Authors: Doris Lessing
He talked to Rose, and suddenly the little cat showed its sharp and unpleasant claws. ‘What is it you want to know?’ she demanded coldly, after several clumsy remarks from him. ‘Well, Rosie – it’s that bloke George, you said you were going to marry him when you were a kid still?’
‘What of it?’ she said, giving him a cool glance.
‘You were together for a long time?’
‘Three years,’ she said flatly.
‘Three years!’ he exclaimed. He had not thought of anything so serious. ‘Three years is a long time.’
She looked at him with a pleading reproach that he entirely failed to understand. As far as she was concerned the delight Jimmie had given her completely cancelled out anything she had known before. George was less than a memory. When she told herself that Jimmie was the first man she had loved, it was true, because that was how she felt. The fact that he could now question it, doubting himself, weakened the delight, made her unsure not only of him but of herself. How could he destroy their happiness like this! And into the reproach came contempt. She looked at him with heavy, critical
eyes; and Jimmie felt quite wild with bewilderment and dismay – she could look at him like that! – then that proved she had been lying when she said he was the first – if she had said so … ‘But, Rosie,’ he blustered, ‘it stands to reason. Engaged three years, and you tell me …’
‘I’ve never told you anything,’ she pointed out, and got up from the table and began stacking the dishes ready for washing.
‘Well, I’ve a right to know, haven’t I?’ he cried out, unhappily.
But this was very much a mistake. ‘Right?’ she inquired in a prim, disdainful voice. She was no longer Rose, she was something much older. She seemed to be hearing her mother speaking. ‘Who’s talking about rights?’ She dropped the dishes neatly into the hot, soapy water and said: ‘Men! I’ve never asked you what you did before me. And I’m not interested either, if you want to know. And what I did, if I did anything, doesn’t interest you neither.’ Here she turned on the tap so that the splashing sounds made another barrier. Her ears filled with the sound of water, she thought: Men, they always spoil everything. She had forgotten George, he didn’t exist. And now Jimmie brought him to life and made her think of him. Now she was forced to wonder: Did I love him as much then? Was it the same as this? And if her happiness with George had been as great as now it was with Jimmie, then that very fact seemed to diminish love itself and make it pathetic and uncertain. It was as if Jimmie were doing it on purpose to upset her. That, at any rate, was how she felt.
But across the din of the running water Jimmie shouted: ‘So I’m not interested, is that it?’
‘No, you’d better not be interested,’ she announced, and looked stonily before her, while her hands worked among the hot, slippery plates. ‘So that’s how it is?’ he shouted again, furiously.
To which she did not reply. He remained leaning at the table, calling Rose names under his breath, but at the same time conscious of bewilderment. He felt that all his possessive masculinity was being outraged and flouted; there was, however, no doubt that she felt as badly treated as he did. As she did not relent he went to her and put his arms around her. It was necessary for him to destroy
this aloof and wounded-looking female and restore the loving, cosy woman. He began to tease: ‘Spitfire, little cat, that’s what you are.’ He pulled her hair and held her arms to her sides so that she could not dry the plates. She remained unresponsive. Then he saw that the tears where running down her immobile and stubborn cheeks, and in a flush of triumph picked her up and carried her over to the bed. It was all quite easy, after all.
But maybe not so easy, because late that night, in a studiously indifferent voice, Rose inquired from the darkness at his side: ‘When are we going to get married?’ He stiffened. He had forgotten – or almost – about this. Hell, wasn’t she satisfied? Didn’t he spend all his evenings here? He might just as well be married, seeing what she expected of him. ‘Don’t you trust me, Rosie?’ he inquired at last. ‘Yes, I trust you,’ she said, rather doubtfully, and waited. ‘There’s reasons why I can’t marry you just now.’ She remained silent, but her silence was like a question hanging in the dark between them. He did not reply, but turned and kissed her. ‘I love you, Rosie, you know that, don’t you?’ Yes, she knew that; but about a week later he left her one morning saying: ‘I can’t come tonight, Rosie. I’ve got to put in some work on this exam.’ He saw her glance at the desk she had bought him and which he had never used. ‘I’ll be along tomorrow as usual,’ he said quickly, wanting to escape from the troubled, searching eyes.
She asked suddenly: ‘Your wife getting anxious about you?’
He caught his breath and stared at her: ‘Who told you?’ She laughed derisively. ‘Well, who told you?’
‘No one told me,’ she said, with contempt.
‘Then I must have been talking in my sleep,’ he muttered, anxiously.
She laughed loudly: ‘“Someone told me.” “Talking in your sleep” – you must think I’m stupid.’ And with a familiar, maddening gesture, she turned away and picked up a dishcloth.
‘Leave the dishes alone, they’re clean anyway,’ he shouted.
‘Don’t shout at me like that.’
‘Rose,’ he appealed after a moment, ‘I was going to tell you, I just couldn’t tell you – I tried to, often.’
‘Yes?’ she said, laconically. That
yes
of hers always exasperated him. It was like a statement of rock-bottom disbelief, a basic indifference to himself and the world of men. It was as if she said: ‘There’s only one person I can rely on – myself.
‘Rosie, she won’t divorce me, she won’t give me my freedom.’ These dramatic words were supplied straight to his tongue by the memory of a film he had seen the week before. He felt ashamed of himself. But her face had changed. ‘You should have told me,’ she said; and once again he was disconcerted because of the pity in her voice. She had instinctively turned to him with a protective movement. Her arms went around him and he let his head sink on her shoulder with that old feeling that he was being swept away, that he had no control over the things he did and said. Hell, he thought, even while he warmed to her tenderness: to hell with it. I never meant to get me and Rosie into this fix. In the meantime she held him comfortingly, bending her face to his hair, but there was a rigidity in her pose that told him she was still waiting. At last she said: ‘I want to have kids. I’m not getting any younger.’ He tightened his arms around her waist while he thought: I never thought of that. For he had two children of his own. Then he thought: She’s right. She should have kids. Remember how she got worked up over that other kid in the blitz? Women need to have kids. He thought of her with his child, and pride stirred in him. He realized he would be pleased if she got pregnant, and felt even more at sea. Rose said: ‘Ask her again, Jimmie. Make her divorce you. I know women get spiteful and that about divorces, but if you talk to her nice –’ He miserably promised that he would. ‘You’ll ask her tonight?’ she insisted. ‘Well …’ the fact was, that he had not intended to go home tonight. He wanted to have an evening to himself – go to the pub, see some of his pals, even work for an hour or so. ‘Weren’t you going home tonight?’ she asked, incredulously, seeing his face. ‘No, I meant it, I want to do some work. I’ve got to get this exam, Rosie. I know I can take it if I work a little. And then I’m qualified. Just now I’m not one thing and I’m not the other.’ She accepted this with a sigh, then pleaded: ‘Go home tomorrow then and ask her.’
‘But tomorrow I want to come and see you, Rosie, don’t you want me?’ She sighed again, not knowing that she did, and smiled: ‘You’re nothing but a baby, Jimmie.’ He began coaxing: ‘Come on, be nice, Rosie, give me a kiss.’ He felt it was urgently necessary for him to have her warm and relaxed and loving again before he could leave her with a quiet mind. And so she was – but not entirely. There was a thoughtful line across her forehead and her mouth was grave and sad. Oh, to hell with it, he thought, as he went off. To hell with them all.
The next evening he went to Rose anxiously. He had drunk himself gay and debonair in the pub, he had flirted a little with Pearl, talked sarcastically about women and marriage, and finally gone home to sleep. He had breakfast with his family, avoided his wife’s sardonic eye, and went off to work with a bad hangover. At the factory, as always, he became absorbed in what he was doing. It was a small factory which made precision instruments. He was highly skilled, but in status an ordinary workman. He knew, had known for a long time, that with a little effort he could easily take an examination which would lift him into the middle classes as far as money was concerned. It was the money he cared about, not the social aspect of it. For years his wife had been nagging at him to better himself, and he had answered impatiently because, for her, what mattered was to outdo their neighbours. This he despised. But she was right for the wrong reasons. It was a question of devoting a year of evenings to study. What was a year of one’s life? Nothing. And he had always found examinations easy. That day, at the factory, he had decided to tell Rose that she would not see as much of him in future. He swore angrily to himself that she must understand a man had a duty to himself. He was only forty, after all … And yet, even while he spoke firmly to himself and to the imaginary Rose, he saw a mental picture of the desk she had bought him that stood unused in the living room of the flat. ‘Well, who’s stopping you from working?’ she would inquire, puzzled. Genuinely puzzled, too. But he could not work in that flat, he knew that; although in the two months before he had met Rose he was working quite steadily in his evenings. That day he was cursing the fate that
had linked him with Rose; and by evening he was hurrying to her as if some terrible thing might happen if he were not there by supper-time. He was expecting her to be cold and distant, but she fell into his arms as if he had been away for weeks. ‘I missed you,’ she said, clinging to him. ‘I was so lonely without you.’
‘It was only one night,’ he said, jauntily, already reassured.
‘You were gone two nights last week,’ she said, mournfully. At once he felt irritated. ‘I didn’t know you counted them up.’ he said, trying to smile. She seemed ashamed that she had said it. ‘I just get lonely,’ she said, kissing him guiltily. ‘After all …’
‘After all what?’ His voice was aggressive.
‘It’s different for you,’ she defended herself. ‘You’ve got – other things.’ Here she evaded his look. ‘But I go to work, and then I come home and wait for you. There’s nothing but you to look forward to.’ She spoke hastily, as if afraid to annoy him, and then she put her arms around his neck and kissed him coaxingly and said: ‘I’ve cooked you something you like – can you smell it?’ And she was the warm and affectionate woman he wanted her to be. Later he said: ‘Listen, Rosie girl, I’ve got to tell you something. That exam – I must start working for it.’ She said, gaily, at once: ‘But I told you already, you can work here at the desk and I’ll sew while you work, and it’ll be lovely.’ The idea seemed to delight her, but his heart chilled at it. It seemed to him quite insulting to their romantic love that she should not mind his working, that she should suggest prosaic sewing – just like a wife. He spent the next few evenings with her, newly in love, absorbed in her. And he felt hurt when she suggested hurriedly – for she was afraid of a rebuff – ‘If you want to work tonight, I don’t mind, Jimmie.’ He said laughing: ‘Oh, to hell with work, you’re the only work I want.’ She was flattered, but the thoughtful line was marked deep across her forehead. About a fortnight after his wife was first mentioned she delicately inquired: ‘Have you asked her about the divorce?’
He turned away, saying evasively, ‘She wouldn’t listen just now.’ He was not looking at her, but he could feel her heavy, questioning look on him. His irritation was so strong that he had to make an effort to control it. Also he was guilty, and that guilt he could
understand even less than the irritation. He all at once became very gay, so that his mood infected her, and they were giggling and laughing like two children. ‘You’re just conventional, that’s what you are,’ he said, pulling her hair. ‘Conventional?’ she tasted the big word doubtfully. ‘Women always want to get married. What do you want to get married for? Aren’t we happy? Don’t we love each other? Getting married would just spoil it.’ But theoretical statements like this always confused Rose. She would consider each of them separately, with a troubled face, rather respectful of the intellectual minds that had formulated them. And while she considered them, the current of her emotions ran steadily and deep, unconnected with words. From the gulf of love in which she was sunk she murmured, fondly: ‘Oh, you – you just talk and talk.’ ‘Men are polygamous,’ he said gaily, ‘it’s a fact, scientists say so.’ ‘What are women then?’ she asked, keeping her end up. ‘They aren’t polygamous.’ She considered this seriously, as was her way, and said doubtfully: ‘Yes?’ ‘Hell,’ he expostulated, half seriously, half laughing, ‘you’re telling me you’re polygamous?’ But Rose moved uneasily, with a laugh, away from him. To connect a word like polygamous, reeking as it did of the ‘nosy parkers’ who were, she felt, her chief enemy in life, with herself, was too much to ask of her. Silence. ‘You’re thinking of George,’ he suddenly shouted, jealously. ‘I wasn’t doing any such thing,’ she said, indignantly. Her genuine indignation upset him. He always hated it when she was serious. As far as he was concerned, he had just been teasing her – he thought.
Once she said: ‘Why do you always look cross when I say what I think about something?’ Now that surprised him – didn’t she always say what she thought? ‘I don’t get cross, Rosie, but why do you take everything so serious?’ To this she remained silent, in the darkness. He could see the small, thoughtful face turned away from him, lit by the bleak light from the window. The thoughtfulness seemed to him like a reproach. He liked her childish and responsive. ‘Don’t I make you happy, Rose?’ He sounded miserable. ‘Happy?’ she said, testing the word. Then she unexpectedly laughed and said: ‘You talk so funny sometimes you make me laugh.’ ‘I don’t see
what’s funny, you’ve no sense of humour, that’s what’s wrong with you.’ But instead of responding to his teasing voice, she thought it over and said seriously: ‘Well I laugh at things, don’t I? I must be laughing at something then. My Dad used to say I hadn’t any sense of humour. I used to say to him: “How do you know what I laugh at isn’t as funny as what you laugh at?”’ He said, wryly, after a moment, ‘When you laugh, it’s like you’re not laughing at all, it’s something nasty.’ ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ ‘I ask you if you’re happy and you laugh – what’s funny about being happy?’ Now he was really resentful. Again she meditated about it, instead of responding – as he had hoped – with a laugh or some reassurance that he made her perfectly happy. ‘Well, it stands to reason,’ she concluded, ‘people who talk about happy or unhappy, and then the long words – and the things you say, women are like this, and men are like that, and polygamous and all the rest – well …’ ‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Well, it just seems funny to me,’ she said lamely. For she could have found no words at all for what she felt, that deep knowledge of the dangerousness and the sadness of life. Bombs fell on old men, lorries killed people, and the war went on and on, and the nights when he did not come to her she would sit by herself, crying for hours, not knowing why she was crying, looking down from the high window at the darkened, ravaged streets – a city dark with the shadow of war.