London Observed

by Doris Lessing

  ‘I bow to your superior worldly wisdom.’

  ‘Anyway, it is a very pretty place. I’m sure you’ll like it.’

  She laughed. At him. He joined in.

  It was a pretty place. Within five minutes of each other, he from London, she from Manchester, they drove off the main road through increasingly narrow lanes, until there was a large and old building with an arch in it, leading to a courtyard, between other, scattered buildings. The ‘cottage’ was in fact a shabby but commodious enough house with windows on to the courtyard, and through one of them Henry and Angela were visible, sitting at a table. First Sebastian, and then, more timidly, Jody, advanced to this window past plants in tubs and a sleeping collie, and presented themselves to the couple who energetically waved and smiled and begged them to come in. As Sebastian reached the door to the kitchen, Angela ran to embrace him, kiss kiss hug hug, oh darling Sebastian, while Henry affably smiled and turned half away, and when Jody appeared, immediately afterwards, Henry went to her and held her tight. ‘Sweetie,’ he said and, his head bent beside hers, he whispered welcomes. Angela, beside Sebastian (their arms around each other still), observed this without turning away, and on her face appeared the fleetest shadow of loss.

  Then Angela and Henry left their respective loved ones, and began whisking plates and glasses off the table. They stood side by side, backs to the sink, smiling.

  Angela was a small, pretty woman, with masses of dark curly hair, and a sprightly amused air which did not leave her as she said enthusiastically to Jody, ‘I am so glad you are here. Really, it is ridiculous we haven’t met long before. I kept saying so, didn’t I, Henry?’

  ‘Yes, you did, but it never seemed appropriate,’ said Henry. He was a large, dark, amiable fellow, with a ruddy face, but this last was from the wine he and Angela had been drinking. Seen there, side by side, they were a pair, a match, a couple, full of well-being, full of goodwill.

  ‘Well, thanks,’ said Jody, and since Sebastian had seated himself at the table that stood in the middle of this large, shabby, pleasant country kitchen, she did too, exactly where she had observed Angela sitting, through the window. They all examined each other, not concealing it: natural enough that they should be curious, their faces, their poses, frankly said. Of course the women particularly took each other’s measure, meeting for the first time: but there need be no end to the new ideas suggested by their being there in the same room. For example, remembering that Jody had more than once suggested he and Henry shared qualities, Sebastian was regarding Henry from this point of view, but concluded, behind his smile, that only an angle of vision so far from anything he could approach was capable of such a comparison, and there was no sense in even trying to achieve it. He attempted this train of thought: Angela chose Henry, and now she’s chosen me, so perhaps there is something in both of us we are unaware of? But then, the parallel thought, Henry chose Angela, and then Jody, cancelled the first. Delightful Angela (perfection in every way) did not have one point where she could be matched with this dramatic Jody, who was sitting there in her elegant country clothes, her yellow hair (dyed, he supposed) shiny and smooth, smiling and open, but as it were sharpened to a fine point of intelligence behind those shrewd, observant grey eyes. A very handsome creature, this Jody. Henry was welcome to her.

  ‘We have a problem,’ announced Henry. ‘Connie isn’t feeling well, and we’ve decided to run her into the local hospital.’

  ‘And that’s why we were so rude and ate before you arrived,’ confessed Angela. ‘But if you’ll just make yourselves at home, we’ll be back in a jiffy.’

  This ‘jiffy’ would be all afternoon, as was obvious as soon as you thought about it. Sebastian was registering Jody’s look which (probably against her will) was positively shouting that surely it must be occurring to the parents this indisposition of eleven-year-old Connie might be related to this traumatic occasion, the presence together for a whole weekend of her two parents and their new mates. But if the parents had this thought they were not showing it.

  ‘She’s been off-colour for some days,’ said Angela. ‘I nearly took her to the doctor last Saturday.’

  ‘We’ll be back in a trice,’ said Henry, with a look at Jody that made her glow with pleasure, made her, suddenly, like a girl, confused and grateful. Her face, however, at once returned to its condition of sober over-alertness that was making Sebastian uncomfortable.

  ‘Sebastian knows where everything is,’ said Angela, with a special look at him.

  Henry and Angela went out, and soon the other two watched them take their daughter, wrapped in a blanket and drooping between them, to a car. Off went the car under the big arch to the outside world, with smiles and waves, and even a kiss blown from Angela to Sebastian over Connie’s head.

  Then Sebastian got up, went to the refrigerator, and began unloading on to the table the lunch that was really only the preliminary to the big evening meal. Pâté. Cheese. Salad. Fruit. Sebastian and Jody sat together in this amiable kitchen, and, for a while, ate.

  ‘I’ve never known a woman so able to make her thoughts felt,’ said Sebastian, but not as if he enjoyed this quality.

  ‘I’m certainly having plenty of them.’

  He said nothing, but poured out more wine, refilling her glass without asking her.

  ‘When, for instance, were you here last?’

  ‘Two weekends ago. No, with Olga. And the child of course – ours. Her name is Marion. And Connie was here too for the day.’

  She digested this. ‘You and your former wife spend holidays together?’

  ‘Well, yes, for the child you know. Marion has become very friendly with Connie, I am glad to say. Henry and Angela like people using this place.’ Silence. He spelled out, ‘We have separate bedrooms, Jody.’

  ‘Naturally, since you are divorced.’

  ‘Not because we are divorced, but because I love Angela.’

  ‘Did you know that Angela and Henry were off for ten days in the spring together?’

  ‘With Connie. They went together to visit Connie’s grandmother in Switzerland – she lives there with her third husband you know. Angela’s mother.’ He added, ‘Actually, Henry was only there a couple of days. I thought he was meeting you somewhere.’

  ‘I thought he was too, but then he was working – in Germany.’

  ‘Henry does work very hard. Much harder than I do.’

  Henry worked in the administration of some artistic foundation, and was always travelling. Sebastian was a businessman, and he travelled a lot too.

  They ate cheese and drank more wine. Then Sebastian began to talk, choosing his words, while his manner said he felt he had to say all this, but would rather there was no necessity. ‘Did you know Henry and Angela have known each other all their lives? They grew up together.’

  ‘Yes, Henry told me.’

  ‘Brother and sister. That’s what they are like. It took me some time to see it, I admit.’

  Now he looked at her, to judge if there was any need to spell it out.

  She said drily, ‘I’m not jealous about sex.’ And added childishly, ‘I’ve no reason to be.’ Then she blushed, because of her boastfulness, again momentarily becoming a girl again.

  Now he laughed at her. He was rather tipsy, and flushed, just like Henry, and relaxed and easy. As at ease as if he were in his own kitchen. ‘Well, good for you,’ he said. ‘I, on the other hand, am capable of being terribly jealous. But not about Henry. They haven’t slept together for years. They can’t. It doesn’t work. Sex was never the important thing, for them.’

  ‘So Henry tells me.’

  ‘Well, then?’ He seemed antagonistic to her now, his ruddy face directed full at her, without any of his usual watchfulness and restraint. The wine had stripped that off him! Or perhaps his dislike of her had … He was going on, ‘Jealousy! If you want my advice, then don’t. Don’t even start. Don’t let it enter things at all. I know. I’ve done it. And regret it.’

  ‘With
Olga?’

  ‘Yes, and not only with Olga. With others. It is my misfortune to be jealous. And now I spend a lot of effort in not being. You can’t win with jealousy, ever.’

  With this warning blasted straight at her, he stood up.

  ‘I don’t think I am jealous.’

  ‘Aren’t you? That’s what it looks like to me.’

  But before she could say any more, he said, moving to the door, ‘I’m a bit tight. And I’m going to sleep. I don’t work half as hard as Henry does, but I like to get a bit of a siesta when I’m here.’ At the door he stopped. ‘Of course, you don’t know where you are sleeping.’

  ‘Presumably with Henry.’

  ‘Naturally. When you get to the top of the stairs, then go along the passage in front of you and it’s at the end.’ He was almost out of the door when he turned to say, ‘Angela and I are in the other direction, in case you are wondering. Separated by at least five rooms.’

  ‘Some cottage,’ she said, but he had gone.

  She sat on alone in the quiet kitchen. She could hear Sebastian’s footsteps overhead, and was pleased to hear them. The thin English sunlight in the courtyard outside, the way people drifted past there, a car heard passing in the lane outside, the shadow of a bird on the stones of the court – all this inflicted on her a mood of dispersal, change, loss. She began to feel out of place, sitting upright, as if on guard, her fingers around the stem of the empty wineglass. She too should go to sleep for a while. Why not?

  The bedroom at the end of the corridor was a large room, furnished adequately for country visits, with rugs on the floors and an old-fashioned down quilt on the vast double bed. From the windows she looked at widely-spaced houses in green fields. She slid into the great bed and thought that here, tonight, she and Henry … well, better wait and see.

  The two came downstairs within five minutes of each other: it was already late afternoon. Henry had rung to say he and Angela were delayed at the hospital. Would Sebastian and Jody start the dinner?

  Sebastian, at home in this kitchen, directed operations while Jody obediently chopped and mixed, and then together they made a pudding she was good at. The courtyard outside the windows now held the last sunlight like a pool, and the plants, and the dog dozing on a flagstone, a tree, a bench, seemed remote, the setting for a song, or a story. Sebastian told Jody the history of this ‘cottage’ and its environs, a long one going back centuries, and full of incident, but only the last part elucidated what they were looking at. This whole area had once been a large estate, and the big archway had been where coaches, carts, teams of horses had come under the building that housed a dozen little workshops. But now a bakery, ironsmiths, the farrier’s, the tannery, the carpenter’s shed, the stone mason’s yard, were studios for artists and students who came here all through the year on courses. These were the people, mostly young, who were slowly passing the windows like lazy fish, lingering to look up at the windy evening sky, or standing to stare at the dog, or – briefly, before manners averted their eyes – at the window where Jody and Sebastian could be seen at work. Then, as dark filled the courtyard, with the meal entrusted to the oven, the two went into the sitting room. This was, like all the house, large, shabby, and comfortable. In this room Jody’s smart clothes seemed out of place, but her manner said she did not propose to apologize for them.

  They had a drink. Another. Then they played Scrabble.

  It was quite dark when the couple returned, entering the house with Connie still drooping between them. They shouted greetings at Sebastian and Jody, and sent apologetic smiles from the door before taking the child upstairs to bed.

  Soon they were downstairs again, for it appeared that Connie was exhausted and only too ready to sleep. Angela and Henry explained how there had been delays, the doctor was always overworked … they took Connie to the big hospital ten miles away … there they had to wait again. Connie might need to have her tonsils out, but of course ‘they’ did not like doing the operation these days. Angela and Henry sat side by side in the ancient sofa that faced a fireplace, now empty, but it must be ever so cosy in winter. They animatedly told their story to Sebastian sitting in the large armchair on their right, and to Jody, in her armchair to their left. They turned from side to side, from one to the other, as if conscientiously allotting their attention. Then, it being dinner time, the four went into the kitchen where they ate, Henry at the head of the table, Angela at the foot. Angela was yawning, drooping, prettily apologizing: she had driven across from Switzerland this morning with Connie, after visiting her mother. She had hardly slept last night. ‘Poor love,’ said Henry, before Sebastian did. Angela smiled gratitude at him, and then turned her round, usually rosy, face, now drained and wan, to Sebastian, and shook her head, and smiled a helpless incapacity to do more than laugh at her own condition. Coffee was carried into the sitting room, but Angela was already asleep on the sofa. They all laughed, and this time Sebastian was in time to rouse her, and take her up the stairs to bed, supporting her as she smiled back apologies, sending kisses to everyone, including Jody who by now surely would be happy to have one.

  Sebastian came down again quite soon, careful to make a noise in the hall before entering the sitting room. Henry was sitting where Angela had sat, blinking and yawning, and Jody was by him, holding his hand. She sat upright by the sprawling man, her expensively shod feet in front of her, her yellow hair gleaming.

  ‘God,’ said Henry, ‘I’m so sorry, I just can’t keep awake.’ To Jody, ‘Sorry, sweetie, I just can’t …’ And giving her a comradely hug and a kiss on her mouth, he waved at them and was off upstairs.

  Sebastian and Jody did not look at each other. After coffee, they went on playing Scrabble, both running up enormous scores and claiming that the other cheated, and laughing a lot. Since they had slept so long that afternoon, it was after midnight when Sebastian joined Angela at one end of the house, and Jody joined Henry at the other. Both Angela and Henry were soundly asleep, and when Sebastian woke well after nine on Sunday morning he was alone in the room, while Jody, coming down in a housecoat, found Henry and Angela drinking coffee. It appeared they had been for a long walk. They planned to take Connie, already up and apparently quite well again, to spend the day with friends who lived not half a mile away. Would Sebastian and Jody make themselves breakfast? They did, and what Jody was not saying seemed to fill not only the kitchen, but the sitting room, when they went into it.

  But back came Angela and Henry, full of animation, suggesting a good long walk: no need to bother about lunch, because they were all invited to lunch where Connie was. Off they went, the four of them, in their proper couples now, Henry and Jody in front, swinging their hands together and laughing, and Sebastian and Angela behind, with enough distance between the two pairs for love talk to be exchanged, if this were to occur. But if this did happen, it was not for long, because after a certain short halt to admire a view of high rolling hills with clouds scudding smartly across them, then Angela and Jody made the pair who came behind, a good way after the energetically striding men. That Angela and Jody should at last become friends was one of the reasons for this perilous (as Jody saw it) weekend, and what they talked about was their children. Angela was generally worried about Connie. The child had been bright and brave about the separation and then the divorce of her parents, but it had all been going on for four vital years, and while she and Henry had done everything – ‘Everything we possibly could,’ wailed Angela into the wind, she felt that Connie was taking it all very hard, though Henry thought she exaggerated. Here Jody told how bad she felt over Stephen, her ten-year-old. While she had remained married to Marcus, Stephen’s father, she had been able to postpone the child being sent to boarding school in the English way, but with the divorce, her influence ceased. Stephen had been banished with all the heartlessness of his people to a school his father insisted on. In the holidays, she tried to have him when she could, but she worked, she held down a very good and very demanding job in the publici
ty department of a big firm. It was only once a year she could claim Stephen for a real holiday together. She knew the child was growing apart from her – had grown apart; she seemed increasingly exotic to him, she knew. She wanted to take Stephen to Colorado where her family ranched, for a long holiday, and she was sure Stephen wanted this, but Stephen’s father claimed this would seriously unsettle an already disturbed boy. She was selfish, he said. She said he was selfish. ‘We quarrel every time we meet.’ But added, ‘We don’t actually meet, I don’t want to set eyes on him again, ever. But we talk on the telephone and we always end up shouting.’

  Angela listened gravely to all this, sometimes inclining her head towards Jody as the wind tugged and tore at these messages of discontent. ‘Thank God Henry and I have remained good friends,’ she shouted. ‘At least there’s not that.’

  Soon they reached a pub, the goal of this walk and, it appeared, of all their country walks. A squat white building self-respectingly confronted the winds of the exposed hillside. Outside it, on a flat flagstoned area stood half a dozen white painted tables and some chairs, but these seemed about to slide away into fields and scattered gorse bushes. On this chilly day only a few people were outside, mostly those with children, exposed against a background of churning trees, rapidly moving skies, and the shimmer of the racing grasses. Inside the pub no concessions were being made to summer. A darkish room was not too well-lit with red and yellowish wall lights, and about thirty people stood or perched along the bar counter. Into this scene Henry, Angela, and Sebastian fitted themselves, as if doing it for the thousandth time, and Jody was politely welcomed. It was evident that everyone here knew these so frequent visitors from London, and in no time they were being included in the talk which, however, Jody could not follow, being gossip and information about local people, happenings and animals. This talk was loud, confident, jokey, and – from the variety of accents – included not one or two classes, but probably several: the voices of the Londoners added notes to a diapason. Not for the first time the foreigner was being made to reflect that the famous class divisions of this island were capable of easy resolution – as in this pub, for instance, where a collection of people enjoying the ritual of pre-Sunday lunch drinking in a darkish room that had something of the aspects of a cave were united by the mellow light, which, as if directed by a painter, emphasized animated faces turned towards each other, or opening in a flash of teeth to call remarks along the curve of the bar counter. It was as if some key or root definition, something primal, had only to be made and everyone here would at once agree, but these words had not been said, and never would be, for there was no need for them. In this scene was something secretive and intimate and deeply shared, something reckless and even dangerous, and Henry’s face, and Sebastian’s, were far from their usual humorous deprecation. As for Angela, who stood between Sebastian and Henry, she was no longer full of the woes revealed during the walk here, and her charming little face smiled often and easily at a large number of people who evidently were fond of her. No wonder this couple – a couple still – had no intention of ever relinquishing their hold on this corner of Englishness, and Jody was seeing that Sebastian was determined to be part of it too. Why, thought Jody, this is where Henry lives, where he really lives, it’s not his house in London! His ‘people’ come from somewhere near here, but I hadn’t taken that in … He’ll end up here. And I? She stood near Sebastian, between him and a large and ravaged blonde who ran riding stables: he was negotiating riding lessons for his daughter Marion. The talk went on, in a flow of its own, into news about the local hunt club and the trouble they were having with the dogs … did Henry approve of hunting? She had never thought of asking … there was the recent indisposition of the pub owner’s pointer bitch Mabel, and the lease of fishing rights in a nearby river to some person from Japan – the amount of money being paid obviously gave everyone the maximum of satisfaction. Then the talk turned to the probable marriage of a recently widowed farmer’s wife with the Belgian owner of a neighbouring farm: this earned no one’s approval. It wouldn’t last, it seemed everyone agreed, though the company showed a generous understanding of the sensual aspects of the affair. She was a fine armful, all right, claimed the fellow behind the counter (not mine host, the owner of the pointer bitch, but his brother-in-law). She was definitely good news, said this lean humorous character (‘Foxy’), who wore a checked waistcoat that had caused him to be generally teased, a tribute he had accepted with the knowing smile and sharp rolling eye of one who knows a good thing when he sees it. No wonder this Gervais what’s-his-name wanted her, he’d need his head examined if he didn’t … but at this a certain laughter broke out around the pub: evidently he of the bright waistcoat had not been averse to this armful. He acknowledged the laughter with a judicious nod: fair enough! – but insisted, clinching the thing, that marriage needed thinking about, those two were rushing into it, no good could come of it.