Landlocked by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online Page A

will.’
    ‘But there isn’t.’
    Martha knew she was smiling, direct into his smiling face. She could not stop. Their faces approached each other as if a hand behind either head pushed them together. They stood on the pavement, the bicycle between them, and a third of an inch of glass between them and the customers inside the Piccadilly . The bicycle pedal grazed Martha’s bare leg, and she said ‘Damn,’ and pulled herself away.
    ‘What a pity,’ said Solly softly.
    ‘Yes, I daresay.’
    She got on her bicycle and pedalled off.
    If she lived, precariously, in a house with half a dozen rooms, each room full of people (they being unable to leave the rooms they were in to visit the others, unable even to understand them, since they did not know the languages spoken in the other rooms) then what was she waiting for, in waiting for (as she knew she did) a man? Why, someone who would unify her elements, a man would be like a roof, or like a fire burning in the centre of the empty space. Why, then, was she allowing herself to respond to Solly as she had the other night, and would again, unless she made certain she wouldn’t meet him? What had she got in common with Solly—except sex, she added, but couldn’t laugh, for the truth was she was in a flaming, irritable, bad temper. She cycled like a maniac between lorries, cars, bicycles, the headlights dazzling, scarlet rear-lights winking. She did not like Solly, apart from not approving of him.
    Two blocks down from the Piccadilly was an Indian grocer and over it the new office, held in the name of the departed Jasmine Cohen. It was used by half a dozen organizations who shared the rent. Martha let herself up dark unlit stairs, and opened, in the dark, a door, and turned the light on in a dingy little office which was the same asevery political office she had ever seen. A small dark dapper man in the uniform of a Greek officer rose from a bench by the window. Athen smiled and said: ‘Matty, I’m glad it was you who came in.’
    ‘What are you doing sitting alone in the dark?’
    He did not answer, she looked quickly at his face and went on: ‘I’ve come to pick up some books for Johnny Lindsay, and I’m late.’
    ‘But I must see you. When shall I see you?’
    ‘Tomorrow?’
    ‘But I have to go back to camp tonight.’
    ‘After Johnny Lindsay I must go and see my father and then I suppose I’ve got to go home.’
    She heard her own voice, desperate rather than angry, and raised her eyes to the grave judging eyes of the Greek.
    ‘Your father is very ill,’ he said, in rebuke.
    ‘I know that.’
    ‘And how is your husband?’
    He had said your husband, instead of Anton, deliberately, and she smiled, freeing herself from his judgement. ‘Ah, Athen,’ she said affectionately, ‘you know, meeting you I’m always reminded…’
    He smiled and nodded, and did not ask what she had been going to say. People know what their roles are, the parts they play for others. They can fight them, or try to change; they can find their roles a prison or a support: Athen approved his role. Possibly he had even chosen it. He was a conscience for others. He burned always, a severe, self-demanding steady flame, at which people laughed, but always with affection; from which they took their bearings.
    ‘Sometimes you seem to me almost impossibly naïve,’ she said apologetically, and he went on smiling, looking closely at her.
    ‘Naïve? Because I remind you of your marriage with Anton?’
    ‘I’m not married.’
    ‘Martha, are you well?’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ she said, irritable. But his look refused this and she said: ‘I may be well, but I’m certainly in a veryodd state. I don’t think I understand anything.’ Tears filled into her eyes, frightening her because they came so often.
    Athen took her by the hand, sat her on the wooden bench by the wall, sat by her, stroked her hand. ‘Martha, dear comrade Martha, do you know something strange? I was thinking just as