The four gated city

 Martha West is living a nomadic life in London. She has left behind her family, her children and her previous life in Zambesia and trying to find answers here. 

She works as waitress in a cheap cafe, staying as a tenant in the same place and witnesses how the "other half" lives. In her walks into the city, she finds a city unable to wake up from the ruins of the war. And people find it a sin to live a normal life because they say don't you know the war is going on. 

But she has to find a job as she is broke. And her friend Jack another waif who is trying to fill the voids of his life with women - unsuccessfully, asks her to move into his building and carry his child. No, she can not. 

But another friend Phoebe - or sister of friend Marjory - a fellow communist, offers her a job in an office as a secretary. This work is  some thing to do with liberating the colonies. Which Martha does not want to be reminded of. She declines curtly. 

So Phoebe takes her to the place of another job - assisting a writer Marc. Martha has to take this job as she is broke and has no where else to go in London. 

Marc has a very young son and a wife who is mentally disturbed and is hospitalised. Hiring a secretary is his dominating mother who wants a feminine presence in his wife. 

Now at least Martha has a roof over her head and little bit saving too. But she wants to move out of this job. She gives Marc an idea that he must hire a housekeeper. She constantly interacts with the workers to prepare the basement for the housekeeper. 

Marc's brother Colin is a professor and a communist. Or he believes he is. And because of his this belief he is under the watch list of the government. And Colin's wife is terrified about this fact. The Jew refugee from Germany does not want her house broken for some stupid ideologies of Colin. 

The book "The Four Gated City" by Doris Lessing is a wonderful read. Describing the war torn city along with class struggles and struggles of women in a beautiful way. May be slightly autobiographical too. Doris too was brought up in Zimbabwe and moved to London later in life. She too was communist for quite some time. A very good but quite a long read.