The Four-Gated City

So a war begins. Into a peace-time life, comes an announcement, a threat. A bomb drops somewhere, potential traitors are whisked off quietly to prison. And for some time, days, months, a year perhaps, life has a peace-time quality into which warlike events intrude. But when a war has been going on for a long time, life is all war, every event has the quality of war, nothing of peace remains. Events and the life in which they are embedded have the same quality. But since it is not possible that events are not part of the life they occur in – it is not possible that a bomb should explode into a texture of life foreign to it – all that means is that one has not understood, one has not been watching.

And, the bomb having exploded, the heralding (or so it seems) event having occurred, even then the mind tries to isolate, to make harmless. It was Martha’s concern, and Mark’s, to try and minimize the double event as if they felt it to be an isolated thing, without results, as it had had no causes. Or at least, that was what it seemed they felt; for with the little boy Paul playing upstairs, his mother dead, his father gone, they were discussing how to soften and make harmless. ‘How to break it’ – as Mark put it.

Paul was going to be six next week. He had plans for his birthday. His mother had talked of a party. Some sort of a party there must be.

‘Is my mother going to be here?’ asked Paul.

‘I expect so,’ said Mark – and turned away from the child’s acutely-fearful black eyes. Paul had never been separated from his mother, not even for one day. And now his uncle said: ‘I expect so.’ Paul became very gay, manic. He rushed all over the big house, bouncing on the beds, teasing the cat, standing to look out of all the windows, one after another. Through one of them, he would see his mother come. He turned, saw Mark and Martha watching him; and pulled the heavy curtains so that he was hidden from them. He took the black cat to bed with him, where he hugged and kissed the beast, which suffered it. But he did not like Martha touching him, nor Mark. Particularly not Mark. He was not used to contact with a man; his father having been kindly, but concerned (he had even said so) to make up for the emotionalism of the unfortunate Sally-Sarah by being cordial, but restrained.

Mark and Martha were prisoners in the house, because the reporters patrolled outside. Paul asked to go for a walk. He did not say that he hoped to catch a glimpse of his mother in the streets. He was told that no one was going for walks. Through the windows he saw men trying to peer in; and asked who they were. He tried to slip out of the back door, but found a smiling man on the doorstep, listening to Martha answering the telephone. No, Mr Coldridge was not in; no, he could not come to the telephone; no there was no comment about Mr Coldridge’s brother.

‘Is Mr Coldridge’s brother my daddy?’ he inquired.

The exchange was asked to alter the number. This was done; and for a couple of days there was peace. But then a reporter got the new number from Jimmy Wood at the factory. Jimmy Wood had been asked not to give it. In explanation he said that the man sounded ‘as if he really wanted it’. The number was changed again. Jimmy was again asked not to give it. But he did: he thought, he explained, the man asking for it was an electronics expert. After all, he had said he was. Jimmy’s part through the long siege was simply – not ever to understand it. Mark asked Jimmy to come to the house, so it could all be explained to him. He must be careful of the journalists, he was told. He arrived at the front door, and was enclosed by a group of news-hungry men. To them, smiling, he told everything he knew. Not much, not more than Mark knew; but affable and willing, he chatted, and entered the house, still smiling. But then, he always smiled. Some time in his life he had decided that life must be faced with his smile, and he never switched it off. A defence? An explanation? Who knew? But this small, wispy man with his great head covered in baby hair – smiled, as if he could not help it. They said to him: Please be careful, please don’t expose us, please don’t talk to the Press, and he smiled. Almost at once he began talking about affairs at the factory. It seemed he could not see the necessity for all this fuss.

But he agreed, not so much impatiently, as with tolerance, not to give the telephone number to anyone at all.

For a while, then, it was quiet. But Margaret telephoned from her country home. She had not been near them since the election party. She was concerned about Francis. ‘You ought to get him back home,’ she said. ‘He must be having a dreadful time at that beastly school.’

‘But it would be worse here with the journalists.’ ‘You think so? I don’t know. Mark could get rid of them, easily, if he wanted to.’ ‘Yes, but I don’t think he’d want to do that.’ ‘You ought to make him.’ ‘Perhaps you’d like to talk to him?’

‘No. No. I really haven’t got any more patience with … have you let the basement?’ ‘The basement!’ ‘Mrs Ashe still wants it.’ ‘But, Margaret, for God’s sake …’

Margaret had sounded embarrassed, about the basement. Now she hurried on: ‘But he always was so wrong-headed. Always.’

‘I think you ought to be discussing that with him.’

‘Well, yes, but – and don’t forget about Mrs Ashe, I must really ring off, I’m really very …’ She rang off.

This was so odd, struck such a discordant note, that Martha was unable to think about it, forgot to tell Mark.

It was Mark who took the next call from his mother.

Margaret had telephoned Francis’s school, and the headmaster said Francis was all right. As far as he knew the news had not reached the school. ‘But he’s such a fool,’ Margaret said. ‘I asked him if he banned the newspapers there, and he said, he was sure his boys understood the meaning of esprit de corps.’

‘Perhaps you could take Francis for a week or two?’

‘Oh, I don’t know – anyway, I’m off to America next week.’

‘You could take him until then, couldn’t you?’

‘I don’t really think …’

She then went on to talk about Mrs Ashe.

Mark said he really hadn’t time to worry about being a landlord, and rang off. It was so extraordinary of Margaret that Mark, like Martha, let it slide.

Paul had listened to this from outside the study door.

‘Why should Francis go and live with his granny?’ he asked.

‘She’s your granny too.’

‘No. She isn’t. She doesn’t like my mummy.’

‘Well, it would only be for a little time.’

She tried to pick him up. He was a heap of heavy limbs. The black frightened eyes, already lit by cunning, held Martha’s face, while he held himself rigid in her arms. She put him down.

‘I don’t want Francis’s granny to come to my party.’

‘She’s not coming.’

His birthday was the day after the next.

‘I want my party. I want my party,’ he sobbed, from the floor. He was saying, I want my mother.

Next morning, Martha put on a headscarf, and Mrs Van’s old coat, and got out of the house by eight in the morning, by the back door. Only two journalists had arrived, and they were at the front of the house. She went across London to Harrods, and bought a cake and presents for the party. When she arrived at the back door, it looked unoccupied. But before she could get in, a man ran up.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

‘I work for Mr Coldridge. I do the cleaning.’

She had the key in the door, but she was gripped by her other arm which clutched parcels.

His face was alive with suspicion, but also with the delights of the chase.

‘What’s going on in there?’

‘I work for Mr Coldridge. I do the cleaning.’

The clothes were right, but her voice was not. His face was hard, self-righteous. He was a man seeking to unmask evil. He took five pounds from his pocket. He hesitated. Five pounds was more than enough for a charwoman, but not for a friend or mistress or fellow-conspirator of Mark Coldridge. Hesitating, he lost his force of purpose; Martha slipped her arm away, and shot indoors, scattering parcels on to the floor of the kitchen. Through the back window his face appeared, in an angry teeth-bared scowl. Framed thus, emphasized, it was almost yes, funny. He looked like a bad actor in a melodrama: my prey has escaped.

One of the aspects of a bad time, before one has entered into its spirit, is that everything has a feel of parody, or burlesque. Martha stood in the kitchen, looking at the ugly, threatening face, and had to suppress laughter. Nervous laughter, certainly, and when he shook his fist at her, it was ugly and she was afraid. That evening, among the pile of newspapers that came from the newsagent, brought past the reporters by the newsagent’s boy, was one which carried a story about a mysterious woman, who had entry to Mr Coldridge’s house, and who would not give her name.

Next day was the birthday. In the morning Paul was given presents which he opened. Mark and Martha watching. He tore through them, throwing them aside, one after another: he was looking for evidences of his mother. He had not mentioned his mother for some days. Clearly the birthday had become for him the talisman which could produce his mother. The presents had not, but there was still the party.

After breakfast he went to Mark’s study and stood by the desk watching Mark pretending to work. By now they were waiting for him to ask: Where is my mother, so that they could tell him the truth. Which they should have done before. But the right time had gone past, and they did not know what to do. Everything was wrong, the ‘party’ absurd, the presents a mistake.

But now they did not know how not to have the party.

Martha laid a party-spread on the table in the dining-room. But Paul demanded that it should be in the kitchen. Nothing came in the front door, only sheaves of newspapers, falling through the letter-slot. But the back door could admit. It was through the back door that he expected his mother.

Martha spread out the cake, with its six candles on the kitchen table, and some biscuits and little cakes. While Martha moved about in these pathetic preparations, Paul stood just inside the kitchen door, watching them: Mark, trying to engage Paul’s attention, played with a wooden train on the floor. From time to time the two grown-up people exchanged glances of helplessness, and of shame, because things could have been allowed to reach this point.

There was a heavy knock on the back door; and the little boy, crying ‘There she is! There’s my mummy!’ rushed to open it. Two men stood there. One was the journalist of yesterday, looking angrily sullen. The other was a large smiling man.

‘Where’s my mummy?’ shouted Paul.