Love, Again

by Doris May Lessing Little Dorrit

  The Founding Four met sometimes in 'their' cafe, which had been taken over by 'the children'. Not that they would have dreamed of using this pet name to their faces. For one thing, they had to discuss why it was that Julie Vairon — or Julie — had put an end to the old Green Bird. 'Before Julie' and 'after Julie' — that was how they talked. But they could not come to a conclusion and at last agreed they had been fortunate to have had those years of wonderful comradeship; perhaps, while they were living through them, they had not sufficiently understood how wonderful they were. But now it was all over, and what better could they have done than relinquish the reins to Sonia? It was obvious to everyone else, though not to her, that she was destined to become that recurrent figure in the theatre — a clever, competent woman, impatient of other people's slowness, abrasive, tactless, 'impossible', and as salutary as a thunderstorm. She would always have passionate friends and as passionate enemies.

  By early summer Sarah's anguish had lessened to the point that she would say it had gone. That is to say, what remained was mild low spirits of a kind she could match easily with this or that bad patch in her life, but they were as far removed from the country of grief as they were distant from happiness. She stood in a landscape like that before the sun comes up, one suffused with a quiet, flat, truthful light where people, buildings, trees, stand about waiting to become defined by shadow and by sunlight. This is the landscape recommended for adults. Over the horizon, somewhere else, was a place, a world, of tenderness and trust, and she was removed from it not by distance but because it was in another dimension. This was right, was as things should be… but the parallel line continued, of feeling. For if she was removed from grief, she was removed too (her emotions insisted) from that intimacy which is like putting your hand into another hand, while currents of love flow between them.

  A strange thing, that when in love or in lust the afflicted ones want most of all to be shut up together in some fastness or solitude, just me and you, only you and me, for at least a year or for twenty, but quite soon, or at any rate after a salutary dose of time, these once so terribly and exclusively desired ones are released into a landscape populated by loving friends and lovers, all bound to each other because they recognize the claims of invisible and secret affinities: if we have loved, or love, the same person, then we must love each other. This improbable state of affairs can only exist in a realm or region removed from ordinary life, like a dream or a legend, a land all smiles. One could almost believe that falling in love was ordained to introduce us to this loving land and its paradise kisses.

  She could look now not only at Stephen's notes but at her own. They were words on paper, like Julie's My heart is aching so badly I wish I could put it out of its misery the way you put an old dog to sleep. I simply cannot endure this pain. Words on a page, that's all.

  She was delivered, she was over the illness and would not go into danger again. She was not going to Belles Rivieres for the rehearsals, or even the first night, but would try — she promised — to manage the last night. That is, when Henry was safely gone. Jean-Pierre thought she did not want to go because of missing Stephen. Perhaps he was right.

  Before Julie and being turned inside out, she thought the country of love was so remote from her seasoned and well- balanced self that she could be likened to someone standing outside great iron gates behind which a dog flounced its hindquarters about, not unattractively, a foolish harmless dog no one could be afraid of. But now she knew that the gates separating her from that place were flimsy, no more than hastily tacked up pieces of thin wood, and behind them was a dog of the kind they breed now for murder. She could see the dog clearly. It was the size of a calf. It wore a muzzle. Or was it a mask? — the theatre mask that changes from a laugh to the grimace of grief, and back again.

  It was mid-August, and some weeks had passed since the anguish that had so crushed her had taken itself off. As she had predicted, she could not remember its intensity, proving that Nature (or whatever) does not need its children to remember pain, unproductive for its purposes, whatever they are. She was finding herself in moments of quiet enjoyment, drawing vitality as she had all her life from small physical pleasures, like the feel of a naked sole on wood, the warmth of sunlight on bare skin, the smell of coffee or of earth, the faint scent of frost on a stone. She had returned to being a woman who never wept, though the idea of a good cry for the sake of it was certainly inviting: she had forgotten how to cry, it seemed. Other people's excesses of emotion tempted her to judge them as immature. She had actually caught on her face the smile that goes with, Really, how silly — on hearing of someone foolishly in love. (Did that mean then that she had learned nothing at all?) She monitored sadness which was steadily retreating, losing strength, and kept her attention on it as if it were a dangerous animal that might attack from an unexpected place. It might worsen, might drag her back: in old people's faces, in their eyes, she often saw the dry sorrow that now she understood. Oh no, she didn't want that, she refused it! And the way to keep it off, that vulture that fed on the heart, was never to relax vigilance.

  She still could not listen to Julie's music, or to the old trouvère and troubadour music. Pain, to be 'sweet' must be mild. The anguish that threatened her at even a few notes from Julie Vairon, or even the vulgar torch song from The Lucky Piece, or Julie — no, absolutely not. Sounds could still seem too loud, too much, and there seemed no safe place anywhere for her. As for that sentimental shepherd boy from long ago, in his silent landscape these days a small wind blew, the dry whine that has set humankind's nerves on edge with apprehension for thousands of years, and the sound held almost audible voices, while the high scream of a hawk was the first note of Julie's third act music. Worse, one day some sheets of paper had blown up the hill towards the boy half asleep under his tree, and he stared at them, thinking he was dreaming, and the black signs on the paper, the words grief, heart, pain, seemed to him some kind of frightful magic- making, so that he woke up completely, but by then the wind had blown the sheets away down the hill and into the grass, and he believed he had imagined an apparition. And where was the silent haven she craved? Down in the oceans, fishes clicked and squeaked, and whales sang. Up in space, debris collided and meteors rumbled. At the bottom of mine shafts or deep caves? The silence of the grave? A likely story. There would be a roar of worms and of excavating roots.

  Yet fear or, if you like, caution did not prevent that process familiar to everyone submerged in the why of something. Clues accumulate and fall into place. You pick up a book apparently at random, and it falls open on a page where what you are thinking about is explored. You overhear a conversation: they are talking about what preoccupies you. You switch on the radio — there it is. Sarah's dreams were full of information, and she felt as if she were on the verge of… Know yourself, says the old admonition, but it is not easy to decide what it is you ought to be trying to know at any given moment.

  Sarah sat on a park bench, looking at an empty bench almost opposite hers, across a wide path that led out of the park.

  Along a path from the gate came a young woman pushing a pram, holding one side of the handle, while a little girl pushed too, using both hands. When they reached the bench nearly opposite Sarah, the young woman hauled the pram onto the grass behind the bench, lifted out a baby of about ten months, and sat down on the bench. She held the baby on her knees. The little girl, who was about four, sat very close to her mother. She was a pretty little girl, and dressed in a crisp pink cotton frock, pink socks, pink shoes, and her straight thin black hair was held with a pink plastic barrette. All this pinkness did not suit her small thin anxious face, nor eyes that seemed too knowledgeable, like a sad woman's.

  The mother was well turned out too. She had tight white trousers and a white singlet that showed carefully tanned shoulders and arms. Her hair was dyed bronze and stood out in a fashionable frizz. She was hugging and kissing the infant, who laughed and tried to grab her hair. Then he reached for her nose, while
she laughed and flirtatiously averted her face. She began singing the nursery rhyme, 'Rock-a-bye Baby', and when she reached 'and down falls baby and cradle and all', she pretended to let the baby fall. He shrieked in delicious false terror: they had often played this game before. The child was trying to join in, singing 'Rock-a-bye Baby', but her voice was lost in the loud full singing of the mother and the baby's gurgles of pleasure.

  The little girl was sitting right against her mother, and now she put up her hand to tug her elbow down, to get her attention.

  'Oh, leave me alone,' snapped the mother, in a voice so irritable and full of dislike it was hard to believe this was the same voice she used to love the baby. And now she used this voice again, rich, full, and sexual, and she kissed the baby's neck with an open mouth. 'Darling, darling, darling,' murmured the mother. 'Little Ned, my darling, darling Ned.' And then, removing her mouth from the baby's neck for this purpose, she snapped at her daughter, 'I told you, stop it, stop bothering me, don't crowd me like that.' And she went on loving the baby as if the child did not exist.

  The little girl wriggled a short way from her mother, and sat watching the love scene. When the woman began another rhyme, this time 'To market, to market, to buy a fat pig', she again tried to join in, but her mother smacked her hard and said, 'Oh, do shut up, Claudine.'

  The child sat frozen, a few inches from her mother, looking sombrely in front of her — looking, in fact, at Sarah, at that dull old woman there on the bench. Unable to stand the loving going on that excluded her, she carefully turned to her mother, expecting a slap, and said, 'Mummy, Mummy, Mummy,' in a desperate voice.

  'Now what is it?' snapped the young woman.

  'I want my orange juice, I want my orange juice.'

  'You've just had orange juice.'

  'I want it again,' the child said, trying to smile, looking up at the woman's angry face, hoping to make her mother see her, see her misery.

  But the mother did not look at her. She leaned her arm back over the bench into the pram, took out a carton of juice, and handed it carelessly to the child, who took it with the caution that governed every movement she made, even the smallest. She tried to get the straw off the side of the carton. The mother watched her fumbling over the top of the baby's head, which was lying on her breasts, or to be precise, in the hollow under her left shoulder, his cheek on her breast. She was watching with a practised irritation that waited for an excuse to pounce. 'There,' she snapped, as the straw fell to the tarmac of the path. 'Look what you've done. You'll have to drink it through the hole, that's all.' And she laid her cheek on her baby's head and crooned, 'Neddy is my darling, my darling, my darling,' and then, 'Baby is my darling… '

  The little girl was not drinking her juice but sat with the carton in her hand staring at Sarah, who saw in those dark and most unchildlike eyes a desolation of unhappiness, a world of grief.

  The mother: 'Why did you nag at me for orange juice if you didn't want it? Give it here — I'll put it in the bottle for Baby.'

  She impatiently took the carton from her daughter, again reached over the bench back, fetched out the bottle, poured the orange juice in the bottle, and then, having taken a little swig herself, fed the juice to the baby.

  The child gave a sob, and as if this was exactly what the mother had been waiting for, she screeched, 'Now what is it?' and in a transport of dislike she slapped the little girl on the forearm. The child sat absolutely still, watching the ugly red come up on her skin. Then she let out a single loud hopeless wail and at once clamped her lips shut — she had been unable to prevent that cry.

  'If you don't behave yourself,' said the mother to the child, in a voice full of hate, 'I'll… '

  The child sat rigid, silent.

  The mother reached back, took out cigarettes and matches, and tried to light a cigarette over the baby's head. 'Oh shit, you take him, then,' said she, depositing the baby on the little girl's lap. 'Now, you hold him nicely, don't jump about, just sit.'

  On the child's face came a trembling smile. Tears stood in her eyes. She held the happy baby and clasped him tight to her body and kissed him. The little girl had her lips on the baby's head, on the soft hair just above the ear. Her eyes were shut. As she sat there in a bliss of love, her mother stared straight ahead, gasping lungfuls of smoke in and out.

  The little girl was singing, 'Darling, darling, darling, I love you, I love you my Ned, my darling Ned,' eyes shut, thin arms squeezing the baby, who was suddenly woeful and might cry. And all at once, in a single movement, the mother flicked her cigarette on the path, stamped on it, and reached for the baby. 'Don't paw him like that, stop it, stop it at once.' And she lifted the baby onto her own lap. And now the baby sat with a trembling down-turned mouth, and it was touch and go whether he would let out a wail.

  'It's your fault,' said the mother in the disliking voice she used for her daughter. And she hastily bounced the baby and sang and kissed him into good humour. Then, when the baby was happy, up got mother, who wanted to put him back in the pram, but he wasn't having that, he clung to her neck and laughed.

  Her mouth tight and angry, the mother said to the child, 'You can push the pram.'

  She went off cuddling the baby, not looking to see if the little girl was following with the heavy pram, which she had to manoeuvre off the grass and onto the path. When she had accomplished this task, the child stood for a moment, getting her breath back.

  Sarah was silently telling the child, 'Hold on, hold on. Quite soon a door will slam shut inside you because what you are feeling is unendurable. The door will stand there shut all your life: if you are lucky it will never open, and you'll not ever know about the landscape you inhabited — for how long? But child time is not adult time. You are living in an eternity of loneliness and grief, and it is truly a hell, because the point of hell is that there is no hope. You don't know that the door will slam shut, you believe that this is what life is and must be: you will always be disliked, and you will have to watch her love that little creature you love so much because you think that if you love what she loves, she will love you. But one day you'll know it doesn't matter what you do and how hard you try, it is no use. And at that moment the door will slam and you will be free.

  She watched the child carefully set off, reaching up with both hands to the handle of the heavy pram, pushing it along the path after the mother. Over the woman's shoulder could be seen the baby's smiling face. The mother made no attempt to slow her pace, although the child was so far behind. At the gate she stopped and turned, and she shouted, 'Oh, do come on.' The child, trying hard, slipped and fell to her knees, and got up crying, and again pushed the pram. Then the baby was put into the pram and propped against cushions, and the three left the park as they had entered it, the mother with One hand on her side of the handle, the little girl reaching up with both hands.

  Did Sarah believe that her mother, the admirable Mrs Millgreen, could ever have been like that young woman with her two little children? Certainly not; Sarah had been witnessing an extreme of unkindness. But wait — how could she, or anyone, know? The talk of old people can only be deciphered by contemporaries. A pause in the run of a reminiscence can stand for some monstrous quarrel. Half a dozen words as ordinary as 'We never got on, you know' mark implacable and decades-long hostilities. 'I'll always remember that summer' or 'We always did fancy each other' (and a laugh) remembers the most intense passion of a lifetime. An old man sighs, once, for a long season of mourning, an old woman stumbles over a word or a phrase, because she was on the verge of self-betrayal. That young woman on the bench: when she was old would there be anything left of her dislike for her little daughter? Perhaps only 'Boys are so much easier than girls.'

  Much more likely, though — Sarah was remembering certain brisk and practical tones of her mother's voice — that the scene from last summer was more to the point, when the three boys had come to say goodnight to their mother in their short red dressing gowns, with their brushed fair hair, their washe
d faces, and then had rushed off up the stairs, but James had come back, twice, and stood at the door.

  'What is it, James?'

  'Nothing.'

  'Then run along.'

  As the boy turned to go out of the room his eyes had met Sarah's. No, it was not that bleak desolation, it was not grief, but rather… patience. Yes, it was stoicism. He was not four years old, or six years old; he was twelve. That door had slammed shut for him long ago, and he had forgotten it was there. With luck he would never know the door was there, never be forced to remember what lay behind it.