The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [164]
“As you know, we quarrelled.”
“Well, has Theresa been?”
“Not yet.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve quarrelled with Theresa?”
“There is no reason why I should tell you anything at all,” said Dorothy. She half got up—she did not need to do more—reached over for her glass of whisky, and took a firm ration of it, her mouth a bit twisted. Grant’s whisky. Oh yes, Dorothy might be poor, thought Alice bitterly, but she wasn’t going to drink anything but her brand of Scotch.
Alice was looking anxiously at that stern face, which seemed as if it had been set forever into a frown, the brows pulled together.
Alice felt she did not know her mother. Dorothy Mellings, in the good old days, the days that could fill Alice’s memory for hours at a time, had been a tall, striking woman with reddish-gold hair in a chignon, creamy, delicately freckled skin, greeny-blue eyes. Rather pre-Raphaelite, really, they had used to joke, all of them. But since Dorothy never lolled or languished or rolled her eyes about, the comparison did not go far. Now she was a tall, strong, elderly woman with all that untidy white hair. Her eyes were like squarish lumps of green stone. When she was with other people—Zoë Devlin, for instance—she was all vitality and laughter.
“Who’s been here visiting you, then?”
“Mrs. Wood from downstairs.”
Alice stood up, stared, sat down again. “Mrs. Wood! What do you mean, Mrs. Wood! Why, she’s …”
“Are you suggesting she isn’t good enough for me?”
“But …” Alice was literally unable to speak. All that splendour of hospitality, the big house, the people coming in and out, the meals, the … “Mrs. Wood,” she stammered.
“I didn’t know you knew her.”
“But you can’t …”
“You mean that she’s working-class? Surely, Alice, you can’t hold that against her? As for me, I’ve reverted to my proper level. And who is it that boasts all the time about her working-class grandfather?” Dorothy, for the first time this evening, was smiling, was really looking at Alice, those greenish eyes cold, angry. “Or is it that you think she’s not intelligent enough for me?”
“But you have nothing in common—she’s never read anything in her life, for a start, I bet.”
“A sudden reverence for literature?” she enquired. And took another mouthful of whisky. “I can tell you, I find the company of Mrs. Wood just as rewarding as … a good many people I might mention. She’s not all full of rubbish and pretensions.”
This, reminding Alice of that inexplicable movement of her mother towards savage criticism of things she had held dear all her life, filled her eyes with tears, and she thought: It’s all been too much for her; oh, how awful, poor thing. She cried out, “You should simply never have said you’d leave home. You should have said you wouldn’t go. Then you wouldn’t have had to come here.”
This sounded like an appeal, as if her mother might even now say, “Yes, it was all a mistake,” and go back to her own house.
Dorothy was looking surprised. Then the cautious look was back, with the frown.
“But, Alice, you know what happened.”
“What does it matter, what happened? What is going to happen now, that’s the point?”
“Well, I do rather despair of talking to you lot about … necessity. It’s no use. You’ve all had it so easy all your lives, you simply do not understand. If you want something, then you take it for granted you can have it.…” Alice let out a little protesting sound, meaning to say that as far as she was concerned, her mother had gone off the point entirely. But Dorothy went on, “I know it is no use. I have been thinking hard about you, Alice. And I have come to one simple conclusion. You’re all spoiled rotten. You’re rotten. And Zoë’s children are the same.”
This was said without emotion. Almost indifferently. All passion spent.
Alice let this go by her, as part of Dorothy’s new persona, or craziness. It was best ignored. Would go away, probably, like this nonsense over living here.
“I think you should tell Cedric that you won’t live here; he must give you more money.”
Dorothy sighed, shifted about on her hard little chair, seemed to want to droop away