Doris Lessing

Alice was going to burst, she was so furious, standing there, fists clenched, face working and red.

"Oh, God, Alice," said Dorothy Mellings, "do go away. I'm just fed up with you, can't you see that? I just can't be bothered with you."

Alice shrieked, "You'll see, you shitty old fascist. You and your fascist friends. That's all you care about...." She was incoherent, panting, sweating. "But you just wait. Everything is rotten. It's all undermined. But you're so dozy and stupid and you can't even see it. We are going to pull it all down." And she even came over to her mother and gave her a push on the shoulder, so that Dorothy had to hold on to the table edge. "You'll all see," Alice yelled finally, and ran out of the room, slamming the door.

Fuelled by an anguish of rage, Alice dashed down the stairs and then the street, turned a corner, and became part of the thin late crowd dispersing from the Underground. A block away, two strolling policemen approached, and Alice became at once the good citizen coming home after an evening's fun. She knew one of the policemen. He had been on that very first raid. He did not know her. She nodded at him, and smiled, ratepayer who paid his wages. He said, "Good evening."

Well, they had orders to fraternise, thought Alice, allowing her face, her body, to scorn him, once safely past. But her real anger had gone into her pounding race along the pavement. Now she was thinking of her mother with a strong protective pity. Two shitty little rooms! Dorothy looked so big in that sitting room; if she turned too quickly she might knock a wall down. Spending her evenings talking to Zoë Devlin and reading books! Alice now examined, from a stored mental picture, titles from the two tidy little strips of shelves up the walls, and from the pile of books on the floor by the big chair. What did she want to read that kind of book for! She might just as well still be at school. When Zoë Devlin came to spend the evening they sat opposite each other and talked about life. No. About books. No, of course, they had that row. Well, that was ridiculous; they'd have to make it up; they'd been like sisters; they said so themselves. A stupid shitty row... well, quite a lot of quarrels, really.

Alice was standing on the pavement, like a child playing statues, apparently waiting for a taxi or to be given a lift. She was - unwillingly - seeing the scene of that dreadful final row between her mother and Zoë. It was in the old sitting room, on the first floor, which stretched from front to back and from side to side of the old house, windows all round, and through the windows views of garden and trees. Dorothy Mellings and Zoë faced each other, pale, too serious to shout or insult each other, as they had done before, but then always made it up, laughing. Two tall strong handsome elderly women, with the lovely room stretching away all around them to the windows, and, beyond them, the gardens.

Alice's vision seemed to shift. Two old women. Ancient. They both looked so battered and beaten. Alice felt their being old as an affront to her. How had they got like this so quickly? Why had they? Why had they let it happen? Why didn't they care? Didn't they see how ridiculous they were, taking themselves so seriously?

Three days before that, these two women had broken off an argument, saying that if they did not, they would start hitting each other.

On that occasion, Dorothy had said, "You and I met on the Aldermaston marches. We met because of our political attitudes. That is what we had in common."

Zoë had said, "Oh, all the rest didn't count, of course! We've been friends for twenty years!"

"Zoë, do you realise that I have to censor everything I say to you now? I can't talk to you about anything I am really thinking?"

"Well, there's plenty to talk about."

"No, there isn't. I'm not wasting my time gossiping and talking about whether we should eat butter and bacon or not. Or start making our own pasta. That's what we talk about."

"You've got so bloody reactionary, that's the trouble."

"Don't stick bloody stupid labels on me. You're back in the nineteenth century, all of you. Weeping about the Tolpuddle Martyrs and singing the Red Flag. You are a bad joke."

"You used not to think it was a joke."

"No. I do now. Do you realise I have to think twice before I invite you here? You can't be invited with anyone who has a different political opinion on anything, because you start calling them fascists! You won't meet anyone, even, who reads a right-wing newspaper. You've become a dreary bigot, Zoë, do you know that?"

"And you are a fascist! Not far off one. Reading books about the KGB, and seeing Reds under every bed."

"There are Reds under every bed," said Dorothy seriously. "God, when I think it used to be a joke, do you remember? The fu

"I've been wondering whether I shouldn't. After all, forty years ago it wasn't fascist to fight for the bad against the worse. Why is it now?"

"I'm just going to leave, Dorothy. If I didn't, I think I'd hit you."

"Yes, I think you'd better."

That had been three days before. Neither woman had made any move towards the other. Then Zoë arrived one morning. Jasper was in the kitchen, eating breakfast cooked by Alice. Dorothy Mellings was on the telephone in the sitting room, having taken herself well out of the way of Jasper, as Alice appreciated.

Zoë went into the sitting room, looking through Alice, who was doing the flowers for her mother. She stood in the middle of the room, gazing dramatically at Dorothy. Who took her time ending the telephone conversation, in order - as both Alice and Zoë could see - to prepare herself for the confrontation with Zoë. A confrontation it was going to have to be - Zoë's face and body said so. It was evident to Alice that Zoë had come to provoke a quarrel. She wanted some kind of noisy showdown with Dorothy; there was something self-consciously accusing about her. She had prepared all kinds of things to say and how to say them.

Dorothy slowly got up and went to stand opposite Zoë, as if accepting a challenge to fight. But now the moment had come, both were very pale and serious, and - much worse than shouting, which anyway usually ended in laughter - spoke in low voices that were breathless because of the awfulness of what was happening.

"Listen, Dorothy. I've got to say this and you've got to listen. Even if you start hating me for it. I mean, even more than you do already."

"Rubbish," said Dorothy, impatient.

"Well, it amounts to that, doesn't it? If everything I do or think is stupid in your eyes?"

"Do you want to talk about that? I mean, seriously? People with different political opinions being stupid? That is what I used to think, certainly."

"Dorothy, don't sidetrack me. I want to say this. Do you realise what you are doing, Dorothy? Because Cedric has left you..."

"Five years ago now."

"Let me say it. Cedric left you, and you have to leave this house. And it's all so awful, you just have to burn your boats, scorched-earth policy - just destroy everything as you leave. Because it won't hurt so much if you do."

Here Zoë stood waiting - expectant, it seemed, of Dorothy's grateful acceptance of her diagnosis.

"You can't be serious!" said Dorothy, keeping her voice low, though it sounded bitterly scornful. "You've come here to say that?"

"Yes, I have. It's important. You've got so extraordinary...."

"Strange as it might seem, the idea had occurred to me. You know, that psychotherapy of yours has made you very dim-witted, Zoë. You come out with something absolutely obvious as if it's some revelation."