The Four-Gated City

by Doris Lessing

  But he agreed, not so much impatiently, as with tolerance, not to give the telephone number to anyone at all.

  For a while, then, it was quiet. But Margaret telephoned from her country home. She had not been near them since the election party. She was concerned about Francis. ‘You ought to get him back home, ’ she said. ‘He must be having a dreadful time at that beastly school.’

  ‘But it would be worse here with the journalists.’

  ‘You think so? I don’t know. Mark could get rid of them, easily, if he wanted to.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t think he’d want to do that.’

  ‘You ought to make him.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to talk to him? ’

  ‘No. No. I really haven’t got any more patience with … have you let the basement? ’

  ‘The basement!’

  ‘Mrs. Ashe still wants it.’

  ‘But, Margaret, for God’s sake …’

  Margaret had sounded embarrassed, about the basement. Now she hurried on: ‘But he always was so wrong-headed. Always.’

  ‘I think you ought to be discussing that with him.’

  ‘Well, yes, but-and don’t forget about Mrs. Ashe, I must really ring off, I’m really very …’ She rang off.

  This was so odd, struck such a discordant note, that Martha was unable to think about it, forgot to tell Mark.

  It was Mark who took the next call from his mother.

  Margaret had telephoned Francis’s school, and the headmaster said Francis was all right. As far as he knew the news had not reached the school. ‘But he’s such a fool, ’ Margaret said. ‘I asked him if he banned the newspapers there, and he said, he was sure his boys understood the meaning of esprit de corps.’

  ‘Perhaps you could take Francis for a week or two? ’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know-anyway, I’m off to America next week.’

  ‘You could take him until then, couldn’t you? ’

  ‘I don’t really think …’

  She then went on to talk about Mrs. Ashe.

  Mark said he really hadn’t time to worry about being a landlord, and rang off. It was so extraordinary of Margaret that Mark, like Martha, let it slide.

  Paul had listened to this from outside the study door.

  ‘Why should Francis go and live with his granny? ’ he asked.

  ‘She’s your granny too.’

  ‘No. She isn’t. She doesn’t like my mummy.’

  ‘Well, it would only be for a little time.’

  She tried to pick him up. He was a heap of heavy limbs. The black frightened eyes, already lit by cunning, held Martha’s face, while he held himself rigid in her arms. She put him down.

  ‘I don’t want Francis’s granny to come to my party.’

  ‘She’s not coming.’

  His birthday was the day after the next.

  ‘I want my party. I want my party, ’ he sobbed, from the floor. He was saying, I want my mother.

  Next morning, Martha put on a headscarf, and Mrs. Van’s old coat, and got out of the house by eight in the morning, by the back door. Only two journalists had arrived, and they were at the front of the house. She went across London to Harrods, and bought a cake and presents for the party. When she arrived at the back door, it looked unoccupied. But before she could get in, a man ran up.

  ‘Who are you? ’ he demanded.

  ‘I work for Mr. Coldridge. I do the cleaning.’

  She had the key in the door, but she was gripped by her other arm which clutched parcels.

  His face was alive with suspicion, but also with the delights of the chase.

  ‘What’s going on in there? ’

  ‘I work for Mr. Coldridge. I do the cleaning.’

  The clothes were right, but her voice was not. His face was hard, self-righteous. He was a man seeking to unmask evil. He took five pounds from his pocket. He hesitated. Five pounds was more than enough for a charwoman, but not for a friend or mistress or fellow-conspirator of Mark Coldridge. Hesitating, he lost his force of purpose; Martha slipped her arm away, and shot indoors, scattering parcels on to the floor of the kitchen. Through the back window his face appeared, in an angry teeth-bared scowl. Framed thus, emphasized, it was almost yes, funny. He looked like a bad actor in a melodrama: my prey has escaped.

  One of the aspects of a bad time, before one has entered into its spirit, is that everything has a feel of parody, or burlesque. Martha stood in the kitchen, looking at the ugly, threatening face, and had to suppress laughter. Nervous laughter, certainly, and when he shook his first at her, it was ugly and she was afraid. That evening, among the pile of newspapers that came from the newsagent, brought past the reporters by the newsagent’s boy, was one which carried a story about a mysterious woman, who had entry to Mr. Coldridge’s house, and who would not give her name.

  Next day was the birthday. In the morning Paul was given presents which he opened. Mark and Martha watching. He tore through them, throwing them aside, one after another: he was looking for evidences of his mother. He had not mentioned his mother for some days. Clearly the birthday had become for him the talisman which could produce his mother. The presents had not, but there was still the party.

  After breakfast he went to Mark’s study and stood by the desk watching Mark pretending to work. By now they were waiting for him to ask: Where is my mother, so that they could tell him the truth. Which they should have done before. But the right time had gone past, and they did not know what to do. Everything was wrong, the ‘party’ absurd, the presents a mistake.

  But now they did not know how not to have the party.

  Martha laid a party-spread on the table in the dining-room. But Paul demanded that it should be in the kitchen. Nothing came in the front door, only sheaves of newspapers, falling through the letter-slot. But the back door could admit. It was through the back door that he expected his mother.

  Martha spread out the cake, with its six candles on the kitchen table, and some biscuits and little cakes. While Martha moved about in these pathetic preparations, Paul stood just inside the kitchen door, watching them: Mark, trying to engage Paul’s attention, played with a wooden train on the floor. From time to time the two grown-up people exchanged glances of helplessness, and of shame, because things could have been allowed to reach this point.

  There was a heavy knock on the back door; and the little boy, crying ‘There she is! There’s my mummy!’ rushed to open it. Two men stood there. One was the journalist of yesterday, looking angrily sullen. The other was a large smiling man.

  ‘Where’s my mummy? ’ shouted Paul.

  The two looked at each other, then studied Martha, arranging cakes, and Mark, playing trains.

  The large man said: ‘Take it easy, son, take it easy. Your mummy’s not coming, you know.’

  ‘Why not, why not? ’ screamed Paul, and flung himself down. Lying face down, he banged his head hard on the floor while his face exploded tears.

  ‘Is this Colin Coldridge’s boy? ’ asked the sullen man, bending to examine him for describable details.

  Mark now scrambled up off his knees, and advanced on the journalists. Yesterday’s man was suspiciously angry. The large man was smiling, ingratiating. The child continued to bang his head, crying noisily. Mark, with his eyes wide, his mouth open, his face white, appeared comic.

  ‘Take it easy, ’ said the large man again, and backed away, in a parody of fear: he was making fun of Mark.

  The self-righteous man was now making mental notes about the kitchen. Having done this, he returned his attention to Paul, who was writhing at his feet, and said accusingly: ‘Why didn’t you tell the boy about his mother? ’

  At which Paul shot off the floor and grasped his uncle around the knees, so violently that Mark staggered and leaned sideways to catch hold of a chair-back. ‘Tell me what? ’ screamed Paul. ‘Where’s my mummy? ’

  ‘Your mummy’s …’ The journalist stopped; unable to say ‘dead’ to the child’s face.

&nb
sp; With a mutter of inarticulate disgust, he backed out of the door. The goodfellow, smiling deprecatingly, said: ‘Here’s my card.’ He laid a piece of card on the table by the cake. Miles Tangin. The Daily-‘If you’d co-operate, Mr. Coldridge, ’ he suggested, ‘then it would be better.’

  ‘I’ll complain to your editor, ’ said Mark over Paul’s head. The child was sobbing noisily, and gripping Mark’s knees, so that Mark had to hold himself upright with one hand on the chair-back while with the other he tried to soothe Paul.

  ‘You do that, ’ said the ñrst man, all contemptuous bitterness.

  The two went out together.

  Mark carried the sobbing child up to bed.

  In bed he was quieter, whimpering a little, while he watched them both. He was waiting.

  ‘Where’s my mummy? ’ he asked at last.

  Martha said: ‘She’s dead, Paul.’

  Paul took it. It was a fact which marched with the events of the last week.

  ‘And is my daddy dead too? ’

  ‘No.’ said Mark, with emphasis. But both he and Martha knew that of course he would not believe them. They had been lying to him: they were probably lying again.

  ‘He’s away, ’ said Martha. ‘He’ll come back.’

  Paul said nothing. He lay staring at them, with his black, untrusting eyes. Then he turned his face to the wall, and shut them out. They stayed with him. Hour after hour passed. He was not asleep. He kept dropping off, but he whimpered in his sleep, and this woke him. It was nearly morning when at last he fell into a deep sleep.

  Their days were now spent with Paul, the child who could not trust them. He had gone silent, evasive, listless. He spent hours curled in a chair in the kitchen, sucking his thumb-He usually did not answer when Martha or Mark spoke to him. This did not look as if he were trying to be a baby again, wanting to be fed; but as if he really could not take in the existence of food, of mealtimes. He would sit listening, or apparently listening, if they read to him or told him stories. He sat quietly for the children’s programmes on the radio. Put to bed, he slept. When he looked out of the back windows, the front windows, and saw the groups of reporters waiting there, he examined them, then looked at Mark and Martha for explanations. It seemed he was afraid to ask questions. But they wouldn’t have known how to answer.

  In the evenings, the two sat in Mark’s study. Mark’s white face had acquired a staring mask-like look; as if wide-eyed at the incredible, the impossible. He did not believe what was happening. This was because he was Mark Coldridge, to whom such things could not happen.

  Yet he was also Mark Coldridge who had written that book about war which came from the heart of an understanding of how such things happened-must happen. Martha was waiting to talk to the man who had written that book: but he was not there.

  Mark was saying things like: ‘We must get Paul to school so that he can get over it.’ Or: ‘When it’s blown over, I’ll take Francis and Paul for a holiday somewhere.’

  He was still talking in terms of a situation normal enough to blow over. He could not bear to see that a deep harm had been done; and that they, or at least, he, must expect the results of it, and that the results were for life.

  But how could Martha blame Mark when she caught herself thinking several times a day: Before Sally killed herself, before Colin went away-the double event which her nerves, geared to laziness, still felt as a water-shed. And it was as much her fault as Mark’s that Paul had not been told the truth (as much truth as could be told to a child of six) so that now he trusted no one; it was as much her fault that the affair had been handled so that the truth had come through journalists scavenging for news.

  And what was the use of feeling guilt, blaming herselfand Mark, when they still did not know how to act, still sat night after night in the quiet book-lined study, with a decanter of old brandy on the desk, and when they did act, absurdity or worse came of it. For they had lost a sense of the ordinary machinery of life.

  One afternoon they had watched through the windows a couple of Press men rummaging through their dustbins in search of incriminating documents.

  One of them was Miles Tangin. Mark telephoned the editor to protest, could not get through, left a message that he would like to be rung back, was rung back by-Miles Tangin. The telephone number then had to be changed again.

  Martha suggested that he should ask the police to guard front and back entrance, to keep the journalists off.

  Mark was furious. ‘I’m not being guarded by police in my own house in my own country because of a lot of… I’ll get Margaret to tell the editor what’s going on. She must know him.’

  He rang his mother’s home in the country. It was only when it had been ringing for some minutes that they realized it was after two in the morning. After a long wait, John came to the telephone. He was polite of course. Mark spoke to the colourless husband of his mother, a man whom he despised, though of course, he had never been anything less than polite to him. Martha sat on an old brown sofa, feeling velvet rub soft under her fingers. She was watching Mark clutch the telephone as if the machine itself could come up with sense, or protection. In the last couple of weeks he had lost over a stone. His clothes were hanging on him. His fingers were stained with nicotine to the knuckles. He looked half crazy.

  John said that Margaret was asleep after a hard day. The Press had been out to the house, and the telephone was never silent.

  ‘I want to speak to her, ’ said Mark.

  ‘I’ll tell her in the morning that you rang.’

  ‘Then tell her to get hold of those editors and call oft their dogs, ’ said Mark.

  A short affronted laugh.

  ‘Perhaps if you were prepared to make some sort of announcement to the Press? suggested Margaret’s husband.

  ‘What announcement would you suggest? ’

  Another short laugh. ‘As things stand, your mother, my wife, is the mother of a man who has escaped behind the Iron Curtain, suspected of being a spy, and of another who refuses to dissociate himself from him.’

  ‘But he happens to be my brother, ’ said Mark. Again, he sounded incredulous. It was precisely here: what he could not believe was happening, or could happen-to him.

  ‘But what can they expect me to do? ’ he asked Martha again. And he listened with his wide fascinated look as if this time he might understand what previously he had failed to understand.

  She said, again: ‘They expect you to make a public announcement that you repudiate your brother and all his works. And to make a public affirmation of loyalty to this country.’

  ‘But good God, ’ he said softly, ‘I mean-but they can’t-but this is this country, it’s not … I mean, the Americans or the Russians or people like that, but not.

  He was looking at her with dislike.

  ‘Don’t tell me that’s what you think I should do! He’s my brother, ’ he insisted. As if it were she who was his enemy.

  ‘You keep asking me what they want.’

  His eyes were hot and dark with refusal. He sat locked in himself. Then he understood he was making an enemy of an ally, smiled, though stiffly, and poured her a brandy.

  ‘I’m sorry, ’ he said.

  Next morning Margaret rang. It was very early. Mark was half-asleep. He came up to Martha’s room to say that he thought his mother had gone mad. She had telephoned about the basement and about Mrs. Ashe.

  They could not understand it. Martha said that this was perhaps Margaret’s way of preserving normality. She was probably right: to worry about letting basements was better than what they were all doing. It was even reassuring of her.

  As they spoke, the telephone rang again. Mark went to it. Mark did not come back, so Martha went down to him. He was sitting, looking very white, by the telephone.

  Margaret’s second call was hysterical. She had shouted that Mark was ruining her life. The very least he could do was to have Mrs. Ashe. On being asked please, to explain Mrs. Ashe, Margaret had muttered, after a silence,
something about Hilary Marsh-restoring confidence in that quarter. And at last it had all become clear to Mark, but so suddenly that he had simply put down the receiver.

  Hilary Marsh, the correct unnoticed gentleman from the election party, had been Margaret’s friend for many years. He was in the Foreign Office. Weeks ago he had been to Margaret, to ask what she knew about her son Colin’s connections. Margaret knew nothing. She had said that Mark did, but Mark would never talk to her, he was always so wrong-headed, always had been. Hilary Marsh had suggested that it might be a good idea if a very old friend of his, Mrs. Ashe, lived in the basement. She was a sensible sort of woman, and could keep an eye on Mark for both of them.

  Mark having digested this, he rang back his mother to ask how she proposed to explain this attempt to spy on him. She said, cold: ‘You have no right to talk to me about spying!’ Then, as he remained silent, she had screamed: ‘You’ve ruined my life. You’ve ruined John’s career!’ And had rung off.

  It turned out that John Patten, in his capacity as representative of British Culture, had been going on a lecture tour to America. But the Americans had not been happy about this, since he was the husband of the woman who had given birth to Colin Coldridge. They had made unofficial and tactful representations to the body who employed John Patten. This body had been excessively apologetic and had quite understood America’s feelings in the matter. After a long committee meeting, someone had suggested that it would be better if nothing were made public, but that the lecture tour on Contemporary British Literature might be postponed. Everyone agreed. The chairman telephoned John Patten while the meeting was still in progress. He asked them to wait while he thought it over-which would only take a few minutes. He asked Margaret what she thought. Margaret rang her old friend Hilary Marsh, who thought this procedure would be best for everyone concerned.

  Mark offered these facts to Martha; sat waiting for her to explain them. He looked extremely ill. He was trembling. He kept dropping his cigarettes. The gap between what a Coldridge believed was possible, and what was happening, had widened to the point that he was in a kind of collapse. Martha suggested he should go back to bed and stay there that day. He went.