The Four-Gated City

by Doris Lessing

  What mattered was Rita, who was quite profoundly all right, though for what Martha could not stop wondering: where was this child of good fortune going to find anything to match her expectations?

  Meanwhile, she took over the house without being asked: she felt, it seemed, that if a house was there to be run, then obviously it was her place to run it. She attended to those letters of Mark’s which he and Martha found most irksome-for like many authors, he was expected to run a kind of private advice bureau on personal problems. Mark refused to touch them: Martha would sweat and suffer because what could one ever say to people who believed that a few words on a piece of paper could solve such tangles of misery? Rita had no such ridiculous inhibitions: she knew by instinct that what unhappy people needed was for someone to pay attention to them, and she wrote pages and pages of admirable advice to anyone who asked for it. (‘You say you feel depressed when you think of your wasted life? That does no good! You must keep your chin up and think of others!’) She also enjoyed London, but in her own way, which announced to some observers that she regarded all this as a prelude to a destiny. She got on with an extraordinary number of varied people, since Martha’s daughter would be bound to know that Graham Patten’s unkind wit was due, like the old miner Saul Baines’s grouchiness, to life’s wounds. ‘People like that often have a sad heart, when all is said and done.’ Lynda, whom she was taken to visit was ‘just like the wife of the postmaster at Gokwe, she has to go off into the loony-bin sometimes when things get too much for her, like in the Christmas rush.’

  She went about with Paul. He was in love with her. She treated him with maternal firmness. He announced to everyone that he would marry Rita who was exactly right for him. He took her to parties, to theatres, to all the new films, and she enjoyed them all: she was incapable of being bored. More, he took her out before she had decided that his taste in clothes was very good, and when she was still wearing her own. Not to mention her own hair. Taken to Madeleine, the genius with the scissors, by Paul, who said that at least she might try, she had said no, she would not have her hair straightened. Sensation! There was probably not one girl in London, apart from Rita, who had short curly hair: much worse than being crippled or ugly. Sitting in front of a mirror clutching her curls (to be fashionable and indeed, almost compulsory a couple of years later), she had demanded why it was that at the dinner the night before there had been seven women aged between seventeen and seventy all with exactly the same haircut, ‘Madeleine’s cut’. Madeleine replied that ‘a hairstyle, like a fashion, must evolve logically from the style before.’ ‘Yes, but I like to be myself, ’ said Rita.

  At this act of rebellion Madeleine had brooded, while her scissors as it were meditated among Rita’s curls. Then she had summoned a young man from the end of the salon. ‘Carlos, ’ she had said decisively, ‘from now on you will be doing Miss … er-what did you say your name was? -hair.”

  Rita then found herself before another mirror, with Carlos, his scissors poised to start work. ‘Just do what I’ve got now only better-after all, it stands to reason you’d do better than they do in Gokwe!’ His scissors remained immobilized for minutes, while he struggled with himself, at last crying out that ‘it was impossible for him to cut out of the current style-his scissors simply would not bring themselves to do it.’ Therefore, every time Rita entered a room, shocked or intrigued eyes turned to look at her curly head, and she instantly earned a reputation for great strength of character.

  ‘Yes, ’ she said modestly, ‘but then I’m a Zambesian, we are independent by nature, though I can see that in London everybody has to be like everybody else, I mean, you’re all brought up like that, aren’t you? ’ This kind of thing caused furores of annoyance, but she was well able to deal with it. Politics were not, as she said, her concern, though she had given the colour question her attention early on in life. It was a pity that the blacks and the whites couldn’t get to know each other as people, because then they would be bound to like each other, people did when they really knew each other, didn’t they? Sometimes she did feel like smacking certain people’s bottoms for them, she wasn’t going to say whose, but where there was a will there was a way, and she was sure good would out in the end.

  On the basis that she was very original, she and Paul were invited everywhere. At last he proposed, formally, on an occasion prepared for and worked up to. She refused, saying that her heart belonged to another.

  Paul took this very badly: probably nothing worse had happened to him since his mother had died. He put a good face on it, but was rather ill, and went away by himself to recover.

  Yet Rita’s refusal, and its manner, did in fact hold its own cure.

  The thing was that Paul had been living for years in a sexual or romantic mirage. Many men do, and this is due entirely to women’s kind hearts (or their cowardice, what you will), because they can so seldom bring themselves to say: No, no, you’re ugly; you’re unsubtle; you snore; you’ve bad breath; you can’t make love; or I don’t like the way you talk about your wife. Now Paul was very handsome. Sex, above all in this London (and he’d never known another), where everyone was young and everyone made love or sex, was something that he had known he must do, or at least appear to do. (The girl with whom he spent, still, most of his time and to whom he always returned, was Zena, whom he never took out, but in whose arms he might spend chaste nights.) Otherwise a thousand women had been to bed with him once, but had discovered they loved their husbands or former lovers; or had just that week decided on monogamy or a regular love, or were unfortunately not feeling well, or felt towards him like a sister. Or if they knew other women who had been to bed with him would not go to bed with him at all-no, no, it was not that he wasn’t as attractive as twenty sheikhs rolled into one, but appearances were deceptive and gossip a liar-actually they were virgins.

  Rita said to him: ‘But, Paul, you and I wouldn’t be suited, you see, because I wouldn’t marry a man who didn’t like a lot of kissing and cuddling.’

  ‘But how do you know what I like? ’ said Paul. ‘You won’t go to bed with me!’

  ‘Oh, now don’t be so silly, Paul. Why do you put on an act with me? I feel really hurt about that, I do, honestly.’

  ‘But I don’t see why you say that.’

  Oh, Paul, do stop it. Your trouble is, you aren’t being realistic, I mean, it’s silly, isn’t it? Because nothing but unhappiness will come of it. No, what you have to do is to find a nice warm-hearted girl-older than you would be a good idea, but she shouldn’t be too keen on that kind of thing, I mean, a lot of girls aren’t, they just pretend to be, because they want people to think well of them. But you aren’t passionate, Paul, you see. You are affectionate, you’ve got a warm heart, but you aren’t a passionate person. So that’s what you have to do. You want to find a girl who wants a man to be very kind, so that she can be kind back, but she shouldn’t want to make love much, because you wouldn’t like that, not really.’

  Paul having departed, Rita was without an escort: it was only now that it became evident that this was how she had seen him. Poor Paul had been made use of: girls made use of him. Also, he had been a shield, for Rita did not accept any of the young men who now presented themselves. She was much at home, a daughter in the house, helpful to Martha and to Mark. Or she might ring up Lynda in Paul’s house, and invite herself to tea: there, she offered to run errands, liking, as she said, to be of use. Meanwhile they-the older women, watched without much verbal comment, that marvellous phenomenon, the single-minded ruthlessness of the female in full confident pursuit, though so far were aims and self-knowledge on parallel lines that she was all passivity, secret sighing tears, and dramatic loss of weight. (Needing to lose weight, she was all the better for it.)

  Nor must it be thought that Mark was oblivious. On the contrary. He said that the girl had a crush on him and it was very flattering to a man of his age. He might say this in Martha’s bed, for she was comforting him for the loss of Lynda-though he was still tr
ying to persuade himself she would come back; and he was comforting her because she was depressed, knowing that her life was about to blow itself into a new shape, with no idea at all how or when.

  But it got on his nerves, he said, having those love-lorn eyes fixed on him day and night; couldn’t the hussy be got out of the place somehow? He needed all his energy for his schemes for the future, and one of these days that girl’d find herself raped-he was only flesh and blood after all, and if one more time he found her draped all over his bed in a nightie darning his socks, he wouldn’t answer for the consequences. So they joked.

  Graham Patten was telephoned. He, in the grip of a fearsome passion for his first wife (they were about to marry each other again), said he could not assist personally, but would see what could be done to widen her interests. Rita then entered Graham’s territory for a while. After a couple of weeks he telephoned to say that he knew earthwomen were in, but the trouble was, peasants were always politically so reactionary, and he had his reputation as a Marxist to protect.

  What had happened was this. It goes without saying that all fashionable parties at that time were stocked entirely with progressives concerned with the state of affairs in Zambesia. A young woman had darted up to Rita and exclaimed that she, Rita, ought to be ashamed of herself but that ‘history would soon have its revenge’. Rita had instantly replied, on a reflex action, with a whole series of statements full of flaming moralistic fervour and uplift, like Jefferson, or Wilberforce. At which the young woman had embraced her as a freedom fighter and invited her to speak on a platform next week-end. Rita said no, but was talked into it: she was a girl who could not withstand being told she was irresponsible. On a platform of the Free Zambesia movement, Rita then delivered herself of a lot more rhetorical statements to do with freedom and liberty to an audience warmly welcoming this precious creature, a white liberal. Only slowly did it dawn on them that she was in fact a firm supporter of the rebel régime in Zambesia. Confusion all round, and apologies from both sides-proving Rita’s point that people could like each other … the trouble was that the education of the young Free Zambesians had not included the information that (to simplify) a young Nazi in 1938, say, would not have said: ‘I am a brutal racist who will lay Europe in ruins and end freedom in our time.’ On the contrary, he would have sounded-like Jefferson. As for Rita, she had heard the young white Zambesians stating their position in high moral and idealistic terms and had been attracted by the sentiments. These she reproduced on request … this experience more than ever determined her to eschew politics, particularly as the Free Zambesians rang up Graham Patten to complain about his friends … He forgave Rita on condition she wouldn’t do it again.

  This led to the next, and crucial incident. Rita was at a party attended by the essence of the screen and stage (vintage 1958 matured) and, attacked yet again as a fascist, she saw that the young woman who was doing the attacking was in fact a young man. She began to mutter something defensive about the bottoms of both sides, black and white, needing to be smacked, received an unintelligible reply, and went off by herself to sit in a corner and observe the scene. First she saw that there were practically no women present at all, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. Then she saw that the guests were in fact the casts of the plays she had seen the night before and the night before that-Romeo and Juliet and Othello, both with all-male casts. The theatres and the actors being world-famous, that she was finding the scene before her eyes repulsive upset her-though she did not wish to be found old-fashioned. She looked for Graham, who, comfortingly, was in love with a woman, even if confusingly-but he and his wife had quarrelled and had left the party separately, sulking.

  She was rescued by a man (she examined him carefully to make sure he was not merely dressed as one) who asked her to go and have some coffee and cheer up - ‘he wasn’t political either’. Rita, well out of her depth and tending towards tears, felt that this was probably a hero (since heroes were kind) and she confided to him all her moral dubieties. He was extremely witty. Rita knew that he was being witty, and enjoyed it, but on one occasion said: ‘Please make your jokes more slowly, it’s not that I don’t get them, it’s just that people aren’t so sophisticated where I come from.’ So he did. He took her to supper where Graham and his ex-mistress-but-one were paying out his ex-and-future wife and her present lover by being seen together where she (the wife) was bound to be-this restaurant was always the scene of these marital tiffs. Rita told her new friend that for her part when she got married, she intended it to be for good. He said that in his opinion she was quite right. Rita then went home with this consolingly integritous man to his flat, where she soon found herself altogether at sea. It was clear that they were going to make love, for he said that they were; and indeed they got into bed at last, where he made a great many more witty remarks, all to do with bottoms and bosoms, and his inclination towards one, but not the other. Finally having said that ‘it was entirely his misfortune, but, alas, she had too much of both’, he played to her some Bach on his record-player, and in the morning when they woke up, a brisk girl secretary was bringing them breakfast in bed, quite undiscomposed by seeing Rita there. When her host had gone to the bathroom, and Rita got out of bed to look at herself in the mirror (for as she said to Martha later, she could hardly believe this was happening to her), she saw ranged in a row beside the bed, four riding whips graded in sizes. It was not that Rita was ignorant about dear old London; after all, she had been around in it for months now (though more in pop and boutique and television circles where as she said she thought things were more old-fashioned), but she found it very hard to connect whips with herself. ‘I kept thinking: but I don’t like horses. I don’t like horsy men.’ Finally, as the secretary entered with The Times, and the announcement that Mr Bravington Poles-Warren would soon be out of the bath, Rita understood that she was sitting naked on a gilt chair in front of the mirror, and the secretary was briskly putting away whips as if filing papers. It occurred to Rita that the whips had been put out to impress the secretary: there had been no suggestions that she, Rita, was to be, or should have been, whipped. She examined the secretary-who seemed a perfectly ordinary girl. But perhaps she was just a poor girl who needed to earn a large salary to support a widowed mother or something like that. She thought of her companion of the night before, and kept saying to herself, over and over again, that poor thing, he must have had an unhappy childhood and be wearing a brave smile over a sad heart; but after she had bathed, he took her down to find a taxi, and insisted on taking her into the sweetshop immediately below where he lived, and, saying good morning, darling, good morning, Petronella, good morning, sweet, good morning, George, to the sales people, he bought Rita an enormous box of continental chocolates. Once again Rita understood this was not for her benefit, but a sort of showing off to the salespeople.

  Suddenly Rita cracked, having preserved the most gentle and good-humoured tact throughout a trying night and morning. She said in front of everyone in the shop: ‘You’re only buying me those because you want everyone to know that I spent last night with you. How many girls have you brought in here beaten black and blue? Well, if you think real men have to beat girls, then you’d better meet one.’ At which she strode out, all hot tears.

  At home she said to Mark that she didn’t think Graham’s friends were very nice: she was broad-minded she hoped.

  She wept. She was very low. She put her arms around Martha’s neck like a small girl and said she didn’t know why it was but she just wanted to cry and cry. Found by Mark on his bed putting buttons on his shirts, in wan tearful beauty and pale blue georgette, she told him the whole story, and one thing leading to another …

  Martha, adding pennies to pennies, hundreds of pounds to hundreds of pounds, was thinking as she half-listened to what was almost certainly a love-silence from next door, ‘I wonder if Rita has remembered that she probably won’t be able to buy disposable nappies in …’ But they weren’t yet absolutely certain where
they were going: it was some small village on the edge of a semi-desert.

  Mark’s Memorandum to Himself (still unfinished) continued:

  ‘6. Therefore, groups of people aware of this situation should set themselves to make flexible preparations based on the fact that within (?) years, probably ten, or fifteen, one, two, or three areas of the world, almost certainly heavily populated ones (see maps Β and Ba and Dorothy’s notes) will become uninhabitable, permanently or temporarily.

  ‘7. Any preparations made will have to take into account the inevitable hostility of governments, expressed subtly rather than openly. This means that any organization will have to be scientifically self-sufficient. But this is again an age of mercenaries-we can hire what we need.

  ‘8. Locations must be found in parts of the world less vulnerable to contamination by wind, rain, etc., and prepared for large numbers of people.