The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches Read online

  ‘When I asked him about it, he said it was all right,’ said Jody.

  Henry laughed. So did Angela. Then, soberly, for Jody’s sake, Angela said, ‘But it is awful. Boys are so much more difficult.’

  ‘Particularly with that awful, ridiculous, unforgivable emotional training they get,’ said Jody. Her voice was now far from cool, and Henry reached out his hand, took hers, squeezed it. The two hands dangled there, between sofa and chair, but the discomfort caused them to fall apart.

  Sebastian said, ‘We should discuss finance, too. I use this place with Olga. I should like to contribute.’

  ‘We can discuss all that,’ said Angela, and yawned.

  “There’s also the business of Connie’s school fees,’ said Henry to Angela. ‘Did you get them paid in time?’ To the others he said, ‘Sony, but we have a lot of things to discuss.’

  ‘We haven’t seen each other for – how long has it been Henry?’

  ‘It’s been weeks,’ said Henry.

  They had turned to face each other again. And they began again to talk about practical things, school fees, holidays, mutually convenient dates. Should Connie perhaps change schools? There must be a room for Connie in Sebastian and Angela’s new flat, as well as the room for Marion. And in Henry’s and Jody’s flat too. And so on … Again it seemed as if the two were waiting for one set of words to be finished, to return another, in a close hard exchange, as if words were something tangible, an extension of the one who used them.

  Throughout this weekend Sebastian and Jody had not allowed their eyes to meet in comment, but now Jody was looking steadily at Sebastian, and then he – slowly, as if determined not to evade a responsibility or an obligation – allowed his eyes to engage with hers. It was a long, sober gaze.

  Again half an hour passed. Henry and Angela could not end this exchange of theirs, which continued animatedly, with exclamations, disagreements, agreements, suggestions … and then, a clock struck from the hall, and Angela leaped up, ‘Oh goodness, I’m going to bed, I’m dropping with sleep, oh Sebastian darling, do come up soon …’ She went out, waving at the three. But Henry followed her, and the two went up the stairs, talking hard all the way. Again the two left behind looked at each other, and went on looking, as they listened to Henry and Angela talking animatedly at the top of the stairs, until at last Henry went one way to the room he shared with Jody, and Angela the other to the room where Sebastian would shortly find her fast asleep.

  A silence.

  Jody said deliberately, ‘They talk like that, they have to, because they can’t make love.’

  He coloured, but did not evade it. I have to say that this weekend I’ve seen things …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jody.

  ‘I’m going to have a drink,’ he said, and it was evident that this would enable him to turn away from her and her absolute determination he should share what she felt, and saw. Without asking her, he poured some whisky for her and put the glass into her hand. He almost did not sit down again, but then made himself: she needed so much that he should.

  ‘I think I’m going to leave early tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘I might even sleep down here tonight.’

  He was certainly startled. Then, still in the same way of making an effort to meet her, said, ‘Last night I don’t think Angela knew I was there at all. She was worn out, poor sweet.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Jody, intending him to understand she took this from a quite different point of view. ‘Anyway, I don’t think I can stand it,’ she said, tears threatening to engulf her voice. But she shook her head, took a gulp of her drink, and made herself smile.

  ‘I know one thing, you are making a decision when you’re very upset. That’s always a mistake.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was making a decision, I said I was leaving … oh, all right, then it is a decision. But I don’t think decisions made in haste are always bad ones.’

  He said, ‘Perhaps it is not always an advantage to be so relentlessly full of insight.’ This sounded spiteful, and he added quickly, ‘Oh I’m not saying you aren’t right -but where does it get you? No, bear with me, I’ve been thinking about it – you’ve made me think. Am I going to be any better for seeing every little nuance..’ Her face said satirically, some nuance, and he nodded impatiently. ‘But perhaps I had taken a decision without knowing it not to see everything after all, I’m going to many Angela and we are going to be happy..’ This tailed off, it was a bad moment: it was occurring to him (of course it had long ago to Jody, naturally, he was thinking angrily) that if Henry didn’t marry Jody then there would be all kinds of new adjustments, complications, new balances.

  ‘There’s one thing you don’t seem to see,’ said she. ‘Olga.’

  ‘Olga?’

  ‘You have Olga, your best friend.’

  He examined this, on its merits. ‘Yes, my best friend, and yes, you’re right, without Olga … yes, without her I’d find it all …’

  ‘All I have is Marcus. If you didn’t have your best friend – has she married again, by the way?’

  ‘No. Not yet. I am sure she would like to, but so far …’

  ‘You wouldn’t marry her again?’

  ‘Look, you don’t seem to … I love Angela. I know this weekend hasn’t been … but I don’t think you are giving it enough time. I certainly don’t feel about it all the way you do.’

  A pause. ‘You certainly have a good time, you people.’

  ‘Wh-a-a-at?’

  She contemplated him, as he sat there with his glass in his hand. Various little scenes from the past two days came back to her, and she contemplated them, too, taking her time. Her smile, when she spoke at last, was full of condemnation. ‘You are so pleased with yourselves! So -content!’

  ‘Content? You make it sound like a crime! Well, yes, I think I am content. I like my life.’ He looked at her, not long and slow, this time, only a quick glance, unable to stand the naked blaze of her unhappiness.

  ‘I’ve missed out,’ she said. “That’s what I’ve learned from you. I’ve missed out on the best relationship of them all. I don’t have a best friend – the ex-husband, the ex-wife.’ Her laugh was a squeal of misery.

  He nodded, smiling, to acknowledge her wit.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He got up. ‘If I were you I’d think about it. Henry’s a good chap, you know. I’ve learned to know him well. He’s all right.’

  ‘Yes, another good friend.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what to say except that…’

  ‘You’re sorry,’ she said finally. ‘And so am I.’

  He went out and up to bed, and she remained sitting where she was.

  Also by Doris Lessing

  NOVELS

  The Gross Is Singing

  The Golden Notebook

  Briefing for a Descent into Hell

  The Summer Before the Dark

  The Memoirs of a Survivor

  The Diaries of Jane Somers:

  The Diary of a Good Neighbor

  if the Old Could.

  The Good Terroris!

  The Fifth Child

  “Canopus in Argos: Archives” series

  Re: Colonized Planet 5. Shikasla

  The Marriages Between Zones Three. Four and Five

  The Sirinan Experiments The Making of the Representative for Planet’S

  Documents Relating to the Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

  “Children of Violence” series

  Martha Quest

  A Proper Marriage

  A Ripple from the Storm

  Landlocked

  The Four-Gated City

  SHORT STORIES

  This Was the Old Chiefs Country

  The Habit of Loving

  A Man and Two Women

  The Temptation of Jack Orkney and Other Stories

  Stories

  African Stories

  The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches

  OPERA

  The Making of the
Representative for Planet 8 (Music by Phillip Glass)

  POETRY

  Fourteen Poems

  NONFICTION

  In Pursuit of the English

  Particularly Cots

  Going Home

  A Small Personal Voice

  Prisons We Choose to Live Inside

  The Wind Blows Away Our Words

  Particularly Cats … And Rufus

  African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimba

  The Doris Lessing Reader

  Copyright

  Some of these stories appeared in the following publications: Antaeus, Fiction Magazine (London), Hampstead and Highgate Express (London), Icarus, The Independent Magazine (London), Irish Times (Dublin), London Magazine (London), Mississippi Valley Review, The New Yorker, The Observer Magazine (London), and Partisan Review.

  This book is published in Great Britain under the title London Observed.

  A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1992 by HarperCollins Publishers.

  THE REAL THING. Copyright © 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992 by Doris Lessing.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-03489-2

  First HarperPerennial edition published 1993

  The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

  Lessing, Doris May, 1919–

  The real thing: stories and sketches / Doris Lessing —1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-06-016853-6

  1. London (England)—Fiction. 1. Title.

  PR6023.E833R44 1992

  832′.914—dc20

  91-59932

  ISBN 0-06-092417-9 (pbk.)

  93 94 95 96 97 RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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