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- Doris Lessing
On the top floor, the two rooms were occupied by Mrs Fortes-
cue, and had been since before the Danderleas came. Ever since the
boy could remember, grumbling went on that Mrs Fortescue had
the part of the house where the liquor smell did not reach; though
she, if remarks to this effect came to her, claimed that on hot nights
she could not sleep for the smell. But on the whole relations were
good. The Danderleas' energies were claimed by buying and selling
liquor, while Mrs Fortescue went out a lot. Sometimes another old
woman came to visit her, and an old man, small, shrunken and
polite, came to see her most evenings, very late indeed, often after
twelve.
Mrs Fortescue seldom went out during the day, but left every
evening at about six, wearing furs: a pale, shaggy coat in winter,
and in summer a stole over a costume. She always had a small hat
on, with a veil that was drawn tight over her face and held with a
bunch of flowers where the fur began. The furs changed often: Fred
remembered half a dozen blonde fur coats, and a good many little
animals biting their tails or dangling bright bead eyes and empty
paws. From behind the veil, the dark made-up eyes of Mrs Fortes-
cue had glimmered at him for years; and her small, old, reddened
mouth had smiled.
One evening he postponed his homework, and slipped out past
the shop where his parents were both at work, and took a short
walk that led him to Oxford Street The exulting, fearful loneliness
that surged through his blood with every heartbeat, making every
stamp of shadow a reminder of death, each gleam of light a prom-
ise of his extraordinary future, drove him around and around the
streets, muttering to himself, bringing tears to his eyes, or to his
lips snatches of song which he had to suppress. For, while he knew
himself to be crazy, and supposed he must have been all his life (he
could no longer remember himself before this autumn), this was a
secret he intended to keep for himself and the tender creature who
shared the stuffy box he spent his nights in. Turning a corner prob-
ably (he would not have been able to say) already turned several
times before that evening, he saw a woman walking ahead of him
in a great fur coat that shone under the street lights, a small veiled
hat, and with tiny sharp feet that took tripping steps towards Soho.
Recognizing Mrs Fortescue, a friend, he ran forward to greet her,
relieved that this frightening trap of streets was to be shared. Seeing
him, she first gave him a smile never offered him before by a
Mrs Fortescue
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woman; then looked prim and annoyed; then nodded at him
briskly and said as she always did: 'Well, Fred, and how are things
with you?' He walked a few steps with her, said he had to do his
homework, heard her old woman's voice say: 'That's right, son,
you must work, your mum and dad are right, a bright boy like you,
it would be a shame to let it go to waste,' - and watched her move
on, across Oxford Street, into the narrow streets beyond.
He turned and saw Bill Bates coming toward him from the hard-
ware shop, just closing. Bill was grinning, and he said: 'What,
wouldn't she have you then?'
'It's Mrs Fortescue,' said Fred, entering a new world between one
breath and the next, just because of the tone of Bill's voice.
'She's not a bad old tart,' said Bill. 'Bet she wasn't pleased to see
you when she's on the job.'
'Oh, I don't know,' said Fred, trying out a new man-of-the-world
voice for the first time, 'she lives over us, doesn't she?' (Bill must
know this, everyone must know it, he thought, feeling sick.) 'I was
just saying hullo, that's all.' It came off, he saw, for now Bill nodded
and said: 'I'm off to the pictures, want to come?'
'Got to do homework,' said Fred, bitter.
'Then you've got to do it then, haven't you,' said Bill reasonably,
going on his way.
Fred went home in a seethe of shame. How could his parents
share their house with an old tart (whore, prostitute - but these
were the only words he knew), how could they treat her like an
ordinary decent person, even better (he understood, listening to
them in his mind's ear, that their voices to her held something not
far from respect), how could they put up with it? Justice insisted
that they had not chosen her as a tenant, she was the company's
tenant, but at least they should have told Sanko and Duke so that
she could be evicted and . . .
Although it seemed as if his adventure through the streets had
been as long as a night, he found when he got in that it wasn't yet
eight, and his mother said no more than that he shouldn't forget
his homework.
He went up to his box and set out his school-books. Through
the ceiling-board he could hear his sister moving. There being no
door between the rooms, he went out to the landing, through his
parents' room (his sister had to creep past the sleeping pair when
she came in late) and into hers. She stood in a black slip before the
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