The Four-Gated City

by Doris Lessing

  She went in A man in shabby dinner clothes and sleeked-down dandruffy hair came forward, already disapproving. Through his eyes, she saw a young woman with damp hair, a damp coat, and a stretched smile. For Martha was suddenly bloody-minded, because of this man’s automatic bad manners, though she knew they were the stuff of his life and what he earned his wages for. A subordinate man, a waiter, came to stand by the first, the headwaiter. Together they surveyed her with a cold skill that cracked her into speaking first. ‘I am meeting Mr. Matheson, ’ she said, awkward. The two conferred, in a long silence and a swiff glance. The first man turned away, to other business; and the second, having not said a word, took her, without going through the main room, to a table which was turned to one side. He pulled out a chair in which she would face a wall. He had not asked her to take off her coat. She did so, shrugging it on to the back of her chair. A lean, elderly man, whose whole life had been dedicated to the service of such minutiae, he again flicked his eyes fast over her and again with an arrogance of bad manners that astounded her, so naked did it seem to her. Her sweater and skirt were adequate. But wrong? Why? She did not know, but he did. He left her to wait.

  The place was still half full, since it was early for dinner. The people were middle-aged, or gave an appearance of being so. She saw, glancing with difficulty backwards, that there were two young people, but their youth was damped into the staid middle-aged air of the atmosphere. They, and the waiters, fitted into the décor which was designed, according to unwritten invisible rules, to fit them. The place was muted, dingy, rather dark; and no single object had any sort of charm or beauty, but had been chosen for its ability to melt into this scene. And the people had no sort of charm or flair. Yet, looking closely, things were expensive: money had been spent obviously, and since the war, to keep the restaurant exactly as it had always been: in an expensive shabbiness, dowdiness. The girl-the only one present apart from Martha, wore a black crèpey dress. It was ugly. Martha recognized this dress because before leaving ‘home’ Marjorie had told her what she would need-she gave her a list of clothes she would need, not for utility or warmth, but for occasions. ‘A uniform!’ Martha had exclaimed. This dress was part of that uniform, relating to no standard of charm or sexuality; doing nothing for the girl who wore it: it was a black dress worn with pearls, and it had a cousinship with the restaurant, its furnishings, and the people in it, who, when you looked, were good-looking, even well-built, certainly well-fed and easy. But now Martha could see perfectly well why her clothes, every bit as expensive, and certainly more attractive, that is, if clothes are to be judged by what they can do for the appearance of who wears them, would not do, and why the black dress did: she was not in the right uniform.

  The point was, not a word of what she thought could be told to Henry: he would not understand it: but when she met Jack tonight, she would only need to mention the girl’s dress, her pretty artless face and hair, the dull-flowering wall-paper, the men’s emphatically assured faces-and he would laugh and understand. And Jack would understand perfectly well when she said (though she would not need to say it)-The trouble is, you have to choose a slot to fit yourself to, you have to narrow yourself down for this stratum or that. Yet although the essence of Henry’s relation to me is that I should choose the right slot, find the right stratum, he would not understand me if I said that: he’d be embarrassed, irritated, if I said it.

  Yes, because Jack had chosen a life that freed him, he would understand all this: but he could not understand her other preoccupation, and the trouble was, the only person she had so far met who did, was Marjorie’s sister-Phoebe.

  Henry came in. Silent communications had already taken place between him and the headwaiter, because his face was prepared whimsically to accept her unsuitability for this restaurant. And all this because the weather had changed! A month ago, in another expensive dingy restaurant, she had been wearing, because of the heat, a slip-dress of black linen, and had been perfectly conformable-though much better dressed than anyone else in the restaurant. because they were over-dressed, being people who could not dress for the sun. Henry had been showing her off: slightly embarrassed, since her simplicity was challenging; and partly because, when the sun shines in England, a licence comes into power with it.

  He sat down. ‘My dear Martha, how very well you look.’

  ‘I know that my hair is wet: but I was not asked if I wanted to use the ladies-if they’ve got one at all.’

  This challenge caused him to send her a quick thoughtful look, before he looked past her head at some brown varnished wood and said: ‘I remember, about two years ago, my Aunt Maynard sent me a protégée-from Cape Town I think she was. She was very combative you know.’

  ‘My problem is, what part of Rome is one going to choose to combat? ’

  ‘Hmm, ’ he said.

  ‘And I had no idea Aunt Maynard’s fief extended as far as Cape Town.’

  Oh, one of those places.’

  Martha sat checking herself like an engine: had she eaten, had she slept, was she over-tired-no, no, yes: because her flare of anger was really so very strong. That aspect of ‘Matty’ which was brought into being by Henry was pure childish aggression. If she chose and was in control enough not to be aggressive or show hostility, then ‘Matty’ was bumbling, charming-apologetic by implication. She preferred aggression: it was a step better than the infant clown.

  Henry was looking past Martha at a man who had just come in. He was like Henry; all open good looks, charm, assurance. He smiled at Henry, and was about to come forward, but Henry smiled differently, and the man sat down behind a menu-sheet across the room.

  ‘Your partner? ’

  His look was very quick now: ‘Yes.’

  ‘You had asked him to look me over, but you find I’m not lookoverable at the moment, so you’ve radared him that you’d rather he didn’t? ’

  ‘He was going to eat here in any case: why shouldn’t I want him to meet you? ’

  ‘Ah, but why not now? ’

  Here came the waiter with the card which he held before Martha. She ordered some pâté and the fish, but Henry said: ‘If you’ll take my advice, the coquille is excellent. Not, of course, that their pâté isn’t.’ Here he offered a small humorous grimace to the grey old waiter, who accepted it.

  ‘Of course, ’ she said, and changed her order.

  She asked for a dry sherry. The wine waiter brought a bottle of semi-sweet sherry, because in such places a lady would be expected to drink sweet sherry. Henry was given an Amontillado.

  She drank hers. He drank his.

  ‘Martha, have you heard from your mother? ’

  Martha noted how this ancient goad to rage now had no effect on her at all: by putting several thousands of miles of sea between her and her mother she was saved? H’mmmm-possibly.

  ‘No, but I expect I shall.’

  ‘You said you thought of taking a job? ’

  ‘I had one in a pub down by the docks.’

  ‘Ever such a lark of course-but not for long surely? ’

  ‘I’ve also been offered the job as a secretary for a firm which hires out lorries.’ In one of the lorries Iris’s cousin worked: the man she had intended for Martha.

  He waited. She would not help him.

  ‘You’d be living near your work? ’

  Almost she said: ‘Why not? ’ But lost interest. What was the use?

  Here came the scallop shells filled with lumps of cod covered with a cheese-coloured white sauce. That this was a restaurant where people ate, not to eat well, but to eat conformably she had understood from what she had seen on the plates near her; and she knew that when she tasted the fish it would be rather worse than she had been eating at joe’s, with Iris and jimmy.

  ‘It’s very nice, ’ she said hastily; to Henry’s inquiring eyebrows.

  ‘Delicious, ’ he affirmed, so that she could make a note of what was admirable.

  She could fault, even as a housewife, a dozen {joints o
n this table: the bread rolls were not fresh; the tablecloth only just clean; the parsley on the fish limp; the peppermill was nearly empty; the roses sagged; everything was second-rate. But Henry did not care, he was at home, cosy with his kind.

  Claustrophobia filled her like a fever; and she took herself in hand: Be quiet, steady-you’ll be out of it for good when this meal is over.

  ‘I really do see, ’ he prompted, ‘what fun it must be, sl … experimenting, for a time.’

  ‘Ah, but you see, one has to be brought up in this country to be able to see it as slumming.’

  He had coloured.

  ‘Now, look, Henry-you’re right. I couldn’t for long stay in those jobs-but for exactly the same reason that I couldn’t take yours, that’s what you ought to be able to see. Can’t you really understand that? ’

  ‘Well, frankly, no.’

  On the chair by him a folded evening newspaper; and even from where she was, she could see, peering over, that the headlines and editorials were to do with the red, socialist, classless, etc., Britain.

  They had finished their fish. Henry had ordered some blanquette of veal for both of them. It wasn’t bad. The wine, however, was very good indeed, marvellous; and Martha was drinking it, although she knew that drinking it might lead to an exchange every word of which she could recite even before it happened. She smiled, offered him scraps of travellers’ tales from the strange land across the river, to which he listened, with the air of a potential traveller choosing possible landscapes for adventure.

  At last he said: ‘If it’s a question of your being a restless sort of person, that you’d want to move on after a year or two, I think we do rather expect that from our staff, the war has unsettled people, including me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No, it’s not a question of being restless.’

  Determined that the tedious exchange, imminent, would not take place, she reached for her wine glass-and knocked it over. The waiter being away, she dabbed at the stain with her napkin. Then the imp took over.

  ‘I’d like another serviette, ’ she said.

  Henry called to the waiter with his eyes.

  ‘If you could bring another napkin, ’ he said.

  Martha suddenly laughed. He frowned incomprehension.

  ‘I don’t know why it is, ’ he said, ‘but I do know that girls are so much cleverer than men at … picking things up. You could, you know, if you tried. For instance, we had a girl in our office. She was only … her father was under me during the war, a very good type of man … well, she came to us as a typist and inside a year she had picked up … now you really can hardly tell her from … she takes over on the switchboard for instance … for some reason men don’t do it so well, they aren’t so adaptable. But if you listened to how other people talk, you could learn very easily … that sort ofthing.’

  The gaps in this homily which had been delivered, half with irritation that he was being forced to verbalize his position even partially; half with genuine concern for her future, for which, the Lord knew why, he felt himself responsible, she now filled in, summing them all up.

  ‘I could learn to pass, ’ she said.

  He sat back in his chair, his handsome, fair, well-bred face all dark with annoyance.

  It was not the slightest use. But the imp had control.

  ‘Henry, if I told you that this meal we are eating is going to cost you over £5, in spite of the fact you are supposed to be restricting yourself because of the war-and that the people I’ve been with don’t spend that on food in a week-and then ask you to look at that newspaper … oh, I don’t know, what is the use!’

  ‘Very poor, are they? ’ he said quickly.

  ‘Very. But that isn’t the point.’

  He leaned back. ‘Well, aren’t we all, these days? ’

  ‘I should have said not.’

  ‘You weren’t here during the war, ’ he said emotionally.

  ‘I’ve learned that, after that, there’s nothing to be said.’

  ‘You must see, Martha, that it’s going to take time to get this poor old country on its feet again.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘God knows we’re poor-but what more do you people want? You’ve got your Labour Government in, they’re not my thing, far from it. I’m more of a Liberal I suppose, though I vote Tory, but they’re in, they’re doing a job-you’ve got your socialism. Of course there are people who think that five years of Labour Party has ruined this country. I’m not one of those, but there is no class left in this country. What do you want? ’

  ‘But, Henry-well, I really don’t know, how can you say-or believe … Henry, if those people I’ve been with-if they turned up here at this restaurant, they wouldn’t be admitted …’ He froze, attacked, undermined: here was precisely where he could not think or look, therefore it was in bad taste. ‘Not that they would turn up, of course, they know better. After all, I wouldn’t have been admitted, probably. They’d have said the place was full. It was only because I gave your name.’

  ‘If they did turn up, I for one’d be only too proud-the salt of the earth. We learned that in the war.’

  ‘Not to mention the other war.’

  There now was rolled towards them the sweets trolley. Henry chose for her and for him, a trifle, though it had another name. Throughout the restaurant, people were eating nursery puddings, under French names.

  ‘I really don’t know what it is you people want, ’ he said pettishly.

  ‘To have things called by their proper names, that’s all. Did you ever actually meet your Uncle Maynard? ’

  ‘No, well of course, he was rather the black sheep, so one gathers.’

  ‘Justice Maynard? Well, I’ve been remembering something he said to me. Ten years ago, more. He said that he couldn’t stick England because no one called a spade a spade. So now he administers law and order in the colonies, where one can. I’ve only just recently understood what he was talking about.’

  ‘Hypocrites, ’ said Henry quickly. ‘Of course, they’ve always called us that.’

  ‘No, no, if you were hypocrites that would be something. A hypocrite is somebody who maintains a virtuous position knowing it to be false. You all seem to me to be-you’re drugged, you’re hypnotized, you don’t seem to be able to see facts when they’re in front of you-you’re the victim of a lot of slogans.’

  Here the wine waiter offered the lady a sweet liqueur and Henry brandy. The lady insisted on asking for brandy. The wine waiter offered Henry a look of commiseration, so far had complicity grown between them. But Henry frowned at him and told him to bring brandy. Martha and the brandy changed the note or current: Henry was able to let slide away any chance there was of their meeting on at least the possibility of there being something in what she said: Martha, gay buccaneer, adventuress, warmed by wine, enabled him to wave over his partner. There arrived at the table John Higham, as charming and as handsome as he, his face presented towards Martha in a look almost transparently eager to taste this phenomenon, who was outside the rules of ordinary politeness—for he examined her openly, boldly: exactly as the dockers, before being made to know by Stella that she was, temporarily, one of their women, were able to call across a street: Hello, darling. She had been outside their circle of humanity. Martha was outside john Higham’s. For a moment the two men sat, united, opposite Martha, eyeing her. It was ugly: behind them, the waiter, and behind him the headwaiter: very ugly. And again, she never would be able to explain why; they would not know what she meant. They were savages, masters and servants both.

  ‘Martha will have none of us, I’m afraid, ’ said Henry, insolent, but smiling.

  ‘I’m sorry, ’ said John Higham.

  ‘I simply cannot imagine, apart of course from the Maynards asking you to keep an eye on me, what you want me for? ’

  They even exchanged glances here, as if she were not able to see that glances were being exchanged-as if they were invisible. Extraordinary, extraordinary people: Iris and Jimmy, Stella
and her man, had more delicacy, more consciousness of themselves.

  ‘You underestimate yourself, ’ said John Higham. ‘You’ve done legal work, haven’t you? You’ve got experience. And I don’t know why it is, but while there are hundreds of girls on the market, there aren’t very many… experienced ones.’

  ‘It isn’t that we mind our girls getting married-far from it. We welcome it, they tend to stay, ’ said Henry.

  ‘And a large part of our practice is out of this country-we’ve been doing a lot of work with refugees for instance. Tidying up after the war-that sort of thing. And we really do need someone with-a wider experience than most English girls have.’

  Now Martha had to be silent. This last point reached her. And, besides, she was exactly in the same position here as she had been, still was, with Iris and Jimmy. She had promised, or had seemed to promise, without knowing she was doing it, more than she had ever meant. She had never, not for one moment, considered working for Henry, had said, in every way she knew: No, no, no. Yet both men now expected her to say yes: were in fact counting on her. A manner which was assumed as a mask, a defence, appearing to be a half-flirtatious consideration of possibilities, had been felt as so much more? Or was it that being in a situation at all, being involved with people, was a promise of more? That was more like it, that was the truth: oh yes, there was something intolerable, unforgivable, about the drifters, the testers, the samplers, she was only just beginning to see it. But it was unjust, unfair! She had been in this country for not much more than a quarter of a year, had seen it as time out of responsibility. She was not going to be allowed to taste and drift and knock about. The genuine feeling of betrayal shown by her friends of Joe’s café (though not by Stella of the docks-why not?), and the expectation shown by Henry and John, proved that she must have made promises implicitly; she, Martha, had something in her which forbade her to drift and visit and slide out. Other people might: she could not. Otherwise why, after such a very short time out of responsibility (what was four months after all?) were the nets closing in? Which was how she felt it. The net had been set from the moment she saw Henry’s politely charming face outside the Customs when she arrived. It was probably, though she did not want to recognize this, that her temperament shared more than she liked with Marjorie; and with Marjorie’s sister Phoebe, an earnestness, a readiness to be involved and implicated, and this temperament was in itself a promise, made promises and offered.