The Four-Gated City

by Doris Lessing

  Oh, what’s the point!’ said Mark.

  ‘It’s not as if I haven’t tried to see your point of view!’

  ‘Why is it so very difficult? It’s simply a question of loyalty. We have different ideas about loyalty.’

  ‘Ohi she said, standing straight, ready for irony, for attack: but his fierceness outflanked her.

  ‘Personal loyalty, ’ said Mark.

  Oh well, I don’t …’ Unexpectedly, she laughed. Almost she went laughing out of the room, through the plant room, to her guests.

  But Mark’s face stopped her. ‘It’s no good, ’ she said. ‘It’s not that I haven’t thought about it. You say something like-my friend right or wrong, my brother right or wrong. Well, that’s all very well, isn’t it, except when something actually happens, and you are living with it-no, wait a minute, I want to have my say, I never have, have I? I’m simply a criminal, I’m in the wrong. But when Colin-did that, he wasn’t thinking about me, was he? About his family? Nor his wife-he never did think about Sally at all, nor about Paul. He simply went on on some moral high-horse or other, to hell with everyone else, to hell with me too-and you, Mark, what sticks in my gullet is, you are so damned moral about everything. You’re in the right. Well why are you? Perhaps you were right and perhaps you weren’t. But how do you know I wasn’t right? But now, when I come anywhere near you I feel

  She stood tall, laughing, bitter and reckless; opposite her was Mark, shrunken inside his old bitterness, his not-understanding- she was all colour and vivid emotion; he, cold and white. So he must have looked, in his hotel room in Moscow, waiting to see his brother, and after he had said good-bye to his brother. This, what they saw now, was the face of what he really felt, before transmuted into dryness, or irony, or patience.

  ‘Anyway, ’ said Margaret, ‘I was going to ask you to-oh but what’s the use! I’ll tread on your toes again I suppose, though I don’t know why…’ She nodded and smiled at Martha, gave a look at Mark as anguished as his at her, and went out over the grass to her guests.

  ‘Come on, ’ said Mark. ‘Unless you’d rather …’ He nodded at the group.

  ‘No, ’ she said.

  ‘You have a ridiculous life, ’ he said. ‘Why shouldn’t you … after all, it’s quite enjoyable this sort of thing, I suppose, people do enjoy it…’

  Anywhere near Margaret, Mark began to suffer about Martha: he remembered other people’s judgement and for a short time, a few moments, half a day, a week, would mutter and brood that he exploited Martha. For the most part, both got on quite comfortably with what both had to do. She hoped now that his misery over his mother was not going to switch into misery over Martha.

  ‘I don’t care one way or the other, ’ she said. ‘Anyway, Lynda’s doing dinner and if there are masses of children again

  Around the corner of the house, out of sight from the others, he kissed her. A kiss of old lovers, compounded like a liqueur of a hundred different flavours, the strongest of which today, was anger: he ended it exclaiming:’ Damn it, am I mad? Or is she?’

  From the house came Patty Samuels, smiling, a handsome Jewish girl: still girl, although fortyish, since she had all the open readiness of one. She wore a short, striped green and white dress, like a night-shirt, with frills at the bottom. Being large, she achieved a look of romping good health. Her smile was shrewd as she observed them both: became soft and confused as Mark kissed her too. The three of them stood close with far too much emotion loose and dangerous, while anger forked behind their smiling eyes.

  ‘Oh, Mark, ’ said Patty, ‘you are always so complicated! Why can’t you just play along? It would make her happy and it’s such an odd thing to have a principle about.’

  ‘What? What has she said? What is it now?’

  ‘Why did you say you wouldn’t?’

  ‘Wouldn’t what?’

  Graham Patten approached. He put his arm around Patty: one should always be seen to have one’s arm around someone. He looked put out.

  ‘Why did you change your mind. Mark?’ he inquired.

  ‘Look, I’m simply going home-I’ve absolutely no idea

  ‘You didn’t tell her you wouldn’t be on the committee?’

  ‘It wasn’t discussed at all.’

  Graham, who had been cuddling and snuggling Patty, while she smilingly submitted, now let his arm drop-he had forgotten her. She quietly shook and trimmed herself back into shape, like a bird after an immersion, while he leaned forward and exclaimed dramatically:

  ‘There does seem to be the most serious misunderstanding.’

  ‘There’s nothing serious about it. I told you I’d sign the appeal and I will-my mother doesn’t come into it.’

  The air became suspended on a moment of speculation. Patty and Graham exchanged the minutest of glances.

  ‘But what is it?’ said Mark wearily. ‘What? What can she possibly have got snarled up now?’

  ‘If you’re going back to London you can give me a lift, ’ said Graham.

  ‘No, we’re going to drop in to some friends in Bone Hill.’

  ‘If it’s the Mowbrays, do give them my love.’

  Mark went towards the car. Graham watched him, Patty not being near enough, he put his arm around Martha.

  ‘I wonder if the Mowbrays would mind if I came too-I knew her well, a lovely person.’

  Martha remained silent, so that he would understand Mark had been lying, and that he did not want Graham.

  But at this stage in his life, Graham could not imagine being unwanted by anyone.

  Another evening with him, possibly some of his friends, was imminent. Patty now tactfully went forward to Mark, who was already in the car, remarking:’ I’ll just get things cleared up with Mark, darling, and then …’

  Tact was now all Patty’s business. Officially she was the stage manager at The Royal Shilling. She spent all day and half the night smoothing the jostling orbits of a dozen budding stars, dealing with newspapers, dealing with Graham, the benevolent sun around whom people swung. The patience, the shrewdness she had learned during her long bad time now stood her in good stead. Success and appreciation had warmed her, prettied her, but underneath she was all competence. Graham had briefly had an affair with her, and now, watching her lean in at the car to talk to Mark, remembered he had heard she once had an affair with Mark. Beside him was Martha, about whose relations with Mark people speculated.

  Graham now amorously grazed about Martha’s neck and ear, bending down to do it, for he was rather tall, while he put on the look of a young man envying an older man’s success.

  ‘Darling, ’ he murmured, watching the car past Martha’s forehead, ‘why do I never see you?’

  This question had the stamp of the new style which was not yet christened camp: it had not become self-conscious. Nor could it have, since the prevailing wind was all warmheartedness and a tender concern for others. When someone murmured. Oh, you’re so camp, it was not to pay homage to wit, or to outrageousness, a getting-away-with (as if, of the four aces with which one has just won the game the last has been slipped in from one’s sleeve and everyone knows it but is too dazzled by dexterity to protest), but to a deliberate exposure of homosexuality in dress or voice which, with the political atmosphere as it was, could only be a variety of courageous protest.

  Martha had to laugh; thus releasing them both from the embrace. For one thing, he had not left last night till after three. Rather, he had been thrown out crying:’ But I hate going to bed early, I never do!’ He had stayed, so he said, because of Phoebe’s little girls: everyone was reading Lolita and he like everyone, had been informed of a tendency which he claimed was his second most serious vice. Phoebe’s little girls had read Lolita and were flattered. They had, however, gone off to bed at ten. He had rung early today to apologize for being rude: he said he had imagined he was being witty. The trouble was, the tone of this particular time was wrong for Graham, supposed to be one of its exemplars.

  He would be altogether mo
re at home five, six years on; meanwhile, he was forced to see wit as the enemy of the heart - ‘an organ which has never been, alas, my strong point’.

  Over at the car, Mark was relaxed, smiling.

  She is marvellous, ’ said Graham. ‘How does Patty do it? Everywhere she is, happy smiling faces …’

  She came over. ‘It’s all right. Mark hadn’t changed his mind at all. Margaret misunderstood.’

  ‘Oh good-in that case we can discuss it in the car.’ He hastened across to the car, while Patty and Martha, used to it. shrugged and submitted.

  ‘I think Margaret is afraid John will have to go to prison, ’ murmured Patty, in a warning. She meant: Calm Mark down, because Margaret is unreasonable.

  ‘Is there a danger of it?’

  ‘Yes. Kenny got six months last week.’

  They watched Graham get into the back seat. Mark, already scowling again, nodded at Martha to come.

  She went in one direction, and Patty returned to the sunny lawn.

  They drove back to London, nothing being said about the visit to the friends, Mowbrays or not, at Bone Hill.

  Young Graham was being very active about the recent public drive against homosexuals. For, this year it was not communism, but homosexuality which was rotting the nation. The editors and the columnists reared and muttered and threatened and warned, week after week, and in this net, poor John Patten had been caught. He had been charged with soliciting in Green Park. A large committee was in existence, mostly as a result of Graham’s efforts, and an appeal was in motion, and all kinds of public people involved. Mark had agreed last week to sign any appeal, but not to go on a committee, not his forte, he thought: it had not therefore crossed his mind that this could be what Margaret wanted him for today.

  It now became apparent that Margaret felt that Mark must feel that there was no obligation for him to support her causes, when she had not supported his.

  She had returned to her guests with a murmur that Mark was always so difficult. They had understood this to mean he would not support the current ‘cause’. This surprised no one. He was, they knew, reactionary.

  For instance, when he was asked why he was not writing another play, after the success of Rachel and Aaron, he replied that he didn’t have to, he had a private income. This was so much not the right note, that they were uncomfortable and had to cover up for him. Such a man might very well refuse to sign a petition on behalf of his stepfather.

  Graham was not aware of Mark’s mood. He was talking about poor Margaret, how upset she was: for one thing, she felt it was likely they would be asked (tactfully of course) not to act as hosts to the expected Russians, even if John were not actually sent to prison. And she was expecting a houseful of Americans in a month’s time, writers and poets.

  He talked on, while Mark was silent, wondering if this was a retrospective reproach for previous curtailments of Margaret’s social life. But on the whole it seemed not: Graham had forgotten, like everyone else.

  And the ‘cause’ was not at all why Graham was here, in the car: his life being once again at a turning point, he was coming to his uncle for advice.

  His career in the film industry had not prospered long, but he felt his time had been well spent. A very great deal of good advice had been given by him to various rich but well-meaning men. If the fresh air now circulating through the other arts had not yet permeated British films, doubtless it soon would, and Graham Patten would deserve credit for it.

  For a few months he had been at a loose end. Reviving, or making use of, his Oxford persona, he wrote a volume of essays called Grey Nights which were witty, urbane and erudite, but whose success made him uneasy; and meanwhile he employed his heart on the Jazz scene, where he introduced a couple of American musicians and had an affair with an indigenous blues singer from Brixton.

  Suddenly then, Hungary and Suez, in the five-starred year; though Suez had to claim him retrospectively, for he was in Budapest for the revolution. He had gone, as he later confessed, ‘on an impulse to experience the real thing’. There he made some speeches ‘on behalf of the British Wellwisher’, saw some people killed, and others let out of prison, and encountered other Englishmen, all from the universities, as romantic as he. These he found a distasteful mirror. Having watched one, very drunk, declaiming about world revolution from a barricade, while afterwards claiming that he had been’doing his bit for Balliol’, he suffered a revulsion against amateurs. For some months he had travelled in East European countries and in Russia, mostly examining the theatre; and returned to London prepared to be a prophet of socialist realism, Brecht, contemporary humanism, and revisionism-the latter muted to the British scene. The thing was, others had done, were doing, the same thing, each believing himself to be a lone precursor. Half a dozen highly educated and influential young men with the tide behind them can do a great deal: he was one of the forces which had changed the stagnant, landlocked theatre of the early ‘fifties. But here was the point of his recurrent dilemma. What now? As he had said, was saying again: ‘I am not yet thirty, and I’ve already reached the top?’

  It was no joke, for having compared himself to Max Beerbohm, and got every other conceivable side-benefit from his situation, the fact remained, he had conquered London-what other peaks could there be? After that, it could only be all downhill.

  Mark had suggested America: after all, it was at least three years since Graham had been there. Graham had returned to New York and was a great success. He had taken away jazz; he went back with Marxism, which had all the charm of novelty, for no one could remember hearing anything like it, their own communists all having been silenced for years, either being in prison, or departed to take refuge in London, or dead from suicide, or in mental hospitals. In fact so far behind them was the age of Joe McArthy, enormous numbers of people could not remember it, and were saying it never had happened. One thing was certain, no one would believe that it might happen again. As Graham said, bringing back the news of America’s liberalism and love of freedom:’ They are all such darling, kind, marvellous people-I tell you, Mark, I felt as safe there as I did when I went to Moscow.’

  But, having come back, what now? Keeping his hand in, he arranged for a production of The Tempest which was, quite clearly, Shakespeare’s message about the under-privileged: Caliban was an African, and the programme notes drew comparisons with South Africa. He did Toad of Toad Hall (a parable about the class society) for a theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. Then-what? He needed a new field to conquer. Should it be television?

  The problem was still unsolved when they reached Hammersmith Bridge, where a friend of Graham’s lived who had promised to go on the committee. The ease with which this person had agreed reminded Graham of Mark’s intransigence and he began pressuring Mark to join the committee. Mark said yes, provided he didn’t have to go to committee meetings. Graham, new to politics, thought this was not workable.

  Mark then developed his view, which was that on these occasions, when Britannia our Mother is in a state of moral indignation, the less said the better.

  ‘Well, really, you’re not suggesting we should simply not do anything? ’

  ‘Not at all, you should do as much as possible, as quietly as possible. Because then it will all blow over-otherwise heads will roll, and scapegoats will have to be found.’

  ‘Blow over! The whole situation is disgraceful!’

  ‘I dare say. But when they’re tired of homosexuality they’ll start on something else, there’s always got to be something.’

  Graham could not see this: there being no substitute for experience. He believed that if he argued long enough with Mark, Mark would be bound to change his mind, since he, Graham was obviously in the right, and Mark both pusillanimous and ill-informed.

  Still arguing, they arrived home to find Patty there: she had got a lift, and was waiting to see Mark and Graham.

  The house seemed full of people of all ages; and music came from several sources. The kitchen and the drawing-ro
om being occupied, the four went into the empty dining-room.

  Patty was embarrassed: also, agitated.

  These were public, or professional attributes: underneath she was angry, something quite different, because she had hoped to spend a pleasant evening at Margaret’s, but had to come chasing into London to calm people down-as usual.

  When she had arrived back among the guests with the news that Mark would sign the petition, and that Graham was to go into London with him, Margaret murmured well, that’s all right.

  She would have been happy to let it go, let things slide: but letting things slide was both her talent and her downfall: through not saying anything, allowing people to gather what they might, Mark was in a false position. She knew that, but could not quite see where it was her fault. She was in a false position too, most profoundly so, and any embarrassment Mark might be feeling was nothing to hers.

  Discovering that her third, and she had hoped, last husband, was, at least partially, homosexual, had caused her anguish-but apart from a dry word or two dropped to Patty, a great chum, she had not said much, save that ‘at my age, companionship is what counts’. This was felt as a valuable lead by a great many women in need of one. But taking this stand, was quite different from finding herself at the heart of a public battle on principle. She was annoyed with her stepson, but could not say so. Why did people always have to be on platforms, and making statements, and creating fusses? (Her attitude, in short, was rather like Mark’s, only neither could see it.) She was desperately sorry for her poor John who had been away, staying with his aged mother, well out of the fuss and limelight and the people who eddied around her, Margaret, so conscientiously on his side; but she did so wish everyone would find some other house to make a centre, or one of the centres, of protest. But she could not say so.

  Now, she kept quiet while someone who had not realized that Mark Coldridge was Margaret Patten’s son, made some remarks about his living with two women, about heterosexuals being so much more immoral than homosexuals, etc. etc. This made her angry, and her head ached. For like many other people, while she was prepared to wish homosexuals every kind of happiness and success in their private pursuits, she would rather this did not mean her supporting their claims to moral superiority. The same person went on to say that he was not surprised Mark Coldridge took this attitude; his novels showed him to be a natural reactionary; conservative, and indeed, authoritarian.