Doris Lessing - The Temptation of Jack Orkney

He knew now what to expect from Walter.

Walter was looking furtive. Of course Jack knew that his furtiveness was not anything he would have noticed normally: this state he was in exaggerated every emotion on other people's faces into caricatures. But Walter was playing a double part, almost that of a spy (as he had with Mona of course, now he came to think of it), and Furtiveness was written large on him.

Walter mentioned the Fast — a success — and then made a clumsy sort of transition which Jack missed, and was talking about Lourdes. Jack wondered why Lourdes? And then he laughed: it was a short laugh, of astonishment, and Walter did not notice it. Or, rather, had not expected a laugh in this place, found it discordant, and therefore discounted it, as if it had not happened. Walter was trying to find out if Jack's religious conversion — the rumour had spread that he went to church on Sundays — included a belief in miracles, such as took place, they said, at Lourdes. Jack said he had been to Lourdes once for the Daily — over some so-called miracles some years ago. Walter nodded, as if to say: That's right. He was already feeling relieved, because Jack had used the right tone. But he was still showing the anxiety of a priest who knew his beliefs to be the correct ones and was afraid of a lamb straying from the flock. He mentioned that Mona was suspected of having become a Roman Catholic. 'Good God, no,' said Jack, 'she can't have.' He sounded shocked. This was because his reaction was that she had been deceiving him, had lied. He sat silent trying to remember the exact tones of her voice, how she had looked. If she was a Catholic, could she have said she did not believe in a personal survival? But he knew nothing at all of what Catholics thought, except that they did not believe in birth control, but did believe in the Pope.

Remembering that Walter was still there, and silent, he looked up to see him smiling with relief, the smile seemed to him extraordinary in its vulgarity, yet he knew that what he was seeing was the pleasure of a good comrade: Walter was happy that nothing was going to spoil their long friendship. The spontaneity of his reply over Mona had reassured him; now, mission accomplished, Walter was already thinking about the various obligations he had to get back to. But he stayed a little, to discuss some committee on pollution he was helping to set up.

He talked: Jack listened, wondering if this was the right time to raise the question of 'the young'. Walter's two sons were both classic revolutionaries and they despised their father for his success, his position in the socialist world, for 'his compromise with the ruling class'. Jack was thinking that of all the people in the world it was Walter, so like himself in experience, position and — he was afraid — character, with whom he should be able to talk about his preoccupation. But he was beginning to realize that there was a difference, and it was obviously an important one, between them. Jack was more on the outskirts of politics. He was more of a freelance, but Walter was always in the thick of every political struggle, always involved with the actual details of organization. He never did anything else. And this was why he was so far from Jack's present vision of things, which saw them all — the people like them — continually planning and arranging and organizing towards great goals, but fated to see these plains fail, or become so diluted by pressures of necessity that the results resembled nothing of what had been envisaged at the start. Sitting there, looking at his old friend's forceful and energetic face, it was in a double vision. On the one hand he thought that this was the one man he knew whom he would trust to see them all through any public or private tight spot; but at the same time he wanted to howl out, in a protest of agonized laughter, that if the skies fell (as they might very well do), if the seas rolled in, if all the water became undrinkable and the air poisoned and the food so short everyone was scratching for it in the dust like animals, Walter, Bill, Mona, himself, and all those like them, would be organizing Committees, Conferences, Sit-downs, Fasts, Marches, Protests and Petitions, and writing to the authorities about the undemocratic behaviour of the police.

Walter was talking about some negotiation with the Conservatives. Normally Jack would be listening to an admirably concise and intelligent account of human beings in conflict. Now Jack could see only that on his friend's face was a look which said: I am Power. Jack suddenly got up with a gesture of repulsion. Walter rose automatically, still talking, not noticing Jack's condition. Jack reminded himself that in criticizing Walter he had forgotten that he must be careful about himself: he had again, and suddenly, became conscious of the expressions that were fitting themselves down over his face, reflecting from Walter's, horrifying him in their complacency or their cruelty. And his limbs, his body, kept falling into postures of self-esteem and self-approval.

Walter was moving to the door, still talking. Jack, trying to keep his face blank, to prevent his limbs from expressing emotions which seemed to him appropriate for a monster, moved cautiously after him. Walter stood in the door — talking. Jack wanted him to go. It tired him, this self-observation he could not stop: there was his image at the door oblivious to anything in the world but his own analysis of events. Yet at last, as Walter said goodbye and he saw Jack again — which he had not done for some minutes, being too self-absorbed — a worried look came into his face, and because of this look Jack knew that what Walter saw was a man standing in a rigid, unnatural position who had his hands at his lower cheeks, fretfully fingering the jaw-bone, as if it were out of place.

Walter said, in a simple and awkward voice: 'It's a bit of a shock when your old man goes. I know when mine died it took me quite a time to get back to normal.'

He left, like a health visitor, and Jack thought that Walter had had to get back to normal when his father died. He was thinking, too, that the cure for his condition was activity. Walter was more sensible than himself: he filled every moment of his time.

He decided to go to the family doctor for sleeping pills. This was a house that self-consciously did not go in for pills of any kind. Or did not know: Rosemary, during what she now called 'my silly time' — which after all had gone on for some years — had taken sleeping pills a lot. But that, even while she did it, had seemed to her a betrayal of her real nature. The girls went in for health in various ways — diets, yoga, home-made bread. His son was too strong — of course! — to need medicine. He smoked pot, Jack believed, and on principle — well, so would Jack have done at his age, the law on marihuana was absurd.

He told the doctor he was not sleeping well. The doctor asked for how long. He had to think. Well, for about a month, perhaps six weeks.

The doctor said: 'That's not going to kill you, Jack!'

‘All right, but before I get into the habit of not sleeping I'd like something — and not a placebo, please.' The glance the doctor gave him at this told him that he had in fact been deciding to prescribe a placebo, but there had been something in Jack's voice to make him change his mind.

'Is there anything else worrying you?'

'Nothing. Or everything.'

'I see,' said the doctor, and prescribed sleeping pills and antidepressants.

Jack had the prescriptions made up, then changed his mind: if he started taking these pills, it would be some sort of capitulation. To what, he did not know. Besides, he was thinking: Perhaps they might make it worse? 'It' was not only the sweet mawkishness which threatened him at every turn, in a jingle of a tune for an advertisement on television, a shaft of light from behind a cloud at sunrise, a kitten playing in the next garden, but the feeling, getting worse, that he was transparent, an automation of unlikeable and predictable reactions. He was like a spy in his own home, noticing the slightest reactions of thought or emotion in his wife and daughters, seeing them as robots. If they knew how he was seeing them, how loathsome they were in their predictability, their banality, they would turn and kill him. And quite rightly. For he was not human. He was outside humanity. He even found himself walking abruptly out of rooms where he was sitting with Rosemary, or one or other of the girls; he could not stand his own horror and pity because of them, himself, everybody.