The Fifth Child - Doris Lessing

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physical disability, and his new daughter, the Down’s syndrome baby, appalled him. Yet he was very much married to Sarah. They were a match: both tall, generously built, dark, like a pair of gypsies, always in colourful clothes. But the poor baby was in Sarah’s arms, covered up so as not to upset everyone, and William was looking everywhere but at his wife.

      He looked instead at Harriet, who sat nursing Paul, two months old, in the big chair that was hers because it was comfortable for this function. She looked exhausted. Jane had been awake in the night with her teeth, and had wanted Mummy, not Granny.

      She had not been much changed by presenting the world with four human beings. She sat there at the head of the table, the collar of her blue shirt pushed to one side to show part of a blue-veined white breast, and Paul’s energetically moving little head. Her lips were characteristically firmly set, and she was observing everything: a healthy, attractive young woman, full of life. But tired…the children came rushing from their play to demand her attention, and she was suddenly irritable, and snapped, ‘Why don’t you go and play upstairs in the attic?’ This was unlike her – again glances were exchanged among the adults, who took over the job of getting the children’s noise out of her way. In the end, it was Angela who went with them.

      Harriet was distressed because she had been bad-tempered. ‘I was up all night,’ she began, and William interrupted her, taking command – expressing what they all felt, and Harriet knew it; even if she knew why it had to be William, the delinquent husband and father.

      ‘And now that’s got to be it, sister-in-law Harriet,’ he announced, leaning forward from his wall, hand raised, like a band-leader. ‘How old are you? No, don’t tell me, I know, and you’ve had four children in six years…’ Here he looked around to make sure they were all with him: they were, and Harriet could see it. She smiled ironically.

      ‘A criminal,’ she said, ‘that’s what I am.’

      ‘Give it a rest, Harriet. That’s all we ask of you,’ he went on, sounding more and more facetious, histrionic – as was his way.

      ‘The father of four children speaks,’ said Sarah, passionately cuddling her poor Amy, defying them to say aloud what they must be thinking: that she was going out of her way to support him, her unsatisfactory husband, in front of them all. He gave her a grateful look while his eyes avoided the pathetic bundle she protected.

      ‘Yes, but at least we spread it out over ten years,’ he said.

      ‘We are going to give it a rest,’ announced Harriet. She added, sounding defiant, ‘For at least three years.’

      Everyone exchanged looks: she thought them condemning.

      ‘I told you so,’ said William. ‘These madmen are going to go on.’

      ‘These madmen certainly are,’ said David.

      ‘I told you so,’ said Dorothy. ‘When Harriet’s got an idea into her head, then you can save your breath.’

      ‘Just like her mother,’ said Sarah forlornly: this referred to Dorothy’s decision that Harriet needed her more than Sarah did, the defective child notwithstanding. ‘You’re much tougher than she is, Sarah,’ Dorothy had pronounced. ‘The trouble with Harriet is that her eyes have always been bigger than her stomach.’

      Dorothy was near Harriet, with little Jane, listless from the bad night, dozing in her arms. She sat erect, solid; her lips were set firm, her eyes missed nothing.

      ‘Why not?’ said Harriet. She smiled at her mother: ‘How could I do better?’

      ‘They are going to have four more children,’ Dorothy said, appealing to the others.

      ‘Good God,’ said James, admiring but awed. ‘Well, it’s just as well I make so much money.’

      David did not like this: he flushed and would not look at anyone.

      ‘Oh don’t be like that, David,’ said Sarah, trying not to sound bitter: she needed money, badly, but it was David, who was in a good job, who got so much extra.

      ‘You aren’t really going to have four more children?’ enquired Sarah, sighing – and they all knew she was saying, four more challenges to destiny. She gently put her hand over the sleeping Amy’s head, covered in a shawl, holding it safe from the world.

      ‘Yes, we are,’ said David.

      ‘Yes, we certainly are,’ said Harriet. ‘This is what everyone wants, really, but we’ve been brainwashed out of it. People want to live like this, really.’

      ‘Happy families,’ said Molly critically: she was standing up for a life where domesticity was kept in its place, a background to what was important.

      ‘We are the centre of this family,’ said David. ‘We are – Harriet and me. Not you, Mother.’

      ‘God forbid,’ said Molly, her large face, always highly coloured, even more flushed: she was annoyed.

      ‘Oh all right,’ said her son. ‘It’s never been your style.’

      ‘It’s certainly never been mine,’ said James, ‘and I’m not going to apologize for it.’

      ‘But you’ve been a marvellous father, super,’ chirruped Deborah. ‘And Jessica’s been a super mum.’

      Her real mother raised her ponderous brows.

      ‘I don’t seem to remember your ever giving Molly much of a chance,’ said Frederick.

      ‘But it’s so co-o-o-ld in England,’ moaned Deborah.

      James, in his bright, overbright clothes, a handsome well-preserved gent dressed for a southern summer, allowed himself the ironical snort of the oldster at youthful tactlessness, and his look at his wife and her husband apologized for Deborah. ‘And anyway,’ he insisted, ‘it isn’t my style. You’re quite wrong, Harriet. The opposite is true. People are brainwashed into believing family life is the best. But that’s the past.’

      ‘If you don’t like it, then why are you here?’ demanded Harriet, much too belligerently for this pleasant morning scene. Then she blushed and exclaimed, ‘No, I didn’t mean that!’

      ‘No, of course you don’t mean it,’ said Dorothy. ‘You’re overtired.’

      ‘We are here because it’s lovely,’ said a schoolgirl cousin of David’s. She had an unhappy, or at least complicated, family background, and she had taken to spending her holidays here, her parents pleased she was having a taste of real family life. Her name was Bridget.

      David and Harriet were exchanging long supportive humorous looks, as they often did, and had not heard the schoolgirl, who was now sending them pathetic glances.

      ‘Come on, you two,’ said William, ‘tell Bridget she’s welcome.’

      ‘What? What’s the matter?’ demanded Harriet.

      William said, ‘Bridget has to be told by you that she is welcome. Well – we all do, from time to time,’ he added, in his facetious way, and could not help sending a look at his wife.

      ‘Well, naturally you are welcome, Bridget,’ said David. He sent a glance to Harriet, who said at once. ‘But of course.’ She meant, That goes without saying; and the weight of a thousand marital discussions was behind it, causing Bridget to look from David to Harriet and back, and then around the whole family, saying, ‘When I get married, this is what I am going to do. I’m going to be like Harriet and David, and have a big house and a lot of children…and you’ll all be welcome.’ She was fifteen, a plain dark plump girl who they all knew would shortly blossom and become beautiful. They told her so.

      ‘It’s natural,’ said Dorothy tranquilly. ‘You haven’t any sort of a home really, so you value it.’

      ‘Something wrong with that logic,’ said Molly.

      The schoolgirl looked around the table,

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