African Stories

by Doris Lessing

  And now, for the first time, she had an affair with a man for whom she cared nothing: this was a half-conscious choice, for she understood that she could not have chosen a man whom she would grow to love. And so it went on, for perhaps two years. She was associating only with people who moved her not at all; and this was because she did not want to be moved.

  There came a point when she said to herself that she must decide now, finally, what she wanted, and make sacrifices to get it. She was twenty-eight. She had spent the years since leaving school moving from hotel to furnished flat, from one job to the next, from one country to another. She seemed to have a tired affectionate remembrance of so many people, men and women, who had once filled her life. Now it was time to make something permanent. But what?

  She said to herself that she was getting hard; yet she was not hard; she was numbed and tired. She must be very careful, she decided; she must not fall in love, lightly, again. Next time, it must matter.

  All this time she was leading a full social life: she was attractive, well-dressed, amusing. She had the reputation of being brilliant and cold. She was also very lonely and she had never been lonely before, since there had always been some man to whom she gave warmth, affection, sympathy.

  There was one morning when she had a vision of evil. It was at the window of a large hotel, one warm summer’s day, when she was looking down through the streets of the attractive modern city in South America, with the crowds of people and the moving traffic . . . it might have been almost any city, on a bright warm day, from a hotel window, with the people blowing like leaves across her vision, as rootless as she, as impermanent, their lives meaning as little. For the first time in her life, the word evil meant something to her: she looked at it, coldly, and rejected it. This was sentiment, she said; the result of being tired, and nearly thirty. The feeling was not related to anything. She could not feel—why should one feel? She disliked what she was—well, it was at any rate honest to accept oneself as unlikable. Her brain remarked dispassionately that if one lived without rules, one should be prepared to take the consequences, even if that meant moments of terror at hotel windows, with death beckoning below and whispering: Why live? Anyway, who was responsible for the way she was? Had she ever planned it? Why should one be one thing rather than another?

  It was chance that took her to Cape Town. At a party she met a man who offered her a job as his secretary on a business trip, and it was easy to accept, for she had come to hate South America.

  During the trip over she found, with a groan, that she had never been more efficient, more responsible, more gently responsive. He was an unhappy man, who needed sympathy . . . she gave it. At the end of the trip he asked her to marry him; and she understood she would have felt much the same if he had asked her to dinner. She fled.

  She had enough money saved to live without working, so for months she stayed by herself, in a small hotel high over Cape Town, where she could watch the ships coming and going in the harbour and think: they are as restless as I am. She lived gently, testing every emotion she felt, making no contact save the casual ones inevitable in a hotel, walking by herself for hours of every day, soaking herself in the sea and the sun as if the beautiful peninsula could heal her by the power of its beauty. And she ran away from any possibility of liking some other human being as if love itself were poisoned.

  One warm afternoon when she was walking high along the side of a mountain, with the blue sea swinging and lifting below, and a low sun sending a sad red pathway from the horizon, she was overtaken by two other walkers. There was no one else in sight, and it was inevitable they should continue together. She found they were farmers on holiday from Rhodesia, half-brothers, who had worked themselves into prosperity; this was the first holiday they had taken for years, and they were in a loosened, warm, adventurous mood. She sensed they were looking for wives to take back with them.

  She liked Tom from the first, though for a day or so she flirted with Kenneth. This was an automatic response to his laughing, challenging antagonism. It was Kenneth who spoke first, in his brusque, offhand way, and she felt attracted to him: theirs was the relationship of people moving towards a love affair. But she did not really want to flirt; with Kenneth it seemed anything else was impossible. She was struck by the way Tom, the elder brother, listened while they sparred, smiling uncritically, almost indulgently: his was an almost protective attitude. It was more than protective. A long while afterwards she told Tom that on that first afternoon he had reminded her of the peasant who uses a bird to catch fish for him. Yet there was a moment during the long hike back to the city through the deepening evening, when Julia glanced curiously at Tom and saw his warm blue glance resting kindly on her in a slow, speculative way, and she chose him, then, in her mind, even while she continued the exchange with Kenneth. Because of that kindness, she let herself sink towards the idea of marriage. It was what she wanted, really; and she did not care where she lived. Emotionally there was no country of which she could say: this is my home.

  For several days the three of them went about together, and all the time she bantered with Kenneth and watched Tom. That defensive, grudging thing she could feel in Kenneth, which attracted her, against her will, was what she was afraid of: she was watching, half-fearfully, half-cynically, for its appearance in Tom. Then, slowly, Kenneth’s treatment of her grew more offhand and brutal: he knew he was being made use of. There came a point when in his sarcastic frank way he shut himself off from her; and for a while the three of them were together without contact. It had been Kenneth and she, with Tom as urbane onlooker; now it was she, by herself, drifting alone, floating loose, waiting, as it were, to be gathered in; and it was possible to mark the point when Tom and Kenneth looked at each other sardonically, in understanding, before Tom moved into Kenneth’s place in his warm and deliberate fashion, claiming her.

  He was nicer than she had believed possible. There was suddenly no conflict. He listened to her tales about her life with detached interest, as if they could not possibly concern him. He remarked once, in his tender, protective way: “You must have been hurt hard at some time. That’s the trouble with you independent women. Actually, you are quite a nice woman, Julia.” She laughed at him scornfully, as an arrogant male who has to make some kind of a picture of a woman so as to be able to fit her into his life. He treated her laughter tolerantly. When she said things like this he found it merely a sort of piquancy, a sign of her wit. Half-laughingly, half-despairingly, she said to Kenneth: “You do realize that Tom hasn’t an idea of what I’m like? Do you think it’s fair to marry him?”

  “Well, why not, if he wants to be married?” returned Kenneth briskly. “He’s romantic. He sees you as a wanderer from city to city, and from bed to bed, because you are trying to heal a broken heart or something of the kind. That appeals to him.”

  Tom listened to this silently, smiling with disquiet. But there were times when Julia liked to think she had a broken heart; it certainly felt bruised. It was restful to accept Tom’s idea of her. She said in a piqued way to Kenneth: “I suppose you understand perfectly easily why I’ve lived the way I have?”

  Kenneth raised his brows. “Why? Because you enjoyed it of course. What better reason?”

  She could not help laughing, even while she said crossly, feeling misunderstood: “The fact is, you are as bad as Tom. You make up stories about women, too, to suit yourself. You like thinking of women as hard and decided, cynically making use of men.”

  “Certainly,” said Kenneth. “Much better than letting yourself be made use of. I like women to know what they want and get it.”

  This kind of conversation irritated and saddened Julia: it was rather like the froth whipping on the surface of the sea, with the currents underneath dark and unknown.

  She did not like being reminded how much better Kenneth understood her than Tom did. She was pleased to get the business of the ceremony over. Tom married her in a purposeful, unhurrying way; but he remarked that it must
be before a certain date because he wanted to start planting soon.

  Kenneth attended as best man with a glint of malice in his eye, and the air of a well-wishing onlooker, interested to see how things would turn out. Julia and he exchanged a glance of pure understanding, very much against their wills, for their attitude towards each other was now one of brisk friendship. From the security of Tom’s arms, she allowed herself to think that if Kenneth were not the kind of man to feel protective towards a woman simply because he enjoyed feeling protective, then it was so much the worse for him. This was slightly vindictive in her; but on the whole good-natured enough—good-nature was necessary; the three of them would be living together in one house, on the same farm, seeing other people seldom.

  It was quite easy, after all. Kenneth did not have to efface himself. Tom effortlessly claimed Julia as his wife, from his magnificent, lazy self-assurance, and she was glad to be claimed. Kenneth and she maintained a humorous understanding. He was given three rooms to himself in one wing of the house; but it was not long before they became disused. It seemed silly for him to retire after dinner by himself. In the evenings, the fact that Julia was Tom’s wife was marked by their two big chairs set side by side, with Kenneth’s opposite. He used to sit there watching them with his observant, slightly sarcastic smile.

  After a while Julia understood she was feeling uneasy; she put it down to the fact that she had expected subtle antagonism between the two men, which she would have to smooth over, while in fact there was no antagonism. It went deeper than that. Those first few nights, when Kenneth tactfully withdrew to his rooms, but looking amused, Tom was restless: he missed Kenneth badly. Julia watched them; and saw with a curious humorous sinking of the heart that they were so close to each other they could not bear to be apart for long. In the evenings it was they who talked, in the odd bantering manner they used even when serious: particularly when serious. Tom liked it when Kenneth sat there opposite, looking shrewd and sceptical about this marriage: they would tease each other in a way that, had they been man and woman, would have seemed positively flirtatious. Listening to them, Julia felt an extraordinary unease, as at a perversity. She chose not to think about it. Better to be affectionately amused at Tom’s elder-brother attitude towards Kenneth; there was often something petulant, rebellious, childish, in Kenneth’s attitude towards Tom. Why, Tom was even elder-brotherish to her, who had been managing her own life, so efficiently, for years all over the world. Well, and was not that why she had married him?

  She accepted it. They all accepted it. They grew into a silent comfortable understanding. Tom, so to speak, was the head of the family, commanding, strong, perhaps a little obtuse, as authority has to be; and Julia and Kenneth deferred to him, with the slightest hint of mockery, to gloss the fact that they were glad to defer: how pleasant to let the responsibility rest on someone else!

  Julia even learned to accept the knowledge that when Tom was busy, and she walked with Kenneth, or swam with Kenneth, or took trips into town with Kenneth, it was not only with Tom’s consent: more, he liked it, even needed it. Sometimes she felt as if he were urging her to be with his brother. Kenneth felt it and rebelled, shying away in his petulant younger-brother manner. He would exclaim: “Good Lord, man, Julia’s your wife, not mine.” And Tom would laugh uneasily and say: “I don’t like the idea of being possessive.” The thought of Tom being possessive was so absurd that Julia and Kenneth began giggling helplessly, like conspiring and wise children. And when Tom had departed, leaving them together, she would say to Kenneth, in her troubled serious fashion: “But I don’t understand this. I don’t understand any of it. It flies in the face of nature.”

  “So it does,” Kenneth would return easily. He looked at her with a quizzical glint. “You must take things as they come, my dear sister-in-law.” But Julia felt she had been doing just that: she had relaxed, without thinking, drifting warmly and luxuriously inside Tom’s warm and comfortable grasp: which was also Kenneth’s, and because Tom wanted it that way.

  In spite of Tom, she maintained with Kenneth a slight but strong barrier, because they were people who could be too strongly attracted to each other. Once or twice, when they had been left alone together by Tom, Kenneth would fly off irritably: “Really, why I bother to be loyal in the circumstances I can’t think.”

  “But what are the circumstances?” Julia asked, puzzled.

  “Oh Lord, Julia . . .” Kenneth expostulated irritably.

  Once, when he was brutal with irritability, he made the curious remark: “The fact is, it was just about time Tom and I had a wife.” He began laughing, not very pleasantly.

  Julia did not understand. She thought it sounded ugly.

  Kenneth regarded her ironically and said: “Fortunately for Tom, he doesn’t know anything at all about himself.”

  But Julia did not like this said about her husband, even though she felt it to be true. Instinctively this particular frontier in their mutual relations was avoided in future; and she was careful with Kenneth, refusing to discuss Tom with him.

  From time to time during those two years before Tom left for the war, Kenneth investigated (his own word) the girls on surrounding farms, with a view to marrying. They bored him. He had a prolonged affair with a married woman whose husband bored her. To Julia and Tom he made witty remarks about his position as a lover. Sometimes the three of them would become helpless with laughter at his descriptions of himself being gallant: the lady was romantic, and liked being courted. Kenneth was not romantic, and his interest in the lady was confined to an end which he could not prevent himself describing in his pungent, sour, resigned fashion during those long evenings with the married couple. Again, Julia got the uneasy feeling that Tom was really too interested—no, that was not the word; it was not the easy-going interest of an amused outsider that Tom displayed; while he listened to Kenneth being witty about his affair, it was almost as if he were participating himself, as if he were silently urging Kenneth on to further revelations. On these occasions Julia felt a revulsion from Tom. She said to herself that she was jealous, and repressed the feeling.

  When the war started Tom became restless; Julia knew that he would soon go. He volunteered before there was conscription; and she watched, with a humorous sadness, the scene (an uncomfortable one) between her two men, when it seemed that Tom felt impelled to apologise to Kenneth for taking the advantage of him in grasping a rare chance of happiness. Kenneth was unfit: the two brothers had come to Africa in the first place because of Kenneth’s delicate lungs. Kenneth did not at all want to go to the war. “Lord!” he exclaimed to Tom; “there’s no need to sound so apologetic. You’re welcome. I’m not a romantic. I don’t like getting killed unless in a good cause. I can’t see any point in the thing.” In this way he appeared to dismiss the war and the world’s turmoil. As for Tom, he didn’t really care about the issues of the war, either. It was sufficient that there was a war. For both men it was axiomatic that it was impossible England could ever be beaten in a war; they might laugh at their own attitude (which they did, when Julia, from her liberal travelled internationalism, mocked at them), but that was what they felt, nevertheless.

  As for Julia, she was more unhappy about the war than either of them. She had grown into security on the farm; now the world, which she had wanted to shut out, pressed in on her again; and she thought of her many friends, in so many countries, in the thick of things, feeling strange partisan emotions which seemed to her absurd. For she thought in terms of people, not of nations or issues; and the war, to her, was a question of mankind gone mad, killing each other pointlessly. Always the pointlessness of everything! And now she was not allowed to forget it.

  To do her credit, all her unhappiness and female resentment at being so lightly abandoned by Tom at the first sound of a bugle calling adventure down the wind was suppressed. She merely said scornfully to him: “What a baby you are! As if there hadn’t been the last war! And look at all the men in the district, pleased as punch because
something exciting is going to happen. If you really cared two hoots about the war, I might respect you. But you don’t. Nor do most of the people we know.”

  Tom did not like this. The atmosphere of war had stirred him into a superficial patriotism. “You sound like a newspaper leader,” Julia mocked him. “You don’t really believe a word you say. The truth is that most people like us, in all the countries I’ve been in, haven’t a notion what we believe about anything. We don’t believe in the slogans and the lies. It makes me sick, to see the way you all get excited the moment war comes.”

  This made Tom angry, because it was true; and because he had suddenly remembered his sentimental attachment to England, in the Rupert Brooke fashion. They were on edge with each other, in the days before he left: he was glad to go, particularly as Kenneth was being no less caustic. This was the first time the two men had ever been separated; and Julia felt that Kenneth was as hurt as she because Tom left them so easily. In fact, they were all pleased when Tom was able to leave the farm, and put an end to the misery of their tormenting each other.

  But after he had gone, Julia was very unhappy. She missed him badly. Marrying had been a greater peace than she had imagined possible for her. To let the restless critical part of one die; to drift; to relax; to enjoy Africa as a country, the way it looked and the way it felt; to enjoy the physical things slowly, without haste—learning all this had, she imagined, healed her. And now, without Tom, she was nothing. She was unsupported and unwarmed; and she knew that marrying had after all cured her of nothing. She was still floating rootlessly, without support; she belonged nowhere; and even Africa, which she had grown to love, meant nothing to her really: it was another country she had visited as lightly as a migrant bird.