Sipping a word like brandy

In Doris Lessing’s story ‘A Road to the Big City’, published in her 1957 collection The Habit of Loving (my Penguin paperback edition, pictured, is from 1960), two young women, sisters, are travelling by train in Johannesburg. Marie, the younger, and Lilla sit at a table with a middle-aged man and allow him to buy […]