London Observed. Doris Lessing
you know it’s the same one?’
‘Can’t you see it is?’
‘They all look alike to me.’
She said nothing, but began her game of carefully pushing crumbs nearer and nearer to it, so that it would be tempted but not frightened.
‘I suppose it’s waiting for its father to come and feed it,’ came the grumble which her alert but cautious pose said she had expected.
‘Or perhaps even its mother,’ she said, dry, ironic – but regretted this note as soon as the words were out, for he erupted loudly, ‘Sitting there, just waiting for us to …’
She said carefully, ‘Look, Father, I said this morning, if you don’t want to do it, then you don’t have to.’
‘You’d never let me forget it then, would you!’
She said nothing, but leaned gently to push a crumb closer to the bird.
‘And then if I didn’t I suppose she’d be back home, expecting us to wait on her, buying her food …’
She was counting ten before she spoke. ‘That’s why she wants to leave and get a place of her own.’
‘At our expense.’
‘The money’s only sitting in the bank.’
‘But suppose we wanted it for something. Repairs to the house … the car’s getting old …’
She sighed, not meaning to. ‘I said, if you feel like that about it, then don’t. But it’s only £10,000. That’s not much to put down to begin on getting independent. It’s a very good deal, you said that yourself. She’ll own a bit of something, even if it is only a share of the place.’
‘I don’t see we’ve any choice. Either we have her at home feeding her and all her friends and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all, or we have to pay to get her out.’
‘She’s twenty-one,’ said the mother, suddenly exhausted with anger, her voice low and tight. ‘It’s time we did something for her.’
He heard, and was going to retreat, but said first, ‘It’s the legal age, isn’t it? She’s an adult, not a baby.’
She did not reply.
Out came the Japanese young man with yet another tray. More cakes piled with cream and jam, more coffee. As soon as he had set these down before his wife (girlfriend? sister?) and his (her?) mother, the three of them bent over and began eating as if in an eating contest.
‘They aren’t short of what it needs,’ he grumbled.
That peevish old voice: it was the edge of senility. Soon she would be his nurse. She was probably thinking something like this while she smiled, smiled, at the bird.
‘Come on,’ she whispered, ‘it’s not difficult.’
And then … the baby hopped down on to the table with its round eyes fixed on her, clumsily took up a crumb, swallowed it.
‘Very likely that’s the first time it has ever done that for itself,’ she whispered, and her eyes were full of tears. ‘The little thing …’
The small sparrow was pecking in an experimental way. Then it got the hang of it, and soon became as voracious as its elders as she pushed crumbs towards it. Then it had cleaned up the table top and was off – an adult.
‘Marvellous,’ she said. ‘Wonderful. Probably even this morning it was still in its nest and now …’ And she laughed, with tears in her eyes.
He was looking at her. For the first time since they had sat down there he was outside his selfish prison and really seeing her.
But he was seeing her not as she was now, but at some time in the past. A memory …
‘It’s a nice little bird,’ he said, and when she heard that voice from the past, not a semi-senile whine, she turned and smiled full at him.
‘Oh it’s so wonderful,’ she said, vibrating with pleasure. I love this place. I love …’ And indeed the sun had come out, filling the green garden with summer, making people’s faces shine and smile.
The Mother of the Child in Question
High on a walkway connecting two tower blocks Stephen Bentley, social worker, stopped to survey the view. Cement, everywhere he looked. Stained grey piles went up into the sky, and down below lay grey acres where only one person moved among puddles, soft drink cans and bits of damp paper. This was an old man with a stick and a shopping bag. In front of Stephen, horizontally dividing the heavy building from pavement to low cloud, were rows of many-coloured curtains where people kept out of sight. They were probably watching him, but he had his credentials, the file under his arm. The end of this walkway was on the fourth floor. The lift smelled bad: someone had been sick in it. He walked up grey urine-smelling stairs to the eighth floor, Number 15. The very moment he rang, the door was opened by a smiling brown boy. This must be Hassan, the twelve-year-old. His white teeth, his bright blue jersey, the white collar of his shirt, all dazzled, and behind him the small room crammed with furniture was too tidy for a family room, everything just so, polished, shining. Thorough preparations had been made for this visit. In front of a red plush sofa was the oblong of a low table, and on it waited cups, saucers and a sugar bowl full to the brim. A glinting spoon stood upright in it. Hassan sat down on the sofa, smiling hard. Apart from the sofa, there were three chairs, full of shiny cushions. In one of them sat Mrs Khan, a plump pretty lady wearing the outfit Stephen thought of as ‘pyjamas’ – trousers and tunic in flowered pink silk. They looked like best clothes, and the ten-year-old girl in the other chair wore a blue tunic and trousers, with earrings, bangles and rings. Mother wore a pink gauzy scarf, the child a blue one. These, in Pakistan, would be there ready to be pulled modestly up at the sight of a man, but here they added to the festive atmosphere. Stephen sat down in the empty chair at Mrs Khan’s (Stephen particularly noted) peremptory gesture. But she smiled. Hassan smiled and smiled. The little girl had not, it seemed, noticed the visitor, but she smiled too. She was pretty, like a kitten.
‘Where is Mr Khan?’ asked Stephen of Mrs Khan, who nodded commandingly at her son. Hassan at once said, ‘No, he cannot come, he is at work.’
‘But he told me he would be here. I spoke to him on the telephone yesterday.’
Again the mother gave Hassan an order with her eyes, and he said, smiling with all his white teeth, ‘No, he is not here.’
In the file that had the name Shireen Khan on the front, the last note, dated nine months before, said, ‘Father did not keep appointment. His presence essential.’
Mrs Khan said something in a low voice to her son, who allowed the smile to have a rest just as long as it took to fetch a tray with a pot of tea on it, and biscuits, from the sideboard. They must have been watching from the windows and made the tea when they saw him down there, file under his arm. Hassan put the smile back on his face when he sat down again. Mrs Khan poured strong tea. The boy handed Stephen a cup, and the plate of biscuits. Mrs Khan set a cup before her daughter, and counted five biscuits on to a separate plate and put this near the cup. The little girl was smiling at – it seemed – attractive private fancies. Mrs Khan clicked her tongue with annoyance and said something to her in Urdu. But Shireen took no notice. She was bursting with internal merriment, and the result of her mother’s prompting was that she tried to share this with her brother, reaching out to poke him mischievously, and laughing. Hassan could not prevent a real smile at her, tender, warm, charmed. He instantly removed this smile and put back the polite false one.
‘Five,’ said Mrs Khan in English. ‘She can count. Say five, Shireen.’ It was poor English, and she repeated the command in Urdu.
The little girl smiled delightfully and began breaking up the biscuits and eating them.
‘If