Doris Lessing was born of British parents in Persia (now Iran) in 1919 and was taken to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) when she was five. She spent her childhood on a large farm there and first came to England in 1949. She brought with her the manuscript of her first novel, The Grass is Singing, which was published in 1950 with outstanding success in Britain, in America, and in ten European countries. Since then her international repu- tation not only as a novelist but as a non-fiction and short story writer has flourished. For her collection of short novels, Five, she was honoured with the 1954 Somerset Maugham Award. She was awarded the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1981, and the German Federal Republic Shakespeare Prize of 1982. Among her other celebrated novels are The Golden Notebook, The Summer Before the Dark, Memoirs of a Survivor and the five volume Children of Violence series. Her short stories have been collected in a number of volumes, including To Room Nineteen and The Temptation of Jack Orkney; while her African stories appear in This Was the Old Chief's Country and The Sun Between Their Feet. Shikasta, the first in a series of five novels with the overall title of Canopus in Argos: Archives, was published in 1979. Her novel The Good Terrorist won the W. H. Smith Literary Award for 1985, and the Mondello Prize in Italy that year. The Fifth Child won the Grinzane Cavour Prize in Italy, an award voted on by students in their final year at school. The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 was made into an opera with Philip Glass, libretto by the author, and premiered in Houston. Her most recent works include the novel, Ben, in the World (the sequel to The Fifth Child) and two volumes of her autobiography, Under My Skin, and Walking in the Shade. By the same author DORIS LESSING NOVELS The Grass is Singing SHORT STORIES The Golden Notebook Five Briefing for a Descent into Hell The Habit of Loving The Summer Before the Dark A Man and Two Women Memoirs of a Survivor The Story of a Non-Marrying Man Diary of a Good Neighbour and Other Stories The Fifth Child If the Old Could ... Winter in July The Good Terrorist The Black Madonna The Fifth Child This Was the Old Chief's Country Playing the Game (Collected African Stories, Vol.1) (illustrated by Charlie Adlard) The Sun Between Their Feet Love, Again (Collected African Stories, Vol. 2) Mara and Dann To Room Nineteen Ben, in the World (Collected Stories, Vol.1) The Temptation of Jack Orkney 'Canopus in Argos: Archives' (Collected Stories, Vol. 2) series Re: Colonised Planet 5, London Observed Shikasta The Marriages Between Zones The Old Age of El Magnifico Three, Four, and Five POETRY The Sirian Experiments Fourteen Poems The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 DRAMA Documents Relating to the Each His Own Wilderness Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Play with a Tiger Empire The Singing Door 'Children of Violence' novel- NON-FICTION sequence In Pursuit of the English Martha Quest Particularly Cats A Proper Marriage Rufus the Survivor A Ripple from the Storm Going Home Landlocked A Small Personal Voice The Four-Gated City Prisons We Choose to Live Inside The Wind Blows Away Our Words OPERAS African Laughter The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (Music by AUTOBIOGRAPHY Philip Glass Under My Skin: Volume I The Making of the representative for Walking in the Shade: Volume II Flamingo Planet 8 (Music by Philip Glass) An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Flamingo An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB Flamingo is a registered trade mark of HarperCollins Publishers Limited www.fireandwater.com Published by Flamingo 2001 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Previously published in paperback by Flamingo 1993 The Fifth and by Paladin 1989 First published in Great Britain by Child Jonathan Cape Ltd 1988 Copyright © Doris Lessing 1988 Doris Lessing asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. Photograph of Doris Lessing by © Ingrid Von Kruse ISBN 0 586 08903 9 Set in Melior Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Harriet and David met each other at an office party neither had particularly wanted to go to, and both knew at once that this was what they had been waiting for. Someone conservative, old-fashioned, not to say obsolescent; timid, hard to please: this is what other people called them, but there was no end to the unaffectionate adjectives they earned. They defended a stubbornly held view of themselves, which was that they were ordinary and in the right of it, should not be criticized for emotional fastidiousness, abstemious- ness, just because these were unfashionable qualities. At this famous office party, about two hundred people crammed into a long, ornate, and solemn room, for three hundred and thirty-four days of the year a boardroom. Three associated firms, all to do with putting up buildings, were having their end-of-year party. It was noisy. The pounding rhythm of a small band shook walls and floor. Most people were dancing, packed close because of lack of space, couples bobbing up and down or revolving in one spot as if they were on invisible turntables. The women were dressed up, dramatic, bizarre, full of colour: Look at me! Look at me! Some of the men demanded as much attention. Around the walls were pressed a few non-dancers, and 7 among these were Harriet and David, standing by humorous air to be an effort. He was making similar themselves, holding glasses - observers. Both had mental comments about her: she seemed to dislike reflected that the faces of the dancers, women more these occasions as much as he did. Both had found out than men, but men, too, could just as well have been who the other was. Harriet was in the sales department distorted in screams and grimaces of pain as in enjoy- of a firm that designed and supplied building ment. There was a forced hecticity to the scene ... but materials; David was an architect. these thoughts, like so many others, they had not So what was it about these two that made them expected to share with anyone else. freaks and oddballs? It was their attitude to sex! This From across the room - if one saw her at all among was the sixties! David had had one long and difficult so many eye-demanding people - Harriet was a pastel affair with a girl he was reluctantly in love with: she blur. As in an Impressionist picture, or a trick photo- was what he did not want in a girl. They joked about graph, she seemed a girl merged with her surround- the attraction between opposites. She joked that he ings. She stood near a great vase of dried grasses and thought of reforming her: 'I do believe you imagine leaves and her dress was something flowery. The you are going to put the clock back, starting with me!' focusing eye then saw curly dark hair, which was Since they had parted, unhappily enough, she had unfashionable ... blue eyes, soft but thoughtful . slept - so David reckoned - with everyone in Sissons lips rather too firmly closed. In fact, all her features Blend & Co. With the girls, too, he wouldn't be sur- were strong and good, and she was solidly built. A prised. She was here tonight, in a scarlet dress with healthy young woman, but perhaps more at home in a black lace, a witty travesty of a flamenco dress. From garden? this concoction her head startingly emerged. It was David had been standing just where he was for an pure nineteen-twenties, for her black hair was sleeked hour drinking judiciously, his serious grey-blue eyes down into a spike on her neck at the back, with two taking their time over this person, that couple, watch- glossy black spikes over her ears, and a black lock on ing how people engaged and separated, ricocheting off her forehead. She sent frantic waves and kisses to each other. To Harriet he did not have the look of David from across the room where she circled with her someone solidly planted: he seemed almost to hover, partner, and he smiled matily back: no hard feelings. balancing on the balls of his feet. A slight young man As for Harriet, she was a virgin. 'A virgin now,' her girl - he looked younger than he was - he had a round, friends might shriek; 'are you crazy?' She had not candid face and soft brown hair girls longed to run thought of herself as a virgin, if this meant a physio- their fingers through, but then that contemplative gaze logical condition to be defended, but rather as some- of his made itself felt and they desisted.