The Real Thing by Doris Lessing Page A

What do they think … they
don’t
think. I haven’t been able to collect any money for three weeks and it was their mistake in the first place, not mine. And now they’re on strike. They owe me a full month. I haven’t paid my rent. I borrowed money from someone who doesn’t have any either. Then they go on strike for a rise … they don’t care about us, they never think about what is happening to us. I could kill them.’
    He said uncomfortably, his eyes bright with sympathy for her, ‘Look at it from their point of view …’
    ‘What point of view?’ she cut in. ‘I’m only interested in my point of view. I had a friend downstairs, she killed herself last time they decided to treat themselves to going on strike. She had two kids. They’re in care now. I got myself a job a couple of months ago. It wasn’t much of a job but it was a job. But hanging around Social Security day after day to try and get my money out of them, I lost it. Now I haven’t even got that. I’m not going to try for another job, what’s the point? If I did get one, the shittingD.H.S.S. would decide to go on strike again.’ She delivered all this in a cold level tone, her eyes-the vulnerable eyes of a girl-staring off at nothing. She was probably seeing visions of herself killing enemies.
    He said, sounding discouraged, ‘Not everyone in the Social Security agrees with the strike. I’m sure of that.’
    ‘I don’t care. Well, I’ve come to begging. I did it last time they went on strike. I shoplifted too. If I hadn’t, the kids’d’ve starved.’
    ‘How many have you got?’
    ‘What’s it to you? I’m not telling you anything.’
    He leaned forward, peering into the cloud of smoke she sat in, and said, speaking slowly and deliberately, to make her listen to him, ‘When I started working there it was all different. Fifteen years ago … I really liked it then, I liked …’ Here he censored ‘helping people’, but she heard it and gave him a sour smile. ‘But then everything slowly went to pot. In those days there was a good atmosphere, not like it is now. We were understaffed suddenly. Then the cuts … suddenly they put up partitions and glass panels and bars in the windows. We were shut off from-the customers, so to speak. It was like being in a cage. Not that I wasn’t sometimes glad of the protection.’ He laughed: it sounded like grudging admiration. He held out his arm and pulled back the sleeve of his jacket, showing a reddened lump just above his wrist. ‘See that? That’s where a girl bit me. She went berserk …’
    ‘Probably me,’ she said, not looking at him. Her pose said she didn’t want to listen to all this. His attitude said that he had to say it: he was full of the need to tell her.
    ‘No, it wasn’t you. I’ll never forget that girl.’
    ‘Could have been, though.’
    “Then you’d have been in the wrong of it. That time it wasn’t our fault. She got herself in a muddle and blamed us.’
    ‘If you say so. If you say something then it has to be true. No appeal. Going berserk, is that what you call it?’ She was stubbing out a cigarette and wondering whether to light another. She looked at her watch: yes, she had a bit more time.
    He said, ‘Ten quid’s worth of food isn’t going to get you very far.’
    ‘I’ve got the ten that rich cow gave me.’
    He took out his wallet, extracted a £10 note, then a £5 note, and handed them to her. ‘Go into the shop again. Stock up a bit.’
    She looked at the money in her hand, her mouth ugly. She got up, then remembered the carrier bags on the chair beside her, and was about to take them into the shop with her.
    ‘Do you think I’m going to steal them?’ He sounded hurt, but she only shrugged, and went into the supermarket. While she was gone he allowed his face to show what he was feeling: anger, but it was different from hers, and he did not seem able to believe what he was remembering, what he was thinking. He was full of