The Golden Notebook. Doris Lessing

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СКАЧАТЬ and began dancing with June Boothby. Jimmy stood open-mouthed and helpless, very much the small boy who has been smacked and doesn’t know what for. Then he wandered off into the night by himself.

      Paul and I danced. Willi and Maryrose danced. Stanley and Mrs Lattimore danced. Mr Lattimore was in the bar and George kept leaving us to pay visits to his caravan.

      We were all more noisy and derisive about everything than we had ever been. I think we all knew it was our last week-end. Yet no decision had been made about not coming again; just as no formal decision had been made about coming in the first place. There was a feeling of loss; for one thing Paul and Jimmy were due to be posted soon.

      It was nearly midnight when Paul remarked that Jimmy had been gone a long time. We searched through the crowd in the big room, and no one had seen him. Paul and I went to look for him and met George at the door. Outside the night was damp and clouded. In that part of the country there is often two or three days’ break in the regularly clear weather we took for granted, while a very fine rain or mist blows softly, like the small soft rain of Ireland. So it was now, and groups and couples stood cooling off, but it was too dark to see their faces, and we wandered among them trying to distinguish Jimmy by his shape. The bar had closed by then and he was not on the hotel verandah or in the dining-room. We began to worry, for more than once we had had to rescue him from a flower-bed or under the gum-trees, hopelessly drunk. We searched through the bedrooms. We searched slowly through the gardens, stumbling over bushes and plants, not finding him. We were standing at the back of the main hotel building, wondering where to look next, when the lights went on in the kitchen half a dozen paces in front of us. Jackson came into the kitchen, slowly, alone. He did not know he was being watched. I had never seen him other than polite and on guard; but now he was both angry and troubled—I remember looking at that face and thinking I had never really seen it before. His face changed—he was looking at something on the floor. We pressed forward to see, and there was Jimmy lying asleep or drunk or both on the floor of the kitchen. Jackson bent down to raise him and, as he did so, Mrs Boothby came in behind Jackson. Jimmy awoke, saw Jackson and lifted his arms like a newly roused child and put them around Jackson’s neck. The black man said: ‘Baas Jimmy, Baas Jimmy, you must go to bed. You must not be here.’ And Jimmy said: ‘You love me, Jackson, don’t you, you love me, none of the others love me.’

      Mrs Boothby was so shocked that she let herself slump against the wall, and her face was a greyish colour. By then we three were in the kitchen, lifting Jimmy up and away from his clinging grip around Jackson’s neck.

      Mrs Boothby said: ‘Jackson, you leave tomorrow.’

      Jackson said: ‘Missus, what have I done?’

      Mrs Boothby said: ‘Get out. Go away. Take your dirty family and yourself away from here. Tomorrow, or I’ll get the police to you.’

      Jackson looked at us, his eyebrows knotting and unknotting, puckers of uncomprehending pain tightening the skin of his face and releasing it, so that his face seemed to clench and unclench. Of course, he had no idea at all why Mrs Boothby was so upset.

      He said slowly: ‘Missus, I’ve worked for you fifteen years.’

      George said: ‘I’ll speak to her, Jackson.’ George had never before previously addressed a direct word to Jackson. He felt too guilty before him.

      And now Jackson turned his eyes slowly towards George and blinked slowly, like someone who has been hit. And George stayed quiet, waiting. Then Jackson said: ‘You don’t want us to leave, baas?’

      I don’t know how much that meant. Perhaps Jackson had known about his wife all the time. It certainly sounded like it then. But George shut his eyes a moment, then stammered out something, and it sounded ludicrous, like an idiot talking. Then he stumbled out of the kitchen.

      We half-lifted, half-pushed Jimmy out of the kitchen, and we said: ‘Good night, Jackson, thank you for trying to help Baas Jimmy.’ But he did not answer.

      We put Jimmy to bed, Paul and I. As we came down from the bedroom block through the wet dark, we heard George talking to Willi a dozen paces away. Willi was saying: ‘Quite so.’ And ‘Obviously.’ And ‘Very likely.’ And George was getting more and more vehement and incoherent.

      Paul said in a low voice: ‘Oh, my God, Anna, come with me now.’

      ‘I can’t,’ I said.

      ‘I might leave the country any day now. I might never see you again.’

      ‘You know I can’t.’

      Without replying he walked off into the dark, and I was just going after him when Willi came up. We were close to our bedroom, and we went into it. Willi said: ‘It’s the best thing that can have happened. Jackson and family will leave and George will come to his senses.’

      ‘This means, almost for certain, that the family will have to split up. Jackson won’t have his family with him again.’

      Willi said: ‘That’s just like you. Jackson’s been lucky enough to have his family. Most of them can’t. And now he’ll be like the others. That’s all. Have you been weeping and wailing because of all the others without their families?’

      ‘No, I’ve been supporting policies that should put an end to the whole bloody business.’

      ‘Quite. And quite right.’

      ‘But I happen to know Jackson and his family. Sometimes I can’t believe you mean the things you say.’

      ‘Of course you can’t. Sentimentalists can never believe in anything but their own emotions.’

      ‘And it’s not going to make any difference to George. Because the tragedy of George is not Marie but George. When she goes there’ll be someone else.’

      ‘It might teach him a lesson,’ said Willi, and his face was ugly as he said it.

      I left Willi in the bedroom and stood on the verandah. The mist had thinned to show a faint diffused cold light from a half-obscured sky. Paul was standing a few paces off looking at me. And suddenly all the intoxication and the anger and misery rose in me like a bomb bursting and I didn’t care about anything except being with Paul. I ran down to him and he caught my hand and without a word we both ran, without knowing where we were running or why. We ran along the main road east, slipping and stumbling on the wet puddling tarmac, and swerved off on to a rough grass track that led somewhere, but we didn’t know where. We ran along it, through sandy puddles we never saw, through the faint mist that had come down again. Dark wet trees loomed up on either side, and fell behind and we ran on. Our breath went, and we stumbled off the track into the veld. It was covered with a low invisible leafy growth. We ran a few paces, and fell side by side in each other’s arms in the wet leaves while the rain fell slowly down, and over us low dark clouds sped across the sky, and the moon gleamed out and went, struggling with the dark, so that we were in the dark again. We began to tremble so hard that we laughed, our teeth were clattering together. I was wearing a thin crepe dance dress and nothing else. Paul took off his uniform jacket and put it round me, and we lay down again. Our flesh together was hot, and everything else was wet and cold. Paul, maintaining his poise even now, remarked: ‘I’ve never done this before, darling Anna. Isn’t it clever of me to choose an experienced woman like you?’ Which made me laugh again. We were neither of us at all clever, we were too happy. Hours later the light grew clear above us and the distant sound of Johnnie’s piano at the hotel stopped, and looking up we saw the clouds had swept away and the stars were out. СКАЧАТЬ