The Golden Notebook. Doris Lessing

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СКАЧАТЬ she wanted, of course, was for Dr Allsop himself to descend on her, and rescue her, like a knight on a white horse.’ ‘Of course.’ ‘That’s the trouble. I can’t say. Dear Mrs Brown, you haven’t got rheumatism, you’re lonely and neglected, and you’re inventing symptoms to make a claim on the world so that someone will pay attention to you. Well, can I?’ ‘You can say all that, tactfully. She probably knows it herself. You could tell her to make an effort to meet people, join some organization, something like that.’ ‘It’s arrogant, me telling her what to do.’ ‘She’s written for help, so it’s arrogant not to.’ ‘Some organization, you say! But that’s not what she wants. She doesn’t want something impersonal. She’s been married for years and now she feels as if half of herself’s torn away.’

      At this he regarded her gravely for some moments, and she did not know what he was thinking. At last he said: ‘Well, I expect you’re right. But you could suggest she writes to a marriage bureau.’ He laughed at the look of distaste that showed on her face, and went on: ‘Yes, but you’d be surprised how many good marriages I’ve organized myself, through marriage bureaux.’

      ‘You sound like—a sort of psychiatric social worker,’ she said, and as soon as the words were out, she knew what the reply would be. Dr West, the sound general practitioner, with no patience for ‘frills’, made jokes about his colleague, ‘the witch-doctor’, to whom he sent patients in serious mental trouble. This, then, was ‘the witch-doctor’.

      Paul Tanner was saying, with reluctance: ‘That’s what I am, in a sense.’ She knew the reluctance was because he did not want from her the obvious response. What the response was she knew because she had felt a leap inside herself of relief and interest, an uneasy interest because he was a witch-doctor, possessed of all sorts of knowledge about her. She said quickly: ‘Oh, I’m not going to tell you my troubles.’ After a pause during which, she knew, he was looking for words which would discourage her from doing so, he said: ‘And I never give advice at parties.’

      ‘Except to widow Brown,’ she said.

      He smiled, and remarked: ‘You’re middle-class, aren’t you?’ It was definitely a judgement. Ella was hurt. ‘By origin,’ she said. He said: I’m working-class, so perhaps I know rather more about widow Brown than you do.’

      At this point Patricia Brent came over, and took him away to talk to some member of her staff. Ella realized that they had made an absorbed couple, in a party not designed for couples. Patricia’s manner had said that they had drawn attention. So Ella was rather annoyed. Paul did not want to go. He gave her a look that was urgent, and appealing, yet also hard. Yes, thought Ella, a hard look, like a nod of command that she should stay where she was until he was free to come back to her. And she reacted away from him again.

      It was time to go home. She had only been at the Wests’ an hour, but she wanted to get away. Paul Tanner was now sitting between Patricia and a young woman. Ella could not hear what was being said but both the women wore expressions of half-excited, half-furtive interest, which meant they were talking, obliquely or directly, about Dr Tanner’s profession, and as it illuminated themselves, while he maintained a courteous, but stiff smile. He’s not going to get free of them for hours, Ella thought; and she got up and made her excuses to Mrs West, who was annoyed with her for leaving so soon. She nodded at Dr West, whom she would meet tomorrow over a pile of letters, and smiled at Paul, whose blue eyes swung up, very blue and startled, at the news that she was leaving. She went into the hall to put on her coat, and he came out, hurriedly, behind her, offering to take her home. His manner was now off-hand, almost rude, because he had not wanted to be forced into such a public pursuit. Ella said: ‘It’s probably out of your way.’ He said: ‘Where do you live?’ and when she told him, said firmly it was not out of his way at all. He had a small English car. He drove it fast and well. The London of the car-owner and taxi-user is a very different city from that of the tube and bus-user. Ella was thinking that the miles of grey squalor she had travelled through were now a hazy and luminous city blossoming with lights; and that it had no power to frighten her. Meanwhile, Paul Tanner darted at her sharp enquiring glances and asked brief practical questions about her life. She told him, meaning to challenge his pigeon-holing of her, that she had served throughout the war in a canteen for factory women, and had lived in the same hostel. That after the war she had contracted tuberculosis, but not badly, and had spent six months on her back in a sanatorium. This was the experience that had changed her life, changed her much more deeply than the war years with the factory women. Her mother had died when she was very young, and her father, a silent, hard-bitten man, an ex-army officer from India, had brought her up. ‘If you could call it a bringing-up, I was left to myself, and I’m grateful for it,’ she said, laughing. And she had been married, briefly and unhappily. To each of these bits of information, Paul Tanner nodded; and Ella saw him sitting behind a desk, nodding at the replies to a patient’s answers to questions. ‘They say you write novels,’ he said, as he slid the car to a standstill outside Julia’s house. ‘I don’t write novels,’ she said, annoyed as at an invasion of privacy, and immediately got out of the car. He quickly got out of his side and reached the door at the same time she did. They hesitated. But she wanted to go inside, away from the intentness of his pursuit of her. He said brusquely: ‘Will you come for a drive with me tomorrow afternoon?’ As an after-thought, he gave a hasty glance at the sky, which was heavily clouded, and said: ‘It looks as if it will be fine.’ At this she laughed, and out of the good feeling engendered by the laugh, said she would. His face cleared into relief—more, triumph. He’s won a kind of victory, she thought, rather chilled. Then, after another hesitation, he shook hands with her, nodded, and went off to his car, saying he would pick her up at two o’clock. She went indoors through the dark hall, up dark stairs, through the silent house. A light showed under Julia’s door. It was very early, after all. She called: ‘I’m back, Julia,’ and Julia’s full clear voice said: ‘Come in and talk.’ Julia had a large comfortable bedroom, and she lay on massed pillows in a large double bed, reading. She wore pyjamas, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. She looked good-natured, shrewd and very inquisitive. ‘Well, how was it?’ ‘Boring,’ said Ella, making this a criticism of Julia for forcing her to go—by her invisible strength of will. ‘I was brought home by a psychiatrist,’ she added, using the word deliberately to see appear on Julia’s face the look she had felt on her own, and had seen on the faces of Patricia and the young woman. When she saw it, she felt ashamed and sorry she had said it—as if she had deliberately committed an act of aggression towards Julia. Which I have, she thought. ‘And I don’t think I like him,’ she added, relapsing into childishness, playing with the scent bottles on Julia’s dressing-table. She rubbed scent into the flesh of her wrists, watching Julia’s face in the looking-glass, which was now again sceptical, patient and shrewd. She thought: Well, of course Julia’s a sort of mother-image, but do I have to play up to it all the time?—And besides, most of the time I feel maternal towards Julia, I have a need to protect her, though I don’t know from what. ‘Why don’t you like him?’ enquired Julia. This was serious, and Ella would now have to think seriously. Instead she said: ‘Thanks for looking after Michael,’ and went upstairs to bed, giving Julia a small, apologetic smile as she went.

      Next day sunlight was settled over London, and the trees in the streets seemed not to be part of the weight of the buildings and the pavements, but an extension of fields and grass and country. Ella’s indecision about the drive that afternoon swung into pleasure as she imagined sunshine on grass; and she understood from the sudden flight upwards of her spirits, that she must recently have been more depressed than she had realized. She found herself singing as she cooked the child’s lunch. It was because she was remembering Paul’s voice. At the time she had not been conscious of Paul’s voice, but now she heard it—a warm voice, a little rough where the edges of an uneducated accent remained. (She was listening, as she thought of him, rather than looking at him.) And she was listening, not to the words he had used, but to tones in which she was now distinguishing delicacy, irony and compassion.

      Julia was taking Michael off for the afternoon to visit friends, and she left early, as soon as СКАЧАТЬ