Doris Lessing: Ben, in The World

But he didn't look too bad now, and he smelled clean.

It was early evening and she did what she would have done alone: she brought out cans of beer from her fridge, filled her glass, and then she filled one for him. They were going to spend the evening doing what he liked best, watching television.

First she found a piece of paper and wrote on it:

Mrs Ellen Biggs

II Mimosa House

Halley Street, London SE6.

She said, 'Ask your mother for your birth certificate. If she has to send for it, then tell her she can always write to you care of me — and here is the address.'

He did not answer: he was frowning. 'Do you understand, Ben?'

'Yes.'

She did not know whether he did or not, but thought so.

He was looking at the television. She got up, switched it on, and came back by way of the cat. 'There, there puss, it's all right.' But the cat never for one moment took its eyes off Ben.

And now it was an easy pleasant evening. He did not seem to mind what he saw. Sometimes she switched to another channel, thinking he was bored. He did like wildlife programmes, but there wasn't one tonight. This was a good thing, really, because he sometimes got too excited: she knew wild instincts had been aroused. She had understood from the start that he was controlling instincts she could only guess at. Poor Ben — she knew he was that, but not how, or why.

At bedtime she unrolled on to the floor the futon he slept on, and put blankets beside it in case: he usually did not use coverings. The cat, seeing that this enemy was on the floor, leaped up on to the bed and lay close against the old woman's side. From there she could not watch Ben, but it was all right, she felt safe. When the lights were off the room was not really dark, because there was a moon that night.

The old woman listened for Ben's breathing to change into what she called his night breathing. It was, she thought, like listening to a story, events or adventures that possibly the cat would understand. In his sleep Ben ran from enemies, hunted, fought. She knew he was not human: 'not one of us' as she put it. Perhaps he was a kind of yeti. When she had seen him first, in a supermarket, he was prowling — there was only that word for it — as he reached out to grab up loaves of bread. She had had a glimpse of him then, the wild man, and she had never forgotten it. He was a controlled explosion of furious needs, hungers and frustrations, and she knew that even as she said to the attendant, 'It's all right, he is with me.' She handed him a pie she had just bought for her lunch, and he was eating it as she led him out of the place. She took him home, and fed him. She washed him, though he had protested that first time. She saw how he reacted to some cold meat — quite alarming it was; but she bought extra meat for him. It was just here where he was most different; meat, he could not get enough. And she was an old woman, eating a little bit of this here, a snack there — an apple, cheese, cake, a sandwich. The stew that day had been just luck: she ate that kind of meal so seldom.

One night, when the three of them had gone to bed, and to sleep, she had woken because of a pressure along her legs. Ben had crept up and laid himself down, his head near her feet, his legs bent. It was the cat's distress that had woken her. But Ben was asleep. It was how a dog lays itself down, close, for company, and her heart ached, knowing his loneliness. In the morning he woke embarrassed. He seemed to think he had done wrong, but she said, 'It's all right, Ben. There's plenty of room.' It was a big bed, the one she had had when she was married.

She thought that he was like an intelligent dog, always trying to anticipate wants and commands. Not like a cat at all: that was a different kind of sensitivity. And he was not like a monkey, for he was slow and heavy. Not like anything she had known. He was Ben, he was himself — whatever that was. She was pleased he was going to find his family. He was hardly communicative, but she had gathered it was a well-off family. And there was his accent which was not what you'd expect, from how he looked. He seemed to like his mother. If she herself could be good to Ben — so Ellen Biggs saw it — then his family could too. But if it didn't work, and he turned up here again, then she would go with him to the Public Records Office and find out about his age. She was so confused about this she had given up trying to puzzle it out. He repeated that he was eighteen, and she had to believe him. In many ways he was childish, and yet when she took a good look at that face she could even think him middle-aged, with those lines around his eyes. Little ones, but still: no eighteen-year-old could have them. She had actually gone so far in her thoughts to wonder if the people he belonged to, whoever they were, matured early, in which case they would die young, according to our ideas. Middle-aged at twenty, and old at forty, whereas she, Ellen Biggs, was eighty and only just beginning to feel her age to the point that she hoped she would not have to make that annoying journey to the Records Office, and then stand in a line: the thought made her tired and cross. She fell asleep, listening to Ben dream, and woke to find him gone. The paper with her address had gone, and the ten-pound note she had left for him. Although she had expected it, now she had to sit down, her hand pressing on a troubled heart. Since he had come into her life, weeks ago, foreboding had come too. Sitting alone when he had gone off somewhere she was thinking, Where's Ben? What is he doing? Was he being cheated again? Far too often had she heard from him, 'They took my money,' — 'They stole everything.' The trouble was, information came out of him in a jumble.

'When was that, Ben?'

'It was summer.'

'No, I mean, what year?'

'I don't know. It was after the farm.'

'And when was that?'

'I was there two winters.'

She knew he was about fourteen when he left his family. So what had he been doing for four years?

His mother had been wrong, thinking he had gone right away. He and his gang of truants from school were camping in an empty house on the edge of their town, and from there made forays, shoplifting, breaking into shops at night, and at weekends went to nearby towns to hang about the streets with the local youths, hoping for a fight and some fun. Ben was their leader because he was so strong, and stood up for them. So they thought, but really the reason was that inwardly he was mature, he was a grown man, more of a parent, whereas they were still children. One by one they were caught, sent to borstal, or returned to parents and school. One evening he was standing on the edge of a crowd of fighting youngsters — he did not fight, he was afraid of his strength, his rage — and he realised he was alone, without companions. For a while he was one of a gang of much older youths, but he did not dominate them as he had the young ones. They forced him to steal for them, made fun of him, jeered at his posh accent. He left them and drifted down to the West Country where he fell in with a motorbike gang, which was engaged in warfare with a rival gang. He longed to drive a motorcycle, but could not get the hang of it. But it was enough to be near them, these machines, he loved them so. The gang used him to guard their bikes when they went into a caff, or a pub. They gave him food, and even a little money sometimes. One night the rival gang found him standing over half a dozen machines, beat him up, twelve to one, and left him bleeding. His own gang returned to find a couple of their machines gone, and were ready to beat him up again but found this apparently slow stupid oaf transformed into a whirling screaming fighting madman. He nearly killed one of them. Setting on him all together they subdued him, no bones broken, but again, he was bleeding and sick. He was taken into a pub by a girl who worked there. She washed him down, sat him in a corner, gave him something to eat, talked him into sense again. He was quiet at last, dazed perhaps.