Ben, in the World

by Doris Lessing

  There was a little conference by the bed. The old woman not wanting to get up was a new thing, which the neighbour understood very well, but who was going to look after her? Mrs Biggs asked her to get her pension, for she felt too poorly and—she was apologetic—empty the cat’s dirt box. Both women understood that Ben could not do this: the mere idea of it—impossible. Even though the cat’s fur was quiet, and she no longer sat with her eyes fixed on Ben. When the neighbour returned with Mrs Biggs’ pension she laid the money on the table, and said, looking at Ben: ‘That’s not enough for more than her and the cat.’

  ‘He’s been using his money to buy me things,’ said the old woman, but they all knew what the situation was.

  ‘That’s all right then,’ said the neighbour, and went off to spread the news that the yeti was looking after Mrs Biggs as if he were her son.

  And so that time went, a happy time, the best in Ben’s whole life, looking after the old woman, even taking her clothes and her bedclothes to the launderette, cooking up dishes from frozen to feed her—but he usually finished them, for she ate so little. But it could not last, because all this time the money was going, going, and he soon had none left. If he wanted to stay there, with Mrs Biggs and the cat, then he would have to get more money and he did not know how. The neighbour, bringing in the pension money, carefully did not look at Ben, and he knew it was a criticism. The old woman did not criticise him, but lay and dozed, or sat and dozed, her hand so often pressing on her heart, saying, ‘Ben, we could both do with a cup of tea, I am sure.’

  He was hungry, for he was trying to eat as little as he could. It could not go on. He told her he was going to see about a job, and saw her sad little smile. ‘Be careful, Ben,’ she said. And Ben left: he had no home in this world.

  He walked along a street—rather, his feet were taking him up this street, past theatres and eating places—and he was on the side he usually avoided, crossing over before he came to a certain forbidden pavement. This time he did not cross over. He stood outside the theatre which frightened him when it was noisy and full of people, and stood on an empty pavement looking across at a little street where there was a doorway. This was a forbidden place. It was morning, and the cars that worked from the cubbyhole in the wall that called itself Super Universal Cabs were not there yet. They came in from early afternoon onwards. The man who organised these cabs, standing outside his cubbyhole, saying, ‘Take them to Camberwell…Swiss Cottage…Notting Hill…’ was not there. This man was what Ben feared. It was he who had said, ‘Fuck off and don’t come back.’ His name was Johnston and he was Rita’s friend.

  Some weeks ago, before Mrs Biggs had found him in the supermarket, he had been walking up this pavement, as usual alert for trouble, when he saw a woman in that doorway—that one, next to Super Universal Cabs. She had smiled at him. He followed the smile, went up narrow stairs behind her, and found himself in a room that he knew was poor and ugly, because he was contrasting it with what he remembered of his home, when he still had one, with his mother. The woman, though she was really a girl, for her make-up and big bruised-looking eyes made her look older, stood facing him, her hand on her belt, ready to take it off. She said, ‘How long?’

  Ben had no idea what she meant, but stood with his teeth bared—this was his scared grin, not the friendly one—and did not reply.

  ‘Ten pounds for a blow job, forty for the whole hog.’

  ‘I don’t have any money,’ said Ben.

  She came over, and put her hands down into his pockets, one on either side, more out of exasperation because of the preposterousness of this customer, than expectation, and at this Ben’s sexual nature, which he kept down, like all his other impermissible hungers, leaped up, and he gripped her by her shoulders, turned her around and, holding her fast, bent her so that she had to put her hands on the bed for support. He tugged up her skirt with one hand, pulled down her knickers, and took her from behind, short, sharp and violent. He had his teeth in her neck, and as he came he let out a grunting bark, like nothing she had ever heard before. He let her go, and she straightened up, flinging her pale hair off her face and stood looking at his face, then down at his thighs, the hairy thighs. She was not exactly unfamiliar with such hairiness—she had jested with Johnston that some of the men that came to her were like chimpanzees—but it was as if she were trying to find out from those strong furry legs just why this customer was so different. That query, that inspection, not hostile, had something in it that made him again grasp her, bend her over and begin again. He was starved for sex, had been hungry for it a long time, and just as if he had not so recently finished his first bout, his teeth went into her neck and she heard the triumphant grunting bark.

  ‘Just a minute,’ she said. ‘Just wait a minute.’

  She pushed him so that he sat on the bed, and she sat on a chair opposite him. She needed time. This experience—a rape, that was what it amounted to—ought to be making her feel angry, and full of the contempt that she usually felt for her customers, but she had been thrilled by that double rape, the great powerful hands gripping her shoulders, the teeth in her neck, and, above all, the grunt like a roar. She was sitting feeling where his teeth had bitten, but could not find an abrasion. She took out a tiny mirror from her bag, and craned her neck to see—no, the skin was not broken, but it was bruised, and there would be questions from Johnston.

  What Ben wanted was to lie on that narrow bed, beside her, and go to sleep. He was thinking hard. When he was the leader of the gang of boys, the bad boys that everyone was afraid of, there had been girls, and one liked him. She had tried to change him saying, ‘But Ben, let’s try it this way, turn round, it’s not nice what you do, it’s like animals.’ And he had indeed tried, but could not do what she wanted, for when he was face to face with her the raging angry need to possess and dominate was silent. It came to this—that if they were to do it, then it had to be his way, and soon she resented and even hated him for it. After some attempts she would not see him again, and the word had gone around among the girls that Ben was funny, there was something not quite right with him.

  With this girl, Rita, he knew she liked him, and had liked what he did.

  A bell rang, or rather hummed from the wall. This was a signal that there was a customer, and that Johnston was downstairs, and in control. She got up, pressed the bell, and said to Ben, ‘You’ve got to go now.’

  ‘Why?’ he said. He had not understood at all. He only knew she liked him.

  ‘Because I say so,’ she said, as if to a child, thinking that she could not remember talking to a customer like this before. ‘Go away.’ And then she added, ‘If you like, you can come again—in the morning, mind you.’ And she pushed him out of the room, and he went down her ugly stairs, zipping himself up, as men so often did on them.

  On the pavement a tall rough-looking man took a good sharp look at him, and then looked again—people always looked again.

  That was his first visit to Rita and next morning he had gone again. Meanwhile she had told Johnston about him. They were lying on her bed, smoking, very late, after all the minicab custom had ceased. He was her protector, and took a cut, but was not jealous, and was even good to her in a casual careless way. He had examined the bruised places on her neck: teeth marks were visible. He had heard a detailed account of the sex. This was because she wanted to talk about it, he was usually not interested. She had told him it hadn’t been like being with a man, more like an animal. ‘You know, like dogs.’

  ‘But you like him,’ Johnston had said, so that she should mark it and remember that he knew. He was feeling something he believed was not jealousy, more curiosity.

  The second occasion was like the first. This time he did it once and she was disappointed, though she could hardly admit this to herself, since she was committed to the creed that her customers left her cold. That roaring triumphant grunt just above her head, the feeling of being helpless in those great hairy hands, the violence of the penetration—well
, it thrilled her, but it was too short. She told him so. This was not like being told by that schoolgirl to lie face to face and then, kisses. He understood what she was saying, with his mind at least, and he let his trousers drop, and allowed her to manipulate him. Because this act was so soon after the first, he managed to keep going, and listened to her cries, with curiosity and surprise. But he was pleased, that he pleased her.

  Meanwhile, he had no money. Literally, did not have the price of a meatburger, his favourite food. She gave him enough money to eat. It was summer and at night he found a bench or a hallway. She made him wash in her little bathroom. She cut his beard. This went on for about a month and then Johnston found out she was giving him money and said, ‘Now, that’s enough, Reet.’

  She had become addicted to Ben and his animal ways and did not want to stop. She told a girlfriend, a whore in the next street, about Ben, and took Ben to that room, another poor dingy place, like Rita’s. This woman liked what Ben did, though he would have preferred to stay with Rita, and she gave him a couple of quid for his services. But her protector or boyfriend was not complacent, like Johnston, and when he found out told her Ben was not to come near her again. Johnston and he knew each other, and together they warned and threatened Ben.

  And so Ben stopped going to Rita, and if he was in that street was careful to stay on the other side, and if he saw Rita, hurried away. It was not being beaten up he feared, for he was sure he could manage Johnston and the other one even if they both came at him together. It was being noticed, drawing attention to himself—that he mustn’t do.

  A week after that he was seen by Mrs Biggs in the supermarket.

  And now, because this was the other place in the world he could go to, and be welcomed with a smile, he made himself cross the tiny street, past Super Universal Cabs, and go up those stairs. The door was closed. He had learned about knocking, because she might have someone else there, but now he let out a shout, like a bull’s bellow, and at once the door opened and she pulled him in, slamming the door and locking it.

  Rita had been angry with Johnston for sending Ben off. She had reminded him that their agreement was that she would please herself with her customers. The amounts of money she had given Ben were peanuts, nothing compared to what she earned in a day. If that ever happened again—then he should watch out. Johnston knew this was no useless threat. Johnston did not deal only in minicabs, and she knew what he got up to—or thought she did. One word from her to the police—the worst that could happen to her was a fine, and anyway, the police knew about her. She had customers among them. Johnston trusted her, had told her much more than was prudent. Rita, if not the proverbial tart with a heart of gold, was sensible, shrewd, affectionate, and gave him good advice.

  Within a minute of arriving in Rita’s room, they were at it, and he was like a starved thing. Then, remembering her demands, at once did it again so that she could get her pleasure. And then she said, falling on the bed and pulling him down, ‘Where have you been, Ben?’

  ‘He said I shouldn’t come here.’

  ‘But I say you can. In the mornings.’

  It all started again. He came every morning, and she gave him enough money to eat, and Johnston cross-examined her. ‘Why do you like him, Reet? I don’t get it.’

  She didn’t get it either, though she thought enough about Ben. She was not an instructed young woman—or girl, for in fact she was not yet eighteen, Ben’s age—but the subject of his age had not come up. She thought he was probably about thirty-five: she liked older men, she knew.

  One of the things they had in common, though they did not know it, was that both had had such a hard childhood. She had left school and run away to London from bad parents, had stolen money, been a thief for a while, and then talked the landlord of the building that housed the minicab firm and this tart’s room up the stairs into letting her have the room when the previous girl left. She was persuasive. She impressed. She had learned that she usually got her way with people. She had met many different kinds, but nothing like Ben. He was outside anything she had been told about, or seen on the television, or knew from experience. When she saw him naked for the first time, she thought, Wow! That’s not human. It was not so much the hairiness of him, but the way he stood, his big shoulders bent—that barrel chest—the dangling fists, the feet planted apart…She had never seen anything like him. And then there were the barking or grunting roars as he came, the whimpers in his sleep—yet if he wasn’t human, what was he? A human animal, she concluded, and then joked with herself, Well, aren’t we all?

  Johnston did not interfere again, but he was waiting for some opportunity he could turn to his advantage. It came. Ben asked Rita to go with him ‘to the place where you get birth certificates’. Rita, familiar with the world of casual work, asked why didn’t he try ‘to work casual’ and the story of the building site came out. Her first reaction was that if anyone cheated Ben then Johnston could sort him out—but knew this would not happen. She asked where Ben had got it into his head he must have a birth certificate, heard about the old woman who said it would help get him unemployment benefit. ‘And then what?’ Rita asked, really curious about what unnecessarily lawful plans might be fermenting in that shaggy head.

  Talking to Johnston, Rita mentioned that Ben wanted a birth certificate so that with it he could enter the world of proper work and unemployment benefit. Johnston saw his chance. He stopped Ben next time he emerged from Rita’s room, and said to him, ‘I want to talk to you,’ and as Ben crouched, his fists already clenched up, ‘No, I’m not warning you off Reet, I can help you get your papers.’

  Now Johnston went back up the stairs to Rita’s, and for the first time the three of them were together in that room, Johnston and Rita sitting side by side on the bed, smoking, while Ben uneasily waited on the chair, wondering if this were a trap, and Rita had turned against him. He was trying to understand.

  ‘If you have a passport then you don’t need a birth certificate,’ said Johnston.

  Ben did know that passports were what people took with them abroad. There had been a trip to France, his father with the other children, while he stayed with his mother. He could not go with them, because he couldn’t behave as they did.

  He said he didn’t want to go anywhere, only a paper he could take to the office where—he described it, as a place where people were behind glass walls, and in front of them lines of other people waited for money. It took a long time for him to understand Johnston. In return for a passport, which Johnston could get from ‘a friend who does passports’, he, Ben, would make a trip to France, taking something with him Johnston wanted to give another friend, probably in Nice, or Marseilles.

  ‘And then shall I come back?’

  Johnston had no intention of encouraging Ben to come back. He said, ‘You could stay there a bit and enjoy yourself.’

  Ben saw from Rita’s face that she did not like this, though she did not say anything. The idea that he would possess something that he could keep in his pocket, and show a policeman, or a foreman on a building site, persuaded Ben, and he went with Johnston to the machine in the Underground where appeared five little photographs, that Johnston took off with him. The passport, when he was given it, surprised Ben. He was thirty-five years old, it said. He was a film actor: Ben Lovatt. His home address was somewhere in Scotland. Johnston was going to keep this passport ‘for safety’ but Ben demanded it to show the old woman. Yes, he said, he would bring it back at once.

  When he stood outside Mrs Biggs’ door he knew the place was empty: he could sense that there was nothing alive in there. He did not knock, but knocked on the neighbour’s door, and heard the cat miaow. He had to knock again, and then at last she came to the door, saw him, and said, ‘Mrs Biggs is in hospital. I’ve got her cat with me.’ Ben had already turned to go off down the stairs, when she said, ‘She’d like it if you visited her, Ben.’

  He was appalled: a hospital was everything he feared most, a big building, full of
noise and people, and of danger for him. He remembered going to doctors with his mother. Every one of them had had that look. The neighbour understood that he was afraid. She and Mrs Biggs had discussed Ben, knew how hard it was for him to inhabit ordinary life—knew for instance that Ben would go down flight after flight of stairs because the lift so intimidated him.

  She said, kindly, ‘Don’t worry, Ben, I’ll tell her you came to see her.’ Then she said, ‘Wait…’ Left him standing there, returned with a ten-pound note, which she slipped into his breast pocket. ‘Look after yourself, Ben,’ she said, as the old woman would have done.

  Ben made his way back to Rita’s. He was thinking about kindness, how it was some people saw him—that was how he put it —really did see him, but were not put off, it was as if they took him into themselves—that was how it felt. And Rita? Yes, she was kind, she felt for him. But not Johnston: no. He was an enemy. And yet there in Ben’s pocket was a passport, with his name in it, and an identity. He was Ben Lovatt, and he belonged to Great Britain which for him until now had been words, a sound, nothing real. Now he felt as if arms had been put around him.

  Meanwhile, Rita and Johnston had been quarrelling. She said she didn’t like it, what Johnston was doing to Ben. What would happen to him in France? He couldn’t speak the language. He could only just cope with things here. Johnston had ended the argument with, ‘Don’t you see, Reet, he’ll end up behind bars anyway.’ He meant prison, but Rita heard something else, which in fact Johnston had mentioned during a discussion about Ben: one day the scientists would get their hands on Ben. Rita shrieked at Johnston that he was cruel. She insisted that Ben was nice, he was just a bit different from other people, that’s all.