Four Gated City (93 page)

Paul having departed, Rita was without an escort: it was only now that it became evident that this was how she had seen him. Poor Paul had been made use of: girls made use of him. Also, he had been a shield, for Rita did not accept any of the young men who now presented themselves. She was much at home, a daughter in the house, helpful to Martha and to Mark. Or she might ring up Lynda in Paul’s house, and invite herself to tea: there, she offered to run errands, liking, as she said, to be of use. Meanwhile they-the older women, watched without much verbal comment, that marvellous phenomenon, the single-minded ruthlessness of the female in full confident pursuit, though so far were aims and self-knowledge on parallel lines that she was all passivity, secret sighing tears, and dramatic loss of weight. (Needing to lose weight, she was all the better for it.)

Nor must it be thought that Mark was oblivious. On the contrary. He said that the girl had a crush on him and it was very flattering to a man of his age. He might say this in Martha’s bed, for she was comforting him for the loss of Lynda-though he was still trying to persuade himself she would come back; and he was comforting her because she was depressed, knowing that her life was about to blow itself into a new shape, with no idea at all how or when.

But it got on his nerves, he said, having those love-lorn eyes fixed on him day and night; couldn’t the hussy be got out of the place somehow? He needed all his energy for his schemes for the future, and one of these days that girl’d find herself raped-he was only flesh and blood after all, and if one more time he found her draped all over his bed in a nightie darning his socks, he wouldn’t answer for the consequences. So they joked.

Graham Patten was telephoned. He, in the grip of a fearsome passion for his first wife (they were about to marry each other again), said he could not assist personally, but would see what could be done to widen her interests. Rita then entered Graham’s territory for a while. After a couple of weeks he telephoned to say that he knew earthwomen were in, but the trouble was, peasants
were always politically so reactionary, and he had his reputation as a Marxist to protect.

What had happened was this. It goes without saying that all fashionable parties at that time were stocked entirely with progressives concerned with the state of affairs in Zambesia. A young woman had darted up to Rita and exclaimed that she, Rita, ought to be ashamed of herself but that ‘history would soon have its revenge’. Rita had instantly replied, on a reflex action, with a whole series of statements full of flaming moralistic fervour and uplift, like Jefferson, or Wilberforce. At which the young woman had embraced her as a freedom fighter and invited her to speak on a platform next week-end. Rita said no, but was talked into it: she was a girl who could not withstand being told she was irresponsible. On a platform of the Free Zambesia movement, Rita then delivered herself of a lot more rhetorical statements to do with freedom and liberty to an audience warmly welcoming this precious creature, a white liberal. Only slowly did it dawn on them that she was in fact a firm supporter of the rebel régime in Zambesia. Confusion all round, and apologies from both sides-proving Rita’s point that people could like each other … the trouble was that the education of the young Free Zambesians had not included the information that (to simplify) a young Nazi in 1938, say, would not have said: ‘I am a brutal racist who will lay Europe in ruins and end freedom in our time.’ On the contrary, he would have sounded-like Jefferson. As for Rita, she had heard the young white Zambesians stating their position in high moral and idealistic terms and had been attracted by the sentiments. These she reproduced on request … this experience more than ever determined her to eschew politics, particularly as the Free Zambesians rang up Graham Patten to complain about his friends … He forgave Rita on condition she wouldn’t do it again.

This led to the next, and crucial incident. Rita was at a party attended by the essence of the screen and stage (vintage 1958 matured) and, attacked yet again as a fascist, she saw that the young woman who was doing the attacking was in fact a young man. She began to mutter something defensive about the bottoms of both sides, black and white, needing to be smacked, received an unintelligible reply, and went off by herself to sit in a corner and observe the scene. First she saw that there were practically no women present at all, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.
Then she saw that the guests were in fact the casts of the plays she had seen the night before and the night before that-
Romeo and Juliet
and
Othello
, both with all-male casts. The theatres and the actors being world-famous, that she was finding the scene before her eyes repulsive upset her-though she did not wish to be found old-fashioned. She looked for Graham, who, comfortingly, was in love with a woman, even if confusingly-but he and his wife had quarrelled and had left the party separately, sulking.

She was rescued by a man (she examined him carefully to make sure he was not merely dressed as one) who asked her to go and have some coffee and cheer up - ‘he wasn’t political either’. Rita, well out of her depth and tending towards tears, felt that this was probably a hero (since heroes were kind) and she confided to him all her moral dubieties. He was extremely witty. Rita knew that he was being witty, and enjoyed it, but on one occasion said: ‘Please make your jokes more slowly, it’s not that I don’t get them, it’s just that people aren’t so sophisticated where I come from.’ So he did. He took her to supper where Graham and his ex-mistress-but-one were paying out his ex-and-future wife and her present lover by being seen together where she (the wife) was bound to be-this restaurant was always the scene of these marital tiffs. Rita told her new friend that for her part when she got married, she intended it to be for good. He said that in his opinion she was quite right. Rita then went home with this consolingly integritous man to his flat, where she soon found herself altogether at sea. It was clear that they were going to make love, for he said that they were; and indeed they got into bed at last, where he made a great many more witty remarks, all to do with bottoms and bosoms, and his inclination towards one, but not the other. Finally having said that ‘it was entirely his misfortune, but, alas, she had too much of both’, he played to her some Bach on his record-player, and in the morning when they woke up, a brisk girl secretary was bringing them breakfast in bed, quite undiscomposed by seeing Rita there. When her host had gone to the bathroom, and Rita got out of bed to look at herself in the mirror (for as she said to Martha later, she could hardly believe this was happening to her), she saw ranged in a row beside the bed, four riding whips graded in sizes. It was not that Rita was ignorant about dear old London; after all, she had been around in it for months now (though more in pop and boutique and television circles where as she said she thought things were
more old-fashioned), but she found it very hard to connect whips with herself. ‘I kept thinking: but I don’t like horses. I don’t like horsy men.’ Finally, as the secretary entered with
The Times
, and the announcement that Mr Bravington Poles-Warren would soon be out of the bath, Rita understood that she was sitting naked on a gilt chair in front of the mirror, and the secretary was briskly putting away whips as if filing papers. It occurred to Rita that the whips had been put out to impress the secretary: there had been no suggestions that she, Rita, was to be, or should have been, whipped. She examined the secretary-who seemed a perfectly ordinary girl. But perhaps she was just a poor girl who needed to earn a large salary to support a widowed mother or something like that. She thought of her companion of the night before, and kept saying to herself, over and over again, that poor thing, he must have had an unhappy childhood and be wearing a brave smile over a sad heart; but after she had bathed, he took her down to find a taxi, and insisted on taking her into the sweetshop immediately below where he lived, and, saying good morning, darling, good morning, Petronella, good morning, sweet, good morning, George, to the sales people, he bought Rita an enormous box of continental chocolates. Once again Rita understood this was not for her benefit, but a sort of showing off to the salespeople.

Suddenly Rita cracked, having preserved the most gentle and good-humoured tact throughout a trying night and morning. She said in front of everyone in the shop: ‘You’re only buying me those because you want everyone to know that I spent last night with you. How many girls have you brought in here beaten black and blue? Well, if you think real men have to beat girls, then you’d better meet one.’ At which she strode out, all hot tears.

At home she said to Mark that she didn’t think Graham’s friends were very nice: she was broad-minded she hoped.

She wept. She was very low. She put her arms around Martha’s neck like a small girl and said she didn’t know why it was but she just wanted to cry and cry. Found by Mark on his bed putting buttons on his shirts, in wan tearful beauty and pale blue georgette, she told him the whole story, and one thing leading to another …

Martha, adding pennies to pennies, hundreds of pounds to hundreds of pounds, was thinking as she half-listened to what was almost certainly a love-silence from next door, ‘I wonder if Rita has remembered that she probably won’t be able to buy disposable
nappies in …’ But they weren’t yet absolutely certain where they were going: it was some small village on the edge of a semi-desert.

Mark’s Memorandum to Himself (still unfinished) continued:

‘6. Therefore, groups of people aware of this situation should set themselves to make flexible preparations based on the fact that within (?) years, probably ten, or fifteen, one, two, or three areas of the world,
almost certainly heavily populated ones
(see maps Β and Ba and Dorothy’s notes) will become uninhabitable, permanently or temporarily.

‘7. Any preparations made will have to take into account the inevitable hostility of governments, expressed subtly rather than openly. This means that any organization will have to be scientifically self-sufficient. But this is again an age of mercenaries-we can hire what we need.

‘8. Locations must be found in parts of the world less vulnerable to contamination by wind, rain, etc., and prepared for large numbers of people.

‘9. Preparations should probably also be military. If there is one thing certain it is that everyone will be in a state of panic, as rumours, counter-rumours, denials by authority, multiply while catastrophes occur, nearly occur, half-occur. Muddle will be the keynote.

‘10. The first thing, then, is to get money.

‘11. In order to do this we need …’

The fund had started with the promise of Mark’s share of the five thousand pounds from the sale of this house. Rita offered what was left of eight hundred pounds. Martha, who had continued to spend little and earn well all these years, contributed two thousand pounds reflecting, as citizens do on these occasions, that such a large sum to her would buy a few postage stamps for the organization. It was all very heartwarming, but hardly enough to set up machinery which Mark saw rescuing large groups of people from death and disaster. It was enough however to hire scientific advice, which turned out to be Jimmy Wood’s. Mark had severed connection with him by simply withdrawing from the factory: someone else had bought it, and Jimmy remained in charge. Mark had told Jimmy why he could no longer work with him. Jimmy had said that he was sorry. A week later he had turned up at the Radlett Street house as if nothing had happened to say that he had a very exciting idea for a new device which … what had happened was
that his new partner, or employer had not yet understood that Jimmy would not work unless fed by talk, so Jimmy was coming to Mark to get talk. It was only then that Mark really understood, really believed, that there are people who cannot be judged morally. They are not responsible for their actions. Jimmy being much around, he was asked for advice-but the problem was, one could not ask Jimmy’s advice on this or that problem to do with germ warfare, fall-out, air pollution, etc. etc., except in the vaguest of terms. Because anyone had only to say to Jimmy: I hear that you are involved with some crack-brained seditious scheme for… and if this person talked enough, Jimmy would talk back-he couldn’t help doing this. Mark therefore postulated an imaginary novel which involved certain hazards: Jimmy was infinitely obliging with his advice.

Now Jimmy was also a bit of a literary celebrity in his own way: he was one day in a pub talking about a new book of his own to a couple of journalists, when he chanced to mention Mark Coldridge, saying that Mark planned a new novel such and such. Mark, asked by one of these journalists about the new book thought, why not? It’s a good enough screen while one makes inquiries and works things out. It sounds, said this friendly young man (for journalists had infinitely changed since the bad old days: invasions of privacy, bad manners, bullying of any kind had long since been forgotten, were altogether obsolete, under the new dispensation of the Press Council), as if it might be a sequel to
A City in the Desert
. True, said Mark, it might very well be. ‘And has it got a name? ’

Mark replied (but after all it is not everyone who can make up good jokes on the spur of the moment), ‘Son of the City.’ ‘The Sun City? ’ ‘Yes, why not? ’

A paragraph appeared in a gossip column, and that was that. Not quite. Weeks later Mark got an agitated letter from a certain Wilhelm Esse Perkins, an American industrialist, who had read this paragraph (he was much addicted to London and English culture and always followed its newspapers) while on a business week-end in Peru. He wished to meet Mark, and was quite prepared to fly over to London to meet him, if that was agreeable. It appeared that something in that paragraph had ‘gone right home’. At any rate, Mr Perkins had bought a copy of
A City in the Desert
as soon as he returned to New York, and even before finishing reading it-but Mark must not think he was by nature an impulsive man, had
decided that Mark was the man to help him build an ideal city on the lines laid down in Mark’s book. He had always been a believer in an enlightened despotism, he said. He saw his task as providing money, and Mark’s as planning and building this city. They would then create some kind of Committee or Trust (elected from suitable interested people, but the details could always be worked out later), whose function it would be to choose an enlightened despot. They would advertise for applicants for this post in a normal manner, go about it all quite openly and without pulling their punches, and above all, taking their time, because clearly, that the despot should be the right man for the job was a key point.