Briefing for a Descent Into Hell - Doris May Lessing [104]
Unlike others who had come in while she sat there, saying silently: I dare you to come and sit with me, and had gone to sit elsewhere, he went straight towards her, sat down, and immediately pulled a pipe out of his pocket and started on the business of filling and lighting it. He wore a casual jacket, and a dark blue sweater under it. He looked like a man who had been an amateur athlete.
He was Professor Charles Watkins and he and Violet were friends.
Now, without asking him, she swept her cards together and began dealing for a poker game which was a favourite of theirs, which meant that each played three hands, seven cards a hand, with four cards wild, and high-low into the bargain. She nearly always won these games, not because she was brighter than the Professor, but because she cared more.
“Threes, fives, sevens, Jacks wild,” she announced, in a companionable girl’s voice.
They played. She won.
She shuffled and said: “Did you see him today?”
“Yes, Doctor X is away.”
“What did he say?”
“He says I’ve got to be moved somewhere. I can’t go on here the way I am.”
“Why, why can’t you? Oh, it is too much!”
“He just keeps saying that this is a reception hospital and he can’t bend the rules any more.”
“Don’t you let them send you to the North Catchment then, whatever else.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t.”
She dealt.
“Twos and sixes and Queens wild,” she said.
They played in silence. She won.
“Haven’t you got any money at all?” she cried, a petulant and wilful child, as it were demanding a new doll, or dress.
“The Professor is quite loaded, so they tell me,” he said. “But that doesn’t help me much, does it?”
“I could get a job and earn, I have had jobs. Never for long though.”
“I’m sure I could too. I’m very handy around the wards, after all. I could wash up in a restaurant or work in a bar?”
“Would we earn enough to live on?”
“We could try.”
“Oh do let’s. Oh please.”
“Yes … we wouldn’t—force each other. We wouldn’t—impose.”
“No. We’d help each other, I’m sure of that.”
She dealt. It was for five cards.
“We’ll play it straight, cool and classical,” she said.
They played. She won.
“Aren’t you cheating at all?” he enquired.
This meant, was she identifying more than was inevitable with one or other of the hands she was playing, for in this personal version of poker they had evolved, the different hands stood for aspects of themselves. They might or might not know what each other’s different hands stood for. But he knew now that when she dealt for the classic game, this meant she was feeling calmer and more in control of her different selves than when she dealt three hands each and with so many cards wild. And so on.
Yesterday morning, she had let him win the first game, making it clear that it was because she knew he had had a bad night.
“Was I cheating? Did it look as if I was? I was trying not to.”
“Well perhaps I was too, a little.”
“But I won,” she claimed fiercely. “I won, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did, Violet. You always do.”
“Yes, I do, don’t I?”
She dealt again, three hands each, five cards.
They played, she won.
“Are your sons coming to see you?”
“No. She won’t bring them.”
“Don’t mind. Oh please don’t. I’ll go and make you some tea. Would you like some?”
“I’d like some tea, yes, but I don’t mind that they aren’t coming. What I mind is, that I don’t mind, when they are so sure that I ought to. Who are they, though? I know you. I suppose you are my daughter. They say I haven’t had a daughter?”
“Oh I wish I was your daughter. Oh I do so wish I were. But you’d be like the rest, I suppose.”
“Perhaps I would. How do I know I am a good father to my sons? But that is then. You are now. I am good for you, Vi? Am I?”
“Yes. But you like me, you see. My families don’t.”
“Yes, I do like you Violet. Very much.”
She went off to the little