Stories by Doris Lessing Page B

father? Getting drunk and making a pig of yourself. Pictures of girls in your desk, and putting grease on your hair in the washrooms …”
    Mr. Brooke went white, tried to find words, looked helplessly round for support to Miss Jenkins and Richards. They did not meet his eyes. He felt as if they were dealing him invisible blows on the face; but after a few moments Miss Ives put away her handkerchief, picked up her pen with a gesture of endurance, and went back to her ledger. No one looked at Mr. Brooke.
    He made himself forget it. She was hysterical, he said. Women would say anything. He knew from what men had toldhim that there were times you should take no notice of them. An old maid, too, he said spitefully, wishing he could say it aloud, forgetting that she, too, had made of her weakness a strength, and that she could not be hurt long by him, any more than he could by her.
    But that was not the only case of hysteria. It seemed extraordinary that for years these people had worked together, making the same jokes, asking after each other’s health, borrowing each other’s things, and then everything went wrong from one day to the next.
    For instance, one of the typists wept with rage all of one morning because Mr. Jones sent back a letter to be retyped. Such a thing had never been known. Such was his manner, as a rule, that a reprimand was almost as warming as praise.
    As for Marnie herself, she was like a small child who does not know why it had been slapped. She wandered about the office miserably, sniffing a little, until by chance Mr. Jones saw her and asked what was wrong. She began to cry, and he took her into his room. The door was shut for over an hour while clients waited. When she came out, subdued but cheerful, the typists cold-shouldered her. Then she rushed in to Miss Ives and asked if she could move her desk into the main office, because the other girls were “nasty” to her. Very naturally Miss Ives was unsympathetic, and she cried again, with her head among the papers on Mr. Brooke’s desk. It happened to be the nearest.
    It was lunch hour. Everyone left but Marnie and Mr. Brooke. The repugnance she felt for this elderly man with the greasy faded hair, the creased white hands, the intimate unpleasant eyes melted in the violence of her misery. She allowed him to stroke her hair. She cried on his shoulder as she had cried on Mr. Jones’s shoulder that morning.
    “No one likes me,” she sobbed.
    “Of course everyone likes you.”
    “Only Mr. Jones likes me.”
    “But Mr. Jones is the boss …” stammered Mr. Brooke, appalled at her incredible ingenuousness. His heart ached for her. He caressed the damp bundle huddled over his desk gently, paternally, wanting only to console her. “If you could just remember this is an office, Marnie.”
    “I don’t want to work in an office. I want to go home. I want my mother. I want Mr. Jones to send me home. He says I can’t. He says he will look after me….”
    When they heard steps on the stairs Mr. Brooke guiltily slipped back to his corner; and Marnie stood up, sullen and defiant, to face Miss Ives, who ignored her. Marnie dragged her feet across the floor to the typists’ room.
    “I suppose you have been encouraging her,” said Miss Ives. “She needs a good spanking. I’ll give it to her myself soon.”
    “She’s homesick,” he said.
    “What about her stepfather in there?” snapped Miss Ives, jerking her head at Mr. Jones’s door.
    “He’s sorry for her,” said Mr. Brooke, defending his own new feeling of protectiveness for the girl.
    “Some people have no eyes in their heads,” she said unpleasantly. “Taking her to the pictures. Taking her to dinner every night. I suppose that is being sorry for her, too?”
    “Yes, it is,” said Mr. Brooke hotly. But he was sick with dismay and anger. He wanted to hit Miss Ives, wanted to run into Mr. Jones’s room and hit him, wanted to do something desperate. But he sat himself down at his desk