he seemed reluctant to use the chest, or the desk.

      There were other points where they did not understand each other. About four weeks after they moved in she said: ‘You aren’t much of a one for home, are you?’ He said, in genuine astonishment: ‘What do you mean? I’m stuck here like …’ He stopped, and put a cigarette in his mouth to take the place of speech. From his point of view he had turned over a new leaf; he was a man who hated to be bound, to spend every evening the same way; and now he came to Rose most evenings straight from work, ate supper with her, paid her sincere compliments on her cooking, and then – well, there was every reason why he should come, he would be a fool not to! He was consumed by secret pride in her. Fancy Rose, a girl like her, living with her old man all these years, like a girl shut into a convent, or not much better – you’d think there was something wrong with a girl who got to be thirty before having a man in her bed! But there was nothing wrong with Rose. And at work he’d think of their nights and laugh with deep satisfaction. She was all right, Rose was. And then, slowly, a doubt began to eat into the pride. It wasn’t natural that she’d been alone all those years. Besides, she was a good-looker. He laughed when he remembered that he had thought her quite ugly at first. Now that she was happy, and in a place of her own, and warmed through with love, she was really pretty. Her face had softened, she had a delicate colour in her thin cheeks, and her eyes were deep and welcoming. It was like coming home to a little cat, all purring and pliable. And when he took her to the pictures he walked proudly by her, conscious of the other men’s glances at her. And yet he was the first man who had had the sense to see what she could be? – hmm, not likely, it didn’t make sense.

      He talked to Rose, and suddenly the little cat showed its sharp and unpleasant claws. ‘What is it you want to know?’ she demanded coldly, after several clumsy remarks from him. ‘Well, Rosie – it’s that bloke George, you said you were going to marry him when you were a kid still?’

      ‘What of it?’ she said, giving him a cool glance.

      ‘You were together for a long time?’

      ‘Three years,’ she said flatly.

      ‘Three years!’ he exclaimed. He had not thought of anything so serious. ‘Three years is a long time.’

      She looked at him with a pleading reproach that he entirely failed to understand. As far as she was concerned the delight Jimmie had given her completely cancelled out anything she had known before. George was less than a memory. When she told herself that Jimmie was the first man she had loved, it was true, because that was how she felt. The fact that he could now question it, doubting himself, weakened the delight, made her unsure not only of him but of herself. How could he destroy their happiness like this! And into the reproach came contempt. She looked at him with heavy, critical eyes; and Jimmie felt quite wild with bewilderment and dismay – she could look at him like that! – then that proved she had been lying when she said he was the first – if she had said so … ‘But, Rosie,’ he blustered, ‘it stands to reason. Engaged three years, and you tell me …’

      ‘I’ve never told you anything,’ she pointed out, and got up from the table and began stacking the dishes ready for washing.

      ‘Well, I’ve a right to know, haven’t I?’ he cried out, unhappily.

      But this was very much a mistake. ‘Right?’ she inquired in a prim, disdainful voice. She was no longer Rose, she was something much older. She seemed to be hearing her mother speaking. ‘Who’s talking about rights?’ She dropped the dishes neatly into the hot, soapy water and said: ‘Men! I’ve never asked you what you did before me. And I’m not interested either, if you want to know. And what I did, if I did anything, doesn’t interest you neither.’ Here she turned on the tap so that the splashing sounds made another barrier. Her ears filled with the sound of water, she thought: Men, they always spoil everything. She had forgotten George, he didn’t exist. And now Jimmie brought him to life and made her think of him. Now she was forced to wonder: Did I love him as much then? Was it the same as this? And if her happiness with George had been as great as now it was with Jimmie, then that very fact seemed to diminish love itself and make it pathetic and uncertain. It was as if Jimmie were doing it on purpose to upset her. That, at any rate, was how she felt.

      But across the din of the running water Jimmie shouted: ‘So I’m not interested, is that it?’

      ‘No, you’d better not be interested,’ she announced, and looked stonily before her, while her hands worked among the hot, slippery plates. ‘So that’s how it is?’ he shouted again, furiously.

      To which she did not reply. He remained leaning at the table, calling Rose names under his breath, but at the same time conscious of bewilderment. He felt that all his possessive masculinity was being outraged and flouted; there was, however, no doubt that she felt as badly treated as he did. As she did not relent he went to her and put his arms around her. It was necessary for him to destroy this aloof and wounded-looking female and restore the loving, cosy woman. He began to tease: ‘Spitfire, little cat, that’s what you are.’ He pulled her hair and held her arms to her sides so that she could not dry the plates. She remained unresponsive. Then he saw that the tears where running down her immobile and stubborn cheeks, and in a flush of triumph picked her up and carried her over to the bed. It was all quite easy, after all.

      But maybe not so easy, because late that night, in a studiously indifferent voice, Rose inquired from the darkness at his side: ‘When are we going to get married?’ He stiffened. He had forgotten – or almost – about this. Hell, wasn’t she satisfied? Didn’t he spend all his evenings here? He might just as well be married, seeing what she expected of him. ‘Don’t you trust me, Rosie?’ he inquired at last. ‘Yes, I trust you,’ she said, rather doubtfully, and waited. ‘There’s reasons why I can’t marry you just now.’ She remained silent, but her silence was like a question hanging in the dark between them. He did not reply, but turned and kissed her. ‘I love you, Rosie, you know that, don’t you?’ Yes, she knew that; but about a week later he left her one morning saying: ‘I can’t come tonight, Rosie. I’ve got to put in some work on this exam.’ He saw her glance at the desk she had bought him and which he had never used. ‘I’ll be along tomorrow as usual,’ he said quickly, wanting to escape from the troubled, searching eyes.

      She asked suddenly: ‘Your wife getting anxious about you?’

      He caught his breath and stared at her: ‘Who told you?’ She laughed derisively. ‘Well, who told you?’

      ‘No one told me,’ she said, with contempt.

      ‘Then I must have been talking in my sleep,’ he muttered, anxiously.

      She laughed loudly: ‘“Someone told me.” “Talking in your sleep” – you must think I’m stupid.’ And with a familiar, maddening gesture, she turned away and picked up a dishcloth.

      ‘Leave the dishes alone, they’re clean anyway,’ he shouted.

      ‘Don’t shout at me like that.’

      ‘Rose,’ he appealed after a moment, ‘I was going to tell you, I just couldn’t tell you – I tried to, often.’

      ‘Yes?’ she said, laconically. That yes of hers always exasperated him. It was like a statement of rock-bottom disbelief, a basic indifference to himself