This passage was taken from The Room Nineteen by Doris
Lessing. "The Northern Anthology of Short Fiction" by R.V. Cassill. W. W. Norton
& Company,1995.
Mathew and Susan had avoided the pitfall so many of their friends had fallen into –
of buying a house in the country for the sake of their children, so that the husband became
a weekend husband, a weekend father and the wife always careful not to ask what went on in
the town flat which they called (in joke) a bachelorflat. No, Mathew was a full-time husband,
a full-time father, and at night, in the big married bed in the big married bedroom (which
had an attractive view of the river), they lay beside each other talking and he told her about
his day, and what he had done, and whom he had met; and she told him about her day. Susan
didn't make the mistake of taking a job for the sake of her independence either, which she
might very well have done, since her old firm, missing her qualities of humor, balance and
sense, invited her often to go back. Children needed their mother to a certain age, that both
parents knew and agreed on; and when these four healthy wisely brought up children were of
the right age, Susan would work again.
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