Ben, in the World

by Doris Lessing

  Then, as they walked towards their reflections in a shop window, he stopped, bent forward, looking at himself. ‘No eyes,’ he said, in explanation. ‘No eyes. My eyes have gone.’ And he panicked, taking off his glasses. ‘But Ben, look at me, then I’ve got no eyes as well.’ And Richard whipped off his sunglasses, showing Ben his eyes, and put them back on. Ben slowly replaced his. But stood looking at himself. What he was seeing was very different from anything he could have seen in London: that smart linen jacket, his hair, and now, his blacked-out eyes.

  Richard gave up his plans for trips into the countryside behind that dazzling coast and tried to find what Ben would enjoy. What did he like, though? He seemed to be pleased, strolling about, or sitting in cafés where people lazed and chatted. It was that ease with each other, the carelessness of it, that was attracting Ben, but Richard did not know that. He could think only in terms of his own past, and wondered if Ben was scared, thinking he was being followed. Ben did very much like walking along the edge of the sea, seeing the ships that appeared and were there, and then were not there, for they went again. He said to Richard, ‘Where do they go?’ ‘Who?’ ‘Those ships?’ ‘Oh, everywhere. All over the world, Ben.’

  And he saw Ben’s uncomprehending face.

  He liked mealtimes, and his steaks and fruit—that was all he ate, steak and fruit. He knew how to sit at a café table and order what he wanted, and he was managing the hotel well, sending out his clothes to be laundered, and going himself to the hotel barber, where he was shaved and his hair trimmed. Richard took him one evening to a nude show, but he got so carried away, letting out yelps and shouts of excitement, that Richard had to shush him. He wanted to go the next night, and promised to sit quietly, but when the girls came on, their nakedness bedecked with wisps of feather or shining stuff, he forgot, and had to be held down in his seat. Richard was actually afraid that Ben would run up to the stage and drag off some girl.

  What was Ben? He slept in his bed, like everyone else, he used his knife and fork, he kept his clothes clean, he liked his beard neat, and his hair cut, and yet he was not like anybody.

  During that week the inhabitants of this ancient port, all well used to criminals and adventurers, had taken Richard’s measure; he was probably the local mafia, this young man—but not as young as he tried to seem—good-looking in an ingratiating way, a manner that always had threat in it, no matter how much he smiled. But they could not place Ben. People made excuses to get into conversation. ‘Who is he?’ Some said, ‘What is he?’ All they could get out of Richard, who was becoming proud of his ability to fend them off, was, ‘He’s a film star.’ And soon, as this seemed to go down well, ‘He’s famous. He’s Ben Lovatt.’

  At the end of a week Richard telephoned Johnston to say that Ben could not manage by himself. He needed another week of surveillance. Johnston did not yet know how triumphantly his plans were working. A first instalment of money had come through, but he was going to have to wait for the next one, because of arousing suspicion. He did not want to pay Richard for another week, thought his accomplice had already been promised more than enough, a quarter of a million pounds, which to Johnston would quite soon seem nothing much. Richard had argued that if he was picked up by the police with Ben going through French customs then he would be in the sort of trouble that would put him in prison for years. Now Johnston said that he hadn’t been arrested, everything was fine. ‘No,’ said Richard now, ‘but I might have been.’ He wanted another quarter of a million. ‘Without me it wouldn’t have worked.’ ‘Yeah, but I’m not short of people to do my dirty work,’ said Johnston, determined not to give way to Richard, probably beginning a process of blackmail.

  This conversation could not go on: it was on a telephone, not in the cubbyhole but in the office of a friend of a friend, and even so, it could be traced.

  ‘What difference is another week going to make?’ asked Johnston.

  ‘It depends if you want him nicked or not,’ said Richard. ‘He just does whatever I tell him, so it’ll be the same with anybody, won’t it?’

  Traffic was swirling and grinding all around Richard: he was shouting. Johnston, in the quiet of a room in a Brixton back street that called itself an office, lost his temper, and shouted instructions, the most important being that if Ben did insist on coming back, he must not know where he could find either him, Johnston, or Rita. Then he agreed to pay for another week.

  Richard told Ben that they would have another week’s holiday.

  ‘And then are we going home?’ asked Ben.

  ‘What do you want to go back there for? Why do you want to leave all this?’

  For Richard this coast had been a revelation of well-being. He had come from a northern English town, and an ugly background: you could say he had been born a criminal. Like Johnston he had been in borstal, and then in prison. Meeting Johnston was the luckiest thing that ever happened to him. He worshipped Johnston, was eager to do anything for him. He was sent to this coast by Johnston, for not too delicate negotiations about getting a car, a Mercedes, into France, without papers, had succeeded and stayed. The life, particularly the casual comings and goings of the cafés and restaurants, the sunshine, the skies of this coast, bathed him with promises of happiness. He had been living poorly, hardly able to eat, though it was worth it for the sake of living here. And now this little crook, because of Johnston, was going to have a quarter of a million pounds and planned to buy a small house, or a flat, anything, provided he would be here, on the edge of this sea, where the light was.

  And here was Ben, who always had to sit in the shade, and who wanted only to go back to London—but Richard had no idea at all how much.

  During that second week, one night when Ben had been left at the hotel, by Richard, he set off by himself and wandered into the streets, going up the steps, always higher into the town, until he was stopped because there, in a doorway, was a girl and she was smiling at him.

  She established that he was English, and then, using her few words in English to set the price, turned to go into her room. Ben did not have in his pockets what she had asked for; which was much more than Rita demanded. He thought that she would be the same as Rita, and be good to him. In the room, this girl examined Ben: she was enough like Rita to admire those great shoulders, the power of him. She turned away to slip off her skirt, and felt those hands on her shoulders, and that she was being bent forward, and the teeth in her neck. She struggled free, and screamed that he was a cochon, an animal, a pig, a bête, pushed him towards the door and out of it, and told him in French never to come near her again.

  Ben went off down the street back to his hotel thinking that he must find someone like Rita, a kindly female: he was craving the kindness of women.

  Richard told him that they had only three days left, and then Ben would be on his own. He did not like saying this: he did not want to leave Ben alone, and not only because it would mean the end of well-paid good times. He had become fond of this—whatever he was. He knew that Ben would be in trouble soon: he had no idea at all of what was dangerous for him and what was not.

  Now Ben said that he was going back to London. He had worked out that if he had a passport, and some money, all he needed was to tell the girls at the desk to book him a flight: he had watched while other hotel guests had done this.

  He wanted to see Johnston. He had done Johnston a favour. ‘You just do this for me, Ben, that’s right, you’re doing me a bit of a favour. And I’ll be real grateful to you.’ These words had had the same effect on Ben as the old lady’s, ‘You’re a good boy, Ben.’

  Ben felt warmly towards Johnston, imagined how he would be welcomed—but he was hearing Richard say, ‘Ben, you don’t understand, Johnston’s not there now.’

  ‘Why not? Where is he?’

  ‘He’s gone away. He’s not doing the minicabs any more.’

  This would be true very soon, even if not true at this moment. Johnston had said, ‘I don’t want him back here. And I’m not
going to be here long anyway. And Rita’s left. Tell him that. Tell him Rita’s gone.’

  Richard told Ben, and saw what he knew was unhappiness, or at least unease.

  A dread was seizing Ben, a cold pain. He had had one refuge, one real friend—Rita. She was gone.

  Then he remembered the old woman. He could go back to her. He had some money now and so he would be welcome, could even give her money to buy food.

  He told Richard he would go to another friend, Mrs Biggs. And he found in his wallet the bit of paper she had given him. ‘See,’ he said. ‘That’s where she lives.’

  ‘If there was a telephone number you could ring her.’

  ‘She has a telephone,’ said Ben. ‘Everyone’s got a telephone.’

  Richard thought hard. If Ben went back to London, to this Mrs Biggs, then that would keep him out of Johnston’s way. He told Ben to stay where he was—as usual at a café table—and he went off to ring telephone enquiries. Loving France, or rather, this coast, had made it easy for him to learn some adequate phrases of French, but he did have difficulty, persuading the French directory girl that yes, there was a Mrs Biggs, at this address and she had a telephone. At last he was talking to the English directory enquiries and there he was told there was no Mrs Biggs at this address and therefore no number. Then he asked to be put through to the number at eleven Mimosa House, and was answered by a woman who said that Mrs Biggs no longer lived there. She had died in hospital.

  Richard told Ben that Mrs Biggs was dead, and Ben sat unmoving, silent, staring. He’s upset, Richard knew, and tried to talk him out of it, with suggestions they should have lunch, and then walk along the front.

  Richard did not know that Ben was so unhappy he would not talk, did not want to eat, could only sit there, not moving. It was an unhappiness that would never leave him now.

  He was understanding that nowhere in London, nowhere in his own country, was anyone at all who would smile when they saw him. He was thinking of Mrs Biggs’ room, where he had been happy, looking after her, of Rita, who had been kind, and then of his own home, but as soon as he imagined his mother, he saw, too, that scene where she had sat on the park bench and patted it so that Paul could come and sit by her. Paul, the image of that hated brother, rose up and filled his mind and brought with it thoughts of murder.

  He could not bear to think of his mother.

  Later, he did get up from his chair when Richard said he should, and did walk along the front, but he saw nothing, knew only that his heart was hurting most dreadfully, and that he felt so heavy he wanted to lie down there and then, on the pavement, where people passed and chattered and laughed.

  He said he wanted to lie down.

  Next day, Richard—he had a spare key to Ben’s room—went up and found Ben curled on his bed, eyes open, but not moving.

  Because Ben was in the habit of obeying Richard, he did get up because Richard said he must, and did go out to eat, and walk a little. He did not speak at all, not a word.

  And now Richard was going to abandon Ben: the time had come. He was fussing and exhorting and persuading: ‘You’ll remember how to do this Ben? Just do what we’ve been doing together and you’ll be all right.’

  Ben did not answer.

  On the morning Richard finally took his leave, he spoke to the girl at the desk, saying it was better if Ben had his money only in instalments. ‘In some ways he’s a bit childish,’ said Richard. ‘He hasn’t had much experience of life.’ When he said goodbye to Ben, up in his room, Ben curled on the bed, this rough and even cruel man knew he could easily cry. What did Johnston think he was doing, letting this loon, this simpleton, loose in the world?

  And so Richard went out of Ben’s life, to look for his little place, where he would live like a free man, not the hunted thing he had been all his life, waiting for the law to put its hand on his shoulders: perhaps his near-tears on leaving were a recognition that their situations in the world were similar. His plans did not turn out well. You may buy a nice little place for a quarter of a million, but then you have to live in it and pay for it, and you have to eat, too. And so Richard drifted back into crime. His story did not have a happy ending.

  Ben sat on his bed and from behind his dark glasses stared at the square of blue in his wall. Richard had gone, and he had been with him all the time, since coming here. The old woman had gone, and Rita, and Johnston. In that world where he had been part of park benches and doorways and railway stations, a person might huddle by you all night so close you could feel the warmth coming out and warming you—and then in the morning, gone, and you would never see them again. He was feeling so loose and weightless and unbelonging he could drop through the floor or float about the room. Yet he had his place here: the room was paid for another two weeks. He could stay in hiding in this room; he could go out into the streets where he had been with Richard. And he was hungry. Richard had said he should use room service if he found the outside world difficult, but to Ben anything he had never done for himself was a trap where he could be enmeshed, and flounder. In the lobby he returned the smiles of the women behind the desk in Reception, then went to the café. He went to the café he knew best. The waiter brought him what he always had, steak, then some fruit. Richard had made him practise paying a bill, and he put down the amount the waiter told him, in English, but knew it was more than it had been ever before. He went to the market. Now, because Richard was not there, a shield between him and this noisy bright world, the sound of French hurt him, full of unknown meanings and threats. The two of them had bought fruit at the market, and there Ben pointed at grapes, at peaches, could not understand what the woman vendor said, held out his palm with money on it—and saw it all disappear. He knew from the small satisfied grin on that face, as she turned away, and how she slid the money she had got from him into her money pocket, that he had been cheated. He felt eyes on him; knew people commented; he sat, as he would have done with Richard at a café table to watch the events and people—and knew he would have to go through the ritual of ordering fruit juice, of paying for it—and he got up and stumbled back to the hotel. He was in a panic. It was his worst moment. The knowledge of his aloneness was beating into him, You are alone, you are alone. He felt danger everywhere and he was right. He had been protected by Richard, and now he was not.

  He returned to his room. That night he went off into the poorer parts of the town, looking for a girl, but did not see one. He planned to try again the next night. He was thinking of Rita, for now he could remember only kindness, but before he could begin a life of wandering up and down this coast, following the smiles of whores, risking all kinds of bad trouble, something else happened.

  A film-maker from New York stood at the reception desk, chatting to the two young women who were arranging a return flight to New York for him. Alex was middle-aged, but in the American way, looking youngish, lean, healthy, and with young clothes, bright and expensive. Going back home would be a defeat. After long anxieties and crises, he had made a film, three years ago, not the one he wanted to make, but he had not been able to attract the money for that. His film was about youths becoming criminals and drug dealers in a South American city, and had earned him enough attention for him to know his second film would be watched for. This time he would stand out for the film he wanted, and if it took time…But it was taking time, and money was getting short. For a year he had been possessed, a mad man, with one thought: which film, which story? Ideas whirled about in his mind, and even his dreams, took him to this city or country and that, possessed him totally, but left him—not good enough; and then another idea took over. He had got to the point where everyone he saw, every street, or bar or railway station or airport suggested a film. The world had become a phantasmagoria of film sets, and he knew he was a little crazy. For half a year he had believed he would make a film about the great days of a Mediterranean port in an earlier time, and that was why he was here. But nothing seemed to crystallise his ideas, and he should leave. Yet he did not
want to leave this coast, and his dreams of it…Into the lobby from the lift came Ben, and Alex’s eyes followed him. Ben went to the revolving doors out to the street, stopped, came back, and sank into a chair. He was grinning—perhaps at an attractive private thought? Alex, who had not for months been able to look at anything or anybody without his mind filling with bright seductive scenes, saw a sombre hillside under a low louring sky, with black rocks clambering and piling up it, ancient vigorous trees; he heard water splashing and from beside a little waterfall emerged a creature, squat, hairy, with powerful shoulders and a deep chest, which lifted gleaming hostile eyes to see this alien, Alex, and barked, at which from behind rocks and through trees came a company of similar creatures, and they went running up the hillside into the mouth of a cave, a big hole in the hillside, and there they assembled and stood alert, to see what threat this unknown might mean. Below them were the crowns of the old trees, of a kind Alex could have sworn he had never seen, and all around jagged rocks. This band of what—dwarfs? Yetis?—nothing that Alex had seen in pictures or on film —held their ground there, staring at him. The tallest were five feet three or four inches, and others were shorter—females, perhaps? Hard to tell what was their sex with that hair falling from their loins. Coarse pale hair on their shoulders, beards, green eyes. Now in their hands were clubs, stones, some as sharp as knives…And the vision faded, it went, and Alex was staring at Ben in his smart clothes, who was looking at the revolving doors, and thinking that, yes, he would go back to London, and look for Rita, after all, there was that money for him in the safe. But Johnston would…It was the thought of Johnston that made that grin of fear appear again on his face. Ben had realised that Johnston had lied to him, tricked him, and now had left him helpless here, surrounded by people who made sounds he could not understand.