The Golden Notebook. Doris Lessing
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And his way of showing it is simply to pretend it didn’t happen.’
Richard came into the room. He looked younger than his middle age, being well-tanned after an early summer holiday in Italy. He wore a tight yellow sports shirt, and new light trousers: every Sunday of his year, summer or winter, Richard Portmain wore clothes that claimed him for the open air. He was a member of various suitable golf and tennis clubs, but never played unless for business reasons. He had had a cottage in the country for years; but sent his family to it alone, unless it was advisable to entertain business friends for a week-end. He was by every instinct urban. He spent his week-ends dropping from one club, one pub, one bar, to the next. He was a shortish, dark, compact man, almost fleshy. His round face, attractive when he smiled, was obstinate to the point of sullenness when he was not smiling. His whole solid person—head poked out forward, eyes unblinking, had this look of dogged determination. He now impatiently handed Molly the key, that was loosely bundled inside her scarlet scarf. She took it and began trickling the soft material through her solid white fingers, remarking: ‘Just off for a healthy day in the country, Richard?’
Having braced himself for just such a jibe, he now stiffly smiled, and peered into the dazzle of sunlight around the white window. When he distinguished Anna, he involuntarily frowned, nodded stiffly, and sat down hastily across the room from both of them, saying: ‘I didn’t know you had a visitor, Molly.’
‘Anna isn’t a visitor,’ said Molly.
She deliberately waited until Richard had had the full benefit of the sight of them, indolently displayed in the sunshine, heads turned towards him in benevolent enquiry, and offered: ‘Wine, Richard? Beer? Coffee? Or a nice cup of tea perhaps?’
‘If you’ve got a Scotch, I wouldn’t mind.’
‘Beside you,’ said Molly.
But having made what he clearly felt to be a masculine point, he didn’t move. ‘I came to discuss Tommy.’ He glanced at Anna, who was licking up the last of her strawberries.
‘But you’ve already discussed all this with Anna, so I hear, so now we can all three discuss it.’
‘So Anna’s told you…’
‘Nothing,’ said Molly. ‘This is the first time we’ve had a chance to see each other.’
‘So I’m interrupting your first heart to heart,’ said Richard, with a genuine effort towards jovial tolerance. He sounded pompous, however, and both women looked amusedly uncomfortable, in response to it.
Richard abruptly got up.
‘Going already?’ enquired Molly.
‘I’m going to call Tommy.’ He had already filled his lungs to let out the peremptory yell they both expected, when Molly interrupted with: ‘Richard, don’t shout at him. He’s not a little boy any longer. Besides I don’t think he’s in.’
‘Of course he’s in.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because he’s looking out of the window upstairs. I’m surprised you don’t even know whether your son is in or not.’
‘Why? I don’t keep a tab on him.’
‘That’s all very well, but where has that got you?’
The two now faced each other, serious with open hostility. Replying to his: Where has that got you? Molly said: ‘I’m not going to argue about how he should have been brought up. Let’s wait until your three have grown up before we score points.’
‘I haven’t come to discuss my three.’
‘Why not? We’ve discussed them hundreds of times. And I suppose you have with Anna too.’
There was now a pause while both controlled their anger, surprised and alarmed it was already so strong. The history of these two was as follows: They had met in 1935. Molly was deeply involved with the cause of Republican Spain. Richard was also. (But, as Molly would remark, on those occasions when he spoke of this as a regrettable lapse into political exoticism on his part: Who wasn’t in those days?) The Portmains, a rich family, precipitously assuming this to be a proof of permanent communist leanings, had cut off his allowance. (As Molly put it: My dear, cut him off without a penny! Naturally Richard was delighted. They had never taken him seriously before. He instantly took out a Party card on the strength of it.) Richard who had a talent for nothing but making money, as yet undiscovered, was kept by Molly for two years, while he prepared himself to be a writer. (Molly; but of course only years later: Can you imagine anything more banal? But of course Richard has to be commonplace in everything. Everyone was going to be a great writer, but everyone! Do you know the really deadly skeleton in the communist closet—the really awful truth? It’s that every one of the old Party war horses—you know, people you’d imagine had never had a thought of anything but the Party for years, everyone has that old manuscript or wad of poems tucked away. Everyone was going to be the Gorki or the Mayakovski of our time. Isn’t it terrifying? Isn’t it pathetic? Every one of them, failed artists. I’m sure it’s significant of something, if only one knew what.) Molly was still keeping Richard for months after she left him, out of a kind of contempt. His revulsion against left-wing politics, which was sudden, coincided with his decision that Molly was immoral, sloppy and bohemian. Luckily for her, however, he had already contracted a liaison with some girl which, though short, was public enough to prevent him from divorcing her and gaining custody of Tommy, which he was threatening to do. He was then readmitted into the bosom of the Portmain family, and accepted what Molly referred to, with amiable contempt, as ‘a job in the City’. She had no idea, even now, just how powerful a man Richard had become by that act of deciding to inherit a position. Richard then married Marion, a very young, warm, pleasant, quiet girl, daughter of a moderately distinguished family. They had three sons.
Meanwhile Molly, talented in so many directions, danced a little but she really did not have the build for a ballerina; did a song and dance act in a revue—decided it was too frivolous; took drawing lessons, gave them up when the war started when she worked as a journalist; gave up journalism to work in one of the cultural outworks of the Communist Party; left for the same reason everyone of her type did—she could not stand the deadly boredom of it; became a minor actress, and had reconciled herself, after much unhappiness, to the fact that she was essentially a dilettante. Her source of self-respect was that she had not—as she put it—given up and crawled into safety somewhere. Into a safe marriage.
And her secret source of uneasiness was Tommy, over whom she had fought a years-long battle with Richard. He was particularly disapproving because she had gone away for a year, leaving the boy in her house, to care for himself.
He now said, resentful: ‘I’ve seen a good deal of Tommy during the last year, when you left him alone…’
She interrupted with: ‘I keep explaining, or trying to—I thought it all out and decided it would be good for him to be left. Why do you always talk as if he were a child? He was over nineteen, and I left him in a comfortable house, with money, and everything organized.’
‘Why don’t you admit you had a whale of a good time junketing all over Europe, without Tommy to tie you?’
‘Of course I had a good time, why shouldn’t I?’
Richard laughed, loudly and unpleasantly, and Molly said, impatient, ‘Oh for God’s sake, of course I was glad to be free for the first time since I had a baby. Why not? And what about you—you have Marion, the good little woman, tied hand and foot to the boys while you do as you like—and there’s another thing. I keep trying to explain and you never listen. I don’t want him to grow up one of these damned mother-ridden Englishmen. I wanted him to break free of me. Yes, don’t laugh, but it wasn’t good, the two of us together in this house, always so close and knowing everything the other one did.’
Richard grimaced with annoyance and said, ‘Yes, I know your little theories on this point.’
At which Anna came in with: ‘It’s not only Molly—all the women I know—I