The Four-Gated City. Doris Lessing

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СКАЧАТЬ here at this restaurant, they wouldn’t be admitted …’ He froze, attacked, undermined: here was precisely where he could not think or look, therefore it was in bad taste. ‘Not that they would turn up, of course, they know better. After all, I wouldn’t have been admitted, probably. They’d have said the place was full. It was only because I gave your name.’

      ‘If they did turn up, I for one’d be only too proud – the salt of the earth. We learned that in the war.’

      ‘Not to mention the other war.’

      There now was rolled towards them the sweets trolley. Henry chose for her and for him, a trifle, though it had another name. Throughout the restaurant, people were eating nursery puddings, under French names.

      ‘I really don’t know what it is you people want,’ he said pettishly.

      ‘To have things called by their proper names, that’s all. Did you ever actually meet your Uncle Maynard?’

      ‘No, well of course, he was rather the black sheep, so one gathers.’

      ‘Justice Maynard? Well, I’ve been remembering something he said to me. Ten years ago, more. He said that he couldn’t stick England because no one called a spade a spade. So now he administers law and order in the colonies, where one can. I’ve only just recently understood what he was talking about.’

      ‘Hypocrites,’ said Henry quickly. ‘Of course, they’ve always called us that.’

      ‘No, no, if you were hypocrites that would be something. A hypocrite is somebody who maintains a virtuous position knowing it to be false. You all seem to me to be – you’re drugged, you’re hypnotized, you don’t seem to be able to see facts when they’re in front of you – you’re the victim of a lot of slogans.’

      Here the wine waiter offered the lady a sweet liqueur and Henry brandy. The lady insisted on asking for brandy. The wine waiter offered Henry a look of commiseration, so far had complicity grown between them. But Henry frowned at him and told him to bring brandy. Martha and the brandy changed the note or current: Henry was able to let slide away any chance there was of their meeting on at least the possibility of there being something in what she said: Martha, gay buccaneer, adventuress, warmed by wine, enabled him to wave over his partner. There arrived at the table John Higham, as charming and as handsome as he, his face presented towards Martha in a look almost transparently eager to taste this phenomenon, who was outside the rules of ordinary politeness – for he examined her openly, boldly: exactly as the dockers, before being made to know by Stella that she was, temporarily, one of their women, were able to call across a street: Hello, darling. She had been outside their circle of humanity. Martha was outside John Higham’s. For a moment the two men sat, united, opposite Martha, eyeing her. It was ugly: behind them, the waiter, and behind him the headwaiter: very ugly. And again, she never would be able to explain why; they would not know what she meant. They were savages, masters and servants both.

      ‘Martha will have none of us, I’m afraid,’ said Henry, insolent, but smiling.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ said John Higham.

      ‘I simply cannot imagine, apart of course from the Maynards asking you to keep an eye on me, what you want me for?’

      They even exchanged glances here, as if she were not able to see that glances were being exchanged – as if they were invisible. Extraordinary, extraordinary people: Iris and Jimmy, Stella and her man, had more delicacy, more consciousness of themselves.

      ‘You underestimate yourself,’ said John Higham. ‘You’ve done legal work, haven’t you? You’ve got experience. And I don’t know why it is, but while there are hundreds of girls on the market, there aren’t very many … experienced ones.’

      ‘It isn’t that we mind our girls getting married – far from it. We welcome it, they tend to stay,’ said Henry.

      ‘And a large part of our practice is out of this country – we’ve been doing a lot of work with refugees for instance. Tidying up after the war – that sort of thing. And we really do need someone with – a wider experience than most English girls have.’

      Now Martha had to be silent. This last point reached her. And, besides, she was exactly in the same position here as she had been, still was, with Iris and Jimmy. She had promised, or had seemed to promise, without knowing she was doing it, more than she had ever meant. She had never, not for one moment, considered working for Henry, had said, in every way she knew: No, no, no. Yet both men now expected her to say yes: were in fact counting on her. A manner which was assumed as a mask, a defence, appearing to be a half-flirtatious consideration of possibilities, had been felt as so much more? Or was it that being in a situation at all, being involved with people, was a promise of more? That was more like it, that was the truth: oh yes, there was something intolerable, unforgivable, about the drifters, the testers, the samplers, she was only just beginning to see it. But it was unjust, unfair! She had been in this country for not much more than a quarter of a year, had seen it as time out of responsibility. She was not going to be allowed to taste and drift and knock about. The genuine feeling of betrayal shown by her friends of Joe’s café (though not by Stella of the docks – why not?), and the expectation shown by Henry and John, proved that she must have made promises implicitly; she, Martha, had something in her which forbade her to drift and visit and slide out. Other people might: she could not. Otherwise why, after such a very short time out of responsibility (what was four months after all?) were the nets closing in? Which was how she felt it. The net had been set from the moment she saw Henry’s politely charming face outside the Customs when she arrived. It was probably, though she did not want to recognize this, that her temperament shared more than she liked with Marjorie; and with Marjorie’s sister Phoebe, an earnestness, a readiness to be involved and implicated, and this temperament was in itself a promise, made promises and offered.

      She could be weak and say something like: I’ll think it over. But she must not. And she must not buy forgiveness with ‘Matty’. With a great effort, she said (abruptly, and without grace, but she said it straight). ‘Look. Please believe me. I’m not taking the job. Thank you very much – but I don’t want it.’

      ‘What have you got lined up instead?’ asked John Higham. He was annoyed.

      ‘She’s thinking of being a barmaid,’ said Henry with a laugh to indicate, not that she would not, but that she was only too capable of it.

      ‘Really, are you?’ said John Higham. ‘Of course, it is a way of – getting around?’ he inquired. ‘One does see that.’

      ‘The thing is,’ said Martha, again furious, trying not to be: ‘I wouldn’t see the job as you do – as something extraordinary. You simply don’t understand – all of you, you talk of the people you call “the working class” as if they were – people from the moon. Not that you use words like “the working class” of course – Oh, I don’t know,’ she concluded, in real despair, ‘one can’t even talk about it with you.’

      Glances were again exchanged between Henry and John, and again as if she were not present. ‘Well,’ said John, ‘that is precisely why we are so keen to have you – you see a great many of the people we deal with have had a rather rough time, and one does need someone to handle them who knows what they are talking about.’

      ‘Perhaps,’ said Martha, ‘having had a rough time as a refugee would include rather more than would be covered by having experience as a barmaid?’

      She was now really angry. Really discouraged. Even frightened. After all, such people ran this country, СКАЧАТЬ