The Four-Gated City. Doris Lessing
of the flat, though Mark and Martha had offered to run it with the house. Dorothy was, or had been, an efficient woman. During the war she had managed a factory that made parts of bombs: she had had about forty women working under her. Becoming normal, for Dorothy, meant once more learning to be competent. It was she who got in a charwoman, ordered food, sometimes went shopping – managed. Then something went wrong, a little thing, like a tap, or the telephone. Dorothy contacted the machinery of the outside world. A week or so later, Martha would find one of the women carrying water downstairs in a bucket, or coming up to use the telephone. When the affair finally came into her hands, or Mark’s, Dorothy would supply a piece of paper on which was written something like this:
| Friday evening. | Lynda said the tap was dripping. I rang five plumbers. Three didn’t answer. This in spite of the fact they advertised to ring after six. The fourth said he would come at nine. He never came at all. The fifth said he would come on Saturday morning at ten. |
| 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 main. |
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