The Four-Gated City

He gave her a very long thoughtful stare. Then he got out of bed. Sally’s child had not been good at dressing himself. He dressed himself, slowly but competently, while she sat and watched.

‘Now we’ll have breakfast,’ she said. Obedient, he came down to the kitchen. He sat, obedient, while she cooked. He was looking at the window, which showed nothing. Martha went to see if the attendant journalists were there. But no, only a box of groceries left on the step by the delivery people.

She was about to open the door to fetch them in when Paul said: ‘I want to go for a walk.’

‘We can’t go for walks yet,’ said Martha.

‘You don’t want them to tell me my daddy is dead,’ he said. Then he pushed the plate of eggs off the table, laughed as it crashed, and ran upstairs crying to his bedroom.

Martha opened the door to get in the groceries, and found Miles Tangin there.

‘Good morning,’ he said affably.

She tried to shut the door, but his foot was in it.

‘Nothing new to tell me?’ he inquired.

‘Nothing.’

‘May I ask who you are?’

‘Certainly, I’m working for Mr Coldridge.’

‘Living here?’ he inquired. There were two expressions on his face, superimposed, as it were. At any rate, he managed to convey simultaneously a camaraderie of understanding for her situation: he was a man of the world, after all! – and the salaciousness with which he proposed to tell the story to the public. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Find out. It’ll give you something to do.’

‘Come, come,’ he said. ‘You’re not in any position to use that tone, you know.’

He was now propped against the door-frame, holding the door open. He was looking past her at the mess of broken eggs and bits of china on the floor.

‘His wife’s in a loony-bin, I hear?’

She remembered that on the stove was the frying-pan, with hot fat in it. She fetched the frying-pan and stood facing him.

‘In your face if you don’t get out,’ she said.

‘Temper, temper, temper!’ he said softly. He was arranging on his face the smile that says: I admire a woman of spirit. Then, seeing she meant it, he looked ugly. She came nearer, with the pan poised.

‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘while you’ve been chasing this juicy story, have you ever thought of that child?’

And now a great wash of sentiment: the blond, goodfellow’s face was all soft and sad. ‘But I’m only doing my job,’ he said. ‘But I can tell you, that poor little chap keeps me awake at nights.’

‘And I shall do mine if you don’t get out.’

He went, and she locked the door.

That evening the Coldridge story acquired a new element, in a piece by Miles Tangin. The previously mentioned sinister female figure now appeared as some sort of watchdog or guardian of Mark Coldridge. There were links, hinted at, with the Soviet Embassy. She had a foreign accent. She was under orders of silence. For some days, the vigilance of the reporters was redoubled: it had shown signs of slackening off. Martha had to be careful to move around the house so that she could not be seen from the windows.

Upstairs in one room Paul lay on his bed, playing with the cat. She brought food to him there. And in another room, Mark lay in the dark, smoking and thinking. After a while he got up, went down to the study and very carefully read all the newspapers from the start of the affair until the present time. There were several weeks of them; and they included the serious newspapers, the popular Press, and the high-class magazines that were studying the subject of treason in depth, and in articles that had a very high intellectual tone.

When he had done this, Mark said that he had finally understood the meaning of the old saying that the last refuge of a scoundrel was patriotism.

He sounded rather cool about it. He was still ill though, or at least, looked ill. But he was in possession of himself. And he had made a decision. He was going down to the country, to stay with his old nurse, who had looked after himself and Colin, and he would take Paul with him.

‘And what about Francis, it’s going to be holidays again in a month?’

‘He can come to Nanny Butts’s too – it’ll be quiet there. And perhaps things will have blown over.’

When he and Paul were ready, suitcases packed, he said: ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to be a decoy.’

Martha put on a coat, made herself seem indifferent, and walked openly out of the front door. A group of men waiting there at first seemed stunned. At her impertinence, at daring them? At any rate, she had gone several yards before they chased after her. One of them offered her a hundred pounds for the story. She smiled. He put it up to two hundred. She smiled again. She went around the corner and into a café. They all came in with her. She kept them there, discussing the possible sale of her revelations about the Coldridge household, until she judged Mark and Paul had got well away. Then she walked back to the front door. The car had gone. Mark Coldridge had gone. ‘Nice work,’ said one of them, laughing. But others, professionally hating, scowled and muttered, like parodies of journalists in a bad film, or in a comedy.

Inside the house, was now only Martha. She went openly in and out, smiling politely at two hopeful journalists who remained. Then at one. But he went too. Then, peace, until Miles Tangin knocked at the front door and asked to be admitted. He had a proposition, he said. She was angry. He was affable. His manner was that of a wronged man concerned to give explanations. There was a genuine reproach for her lack of understanding. She should have retired to sharpen her anger, and set it on guard. But she let him in. Curiosity had a lot to do with it. Curious, she sat listening while he offered her one thousand pounds for the story of Mark’s mistress. He accepted her refusal with the remark that everyone had their price, but that the story was not worth more. He seemed to expect she would feel belittled by this; he even made a consoling remark: If Mark had a larger reputation, then more than one thousand pounds would have been forthcoming. Of course, if there were any justice, his reputation would be larger. It turned out that he admired Mark for having written the best novel for his money – Miles Tangin’s – since All Quiet On The Western Front. If he, Miles Tangin, were a critic, that would be put right, but for his sins, he was a journalist. Only for the time being: he was writing a novel. He also admired Mark for (he hoped Martha would not take this amiss) his taste. The house must be empty, if Mark was away? He did not think Martha ought to take it like that, all was fair in love and war. Anyway, he’d be making the suggestion again later: she was his cup of tea, all right. Meanwhile he was busy, he was off to the country to find Mark Coldridge. There’s a lot of Britain,’ said Martha.

‘No, dear, there isn’t. When one of these upper-class types go to the ground he’s at an old teacher’s, or nanny. I know how their minds work.’

He left, affable.

She telephoned Mark, to warn him. But a journalist had already appeared at Nanny Butts’s cottage. Mark was coming back to London.

He came that evening. He had been to his old school, explained the situation to the headmaster, and Paul was already installed.

And now, said Mark, they are welcome to me. He dictated a short piece for the Press saying that he stood wholeheartedly behind his brother in whatever action he had seen fit to take. Asked if he was a communist, he said he was, if that made him one.

And now, silence.

Mark was in his study. He stayed there. What sort of a state he was in, she did not know. His manner was cold, abrupt, but agitated.

She was in her room trying to see what was likely to happen next, trying not to be taken by surprise by events. The immediate facts were that Francis would be home soon, after what must be an awful time; Mark had been writing the usual weekly letters, but had not mentioned the sensational news which every paper had carried for weeks: Francis must surely have seen the newspapers. Paul, in a state of shock, had been dumped in a school which, ‘progressive’ or not, was still a boarding-school. Mark, as far as she could see, was in a state of shock. He certainly wasn’t dealing with the problem, now pressing, of finance.

The bills for Lynda’s hospital were unpaid. There was Francis’s school – very expensive, and there would now be Paul’s school. Ideally, Mark ought to find, in the next month, a couple of thousand pounds. He could not find so many shillings.

The factory? But she did not like to interfere with something she understood nothing about. Then Jimmy Wood arrived one afternoon to see Mark. Mark’s door was locked. Martha therefore talked to Jimmy.

Or she tried to. They were in the kitchen, and they drank tea and ate cake – everything that was normal and reassuring. There he sat, smiling, as usual. And there she sat, opposite him, trying to understand him. She had seen that he was a human being constructed on a different model from most, but this did not help. Making contact with Jimmy, or trying to, one understood how one meshed with others. They were angry, they were pleased, they were sad, they were shocked. They might be several things in the course of an afternoon, but at any given moment one talked to an angry man, a frightened man, etc.; one contacted a state, an emotion. But Jimmy Wood? There he sat, smiling, while he heartily ate cake and asked for more, and even got up to refill the kettle and put it on the ring. All this went on, the activity of a man enjoying his tea. He had come to this house because he wanted to say something. Mark not being available he was saying it to Martha. But what? He was disturbed about something. His movements were those of an agitated man. His eyes were hidden behind the great spectacles and his mouth, a thin, pink, curved mouth, smiled.

He was upset by Mark calling himself a communist? Martha tried this note – but no. There was no resonance. Yes, that was what was throwing her off balance: where other people resounded, he did not. He wanted to leave the factory and find work elsewhere. But he said this without emotion – it was a fact that emerged after an hour or so. Why? He talked about two contracts that had not been renewed. Did he know why? – He thought it was because of the ‘fuss about Mark in the papers’. But that was not his point. Did he think the factory was going to have to shut down? No, not necessarily. They could coast along for months, even a year or so. But there was a job that would suit him in a factory in Wales. Martha suggested that Mark would be upset if he, Jimmy, left. They had worked together for years. From what she could make out of the mask-face, this embarrassed Jimmy. She pressed on: ‘He’s very fond of you,’ and was faced by the great baby-head and the round glinting spectacles, and the pink smiling mouth. She felt extremely uncomfortable. He poured himself more tea, and energetically dotted up loose currants on the end of a wetted forefinger.

Martha sat, going back in her mind over the various points that had come up. Not politics – no. To him, the greatest of irrelevancies. Not money – the business would survive temporary difficulties. At random she said: ‘I expect Mark will be back at work in a few days. Perhaps sooner.’ And now, just as if Jimmy had not said he would leave, he began talking about a machine he and Mark had planned to start making. It was as if she touched a switch, which had caused him to work again. From his remarks, all random, even disconnected, a picture emerged of Mark and him, spending days at a time in the office at the factory, with blueprints and scientific papers and their own imaginations – talking. Was it that, some sort of machine himself (or so she could not help feeling), he needed this, had been deprived of it, had felt deprived of something, but he did not know what – and now, knowing that this need to talk would at some time in the near future be met, was prepared to go on as before? At any rate, after three hours or so he left, smiling, with the remark that the foreman had said he’d like to see Mark sometime, to give him his assurance that he and the men thought he had been shockingly treated – they were going to stand by him.

Martha wrote on a piece of paper: ‘I don’t understand your Jimmy Wood. But he says the foreman wants to stand by you. I think Jimmy will leave if you don’t go and talk to him soon.’ This she pushed under the door of the study.

The financial problems had not been solved.

One thing could be done at once: which was to let the basement.

Martha pushed another note under the door saying that Mark must at once write to Lynda’s hospital asking for time to pay: the last account had been peremptory.

Mark telephoned. The doctor suggested that perhaps Mrs Coldridge might come home for the week-end: she had a plan for her future which would involve Mark’s co-operation, and which might help Mark financially. For his part, said Dr Lamb, he was prepared to say Lynda was better; not cured, but better.

Lynda came home for the week-end. She was like a guest. Mark came out of his study and was like a host. She said she wanted to leave the hospital, and live in the basement. No, she was not well enough to be by herself but she could share it with a friend from the hospital. She said with a laugh that she did not think Mark would like her friend, who was called Dorothy. Sometimes she didn’t like her either. But they got on.

Mark said he would of course do anything she wanted.

A moment later she took up her little box of pills and went up to bed.

Later, when Martha was ready for bed, her sense of things that were waiting to be said was strong enough to send her down to the kitchen. There sat Lynda in her dressing-gown with a spread of cards in front of her.

‘If I came to live here,’ said Lynda, continuing the conversation, ‘it wouldn’t cost so much, would it? Oh – I don’t mean I want to be Mark’s wife, I couldn’t be that. But if I were here in the house, then it would be better, wouldn’t it? Then they couldn’t say you were taking him away from me?’

‘Why, are people saying that?’

‘They are bound to be saying something, aren’t they?’

‘I suppose so. We’ve been too busy about this other thing.’

‘Oh, politics. Oh well, I don’t care about that. That’s just nothing at all. But Dorothy’s got some money of her own. She could pay some rent. It would help, wouldn’t it?’

She shuffled the cards, humming cheerfully for a time. ‘Of course, there’s Francis. But he hasn’t a mother anyway. I thought it would be better to have me in the house, than not at all – for what he has to say to his friends, I mean.’

More shuffling of cards, more humming.

‘And about clothes. I’ve all that money for clothes in my bank account. You must make him take it. That’s what he wants you see – that I shall be beautiful all the time.’

‘Yes, but I don’t think he’d take it.’

‘I wouldn’t mind if he divorced me. I know that would be best really. But he wouldn’t ever divorce me. I know that.’ ‘No, he wouldn’t.’

‘I don’t care about all that – all that’s not what I care about.’

And now she looked, very close, at Martha, studied her. She leaned forward, her chin in her hand, looking. As if she were trying to find out something? Was it that she wanted to know if Martha could guess what she did care about? She looked disappointed. She even sighed, and made a small pettish gesture of disappointment as she returned to the cards.

‘You can go to bed, if you like,’ she said. ‘I’m all right by myself, you know.’

That was on the Friday. Next morning early Paul’s new headmaster telephoned to say that he would consider it a good thing if the child came home for the week-end: he and the staff thought it might help him.

His name was Edwards. He sounded very competent. He sounded in control. Martha felt that he and the staff would have every reason not to feel in control, with Paul in the state he was. She felt he might well have been entitled to say more than, ‘Paul seems rather confused.’

Paul was put on the train at the village station fifty miles away, and was met by Mark. When Paul got out of the car, a pale, spiky, black-eyed waif, he was already in the uniform of a progressive school – jeans and sweater. He came into the drawing-room where Lynda sat, like a visitor in her pale fur coat, smoking and guarding her little box of pills.

She studied Paul, for a while, while he wriggled about in a chair opposite her. Then she smiled at him, her wide, beautiful smile. He, slowly, smiled back, a rather tentative offering. Slowly he approached Lynda, sidled around her, then tried to climb on her lap. But she held him off.

‘I don’t like being touched,’ she said. ‘But you can sit here.’ She indicated the patch of sofa beside her. He sat close, snuggling, as he would have done with his mother. But Lynda, at the touch, shrank from him. He felt it, and moved away, examining her face as a guide to how far he must go. Side by side they sat, a space between them.

Martha and Mark were busy with tea things. This ought probably not to happen at all. But then nothing of this ought to be happening.

‘Why don’t you like being touched?’

‘Because I’m ill.’

‘My mother liked it.’

‘But I’m not like your mother.’ ‘She’s dead.’

‘She killed herself,’ said Lynda. ‘Why did she?’

‘Some people don’t like living.’ ‘Didn’t she like me?’ ‘Very much,’ said Lynda.

‘I don’t think she liked me. Or she wouldn’t have killed herself.’

‘That doesn’t follow.’ ‘Yes it does.’

Lynda had moved where she sat, so that she was looking at Paul with a direct, cool smile. And he was leaning forward, gazing up into her truth-telling face.

‘Didn’t my daddy like living?’

‘You say that because you think he is dead.’

‘Yes, he’s dead.’

‘No, I don’t think he’s dead.’

‘He is! He is! I know he is!’

Tears were imminent, but Lynda made no attempt to stop them. ‘No. Perhaps he is, but we don’t think so. And he may come back.’

‘He won’t come back, because he doesn’t like me.’

‘You are making yourself much too important,’ said the sick woman to the desperate child. ‘Your daddy had work to do. It was important. If he went away it wasn’t because of you and your mother.’

‘Did my mother kill herself because he went away?’ ‘No. He went away and she killed herself – the two things at the same time.’ ‘How did she kill herself?’ ‘She made herself stop breathing.’ ‘Could I?’

‘Yes, if you wanted to.’ ‘Do you want to?’ ‘Sometimes.’ ‘Are you going to?’ ‘No.’

‘Why aren’t you?’

‘Because every time I think I will, then I decide to stay alive and see what happens next. It is interesting.’

He gave a scared laugh, and snuggled closer. His hand, meeting hers, felt hers go away. He put his two hands carefully on his knees.

‘At the school, the other children have mothers and fathers for the holidays.’ ‘Well, you haven’t.’ ‘Why haven’t I?’ ‘I’ve told you.’

They observed that his face had gone red, and his mouth was pinched up.

Lynda slapped him. ‘Stop it. You don’t die by holding your breath.’ ‘I shall if I want.’

‘Anyway, it’s silly. You’re unhappy now. But later you might be happy, who knows?’ ‘Am I unhappy?’ ‘Yes, you’re very unhappy.’ ‘I don’t want to be.’ ‘I dare say. But you are.’

She smiled, and got up. At the tea-tray she took a cup of tea, and sugared it. She went towards the door, with the cup. ‘Why are you going? Can I come too?’ ‘No. I can’t be with people for long. I’m ill, you see.’ ‘What sort of ill?’

And now a bad, twisted moment, a jar. ‘I have to be careful. I have to be on guard,’ she said, ‘so that’s why I’m ill.’ He had rushed to her, stood near, looking up. She bent down and widened her eyes at him, smiling secretly, straight into his face: ‘I know things, you see. They don’t like it.’

He looked afraid, shrank. The small boy stood, pathetic, staring up at the tall woman. And she felt that she had made a mistake. Her smile faded. She looked sick and anxious.

But he needed her too badly to be afraid of her. Before she got out of the door, he was after her. Careful not to touch, he stood as close as he could get.

‘Lynda. Lynda. Are you my mother now?’

‘No. You have no mother.’

‘Are you Francis’s mother?’

‘Yes. No. I suppose so. Not really. I’m not much good at being that kind of person. Some people aren’t.’

He drooped away, his finger in his mouth.

‘But, Paul, I’m your friend. Do you want that?’

He nodded, merely, not looking at her. Then he gave her a scared glance, and saw her wonderful smile. He smiled, slowly.

She went to her room. Later that day, Paul went to her, was admitted. He was there for about half an hour. They did not know what was said, or felt; but Paul was cheerful through his supper, and he asked Mark to tell him a story. When that was over, he said he would like to go back to the school next morning.

Mark took him back in the car. When he arrived back at the house he found Lynda establishing herself in the basement.

He telephoned the hospital.

Mark said to her: ‘They say you’ve made a remarkable recovery.’

He was watching Lynda and Martha arrange the bed for Lynda. What he was really saying was: You still might get quite better and be my wife again.

But Lynda smiled at him and said: ‘What awful fools they are. What fools! Well, thank God, they are.’ She laughed, was scornful. She continued to smile, scornfully, during the evening, but muttered once or twice: ‘But I must be careful though.’

She did not feel able to stay alone in the basement. Martha moved down, and slept in the living-room for a couple of nights. But then Dorothy, Lynda’s friend, came to live with her. She was a Mrs Quentin, but it seemed that her husband was living with another woman somewhere in Ireland. She was a large, dark, slow-moving woman, anxiously watchful of the impression she might be giving, with a tendency to make jocular remarks. She had a large quantity of jackdaw possessions, which she set out all over the flat before even unpacking her clothes. She was not the person either Mark or Martha could associate easily with Lynda.

But Lynda was pleased to have her there, did not mind the embroidered velvet hearts, the magazine covers tacked to the walls, the dolls; did not mind her friend’s possessiveness. It seemed that she liked Dorothy telling her to do this, and to do that; liked it when Dorothy said to Mark: ‘I think it’s time Lynda went to bed now.’

Mark did not like it. There was a moment when Lynda, being ordered to take her pills by Dorothy, looked across at Mark’s hostile face and openly laughed. It was in a kind of triumph.

Lynda wanted Dorothy here as a protection against Mark, against having to be Mark’s wife.

When Mark, or Martha, descending to the basement to offer help, or their company, the two women became a defensive unit, which excluded everybody. They exchanged private jokes, and made references to the hospital. There was something about them of two schoolgirls engaged in a world-hating friendship.

In short, having Lynda back in the basement, with a friend who had money and would pay some rent, would make a difference to the finances of the household; but not to much else.

Chapter Two

The bad time had been going on for – but one of the qualities of a bad time is that it seems endless. Certainly everything that happened, the events, had long ago ceased to stand out as unpleasant incidents, or harbingers. The texture of life was all heaviness, nastiness, fear. When Martha tried to put her mind back into places, times, when things had been normal (but what did she mean by that?) she could not. Her memory was imprisoned by now. And when she tried to look forward, because after all, this was going to change, since everything changed, she could see nothing ahead but a worsening. The poisoned river would plunge down, yes, explode over a fall of rocks – but not into any quiet place. There was probably going to be war again. Yet that she could think like this at all meant she had learned nothing at all from the war so recently finished. A war was going on, at that moment, in yet another place no one had heard of before there was a war. Korea. A nasty war. If she were a Korean she would not now be saying: there is going to be a war. And if she were in America – well, from there England would seem all sun and sanity. In America she would have certainly lost her job, would probably be in prison. She would be wanting to emigrate, that is, if she could get a passport, which was doubtful. To a liberal country like England. Which so many Americans were finding such a refuge.