Doris Lessing - Doris Lessing

Felicity was just coming out of the gate, and when she saw Alice, wary annoyance possessed her. But Alice gave her no time to develop this. She went straight up and said, "Philip's affairs are more or less sorted out. But they are looking for his sister. If they don't find her in a couple of days, they'll fix the funeral for Monday or Tuesday anyway." Felicity, as expected and as she ought, looked embarrassed, if impatient, and said, "Thanks, it's good of you to take it on."

"I had no alternative," Alice reminded her crisply.

The two women stood facing each other, but Felicity looked as though she were in a game of trying to dodge past someone without being touched. Alice said, "Can I borrow your car for a few hours?"

At this Felicity sighed and said, "But I'm using it this morning." Felicity was a social worker.

"I need it," said Alice simply.

Felicity thought, and said, "You could have it tomorrow morning until lunchtime." She could not have said more clearly: And that is all you are getting from me as quid pro quo! Alice answered this with, "Fine. We'll consider accounts settled, then." Hearing it put into words made Felicity blush, but she said, "I'm in a hurry. Same time tomorrow?" And almost ran to her car, a Datsun, which stood parked with all the other conforming, obedient cars along the pavement's edge.

That's done, thought Alice, and put all thoughts of the dangerous packages out of her head. Tomorrow she would take them to the municipal rubbish tip, and that would be that. And if any more turned up, they would be got rid of.

Outside her front door stood a man, in a neat grey suit and a tie, so much the official that she thought, Oh no, not the Council again, and put on her competent, I-am-coping-with-everything face.

But it was in an American accent that he said, or stated, "Alice Mellings?"

"That's right" - and she knew that this forthcoming encounter was one she would need all her wits for. Her excited blood told her so.

"Can I come in?"

Without speaking, she opened the door, and went in front of him to the kitchen, and indicated that he should sit in the chair at the end of the table. She put on the kettle and sat at the head.

He looked younger than herself. But he was the type to look young. He had a smooth face, attentive and polite, like an old-fashioned student. He had rather nice brown eyes, at the moment devoted to her every movement, eyes that examined her as closely as she did him. He had well-cared-for hands. But his most remarkable feature was his featurelessness. There was nothing, but nothing, to fasten on to in him. A clerk; someone essentially indoor, weathered at the worst by a draught or too-cold air from a left-open window. He might have taken an exam in how to be ordinary! Yet there was something excessive in it.... Of course, she, Alice, was only likely to meet nonconformists - or, as her mother in her old-fashioned way put it, bohemians; and, of course, in England in these days, particularly London, no one gave a fuck, but all the same...

It was he who broke the silence with, "Comrade Mellings, I was informed early this morning that you were reluctant to accept a consignment of materiel."

Alice stared. The use of the word materiel now, in this context, was not thrilling her at all. In this situation (one she wanted to shake off and be rid of), the word materiel was too portentous; it was a word that insisted on being taken seriously.

He said, "Is that true, Comrade Mellings? I would like some kind of explanation." He spoke as it were abstractly, his own personality removed, but the words he used were enough, and she was suddenly furious. Who the fuck did he think...

"It certainly is true," she said calmly, and coldly. "It was quite out of order to bring it here. No arrangement has ever been made that any sort of stuff should be sent here." She deliberately used the word "stuff," which sounded unimportant.

He licked his lips, and his eyes were slightly narrowed as he stared.

"That is not possible," he observed, at last. But she could see he was nonplussed, was trying to find some thread or loose end to guide him in.

"Oh yes, it is," she asserted herself. "All kinds of things were dumped next door and picked up again. But that had nothing to do with us in this house. This is a quite different situation."

There were sounds from the kettle that enabled her briskly to rise and go to it. Her back to him, she stirred powdered coffee into two mugs. Slowly. Something about him bothered her. He was rather like those large, smooth, shiny bales upstairs, with not a mark on them, and with God knows what inside.

An American? Well...

She took her time in turning, in setting the mug down in front of him. She had not asked what he would drink. Then she surprised herself by yawning, a deep, irresistible yawn. After all, she had hardly slept. He glanced at her, covertly, surprised. This glance was not, as it were, on the agenda; and she felt suddenly in control.

She calmly sat down, and when he seemed to be looking about for milk, or sugar, she pushed a half-empty bottle of milk towards him, and a quite pretty old cup with sugar in it. She could see that these domestic arrangements did not meet with his approval.

She waited, her mind at work on what it was about him that disturbed her.

"The American revolutionaries depend on this liaison, so that their aid can reach the Irish revolutionaries," he said.

"What American revolutionaries?"

"As you know, Comrade Mellings, large numbers of honest Americans wish to aid the Irish in their fight against the British oppressor."

"Yes, but most of them are just ordinary people; they aren't revolutionaries." There was considerable contempt in this for him - for his inexactness.

He was now staring down at his mug, as if examining her was not yielding him the information he needed, and the mug might provide inspiration.

"Just let's get this clear," she said. "You are supposed to be an American supplying the Irish comrades with materiel?" She had not meant to sound so raw and derisive.

He said, still looking at his mug, "Yes, I am an American, Gordon O'Leary. Third-generation American. An old Irish-American family. Like the Kennedys." He laughed, for the first time. The laugh offered her this joke like a present, and he looked full at her, with confidence.

"And Comrade Andrew is an American too?" she enquired, her voice quite stifled with derision.

"Yes, he is an American. Of course. But I think his family came from Germany."

"Oh, for shit's sake," she said. "Comrade Andrew is about as American as..." She looked straight at him, with the full force of her essential innocence, her candour, and said, "And you are not an American. You couldn't be an American, not in a thousand years."

His pale, obedient cheeks coloured, and his breathing changed as he dropped his dangerously angry gaze. Regaining control, he said, "But I can assure you I am. Why shouldn't I be?"

"You are Russian. Like Andrew. Oh, you speak perfect American, of course." Alice laughed, from nervousness. But she was fuelled by the most sincere anger. She had never been able to stand being treated like a fool. She was being treated like one now.

He made some internal adjustment or other, sighed, sat up straight in his chair, as if reminded by an inward monitor that one didn't slump in a chair, and looked at her. He said, mildly enough, "Comrade Mellings, as it happens I am an American. From Michigan. I am an engineer, and when I have finished certain little assignments here, that is what I shall return to do. Do you understand?" He waited for her to reply, but while she was listening to him, her gaze fixed on his face, the gaze was a little glassy, because her mind was hard at work. Why could he not be an American? His accent was perfect, better than Andrew's! No, it was his style. It was something about him. What were Americans, then? (She even shut her eyes, allowing Americans she had known to appear in her mind's eye, for examination.) All the ones she had met - which, she reminded herself, were mostly young and belonging to the network of international wanderers and explorers but, nevertheless, real Americans - were quite different. There was a quality - what was it? Yes, there was a largeness, an openness, a looseness... there was a freedom, yes, that was the word. Whereas this man here (and she opened her eyes to make comparisons with what she had been examining on her inner screen, to see him most curiously watching her) was tight and controlled, and looked as if he couldn't make a spontaneous movement if he tried. He looked, even though he sat "relaxed" - presumably that was meant to be an informal pose - as if he wore an invisible straitjacket and had never been without it, ever, in his life. His very molecules had got into the habit of being on guard.