Doris Lessing - Landlocked

‘Disgusting,’ said Mrs Quest, in real revulsion from the clean, bleached fragment of skeleton. She said in a softer ‘humorous’ voice: ‘Really, Kaiser, you don’t bring bones into drawing-rooms!’ She flipped it out of the window with a look of disgust. The little dog rushed after it and brought it back, playfully, to lie at his mistress’s feet. But she, in a rush of anger, threw it right out of the window and over the veranda wall. This time the animal sensed that he, or at least his precious bone, was not wanted, and he vanished with it behind a shrub. Mrs Quest sat alone, listening to the radio. It seemed to her that for years, for all her life, she had sat, forced to be quiet, listening to history being made. She, whose every instinct was for warm participation, was never allowed to be present. Somewhere else people danced all night, revolving in a great flower-decked room, watching the Dancer revolve, her cruel smile concealed behind the mask of a beautiful young woman. Somewhere else, unreachably far away, a great chestnut horse rose like an arrow over the dangerous fences of half a dozen leafy English counties, and on the horse’s back was the masked Rider. Three red roses, three perfect red roses, with the dew fresh on them … Mrs Quest went to the bedroom to see if her husband was awake. He lay in a dead sleep, although he had had no drug since last night. Just as well he had not gone to the Victory Parade. The servants were cleaning silver, scrubbing potatoes, sweeping steps, snipping dead blooms off rose bushes. The big house, with its many rooms, was all ready for people, for the business of life; and yet in it was a dying man, his nurse, and the two black men and the black child who looked after them. Well, soon Jonathan would come home, and then he would get married, and his children could come and stay and fill these rooms. Or perhaps Martha would have another baby and she would need … Mrs Maynard wanted her on the committee.

On the radio, the first stirrings of the Victory occasion could be heard. Horses’ hooves. Drums – real drums, not a tom-tom. The commentator spoke of the brilliant day, and of the slow approach of the Governor and his wife.

Mrs Quest heard this, saw it even, with a smile that already had the softness of nostalgia. This little town, this shallow little town, that was set so stark and direct on the African soil – it could not feed her, nourish her … an occasion where the representatives of Majesty were only ‘the Governor and the Governor’s wife’ – no, it wouldn’t do. And the troops would have black faces, or at least, some of them would be black, and the dust clouds that eddied about the marching feet of the bands would be red … Mrs Quest was no longer in Africa, she was in Whitehall, by the Cenotaph, and beside her stood the handsome man who was her husband, and the personage who bent to lay the wreath was Royal.

The short hour of ritual was too short. Mrs Quest came back to herself, to this country she could never feel to be her own, empty and afraid. Now she must go and wake her husband – because he couldn’t be allowed to sleep all the time, he must be kept awake for an hour or so. He must be washed, and fed again and soon the doctor would come. And for the rest of that day, so it would be, and the day after, and the day after – she would not get to Mrs Maynard’s committee tomorrow night, and in any case, Mrs Maynard did not want her, she wanted Martha.

Mrs Quest went to the telephone and told Martha that Mr Quest had been asking after his daughter, and why didn’t she care enough for her father to come and visit him?

‘But I was there last night.’

‘Well, if you haven’t got time for your own father, that’s another thing,’ said Mrs Quest, and heard her own rough voice with dismay. She had not meant to be impatient with Martha. She reached for the box of cigarettes with one hand. The box was empty. She had smoked twenty or more that morning. If Jonathan’s arm did not heal well, or if he was sunk coming home, then it would be her fault.

‘I had a letter from Jonathan,’ said Mrs Quest. ‘I think we might very well go and live in England now that the war is over. He’s talking of settling in Essex.’

Nothing, not a sound from Martha. But Mrs Quest could hear her breathing.

The servant came into the room to say that it was time to cook lunch, what would she like? Mrs Quest gestured to the empty box and pushed some silver towards him, with a pantomime that he must go and buy some cigarettes. Now, the nearest shop was half a mile away, and she was being unreasonable, and she knew it. She had never done this before.

She said loudly to Martha: ‘I said, did you hear me, we might go and settle in England?’

‘Well, that’s nice,’ said Martha at last, and Mrs Quest, furious with the girl, looked at the servant, holding the silver in his palm.

‘See you tonight without fail,’ said Mrs Quest, putting down the telephone. ‘What is it?’ she said sharply to the man.

‘Perhaps missus telephone the shop, I want to clean the veranda,’ said the servant.

‘No, missus will not telephone the shop, don’t be so damned lazy, do as I tell you,’ said Mrs Quest.

She could not bear to wait for the hour, two hours, three hours, before the shop could deliver. She had smoked not at all for five years, except for the few days when Jonathan was wounded, but now she would not wait an hour for a cigarette. ‘Take the young master’s bicycle and go quickly,’ she ordered.

‘Yes, missus.’

That evening, Martha arrived to find her mother sitting on the veranda, hunched inside a jersey with a rug around her knees, smoking. Mrs Quest had spent the afternoon in a long fantasy about how Martha joined Mrs Maynard’s ladies, but had to be expelled. Martha cycled up the garden at that moment when in her mother’s mind she was leaving the Maynard drawing-room in disgrace.

Mrs Quest’s mind ground to a stop. Actually faced with Martha she yearned for her affection. It was not that she forgot the nature of her thoughts; it was rather that it had never occurred to her that thoughts ‘counted’.

In short, Mrs Quest was like ninety-nine per cent of humanity: if she spent an afternoon jam-making, while her mind was filled with thoughts envious, spiteful, lustful – violent; then she had spent the afternoon making jam.

She smiled now, rather painfully, and thought: Perhaps we can have a nice talk, if he doesn’t want me for anything.

She saw a rather pale young woman who seemed worried. But there was something else: Martha was wearing a white woollen suit, and it disturbed Mrs Quest. It’s too tight, she thought. She did not think of Martha having a body. What she saw was ‘a white suit’, as if in a fashion advertisement. And there were disturbing curves and shapes from which her mind shrank because of a curiosity she could not own.

Martha thought that the old woman who sat in the dusk on the veranda looked tired. Feeling guilty about something, from the look of her.

Mrs Quest said: ‘You look tired.’

‘I am tired.’

‘And you’re much too thin.’

‘It’s one of my thin phases,’ said Martha vaguely. Flames of rage leaped unexpectedly in Mrs Quest … ‘one of my thin phases’… so like her, cold, unfeeling, just like her!

‘Then why don’t you eat more?’ said Mrs Quest with an angry titter.

‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ll just get fat again by myself.’

Martha sat down and lit a cigarette. Light from the door fell over her mother. Martha saw, under the rug, a brownish skirt, and a pink woollen jersey. Martha looked incredulously at the jersey. How was it possible for a woman, for any woman at all, to wear such a hideous salmon-coloured thing? Why, to touch it must be positively painful.