The Four-Gated City

‘I have just the right job for you,’ announced Phoebe at last, since Martha the traveller was silent. She was making a good many things plain in this one announcement. She was left-wing labour: but not so left that she did not regard some well-known left-wingers, her ex-husband for one, as ‘extreme’. She was bound by her position, to regard all communists with a greater hatred and suspicion than she would a Tory. Her sister Marjorie was – from her point of view – a communist; she was dangerous, dogmatic, wrongheaded. But this was the role that Marjorie had always played for elder sister Phoebe. Martha was a friend of Marjorie’s. But Mrs Van der Bylt in correspondence, in constant touch with a dozen of the organizations which Phoebe committee’d or secretaried or manned, had written offering Martha as a valuable recruit for the cause. Which meant that Martha’s degree of redness had been defined as tolerable – not only personally, as what Mrs Van and presumably Phoebe could stand, as people; but what others might be expected to stand. In an inflammable time. Not altogether complimentary that: Martha was not altogether sure she liked being so safe. Besides, whatever else she had learned in London, she was sure of one thing: anything her communist friends had told her of the poverty of the working people; of the blind selfishness of the middle classes (she hadn’t met the aristocracy, irrelevant, probably), was true. More than true. If she were going to have to be political, communism was nearer her mark than ‘Labour’ in its various degrees. Yet for days now she had been coming towards Phoebe, and knowing quite well that in doing so she was choosing her future. Her immediate future, at least. Well, one thing was certain. She was bound to be in a false position of one kind or another. That couldn’t be avoided. To what extent?

‘What kind of a job, Phoebe?’

‘We are going to start an organization for freeing the colonies, that sort of thing. A society or organization here, with the progressive movements there. And we need a secretary.’

‘I see.’

Martha considered Phoebe’s ‘We’. She was not in a position to define it.

‘A fairly broadly based thing.’

‘I see. Anyone who would support the objectives?’

Phoebe hesitated, coloured, gave Martha an acute but wary glance, and lowered her gaze to her soup. ‘There would have to be limits. You know, of course, that communists are proscribed in the Labour Party – and other organizations?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Martha, bland out of irritation. The irritation was unreasonable. Phoebe was doing her duty. As she, Martha, would do in her position.

Phoebe now waited for Martha to say clearly where she stood. Martha was damned if she would – besides, she didn’t know herself. Mrs Van’s recommendations were going to have to do.

Phoebe, annoyed, spooned in soup. Martha did the same.

‘We do need someone with real experience of the colonies – someone who knows the conditions, experience with the natives.’

‘For a start you can’t use that word any longer – natives.’

‘Oh! No? Well there you are, that’s why one needs …’

‘But I don’t think I want to do that sort of job.’

‘Well of course the money wouldn’t be very good,’ said Phoebe, making it clear that in her eyes this was no reason to refuse any job. ‘But there would be compensations.’ She meant, the society of people like herself; the interest of the work; above all, knowing oneself to be of use – exactly as Martha would in her position.

‘The thing is, I don’t want to be in that atmosphere. When I came to England, it was to get out of it.’

And now Phoebe was bound to be disappointed in Martha. For one thing – why had she wasted her, Phoebe’s time? What other kind of job did she expect?

‘I see,’ she said, tightening her lips, and looking for the waiter to take away her soup and bring the fish. She was busy, had no more time to waste.

If Marjorie had sat there, she would have cried out, all emotion and affectionate indignation: Well, Matty, if you’re going to take that line! If you’re going to be like that! Well then!

But Phoebe was not Marjorie. And Martha was not ‘Matty’, was refusing ‘Matty’ entrance. In order not to be ‘Matty’ she had to be cool, brisk – hard. As hard as Phoebe.

Martha now ate gluey fish in silence, thinking of Phoebe, of Marjorie. For this was the real experience of the meal, what she would take away from it. Phoebe was physically like Marjorie. Coming on Phoebe suddenly, without warning, Martha would have embraced her, lovable and absurd Marjorie, the younger sister. She had known Marjorie for how long? Over ten years! They had seen each other nearly every day. Marjorie had appeared, before the war, in the colony, as ‘immigrant’ – a girl from England. The people who worked with her all had the same attitude to her – an affection, almost an amusement. ‘Marjorie’ they had said, meaning her quality of charm, desperate enthusiasm, earnestness. But what had they known? Only this: Marjorie the younger sister. And an arrangement of eyes, nose, hair, pretty English skin. Here they were in front of Martha now, as Phoebe.

What had made Marjorie was this: a doctor in a country town in England with bookish tastes and an interest in politics, had brought up two daughters, his wife having died when they were children. They were very alike: pretty, fair, lively, English girls. Phoebe, the elder, was bossy and downright, with Marjorie, the girl five years her junior. Eventually Marjorie had escaped from Phoebe, had had to, to gain herself. But: sitting opposite Phoebe, who spoke in Marjorie’s voice, who was so like Marjorie, how could one not wonder: who was Marjorie? She was not her voice; not her face; not her body; not her eyes or her hair. Her manner then? But Marjorie’s breathless, defensive, agitated charm – that was all younger-sister. So had she won breathing space from Phoebe through their childhood. Marjorie was just – the younger sister? Of course not.

But who, what? Martha had no idea.

Martha sat opposite the brisk, pretty efficient Englishwoman, who was Phoebe, consciously preventing herself from talking to Marjorie. She was ashamed. She had never known Marjorie. As always, she had been lazy, unimaginative: she had never done more than talk to the younger sister. Well, if she wasn’t careful, she wouldn’t do more than talk to the older sister! For that manner was so strong in Phoebe, it was hard to imagine one could get past it.

‘Of course, I’d be prepared to advise,’ said Martha.

‘There are always plenty of people ready to do that,’ said Phoebe at once; then, seeing that she contradicted herself, looked irritated, and suddenly very tired. ‘We do need help,’ she said.

‘Phoebe, have you felt caged, shut inside an atmosphere?’

‘Well, frankly yes,’ said Phoebe, meaning the war again.

‘No I didn’t mean the war,’ said Martha, clumsily, for Phoebe’s reproach was so strong.

‘I can’t imagine myself not working for what I believe in – frankly, I can’t.’

‘Does one actually have to work in some organization! Well I can see why you are annoyed. You’re not an employment agency! I don’t know why I imagined.’

Phoebe’s glance at the words ‘employment agency’ betrayed that that was exactly what she had been thinking.

‘Well, I do always seem to know of jobs that need filling … let me see then.’

‘I suppose what it comes to – I’ve had enough of organized politics for the time being.’

Phoebe was silent for some time. Martha knew why. Without Mrs Van’s recommendations, Phoebe would have set her down as one of the people whose reforming energies had come out of passionate identification with Russia, the pure and the perfect: just another red with a broken heart, a weak reed, a neurotic, a washout. But Mrs Van had said differently. Therefore Phoebe sat, eating jammy sponge with a teaspoon, her eyebrows drawn together. She looked so like Marjorie that Martha experienced a variety of awe, or panic. It seemed inconceivable that she could not say: Marjorie! and that the person opposite would respond out of ten years of – friendship?

‘Mrs Van Bylt said you had done research – that kind of thing?’ ‘Yes. Tell me, Phoebe, do you and Marjorie ever write to each other?’

‘We are neither of us very good correspondents. How is she? She’s had another baby, she said. That’s four now?’

In her voice the shadow of a pain, something personal, ‘And I’ve never met her husband of course.’

‘He’s a nice man. A quiet kind of man. He’s a civil servant.’

‘So she said,’ said Phoebe, making it clear what she thought of civil servants: reminding Martha that she herself had married a crusading firebrand from the left. She lifted her face and smiled at Martha: who felt as she had that morning with Iris and her Stanley: an area of family emotion had been highlit, touched on.

Suppose I said to her: ‘Your sister’s a very unhappy woman. She’s bored with her nice reliable husband. She had children out of a compulsion. She’s living in a permanent nervous breakdown’ – no, of course she could not say this. This woman did not understand despair – or rather, the admission of it. And besides, such information, if it were not diagnosed – and it would be – as a symptom of Martha’s own identification with the neurotic weakness of this world, would be confirmation of the younger sister’s always expected failure.

‘Is it a success – that sort of thing?’

‘Well, yes; I think the four small children are a bit of a handful at the moment.’

‘I don’t see that. After all, you have plenty of servants out there, don’t you?’ She snapped this out, her face in high colour, and said everything about her own life, which was doing a hard poorly paid job, and being responsible, and bringing up two small girls without a father – without help, without servants.

‘I think I know something for you,’ said Phoebe, pushing aside the personal, while her face still flamed red, and her fingers clutched her purse. ‘There’s my brother-in-law. My ex-brother-in-law. He wants some help. He’s a writer. Of a kind, of course. It’s a hobby really. He’s got some sort of a business or other.’

‘What sort of a writer?’

A silence. Phoebe took a mouthful of weak coffee while Martha registered an old atmosphere: oh yes, she had been here before, and very much so. ‘He did get a book published.’ Another sip. ‘It got quite good reviews.’ One could see that the good reviews were not only a surprise, but a disappointment. She disliked the man, or disliked the book? No, the atmosphere was so strong that Martha waited for the next phrase with confidence. ‘I haven’t any time for books that aren’t about something real, have you?’

So Marjorie might have said; or Anton. Among a selection of similar phrases, she could also have used: I’m not interested in ivory tower writing. No, that would probably be too literary a choice of words for Phoebe.

Martha tried: ‘What was it about?’ ‘Oh, just personal emotions.’ ‘Well, I need a job.’

Here Phoebe looked, lips tight, at Martha’s suitcase. ‘Where have you left your luggage?’

Almost Martha let ‘Matty’ say for her, humorous, deprecating, charming: All I’ve got in the world! ‘That’s my luggage.’

‘You must be a very efficient packer,’ said Phoebe, making a virtue of poor material.

‘What sort of help does he want? What’s the job?’

‘Oh, I don’t know – he’s always running about, you know, he’s got so many irons in the fire. He lives rather near here, actually. I was thinking, we could drop in if you’ve time?’

‘Yes. Good.’

‘Dropping in’, so much not what Martha had experienced of London – that is, the London where people actually lived in houses, had organized lives, as distinct from the wanderers and campers – meant that Phoebe had a special relation with this man?

‘I’ll telephone,’ said Phoebe.

One didn’t ‘drop in’ without telephoning first.

Phoebe went across to the waiter, conferred, and disappeared into a door marked ‘Private’. She came back to say: ‘Mark says we can come round. He’ll be free at two-thirty for an hour.’

Yes, that was more like it: one was free by appointment for an hour. What made the difference? Of course, servants! With servants, plentiful and cheap, one could drop in, drop by, stay for meals, develop large casual acquaintanceships.

Around the corner meant Bloomsbury.

Martha’s arms were both wrenched by the suitcase to a condition of permanent ache. She suggested a taxi. Phoebe never used taxis. They went by bus.

The house was not part of one of the famous squares, but nearly so: from the front door, it seemed as if the trees and plants of the square claimed the house. Tall, narrow, formal, it was like the houses of the squares; and the whole neighbourhood, now that the different shades of ‘white’ chosen by their owners before the war had dimmed into an unremarkable but uniform grey, had the unity of its original design: houses, terraces, grassy squares full of old trees. Here, in short, one thought of the beauty of London, not of its ugliness. Standing in the hall of the house, which had Persian rugs on a dark floor, and a minimum of old furniture. Martha knew that for the first time in her life she was in a setting where, if she chose to stay, there would be no doubt at all of how she ought to behave, to dress. She had always resisted such a setting, or the thought of it. If she took this job, then it must be for a very short time. She felt attacked by the house – claimed. Besides, she was out of place. And so, she noted, was Phoebe, who was dowdy, seemed clumsy, where she, Martha, was strident.

A man came down the stairs, half-seen until he turned on a light. He was dark, and of middle-height; but he was strongly built, and his face strongly featured, so that he gave, at once, an impression of force and of height. A presence: a strong one. But then he spoke, and what came over was anxiety, worry, even annoyance.

‘How very good of you … let me …’ here he took Phoebe’s coat over his arm, and Martha’s suitcase from her hand. ‘Now let me see. Really, Phoebe, it is so very kind of you to take so much trouble.’ He was giving them no more than the courtesy he felt that he should. Either something had happened since Phoebe had telephoned half an hour before, or he had taken a dislike to Martha on sight. At which Martha reacted – and saw herself doing it – with the childish: All right then, I don’t think much of you either! For she didn’t. The colonial in her named his politeness insincerity, since he was so clearly angry about something; and the worry that he radiated was alerting her nerves for flight. She wondered how quickly she could make excuses, while Phoebe reclaimed her coat, saying she had work to do and must leave at once.

‘No, do stay, do, Phoebe,’ he almost cried, his face anguished in his effort to smile. ‘Let me see now, where …’ He opened a door off the hall, displaying a drawing-room. ‘I’m sure Margaret wouldn’t mind my using …’

Martha understood that she was about to be interviewed, by a man who had no taste, either for her, or for interviews, she could not decide which, and he was trying to decide on an appropriate place for it.

‘I’m very sorry,’ said Phoebe, reproving his lack of faith in her busy-ness. ‘Let me know how things go,’ she said to Martha. ‘Because if you and Mark don’t suit each other, then I’m sure there’s plenty of work that needs to be done.’ She went.

Martha and Mark Coldridge stood in the hall, left to their own decisions.

‘You aren’t the young lady from Birmingham?’ ‘No, should I be?’

‘Oh, well then …’ He held the door open and she entered the long, subdued, beautiful room which looked as if no one had been in it for months.

‘For some weeks now Phoebe has been urging me on to some protégée of hers from Birmingham. Labour Party or something.’

He was looking at her more closely. She stood, to be inspected; examining him. But all she felt was: here are claims. Not only from him, the man, very strong ones, though she did not know how to define them; but from the house, the furniture – even this area of London.

‘Look,’ said Martha, almost becoming ‘Matty’ in her desperation to escape. ‘There’s been a mistake. You’re in a false position. I’m so sorry – I’ll leave.’ And she was on her way to the door.

‘No. Wait. We’ll go upstairs,’ he said, thus making it clear that Margaret’s room, whoever Margaret was, had been chosen probably to put off, or intimidate, the young lady from Birmingham, or Phoebe – at any rate, the room was seen as a kind of no-man’s land or defensive area. She followed him upstairs to a small room on the first floor, which being full of books and papers and comfortable clutter, made it easier for Martha to sit down.

‘Who are you then?’

She replied, giving him minimum information, resisting impulses to reply as she had done to other strangers, I’m Patty Jones, I’m Joan Baker, I’m the mother of twins or the sister of a sailor who …

‘And what kind of job did Phoebe say it was? What are you expecting?’

This so far away from the suavity which was one of his inbuilt attributes, indicated so much anxiety, defensiveness, that again she was on the point of running away. She examined his face before replying: a dark, strong, well-featured face. Handsome? As handsome as it did: it was all clenched up with watchful tension.

‘You needed some sort of help with a book, but I don’t really think …’

‘I see.’ He was more relaxed. He smiled. ‘Well, but don’t go. Because I do.’ ‘What sort of help?’

And now a look which, if he had not been a man to whom such devices were foreign, if he had been anybody else, Martha would have said was cunning. No: but here was something hidden, tucked away.

‘Well. I’ve a deadline – that’s the word they use for it. And I’ve got to …’ He let all that drift away. Sitting half-way on to a writing-table, his legs held up, as if they rested on a stool, or chair – but they rested on air, he looked at her as if around a corner. Everything was out of scale, disproportionate – discordant. Martha understood she was repelled, not by him, whom she could say she liked; but by a situation. There was one. Anything here, in this house, she understood, would be the absolute opposite of everything she had hoped to find.

She rallied and said firmly: ‘I am looking for a job for a limited period. I don’t want to be tied down to anything. And I did hope, regular hours.’

His face had remained steady during the first condition, but it definitely darkened at her last.

‘Oh, very reasonable of course. But I was rather hoping … you see I work irregularly myself. Mostly at nights. I’ve got an office to go to in the day …’

Here there was a commotion outside, as of an entrance being set or arranged: then a firm knock, and then, before Mark could say anything, there came in a lady, holding a small boy by the hand.

‘Ah!’ said Mark, hopelessly. He got off the desk. To the small boy he said: ‘Well old chap?’ and the child, a round, dark, very pale boy with extraordinarily defensive dark eyes pathetically smiled. He looked around for somewhere appropriate to sit, and sat, while the woman watched to see if he did it right.

‘This is my mother,’ said Mark. ‘Margaret Patten. And this is my son, Francis. And this is Mrs Hesse.’

Martha felt that she knew the lady only too well; since she was large, light, buoyant, and seemed much younger than she must be to be this man’s mother. She wore an ample flowered silk dress and carried gloves, which she now laid down on Mark’s desk and, without looking at them, patted and fitted into a finger-matching pair one above the other, as if they still lay on a display counter, or as if she wished they did. Meanwhile she took in a variety of physical facts about Martha, age, dress, presence, style, and could be heard thinking loudly: Hesse? German? A German name? She’s not German, no. But she’s not English either … Mark looked increasingly annoyed.

‘Well, I do so hope that you’ve found someone at last,’ she announced. ‘Won’t you sit down?’ she said to the child, who had got up, to come closer to his father. He sat again, promptly, his feet side by side, watching the hostile grown-up world from which, so those eyes said so terribly clearly, he could expect nothing that wasn’t painful. Martha found her heart was aching. That little boy Francis was unbearably painful. Meanwhile, Mrs Patten was most frankly summing her up; while her son Mark watched her do it and resented it.

‘Mrs Hesse has only just this moment arrived and we have not agreed about anything at all.’

‘Oh,’ said Margaret Patten, smiling at Martha across her son, as if behind his back.

‘In fact we are engaged in a sort of mutual interview.’

‘Oh well then, we must leave you to it, mustn’t we, Francis?’ She held out her hand and Francis instantly rose to grasp it.

‘If she does stay,’ said Mrs Patten, ‘it’s lucky the big room will be empty for a bit – that is, if dear Sally can bear to keep away!’

He said nothing. Martha said nothing. She was angry for a variety of reasons: mostly pressures from the past, and strong ones. She resented Mrs Patten on her own account and on Mark’s. And on the child’s. Francis now offered his father a smile, which Mark returned: like prisoners of fate they were, condoling briefly before inevitable parting. Then Mrs Patten removed him from the room.

There was a pause while Mark recovered himself. Then: ‘She’s left her gloves, damn it.’ He picked them up and carried them to the door where he saw them into his mother’s hand. Good-byes were said again. He came back.

‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘My wife’s in a mental hospital.’ He paused, not looking at her, while it sank in. ‘My mother’s had the brunt of Francis for quite a bit and she feels that if there were a woman in the house, it would make it easier – during school holidays, for instance.’

There was so much information here that Martha remained silent, digesting it, while he waited for her. And as she thought it out, she saw before her eyes the child’s face as he turned to leave: it was a long, curious, hopeful look.

Oh no, said Martha to herself. Oh no, no, no!

At last she looked at Mark and waited and he said: ‘But you mustn’t think that if you did work for me – for a while, you’d be in any way responsible for Francis, or that you’d have to live here.’

‘Who does live here?’

‘A good question,’ he said, laughing at last. ‘Yes. Well, I should have told you before. The thing is, it’s often hard to know. Well, I do, basically. And my wife – when she’s well …’ A long pause. ‘That’s not likely to be … she’s not very … it doesn’t look as if she’ll be home for some time. Or if she is, she’s not … My mother has the use of the room you saw downstairs. She sometimes likes to entertain in town. And there are the rooms upstairs. They all seem to belong to someone. Or did. We are a large family. We were.’

‘I see’.

‘Yes, I supposed that you had.’ This was an appeal as well as an apology. Martha felt as if she were being swept fast over an edge, and by her own emotions; for the first time since she came to London, she was unfree. She wanted to run out of the house – anywhere. She was extraordinarily upset. So was he.

‘The job itself,’ he said at last. ‘It is pretty straightforward. But you see, my difficulty is, I’ve got to have someone who isn’t going to be upset by – tricky situations.’

She saw very clearly. Martha was thinking: She had no money left. If she were to go to a hotel or find a room she must ask Mark Coldridge for an advance on salary (not yet mentioned). The room upstairs (who was Sally?) would be a godsend, until she could find a place of her own. But that would mean landing herself even deeper in this terrible involving situation which had already involved her; the child’s face haunted her. Why had she been so stupid to leave herself without any money? To work here, living somewhere else – that would be safe enough, probably. (Would it?) She could borrow money. Who? Jack. She must ask Jack.