The Four-Gated City. Doris Lessing

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СКАЧАТЬ be very good,’ said Phoebe, making it clear that in her eyes this was no reason to refuse any job. ‘But there would be compensations.’ She meant, the society of people like herself; the interest of the work; above all, knowing oneself to be of use – exactly as Martha would in her position.

      ‘The thing is, I don’t want to be in that atmosphere. When I came to England, it was to get out of it.’

      And now Phoebe was bound to be disappointed in Martha. For one thing – why had she wasted her, Phoebe’s time? What other kind of job did she expect?

      ‘I see,’ she said, tightening her lips, and looking for the waiter to take away her soup and bring the fish. She was busy, had no more time to waste.

      If Marjorie had sat there, she would have cried out, all emotion and affectionate indignation: Well, Matty, if you’re going to take that line! If you’re going to be like that! Well then!

      But Phoebe was not Marjorie. And Martha was not ‘Matty’, was refusing ‘Matty’ entrance. In order not to be ‘Matty’ she had to be cool, brisk – hard. As hard as Phoebe.

      Martha now ate gluey fish in silence, thinking of Phoebe, of Marjorie. For this was the real experience of the meal, what she would take away from it. Phoebe was physically like Marjorie. Coming on Phoebe suddenly, without warning, Martha would have embraced her, lovable and absurd Marjorie, the younger sister. She had known Marjorie for how long? Over ten years! They had seen each other nearly every day. Marjorie had appeared, before the war, in the colony, as ‘immigrant’ – a girl from England. The people who worked with her all had the same attitude to her – an affection, almost an amusement. ‘Marjorie’ they had said, meaning her quality of charm, desperate enthusiasm, earnestness. But what had they known? Only this: Marjorie the younger sister. And an arrangement of eyes, nose, hair, pretty English skin. Here they were in front of Martha now, as Phoebe.

      What had made Marjorie was this: a doctor in a country town in England with bookish tastes and an interest in politics, had brought up two daughters, his wife having died when they were children. They were very alike: pretty, fair, lively, English girls. Phoebe, the elder, was bossy and downright, with Marjorie, the girl five years her junior. Eventually Marjorie had escaped from Phoebe, had had to, to gain herself. But: sitting opposite Phoebe, who spoke in Marjorie’s voice, who was so like Marjorie, how could one not wonder: who was Marjorie? She was not her voice; not her face; not her body; not her eyes or her hair. Her manner then? But Marjorie’s breathless, defensive, agitated charm – that was all younger-sister. So had she won breathing space from Phoebe through their childhood. Marjorie was just – the younger sister? Of course not.

      But who, what? Martha had no idea.

      Martha sat opposite the brisk, pretty efficient Englishwoman, who was Phoebe, consciously preventing herself from talking to Marjorie. She was ashamed. She had never known Marjorie. As always, she had been lazy, unimaginative: she had never done more than talk to the younger sister. Well, if she wasn’t careful, she wouldn’t do more than talk to the older sister! For that manner was so strong in Phoebe, it was hard to imagine one could get past it.

      ‘Of course, I’d be prepared to advise,’ said Martha.

      ‘There are always plenty of people ready to do that,’ said Phoebe at once; then, seeing that she contradicted herself, looked irritated, and suddenly very tired. ‘We do need help,’ she said.

      ‘Phoebe, have you felt caged, shut inside an atmosphere?’

      ‘Well, frankly yes,’ said Phoebe, meaning the war again.

      ‘No I didn’t mean the war,’ said Martha, clumsily, for Phoebe’s reproach was so strong.

      ‘I can’t imagine myself not working for what I believe in – frankly, I can’t.’

      ‘Does one actually have to work in some organization! Well I can see why you are annoyed. You’re not an employment agency! I don’t know why I imagined.’

      Phoebe’s glance at the words ‘employment agency’ betrayed that that was exactly what she had been thinking.

      ‘Well, I do always seem to know of jobs that need filling … let me see then.’

      ‘I suppose what it comes to – I’ve had enough of organized politics for the time being.’

      Phoebe was silent for some time. Martha knew why. Without Mrs Van’s recommendations, Phoebe would have set her down as one of the people whose reforming energies had come out of passionate identification with Russia, the pure and the perfect: just another red with a broken heart, a weak reed, a neurotic, a washout. But Mrs Van had said differently. Therefore Phoebe sat, eating jammy sponge with a teaspoon, her eyebrows drawn together. She looked so like Marjorie that Martha experienced a variety of awe, or panic. It seemed inconceivable that she could not say: Marjorie! and that the person opposite would respond out of ten years of – friendship?

      ‘Mrs Van Bylt said you had done research – that kind of thing?’ ‘Yes. Tell me, Phoebe, do you and Marjorie ever write to each other?’

      ‘We are neither of us very good correspondents. How is she? She’s had another baby, she said. That’s four now?’

      In her voice the shadow of a pain, something personal, ‘And I’ve never met her husband of course.’

      ‘He’s a nice man. A quiet kind of man. He’s a civil servant.’

      ‘So she said,’ said Phoebe, making it clear what she thought of civil servants: reminding Martha that she herself had married a crusading firebrand from the left. She lifted her face and smiled at Martha: who felt as she had that morning with Iris and her Stanley: an area of family emotion had been highlit, touched on.

      Suppose I said to her: ‘Your sister’s a very unhappy woman. She’s bored with her nice reliable husband. She had children out of a compulsion. She’s living in a permanent nervous breakdown’ – no, of course she could not say this. This woman did not understand despair – or rather, the admission of it. And besides, such information, if it were not diagnosed – and it would be – as a symptom of Martha’s own identification with the neurotic weakness of this world, would be confirmation of the younger sister’s always expected failure.

      ‘Is it a success – that sort of thing?’

      ‘Well, yes; I think the four small children are a bit of a handful at the moment.’

      ‘I don’t see that. After all, you have plenty of servants out there, don’t you?’ She snapped this out, her face in high colour, and said everything about her own life, which was doing a hard poorly paid job, and being responsible, and bringing up two small girls without a father – without help, without servants.

      ‘I think I know something for you,’ said Phoebe, pushing aside the personal, while her face still flamed red, and her fingers clutched her purse. ‘There’s my brother-in-law. My ex-brother-in-law. He wants some help. He’s a writer. Of a kind, of course. It’s a hobby really. He’s got some sort of a business or other.’

      ‘What sort of a writer?’

      A silence. Phoebe took a mouthful of weak coffee while Martha registered an old atmosphere: oh yes, she had been here before, and very much so. ‘He did get a book published.’ Another sip. ‘It got quite good reviews.’ One could see that the good reviews were not only a surprise, but a disappointment. СКАЧАТЬ