The Four-Gated City

by Doris Lessing

  Margaret’s invitation for the afternoon had been casual, and repeated in half a dozen telephone calls about something else. She had sounded increasingly, guilty, but off-hand. Mark had said:’ She’s up to something.’

  She was manipulating them. What did she want? For weeks now he had been trying to see her, but see her, as he put it, ‘properly’. He had been trying to make his mother discuss her son, his brother, Colin. Mark had been back from Moscow for over two months: Margaret had not had time to do more than hear the most brief of accounts over the telephone and once as she hurried past to the theatre. She had not had time to talk about Colin, but she wanted Mark, Martha, as her accomplices in some plan of her own. The two needs-Mark’s, Margaret’s-were meshed somewhere?

  A couple of years before, the Cold War having been officially declared as over-that is to say, was referred to as being in the past in newspapers and on the television-Margaret had inquired of an old chum recently returned from the embassy in Moscow, if anything was known about Colin. He said not. Inquiries had been made, on that kind of a level, but it was suggested he was dead. Then, a friend of Patty’s who had been to Moscow on some kind of delegation, said that another friend had mentioned a Mr. Coldridge, met at somebody’s flat. Had Mark been in Moscow perhaps? Mark, then, after consultation with Patty who, after all continued to know the score, even if retrospectively, simply applied for a visa to the Soviet Union, as a writer. He got a visa without trouble. In Moscow he had asked his interpreter, an infinitely helpful young woman, if it would be possible for him to meet his brother; he spoke as if there could be no doubt at all that Moscow was where Colin must be. The interpreter, non-committal, said she would make inquiries. After two days or so of ballet, the theatre, and excursions of various kinds, the interpreter had said that of course it would be perfectly in order for Mr. Coldridge to see his brother, it was only too natural, after so many years. His telephone number was so and so.

  Mark telephoned, and heard his brother’s voice reply. Colin had no idea, apparently, that this was to happen, or so it seemed, for when he was told who it was, there was a short silence, and then:’ How did you find me?’ ‘I was given the number by Intourist, ’ said Mark.

  They met an hour later in Colin’s flat, which was not half an hour’s bus time from the hotel. It was a small, pleasant flat, in a new block which housed scientific workers. Furnished in an anonymous contemporary style, it could have been anywhere in the world. Colin was married to a charming Russian woman who taught ballet to children. She had a child from her previous marriage; her husband had been killed at Stalingrad. This boy was fifteen. There was also a little girl, the result of this marriage. Mark entered a family scene: was made very welcome.

  Mark, in describing it to Martha, had used that grimly humorous tone which is the alternative to weeping-the tone of a generation. But this was not how he had felt at the time.

  During the evening the children had been introduced to Uncle Mark from England. A great deal of very good food was eaten. Sally-Sarah’s death was at last commented on: Mark was made to feel that suicide was a form of moral cowardice peculiar to capitalism, perhaps a lack of esprit de corps. Galina said several times that life was a precious gift; she really could not understand people who killed themselves. She sounded both prim and life-enhancing. Mark was irritated and ashamed of being: her tragically heroic life seemed to entitle her to anything. Friggishness was perhaps after all a sign of virtue, as ant-heaps in hot countries show that water lies far below. After all, the Victorians … it seems inevitable that revolutions should evoke the Victorians. Colin asked after Paul, and suggested that the boy might visit them in Moscow. Mark continued to supply him with information about Paul; and at the end of the evening Colin ruffled through a great heap of gramophone records, and found some folksongs as a present for his son. Both Colin and Galina pressed Mark to visit them again, when he came back to Moscow. They drank several toasts, to friendship, and to peace. Mark had then gone back to the hotel room where he had found himself swearing, and dashing about like a madman.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it. The whole of that evening was as if I’d walked on to the wrong stage, into the wrong play. There was nothing real about any of it. I began to believe that none of it had happened. I telephoned Colin. It was about four in the morning. I dare say I was over-emotional. I demanded to see him at once. He was cool. Then I thought I wasn’t being tactful. Secret police-that sort of thing. But no, looking back, I think it was just very late to ring up. I demanded to see him alone. He said of course, he’d ask Galina and if she didn’t mind he would be in the park next afternoon.’

  Mark had not gone to bed. He wondered, for the most part, why he had been given the telephone number. He was, perhaps, considered a spy himself? Fantasies of this nature occupied his mind for some hours, but at last he concluded that it was probably some kind of muddle. After all, most things were. In Britain, there were six, no seven, espionage organizations, for the most part engaged in spying on each other: the keynote of any operation one chanced to hear about was always muddle, but a farcical, painful, ridiculous muddle. The Soviet Union was increasingly prosperous, developed, stable; doubtless the spy organizations proliferated and competed there too. Perhaps some official had thought: Well, let’s give him the number and then see what happens … Or even: His brother? Of course! Family ties … One could imagine, even, a humanistic smile.

  All the same, it was that which stung Mark more than anything: the telephone number of his brother, printed neatly on some paper, given to him casually, as if nothing could be more ordinary. Every time it came back into his mind, he got worse-tempered, more emotional, and by the time he actually met his brother, he was in a fine state. But he saw at once that the more excited he was, the further that put him from Colin, who was even more matter-of-fact today than he had been yesterday.

  In a park of Culture and Rest they strolled up and down, eating ice-cream. Mark wanted to ask a question, the key-question. ‘Colin, why did you leave your own country? Were you frightened? Threatened? Guilty? And if you had to leave why didn’t you come back later?’

  Mark kept approaching the subject-then at the last moment skirting it. His feeling was that surely Colin must be expecting, waiting for such questions. Yet he gave no sign of it. He seemed in an extremely good mood: he talked a great deal about Galina, with whom he was happy; he did not say in so many words that she was a nice change from Sally-Sarah, but that was what he meant. He talked about Galina’s son, who had had difficulty in accepting him, Colin, as a father; he showed a good deal of sensible insight here. Time passed. He said he must be off at about four: he intended to work late in his Institute. At last Mark said something about Colin’s leaving England. Colin seemed embarrassed, as if Mark were deliberately tactless. Mark came out with a direct question: were you under pressure to leave, and if so, what pressure?

  And now Colin started talking. He talked lengthily and logically till the time came for him to go to work, and say good-bye to his brother. What he was saying was a sort of abstract of the point of view in communist circles of ten years back, and it was impersonal. His own emotions, attitudes did not appear at all.

  So they parted.

  All the way back on the aircraft Mark had wrestled with two sets of emotions, or viewpoints-he was trying to match the decade he had lived through inside the shadow of his brother’s ‘escape to communism’, and his responsibility for Paul; with what he felt when he was actually with his brother, in whose life there appeared to be a gulf which made irrelevant anything that happened before. But he couldn’t make the two attitudes, landscapes, come together.

  Back in London, Martha and Mark discussed it, talked, argued, and finally ended with a set of facts, or sentences. Colin was a scientist. He had always been a scientist. Since he was a small boy with his first chemistry set, he had known what he was. Committing treachery, treason, he had acted as a scientist. In the Soviet Union he was-a scientist. No, not in as important a job a
s he might have expected in Britain, because (and he assumed that Mark must agree with him that it would not be reasonable to expect anything else) in the Soviet Union he would always be a security risk. If he understood nothing else, he knew the score, and in his case this meant that anywhere he was, he must be a security risk. But his life was science, and would continue to be. The ironical truth was that Colin was not interested in politics, and never had been. He said the capitalist part of the world was Χ, Y and Z, just as if he would have said the communist world was Ζ, Y and X if he had stayed in Britain or gone to America. Whatever he was as a scientist, in politics he was a conformist.

  Yet although Britain was corrupt and decadent, etc. etc., and his own family by definition its exemplar, he had said how nice it would be if his mother dropped over to see them: she’d like the Soviet Union.

  Weeks after Mark’s return Margaret had still not time to discuss it. It became evident that it would all slide away into the past, undiscussed, unfocused, with nothing resolved.

  Why not? Why shouldn’t it? Because Mark could not bear it. Colin, his much-loved brother, the only person he had been close to in their youth, was lost to him, that was all finished. But he had set his heart on their mother facing-but what? Martha was unable to see what he expected from Margaret. I am guilty, please forgive me! she might cry, and then the past would be cancelled out … something like that, perhaps. Or Mark might confess. I made a mistake! Communism is an error! And then they would embrace.

  The house happened to be situated about ten miles this side of the hospital in which Lynda had stayed a couple of years before. But, driving to Margaret’s, it was hard to think: If I continued on this road then … Just as, visiting Lynda, she had not thought: I might drop off and see Margaret … To such an extent do destinations colour journeys.

  The gates were discreet and set back from the main road, which was very busy, interrupted by towns and villages, but which showed glimpses of field and wood. This was the countryside, as experienced by those who do not turn in at those gates.

  All over these islands are main roads full of traffic and villages and signs to towns and villages-the countryside. And set discreetly along them are gates, sometimes with a little caretaking lodge near by. Hidden there are-what, a thousand houses? Ten thousand? A magical kind of house which must have something like aerial roots, for it is certain they feed on a different air to that breathed by ordinary houses. The breath of gardens perhaps, of tamed forests …

  The drive to Margaret’s house was half a mile through old trees. The house was an urbane, white presence. It was Georgian, and had just been classed as a national monument. Mark approached it as the kind of place one lived in; Martha as a sort of inhabitable museum.

  Beyond the house was a river. Between house and river, lawns. On the lawns were shrubs, cloud shadows, a tea-table, people, roses: a Sunday afternoon at Margaret Patten’s.

  But in the last three, four years, the guests had changed. One glance at the faces and the names attached to them-but no, whatever else she was, cynical she was not; nor, perhaps, even calculating. To be her kind of hostess, what is needed is passivity. Ten years ago, on to those lawns had been blown the editors, critics, pundits, writers of the Cold War; they were not gone, one or two could still be observed in stances of experience, of maturity, their backs to the roses, but youth swamped the lawns, the new socialists. A single glance down past the house showed Graham Patten, Patty Samuels, and a crowd of people from her little theatre. For, in the past two years, the theatre had caught up with the rest: and nowhere could the change be so sharply observed as in this garden, for here were the actors, actresses, directors, from the two little socialist theatres which for years had been playing to empty houses and to patronizing notices, and which were suddenly the stars of the theatre scene. Mark’s play, for instance, revived because of the change of temperature, had been successful, enthusiastically reviewed by critics who analysed every reason for their change of front save one, the main one, and, transferred to the West End, had been running there for several months. Rachel and Aaron were talking to Graham Patten, and Mark, observing this scene unobserved, swerved off into the garden room with Martha. This room was chintzed and flowerpotted and garlanded, and opened off into a morning room, now in shadow. Quietly they stood, side by side, watching the sunny grass and the moving people through panes of warmed glass. They looked at charming dark-eyed Rachel, at vibrantly handsome Aaron, the doomed brother and sister. But not doomed here, no, quite safe, for it seemed as if this scene, a summer afternoon in England, had always existed and always would, as if, any time of the year and in any season, one had simply to come to this glass wall and look through and there people moved, smiling, on deep grass beside roses.

  Margaret was coming towards the house. She hadn’t changed much. Her hair was dead-leaf colour, her skin was creamy, her eyes large, grey, thoughtful. She wore dark green cloth trousers and a shirt of orangy-yellow cotton. She, like everyone, was exceedingly ornamental. Seeing her, one became conscious of one’s clothes-how very much things had changed, that one thought so much about clothes, wanted to look at them, touch them, could admire and envy. Martha hoped that her summer dress was all right; it had seemed so before leaving home; and Mark muttered that, damn, he should have changed.

  Margaret came. Now she was close, she looked tired and sad.

  ‘Aren’t you coming out?’ she asked, already resentful.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Aren’t they friends of yours? Graham’s here.’

  ‘He was with us last night as a matter of fact.’

  She gave him an irritated look and sat down.

  ‘So he said this morning. Then we can talk about it here.’

  Mark looked angry: believing her to mean that she was still so ashamed of Colin she wished to keep him a secret.

  She said conversationally:’ Graham says he knows a man who is writing a book about Colin-all that affair. Patty says she knows him too. He might come and ask me for material.’

  Mark had gone very white. A bad sign. She looked at him, puzzled.

  ‘I really do think you might come out-after all, here’s Rosie and Barney, and they are so fond of you.’

  Rosie and Barney were Aaron and Rachel.

  ‘Delightful people, ’ murmured Mark.

  She gave him a look which was all a readiness to suffer exasperated patience. Last week she had exclaimed, ‘It’s not as if they are the stuffy old lot, they are the new young exciting people.’

  She sat on an old cane chair by a stand full of pink and white variegated blooms.

  Mark sat down on a wooden bench, his way of saying he was in a hurry. Martha, in a kind of compromise, sat by him, but accepted an offer of tea.

  ‘How is Lynda?’

  ‘She did think of coming, but then decided not.’

  ‘Francis wrote-he’ll be home soon, he said.’

  ‘He is at home now. It’s half-term.’

  Margaret sighed again: Francis would not be friends with his grandmother. She wanted them to say why he was not here this afternoon-they were determined not to say: they would either have to be rude, or tell lies.

  ‘And Paul is very well, ’ said Mark, to get it over with.

  ‘Good, good … I could ask Graham to drop in and have a cup with us here, ’ said Margaret.

  ‘Well, actually, no time. I do have messages from Colin

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He said, why didn’t you go and visit him?’

  ‘Well yes. I might, ’ said Margaret, puzzled. Sitting quietly, enjoying this chance to rest, she let a hand with a cigarette in it trail by her side, as if in water: Mark, always difficult, was difficult again, she was feeling; and intended it to show.

  ‘Galina, she is nice, is she?’

  ‘Very, ’ said Mark.

  ‘Well perhaps they might all come over for a holiday.’

  Mark was near explosion.

  ‘I expect it might be dangerous to come here, ’
said Martha.

  ‘Oh I don’t know, ’ said Margaret.

  ‘He’d be hanged, drawn, quartered-impeached, ’ said Mark fiercely.

  ‘Well perhaps it would be better if he didn’t come. A pity. We are having some Russians next week, as a matter of fact. We’ve been asked to put them up by the Council. Two writers, a ballet dancer and a newspaper editor.’ She was smiling with pleasure. Beyond Mark, and Martha, she looked towards the well-loaded lawns. Like every good hostess, or rather, born hostess, she was almost certainly enjoying a vision, not of those people she actually saw there, but the ones she imagined for next week, or next year or-if one could only see who would be among those flowerbeds in ten years’ time!

  Mark sat rather hunched, staring at his mother. She removed her attention from guests, real and imaginary, and smiled at him. She could see he was writhing internally with every kind of anger, emotion, resentment. She really had no idea why. She wondered how to reintroduce her subject, Graham.

  ‘Perhaps I’ll pop over next year-after all, we have the address now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘What’s he working at-not still bombs and so on, I hope?’

  ‘I was careful not to ask him.’

  ‘Oh-1 suppose not. Well, I don’t know, we wouldn’t understand what he said anyway, would we? And bombs are quite-well, compared to the other things everyone seems to be making, I suppose one should be pleased he’s not making nerve gases or diseases or something.’

  ‘For all I know he is. Well… I really do have to be getting back.’

  ‘But you’ve only just…’

  She rose as he did; they stood staring into each other’s feces, bitter, pained, and completely noncomprehending.

  ‘I don’t know why you … All I know is, I’m to blame for everything as far as you are concerned, ’ she said, in a low bitter tone. Her eyes glittered with tears.