The Four-Gated City

by Doris Lessing

  Martha kept sounding notes to which he could not help responding if-he were not trying to hide something? Not a man numbed by terror. How to account for this lack of resonance? Unless, of course, he was not a communist and never had been one. But she had not before met this type of person who, because he admires a certain communist country, or a communist achievement, or to annoy Aunt Authority, will call himself, herself, a communist or a marxist without ever going near the communist party. They are pretty common at times when the heat is off and to admire communism not dangerous-during the war, for instance, or during the later ‘fifties and the ‘sixties. But this kind of platonic admiration, at the height of the Cold War was quixotic or simply-crazy. Unless to be a Coldridge absolved one from the necessity for caution, which is what Martha was beginning to believe.

  For Colin did not seem to be frightened in the least. Of course, in Mark’s calm, storm-excluding study, it was hard to believe in danger. Nor did he seem to want to conceal anything. On the contrary, he talked all evening about his principal, now awaiting trial, whom he had visited frequently, obviously despising (or ignorant of?) the danger of doing this, and in spite of the entreaties of his wife who had begged and wept. The man was his friend, he had said; just as Mark was to say later: Colin is my brother.

  It was, obviously, a relief to get away from his wife-not that he said so, of course. But Sally-Sarah was present throughout the evening, in silences and looks exchanged by the two men; and afterwards Martha saw that it was on this evening that they had decided, without actually saying so, that she must be here for Christmas.

  When she came, she spent her time in James’s room, with her child, weeping or sleeping. The little boy came downstairs from time to time, his face still wan from hours of tears, to say: ‘Mummy’s asleep.’ When Martha went up with tea, coffee, she found Sally-Sarah curled up under an eiderdown, thumb in her mouth, like a child, but not asleep. She stared at the wall, or traced out the pattern on the wallpaper with a finger. ‘I wish I was dead, ’ she said to Martha. ‘I do. I wish I was dead.’

  Lynda arrived on Christmas Eve. The photographs said she was beautiful. Martha knew, too, that she would have beautiful clothes, because the bills for her clothes were enormous: one of the points of self-respect, return towards normality, was that she must always be perfectly dressed. Mark willingly paid the bills.

  Lynda arrived in Margaret’s chauffeured car, and stepped into her home like a visitor. She smiled, cool, at her husband and was about to smile, cool, at her son, when she reminded herself, and kissed the child’s cheek, murmuring: ‘Darling!’ as he froze in pain and embarrassment. She was tall, very thin with a face strained by the effort of not being ‘upset’. She smiled steadily, while great grey eyes stared out of brownish hollows. But she was staring inward at the place where she kept her balance. She was enveloped in a great pale fur coat. Her hands, long and white and lovely, ended in nails bitten to the quick: there were rusty stains around the cuticle. Her hair, just done, was a soft gleaming gold: all her health seemed to be in her hair. At once she asked to be taken to her room-to wash, she said; but she stayed there all evening.

  The room had been a problem. Since this Christmas occasion was designed, primarily, for Francis, for normality; and since mother and father shared a room, or at least should appear to share one, Lynda was put into the married room, Mark’s own, on the first floor. But Mark had a bed put into the dressing-room, because as he told Martha, curt, giving necessary information, Lynda could not stand having him near her. It would be necessary, if she were not to upset, that the door between the bedroom and dressing-room should be locked. They had to have a new lock made.

  The Christmas Eve dinner was eaten by Mark, silent, but smiling a determination to present normality to his son; Sally-Sarah, miserable, and making no attempt to hide it; her son, near tears; Francis, his wide anxious eyes on his father’s face; and Martha. During the meal, Paul had climbed on to his mother’s lap and the two had sat enwrapping each other, her cheek on his head. Francis watched: he was looking at a mother and her little boy. After dinner he shook his father’s hand goodnight. Later still, Martha heard him crying. His room was next to hers. She went in to comfort him. He held his breath, held back tears, while she put her arms around him. He would not respond. As she shut the door she heard the great burst of breath and tears and Go away and leave me alone. Christmas dinner was the same, a kind of endurance test. Lynda sat at the foot of the table, serving the food cooked by Martha: her son watched her. Colin, exhorted by his wife that ‘It was the least he could do’ came for just that meal, and sat grimly through it, while Sally-Sarah kept her great dark eyes on him in tearful reproach, and spoke reproach to him through his son. He left the moment it was finished.

  ‘We’ve got that over, thank God, ’ said Mark to Martha, as he helped her clear uneaten food into the refrigerators.

  There was another week of getting it over, spent by Martha for the most part with workmen, and in the basement with dealers. Meanwhile the family suffered in separate rooms of the house and Martha felt the ridiculousness of furniture, leaking roofs and plumbing. It felt almost as if an underground guerrilla war went on, the fabric of the house as battleground, while amiably incompetent men came and went, carpets vanished and appeared, the sounds of banging and hammering shook walls and floors. She invited Mark to inspect the future housekeeper’s flat; but he left it to her. Lynda should not know about the basement, the sale of the furniture, he said. Yet one afternoon, when Martha was in the basement with a dealer, Lynda had appeared in her pale furs, and was competent about values and prices: seeing her thus, Martha found it hard to believe she was ill. This would be a nice flat, Lynda had said; she wouldn’t mind living in it herself. She had retired up the stairs with the remark that Martha must not tell Mark that she, Lynda, had been doing this. ‘I don’t think he’d like it, ’ she said. ‘He doesn’t, you know.’

  One afternoon, Lynda spent with her son. They sat in ‘Margaret’s room’, the drawing-room, on a big sofa. She asked him questions, gentle, detached, about his school. She was answered by a child who measured everything he said against the minutest signs, the tiniest reactions, of his mother’s face; as if a word, a phrase, from him, could harm, or ‘upset’ her. And indeed, at the end of this interview (for that was what it seemed) Lynda announced, suddenly, she felt ill and must lie down, and Francis sat alone, near a Christmas tree with coloured bulbs alight on it. Mark and Martha, across the passage in the dining-room, heard muffled crying.

  Mark burst out: ‘I can’t stand it, it’s a mistake-we’ve got to get her back to the hospital. Or is this better than nothing? ’

  ‘Perhaps it is, I suppose so.’

  ‘Are you sure? ’

  ‘No, of course I’m not sure!’ And now Martha wept, or nearly did, understanding exactly how Francis must feel: one did not weep, show strain, with people who were so palpably suffering much more than she could.

  ‘I’m sorry, ’ pleaded Mark-she must not cry, he was saying silently. ‘But there’s no way of doing anything right, is that the point? ’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose so. Isn’t this better than not having a mother at all? ’

  ‘Or a wife? ’ said Mark. ‘But that isn’t what you think, is it? ’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I think.’

  ‘It isn’t what they think!’

  ‘I know that!’

  ‘My mother hasn’t been near us. It’d make her happy if Lynda was committed.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Oh all right, all right-you’re leaving. I keep forgetting.’

  Unfairly, outrageously, she felt-this was all ironical reproach. So, doing what she could, where so little could be done, she continued with taps, cupboards, floorboards.

  Every night she heard Francis crying. She would creep to the door, open it-try to force herself to go in, in another attempt at comfort… where there could be no comfort. Once he felt her there and sat up: ‘Who’s that?
’ he said. Martha knew he hoped it was his mother.

  ‘It’s Martha. Are you all right? ’

  ‘Perfectly all right, thank you very much.’ And he laid himself down, silent, to endure: exactly as he would in that dormitory of his where he would not be able to cry without being overheard by a couple of dozen little boys.

  A couple of nights before Lynda was due to leave, Martha, unable to stand the sound of the muffled weeping from the next door, went down to the kitchen to make coffee. It was about three in the morning. Lynda sat at the big kitchen table, with a spread of cards in front of her. In a little heap to one side of the cards were some pills. Lynda wore an old-fashioned high-necked nightdress, all lace and tucks and frills. She saw Martha and ignored her, went on playing cards humming a small sad tune to herself. Martha made some coffee and sat down at the other end of the table. Lynda had not been to the hairdresser during the last week, and her hair hung in lank colourless strands. She seemed all great staring eyes and skull. The illness, or the pills she took so many of, made her sweat a lot: she smelled sour. Nowhere in this sick creature could Martha find the competent woman who had assisted her planning the basement. She drank coffee, silently, while Lynda sat swaying and humming.

  ‘You’re going, you think, ’ she remarked.

  ‘Yes. In March.’

  ‘No, you’re not, ’ said Lynda, rude as a child. Now she peered into her cards, and said: ‘It’s coming out!’ Angry, she pushed the cards together: apparently her own internal rules would be broken if the patience came out.

  ‘Have you got a cigarette? ’ she now demanded.

  Martha handed her a packet. Lynda took one, then scooped out three more with a bland sly smile and laid them side by side, near the pills.

  ‘If I take these now, I shall have to go back to the hospital tomorrow, not the day after, because I won’t have enough pills, ’ she explained. Smiling, challenging Martha, or some authority, she separated a couple of pills from the heap, a small yellow one, and a big yellow one.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, ’ she announced, looking up and smiling at Martha-direct now, personal, charming. Oh yes, one could see how beautiful she was or could be. ‘Well, you’re right. But what’s the use of being right? ’

  Martha said nothing.

  Lynda pushed the two pills back into the heap. ‘I’ll stay over the other day. But what for? ’ She put her head into her hands, and sat swaying and humming. A pause. ‘No, ’ she said, violently, and sat up. ‘It’s not true, I couldn’t come out and try. How could I? ’

  Martha said nothing.

  Lynda was now leaning forward and peering into Martha’s face, as if listening.

  ‘Why can’t you accept it? Some people are just no good. Useless! No good. Not for ordinary life. I keep telling you. I told Mark when he married me. I told him. Why do you want to make everyone like yourselves? I know what I know!’

  Martha said nothing and drank coffee. The big kitchen was like a ruin. Curtains, taken down to be washed, were bundled on top of a step-ladder. Floorboards had been taken up and pipes lay exposed near the wall. The tiles behind the sink had been ripped away; but the man had forgotten to put them back-he would have to be telephoned in the morning. Last morning he had arrived at eight o’clock to be paid: putting the tiles back was not his job, he had said, but somebody else’s. The argument had woken Mark. Mark’s dressing-room was over the kitchen. Was Mark awake over their heads now?

  ‘Mark’s asleep.’ said Lynda. ‘When Mark’s asleep he sleeps. I am happy when he’s asleep; then I know I’m not tormenting him. Sometimes I want to kill him, because if he was dead then I’d know he wasn’t unhappy because of me. Do you see? When I came down to the kitchen now I went to look at him. I like looking at him when he’s asleep. When I was married to him, I used to wake up at night so that I could see him asleep.’

  ‘You are married to him now, ’ said Martha.

  ‘There’s no need to say anything, ’ said Lynda. ‘You said that because you thought you ought. If I were asleep now, you wouldn’t have to say anything, would you? That’s why I like sleeping. I wish I could sleep all my life. But they won’t give me enough pills. I tell them, all right, if you won’t let me have what I know, why can’t I sleep? What’s the difference between being kept silly, because they keep you silly, you see, and being asleep? I’m no use to anyone, so I might as well be asleep. You see, ’ she said, once again offering her intimate, enchanting smile, all of her there for a moment, ‘I’d kill myself, but I’m afraid. After all, we don’t know, do we? It might be worse there than it is here. You don’t believe in God, do you? ’

  ‘It’s a word, ’ said Martha.

  ‘Yes, but the devil is a word too. I know there’s a devil. He talks to me.’

  One of Lynda’s symptoms was, she heard voices. But the doctors had told Mark that this symptom had abated. Which was why Lynda was allowed out for Christmas.

  Now Lynda screwed up her face, so that she suddenly looked like a malevolent old witch, and leaned forward to peer at Martha.

  ‘Don’t tell them I said so. I keep quiet about what I know. I have to, you see.’ She sat swaying back and forth, back and forth. Then: ‘That’s freedom, isn’t it? Everyone has a bit of freedom, a little space …’ She traced a small circle on the wood of the table, about an inch in diameter. She looked down, peered close. ‘That wood is nice, isn’t it? I chose that table, did Mark tell you? I got it off a street market in Guildford. It cost ten shillings. An old kitchen table, yes, like the one we had at home. It was in the kitchen. The servants ate off it. Nicer than ours. The grain of this wood-look.’ Martha came nearer to look at whorls of hard grain around which the soft fleshy part of the wood had been worn or scrubbed away. They looked at the cross-cut of a spiral that had once been a growing-point in the wood. Lynda sat tracing it with her fìnger-contented. ‘That is freedom.’ she said. ‘That’s mine. It’s all they let me have. They wouldn’t let me keep that if they knew how to take it away. But if I say to them: I don’t hear voices, you’ve cured me, the voices have gone … they can’t prove anything. That’s my freedom. But I suppose they’ll develop machines-they always do, you know. They won’t be able to stand that, that amount of freedom. So they’ll make a machine and clamp it to our heads and they’ll be able to say: You’re lying, we can measure the shape of the voices on this machine. What are you trying to hide? What do you hear? …’ She swayed, swayed back and forth, in an increasingly rapid rhythm. ‘But they haven’t made that machine yet. I’m still free. I know what I know. You do believe me, don’t you? ’

  ‘Yes, ’ said Martha.

  Threatening, Lynda leaned forward, ready to hit or to strike; her white grubby hand was clenched around an imaginary knife. ‘Yes, but what do you believe, Martha? ’

  Her eyes shifted past Martha to the door behind. Martha turned. Mark stood in the door. He looked weary and frightened.

  She cackled: ‘Look at him. He wants me in prison. He doesn’t want me to have my freedom. He wants me cured.’

  ‘Lynda, ’ he said desperate-and all wrong. A man, a husband, all warm and responsible, he said: ‘Lynda, this is Mark!’

  At this pressure on her she smiled, became evasive, went inside herself and stood up. Her hand went out to the pills. She was smiling like a disobedient schoolgirl. She pretended to put the pills in her mouth, then let her hand drop and stood shaking with laughter. ‘You’ve persuaded me, ’ she said to Martha. ‘You’re right.’ She now carefully, neatly, soberly, filled a glass with water, swallowed two pills, and put the rest into a cup, with the cigarettes. This she held before her, and went out of the kitchen, carrying the cup with the pills and the cigarettes as if it were a candle. In her old-fashioned frilly nightdress, she looked like a good child going up to bed.

  Mark went after her, giving Martha a hasty goodnight.

  Lynda stayed over an extra day, but Francis did not see her again. He was taken off by his grandmother in the big chauffeured car f
or the other week of his holidays. He took with him a chemistry set, a proper grown-up one, from Martha; a foot ball from his father; and a great heap of toys from his mother, ordered by her on the telephone from Harrods.

  Before Lynda went back to hospital, she made another visit to the basement. Martha found her there, telling a workman who was about to put in a cupboard, that he was using the wrong kind of wood. If he had any pride in his work, she was saying, he would refuse to use the wood supplied by the foreman, which anyone could see was going to warp inside a year, because it hadn’t been properly seasoned. The workman was saying yes, he knew that, but he was only being paid to do the job, it wasn’t for him to reason why.

  Martha took over the altercation from Lynda; tackled the foreman, who said it was not his fault if the firm chose to do a bad job, then the owners of the firm, who said it was the fault of the workman. As a result of this, and many similar battles, the basement, by the end of January, was at least within sight of being occupiable. Who was going to live in this basement? What the situation needed was some kind of sensible ‘body’ - a young one rather than an old one; but Martha could not see Mark choosing such a one. Phoebe, he said, was sure to come up with somebody: Martha could give Phoebe a ring perhaps?

  Martha did no such thing. For, now the flat was ready-well, nearly; and Martha’s departure only four weeks off, she was concerned to see that the woman who did come would be good for Francis. Because if one thing was essential, it was to see that Francis left that school of his. He would not be able to do this if there were not the right kind of woman in the house. The housekeeper should be a good deal more than a housekeeper. The flat must be properly tenanted. Martha was imagining how Francis, returning from his sensible, human day-school, would come down to this flat to the woman who would live here, for talk, supper, homework-warmth. It was simply a question of getting Mark to see…