Doris Lessing - The Memoirs of a Survivor

Well, I preferred that good night to many others we had exchanged when at ten o'clock she would cry, 'Oh, it's my bedtime, off I go' — and a dutiful good night kiss hung between us, a ghost, like the invisible white gloves of Professor White.

It happened that during that early autumn, day after day, fresh gangs came through. And, day after day, Emily was with them. She did not ask if she could. And I wasn't going to forbid her, for I knew she would not obey me. I had no authority. She was not my child. We avoided a confrontation. She was there whenever the pavements opposite were crowded and the fire blazing. On two occasions she was very drunk, and once she had a torn shirt and bite marks on her neck. She said: 'I suppose you think I've lost my virginity? Well, I haven't, though it was a close thing, I grant you.' And then the cold little addition, her signature, 'If it matters, which I doubt.'

'I think it matters,' I said.

'Oh, do you? Well, you are an optimist, I suppose. Something of that kind. What do you think, Hugo?'

That sequence of travelling gangs came to an end. The pavements up and down the street were blackened and cracked with the fires that had been blazing there for so many nights, the leaves of the plane trees hung limp and blasted, bones and bits of fur and broken glass lay everywhere, the waste lot behind was trampled and filthy. Now the police materialised, were busy taking notes and interviewing people. The cleaners came around. The pavements went back to normal. Everything went back to normal for a time, and the ground floor windows had lights in them at night.

It was about then I understood that the events on the pavements and what went on between me and Emily might have a connection with what I saw on my visits behind the wall.

Moving through the tall quiet white walls, as impermanent as theatre sets, knowing that the real inhabitant was there, always there just behind the next wall, to be glimpsed on the opening of the next door or the one beyond that, I came on a room, long, deep-ceilinged, once a beautiful room, which I recognised, which I knew (from where, though?) and it was in such disorder I felt sick and I was afraid. The place looked as if savages had been in it; as if soldiers had bivouacked there. The chairs and sofas had been deliberately slashed and jabbed with bayonets or knives, stuffing was spewing out everywhere, brocade curtains had been ripped off the brass rods and left in heaps. The room might have been used as a butcher's shop: there were feathers, blood, bits of offal. I began cleaning it. I laboured, used many buckets of hot water, scrubbed, mended. I opened tall windows to an eighteenth century garden where plants grew in patterns of squares among low hedges. Sun and wind were invited into that room and cleaned it. I was by myself all the time; yet did not feel myself to be. Then it was done. The old sofas and chairs stood there repaired and clean. The curtains were stacked for the cleaners. I walked around in it for a long time, for it was a room large enough for pacing; and I stood at the windows, seeing hollyhocks and damask roses, smelling lavender, roses, rosemary, verbena, conscious of memories assaulting me, claiming, insinuating. One was from my 'real' life, for it was nagging and tugging at me that the pavements where the fires had burned and the trees had scorched were part of the stuff and the substance of this room. But there was the tug of nostalgia for the room itself, the life that had been lived there, would continue the moment I had left. And for the garden, whose every little turn or corner I knew in my bones. Above all, for the inhabitant who was somewhere near, probably watching me; who, when I had left, would walk in and nod approval at the work of cleaning I had done and then perhaps go out to walk in the garden.

What I found next was in a very different setting: above all, in a different atmosphere. It was the first of the 'personal' experiences. This was the word I used for them from the start. And the atmosphere was unmistakable always, as soon as I entered whatever scene it was. That is, between the feeling or texture or mood of the scenes which were not 'personal', like, for instance, the long quiet room that had been so devastated, or any of the events, no matter how wearying or difficult or discouraging, that I saw in this or that setting — between these and the 'personal' scenes a world lay; the two kinds 'personal' (though not necessarily, to me) and the other, existed in spheres quite different and separated. One, the 'personal' was instantly to be recognised by the air that was its prison, by the emotions that were its creatures. The impersonal scenes might bring discouragement or problems that had to be solved, like the rehabilitation of walls or furniture, cleaning, putting order into chaos — but in that realm there was a lightness, a freedom, a feeling of possibility. Yes, that was it, the space and the knowledge of the possibility of alternative action. One could refuse to clean that room, clear that patch of earth; one could walk into another room altogether, choose another scene. But to enter the 'personal' was to enter a prison, where nothing could happen but what one saw happening, where the air was tight and limited, and above all where time was a strict unalterable law and long, oh my God, it went on, and on and on, minute by decreed minute, with no escape but the slow wearing away of one after another.

It was again a tall room, but this time square and without grace, and there were tall but heavy windows, with dark red velvet curtains. A fire burned, and in front of it was a strong fireguard, like a wire meat cover. On this were airing a great many thick or flimsy napkins, baby's napkins of the old — fashioned sort, and many white vests and binders, long and short dresses, robes, jackets, little socks. An Edwardian layette, emitting that odour which is not quite scorch, but near to it: heated airless materials. There was a rocking horse. Alphabet books. A cradle with muslin flounces, minute blue and green flowers on white… I realised what a relief the colour was, for everything was white, white clothing, white cot and cradle and covers and blankets and sheets and baskets. A white-painted room. A little white clock that would have been described in a catalogue as a Nursery Clock. White. The clock's tick was soft and little and incessant.

A small girl of about four sat on a hearthrug, with the clothing that was set to air between her and the flames. She wore a dark blue velvet dress. She had dark hair parted on one side and held by a large white ribbon. She had intensely serious, already defensive hazel eyes.

On the bed was a baby, being bundled for the night. The baby was chuckling. A nurse or attendant hung over the baby; but only a broad white back was visible. The little girl's look as she watched the loving nurse bending over the brother was enough, it said everything. But there was more: another figure, immensely tall, large and powerful came into the room; it was a personage all ruthless energy, and she too, bent over the baby, and the two females joined in a ceremony of loving while the baby wriggled and responded and cooed. And the little girl watched. Everything around her was enormous: the room so large, warm and high, the two women so tall and strong and disliking, the furniture daunting and difficult, the clock with its soft hurrying which told everyone what to do, was obeyed by everyone, consulted, constantly watched.

Being invited into this scene was to be absorbed into child — space; I saw it as a small child might — that is, enormous and implacable; but at the same time I kept with me my knowledge that it was tiny and implacable — because petty, unimportant. This was a tyranny of the unimportant, of the mindless. Claustrophobia, airlessness, a suffocation of the mind, of aspiration. And all endless, for this was child-time, where one day's end could hardly be glimpsed from its beginning, ordered by the hard white clock. Each day was like something to be climbed, like the great obdurate chairs, a bed higher than one's head, obstacles and challenges overcome by the aid of large hands that gripped and pulled and pushed — hands which, seen at work on that baby, seemed to be tender and considerate. The baby was high in the air, held up in the nurse's arms. The baby was laughing. The mother wanted to take the baby from the nurse, but the nurse held tight and said: 'Oh no, this one, this is my baby, he's my baby.' 'Oh no, Nurse,' said the strong tower of a mother, taller than anything in the room, taller than the big nurse, almost as high as the ceiling: 'Oh no,' she said, smiling but with her lips tight, 'he's my baby.' 'No, this is my baby,' said the nurse now rocking and crooning the infant, 'he's my darling baby, but the other one, she's your baby, Emily is yours, madam.' And she turned her back on the mother in a show of emotional independence, while she loved and rocked the baby. At which the mother smiled, a smile different from the other, and not understood by the little girl, except that it led to her being pulled up roughly on the mother's hand, and told: 'Why aren't you undressed? I told you to get undressed.' And there began a rapid uncomfortable scrambling and pushing; she was trying to remain steady on her feet, while layers of clothes were pulled off her. First the blue velvet dress of which she was proud, because it suited her — she had been told so by voices of all kinds insisting against each other high over her head, but it had many little buttons up the inside of her arm and down her back, each one taking so long to undo while the big fingers hurt and bruised. Then off came the petticoat, quite fast but scratching at her chin, then long white tights too big for her which released a warm likeable smell into the air: the mother noticed it and made a grimace. 'And now into bed with you,' she said as she hastily pulled down a white nightdress over the child's head.