The Four-Gated City

by Doris Lessing

  Saturday morning. We waited for the plumber. When he had not turned up by twelve, I went out shopping. Lynda went to sleep. The man came while I was out. I telephoned him that afternoon. There was no reply. Saturday evening. I telephoned him. His wife answered. She said it was the week-end. Her husband did not work over week-ends. She suggested I ring Mr. Black of Canonbury. His wife said he worked at week-ends. I left a message.

  Sunday morning. I rang Mr. Black. He was out. His wife said she would try to get him to come in the afternoon. I stayed up instead of going to sleep. Sunday afternoon. Mr. Black telephoned. He said if it wasn’t urgent he would come on Monday. I told him off. I told him if he was so slack he wouldn’t be any good as a workman.

  Monday morning. I telephoned the first plumber. His wife said he would come that afternoon. Monday afternoon He did not come. By then the tap was leaking badly. I turned off the

  The question is: are we in a position to sue for loss of time and damage and inconvenience? When he turned up at last on Wednesday afternoon, he had the nerve to say he was going to send in an account for the first visit (see under Saturday morning), so I told him where he got off.

  This, or something like it, happened fairly often, as it does in every household. Dorothy was always in the right. Each time she got herself into a state of furious, helpless irritation which ended in her having to go to bed, where Lynda nursed her.

  Mark dealt with each new crisis, and this brought him into contact with Lynda for several days, while Dorothy was ill. The reason why Dorothy would never, until some situation was desperate-no water, no gas, no electricity-come for help upstairs, was that it meant bringing in Mark, or Mark’s deputy, Martha. It meant that she, Dorothy, had failed Lynda. It meant a collapse into inadequacy in a dark bedroom, and oblivion in drugs.

  Mark and Lynda, with Dorothy asleep in her bedroom, achieved some hours of companionship, even gaiety.

  The telephone, or tap, restored to normal-Lynda went back to the basement and the door was locked.

  Mark made a visit to Martha’s room. When he did this it meant something of importance, something he found hard to talk about; which, perhaps, he had been working himself up to talk about all that day, or even, several days.

  She had been sitting in the dark, looking out of the window at the ragged sycamore tree, thinned by late autumn. The knock on the door was abrupt, but soft.

  ‘Do you mind if I come in? ’ He switched on the light, and saw, as he always did, a succession of rooms in this one, back to where young children played in it, he among them.

  He took hold of the present, where a woman in a red house-coat, with untidy hair, sat by a dark window, looking out, a cat asleep beside her.

  The cat woke, stalked across to him, looked up into his face, and miaowed. He sat down, the cat on his knee. He was in his dressing-gown. They were like an old married couple, or a brother and sister.

  This thought passed from her to him, and he said: ‘This is no sort of life for you.’

  Or for you.’

  ‘Don’t you ever think of marrying? ’

  ‘Yes. Sometimes.’ The worry on his face was to do with her: not what he had come about. ‘People have been saying I’m after you? ’

  He coloured up at once, changed position: the cat jumped down, annoyed.

  ‘Yes. Do you mind? ’

  ‘No. Yes, a little. Not much.’

  ‘It was stupid of me. I’d forgotten completely that-well, what with everything else…”

  ‘You shouldn’t let yourself listen to them.’ As she spoke she knew she was saying more: Why are you letting yourself be influenced? He heard this, gave her an acute look, acknowledging it. In a different mood he might have become ‘The Defender’. But not tonight. He was Lynda’s husband.

  ‘I want to ask you something. I get so involved in-I know I’m not seeing something. It’s Lynda. Why do I upset her so much? Do you know? ’

  ‘You always ask too much of her.’

  ‘But how is she ever going to get well if… I mean, what was the point of her coming home at all? ’

  She could not bring herself to say what she was thinking.

  ‘You mean, it was just to get out of the hospital? I mean, it couldn’t just have been that-I am here, after all!’

  ‘She didn’t have much choice.’

  ‘She could have gone off and shared a flat with that… what was to stop her? ’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘She came here, where I am.’

  ‘And Francis.’

  ‘He’s never here. She never sees him.’

  ‘Perhaps she wants to. I don’t know, Mark. How should I know? ’

  ‘Do you think they are Lesbians? ’ He found it difficult to say this. He had gone white now, was all dark hot eyes in a white face. One mask, or look, does for several different emotions. So Mark looked when contemplating his mother’s connivance with Hilary Marsh, or the affair of Ottery Bartlett. That was anger. This was misery.

  ‘I don’t know. A bit, perhaps. I’ve never known any. But I shouldn’t imagine that’s the point. It’s probably more that they make allowances for each other.’

  ‘A dreadful woman, dreadful, dreadful.’

  ‘Well… I don’t know.’

  ‘You wouldn’t choose to share your life with her!’

  ‘Well, no. But I’m not ill.’

  Lynda had been diagnosed by a large variety of doctors: there had been a large variety of diagnoses. She was depressed; she was a manic-depressive; she was paranoic; she was a schizophrenic. Most frequently, the last. Also, in another division, or classification, she was neurotic; she was psychotic. Most frequently, the latter.

  ‘They said she was better. Well, I don’t see it.’

  ‘She is managing out of hospital.’

  ‘Yes but… when we were married, it never came easily to her-sex, I mean. It wasn’t that-I mean, she’s normal enough. What’s normal? But how do I know? It’s not as if I had had all that experience when we were married. It’s not as if I can make vast comparisons. But I remember it striking me always, it was as if being able to sleep with me was a proof to herself-do you understand? ’

  ‘How can I? One could say that of lots of people these days. Sex is a kind of yardstick, one’s got to succeed. Were you her first lover? ’

  ‘Yes. Well, yes, I am sure I was. But sometimes it was like making love to a drowning person.’

  ‘She wanted to be saved? ’

  ‘Yes. Yes! Exactly that!’ He was excited because she saw it. ‘Sometimes I thought, my God, am I murdering this woman! Did you hear that, when she said, Mark, you’re killing me.’

  ‘Yes, but that

  ‘No. That meant something. It made sense. She used to say, “Save me, Mark, save me!” Well, I had a jolly good try!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now what? What is one supposed to do? Just let her-drown? ’

  He sat, white, stiff, his eyes full of tears.

  With this man one could not easily use the ancient balm of arms, warmth, easy comfort. She pulled a chair near his, took his hand, held it. The tears ran down his face.

  ‘Mark, listen. She’s not going to be your wife. She’s not ever going to be. Sometime, you’ve got to see it.’

  ‘You mean, I should look for another wife? Oh, I’ve had plenty of that sort of advice recently, I assure you. They’ve even said, I should marry you!’

  ‘Well, God knows I’m not one to say that one should marry for the sake of being married. But, Mark, you’ve got to give up Lynda. I mean, you’ve got to stop waiting for her to be different.’

  ‘If I can’t have her, I don’t want anybody.’

  ‘All right. Then you’ll have nobody.’

  ‘But why? The other afternoon, when that dreadful woman was not there, it was as if-it was like when we were first married.’ After a long time, when she did not say anything, his taut hand went loose in hers, and he stood up. The look he gave her was hurt: she had not help
ed him, not said what he wanted to hear.

  Next day, he asked Lynda if she would go away with him for a week-end, to stay at Mary and Harold Butts’s. She had always loved Nanny Butts.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, ’ said Lynda. ‘I’d love to. What a lovely idea.’

  They were to leave by car on Friday afternoon. In the morning there were voices shouting in anger from the basement, screams that wailed off into tears. Objects crashed against walls, doors slammed.

  Mark packed a suitcase, and went downstairs at the time he had appointed, to fetch his wife. Lynda was sitting on her bed in a dressing-gown, with a desperate trembling smile that was directed generally, not at Mark, but at life. Dorothy sat knitting in the other room. She was making a tea-cosy, of purple and red wool. Lynda’s clothes were on the floor, in a heap beside the suitcase.

  Then Lynda stood up, still smiling, walked out of the bedroom, and went up the stairs, with her husband following her. In Mark’s bedroom, on the table by his bed, stood a photograph of a radiant young beauty who smiled back at the soiled, ill, sour-smelling Lynda.

  The sick woman ground her teeth with rage, picked up the photograph, looked at it with hatred, then flung it down to break into a mess of glass and wood. Then she went into the study. On a long table against one wall stood Jimmy’s models of possible electronic machines. One of them was a development of existing machines that could chart the human brain in terms of electric impulses. These machines she systematically smashed. Then she went downstairs again, locking the door into the basement behind her.

  Late that night Martha, on her way up to bed, saw the study door open. Mark was sitting by his desk, and the face he lifted was the white black-eyed mask.

  ‘Martha, will you get rid of that-picture? I can’t.’

  She went to the bedroom, swept up the glass and the bits of frame, and took up the photograph of young Lynda-undamaged. It was hard to tear up that beautiful face, but she tore it up, and disposed of it all in the rubbish bin.

  As she passed the study for the second time, Mark called her in.

  ‘I’m going to see if I can find my brother, ’ he said.

  This could have been foreseen, if she had been awake? Possibly. It was a shock. She sat down, opposite his challenger’s face, to challenge him.

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I’m going to.’

  ‘What did you have in mind? That you’d turn up in Moscow and say, “Where is my brother? “? ’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But he might be anywhere-not necessarily Russia. And you wouldn’t get a visa.’

  ‘I know people during the war who got in and out of Nazi Germany. My brother James did once. He was on some sort of secret mission.’

  ‘Your brother James was working for a secret service? ’

  ‘Well, that was the war. A lot of people did.’

  ‘If you get killed then Francis won’t have a father. And what will happen to Paul? ’

  The white face and the black bitter eyes seemed all there was of him. Then a switch turned somewhere, and he went red, and he said: ‘Capitalist propaganda. You’re an ex-communist. That’s how you are bound to talk.’

  ‘Never mind about communism and capitalism for the moment. But if you go bouncing about behind the Iron Curtain being a nuisance, you’ll find yourself in jug. Or worse.’

  A sneer. The communist sneer. Indistinguishable of course from a sneer of any kind. But melodramatic, improbable. Particularly on this face, in this quiet study, in this house. And in Radlett Street, Bloomsbury, London.

  ‘Or don’t you read the newspapers?’

  ‘Well, really,’ he said, with a laughing sneer.

  ‘All right then, ask the comrades-you just ask them if you can go to an Embassy and say: I want to get a visa to let me travel to Russia so I can find my brother who has defected East because …"

  ‘Because he’s a spy? He’s not a spy. I tell you it’s not possible.’

  ‘You’ve just said your brother james was.’

  ‘That’s not… if you can’t tell the difference, then …’

  ‘Probably what happened was Colin got a visit from somebody like Hilary Marsh and he got into a panic.’

  ‘Colin is not the kind to scare easily.’

  ‘Then he was a fool not to be scared. You were scared. So was I. I’m scared now.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot of time for you, Martha, you know that. But when you start talking like the gutter Press, then I’m sorry.’

  ‘Have you actually asked any of the comrades about it? Why don’t you? ’

  ‘I shall. Goodnight.’ And he dismissed the enemy.

  She remained the enemy for some weeks. Night after night he asked his friends in, or went to their homes. She was not introduced to them: they met on the stairs with nods and smiles. Then, as a result of Mark’s inquiries, Patty Samuels came to the house, on a proper, formal interview, to see Mark. They were together for an hour or more. Martha inquired what the advice had been.

  Mark said, briefly, that ‘on the whole it was considered inadvisable’. Then, with an apologetic laugh and glance: ‘What a war-horse!’

  But he had liked her, or had been intrigued by her. She came again, became one of the people who dropped in, by herself, or with others, in the evenings. She was a lively vital woman in her early thirties, and a veteran of the Party, absolutely unlike anyone Mark had ever met, but like dozens Martha had met-and like what she herself had been for a brief period.

  Patty was the opposite, in every way, of Lynda.

  And this time, Martha was able to foresee what would happen.

  While Mark developed an affair with Patty, Lynda, in the basement, had a relapse, a falling back. For a time it was touch and go whether she would have to go back to hospital.

  Dorothy came up to Martha, a few days after the incident of the photograph, to ask if Martha would come down to see Lynda, who was asking for her.

  Lynda was in bed, crying hysterically that she was no good, she was useless, she had ruined Mark, and she didn’t understand why Mark didn’t kill her. She wished Mark had killed her. If Mark did not kill her, she would kill herself.

  Martha wanted to call in Dr Lamb, who, after all, both women visited regularly, for drugs and for advice. But Dorothy, weeping, begged Martha not to do this. Dr Lamb would send Lynda back to the hospital; they would both have to go back to the hospital. Lynda added her tears and pleas to Dorothy’s. Why, then, had Lynda asked for Martha to come down?

  Then Martha saw that she was Mark’s deputy. Lynda could not face Mark himself. But she could say to Martha what she was afraid of saying to Mark. Lynda did not mean to kill herself. These bitter tears and self-reproaches were a way of announcing to Mark, through Martha, and to Dorothy, and perhaps to herself, her sorrow at not being able to be Mark’s wife, and her intention of refusing to be. It was also a reproach to Mark: look, you are making me ill by asking so much of me. Mark, hearing that Lynda was ill, appeared in the basement but Lynda shrieked at him to go away. He went.

  Lynda wept that she was a beast and unfit to live; but there was relief in it. Mark did not, for a while, go near the basement. But Martha was admitted, and reported to him.

  For some weeks Lynda remained low, and weepy. Nothing, it seemed, could break her misery. Then Paul came home for a month’s holiday, and he made her better.

  Lynda and Paul together-it was charming, delightful; they were like two children. Dorothy watched, indulgent: Lynda’s mother, she now became Paul’s as well. For Lynda still could not bear being touched. So Paul sat on Dorothy’s large, steamy, sad lap, and was hugged and given sweets. With Lynda, he played. Martha made excuses to go down and watch. She was seeing Sally-Sarah again. Yes, there she was, in her child, a bright exuberant vivid creature, all charm and peremptory emotional demand, who cuddled up to Dorothy, and flung his arms around Martha’s neck, and sat very quiet, by Lynda’s side, his hands in his lap, while he smiled and listened to her fantastic stories.

&
nbsp; But that was in the basement. In the rest of the house, Paul was a cool, shrewd clever little boy (‘too clever by half!’ as one teacher had let drop), whom no one would dare to touch or pet or fondle.

  Then, the holidays ended and Paul went back to school, and Lynda remained well.

  There was a new balance in the house. Upstairs Mark was absorbed in his developing affair with Patty Samuels. It seemed that he no longer expected anything from Lynda. He saw very little of Martha, and did not speak at all about the search for his brother.

  In the basement the two sick women were trying to expand their lives, to become like ordinary people. Dorothy now started to go out of the flat, which she had not wanted to do before. She shopped, sometimes went to the cinema, talked of getting a job. But Lynda did not leave the flat. They had visitors, women for the most part. When this happened Lynda made an effort to dress, and to be beautiful again. Once they invited Martha down. It turned out to be a seance. A couple of men, and half a dozen women had arrived. In the heavy curtained room, with its air that smelled of drugs and anxiety, the lights were turned low and a woman called Mrs. Mellendip invoked spirits: successfully, as far as some of those present were concerned. After that, Martha tried not to go down unless the two were alone. Otherwise it was an atmosphere of inordinate tea-drinking, palm-reading, fortune-telling. They would sit through entire afternoons and evenings laying the cards again and again and again for guidance on matters like buying a new handbag or having a hairdo. They worked out the horoscopes of themselves, their friends, their doctors, and public persons. Mrs. Mellendip earned her living by doing horoscopes, but did not charge Lynda or Dorothy. Without being asked, she did Martha’s. It turned out to be more of a character reading, and was very shrewd indeed. Martha said it was, but that she had not learned anything about herself she did not already know. To which Mrs. Mellendip, a large, forceful, handsome woman in her middle fifties, returned: ‘Well, dear, I could tell you more if you knew it.’ Which remark was very much the note or tone of these gatherings. For when the tea-leaves or the cards confirmed what a person already knew, this was not a sign of failure, but of success, and added to Mrs. Mellendip’s confidence in herself, and her powers.