The Four-Gated City

by Doris Lessing

  The fact was that Lynda ‘totally incapable of ordinary life’ was judged by her guests who were by definition the most sensitive and talented available, as like everyone else.

  And mad? but certainly not!

  ‘You say that Lynda sometimes has breakdowns? ’

  Extraordinary. But this thought does lead one on to the next … who, then, is mad? (Banal, of course, but all the same, not without its uses as well as its hazards.) Lynda, for a start and for a certainty. Martha? Well, there is evidence for supposing … Mark? Certainly not, he was an artist. Graham Patten? Good God no, or at least if he is, who isn’t? Francis, Paul? It was too early to say. Jill? But having illegitimate children, and practically on principle, is not certifiable. Margaret? Her husband John? No, no, this train of thought won’t do. Much better use the humility of the psychiatrists (which they display here and nowhere else) when they say that someone who can’t cope with ordinary life can be considered, as, perhaps, not as balanced as one might wish. Back we come to Lynda. Lynda, certainly, comes under this head. Martha? Jill…

  How about Dr Lamb or Mrs. Johns?

  No, it will be seen that this particular quest for definition doesn’t get one far. Particularly as … the fact is, for the six months when Lynda was a hostess, and a real one, with no more than reasonable help from Martha and her husband, with guests around her day and night, and putting all the energy one has to, into having one’s hair done, her shoes fitted, her stockings matched and her menus just perfect, Lynda, who was as mad as they come, and showing more strain with every day that passed, did not strike anyone as more than engagingly ‘different’.

  Her gloves for instance: they charmed everyone. When asked why she wore them, she said it was because she bit her nails until they bled. ‘Lynda’s gloves’ became a kind of family joke-among dozens of people.

  Lynda, asked why she didn’t have any affairs, replied that she couldn’t have an affair because she never took her gloves off: the remark was found the very essence of camp.

  Meanwhile, her two comrades, her husband and Martha, were sitting it out. Martha enjoyed it all-more or less. But it was destructive of that part of herself she cared most about. To eat and drink half the night, getting to bed at three or four: then, to get up late so as to attend to one’s clothes and help Lynda about food and charwomen; to talk and talk and talk; to meet a dozen new people every day, each one more delightful and intelligent than the next-it was utterly exhausting. Martha could not understand how it was anybody could live like this for long; but after all, many people did. She was more exhausted than Lynda, who seemed to be running on a battery of fine nervous energy unknown to Martha. She was more exhausted than Mark, who was simmering quickly but steadily on a low fuel of patience.

  Sign of the time: A London dealer, who bought on behalf of American universities, wrote to Mark among many others to ask if he had manuscripts of any of his books. Mark replied that he destroyed first or second drafts, and that in any case he typed. The dealer, having begged for an interview, came to say that ‘in the interests of literature’ Mark should not destroy early drafts, because ‘when students came to write theses about Mark, how would they know what to think about his work? ’ Further, Mark should not use a typewriter ‘if he could help it’, because good prices were only paid for handwritten work. Author X, having earned £341 for a highly praised novel, which he had written straight on to the typewriter, and, needing money badly to write another, took three months off to write out the novel again in long-hand, with all kinds of erasures, additions, notes, etc.-this work of art he sold for £900 to an American university. Paul was very angry with Mark for not allowing Paul to do the same with all Mark’s early books. ‘Everyone did it, ’ as he said. No, of course Paul did not want to get the benefit; he knew of a young painter who desperately needed the money: if Mark would let this young man make a fancy-free version of, let’s say. The City, then Mark could feel he was doing some good: after all, they never even checked about handwriting. Or how about an imaginary diary? It would be worth a fortune; he, Paul, would guarantee at least ten thousand for it. Well, if Mark was so rich he didn’t care about throwing away £10, 000, just like that, what about all the poor starving people in wherever you cared to name. Paul knew just the man to write an imaginary diary-he had already done one for the novelist so-and-so.

  Sign of the time: The young man who was the narrator of Mark’s book, The Way of a Tory Hostess, had gone off to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Now, no matter what Mark could say, he was taken to be a veteran of the Spanish Civil War. He was in America at that time, he said; he was not interested in politics then, he protested-but it was no use. His disclaimers were put down to modesty, and then (after all, he was such an old Tory!) to the fact that he had fought on the wrong side and was trying to cover it up. The ending of his book then, was hypocrisy.

  Then he got a letter from the Daily Y begging for his reminiscences about Franco’s armies. A publisher offered him several thousand. At the same time, spies being so well fancied, he was offered large sums for his personal memories of those spies which got away ten years before, all of whom he had obviously known, since he had known his brother.

  This was the year when he worked out that if he had written his memoirs of his service for Franco, his reminiscences of Burgess, Maclean and the rest, and allowed Paul to organize the fair copies of his books, he might have made something like thirty thousand pounds for that six months, which was all due of course, to his engaging in that occupation essential for authors, of being currency in the literary world.

  But, being so occupied, he was not able to do anything else; any future work, any present work, all past works but one, had become absorbed, not into the book, The Way of a Tory Hostess, but into the personality of a romantic revolutionary (left or right wing, it didn’t matter) of the Spanish barricades.

  There is probably nothing one can do about this except, as some writers seem to have discovered, to write novels and call them autobiography.

  It has literally become impossible for anyone to read a work of fiction except in terms of the author’s life. Since they have learned to read at all, the ‘lives’ of artists, the experiences of artists, the opinion of artists, have been offered side by side with the work of artists, which has become infinitely less important. Plays, novels, stories, poems, are ‘taught’ in schools, in terms of the authors’ lives. So-and-so was gregarious; such-and-such was mad; X was deaf; Y was a lady; X was a man; Shakespeare was a homosexual- (Suns of the world can stain if heaven’s sun staineth-what else could that mean?) and modern writer XYZ has been married and divorced four times.

  Faced with a highly educated young woman who leans forward to ask: ‘Mr. Coldridge when you were in Spain did you …? ’ it is a waste of time to reply: ‘I was never in Spain.’ because a slight shade of annoyance will cross her face with the thought: I wonder why he feels he has to say that; what a prima donna! and she will continue: ‘But when you were in Spain did you …’

  ‘It is not the slightest use Mr. Coldridge saying this is not autobiographical; everybody knows that Margaret Coldridge was hostess to everyone who

  ‘The autobiographical element here has been well-absorbed into…’

  ‘Of course most novels are a mixture of autobiography and imagination

  So far has the process gone that one may be quite sure that if a group of friends wrote a book, or put some related pieces together, and published a work anonymously, in the hope that perhaps there might be someone left who could be persuaded to consider whether there are other ways of looking at a book (or even at a life), then the reviews would say something like: ‘It is impossible to see why the authors, whose identities are transparently obvious from the context, should resort to such a …’ And would continue to discuss the book in terms of parallels between the material and facts known or imagined about the authors’ lives.

  This habit of dealing with books, however, operates only with serious writers, never, for
instance, with a Jimmy Wood. He had just published a story called, The Force Dealers, whose ‘storyline’ was that a certain type of human being had learned to ‘plug in’ to the energies of other beings, and live off them like a species of vampire. Some of the people who were thus being bled of energy knew about it, but others did not. Those who knew tried to warn those who didn’t. The vampires did all they could to keep their victims passively in their power. A war developed between the vampire people and the warners. As more and more of humanity became involved in mutual destruction, it was as if the war was a sort of psychological Trojan Horse, whose function was to channel off energy to feed another planet since planets were beings, rather than swirls of fire or lumps of earth and stone. This flight of fancy sold thirty thousand copies in the first month, and was bought for a film for twenty thousand pounds. But when Jimmy attended dinners in Radlett Street, no one had heard of him.

  ‘You are a writer, Mark says? ’

  ‘Oh, just space fiction.’

  Lynda cracked up again. This time it wasn’t fast and obviously: she fought all the way. It was defeat for them all. For Mark had not, this time, allowed himself to suggest holidays together, or that his wife might come upstairs to him. And Martha had been there, in the background, never offering help unless Lynda wanted it, never imposing herself. For Mark and Martha, it had been an exercise in watchful self-effacement. The personal had not been imposed on Lynda. Rather, they had not imposed the personal on her.

  But it was this that in fact had reached her, was ‘upsetting’ her-through Jill and the children.

  It was obvious to Lynda that Jill needed Phoebe; and that Phoebe suffered over Jill. Saying this to either was a waste of time. Lynda had therefore placed herself like that person in the game who slides out of the ring leaving people on either side holding each other’s hands when they think they are holding hers. She bought presents which she allowed Jill to think came from Phoebe, and messages from Jill (invented) were transferred to Phoebe. Meanwhile she worried over Francis; believed that he should be shielded from his need to immolate himself in service to the sad girl and her infants.

  Lynda began long, hopeless, weeping fits. Everything was her fault. She rang up Phoebe to say she was sorry, she had done more harm than good.

  Phoebe rang up Radlett Street to ask if Lynda had cracked up again.

  Interestingly, neither Mark nor Martha had seen this: for weeping and a sorrowing concern for all humanity, but most particularly Jill and Francis and Phoebe, had not been how Lynda had ever started being ill before.

  Then Lynda announced she was ill, and she suggested Martha should see her through it, since Mark wanted to work again.

  She knew she was ill because suddenly she did not care at all that her efforts had achieved nothing; one week she had laid awake all night, and wept continuously, but almost from one moment to the next, she did not care.

  She tried to care that probably she had done harm.

  Phoebe, receiving affectionate messages from Jill, Jill getting presents from Phoebe, waited for the other to take some step. But nothing happened.

  Phoebe decided not to bother Jill, who had her own life to lead: she described this to herself as behaving well. She was very lonely. Gwen had gone off to share a flat with some girls. All quite normal and in order. Phoebe said: ‘Young people should try their wings, ’ and did not say that she hadn’t heard a word of Gwen for months.

  Since above all one should behave well, Phoebe never allowed herself to say that Gwen had left home on that day Mary, Arthur’s wife, rang up to say that this marriage was probably going to break up. Gwen had taken the news (given by Phoebe without prejudice, her voice neutral, for above all one should behave well) with rising colour and eyes going wild, as if she were being hit with her hands tied behind her back. Phoebe knew exactly how her daughter was feeling, but did not want to say so, did not want to criticize Arthur. Then Gwen went very white, and vomited.

  Arthur had thought briefly of leaving Mary to marry Joyce, one of the devoted women admirers. Mary had thought briefly of marrying Phil, a charming lecturer from Cambridge-philosophy. Both Arthur and Mary had come to see Phoebe, separately of course. Phoebe had sat very quiet, listening. With Mary, her supplanter, she had provided variations of the theme: You should do what you think best. But with Arthur, she was suddenly out of control, and got up and went slapping and banging around the room like a windmill with broken sails until at last she turned to him, choking and green and said: ‘Oh, get out.’

  Next day he wrote a letter to say he supposed he had been insensitive, but he thought of her as his closest friend. The letter she wrote back, but did not allow herself to post, contained years of protest, misery, reproach. When Arthur had left her to marry Mary, sweet, pretty, gentle little Mary (without a brain in her head Phoebe thought privately though never said, since one should behave well), Phoebe had felt pain. When Arthur left Mary, or thought of it, was when Phoebe felt betrayed. The letter she did not post included the words: If you were going to get tired of her so easily then why bother to leave me at all and land me with all the misery over the girls.

  She had never before suggested that she was suffering over her responsibility for the girls. After thought, she decided not to say it now. When Arthur rang up a month or so later, to say he and Mary were staying together ‘for the sake of the children’, Phoebe behaved well. Even to the extent of not telling him that Gwen had left home in a final repudiation of them both. Besides, she suspected, wearily, or if you like, bitterly (though she did not admit a right to be bitter), that soon Gwen would be back, in and out of Arthur’s house, while she still kept away from her, Phoebe. Hadn’t it always been like that?

  Arthur, very busy, as usual, devoted himself to politics; Mary allowed the affair with her lover to continue for some time; then her children, vulnerably adolescent, reclaimed her. These children began visiting Phoebe, making sad jokes about extended families. Phoebe surprised, realized after a time that they liked her; with gratitude that made her weep (to her own surprise), one night, great floods of tears, she understood they needed her. She then, with both her own girls gone and neither wishing to see her, devoted herself to Arthur’s and Mary’s children. Gwen visited (Phoebe had been right) Mary and her father, who were ‘getting on’ at all costs under these watchful and disbelieving eyes. But it was Phoebe who had been hurt more by the (passing) rift in this marriage than either of them. She had been more than hurt. It finished something for her-her feelings of worth as a woman; more, her belief in the possibility of a worth in any of these marriages, loves, liaisons all so dingily precarious. Arthur Coldridge had stabbed her to the heart twice, the second time more dreadfully than the first: and no one but she understood it.

  Phoebe, who had always behaved well, who had never allowed herself a jealous look or word or a petty thought now, when with Arthur on some political trip, and he made a large harmless male joke with a girl, or flirted, or basked a little-now Phoebe went pale, tightened her lips, was catty or looked away from the scene.

  She thought: to think I used to lie awake at nights for years and years, crying my eyes out about Arthur … if I’d known he was going to leave her too! And her liberal views about censorship, morals, individual liberty, tightened. She felt that she had always believed that people when young made far too much fuss about love and that sort of thing, and that they ought to be protected from themselves until they reached the age of knowing better. Yet she did not dare say this to Gwen on the very rare occasions she saw her; and all she would say to Francis, when he came to see her was: Look after yourself, my dear, you must look after yourself. For she thought Jill did not deserve his devotion.

  She reflected that there were many things now she was not saying aloud, and wondered if her integrity was less. She was perhaps demoralized by the now nearly thirteen-year-old stretch when the Government was everything she hated, and the Party which was her moral framework frayed by what seemed a perpetual opposition? This long ex
ile from what in her youth she had believed was what her life-work ought to be had made her corrupt?

  Hundreds of people like her were making this a point of conscience: she knew this, for she travelled a great deal in the course of her work. The business of ‘selling out’ of ‘being bought’ was being discussed continually among the journeymen of the Party, when other matters were done with. Late at night, men and women sat around, usually in a poorer kind of house, like those of the people they believed that they fought for, and the talk would come back, back, to the razor-edge days of just before the First World War, when Revolution was imminent; and the General Strike, which was nearly a Revolution; and Ramsay Macdonald and the Coalition Governments; and every campaign or turning-point seemed to have a fatality of weakness built into it: there were always men who ‘sold out’, chose the handful of ribbons or money. Yet while their minds moved along the path of those years (‘The History of the Labour Party’) there were big gaps: the First World War, the Second World War, as if these periods were outside politics, as if the business of national survival cancelled everything else.

  Recently, there had been the almost thirteen years in opposition. The Party was reft, split, full of groups and divisions and hostilities. Any group in opposition is like this: it is inevitable. But Phoebe was less affected than many in the movement: she belonged to that section of the Party-not over at the extreme Left where Arthur was, but where the Left merged with the Centre, which was, she believed, the hope of them all. It was just here, where she belonged, that growth and development was visible: it was where people joined, supported, argued, published books. There was a ferment lively enough to change the whole nation! That is, would be if ‘the people’ would soon enough vote out the Tories and vote them in. Thirteen years had been too long to watch impotently while everything went from bad to worse. For if one kind of demoralization was feared, watched for, discussed (that of ‘selling out’ or drifting away), another was actually visible, a central fact which screamed and shouted to be seen. For if people like Phoebe could not put their faith in ‘the people’ there was nowhere to put it. Yet what ‘the people’ supported during those years was a government more corrupt and ineffectual than any in the history of this country. There had never been one with such a record of broken promises, bad faith, indifference. It was during that time Britain’s bondage to America (begun in the Cold War while the nation’s eyes were fixed, hypnotized, on Russia) was confirmed and built into an economic keystone; those years saw Britain’s abject role in the Arms Race laid down; during those years occurred painfully ludicrous excursions into nineteenth-century colonial warfare-Kenya, Cyprus, Suez. Internally, the country ran down even further than it had during the war: the schools, hospitals, services, slumped into outdated incompetence; old people died in impoverished neglect; science and technology were poor relations of the great money spender and breeder, war; nothing was right anywhere; and yet ‘the Tory Press’ - a phrase used by Phoebe exactly as she had always used it, would begin editorials: ‘Once this country of ours was divided into two nations, rich and poor. Those bad old days are over and …’ A sort of built-in imbecility, a blindness, persisted: as if it were impossible for anybody to see what was actually happening. And yet still the ‘people’ did not vote out the Conservatives. As the by-elections and the council elections and the rural elections came and went, the popularity of the Government fluctuated; but these fluctuations seemed to have nothing to do with what the Government actually did, or what promises it broke, what opportunities it missed, nothing to do with good or bad government.