The Four-Gated City

‘Don’t you ever think of marrying?’

‘Yes. Sometimes.’ The worry on his face was to do with her: not what he had come about. ‘People have been saying I’m after you?’

He coloured up at once, changed position: the cat jumped down, annoyed. ‘Yes. Do you mind?’ ‘No. Yes, a little. Not much.’

‘It was stupid of me. I’d forgotten completely that – well, what with everything else ‘You shouldn’t let yourself listen to them.’ As she spoke she knew she was saying more: Why are you letting yourself be influenced? He heard this, gave her an acute look, acknowledging it. In a different mood he might have become ‘The Defender’. But not tonight. He was Lynda’s husband.

‘I want to ask you something. I get so involved in – I know I’m not seeing something. It’s Lynda. Why do I upset her so much? Do you know?’

‘You always ask too much of her.’

‘But how is she ever going to get well if … I mean, what was the point of her coming home at all?’

She could not bring herself to say what she was thinking.

‘You mean, it was just to get out of the hospital? I mean, it couldn’t just have been that – I am here, after all!’

‘She didn’t have much choice.’

‘She could have gone off and shared a flat with that … what was to stop her?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘She came here, where I am.’ ‘And Francis.’

‘He’s never here. She never sees him.’

‘Perhaps she wants to. I don’t know, Mark. How should I know?’

‘Do you think they are Lesbians?’ He found it difficult to say this. He had gone white now, was all dark hot eyes in a white face. One mask, or look, does for several different emotions. So Mark looked when contemplating his mother’s connivance with Hilary Marsh, or the affair of Ottery Bartlett. That was anger. This was misery.

‘I don’t know. A bit, perhaps. I’ve never known any. But I shouldn’t imagine that’s the point. It’s probably more that they make allowances for each other.’

‘A dreadful woman, dreadful, dreadful.’

‘Well … I don’t know.’

‘You wouldn’t choose to share your life with her!’ ‘Well, no. But I’m not ill.’

Lynda had been diagnosed by a large variety of doctors: there had been a large variety of diagnoses. She was depressed; she was a manic-depressive; she was paranoic; she was a schizophrenic. Most frequently, the last. Also, in another division, or classification, she was neurotic; she was psychotic. Most frequently, the latter.

‘They said she was better. Well, I don’t see it.’ ‘She is managing out of hospital.’

‘Yes but … when we were married, it never came easily to her – sex, I mean. It wasn’t that – I mean, she’s normal enough. What’s normal? But how do I know? It’s not as if I had had all that experience when we were married. It’s not as if I can make vast comparisons. But I remember it striking me always, it was as if being able to sleep with me was a proof to herself – do you understand?’

‘How can I? One could say that of lots of people these days. Sex is a kind of yardstick, one’s got to succeed. Were you her first lover?’

‘Yes. Well, yes, I am sure I was. But sometimes it was like making love to a drowning person.’ ‘She wanted to be saved?’

‘Yes. Yes! Exactly that!’ He was excited because she saw it. ‘Sometimes I thought, my God, am I murdering this woman! Did you hear that, when she said, Mark, you’re killing me.’

‘Yes, but that …’

‘No. That meant something. It made sense. She used to say, “Save me, Mark, save me!” Well, I had a jolly good try!’ ‘Yes.’

‘And now what? What is one supposed to do? Just let her – drown?’

He sat, white, stiff, his eyes full of tears.

With this man one could not easily use the ancient balm of arms, warmth, easy comfort. She pulled a chair near his, took his hand, held it. The tears ran down his face.

‘Mark, listen. She’s not going to be your wife. She’s not ever going to be. Sometime, you’ve got to see it.’

‘You mean, I should look for another wife? Oh, I’ve had plenty of that sort of advice recently, I assure you. They’ve even said, I should marry you!’

‘Well, God knows I’m not one to say that one should marry for the sake of being married. But, Mark, you’ve got to give up Lynda. I mean, you’ve got to stop waiting for her to be different.’

‘If I can’t have her, I don’t want anybody.’

‘All right. Then you’ll have nobody.’

‘But why? The other afternoon, when that dreadful woman was not there, it was as if – it was like when we were first married.’ After a long time, when she did not say anything, his taut hand went loose in hers, and he stood up. The look he gave her was hurt: she had not helped him, not said what he wanted to hear.

Next day, he asked Lynda if she would go away with him for a week-end, to stay at Mary and Harold Butts’s. She had always loved Nanny Butts.

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Lynda. ‘I’d love to. What a lovely idea.’

They were to leave by car on Friday afternoon. In the morning there were voices shouting in anger from the basement, screams that wailed off into tears. Objects crashed against walls, doors slammed.

Mark packed a suitcase, and went downstairs at the time he had appointed, to fetch his wife. Lynda was sitting on her bed in a dressing-gown, with a desperate trembling smile that was directed generally, not at Mark, but at life. Dorothy sat knitting in the other room. She was making a tea-cosy, of purple and red wool. Lynda’s clothes were on the floor, in a heap beside the suitcase.

Then Lynda stood up, still smiling, walked out of the bedroom, and went up the stairs, with her husband following her. In Mark’s bedroom, on the table by his bed, stood a photograph of a radiant young beauty who smiled back at the soiled, ill, sour-smelling Lynda.

The sick woman ground her teeth with rage, picked up the photograph, looked at it with hatred, then flung it down to break into a mess of glass and wood. Then she went into the study. On a long table against one wall stood Jimmy’s models of possible electronic machines. One of them was a development of existing machines that could chart the human brain in terms of electric impulses. These machines she systematically smashed. Then she went downstairs again, locking the door into the basement behind her.

Late that night Martha, on her way up to bed, saw the study door open. Mark was sitting by his desk, and the face he lifted was the white black-eyed mask.

‘Martha, will you get rid of that – picture? I can’t.’

She went to the bedroom, swept up the glass and the bits of frame, and took up the photograph of young Lynda – undamaged. It was hard to tear up that beautiful face, but she tore it up, and disposed of it all in the rubbish bin.

As she passed the study for the second time, Mark called her in.

‘I’m going to see if I can find my brother,’ he said.

This could have been foreseen, if she had been awake? Possibly. It was a shock. She sat down, opposite his challenger’s face, to challenge him.

‘You can’t.’

‘I’m going to.’

‘What did you have in mind? That you’d turn up in Moscow and say, “Where is my brother?”?’ ‘Yes.’