Landlocked

Landlocked
Doris Lessing

The fourth book in the Nobel Prize for Literature winner’s ‘Children of Violence’ series tracing the life of Martha Quest from her childhood in colonial Africa to old age in post-nuclear Britain.In the aftermath of the Second World War, Martha Quest finds herself completely disillusioned. She is losing faith with the communist movement in Africa, and her marriage to one of the movement's leaders is disintegrating. Determined to resist the erosion of her personality, she engages in a love affair and breaks free, if only momentarily, from her suffocating unhappiness.

DORIS LESSING

Landlocked

Book Four of the

‘Children of Violence’ series

Contents

Cover (#u9e76db89-1cf2-5297-9c42-20c7ae407176)

Title Page (#ub6c4af82-7291-5a53-a175-ffdb323b329c)

Part One (#u9684c343-444c-578d-973a-2e172f871855)

Chapter One (#u588da70d-969f-5dfd-972d-560569007b9a)

Chapter Two (#u31353cad-87f0-59a1-b3ca-2ba49d94f239)

Chapter Three (#u8f135195-f0b3-5367-a0f8-c2f828c62852)

Chapter Four (#u2bd240dc-28e7-59d6-b925-640ca899eabe)

Part Two (#ub5a6ffef-fe27-5898-9040-7e22881fd0b9)

Chapter One (#u97cda29a-a7b7-5ee4-8f5f-db0385a110d5)

Chapter Two (#ub053b464-069c-54cc-aec5-0937321eab97)

Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Read On (#litres_trial_promo)

The Grass is Singing (#litres_trial_promo)

The Golden Notebook (#litres_trial_promo)

The Good Terrorist (#litres_trial_promo)

Love, Again (#litres_trial_promo)

The Fifth Child (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Part One (#ulink_7f31b98d-73f6-5157-94fe-8bff3b014509)

The Mulla walked into a shop one day. The owner came forward to serve him.

‘First things fìrst,’ said Nasrudin; ‘did you see me walk into your shop?’

‘Of course.’

‘Have you ever seen me before?’

‘Never in my life.’

‘Then how do you know it is me?’

THE SUFIS; Idries Shah

Chapter One (#ulink_3d2dbf51-2e0a-5e96-9ef0-1633bb5ba5b9)

The afternoon sun was hot on Martha’s back, but not steadily so: she had become conscious of a pattern varying in impact some minutes ago, at the start of a telephone conversation that seemed as if it might very well go on for hours yet. Mrs Buss, the departing senior secretary, had telephoned for the fourth time that day to remind Martha, her probable successor, of things that must be done by any secretary of Mr Robinson, for the comfort and greater efficiency of Mr Robinson. Or rather, that is what she said, and possibly even thought, the telephone calls were for. In fact they expressed her doubt (quite justified, Martha thought) that Martha was equipped to be anybody’s secretary, and particularly Mr Robinson’s – who had been spoiled (as Martha saw it), looked after properly (as Mrs Buss saw it), for five years of Mrs Buss’s life.

Mrs Buss said: ‘And don’t forget the invoice on Fridays,’ and so on; while Martha, fully prepared to be conscientious within the limits she had set for herself, made notes of her duties on one, two, three, four sheets of foolscap. Meanwhile she studied the burning or warm or glowing sensation on her back. The window was two yards behind her, and it had a greenish ‘folkweave’ curtain whose edge, or rather, the shadow of whose edge, chanced to strike Martha’s shoulder and her hip. At first had chanced – Martha was now carefully maintaining an exact position. Areas of flesh glowed with chill, or tingled with it: behind heat, behind cold, was an interior glow, as if they were the same. Heat burned through the glass on to blade and buttock; the cool of the shadow burned too. But there was not only contrast between hot heat and hot chill (cold cold and cold heat?); there were subsidiary minor lines, felt as strokes of tepid sensation, where the shadow of the window frame cut diagonally. And, since the patches and angles of sunlight fell into the office for half of its depth, and had been so falling for three hours, everything was warmed – floors, desks, filing cabinets flung off heat; and Martha stood, not only directly branded by sunlight and by shadow, her flesh stinging precisely in patterns, but warmed through by a general irradiation. Which, however, was getting too much of a good thing. ‘Actually,’ she said to Mrs Buss, ‘I ought to be thinking of locking up.’ This was a mistake; it sounded like over-eagerness to be done with work, and earned an immediate extension of the lecture she was getting. She ought to have said: ‘I think Mr Robinson wants to make a call.’