Doris Lessing - The Four-Gated City

This, or something like it, happened fairly often, as it does in every household. Dorothy was always in the right. Each time she got herself into a state of furious, helpless irritation which ended in her having to go to bed, where Lynda nursed her.

Mark dealt with each new crisis, and this brought him into contact with Lynda for several days, while Dorothy was ill. The reason why Dorothy would never, until some situation was desperate – no water, no gas, no electricity – come for help upstairs, was that it meant bringing in Mark, or Mark’s deputy, Martha. It meant that she, Dorothy, had failed Lynda. It meant a collapse into inadequacy in a dark bedroom, and oblivion in drugs.

Mark and Lynda, with Dorothy asleep in her bedroom, achieved some hours of companionship, even gaiety.

The telephone, or tap, restored to normal – Lynda went back to the basement and the door was locked.

Mark made a visit to Martha’s room. When he did this it meant something of importance, something he found hard to talk about; which, perhaps, he had been working himself up to talk about all that day, or even, several days.

She had been sitting in the dark, looking out of the window at the ragged sycamore tree, thinned by late autumn. The knock on the door was abrupt, but soft.

‘Do you mind if I come in?’ He switched on the light, and saw, as he always did, a succession of rooms in this one, back to where young children played in it, he among them.

He took hold of the present, where a woman in a red house-coat, with untidy hair, sat by a dark window, looking out, a cat asleep beside her.

The cat woke, stalked across to him, looked up into his face, and miaowed. He sat down, the cat on his knee. He was in his dressing-gown. They were like an old married couple, or a brother and sister.

This thought passed from her to him, and he said: ‘This is no sort of life for you.’ ‘Or for you.’

‘Don’t you ever think of marrying?’

‘Yes. Sometimes.’ The worry on his face was to do with her: not what he had come about. ‘People have been saying I’m after you?’

He coloured up at once, changed position: the cat jumped down, annoyed. ‘Yes. Do you mind?’ ‘No. Yes, a little. Not much.’

‘It was stupid of me. I’d forgotten completely that – well, what with everything else ‘You shouldn’t let yourself listen to them.’ As she spoke she knew she was saying more: Why are you letting yourself be influenced? He heard this, gave her an acute look, acknowledging it. In a different mood he might have become ‘The Defender’. But not tonight. He was Lynda’s husband.

‘I want to ask you something. I get so involved in – I know I’m not seeing something. It’s Lynda. Why do I upset her so much? Do you know?’

‘You always ask too much of her.’

‘But how is she ever going to get well if … I mean, what was the point of her coming home at all?’

She could not bring herself to say what she was thinking.

‘You mean, it was just to get out of the hospital? I mean, it couldn’t just have been that – I am here, after all!’

‘She didn’t have much choice.’

‘She could have gone off and shared a flat with that … what was to stop her?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘She came here, where I am.’ ‘And Francis.’

‘He’s never here. She never sees him.’

‘Perhaps she wants to. I don’t know, Mark. How should I know?’

‘Do you think they are Lesbians?’ He found it difficult to say this. He had gone white now, was all dark hot eyes in a white face. One mask, or look, does for several different emotions. So Mark looked when contemplating his mother’s connivance with Hilary Marsh, or the affair of Ottery Bartlett. That was anger. This was misery.

‘I don’t know. A bit, perhaps. I’ve never known any. But I shouldn’t imagine that’s the point. It’s probably more that they make allowances for each other.’

‘A dreadful woman, dreadful, dreadful.’

‘Well … I don’t know.’

‘You wouldn’t choose to share your life with her!’ ‘Well, no. But I’m not ill.’

Lynda had been diagnosed by a large variety of doctors: there had been a large variety of diagnoses. She was depressed; she was a manic-depressive; she was paranoic; she was a schizophrenic. Most frequently, the last. Also, in another division, or classification, she was neurotic; she was psychotic. Most frequently, the latter.

‘They said she was better. Well, I don’t see it.’ ‘She is managing out of hospital.’

‘Yes but … when we were married, it never came easily to her – sex, I mean. It wasn’t that – I mean, she’s normal enough. What’s normal? But how do I know? It’s not as if I had had all that experience when we were married. It’s not as if I can make vast comparisons. But I remember it striking me always, it was as if being able to sleep with me was a proof to herself – do you understand?’

‘How can I? One could say that of lots of people these days. Sex is a kind of yardstick, one’s got to succeed. Were you her first lover?’

‘Yes. Well, yes, I am sure I was. But sometimes it was like making love to a drowning person.’ ‘She wanted to be saved?’

‘Yes. Yes! Exactly that!’ He was excited because she saw it. ‘Sometimes I thought, my God, am I murdering this woman! Did you hear that, when she said, Mark, you’re killing me.’

‘Yes, but that …’

‘No. That meant something. It made sense. She used to say, “Save me, Mark, save me!” Well, I had a jolly good try!’ ‘Yes.’

‘And now what? What is one supposed to do? Just let her – drown?’

He sat, white, stiff, his eyes full of tears.

With this man one could not easily use the ancient balm of arms, warmth, easy comfort. She pulled a chair near his, took his hand, held it. The tears ran down his face.

‘Mark, listen. She’s not going to be your wife. She’s not ever going to be. Sometime, you’ve got to see it.’

‘You mean, I should look for another wife? Oh, I’ve had plenty of that sort of advice recently, I assure you. They’ve even said, I should marry you!’

‘Well, God knows I’m not one to say that one should marry for the sake of being married. But, Mark, you’ve got to give up Lynda. I mean, you’ve got to stop waiting for her to be different.’

‘If I can’t have her, I don’t want anybody.’

‘All right. Then you’ll have nobody.’

‘But why? The other afternoon, when that dreadful woman was not there, it was as if – it was like when we were first married.’ After a long time, when she did not say anything, his taut hand went loose in hers, and he stood up. The look he gave her was hurt: she had not helped him, not said what he wanted to hear.

Next day, he asked Lynda if she would go away with him for a week-end, to stay at Mary and Harold Butts’s. She had always loved Nanny Butts.

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Lynda. ‘I’d love to. What a lovely idea.’

They were to leave by car on Friday afternoon. In the morning there were voices shouting in anger from the basement, screams that wailed off into tears. Objects crashed against walls, doors slammed.

Mark packed a suitcase, and went downstairs at the time he had appointed, to fetch his wife. Lynda was sitting on her bed in a dressing-gown, with a desperate trembling smile that was directed generally, not at Mark, but at life. Dorothy sat knitting in the other room. She was making a tea-cosy, of purple and red wool. Lynda’s clothes were on the floor, in a heap beside the suitcase.

Then Lynda stood up, still smiling, walked out of the bedroom, and went up the stairs, with her husband following her. In Mark’s bedroom, on the table by his bed, stood a photograph of a radiant young beauty who smiled back at the soiled, ill, sour-smelling Lynda.