The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing Page B

moors she could hardly see for grey drifting rain. The place stood square and upright among dismal dripping evergreens, and its regular windows, three rows of them, were barred.
    She entered a small entrance lobby that had a handwritten card tacked on the inner door: “Ring for Attendance.” She rang, and waited, and nothing happened. Her heart was beating. She still surged with the adrenaline that had given her the impetus to come, but the long drive had subdued her, and this oppressive building was telling her nerves, if not her intelligence—for, after all, she had no facts to go on—that what she had feared was true. Yet she did not know exactly what that was. She rang again. The building was silent: she could hear the shrill of a bell a long way off in its interior. Again, nothing, and she was about to go around to the back when the door abruptly openedto show a slatternly girl wearing jerseys, cardigans, and a thick scarf. She had a pale little face under a mass of curly yellow hair that had a blue ribbon holding a queue like a sheep’s tail. She seemed tired.
    “Yes?” she asked.
    Harriet saw, understanding what this meant, that people simply did not come here.
    She said, already stubborn, “I’m Mrs. Lovatt and I’ve come to see my son.”
    It was evident that these were words this institution, whatever it was, did not expect to meet.
    The girl stared, gave an involuntary little shake of the head that expressed incapacity, and then said, “Dr. MacPherson isn’t here this week.” She was Scottish, too, and her accent was strong.
    “Someone must be deputising for him,” said Harriet decisively.
    The girl fell back before Harriet’s manner, smiling uncertainly, and very worried. She muttered, “Wait here, then,” and went inside. Harriet followed her before the big door was shut to exclude her. The girl did glance around, as if she planned to say, You must wait outside, but instead she said, “I’ll fetch someone,” and went on into the dark caverns of a corridor that had small ceiling lights all along it, hardly disturbing the gloom. There was a smell of disinfectant. Absolute silence. No, after a time Harriet became aware of a high thin screaming that began, and stopped, and went on again, coming from the back of the building.
    Nothing happened. Harriet went out into the vestibule, which was already darkening with the approaching night. The rain was now a cold deluge, silent and regular. The moors had disappeared.
    She rang again, decisively, and returned to the corridor.
    Two figures appeared, a long way off under the pinpoints ofthe ceiling lights, and came towards her. A young man, in a white coat that was not clean, was followed by the girl, who now had a cigarette in her mouth and was screwing up her eyes from the smoke. Both looked tired and uncertain.
    He was an ordinary young man, though worn down in a general way; taken bit by bit, hands, face, eyes, he was unremarkable, but there was something desperate about him, as if he contained anger, or hopelessness.
    “You can’t be here,” he said, in a flurried indecisive way. “We don’t have visiting days here.” His voice was South London, flat and nasal.
    “But I am here,” said Harriet. “I am here to see my son Ben Lovatt.”
    And suddenly he took in a breath, and looked at the girl, who pursed her lips together and raised her eyebrows.
    “Listen,” said Harriet. “I don’t think you understand. I’m not just going away, you know. I’ve come to see my son, and that is what I am going to do.”
    He knew she meant it. He slowly nodded, as if saying, Yes, but that isn’t the point. He was looking hard at her. She was being given a warning, and from someone who was taking the responsibility for it. He might be a rather pitiable young man, and certainly an overtired and inadequately fed one, doing this job because he could not get another, but the weight of his position—the unhappy weight of it—was speaking through him, and