514
DORIS LESSING
What the gentleman :,jaw ill her struck his friends into incredulity,
and her into laughter, and then thoughl. She was the re-incarnation,
he said, of hi s grandmother, the best horsewoman in the county,
the bravest woman he had ever known - and, but of course, a
great lady.
Mary wondered for a while whether to take riding lessons, in
case some play or film producer saw in her what her still unknown
admirer saw, but decided aga inst il. They were introduced, and he
began to court her - the only word for it. She was living at the
time with a fashi onable dress designer, and it was hard to say which
of the two, Mary or her lover ("boy-friend") got more excitement
from the ritual. John sent her flowers, formally charming notes, left
visiting cards, took her to tea, drove her into the country in his
Bently - or rather, sat with her in the back seat while the man–
servant drove, took her to dinner. From each excursion Mary re–
turned to mourn with her dress designer the sad lack of romance in
modern life, and more than once they lay wrapped tearfully in each
other's arms, because of the poetry their relationship lacked and
must now always lack ( there being a time and a place for every–
thing) because for them flowers, formal notes, drives and long
intimate dinners were simply impossible, out of key. Their fate had
been to meet before a fitting-room mirror, to quarrel half an hour
later, and to start living together a week after. Surely, they both
wondered, it was not possible that gentleman John could be working
up to a proposal of marriage? As Mary put it: I know he's nuts,
but he's not completely gone - me, his wife, he must be joking.
About six months went by, of a patient courtship conducted to
rules invisible to Mary, but which she respected. Why not?
As
she
said, she'd have time to fit in a dozen of such relationships concur-
~
rently, apart from acting in one play and rehearsing for another and
r
keeping her boyfriend happy. What did those people
do
with them–
selves in those days, she asked, putting that time at about a hundred
years back, while waiting for the moment of truth? Then, at last,
John told her that he had decided she was the woman for him.
"You are the woman for him?" enquired her dress-designer.
"That's what he said - I swear it."
Mary was then invited, and for the first time, to weekend at his
house. Her lover made her some dinner dresses, romantic rather than
