“Ships that pass,” said Maureen. “Like people meeting on journeys. We’ll probably never see each other again.”
She went out, shutting the door.
An hour later, there was a still absolute silence through the flat, Kate looked for her. She had put on a 1930’s evening dress, of the kind that is cut on the bias and fits closely. It had a low back crisscrossed with narrow straps. It was of black satin. She had cut off her hair. She had cut it straight around at the level of her lobes. It was fastened down with slides and clips, but if she was conventionalised as a syren to her neck, her head looked like a woman who has just come out of prison or boarding school.
She sat on a cushion in the hall making something out of the cut-off hair. She held this object up. Her eyes did not choose to meet Kate’s. She had looped the hair into a figure like a harvest doll, a corn doll.
Kate was shocked: as of course she was meant to be. “It’s going to be some party,” she said.
“That’s right.”
The bell rang. Guests stood in the door.
“Hi!” “Hi.” “Hello.” “Hi.” Kisses. “What’s that you’ve got, Maureen?”
“It’s my hair. Can’t you see? It’s my baby.” Maureen began dancing in front of them, not looking at them at all, but holding up the doll that dangled from her wrist: a bright fragile puppet.
Soon the rooms were full. The many people, the numerous young men who followed Maureen’s black satin body with their eyes—among them Stanley, Philip, and a man rather older than the others, solid, authoritative, who could be no other than William, the passport back to her own people if she wanted to use it—all the multifaced crowd, seemed like a map or like a statement of Maureen’s rich life, full of possibilities. But her guests had been greeted by the hair doll, not by her. She did not seem able to look at them, to stay with any one long enough to talk; she moved fast from group to group, or danced a step or two with some man before sliding away from him; or absented herself by fussing over the drinks and the food.
Kate wondered why she should not go back to her home now; this minute, tonight; there was no need to wait until tomorrow.
She left a note for Maureen with, since she could not think of anything better, anything that would be right, a bottle of scent.
She stood in the hall with her suitcase and looked for Maureen.
Maureen was in William’s embrace. He leaned with his back to the wall, on solid feet, supporting Maureen by holding her around her waist with his two large hands.
She drooped in his grasp, one hand fiddling with the twist of hair that dangled from her wrist, frowning, not looking at him.
“You know quite well that you’ll marry me in the end, so why not now?”
“Do I know that? I don’t think I do,” said Maureen, spinning the doll around and around.
“Give me that thing, I don’t like it.” But rushing the defences was not the right thing at all, for she guarded her puppet and said, “You aren’t supposed to like it.”
She sounded petulant; a good augury for his chances?
One could easily imagine them together, in their large house in Wiltshire or somewhere, deep in plentiful horses, children, and dogs, everything according to the pattern, including their humorous comments on it.
Beyond William in the kitchen door appeared Philip, uniformed as usual, accompanied by a neatly pretty English girl, her femininity well battened down by responsibility, duty, service—the lot. At first glance an omelette-maker, a willing bearer of unpleasant burdens and choices, she wore a dress that seemed as military as Philip’s gear, a dark-blue crêpe with a little white collar, and a brooch like a medal on the upper slope of her firmly confined left breast. Perfectly mated these two, and she had her hand in his elbow; but Philip was unable to prevent himself glaring and yearning after Maureen languishing gracelessly there in her William’s arms.
“I simply will not have you being so silly,” said William, attempting the elder brother and trying to jerk the twist of yellow hair off the girl’s wrist.
“No, no,” she shrieked, “no, stop it.” But she stayed where she was.
And there stood Philip watching them both; and the girl jealously watching Philip.
No one noticed Kate with her suitcase. So she picked it up, let herself unobserved out of the flat, and made her way to the bus stop and so home.
ALSO BY DORIS LESSING
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A fascinating look inside the mind of a man who is supposedly “mad.” Professor Charles Watkins of Cambridge University is a patient at a mental hospital where the doctors try to bring his mind under control by increasing his drugs. But Watkins has embarked on a tremendous psychological adventure where, after spinning endlessly on a raft in the Atlantic, he lands on a tropical island inhabited by strange creatures with strange customs. Later, he is carried off on a cosmic journey into space.
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In the unconstrained atmosphere of England in the late 1960s, Harriet and David Lovatt, an upper-middle-class couple, face a frightening vicissitude. As the days’ events take a dark and ugly turn nearing apocalyptic intensity, the Lovatts’ guarded contentedness and view of the world as a benign place are forever shattered by the violent birth of their fifth child: Ben, monstrous in appearance, insatiably hungry, abnormally strong, demanding, brutal.
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MEMOIRS OF A SURVIVOR
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SHIKASTA
This is the first volume in the series of novels Doris Lessing calls collectively Canopus in Argos: Archives. Presented as a compilation of documents, reports, letters, speeches and journal entries, this purports to be a general study of the planet Shikasta—clearly the planet Earth—to be used by history students of the higher planet Canopus and to be stored in the Canopian archives. Johor, an emissary from Canopus and the primary contributor to the archives, visits Shikasta over the millennia from the time of the giants and the biblical great flood up to the present. With every visit he tries to distract Shikastans from the evil influences of the planet Shammat but notes with dismay the evergrowing chaos and destruction of Shikasta as its people hurl themselves toward World War III and annihilation.
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Doris Lessing, The Summer Before the Dark
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