Doris Lessing Three-Book Edition: The Golden Notebook, The Grass is Singing, The Good Terrorist. Doris Lessing
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‘And politicians. Don’t forget the comrades.’
‘Well, why not? He’ll grow up knowing something about the world he lives in, which is more than you can say about your three—Eton and Oxford, it’s going to be, for all of them. Tommy knows all kinds. He won’t see the world in terms of the little fishpond of the upper class.’
Anna said: ‘You’re not going to get anywhere if you two go on like this.’ She sounded angry; she tried to right it with a joke: ‘What it amounts to is, you two should never have married, but you did, or at least you shouldn’t have had a child, but you did—’ Her voice sounded angry again, and again she softened it, saying, ‘Do you realize you two have been saying the same things over and over for years? Why don’t you accept that you’ll never agree about anything and be done with it?’
‘How can we be done with it when there’s Tommy to consider?’ said Richard, irritably, very loud.
‘Do you have to shout?’ said Anna. ‘How do you know he hasn’t heard every word? That’s probably what’s wrong with him. He must feel such a bone of contention.’
Molly promptly went to the door, opened it, listened. ‘Nonsense, I can hear him typing upstairs.’ She came back saying, ‘Anna, you make me tired when you get English and tight-lipped.’
‘I hate loud voices.’
‘Well I’m Jewish and I like them.’
Richard again visibly suffered. ‘Yes—and you call yourself Miss Jacobs. Miss. In the interests of your right to independence and your own identity—whatever that might mean. But Tommy has Miss Jacobs for a mother.’
‘It’s not the miss you object to,’ said Molly cheerfully. ‘It’s the Jacobs. Yes it is. You always were anti-semitic.’
‘Oh hell,’ said Richard, impatient.
‘Tell me, how many Jews do you number among your personal friends?’
‘According to you I don’t have personal friends, I only have business friends.’
‘Except your girl-friends of course. I’ve noticed with interest that three of your women since me have been Jewish.’
‘For God’s sake,’ said Anna. ‘I’m going home.’ And she actually got off the window-sill. Molly laughed, got up and pushed her down again. ‘You’ve got to stay. Be chairman, we obviously need one.’
‘Very well,’ said Anna, determined. ‘I will. So stop wrangling. What’s it all about, anyway? The fact is, we all agree, we all give the same advice, don’t we?’
‘Do we?’ said Richard.
‘Yes. Molly thinks you should offer Tommy a job in one of your things.’ Like Molly, Anna spoke with automatic contempt of Richard’s world, and he grinned in irritation.
‘One of my things? And you agree, Molly?’
‘If you’d give me a chance to say so, yes.’
‘There we are,’ said Anna. ‘No grounds even for argument.’
Richard now poured himself a whisky, looking humorously patient; and Molly waited, humorously patient.
‘So it’s all settled?’ said Richard.
‘Obviously not,’ said Anna. ‘Because Tommy has to agree.’
‘So we’re back where we started. Molly, may I know why you aren’t against your precious son being mixed up with the hosts of mammon?’
‘Because I’ve brought him up in such a way that—he’s a good person. He’s all right.’
‘So he can’t be corrupted by me?’ Richard spoke with controlled anger, smiling. ‘And may I ask where you get your extraordinary assurance about your values—they’ve taken quite a knock in the last two years, haven’t they?’
The two women exchanged glances, which said: He was bound to say it, let’s get it over with.
‘It hasn’t occurred to you that the real trouble with Tommy is that he’s been surrounded half his life with communists or so-called communists—most of the people he’s known have been mixed up in one way and another. And now they’re all leaving the Party, or have left—don’t you think it might have had some effect?’
‘Well, obviously,’ said Molly.
‘Obviously,’ said Richard, grinning in irritation. ‘Just like that—but what price your precious values—Tommy’s been brought up on the beauty and freedom of the glorious Soviet fatherland.’
‘I’m not discussing politics with you, Richard.’
‘No,’ said Anna, ‘of course you shouldn’t discuss politics.’
‘Why not, when it’s relevant?’
‘Because you don’t discuss them,’ said Molly. ‘You simply use slogans out of the newspapers.’
‘Well can I put it this way? Two years ago you and Anna were rushing out to meetings and organizing everything in sight…’
‘I wasn’t, anyhow,’ said Anna.
‘Don’t quibble. Molly certainly was. And now what? Russia’s in the doghouse and what price the comrades now? Most of them having nervous breakdowns or making a lot of money, as far as I can make out.’
‘The point is,’ said Anna, ‘that socialism is in the doldrums in this country…’
‘And everywhere else.’
‘All right. If you’re saying that one of Tommy’s troubles is that he was brought up a socialist and it’s not an easy time to be a socialist—well of course we agree.’
‘The royal we. The socialist we. Or just the we of Anna and Molly?’
‘Socialist, for the purposes of this argument,’ said Anna.
‘And yet in the last two years you’ve made an about-turn.’
‘No we haven’t. It’s a question of a way of looking at life.’
‘You want me to believe that the way you look at life, which is a sort of anarchy, as far as I can make out, is socialist?’
Anna glanced at Molly; Molly ever-so-slightly shook her head, but Richard saw it, and said, ‘No discussion in front of the children, is that it? What astounds me is your fantastic arrogance. Where do you get it from, Molly? What are you? At the moment you’ve got a part in a masterpiece called The Wings of Cupid.’
‘We minor actresses don’t choose our plays. Besides, I’ve been bumming around for a year, not earning, and I’m broke.’
‘So your assurance comes from the bumming around? It certainly can’t come from the work you do.’
‘I call a halt,’ said Anna. ‘I’m chairman—this discussion is closed. We’re talking about Tommy.’
Molly ignored Anna, and attacked. ‘What you say about me may or may not be true. But where do you get your arrogance from? I don’t want Tommy to be a businessman. You are hardly an advertisement for the life. Anyone can be a businessman, why, you’ve often said so to me. Oh come off it, Richard, how often have you dropped in to see me and sat there saying how empty and stupid your life is?’
Anna made a quick warning movement, and Molly said, shrugging, ‘All right, I’m not tactful. Why should I be? Richard says my life isn’t up to much, well I agree with him, but what’s his? Your poor Marion, treated like a housewife or a hostess, but never as a human being. Your boys, being put through the upper-class mill simply because you want it, given no choice. Your stupid little affairs. Why am I supposed to be impressed?’
‘I see that you two have after all discussed