Then he squatted on his bed, moving his arms and staring around his room, recognizing it, and her, at last.
He said, ‘Open the door.’
She said, ‘No, not until I am sure you will behave well.’
He was about to start again, but she shouted at him, ‘Ben, I mean it! You shout and scream and I’ll tie you up.’
He controlled himself. She handed him sandwiches, which he crammed into his mouth, choking.
He had unlearned all the basic social skills that it had been so hard to teach him.
She talked quietly while he ate. ‘And now listen to me, Ben. You have to listen. You behave well and everything will be all right. You must eat properly. You must use the pot or got to the lavatory. And you mustn’t scream and fight.’ She was not sure he heard her. She repeated it. She went on repeating it.
That evening she stayed with Ben, and she did not see the other children at all. David went up to the other room away from her. How she felt at this time was that she was shielding them from Ben while she re-educated him for family life. But how they felt it, she knew, was that she had turned her back on them all and chosen to go off into alien country, with Ben.
That night she locked the door on him, and bolted it, left him undrugged and hoped he would sleep. He did, but woke, screaming in fear. She went in to him, and found him backed against the wall at the end of the bed, an arm up over his face, unable to hear her, while she talked, and talked, using reasonable persuasive words against this storm of terror. At last he became quiet and she gave him food. He could not get enough food: he had really been starving. They had had to keep him drugged, and, when drugged, he could not eat.
Fed, he again backed himself against the wall, squatted on the bed, and looked at the door where his jailers would enter: he had not really understood he was at home.
Copyright
Fourth Estate
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First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd 1951
‘Events in the Skies’ first published in 1987 in Granta
Copyright © Doris Lessing 1951, 1953, 1973, 1987
This edition copyright © Doris Lessing 2003
Doris Lessing asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons. living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental
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Epub Edition © MAY 2012
eISBN: 9780007404896
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