To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories Volume One. Doris Lessing
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she said as she saw Jessie’s suit. ‘You might just as well have had me with you.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Jessie quickly.
‘I went in to Renée’s this morning and told them you were coming, and I asked them to show you that suit. And you’ve bought it. You see, I do know your tastes as I know my own.’
Jessie lifted her sharp battling chin at her mother, who dropped her eyes in modest triumph and began poking at the pavement with the point of her umbrella.
‘I think we’d better get started,’ I said.
Aunt Emma and Cousin Jessie, sending off currents of angry electricity into the air all around them, fell in beside me, and we proceeded up the street.
‘We can get a bus at the top,’ I said.
‘Yes, I think that would be better,’ said Aunt Emma. ‘I don’t think I could face the insolence of another taxi driver today.’
‘No,’ said Jessie, ‘I couldn’t either.’
We went to the top of the bus, which was empty, and sat side by side along the two seats at the very front.
‘I hope this man of yours is going to do Jessie justice,’ said Aunt Emma.
‘I hope so too,’ I said. Aunt Emma believes that every writer lives in a whirl of photographers, press conferences, and publishers’ parties. She thought I was the right person to choose a photographer. I wrote to say I wasn’t. She wrote back to say it was the least I could do. ‘It doesn’t matter in the slightest anyway,’ said Jessie, who always speaks in short, breathless, battling sentences, as from an unassuageably painful inner integrity that she doesn’t expect anyone else to understand.
It seems that at the boarding house where Aunt Emma and Jessie live, there is an old inhabitant who has a brother who is a TV producer. Jessie had been acting in Quiet Wedding with the local Reps. Aunt Emma thought that if there was a nice photograph of Jessie, she could show it to the TV producer when he came to tea with his brother at the boarding house, which he was expected to do any weekend now; and if Jessie proved to be photogenic, the TV producer would whisk her off to London to be a TV star.
What Jessie thought of this campaign I did not know. I never did know what she thought of her mother’s plans for her future. She might conform or she might not; but it was always with the same fierce and breathless integrity of indifference.
‘If you’re going to take that attitude, dear,’ said Aunt Emma, ‘I really don’t think it’s fair to the photographer.
‘Oh, Mummy!’ said Jessie.
‘There’s the conductor,’ said Aunt Emma, smiling bitterly. ‘I’m not paying a penny more than I did last time. The fare from Knightsbridge to Little Duchess Street is threepence.’
‘The fares have gone up,’ I said.
‘Not a penny more,’ said Aunt Emma.
But it was not the conductor. It was two middle-aged people, who steadied each other at the top of the stairs and then sat down, not side by side, but one in front of the other. I thought this was odd, particularly as the woman leaned forward over the man’s shoulder and said in a loud parrot voice: ‘Yes, and if you turn my goldfish out of doors once more, I’ll tell the landlady to turn you out. I’ve warned you before.’
The man, in appearance like a damp, grey, squashed felt hat, looked in front of him and nodded with the jogging of the bus.
She said, ‘And there’s fungus on my fish. You needn’t think I don’t know where it came from.’
Suddenly he remarked in a high insistent voice, ‘There are all those little fishes in the depths of the sea, all those little fishes. We explode all these bombs at them, and we’re not going to be forgiven for that, are we, we’re not going to be forgiven for blowing up the poor little fishes.’
She said, in an amiable voice, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and she left her seat behind him and sat in the same seat with him.
I had known that the afternoon was bound to get out of control at some point but this conversation upset me. I wa relieved when Aunt Emma restored normality by saying: ‘There. There never used to be people like that. It’s the Labour Government.’
‘Oh, Mummy,’ said Jessie, ‘I’m not in the mood for politics this afternoon.’
We had arrived at the place we wanted, and we got down off the bus. Aunt Emma gave the bus conductor ninepence for the three of us, which he took without comment. ‘And they’re inefficient as well,’ she said.
It was drizzling and rather cold. We proceeded up the street, our heads together under Aunt Emma’s umbrella.
Then I saw a newsboard with the item: Stalin is Dying. I stopped and the umbrella went jerking up the pavement without me. The newspaperman was an old acquaintance. I said to him, ‘What’s this, another of your sales boosters?’ He said: ‘The old boy’s had it, if you ask me. Well, the way he’s lived – the way I look at it, he’s had it coming to him. Must have the constitution of a bulldozer.’ He folded up a paper and gave it to me. ‘The way I look at it is that it doesn’t do anyone any good to live that sort of life. Sedentary. Reading reports and sitting at meetings. That’s why I like this job – there’s plenty of fresh air.’
A dozen paces away Aunt Emma and Jessie were standing facing me, huddled together under the wet umbrella. ‘What’s the matter, dear?’ shouted Aunt Emma. ‘Can’t you see, she’s buying a newspaper,’ said Jessie crossly.
The newspaperman said, ‘It’s going to make quite a change, with him gone. Not that I hold much with the goings-on out there. But they aren’t ued to democracy much, are they? What I mean is, if people aren’t used to something, they don’t miss it.’
I ran through the drizzle to the umbrella. ‘Stalin’s dying,’ I said.
‘How do you know?’ said Aunt Emma suspiciously.
‘It says so in the newspaper.’
‘They said he was sick this morning, but I expect it’s just propaganda. I won’t believe it till I see it.’
‘Oh don’t be silly, Mummy. How can you see it?’ said Jessie.
We went on up the street. Aunt Emma said: ‘What do you think, would it have been better if Jessie had bought a nice pretty afternoon dress?’
‘Oh, Mummy,’ said Jessie, ‘can’t you see she’s upset? It’s the same for her as it would be for us if Churchill was dead.’
‘Oh, my dear!’ said Aunt Emma, shocked, stopping dead. An umbrella spoke scraped across Jessie’s scalp, and she squeaked. ‘Do put that umbrella down now. Can’t you see it’s stopped raining?’ she said, irritably, rubbing her head.
Aunt Emma pushed and bundled at the umbrella until it collapsed, and Jessie took it and rolled it up. Aunt Emma, flushed and frowning, looked dubiously at me. ‘Would you like a nice cup of tea?’ she said.
‘Jessie’s going to be late,’ I said. The photographer’s door was just ahead.
‘I do hope this man’s going to get Jessie’s expression,’ said Aunt Emma. ‘There’s never been one yet that got her look.’
Jessie went crossly ahead of us up some rather plushy stairs in a hallway with mauve and gold striped wallpaper. At the top there was a burst of Stravinsky as Jessie masterfully opened a door and strode in. We followed her into what seemed to be a drawing room, all white and grey and gold. The Rites of Spring tinkled a baby chandelier overhead; and there was no point in speaking until our host, a charming young man in a black velvet jacket, switched off the machine, which he did with an apologetic smile.
‘I do hope this is the right place,’ said Aunt Emma.