Landlocked. Doris Lessing

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СКАЧАТЬ as Martha came in, dusted ash off it with one hand, while she raised her eyes with the same cosmos-questioning gesture and shrug she had once used for: ‘And who’d be a woman, hey?’ But now she was saying: ‘Well, Matty, who’d be a mother, man? Just look at her.’

      Nevertheless, she smiled, and the nurse-girl smiled, having safely accomplished the task of getting all four dissident little limbs disposed in the scarlet arms and legs of the pyjamas. Now Rita stuck her thumb in her mouth and blinked great black eyes, fighting each heavy blink, blink, with an obstinate tightening of her face. She was fighting sleep. Peace. Silence. The black girl smiled at Maisie, and began picking up garments from all over the room. Rita was scooped up by her mother, where she stood to attention, as it were, in her arms. Maisie tried to rock and cradle the child, but Rita would not go limp. A little stubborn bulldog, she tightened her lips in a determination not to sleep. Meanwhile Maisie, a cigarette hanging from her lips, blew smoke out above the small head. Suddenly, the child went limp, she was half-asleep. Maisie looked down into the child’s face, thoughtful, frowning. Martha came up close to look too. Martha did not touch the child. Last Saturday, when Rita had put her arms around the knees of her mother’s friend, Maisie had called her away and said: ‘Yes, I can see it must be hard for you, when you’ve not got your own kid, I can see that.’ Maisie was winding a piece of Rita’s black hair around her finger. But the hair was straight, and simply fell loose again. Maisie stood with a cigarette in her mouth, Rita cradled in one arm, trying with her free hand to make ringlets in Rita’s hair. Then she put up her hand to wind a strand of her own fair hair around her forefinger. It sprang off in a perfect ringlet. Ash scattered on the red pyjamas, and Martha rescued the cigarette. ‘Thanks, Matty, you’re a pal.’ The child sucked her thumb noisily, the small pink lips working around the white wet thumb. She blinked, blinked. Maisie gave up the attempt to make the heavy black hair curl, and took a cautious step towards the small bed beside her big one. The child opened her eyes and started up, struggling to stand in her mother’s arms.

      ‘Let me,’ said Martha, and nodded in response to Maisie’s quick look of enquiry. Rita went into Martha’s arms, staring in solemn curiosity into the new face close to hers.

      ‘She’s old for her age,’ said Maisie. ‘Do you know what, Matty? I think they’re born older than they used to be. Sometimes Rita just gives me the creeps, watching me, you’d think she knew everything already.’ Certainly it was a serious and knowledgeable look. Martha did not feel she held a tiny child in her arms, and it made things easier, for this was the first time she had held a baby since she had left her own. She held the solid heavy little girl, while Maisie stripped off her dress and said: ‘Poor Matty, but perhaps one of these days you’ll have another baby and then you’ll forget all your sorrow.’

      ‘Yes, I expect I will,’ said Martha. She sat on Maisie’s bed, holding the child carefully. Rita was at last going to sleep, at last she seemed a baby – small, warm, confiding. Maisie stood in her pink satin petticoat, her strong white legs planted firmly, and frowned into a mirror, while she wet her eyebrows with a forefinger. The nurse came in and said: ‘Can I go home now, missus?’ ‘Yes, you go home, nursie.’ ‘I’ll do Miss Rita’s washing in the morning.’ ‘Yes, that’s fine.’ ‘Good night, Miss Maisie.’ ‘Good night, nursie.’ The girl nodded at Martha, with a quick unconscious smile of love for the sleeping child, and went out.

      ‘She’s a good girl,’ said Maisie. ‘She’s got two kids of her own, she leaves them with her mom in the Location. I tell her she’s lucky to have her mom near her, I wish I did.’ She frowned, stretching her mouth to take lipstick. ‘Her husband, or so she calls him, has gone to the mines in Jo’burg, well, I tell her she’s lucky to be rid of him, men are more trouble than they are worth.’

      Now she put on a cocktail dress, suitable for her calling as a barmaid. It was a bright blue crêpe, tight over the big hips, pleated and folded marvellously over the breasts, showing large areas of solid white neck and white shoulder. She put on diamanté ear-rings, a diamanté brooch. She inspected herself, then used thumb and forefinger to crimp her pale hair into waves around her face. Martha thought: I wonder what Andrew would say if he could see Maisie now, and this apparently communicated itself to Maisie, for she turned from the mirror, smiling unpleasantly, to say, ‘If Andrew could see me, he’d have a fit. Well, that’s his funeral, isn’t it?’ She now came over to Martha, lifted the baby, and slid her under the covers of the little bed. Off went the light. The room, dimmed, seemed larger. Except for the child’s bed, it was exactly the same as the bedroom in the flat where Maisie had lived with Andrew. The same plump blue shining quilt, the same trinkets and pictures. A girl’s bedroom. But no photographs – not a sign of them: Binkie and Maisie’s three husbands were not here.

      ‘Have you heard from Andrew yet?’

      ‘Yes, strangely enough. He said would I come to England to live. But I can’t see myself. Of course you want to go to England and I can see that it takes all sorts.’

      She now sat near Martha on the bed, offered her a cigarette, lit one herself, and said: ‘Everything’s nuts. When the war was bad, well, we used to think, the war will be over soon, and so will our troubles. But it just goes on. Well, they say it’s going to be over soon but why should it? I mean, they had a war for a hundred years once, didn’t they? But Athen says it will be over soon.’

      ‘Have you seen Athen?’

      Maisie’s face changed to an expression Martha had seen there before, when Athen was mentioned. A new look – resentment. ‘He came in to see me last week. Well, he’s too good for this world, I can tell you that!’ Then she sighed, lost her bitterness and said: ‘Yes, it’s a fact, he’s not long for this world.’ At Martha’s look she nodded and insisted: ‘Yes, it’s true when they say the good people go first. Look at my two first husbands, they’re dead, aren’t they?’ ‘And Andrew’s bad just because he’s still alive?’ said Martha, smiling.

      At this Maisie jumped up and said: ‘We’ll wake Rita if we natter in here.’ She pushed open the window and instantly the room reeked from the spilt beer on the pavement just below. She shut the window again, saying: ‘Well, lucky it’ll be winter soon, I can have the windows shut. Sometimes I can’t stand the smell, and then the men from the bar start fighting and being sick so I can’t sleep sometimes.’

      She went into the other room and Martha followed.

      ‘I’m late for the bar,’ said Maisie, and sat down calmly, to smoke. ‘Athen says he wants to see you, Matty.’

      ‘Well, I’m always happy to see him.’

      ‘Yes, he’s one of the people …’ Again resentment, a sighing, puzzled resentment. ‘All the same, Matty. He said I shouldn’t be working in a bar. I said to him: “All right then, you find me a job where I can have my baby, just above my work all the time, you find me that job and I’ll take it.” And then he went on and on, so I said: “And what about your mom and your sisters? Didn’t you tell me the things they had to do because they were poor? They had to do bad things. And your sister married a man she didn’t love because he said he’d pay your mom’s debts. Well, you said that didn’t you?” And he said: “Yes, but they were poor and you aren’t.” Well, Matty, that made me so mad …’ Her voice was shaking, her eyes full of tears. ‘Excuse me a sec, Matty.’ She went to the bedroom to fetch a handkerchief, and came back saying: ‘Well, who’d be a woman, eh?’ exactly as she used to; and Martha saw the old, maidenly, fighting Maisie in the fat barmaid dressed garishly for her work.

      Martha said, with difficulty: ‘You know, Maisie, I used to think you could love Athen if …’

      Maisie gave Martha a look, first conscious, then defiant. ‘Love. That’s right. Well, he’s the best man I’ve ever known in my life, I’ll СКАЧАТЬ