Four Gated City by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online Page B

not know what she meant. They were savages, masters and servants both.
    ‘Martha will have none of us, I’m afraid, ’ said Henry, insolent, but smiling.
    ‘I’m sorry, ’ said John Higham.
    ‘I simply cannot imagine, apart of course from the Maynards asking you to keep an eye on me, what you want me for? ’
    They even exchanged glances here, as if she were not able to see that glances were being exchanged-as if they were invisible. Extraordinary, extraordinary people: Iris and Jimmy, Stella and her man, had more delicacy, more consciousness of themselves.
    ‘You underestimate yourself, ’ said John Higham. ‘You’ve done legal work, haven’t you? You’ve got experience. And I don’t know why it is, but while there are hundreds of girls on the market, there aren’t very many… experienced ones.’
    ‘It isn’t that we mind our girls getting married-far from it. We welcome it, they tend to stay, ’ said Henry.
    ‘And a large part of our practice is out of this country-we’ve been doing a lot of work with refugees for instance. Tidying up after the war-that sort of thing. And we really do need someone with-a wider experience than most English girls have.’
    Now Martha had to be silent. This last point reached her. And, besides, she was exactly in the same position here as she had been, still was, with Iris and Jimmy. She had promised, or had seemed to promise, without knowing she was doing it, more than she had ever meant. She had never, not for one moment, considered working for Henry, had said, in every way she knew: No, no, no. Yet both men now expected her to say yes: were in fact counting on her. A manner which was assumed as a mask, a defence, appearing to be a half-flirtatious consideration of possibilities, had been felt as so much more? Or was it that being in a situation at all, being involved with people, was a promise of more? That was more like it, that was the truth: oh yes, there was something intolerable, unforgivable, about the drifters, the testers, the samplers, she was only just beginning to see it. But it was unjust, unfair! She had been in this country for not much more than a quarter of a year,had seen it as time out of responsibility. She was not going to be allowed to taste and drift and knock about. The genuine feeling of betrayal shown by her friends of Joe’s café (though not by Stella of the docks-why not?), and the expectation shown by Henry and John, proved that she must have made promises implicitly; she, Martha, had something in her which forbade her to drift and visit and slide out. Other people might: she could not. Otherwise why, after such a very short time out of responsibility (what was four months after all?) were the nets closing in? Which was how she felt it. The net had been set from the moment she saw Henry’s politely charming face outside the Customs when she arrived. It was probably, though she did not want to recognize this, that her temperament shared more than she liked with Marjorie; and with Marjorie’s sister Phoebe, an earnestness, a readiness to be involved and implicated, and this temperament was in itself a promise, made promises and offered.
    She could be weak and say something like: I’ll think it over. But she must not. And she must not buy forgiveness with ‘Matty’. With a great effort, she said (abruptly, and without grace, but she said it straight). ‘Look. Please believe me. I’m not taking the job. Thank you very much-but I don’t want it.’
    ‘What have you got lined up instead? ’ asked John Higham. He was annoyed.
    ‘She’s thinking of being a barmaid, ’ said Henry with a laugh to indicate, not that she would not, but that she was only too capable of it.
    ‘Really, are you? ’ said John Higham. ‘Of course, it is a way of-getting around? ’ he inquired. One does see that.’
    ‘The thing is, ’ said Martha, again furious, trying not to be: ‘I wouldn’t see the job as you do-as something extraordinary. You simply