Doris Lessing Three-Book Edition: The Golden Notebook, The Grass is Singing, The Good Terrorist. Doris Lessing

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ laughed; they were suddenly in harmony.

      ‘Then he wrote to say he missed London and all its cultural freedoms.’

      ‘Then I suppose we can expect him any moment.’

      ‘He came back. A couple of months ago. He’s abandoned his wife, apparently. She’s much too good for him, he says, weeping big tears, but not too big, because after all she is stuck with two kids in Ceylon and no money; so he’s safe.’

      ‘You’ve seen him?’

      ‘Yes.’ But Anna found herself unable to tell Molly what had happened. What would be the use? They’d end up, as she had sworn they would not, spending the afternoon in the dry bitter exchange that came so easily to them.

      ‘And how about you, Anna?’

      And now, for the first time, Molly had asked in a way which Anna could reply to, and she said at once:

      ‘Michael came to see me. About a month ago.’ She had lived with Michael for five years. This affair had broken up three years ago, against her will.

      ‘How was it?’

      ‘Oh, in some ways, as if nothing had happened.’

      ‘Of course, when you know each other so well.’

      ‘But he was behaving—how shall I put it? I was a dear old friend, you know. He drove me to some place I wanted to go. He was talking about a colleague of his. He said, Do you remember Dick? Odd, don’t you think, that he couldn’t remember if I remembered Dick, since we saw a lot of him then. Dick’s got a job in Ghana, he said. He took his wife. His mistress wanted to go too, said Michael. Very difficult these mistresses are, said Michael, and then he laughed. Quite genuinely, you know, the debonair touch. That was what was painful. Then he looked embarrassed, because he remembered that I had been his mistress, and went red and guilty.’

      Molly said nothing. She watched Anna closely.

      ‘That’s all, I suppose.’

      ‘A lot of swine they all are,’ said Molly cheerfully, deliberately striking the note that would make Anna laugh.

      ‘Molly?’ said Anna painfully, in appeal.

      ‘What? It’s no good going on about it, is it?’

      ‘Well, I’ve been thinking. You know, it’s possible we made a mistake.’

      ‘What? Only one?’

      But Anna would not laugh. ‘No. It’s serious. Both of us are dedicated to the proposition that we’re tough—no listen, I’m serious. I mean—a marriage breaks up, well, we say, our marriage was a failure, too bad. A man ditches us—too bad we say, it’s not important. We bring up kids without men—nothing to it, we say, we can cope. We spend years in the Communist Party and then we say, Well, well, we made a mistake, too bad.’

      ‘What are you trying to say?’ said Molly, very cautious, and at a great distance from Anna.

      ‘Well, don’t you think it’s at least possible, just possible that things can happen to us so bad that we don’t ever get over them? Because when I really face it I don’t think I’ve really got over Michael. I think it’s done for me. Oh I know, what I am supposed to say is, Well well, he’s ditched me—what’s five years after all, on with the next thing.’

      ‘But it has to be, on with the next thing.’

      ‘Why do our lot never admit failure? Never. It might be better for us if we did. And it’s not only love and men. Why can’t we say something like this—we are people, because of the accident of how we were situated in history, who were so powerfully part—but only in our imaginations, and that’s the point—of the great dream, that now we have to admit that the great dream has faded and the truth is something else—that we’ll never be any use. After all, Molly, it’s not much loss is it, a few people, a few people of a certain type, saying that they’ve had it, they’re finished. Why not? It’s almost arrogant not to be able to.’

      ‘Oh Anna! All this is simply because of Michael. And probably he’ll come in again one of these days and you’ll pick up where you left off. And if he doesn’t, what are you complaining of? You’ve got your writing.’

      ‘Good Lord,’ said Anna softly. ‘Good Lord.’ Then after a moment, she forced the safe tone back: ‘Yes, it’s all very odd…well, I must be rushing home.’

      ‘I thought you said Janet was staying with a friend?’

      ‘Yes, but I’ve got things to do.’

      They kissed, briskly. That they had not been able to meet each other was communicated by a small, tender, even humorous squeeze of the hand. Anna went out into the street to walk home. She lived a few minutes’ walk away, in Earls Court. Before she turned into the street she lived in she automatically cut out the sight of it. She did not live in the street, or even in the building, but in the flat; and she would not let the sight return to her eyes until her front door was shut behind her.

      The rooms were on two floors at the top of the house, five large rooms, two down and three up. Michael had persuaded Anna, four years before, to move into her own flat. It was bad for her, he had said, to live in Molly’s house, always under the wing of the big sister. When she had complained she could not afford it, he had told her to let a room. She had moved, imagining he would share this life with her; but he had left her shortly afterwards. For a time she had continued to live in the pattern he had set for her. There were two students in one big room, her daughter in another, and her own bedroom and living-room were organized for two people—herself and Michael. One of the students left, but she did not bother to replace him. She took a revulsion against her bedroom, which had been planned for Michael to share, and moved down to the living-room, where she slept and attended to her notebooks. Upstairs still lived the student, a youth from Wales. Sometimes Anna thought that it could be said she was sharing a flat with a young man; but he was a homosexual, and there was no tension in the arrangement. They hardly saw one another. Anna attended to her own life while Janet was at school, a couple of blocks away; and when Janet was home, devoted herself to her. An old woman came in once a week to clean the place. Money trickled in irregularly from her only novel, Frontiers of War, once a best-seller, which still earned just enough for her to live on. The flat was attractive, white painted, with bright floors. The balustrades and banisters of the stairs made white patterns against red paper.

      This was the framework of Anna’s life. But it was only alone, in the big room, that she was herself. It was an oblong room, recessed to take a narrow bed. Around the bed were stacked books, papers, a telephone. There were three tall windows in the outer wall. At one end of the room, near the fireplace, was a desk with a typewriter, at which she dealt with letters, and the book reviews and articles she sometimes, but infrequently, wrote. At the other end was a long trestle table, painted black. A drawer held the four notebooks. The top of this table was always kept clear. The walls and ceilings of the room were white, but shabbied by the dark air of London. The floor was painted black. The bed had a black cover. The long curtains were a dull red.

      Anna now passed slowly from one to another of the three windows, examining the thin and discoloured sunshine that failed to reach the pavements which were the floor of the rift between high Victorian houses. She covered the windows over, listening with pleasure to the intimate sliding sound of the curtain runners in their deep grooves, and to the soft swish, swish, swish of the heavy silk meeting СКАЧАТЬ