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Mrs Fortescue
497
'I've always been lucky that way, my friends were always gener-
ous. Take Mr Spencer now, he never lets me want for anything,
only yesterday he said: Your curtains are getting a bit
passe,
I'll get
you some new ones. And mark my words, he will, he's as good as
his word.'
He saw that the whisky, coming on top of whatever she'd had
earlier, was finishing her off. She sat blinking smeared eyes at him;
and her cigarette, secured between thumb and forefinger six inches
from her mouth, shed ash on her cherry-red gown. She took a gulp
from the glass, and nearly set it down on air: Fred reached forward
just in time.
'Mr Spencer's a good man, you know,' she told the air about a
foot from her unfocussed brown gaze.
'Is he?'
'We're just old friends, now, you know. We're both getting on a
bit. Not that I don't let him have a bit of a slap and a tickle some-
times to keep him happy, though I'm not interested, not really.'
Trying to insert the end of the cigarette inside her fumbling lips,
she missed, and jammed the butt against her cheek. She leaned for-
ward and stubbed it out. Sat back - with dignity. Stared at Fred,
screwed up her eyes to see him, failed, offered the stranger in her
room a social smile.
This smile trembled into a wrinkled pout, as she said: 'Take Mr
Spencer now, he's a good spender, I'd never say he wasn't, but but
but. . .' She fumbled at the packet of cigarettes and he hastened to
extract one for her and to light it.
'But.
Yes. Well, he may think I'm
past it, but I'm not, and don't you think it. There's a good thirty
years between us, do you know that?'
'Thirty years,' said Fred, politely, his smile now fixed by a cold
determined loathing.
'What do you think, dear? He always makes out we're the same
age, now he's past it, but - well, look at that then if you don't
believe me.' She pointed her scarlet-tipped and shaking left hand at
the table with the photographs. 'Yes, that one, just look at it, it's
only from last summer.' Fred leaned forward and lifted towards
him the image of her just indicated which, though she was sitting
opposite him in the flesh, must prove her victory over Mr Spencer.
She wore a full-skirted, tightly-belted, tightly-bodiced striped dress,
from which her ageing bare arms hung down by her sides, and her
old neck and face rose shameless under the beautiful gleaming hair.
498- Doris Lessing
'Well it stands to reason, doesn't it?' she said, as it were indig-
nant: 'Well what do you think then?'
'When's Mr Spencer coming?' he asked.
'I'm not expecting him tonight, he's working. I admire him, I
really do, holding down that job, three, four in the morning some-
times, and it's no joke, those layabouts you get at those places, and
it's always Mr Spencer who has to fix them up with what they
fancy, if you know what I mean, dear, or get rid of them if they
make trouble, and he's not a big man, and he's not young any more,
I don't know how he does it. But he's got tact. Tact. Yes, I often say
to him, you've got tact, I say, it'll take a man anywhere.' Her glass
was empty, and she was looking at it.
The news that Mr Spencer was not expected did not surprise
Fred; he had known it, because of his secret brutal confidence born
when she had said: 'I never touch the stuff, dear.'
He now got up, went behind her, stood a moment steeling him-
self, because the embarrassed shamefaced grin had come back on
to his face, weakening his purpose - then put two hands firmly
under her armpits, lifted her and supported her.
She at first struggled to remain sitting, but let herself be lifted.
'Time for byebyes?' she said. But as he began to push her, still sup-
porting her, toward the bedroom, she said, suddenly coherent: 'But
Fred, it's Fred, Fred, it's Fred . . . ' She twisted out of his grip, fell
two steps back, and was stopped by the door to the bedroom.
There she spread her two legs under the cherry gown, to hold her
trembling weight, swayed, caught at Fred, held tight, and said: 'But
it's
Fred:
'Why should you care,' he said, cold, grinning.
'But I don't work here, dear, you know that - no, let me go.' For
he had put two great schoolboy hands on her shoulders.
He felt the shoulders tense, and then grow small and tender in
his palms.
'You're like your father, you're the spitting image of your father,
did you know that?'
He opened the door with his left hand; then spun her around by
pushing at her left shoulder as she faced him; then, putting both
hands under her armpits from behind, marched her into the bed-
room, while she tittered, steadily.
The bedroom was mostly pink. Pink silk bedspread. Pink walls.
A doll in a pink flounced skirt lolled against the pillow, its chin
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