Doris Lessing - The Memoirs of a Survivor

In the background was a man, looking uncomfortable. He was a soldier, or had been one. He was tall, and built well, but held himself as if it were hard to maintain purpose and self — respect. His conventionally handsome face was sensitive and easily pained, and was half-hidden by a large moustache.

The woman, the wife and mother, was talking; she talked, she talked, she went on and on as if no one but herself existed in that room or beyond it, as if she were alone and her husband and her children — the little girl particularly, who knew she was the chief culprit, the one being complained of — couldn't hear her.

'But I simply did not expect it, no one ever warns one how it is going to be, it is too much. By the time the end of the day has come I'm not fit for anything at all but sleep, my mind is just a fog, it's a scramble… as for reading or any serious sort of thing, that is out of the question. Emily will wake at six, I've trained her to stay quiet until seven, but from then on, I'm on the go, the go, the go, all day, it is one thing after another, and when you think that at one time I was quite known for my intelligence, well that is just a joke, I'm afraid.'

The man, very still, sat back in his chair, smoking. The ash on his cigarette lengthened itself and dropped. He frowned, gave his wife an irritated look, hastily pulled an ashtray towards him in a way that said at the same time he should have remembered the ashtray before, but that if he felt like dropping ash he was entitled to. He went on smoking. The little girl, who was about five or six, had her thumb in her mouth. Her face was shadowed and bleak because of the pressure of criticism on her, her existence.

She was a dark-haired child, with dark eyes like her father's, full of pain — guilt.

'No one has any idea, do they, until they have children, what it means. It's all I can do just to keep up with the rush of things, the meals one after another, the food, let alone giving the children the attention they should have. I know that Emily is ready for more than I have time to give her, but she is such a demanding child, so difficult, she always has taken a lot out of me, she wants to be read to and played with all the time, but I'm cooking, I'm ordering food, I'm at it all day, well you know how it is, there isn't time for what there has to be done, I simply don't have time for the child. I did manage to get a girl for a time last year, but that was really more trouble than it was worth, really, all their problems and their crises and you have to deal with them, she took up as much of my time as Emily does, but I did get an hour to myself after lunch and I put my feet up for a bit, but I did not find I had the energy to read, let alone study, no one knows how it is, what it means, no, children do for you, they do you in, I'm not what I was, I know that only too well I am afraid.'

The child on her knee, two or three years old, a heavy passive child dressed in white wool that smelled damp, was being jogged faster now; his eyes were glazing as the world bounced up and down around him, his adenoidal mouth was open and slack, the full cheeks quivering.

The husband, passive but really tense with irritation — with guilt — smoked on, listening, frowning.

'But what can you give out when you get nothing in? I am empty, drained; I am exhausted by lunchtime and all I want is to sleep by then. And when you think of what I used to be, what I was capable of! I never thought of being tired, I never imagined I could become the sort of woman who would never have time to open a book. But there it is.'

She sighed, quite unselfconsciously. She was like a child, that tall, solid, confident woman; she needed understanding as a child does. She sat looking inward into the demands of her days and her nights. No one else was there for her, because she felt she was talking to herself: they could not hear, or would not. She was trapped, but did not know why she felt this, for her marriage and her children were what she personally had wanted and had aimed for — what society had chosen for her. Nothing in her education or experience had prepared her for what she did in fact feel, and she was isolated in her distress and her bafflement, sometimes even believing that she might perhaps be ill in some way.

The little girl, Emily, had left the chair where she had been standing and holding tight to the arm, sheltering from the storm of abuse and criticism. She now went to her father, and stood by his knee, watching that great powerful woman her mother, whose hands were so hurtful. She was shrinking closer and closer to her father who, it seemed, was unaware of her. He made a clumsy movement, knocking off his ashtray, and his instinctive retrieval of it caused his elbow to jog Emily. She fell back, dropped away, like something left behind as a rush of water goes past, or a stream of air. She drifted to the floor and lay there, face downwards, thumb in her mouth.

The hard accusing voice went on and on, would always go on, had always gone on, nothing could stop it, could stop these emotions, this pain, this guilt at ever having been born at all, born to cause such pain and annoyance and difficulty. The voice would nag on there for ever, could never be turned off, and even when the sound was turned low in memory, there must be a permanent pressure of dislike, resentment. Often in my ordinary life I would hear the sound of a voice, a bitter and low complaint just the other side of sense: there it was, in one of rooms behind the wall, still there, always there… standing at the window I watched Emily, the bright attractive girl who always had people around her listening to her chatter, her laugh, her little clevernesses. She was always aware of everything that went on, nothing could escape her in the movements and happenings of that crowd; while talking with one group, it seemed as if even her back and shoulders were taking in information from another. And yet she was isolated, alone; the 'attractiveness' was like a shell of bright paint, and from inside it she watched and listened. It was the intensity of her self — awareness that made her alone; this did not leave her, even at her most feverish, when she was tipsy or drunk, or singing with the others. It was as if she had an invisible deformity, a hump on her back, perhaps, visible only to herself… and to me, as I stood watching her in a way I never could when she was close to me at home.

Emily might not see me at all. So much aware of what went on among her companions, she had eyes for every little outside. But she did notice me once or twice, and then it was odd to see how she would look at me, just as if I could not see her looking. It was as if the act of her gazing out from the protection of that crowd gave her immunity, was a different thing from looking at someone inside it, demanding a different code. A long, level thoughtful stare, not unfriendly, merely detached, her real self visible, and then would come the bright hard smile, the wave of the hand — friendliness, as far as it was licensed by her companions. As soon as she lost sight of me, my existence vanished for her; she was back again, enclosed by them, the prisoner of her situation.

While I stood there at my window, Hugo watchful beside me, observing her, I saw how the numbers on the pavement had grown: fifty or more of them now, and, looking up at the innumerable windows full of faces, that overhung the scene, knew that we all had one thing in common: we were wondering how soon this throng, or part of it, would move on and away, how soon 'the youngsters' would be off… it would not be long now. And Emily? She would go with them? I stood by the watching yellow beast who would never let me fondle him, but who seemed to like my being there, close, the friend of his mistress, his love — I stood there and thought that any day I could approach that window and find the opposite pavement empty, the street cleaners swilling water and disinfectant, clearing away all memories of the tribe. And Hugo and I would be alone, and I would have betrayed my trust.