The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online Page B

do what you like,” Harriet said.
    But when Easter came, Harriet was proved right: it was not a success. Her strained, abstracted face as she sat there at her table, stiffly upright, braced for the next jolt, or jab, stopped conversation, spoiled the fun, the good times. “What have you got in there?” asked William, jocular but uneasy, seeing Harriet’s stomach convulse. “A wrestler?”
    “God only knows,” said Harriet, and she was bitter, not joking. “How am I going to get through to July?” she demanded, in a low appalled voice. “I can’t! I simply can’t do it!”
    They all—David, too—judged that she was simply exhausted because this baby was coming too soon. She must be humoured. Alone in her ordeal—and she had to be, she knew that, and did not blame her family for not accepting what she was being slowly forced to accept—she became silent, morose, suspicious of them all and their thoughts about her. The only thing that helped was to keep moving.
    If a dose of some sedative kept the enemy—so she now thoughtof this savage thing inside her—quiet for an hour, then she made the most of the time, and slept, grabbing sleep to her, holding it, drinking it, before she leaped out of bed as it woke with a heave and a stretch that made her feel sick. She would clean the kitchen, the living-room, the stairs, wash windows, scrub cupboards, her whole body energetically denying the pain. She insisted that her mother and Alice let her work, and when they said there was no need to scrub the kitchen again, she said, “For the kitchen no, for me yes.” By breakfast time she might have already worked for three or four hours, and looked hagridden. She took David to the station, and the two older children to school, then parked the car somewhere and walked. She almost ran through streets she hardly saw, hour after hour, until she understood she was causing comment. Then she took to driving a short way out of the town, where she walked along the country lanes, fast, sometimes running. People in passing cars would turn, amazed, to see this hurrying driven woman, white-faced, hair flying, open-mouthed, panting, arms clenched across her front. If they stopped to offer help, she shook her head and ran on.
    Time passed. It did pass, though she was held in an order of time different from those around her—and not the pregnant woman’s time either, which is slow, a calendar of the growth of the hidden being. Her time was endurance, containing pain. Phantoms and chimeras inhabited her brain. She would think, When the scientists make experiments, welding two kinds of animal together, of different sizes, then I suppose this is what the poor mother feels. She imagined pathetic botched creatures, horribly real to her, the products of a Great Dane or a borzoi with a little spaniel; a lion and a dog; a great cart horse and a little donkey; a tiger and a goat. Sometimes she believed hooves were cutting her tender inside flesh, sometimes claws.
    In the afternoon, she collected the children from school, and, later, David from the station. She walked around the kitchenas suppers were eaten, encouraged the children to watch television, and then went up to the third floor where she hastened up and down the corridor.
    The family could hear her swift heavy steps, up there, and did not let their eyes meet.
    Time passed. It did pass. The seventh month was better, and this was because of the amount of drugs she took. Appalled at the distance that had grown up between her and her husband, between her and the children, her mother, Alice, she now planned her day for one thing: that she would seem to be normal between the hours of four, when Helen and Luke ended school, until eight or nine, when they went to bed. The drugs did not seem to be affecting her much: she was willing them to leave her alone and to reach the baby, the foetus—this creature with whom she was locked in a struggle to survive. And for those hours it was quiet, or if it