Free The Real Thing by Doris Lessing Page B

red van stood obstinately in front of the Escort. Now I could see the face, or rather, the profile of the driver of the red van. He was elderly, overweight, and his cheek looked as if it had been washed in the water beetroot had been boiled in. A candidate for a stroke. Out of the window of the Escort billowed smoke. I could just see her face: thestrong features of a woman who would stand to the death for common sense and her rights.
    Behind the red van the long line of blocked cars was trying to dissolve itself by backing up the hill and then turning off right into the street parallel to the one I had come from. That meant that I and the cars behind me, including the Golf, had to wait while all these cars reversed and manoeuvred. All the time cars were adding themselves to this line, and hooting, and people were shouting at each other, because they had not understood the seriousness of the situation with the red van and the Escort. The man in the Golf, the one who had waggled his hands in a gesture of world-weary tolerance, could not see what was holding me up now. He leant out and shouted at me and I leant out and shouted that there were about fifteen cars ahead sorting themselves out. He finally cracked. He yelled, ‘Oh Christ, would you believe it!’ and gestured to the cars behind him that he was going to reverse. There was just room, and he went forward into the drive of a man who came out of the house to shout that his drive was not a public roadway.
    A woman from the manoeuvring cars behind the red van held them all up to walk down to the red van and the Escort, where she surveyed the scene, and then said to the puce-faced driver and the smoke-shrouded woman, ‘Well, I suppose you two are getting something out of all this.’
    And went back to her car.
    At last I was able to go fast enough ahead to get a place going up the hill before yet another car turned in front of me. At the top of the hill I slowed to look around and there was the red van, there was the Escort, and neither had conceded an inch.

D .H.S.S
    The young woman on the pavement’s edge was facing in, not out to the street and she moved about there indecisively, but with a stubborn look. Several times she seemed about to approach somebody who had just come out of the Underground to walk up the street, but then she stopped and retreated. At last she moved in to block the advance of a smartly dressed matron with a toy dog on a leash that came to sniff around her legs as she said hurriedly, ‘Please give me some money. I’ve got to have it. The Social Security’s on strike and I’ve got to feed my kids.’ Resentment made her stumble over her words. The woman examined her, nodded, took a £5 note from her handbag, then put it back and chose a £10 note. She handed it over. The young woman stood with it in her hand, looking at it disbelievingly. She muttered a reluctant Thanks’, and at once turned and crossed the street in a blind, determined way, holding up one hand to halt the traffic. She was going to the supermarket opposite the Underground station, but at the entrance stopped to glance back at the woman who had given her the money. She was standing there watching her, the little dog yapping and bouncing at the end of its leash. ‘Fuckingcheek. Checking to see if I was lying,’ muttered the young woman. But she was a girl, really. ‘I’ll kill her. I’ll kill them …’ And she went in, took a basket, and began selecting bread, margarine, peanut butter, cans of soup.
    This incident had been observed by a man sitting in a shabby blue Datsun at the pavement’s edge. He had got out of the car and crossed the street just behind her, holding up his hand against the traffic to support her. He followed her in to the supermarket. He was a few paces behind her during her progress through the shop. At the check-out desk, when she took out the £10 note, her face tense with the anxiety of wondering if it would be enough, he interposed his own £10