Doris Lessing - Landlocked

Even so, she was on the edge all the time of being ill. It was never far off. This was not at all the vague, tight tension of before Thomas, which had been not so much the threat of illness as the illness itself: a perpetual dry inner trembling, a super-brightness, extra-attention, a lightness of her being – the stage on to which might walk, at any time, the disembodied emotions she could not give soil and roots to within herself.

No: this was something quite different, on a different level – directly physical. If she let her connection with Thomas weaken; if she let her – what? Body? (but what part of it?) remember Anton and that he was her husband, well, her nerves reacted at once and in the most immediately physical way. She vomited. Her bladder became a being in the flesh of her lower stomach, and told her it was there and on guard. It did not like what she was doing – did not like it at all. Her stomach, her intestines, her bladder complained that she was the wife of one man and they did not like her making love with another.

But of course, none of this could be told to Anton, or even mentioned to him. They were being civilized, he and she; they made civilized arrangements about marriage when it was not a success, and lived together like brother and sister, sharing single beds in a small bedroom, saying things like: ‘Did you have a good day, Anton?’

‘Yes, very good. I’m reorganizing that whole department. Yes, I may be an enemy alien and a damned German, but I’m organizing their freight department for them.’

‘And about time too, I’m sure.’

‘And I went to see Colonel Brodeshaw. After all, he is Member of Parliament for this constituency.’

‘Oh, good, can he help you?’

‘I think he wants to. I begin to think that Marxist theory underrates the role that the democratic consciousness plays in the British way of life. It is not only a mask for reaction, it is not just hypocrisy.’

‘Oh, you think not?’

‘No. Although he is a proper old Blimp, he is really very decent.’

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