The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

by Doris Lessing

  ‘Yes, but at least we spread it out over ten years,’ he said.

  ‘We are going to give it a rest,’ announced Harriet. She added, sounding defiant, ‘For at least three years.’

  Everyone exchanged looks: she thought them condemning.

  ‘I told you so,’ said William. ‘These madmen are going to go on.’

  ‘These madmen certainly are,’ said David.

  ‘I told you so,’ said Dorothy. ‘When Harriet’s got an idea into her head, then you can save your breath.’

  ‘Just like her mother,’ said Sarah forlornly: this referred to Dorothy’s decision that Harriet needed her more than Sarah did, the defective child notwithstanding. ‘You’re much tougher than she is, Sarah,’ Dorothy had pronounced. ‘The trouble with Harriet is that her eyes have always been bigger than her stomach.’

  Dorothy was near Harriet, with little Jane, listless from the bad night, dozing in her arms. She sat erect, solid; her lips were set firm, her eyes missed nothing.

  ‘Why not?’ said Harriet. She smiled at her mother: ‘How could I do better?’

  ‘They are going to have four more children,’ Dorothy said, appealing to the others.

  ‘Good God,’ said James, admiring but awed. ‘Well, it’s just as well I make so much money.’

  David did not like this: he flushed and would not look at anyone.

  ‘Oh don’t be like that, David,’ said Sarah, trying not to sound bitter: she needed money, badly, but it was David, who was in a good job, who got so much extra.

  ‘You aren’t really going to have four more children?’ enquired Sarah, sighing – and they all knew she was saying, four more challenges to destiny. She gently put her hand over the sleeping Amy’s head, covered in a shawl, holding it safe from the world.

  ‘Yes, we are,’ said David.

  ‘Yes, we certainly are,’ said Harriet. ‘This is what everyone wants, really, but we’ve been brainwashed out of it. People want to live like this, really.’

  ‘Happy families,’ said Molly critically: she was standing up for a life where domesticity was kept in its place, a background to what was important.

  ‘We are the centre of this family,’ said David. ‘We are – Harriet and me. Not you, Mother.’

  ‘God forbid,’ said Molly, her large face, always highly coloured, even more flushed: she was annoyed.

  ‘Oh all right,’ said her son. ‘It’s never been your style.’

  ‘It’s certainly never been mine,’ said James, ‘and I’m not going to apologize for it.’

  ‘But you’ve been a marvellous father, super,’ chirruped Deborah. ‘And Jessica’s been a super mum.’

  Her real mother raised her ponderous brows.

  ‘I don’t seem to remember your ever giving Molly much of a chance,’ said Frederick.

  ‘But it’s so co-o-o-ld in England,’ moaned Deborah.

  James, in his bright, overbright clothes, a handsome well-preserved gent dressed for a southern summer, allowed himself the ironical snort of the oldster at youthful tactlessness, and his look at his wife and her husband apologized for Deborah. ‘And anyway,’ he insisted, ‘it isn’t my style. You’re quite wrong, Harriet. The opposite is true. People are brainwashed into believing family life is the best. But that’s the past.’

  ‘If you don’t like it, then why are you here?’ demanded Harriet, much too belligerently for this pleasant morning scene. Then she blushed and exclaimed, ‘No, I didn’t mean that!’

  ‘No, of course you don’t mean it,’ said Dorothy. ‘You’re overtired.’

  ‘We are here because it’s lovely,’ said a schoolgirl cousin of David’s. She had an unhappy, or at least complicated, family background, and she had taken to spending her holidays here, her parents pleased she was having a taste of real family life. Her name was Bridget.

  David and Harriet were exchanging long supportive humorous looks, as they often did, and had not heard the schoolgirl, who was now sending them pathetic glances.

  ‘Come on, you two,’ said William, ‘tell Bridget she’s welcome.’

  ‘What? What’s the matter?’ demanded Harriet.

  William said, ‘Bridget has to be told by you that she is welcome. Well – we all do, from time to time,’ he added, in his facetious way, and could not help sending a look at his wife.

  ‘Well, naturally you are welcome, Bridget,’ said David. He sent a glance to Harriet, who said at once. ‘But of course.’ She meant, That goes without saying; and the weight of a thousand marital discussions was behind it, causing Bridget to look from David to Harriet and back, and then around the whole family, saying, ‘When I get married, this is what I am going to do. I’m going to be like Harriet and David, and have a big house and a lot of children…and you’ll all be welcome.’ She was fifteen, a plain dark plump girl who they all knew would shortly blossom and become beautiful. They told her so.

  ‘It’s natural,’ said Dorothy tranquilly. ‘You haven’t any sort of a home really, so you value it.’

  ‘Something wrong with that logic,’ said Molly.

  The schoolgirl looked around the table, at a loss.

  ‘My mother means that you can only value something if you’ve experienced it,’ said David. ‘But I am the living proof that isn’t so.’

  ‘If you’re saying you didn’t have a proper home,’ said Molly, ‘that’s just nonsense.’

  ‘You had two,’ said James.

  ‘I had my room,’ said David. ‘My room – that was home.’

  ‘Well, I suppoe we must be grateful for that concession. I was not aware you felt deprived,’ said Frederick.

  ‘I didn’t, ever – I had my room.’

  They decided to shrug, and laugh.

  ‘And you haven’t even thought about the problems of educating them all,’ said Molly. ‘Not so far as we can see.’

  And now here was appearing that point of difference that the life in this house so successfully smoothed over. It went without saying that David had gone to private schools.

  ‘Luke will start at the local school this year,’ said Harriet. ‘And Helen will start next year.’

  ‘Well, if that’s good enough for you,’ said Molly.

  ‘My three went to ordinary schools,’ said Dorothy, not letting this slide; but Molly did not accept the challenge. She remarked, ‘Well, unless James chips in to help…” thus making it clear that she and Frederick could not or would not contribute.

  James said nothing. He did not even allow himself to look ironical.

  ‘It’s five years, six years, before we have to worry about the next stage of education for Luke and Helen,’ said Harriet, again sounding over-irritable.

  Insisted Molly: ‘We put David down for his schools when he was born. And Deborah, too.’

  ‘Well,’ said Deborah, ‘why am I any better for my posh schools than Harriet – or anyone else?’

  ‘It’s a point,’ said James, who had paid for the posh schools.

  ‘Not much of a point,’ said Molly.

  William sighed, clowning it: ‘Deprived all the rest of us are. Poor William. Poor Sarah. Poor Bridget. Poor Harriet. Tell me, Molly, if I had been to posh schools would I get a decent job now?’

  ‘That isn’t the point,’ said Molly.

  ‘She means you’d be happier unemployed or in a filthy job well educated than badly educated,’ said Sarah.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Molly. ‘Public education is awful. It’s getting worse. Harriet and David have got four children to educate. With more to come, apparently. How do you know James will be able to help you? Anything can happen in the world.’

  ‘Anything does, all the time,’ said William bitterly, but laughed to soften it.

  Harriet moved distressfully in her chair, took Paul off her breast with a skill at concealing herself they all noted and admired, and said, ‘I don’t want to have this conversation. It’s a lovely morning…’

  ‘I’ll help you, of course, within limits,’ said James.
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br />   ‘Oh, James…’ said Harriet, ‘thank you…thank you…Oh dear…why don’t we go up to the woods?…We could take a picnic lunch.’

  The morning had slid past. It was midday. Sun struck the edges of the jolly red curtains, making them an intense orange, sending orange lozenges to glow on the table among cups, saucers, a bowl of fruit. The children had come down from the top of the house and were in the garden. The adults went to watch them from the windows. The garden continued neglected; there was never time for it. The lawn was patchily lush, and toys lay about. Birds sang in the shrubs, ignoring the children. Little Jane, set down by Dorothy, staggered out to join the others. A group of children played noisily together, but she was too young, and strayed in and out of the game, in the private world of a two-year-old. They skilfully accommodated their game to her. The week before, Easter Sunday, this garden had had painted eggs hidden everywhere in it. A wonderful day, the children bringing in magical eggs from everywhere that Harriet and Dorothy and Bridget, the schoolgirl, had sat up half the night to decorate.

  Harriet and David were together at the window, the baby in her arms. He put his arm around her. They exchanged a quick look, half guilty because of the irrepressible smiles on their faces, which they felt were probably going to exasperate the others.

  ‘You two are incorrigible,’ said William. ‘They are hopeless,’ he said to the others. ‘Well, who’s complaining? I’m not! Why don’t we all go for that picnic?’

  The house party filled five cars, children wedged in or on the adults’ laps.

  Summer was the same: two months of it, and again the family came and went, and came again. The schoolgirl was there all the time, poor Bridget, clinging fast to this miracle of a family. Rather, in fact, as Harriet and David did. Both more than once – seeing the girl’s face, reverential, even awed, always on the watch as if she feared to miss some revelation of goodness or grace the moment she allowed her attention to lapse – saw themselves. Even uneasily saw themselves. It was too much…excessive…Surely they should be saying to her, ‘Look here, Bridget, don’t expect so much. Life isn’t like that!’ But life is like that, if you choose right: so why should they feel she couldn’t have what they had so plentifully?

  Even before the crowd gathered before the Christmas of 1973, Harriet was pregnant again. To her utter dismay, and David’s. How could it have happened? They had been careful, particularly so because of their determination not to have any more children for a while. David tried to joke, ‘It’s this room, I swear it’s a baby-maker!’

  They had put off telling Dorothy. She was not there, anyway, because Sarah had said it was unfair that Harriet got all the help. Harriet simply could not manage. One after another, three girls came to help; they had just left school and could not easily find work. They were not much good. Harriet believed she looked after them more than they her. They came or didn’t come as the mood took them, and would sit around drinking tea with their girl-friends while Harriet toiled. She was frantic, exhausted…she was peevish; she lost her temper; she burst into tears…David saw her sitting at the kitchen table, head in her hands, muttering that this new foetus was poisoning her: Paul lay whimpering in his pram, ignored. David took a fortnight’s leave from his office to come home and help. They had known how much they owed Dorothy, but now knew it better – and that when she heard Harriet was pregnant again she would be angry. Very. And she would be right.

  ‘It will all be easier when Christmas starts,’ wept Harriet.

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ said David, furious. ‘Of course they can’t come this Christmas.’

  ‘But it is so easy when people are here, everyone helps me.’

  ‘Just for once we’ll go to one of them,’ said David, but this idea did not live for more than five minutes: none of the other households could accomodate six extra people.

  Harriet lay weeping on her bed. ‘But they must come, don’t put them off – oh, David, please…at least it’ll keep my mind off it.’

  He sat on his side of the bed watching her, uneasy, critical, trying not to be. Actually he would be pleased not to have the house full of people for three weeks, a month: it cost so much, and they were always short of money. He had taken on extra work, and here he was at home, a nursemaid.

  ‘You simply have to get someone in to help, Harriet. You must try and keep one of them.’

  She burst out in indignation at the criticism. ‘That’s not fair! You aren’t here stuck with them – they aren’t any good. I don’t believe any of these girls have done an hour’s work in their lives.’

  ‘They’ve been some help – even if it’s only the washing-up.’

  Dorothy telephoned to say that both Sarah and Harriet were going to have to manage: she, Dorothy, needed a break. She was going home to her flat to please herself for a few weeks. Harriet was weeping, hardly able to speak. Dorothy could not get out of her what could possibly be wrong: she said, ‘Very well, I suppose I’ll have to come, then.’

  She sat at the big table with David, Harriet, the four children there, too, and looked severely at Harriet. She had understood her daughter was pregnant again within half an hour of arriving. They could see from her set angry face that she had terrible things to say. ‘I’m your servant, I do the work of a servant in this house.’ Or, ‘You are very selfish, both of you. You are irresponsible.’ These words were in the air but were not spoken: they knew that if she allowed herself to begin she would not stop with this.

  She sat at the head of the table – the position near the stove – stirring her tea, with one eye on baby Paul, who was fretful in his little chair and wanted to be cuddled. Dorothy, too, looked tired, and her grey hair was disordered: she had been going up to her room to tidy herself when she had been swallowed in embraces with Luke and Helen and Jane, who had missed her and knew that the crossness and impatience that had ruled the house would now be banished.

  ‘You know that everyone is expecting to come here for Christmas,’ she demanded heavily, not looking at them.

  ‘Oh yes, yes, yes,’ clamoured Luke and Helen, making a song and dance of it and rushing around the kitchen. ‘Oh yes, when are they coming? Is Tony coming? Is Robin coming? Is Anne coming?’

  ‘Sit down,’ said David, sharp and cold, and they gave him astonished, hurt looks and sat.

  ‘It’s crazy,’ said Dorothy. She was flushed with the hot tea and with all the things she was forcing herself not to say.

  ‘Of course everyone has to come,’ Harriet said, weeping – and ran out of the room.

  ‘It’s very important to her,’ said David apologetically.

  ‘And not to you?’ This was sarcastic.

  ‘The thing is, I don’t think Harriet is anywhere near herself,’ said David, and held his eyes on Dorothy’s, to make her face him. But she would not.

  ‘What does that mean, my mother isn’t near herself?’ enquired Luke, the six-year-old, ready to make a word game of it. Even, perhaps, a riddle. But he was perturbed. David put out his arm and Luke went to his father, stood close, looked up into his face.

  ‘It’s all right, Luke,’ said David.

  ‘You’ve got to get someone in to help,’ said Dorothy.

  ‘We have tried.’ David explained what had happened with the three amiable and indifferent girls.

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me. Who wants to do an honest job these days?’ said Dorothy. ‘But you have to get someone. And I can tell you I didn’t expect to end my days as your and Sarah’s skivvy.’

  Here Luke and Helen gave their grandmother incredulous looks and burst into tears. After a pause, Dorothy controlled herself and began consoling them.

  ‘All right, it’s all right,’ she said. ‘And now I’m going to put Paul and Jane to bed. You two, Luke and Helen, can put yourselves to bed. I’ll come up and say good night. And then your gran is off to bed. I’m tired.’

  The subdued children went off upstairs.

  Harriet did not come down again that evening; her husband and her m
other knew she was being sick. Which they were used to…but were not used to ill temper, tears, fretfulness.

  When the children were in bed, David did some of the work he had brought home, made himself a sandwich, and was joined by Dorothy, who had come down to make herself tea. This time they did not exchange irritabilites: they were together in a companionable silence, like two old campaigners facing trials and difficulties.

  Then David went up into the great shadowy bedroom, where lights from an upstairs window in a neighbouring house a good thirty yards away sent gleams and shadows on to the ceiling. He stood looking at the big bed where Harriet lay. Asleep? Baby Paul was lying asleep close to her, unwrapped. David cautiously leaned over, folded Paul into his cuddling blanket, took him to his room next door. He saw Harriet’s eyes shine as she followed his movements.

  He got into bed and, as always, slid out his arm so that she could put her head on to it and be gathered close to him.

  But she said, ‘Feel this,’ and guided his hand to her stomach.

  She was nearly three months pregnant.

  This new baby had not yet shown signs of independent life, but now David felt a jolt under his hand, quite a hard movement.

  ‘Can you be further along that you thought?’ Once more he felt the thrust, and could not believe it.

  Harriet was weeping again, and he felt, knowing of course this was unfair, that she was breaking the rules of some contract between them: tears and misery had not ever been on their agenda!

  She felt rejected by him. They had always loved to lie here feeling a new life, greeting it. She had waited four times for the first little flutters, easily mistaken but then certain; the sensation that was as if a fish mouthed out a bubble; the small responses to her movements, her touch, and even – she was convinced – her thoughts.

  This morning, lying in the dark before the children woke, she had felt a tapping in her belly, demanding attention. Disbelieving, she had half sat up, looking down at her still flat, if soft, stomach, and felt the imperative beat, like a small drum. She had been keeping herself on the move all day, so as not to feel these demands from the new being, unlike anything she had known before.