Ben, in the World. Doris Lessing

was a criticism. The old woman did not criticise him, but lay and dozed, or sat and dozed, her hand so often pressing on her heart, saying, ‘Ben, we could both do with a cup of tea, I am sure.’

      He was hungry, for he was trying to eat as little as he could. It could not go on. He told her he was going to see about a job, and saw her sad little smile. ‘Be careful, Ben,’ she said. And Ben left: he had no home in this world.

      He walked along a street – rather, his feet were taking him up this street, past theatres and eating places – and he was on the side he usually avoided, crossing over before he came to a certain forbidden pavement. This time he did not cross over. He stood outside the theatre which frightened him when it was noisy and full of people, and stood on an empty pavement looking across at a little street where there was a doorway. This was a forbidden place. It was morning, and the cars that worked from the cubbyhole in the wall that called itself Super Universal Cabs were not there yet. They came in from early afternoon onwards. The man who organised these cabs, standing outside his cubbyhole, saying, ‘Take them to Camberwell… Swiss Cottage… Notting Hill… ’ was not there. This man was what Ben feared. It was he who had said, ‘Fuck off and don’t come back.’ His name was Johnston and he was Rita’s friend.

      Some weeks ago, before Mrs Biggs had found him in the supermarket, he had been walking up this pavement, as usual alert for trouble, when he saw a woman in that doorway – that one, next to Super Universal Cabs. She had smiled at him. He followed the smile, went up narrow stairs behind her, and found himself in a room that he knew was poor and ugly, because he was contrasting it with what he remembered of his home, when he still had one, with his mother. The woman, though she was really a girl, for her make-up and big bruised-looking eyes made her look older, stood facing him, her hand on her belt, ready to take it off. She said, ‘How long?’

      Ben had no idea what she meant, but stood with his teeth bared – this was his scared grin, not the friendly one – and did not reply.

      ‘Ten pounds for a blow job, forty for the whole hog.’

      ‘I don’t have any money,’ said Ben.

      She came over, and put her hands down into his pockets, one on either side, more out of exasperation because of the preposterousness of this customer, than expectation, and at this Ben’s sexual nature, which he kept down, like all his other impermissible hungers, leaped up, and he gripped her by her shoulders, turned her around and, holding her fast, bent her so that she had to put her hands on the bed for support. He tugged up her skirt with one hand, pulled down her knickers, and took her from behind, short, sharp and violent. He had his teeth in her neck, and as he came he let out a grunting bark, like nothing she had ever heard before. He let her go, and she straightened up, flinging her pale hair off her face and stood looking at his face, then down at his thighs, the hairy thighs. She was not exactly unfamiliar with such hairiness – she had jested with Johnston that some of the men that came to her were like chimpanzees – but it was as if she were trying to find out from those strong furry legs just why this customer was so different. That query, that inspection, not hostile, had something in it that made him again grasp her, bend her over and begin again. He was starved for sex, had been hungry for it a long time, and just as if he had not so recently finished his first bout, his teeth went into her neck and she heard the triumphant grunting bark.

      ‘Just a minute,’ she said. ‘Just wait a minute.’

      She pushed him so that he sat on the bed, and she sat on a chair opposite him. She needed time. This experience – a rape, that was what it amounted to – ought to be making her feel angry, and full of the contempt that she usually felt for her customers, but she had been thrilled by that double rape, the great powerful hands gripping her shoulders, the teeth in her neck, and, above all, the grunt like a roar. She was sitting feeling where his teeth had bitten, but could not find an abrasion. She took out a tiny mirror from her bag, and craned her neck to see – no, the skin was not broken, but it was bruised, and there would be questions from Johnston.

      What Ben wanted was to lie on that narrow bed, beside her, and go to sleep. He was thinking hard. When he was the leader of the gang of boys, the bad boys that everyone was afraid of, there had been girls, and one liked him. She had tried to change him saying, ‘But Ben, let’s try it this way, turn round, it’s not nice what you do, it’s like animals.’ And he had indeed tried, but could not do what she wanted, for when he was face to face with her the raging angry need to possess and dominate was silent. It came to this – that if they were to do it, then it had to be his way, and soon she resented and even hated him for it. After some attempts she would not see him again, and the word had gone around among the girls that Ben was funny, there was something not quite right with him.

      With this girl, Rita, he knew she liked him, and had liked what he did.

      A bell rang, or rather hummed from the wall. This was a signal that there was a customer, and that Johnston was downstairs, and in control. She got up, pressed the bell, and said to Ben, ‘You’ve got to go now.’

      ‘Why?’ he said. He had not understood at all. He only knew she liked him.

      ‘Because I say so,’ she said, as if to a child, thinking that she could not remember talking to a customer like this before. ‘Go away.’ And then she added, ‘If you like, you can come again – in the morning, mind you.’ And she pushed him out of the room, and he went down her ugly stairs, zipping himself up, as men so often did on them.

      On the pavement a tall rough-looking man took a good sharp look at him, and then looked again – people always looked again.

      That was his first visit to Rita and next morning he had gone again. Meanwhile she had told Johnston about him. They were lying on her bed, smoking, very late, after all the minicab custom had ceased. He was her protector, and took a cut, but was not jealous, and was even good to her in a casual careless way. He had examined the bruised places on her neck: teeth marks were visible. He had heard a detailed account of the sex. This was because she wanted to talk about it, he was usually not interested. She had told him it hadn’t been like being with a man, more like an animal. ‘You know, like dogs.’

      ‘But you like him,’ Johnston had said, so that she should mark it and remember that he knew. He was feeling something he believed was not jealousy, more curiosity.

      The second occasion was like the first. This time he did it once and she was disappointed, though she could hardly admit this to herself, since she was committed to the creed that her customers left her cold. That roaring triumphant grunt just above her head, the feeling of being helpless in those great hairy hands, the violence of the penetration – well, it thrilled her, but it was too short. She told him so. This was not like being told by that schoolgirl to lie face to face and then, kisses. He understood what she was saying, with his mind at least, and he let his trousers drop, and allowed her to manipulate him. Because this act was so soon after the first, he managed to keep going, and listened to her cries, with curiosity and surprise. But he was pleased, that he pleased her.

      Meanwhile, he had no money. Literally, did not have the price of a meatburger, his favourite food. She gave him enough money to eat. It was summer and at night he found a bench or a hallway. She made him wash in her little bathroom. She cut his beard. This went on for about a month and then Johnston found out she was giving him money and said, ‘Now, that’s enough, Reet.’

      She had become addicted to Ben and his animal ways and did not want to stop. She told a girlfriend, a whore in the next street, about Ben, and took Ben to that room, another poor dingy place, like Rita’s. This woman liked what Ben did, though he would have preferred to stay with Rita, and she gave him a couple of quid for his services. But her protector or boyfriend was not complacent, like Johnston, and when he found out told her Ben was not to come near her again. Johnston and he knew each other, and together they warned and threatened Ben.

      And so Ben stopped going to Rita, and if he was in that street was careful to stay on the other side, and if he saw Rita, hurried away. It was not being beaten up he feared, for he was sure he could manage Johnston and the other