Free The Real Thing by Doris Lessing

you to listen to me. Are you listening? We are all in the same boat here. We’ve got our little troubles, we have, all of us. I had to have a hysteriaectomy’ –so she pronounced it, as a joke, for while she was a real old-style working-class woman, unlike the others here except for the widow, she knew quite well how the word should be said. ‘The way I see it, it’s not fair. What’s my womb ever done for me?’Here she raised her face so the others could see that she was closing her left eye in a wink. Always good for a laugh, that’s me, said this wink. Now she said loudly, to be heard over the sobbing, ‘Look, dear, if you’ve had someone to say goodnight to every night of your life, then it’s more than most people have. Can’t you see it like that?’
    Mildred went on crying.
    They could all see Miss Cook’s face in the light from the window. It looked strained and tired, the jolly clown notwithstanding.
    She laid her arm around the weeping woman’s shoulders and gently shook her. ‘Now, my dear,’ she said, ‘don’t cry like that, you really mustn’t …’
    But Mildred had turned and flung her arms around Miss Cook’s neck. ‘Oh,’ she wept. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. I’ve never had to sleep by myself, not ever, I’ve always had my Tom …’
    Miss Cook put her arms right around Mildred, cradling and rocking the poor bereft little girl. Her face was, as they say, a study. She seemed to be struggling with herself. When at last she spoke, her voice was rough, even angry. ‘What a lucky girl you are, aren’t you? Always had Tom, ‘ave you? And I’m sure a lot of us wish we could say the same.’ Then she checked her anger and began again in a soothing monotonous tone. ‘Poor little thing, poor little girl, what a shame, is that what it is, then, oh dear, poor thing
    The other women were remembering that Miss Cook had not had children, had never been married, and lived alone, and apart from her cat had no one to touch, stroke, hold. And here she was, her arms filled with Mildred Grant, and probably this was the first time in years she had had her arms around another person, man or woman.
    What must it feel like, being reminded of this otherworld where people hugged and held and kissed and lay close at night, and woke in the dark out of a dream to feel arms around them, or were able to reach out and say, ‘Hold me, I’ve been dreaming’?
    But her voice was going on, kindly, impersonal, firm. ‘Poor little thing. Poor little girl. What a shame, but never mind, you’ll have your Tom back soon, won’t you …’
    This went on for a good quarter of an hour. The sobbing stopped. Miss Cook laid down the exhausted woman, letting her limbs and head flop gently into a comfortable position, as one does with a child.
    When she stood up and looked down at the sleeping woman. Miss Cook’s face was, if possible, even more of a study. She went to her bed, removed her flowery gown and her slippers and lay carefully down.
    The women communicated without words.
    It was necessary for someone to say something. It was she, Miss Cook, who had to say it. ‘Well,’ she remarked. ‘You live and learn.’
    Soon they were all in their own worlds, fast asleep.

P rinciples
    I was driving up one of the roads in Hampstead which, as we all know, were never designed for cars, were not long ago lanes that accommodated horses and people walking. In front of me a knot in the traffic. Hardly unusual. I stopped. I had to. In front of me was a Golf, and in front of that a blue Escort was blocked by a red van, nose to nose. If the red van reversed no more than a couple of yards, then the Escort could drive past. But the red van wasn’t going to budge, although for the Escort to let him through meant that the woman-yes, yes, a woman driver-would have to reverse past a parked car and then abruptly at an angle into an empty space too small for it, so it would stick out anyway. If the Escort did this, yes, there