Doris Lessing - Love, Again

Henry was off to Berlin tomorrow morning. He was to do a production there next year, and it had to be discussed. They jested that she would go with him, and then there was a moment when it was not a joke. Why not? They both wanted it. But as it became a possibility, and then a plan, constraint entered, because arrangements had to be made and other people involved. Still, they parted after the rehearsal agreeing they would meet in the hotel in Berlin if it was too late to get onto the same flight. When she rang a travel agency, her elation subsided. For a woman of her age to share a room with a man of his would cause comment. Two rooms would be needed. When the agency rang back, it was to report that the two preferred hotels would not know until tomorrow if there would be rooms. They could always arrive in Berlin unbooked, take a taxi, and drive from hotel to hotel; but if they were not on the same flight, then… By now an irritable gloom had taken possession of her. All this was a million miles from Arcadia. She found it hard to ring Henry with all these problems and, when he was not in his room was both relieved and desolated. Instead of doing all the energetic things necessary to get herself to Berlin tomorrow, she decided to wait for his call from Berlin. She needed to hear his voice, his cry of 'Sarah!' — which, she knew, would make it possible for her to get to Berlin.

No sooner had she sat down to wait than the telephone rang. It was Anne. 'Sarah, I'm terribly sorry, but you have to come over.' 'I can't come now.' 'You must, Sarah. You have to.' And she rang off before Sarah could protest further.

It was a large family house in Holland Park. In the garden, still full of a weak sunlight, Joyce's sisters lolled almost naked in deck chairs. They looked like two pretty young greyhounds. Sarah's relations with Briony and Nell could best be described as formal: formalized around discussions about Joyce, rituals of presents, and invitations to the theatre. They had complained that their aunt believed she had only one niece. They were clever girls, who had done well, sometimes brilliantly, at school and then university. They were both in good jobs, one in a bank and the other as a chemist in a laboratory. Neither was ambitious, and they had refused chances of promotion which would have meant hard work. They were now in their mid-twenties and lived at home, saying frankly, and often, why should they leave home, where everything was done for them and where they could save money? They were both ignorant, being products of a particularly bad period in British education. Either girl was capable of saying with a giggle that she didn't know the Russians had been on our side in the last war, or that the Romans had been in Britain. Among things they had never heard of were the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the Mongols, the Norman Conquest of Britain, the wars with the Saracens, the First World War. This had turned into a game: if Sarah happened to mention, let's say, the Wars of the Roses, they would put on loopy smiles: 'Something else we don't know; oh dear.' They had read nothing and were curious about nothing except the markets in the cities they visited. To please Sarah, Briony had said, she had tried to read Anna Karenina, but it had made her cry. These two amiable barbarians scared Sarah, for she knew they were representative. Worse, an hour in their company had her thinking, Oh well, why should anyone know anything? Obviously they do perfectly well knowing only about clothes and having a good time. Enough money had been spent on their education to keep a village in Africa for several years.

Sarah went up to the top of the house, where Anne had a little sitting room. When she saw Sarah, she sighed, then smiled, stubbed out a cigarette, remembered that Sarah was not a patient, and lit another.

She came to the point at once. 'Are any of these yours?'

On a table was a magpie's litter. A large silver spoon. A silver picture frame. An amber necklace. Some old coins. A little Victorian gold mesh bag. An ornate belt that looked like gold. And so on.

Sarah indicated the necklace and the picture frame. 'Joyce?' she asked, and Anne nodded, expelling smoke into a room already swirling with it. 'We found this cache in her room. The police are coming in an hour to take away anything that isn't yours.'

'She's not going to get rich on that lot.'

'You mustn't leave anything lying around, Sarah. And your credit cards and your cheque books and anything like that.'

'Oh, surely she wouldn't… '

'She forged my signature last week on a cheque for three thousand pounds.'

'Three thousand… ' Sarah sat down.

'Precisely. If it were thirty or even three hundred… And no, I don't think it is a cry for help or any of the things those stupid social workers say. She lives in such a dream world she probably thinks three thousand is the same as three hundred.' Her voice cracked and she coughed, then lit a new cigarette. She poured herself juice from a glass jug and waved her hand in an invitation that Sarah should do the same. But there was no second glass.

'So what happened?'

'We sorted it out with the police. They were wonderful. Then we lectured her. Only afterwards did it occur to us that what we were saying amounted to: Next time don't try for such a large sum — you know, if you're going to be a thief, then at least be an efficient one. Because if she's on drugs she's going to steal, isn't she?'

She laughed, not expecting Sarah to share it. Sarah thought her sister-in-law looked more than tired; she was possibly even ill. Pale hair fell about a gaunt face. That hair had been smooth and golden and shining. Like Joyce's.

'What are we going to do?'

'What can we do? Hal says I should give up my work and look after her. Well, I'm not going to. It's the only thing that keeps me sane.'

Sarah got up to go, taking the things that were hers.

Then Anne said in a low, intense, trembly voice, 'Don't think too badly of me. You simply don't know… you have no idea what it is being married to Hal. It's like being married to a sort of big soft black rubber ball. Nothing you do makes any impression on it. The funny thing is, I'd have left him long ago if it hadn't been for Joyce. Silly. I thought she'd get better. But she was a write-off from the start.'

Sarah kissed her goodbye. This was not exactly their style, but Anne was pleased. Tears filled her already inflamed eyes.

'How are your two?'

'Why — fine. I had letters this week from both of them. And George rang last night. He might bring them all over for Christmas.'

'Marvellous,' said Anne dreamily. 'That's how it should be. You just take it for granted — they are both fine and that's the end of it. You don't think of them all that much, do you?'

'Recently I've been so… '

'Quite so. Better things to think about. But I spend my time worrying. And I always feel guilty when I'm with you, because you took the brunt all those years. The fact is, I'd have had to stop working if you hadn't coped. The fact is, I've failed with Joyce.'

On her way out through the garden, Sarah saw the two deck chairs were empty. It occurred to her that the two healthy daughters had not been mentioned. Briony and Nell had taken to saying, 'Oh, don't bother about us, please. We're only the healthy ones. We are a success. We are viable.' The musicians had arrived. Sarah and Henry sat side by side behind their trestle table, which was loaded with prompt books, scores, polystyrene cups stained with coffee, and the faxed messages from all over the world that show business cannot do without for half a day. She was determined to feel nothing at all when the music began, but a sweet shaft winged straight to Sarah's solar plexus, and she turned wet eyes to meet Henry's.