The Temptation of Jack Orkney: Collected Stories Volume Two. Doris Lessing

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      ‘Well yes, I can see how you felt.’

      ‘Three of the nights he went to her bedroom with her – very casual about it, because she was being. But he was not in there in the mornings. So I asked her. You know how it is when you ask her a question. As if you’ve been having long conversations on that very subject for years and years, and she is merely continuing where you left off last. So when she says something surprising, one feels such a fool to be surprised?’

      ‘Yes. And then?’

      ‘I asked her if she was sorry not to have children. She said yes, but one couldn’t have everything.’

      ‘One can’t have everything, she said?’

      ‘Quite clearly feeling she has nearly everything. She said she thought it was a pity, because she would have brought up children very well.”

      ‘When you come to think of it, she would, too.’

      ‘I asked about marriage, but she said on the whole the role of a mistress suited her better.’

      ‘She used the word mistress?’

      ‘You must admit it’s the accurate word.’

      ‘I suppose so.’

      ‘And then she said that while she liked intimacy and sex and everything, she enjoyed waking up in the morning alone and her own person.’

      ‘Yes, of course.’

      ‘Of course. But now she’s bothered because the professor would like to marry her. Or he feels he ought. At least, he’s getting all guilty and obsessive about it. She says she doesn’t see the point of divorce, and anyway, surely it would be very hard on his poor old wife after all these years particularly after bringing up two children so satisfactorily. She talks about his wife as if she’s a kind of nice old charwoman, and it wouldn’t be fair to sack her, you know. Anyway. What with one thing and another, Judith’s going off to Italy soon in order to collect herself.’

      ‘But how’s she going to pay for it?’

      ‘Luckily the Third Programme’s commissioning her to do some arty programmes. They offered her a choice of The Cid – El Thid, you know – and the Borgias. Well the Borghese, then. And Judith settled for the Borgias.’

      ‘The Borgias,’ I said. ‘Judith?’

      ‘Yes, quite. I said that too, in that tone of voice. She saw my point. She says the epic is right up her street, whereas the Renaissance has never been on her wavelength. Obviously it couldn’t be, all the magnificence and cruelty and dirt. But of course chivalry and a high moral code and all those idiotically noble goings-on are right on her wavelength.’

      ‘Is the money the same?’

      ‘Yes. But is it likely Judith would let money decide? No, she said that one should always choose something new, that isn’t up one’s street. Well, because it’s better for her character, and so on, to get herself unsettled by the Renaissance. She didn’t say that, of course.’

      ‘Of course not.’

      Judith went to Florence; and for some months postcards informed us tersely of her doings. Then Betty decided she must go by herself for a holiday. She had been appalled by the discovery that if her husband was away for a night she couldn’t sleep; and when he went to Australia for three weeks, she stopped living until he came back. She had discussed this with him, and he had agreed that, if she really felt the situation to be serious, he would dispatch her by air, to Italy, in order to recover her self-respect. As she put it.

      I got this letter from her: ‘It’s no use, I’m coming home. I might have known. Better face it, once you’re really married you’re not fit for man nor beast. And if you remember what I used to be like! Well! I moped around Milan. I sunbathed in Venice, then I thought my tan was surely worth something, so I was on the point of starting an affair with another lonely soul, but I lost heart, and went to Florence to see Judith. She wasn’t there. She’d gone to the Italian Riviera. I had nothing better to do, so I followed her. When I saw the place I wanted to laugh, it’s so much not Judith, you know, all those palms and umbrellas and gaiety at all costs and ever such an ornamental blue sea. Judith is in an enormous stone room up on the hillside above the sea, with grape vines all over the place. You should see her, she’s got beautiful. It seems for the last fifteen years she’s being going to Soho every Saturday morning to buy food at an Italian shop. I must have looked surprised, because she explained she liked Soho. I suppose because all that dreary vice and nudes and prostitutes and everything prove how right she is to be as she is? She told the people in the shop she was going to Italy, and the signora said, what a coincidence, she was going back to Italy too, and she did hope an old friend like Miss Castlewell would visit her there. Judith said to me: “I felt lacking, when she used the word friend. Our relations have always been formal. Can you understand it?” she said to me. “For fifteen years,” I said to her. She said: “I think I must feel it’s a kind of imposition, don’t you know, expecting people to feel friendship for one.” Well. I said: “You ought to understand it, because you’re like that yourself.” “Am I?” she said. “Well, think about it,” I said. But I could see she didn’t want to think about it. Anyway, she’s here, and I’ve spent a week with her. The widow Maria Rineiri inherited her mother’s house, so she came home, from Soho. On the ground floor is a tatty little rosticceria patronized by the neighbours. They are all working people. This isn’t tourist country, up on the hill. The widow lives above the shop with her little boy, a nasty little brat of about ten. Say what you like, the English are the only people who know how to bring up children, I don’t care if that’s insular. Judith’s room is at the back, with a balcony. Underneath her room is the barber’s shop, and the barber is Luigi Rineiri, the widow’s younger brother. Yes, I was keeping him until the last. He is about forty, tall dark handsome, a great bull, but rather a sweet fatherly bull. He has cut Judith’s hair and made it lighter. Now it looks like a sort of gold helmet. Judith is all brown. The widow Rineiri has made her a white dress and a green dress. They fit, for a change. When Judith walks down the street to the lower town, all the Italian males take one look at the golden girl and melt in their own oil like ice cream. Judith takes all this in her stride. She sort of acknowledges the homage. Then she strolls into the sea and vanishes into the foam. She swims five miles every day. Naturally. I haven’t asked Judith whether she has collected herself, because you can see she hasn’t. The widow Rineiri is match-making. When I noticed this I wanted to laugh, but luckily I didn’t because Judith asked me, really wanting to know: “Can you see me married to an Italian barber?” (Not being snobbish, but stating the position, so to speak.) “Well, yes,” I said, “you’re the only woman I know who I can see married to an Italian barber. “Because it wouldn’t matter who she married, she’d always be her own person. “At any rate, for a time,” I said. At which she said, asperously: “You can use phrases like for a time in England but not in Italy.” Did you ever see England, at least London, as the home of licence, liberty and free love? No, neither did I, but of course she’s right. Married to Luigi it would be the family, the neighbours, the church and the bambini. All the same she’s thinking about it, believe it or not. Here she’s quite different, all relaxed and free. She’s melting in the attention she gets. The widow mothers her and makes her coffee all the time, and listens to a lot of good advice about how to bring up that nasty brat of hers. Unluckily she doesn’t take it. Luigi is crazy for her. At mealtimes she goes to the trattoria in the upper square and all the workmen treat her like a goddess. Well, a film star then. I said to her, you’re mad to come СКАЧАТЬ