Doris Lessing - Landlocked

‘It’s natural you should feel like that, comrade,’ said Athen, in gentle, sorrowful rebuke.

Thomas Stern said: ‘If we all ate fifty cream cakes each, what difference would it make to them? ’ His them were the victims of the concentration camps, and as the plate of cakes descended between them from the manicured hand of the waitress, he took an éclair, making a public statement, and instantly bit a large piece out of it. Anton took a cake, so did Joss, so did Martha. But Athen shook his head and sat frowning, suffering.

‘Have a heart,’ said Thomas. ‘You’re making us feel terrible.’

Athen hesitated, then he said: ‘Yes, I know, and I’m sorry for it. But recently I understood: these days, after being with you, I find myself thinking, this wine is bad, or this wine is good, I can’t eat this meat, this is a bad meal. I find myself going into a good restaurant.’

‘Cheer up,’ said Joss. ‘There aren’t any good restaurants. You couldn’t corrupt yourself if you tried.’

They all laughed, wanting to laugh. They were irritated by Athen, and ashamed that they were. And, now that he was forcing such thoughts on them, they sat and looked at him, elegant in his new cream-coloured suit.

Anton said, smiling, reaching for another cake: ‘I see you have found yourself a tailor, comrade Athen.’

This could have been taken as small talk. But they all knew each other far too well. They knew, almost before Anton had finished speaking, that Athen would go pale, would suffer, could be expected to lie awake that night, that tomorrow he would come to one or another of them and say: ‘But I couldn’t send the money home to my family. And it was not an expensive suit.’

And Martha, at least, knew that Anton was teasing Athen (as Anton would describe it), attacking Athen (as Athen would feel it), because he felt guilty over Millicent.

Suddenly Thomas got up saying: ‘I’ve got work. Matty, I want to see you. I’ll ring you at your office. I’ve got something to talk over with you. Solly’s up to something and Clive de Wet says he needs our help.’ Normally Thomas would have made a joke for Anton’s benefit: If your husband will give me permission – or something like that. But he nodded briefly at Anton, laid his hand on Athen’s shoulder as if to say: Take it easy, for heaven’s sake! smiled at Martha, then at Joss, and went out.

‘I suppose it’s one of his girls,’ said Anton.

‘No,’ said Joss. ‘He’s upset. A friend of his was with the troops that went into Belsen. He got a long letter. I read it.’

‘Oh well then, that’s different,’ said Anton, almost in the tone he would have used as a chairman, accepting someone’s excuse for leaving early.

Meanwhile Martha sat, registering the fact that Thomas’s going off had upset a pleasant tension: she had been sitting, equally weighted, so to speak, between Joss and Thomas.

Athen got up, saying: ‘I’m sorry, comrades, but I must leave you. I am sorry that tonight I am such bad company.’ He went off by himself.

Anton took the bill to pay at the cash desk. Joss and Martha, alone, turned towards each other.

‘You’re having an affair with Solly?’ said Joss, direct.

‘No.’

‘It looked as if you were.’

‘No.’

Now Joss examined her with the intimate frankness licensed by their long friendship, and then glanced at Anton’s tall, correct back.

‘You two not getting on too well, is that it?’

‘Not very.’

He said, in exactly the same tone of raillery as Solly: ‘Well, we did warn you, didn’t we? You just wouldn’t listen to us, that’s your trouble.’

Martha smiled, decided against telling him that the despised Solly had used almost the same words earlier, and said: ‘Yes, you did.’

‘Well,’ said Joss, practically. ‘It’s a pity I’ve got to love you and leave you. But when the authorities get around to letting me have the right bits of paper, I’m off up North.’

Here Anton came back. Joss said, rising: ‘Matty, can you have the office open for me tomorrow? I’ll ring you.’

He went off, as she nodded.

Now Anton and Martha walked together out of the Old Vienna Tea Rooms. She was thinking, as she sent glances at his pallor, the tension of his mouth: Is he upset because of Millicent or because of Germany? Last week he had sat silent on the edge of his bed, holding a small scrap of newsprint. Later she had found it in a drawer. It described how in a panic flight from Eastern Germany, away from the advancing Russian armies, women had left the train at the stops, carrying wrapped in newspaper the corpses of babies that had died of hunger. The women buried them in the snow by the side of the railway tracks. Famished dogs came afterwards, and dug up the half-buried babies. The mass bombings of German cities, the atrocities, the concentration camps, the frightful destruction of his country, the fact that his countrymen fled like guilty ghosts before the armies of half the world, the fact that they struggled and died and starved like animals – all of this, which surely must have reached the very essence of the man, was received by him with no more than the comment: They deserve a good hiding. But over this, the small scrap of newspaper about the babies wrapped in newspaper, he had sat and wept secretly, the tears running down his cheeks, then he had dried his cheeks carefully, with a large white handkerchief – then sat again, silent, crying.

Martha put her arm into her husband’s arm, and let it drop again as he said: ‘What does Thomas want to see you for?’

‘I don’t know.’

They found the car, an old Ford, parked among the lorries and wagons of the farmers who had been in the cinema, and began the half-mile drive back to the flat. They drove under banks of deep trees that were silvered by intermittent starlight, darkening and lifting into light as big clouds drove overhead. The tarmac shone white, like salt or like snow, then was very dark under the trees.

‘Well?’ said Anton at last: ‘What have you decided?’

Martha knew quite well that the right answer to this was that she should touch him, or kiss him. But she said stupidly: ‘What about?’

He let the car slide gently into a ditch filled with dry leaves, and neatly pulled on the brake before turning his pale eyes on her: ‘I want to know whether I should give you another chance or not.’

Martha raged with resentment at the phrase; she could not dispel it, even though she knew that phrases like ‘give you another chance’ or ‘give them a good hiding’ should be calls on her compassion rather than triggers for anger.

She walked quickly up the path away from him, listening to his crunch crunch behind her on the gravel. In the tiny room that was their bedroom, she switched on the lights and at once winged insects began circling around it, their wings rustling and clicking.

She was thinking: There’s something in this conflict with Anton that reminds me of the horrible cold arguments I have with my mother. She’s always in the right – and so am I. And Anton and I are both in the right. There’s something about being in the right … she felt positively sick with exasperation already – because of the banality of what they were going to say. Both Anton and she would be thinking quite sensible, even intelligent, thoughts – but what they said would be idiotic, and their bad temper, their unpleasantness, would be because both knew they could not express their sense in their words, let alone actions. Martha even felt as if this conversation or discussion (if the coming exchange could be dignified by such words) had taken place already and there was no point in going through with it again.

However, she stood drawing striped cotton over the windows, thereby shutting out a sky where the storm clouds still swept and piled in great, dramatic silver masses, and folded back the thin white covers of the two beds in which both were going to sleep so badly. Meanwhile, Anton untied his tie before a glass and watched his young wife in it, his face hard.