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A Proper Marriage
Doris Lessing
The second book in the Nobel Prize for Literature winner’s ‘Children of Violence’ series tracing the life of Martha Quest from her childhood in colonial Africa to old age in post-nuclear Britain.‘A Proper Marriage’ sees twenty-something Martha beginning to realise that her marriage has been a terrible mistake. Already the first passionate flush of matrimony has begun to fade; sensuality has become dulled by habit, blissful motherhood now seems no more than a tiresome chore. Caught up in a maelstrom of a world war she can no longer ignore, Martha’s political consciousness begins to dawn, and, seizing independence for the first time, she chooses to make her life her own.



A Proper Marriage
Book Two of the ‘Children of Violence’ series
Doris Lessing




Copyright (#ulink_5034da5d-40d6-58df-a21d-9a6cfec916ce)
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph 1954

Copyright © Doris Lessing 1954

Doris Lessing asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780586089996
Ebook Edition © MAY 2010 ISBN: 9780007406920
Version: 2014-09-15

Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u3f7a3bda-f687-5938-8729-61b0eb521da6)
Title Page (#u225d8125-f5da-5d4e-bb77-e68f1624b6f0)
Copyright (#u6c8167e1-8ed0-5a32-8e34-1b22f5217d7d)
Part One (#ua6c57fbb-f6bc-513d-a7eb-b9a7044b53ff)
Chapter One (#u8e41b2e2-6812-5e2e-9e8d-cb9c71da835a)
Chapter Two (#u8da2380d-67b4-558f-a337-4e7fce78d544)
Chapter Three (#ud90c22b2-2bd9-5da2-9191-150c541bc47f)
Chapter Four (#u1d2be00e-e91e-5b5b-a909-d1fd8499a789)
Part Two (#u2d621fa3-f0a8-56ac-bc34-0cfa63a68c90)
Chapter One (#ub9a445ed-fb6e-5802-bf6b-fbc2c9baaec7)
Chapter Two (#u349ae1b1-96de-5cf5-9265-b7771ee25e78)
Chapter Three (#u3b2b6926-bf9e-5624-a524-28ca81bb4c1d)
Chapter Four (#u86d18b3b-c4b6-56ae-b2fd-1b40a5a43cc0)
Part Three (#u2e8ae005-dcde-51d0-90e4-62d774662157)
Chapter One (#ua46ae6b0-ad28-5095-b411-c217fa1274ec)
Chapter Two (#uada9003f-ec0d-54cf-bd25-d93eb9c0683a)
Chapter Three (#u7cc8ba3b-d8df-5e77-b01f-5847200e13ed)
Chapter Four (#u36ce0070-3d6d-5e88-ab91-4af5d2ff1db6)
Part Four (#u966d2b8e-45e3-5e4b-a9e9-220431dcd291)
Chapter One (#u4ab84ec5-6c8b-518b-940d-36a38e735bf0)
Chapter Two (#ud147189e-8974-5277-8b9e-cb952c5513da)
Chapter Three (#u47ec82b3-9fd3-5676-8102-8e0dccc229f9)
Chapter Four (#u865f8a36-60b0-55f0-95d0-3c32043559c4)
Read On (#u72b35104-ad65-582f-a4c3-d272659baab9)
The Grass is Singing (#uf70cc18d-ceb2-5099-b1ef-5e05daa1f4e0)
The Golden Notebook (#u9fc5e0f7-0bc7-5eef-8749-325ecefba38c)
The Good Terrorist (#udc94a7b9-3f13-5a6c-bf70-97864a260062)
Love, Again (#ub5bcaedb-16f5-5e6e-8e31-eac543057017)
The Fifth Child (#u9d24d6ac-a881-57a8-bfa8-2697bb176244)
About the Author (#u0ae2d17f-18db-5699-92bf-e949105aec1d)
Also by the Author (#u0f9ce858-8edb-5872-9bb3-1ba34933df33)
About the Publisher (#uaaeadc54-af3e-5a57-84d7-fb4c2d60dbb7)

Part One (#ulink_2802ed82-7107-5624-b424-2486fe2ccf51)
‘You shouldn’t make jokes,’ Alice said, ‘if it makes you so unhappy.’
LEWIS CARROLL

Chapter One (#ulink_0ce05f9a-1acc-5595-9b35-525e00e6cd69)
It was half past four in the afternoon.
Two young women were loitering down the pavement in the shade of the sunblinds that screened the shop windows. The grey canvas of the blinds was thick, yet the sun, apparently checked, filled the long arcade with a yellow glare. It was impossible to look outwards towards the sun-filled street, and unpleasant to look in towards the mingling reflections in the window glass. They walked, therefore, with lowered gaze as if concerned about their feet. Their faces were strained and tired. One was talking indefatigably, the other unresponsive, and – it was clear – not so much from listlessness as from a stubborn opposition. There was something about the couple which suggested guardian and ward.
At last one exclaimed, with irritated cheerfulness, ‘Matty, if you don’t get a move on, we’ll be late for the doctor.’
‘But, Stella, you’ve just said we had half an hour to fill in,’ said Martha as promptly as if she had been waiting for just this point of fact to arise, so that she might argue it out to its conclusions. Stella glanced sharply at her, but before she could speak Martha continued, deepening the humorous protest, because the resentment was so strong, ‘It was you who seemed to think I couldn’t get through another day of married life without seeing the doctor, not me. Why you had to fix an appointment for this afternoon I can’t think.’ She laughed, to soften the complaint.
‘It’s not easy to get an appointment right away with Dr Stern. You’re lucky I could arrange it for you.’
But Martha refused to be grateful. She raised her eyebrows, appeared about to argue – and shrugged irritably.
Stella gave Martha another sharp look, tightened her lips with calculated forbearance, then exclaimed, ‘That’s a pretty dress there. We might as well window-shop, to fill in the time.’ She went to the window; Martha lagged behind.
Stella tried to arrange herself in a position where she might see through the glass surface of reflections: a stretch of yellow-grained canvas, a grey pillar, swimming patches of breaking colour that followed each other across the window after the passers-by. The dresses displayed inside, however, remained invisible, and Stella fell to enjoying her own reflection. At once her look of shrewd good nature vanished. Her image confronted her as a dark beauty, slenderly round, immobilized by a voluptuous hauteur. Complete. Or, at least, complete until the arrival of the sexual partner her attitude implied; when she would turn on him slow, waking eyes, appear indignant, and walk away – not without throwing him a long, ambiguous look over her shoulder. From Stella one expected these pure unmixed responses. But from her own image she had glanced towards Martha’s; at once she became animated by a reformer’s zeal.
From the glass Martha was looking back anxiously, as if she did not like what she saw but was determined to face it honestly. Planted on sturdy brown legs was a plump schoolgirl’s body. Heavy masses of lightish hair surrounded a broad pale face. The dark eyes were stubbornly worried, the mouth set.
‘What I can’t understand,’ said Martha, with that defensive humour which meant she was prepared to criticize herself, even accept criticism from others, provided it was not followed by advice – ‘what I can’t understand is why I’m thin as a bone one month and as fat as a pig the next. You say you’ve got dresses you wore when you were sixteen. Well, this is the last of mine I can get on.’ She laughed unhappily, trying to smooth down crumpled blue linen over her hips.
‘The trouble with you is you’re tired,’ announced Stella. ‘After all, we’ve none of us slept for weeks.’ This sophisticated achievement put new vigour into her. She turned on Martha with determination. ‘You should take yourself in hand, that’s all it is. That hair style doesn’t suit you – if you can call it a hair style. If you had it cut properly, it might curl. Have you ever had it cut properly – ?’
‘But Stella,’ Martha broke in, with a wail of laughter, ‘it needs washing, it’s untidy, it’s …’
She clutched her hair with both hands and moved back a step as Stella moved to lay her hands on it in order to show how it should be arranged. So violent and desperate was her defence that Stella stopped, and exclaimed with an exasperated laugh, ‘Well, if you don’t want me to show you!’
In Martha’s mind was the picture of how she had indubitably been, not more than three months ago, that picture which had been described, not only by herself but by others, as a slim blonde. Looking incredulously towards her reflection, she saw that fat schoolgirl, and shut her eyes in despair. She opened them at once as she felt Stella’s hand on her arm. She shook it off.
‘You must take yourself in hand. I’ll take you to have your hair cut now.’
‘No,’ said Martha vigorously.
Checked, Stella turned back towards her own reflection. And again it arranged itself obediently. Between the languidly enticing beauty who was Stella before her glass and the energetic housewife who longed to take Martha in hand there was no connection; they were not even sisters.
Martha, sardonically watching Stella in her frozen pose, thought that she would not recognize herself if she caught a glimpse of herself walking down a street, or – a phrase which she saw no reason not to use, even to his face – managing her husband.
Stella saw her look, turning abruptly, and said with annoyance that, they would go that moment to the hairdresser.
‘There isn’t time,’ appealed Martha desperately.
‘Nonsense,’ said Stella. She took Martha’s hand in her own, and began tugging her along the pavement: an attractive matron whose sensuality of face and body had vanished entirely under the pressure of the greater pleasures of good management.
Martha pulled herself free again, and said, ‘I don’t want to have my hair cut.’ Then, as a final appeal: ‘I’ll miss my appointment with Dr Stern.’
‘You can have an appointment with Dr Stern any time. I can always fix it.’ Stella, preoccupied, frowned at Martha, and commanded, ‘Just wait for me here, I’ll go and tell Mrs Kent you’re a friend of mine, she’ll do it as a favour.’ With this she hastened over the street and vanished into a door under the sign ‘Chez Paris. Coiffeuse’.
Martha remained at the street’s edge, telling herself she would hurry after Stella and put her foot down. A familiar lassitude overcame her, and she remained where she was, wishing that Stella would leave her alone and return to her own life – if she had one at all. But this spiteful final jab was rather as if she were sticking a pin into her own image, for whose fault was it, if not her own, that she had spent most of the last month with Stella, that the four of them had even gone off together on what was virtually a honeymoon for four? ‘After all, I don’t even like her,’ muttered Martha obstinately, thus committing herself to the acknowledgment, always imminent the moment she was left alone, that she didn’t like any of the things she had become obliged to like by the fact of marrying. The communal exaltation, like a sort of drunkenness, vanished the moment she was alone, leaving her limp with exhaustion. But she had not been alone for five minutes since her marriage.
Feeling her back stung by the sun, she moved into the shade of a pillar to wait. She was looking along the pavement backed by low buildings. Half a mile away, at the end of the street, a glint of waving burnished grass showed the vlei. The urban scene, solid and compact in the main streets, tended to dissolve the moment one moved into the side streets. The small colonial town was at a crossroads in its growth: half a modern city, half a pioneers’ achievement; a large block of flats might stand next to a shanty of wood and corrugated iron, and most streets petered out suddenly in a waste of scrub and grass.
Outside a sprawling shed that was a showroom for agricultural implements lounged a group of farmers in their khaki; past them came a city man in smooth grey flannel. Martha’s eyes followed this man, the only moving object in the heat-stilled street. She was deep in worried introspection. Into this grey lake plopped the thought, I know that man, don’t I? It was enough to restore a little sight to her eyes, and she watched him coming towards her, while with another part of her mind she was thinking, When Stella comes out I shall tell her I won’t have my hair cut – as if this act of defiance would in itself be a protest against her whole situation.
The man was tall, rather heavy; the grey flannel which encased him was like a firm outer skin to his assurance. His large elderly face had the authority of a commanding nose, jowled cheeks, strong hazel eyes deep under thick black brows. It was that English face which, with various small deviations, has been looking down so long from the walls and countless picture galleries of country houses. Handsome it was, but more – every feature, every curve, had an impressive finality, an absolute rightness, as if the atoms which composed it had never had a moment’s hesitation in falling where they did.
Martha thought: here is another person who is complete –finished in his way as Stella is in hers. Whereas she herself was formless, graceless, and unpredictable, a mere lump of clay. She rejected even the sight of him, and returned to her own preoccupations.
Mr Maynard was also preoccupied, whether pleasantly or not could be deduced only by a certain sarcastic twist of the lips. He noticed a girl standing listlessly by a pillar, and was about to walk past her, when he slowed his pace: he ought to know her. Then he remembered that less than a week before he had married her to her husband. She was looking through him; and at once he was annoyed that she should not remember such an important figure at what was surely an important occasion. This annoyance was succeeded by a more sincere pressure: she, if anyone could, would be able to tell him where his son Binkie was.
He stood firmly before her, blocking her preoccupied stare, and said, ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Knowell.’
Martha glanced hastily sideways to see whom he was addressing, then blushed. She looked closely at him, and then exclaimed, ‘Oh – Mr Maynard!’
‘And how,’ inquired Mr Maynard, cutting short this mutual embarrassment, ‘do you find the married state?’
She considered this seriously, then said, ‘Well, I’ve only been married five days.’
‘A very sensible attitude.’
She looked at him and waited. He was struck by her tiredness, and the unhappy set of her mouth. That critical look, however, checked in him the instinct to instruct. He was not a magistrate and the descendant of magistrates and landowners for nothing. He found himself searching for the right tone.
She saved him the trouble by asking, ‘Has Binkie come home yet?’
‘I thought you would be able to tell me.’
‘The last we saw of him was when he left the Falls at two last night. He said he was going to swim across the Falls if it was the last thing he did. It probably would be, too,’ she added dispassionately.
Mr Maynard winced. ‘He was drunk, I suppose?’
‘Not drunk.’ This, it seemed, she found crude. But she added, ‘No more than usual.’
Mr Maynard looked sharply at her, saw this was not criticism but information willingly given, and said, ‘I suppose the fact that the river is full of crocodiles wouldn’t deter him?’
‘Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t really do it,’ she said quickly, on a maternal note. ‘They rushed off in a horde saying they would. Three years ago they say one of them tried to jump across to that little island – you know the one, when the river is low – and he went over the edge. We reminded them about it just as they left. Besides, Binkie’s far too sensible.’
‘Binkie’s sensible?’ exclaimed Mr Maynard, very bitterly.
Martha, feeling that she was included in the bitterness, moved slightly away with ‘Well, I’m not responsible for Binkie.’
He hesitated, then again moved in front of her. ‘Young woman, it would interest me very much to know why you think Binkie is sensible. He drinks like a fish. He never does any work if he can help it. He is continually either giving it a bang or tearing the place to pieces.’ He heavily isolated these last phrases, and handed them to her, as it were, like a challenge.
After a pause for reflection Martha observed, ‘He always knows what he’s doing.’ This comment, it appeared, was enough.
‘You amaze me. You really do amaze me, you know.’ He waited for more.
Martha offered him a sudden friendly smile, and said, ‘I shouldn’t worry. In twenty years’ time he’ll be a magistrate, too, I shouldn’t wonder.’ She laughed, as if this in itself was funny.
‘My youth was not misspent. We neither gave it a bang nor tore the place to pieces.’
Martha’s eyebrows at once went up. ‘Really? I understood that you did – judging from novels, at least. Though of course in England you’d call it something else probably, you people.’
‘Who is “you people”?’ he asked, annoyed.
Martha looked at him as if suspecting a deliberate dishonesty, and then remarked, blushing because she had to put it into words, ‘Why, the upper classes, of course, who else?’
Ironically stiff, he remarked, ‘My son Binkie also uses the phrase “you people” – and in the same way.’
‘For all that, he’ll end up by being a magistrate.’ And Martha laughed with real enjoyment and looked straight at him, expecting him to share it.
He did not laugh. He was hurt. ‘You are exempt from this law?’
The shaft went home at once. She lost her shell of confidence, her face contracted, she looked at him from a haze of anxiety before turning away from him. He had no idea why this should be so.
He was contrite. Then he said apologetically, ‘Well, thank you. I daresay Binkie will turn up at midnight again. I don’t know why he imagines he can miss three days at the office without even ringing up to apologize – his chief rang me this morning.’ He heard his own voice becoming so bitter that he hastened to restore his balance by sarcasm. ‘Don’t imagine I am inquiring on my own account. As far as I am concerned, I decided long ago it would be no loss to society if Binkie did fall prey to the crocodiles. But my wife will have a sick headache until he returns.’
Under the impression that he had ended the interview on a note which must leave him whole in her eyes, he was about to turn away with a ‘Good afternoon’, when he saw her offering him a look of such ironic pity that he stopped.
She smiled and he found himself returning her smile. ‘Well, Mr Maynard,’ she remarked in precisely his own tone of cool self-punishing sarcasm. ‘If Binkie has learned to ignore sick headaches, then it must be because he knows he’d be doing someone out of a pleasure if he did not.’ But this logical sentence crumbled, and she added awkwardly, ‘I mean, everyone knows about sick headaches … Besides – they’re so old-fashioned,’ she went on angrily. And then: ‘Not that everything doesn’t just go on, even when one might think they had no right to exist any longer.’
Ignoring the last part of this, he seized upon the first with an ironical ‘Well, well!’ His relations with his wife had been conducted on this principle, but he would have considered it unchivalrous to do more than talk blandly about ‘the female element’ when with his male friends. Yet here was a representative of this same element who seemed to feel no disloyalty in putting what he had imagined to be a male viewpoint. It occurred to him, first, that he was out of touch with the young; secondly, a note had been struck which he instinctively responded to with gallantry.
Instilling gallantry into his voice, and a gleam of ironic complicity into his eyes, he moved nearer and said, ‘You interest me enormously.’
At once she frowned, and even moved away. He dropped the tone; but held it in reserve for a later occasion.
Then he lowered his voice like a conspirator, and inquired expanding his eyes with a look of vast inquiry, ‘Tell me, Mrs Knowell, is it the fashion now for young people to take their honeymoons in crowds? In my young days a honeymoon was an opportunity to be alone.’
‘You know quite well we did our best to get away without Binkie and the gang,’ said Martha resentfully.
‘I was referring to the other couple, the Mathews.’
For a moment it was touch and go whether she would repudiate them; but another loyalty was touched, for she laughed and asserted that they had all had a marvellous time and it was absolutely gorgeous.
Mr Maynard watched her, then raised his heavy brows and said drily, ‘So it would appear.’
He had expected her to succumb in confusion to this pressure; instead she suddenly chuckled, and met his eyes appreciatively. He said quickly, ‘Our generation has not made such a success of things that we can expect you to follow our example.’ This seemed to him the extreme of magnanimity, but she smiled sceptically and said, ‘Thanks.’
There was another pause. Martha was thinking that his eighteenth-century flavour had, after all, its own piquancy – not fifty yards away the farmers still lounged and argued prices and the weather and the labour question, while almost at their elbow arched the great marble doors of the cinema.
But surely Stella should be returning by now? And all this talk of generations had a stale, dead ring. Martha reacted violently against Mr Maynard, particularly because of that moment when he had invited her to flirt a little. She thought confusedly that there was always a point when men seemed to press a button, as it were, and one was expected to turn into something else for their amusement. This ‘turning into something else’ had landed her where she was now: married, signed and sealed away from what she was convinced she was. Besides – and here her emotions reached conviction – he was so old! She wished now, belatedly, that she had snubbed him for daring to think that she might have even exchanged a glance with him.
He was inquiring, in a voice which engaged her attention, ‘I wonder if I might take this opportunity to inquire whether “the kids” – or, if you prefer it, “the gang” – behaved so badly that I may expect a bill for damages.’
This was, underneath the severity, an appeal. Martha at once replied with compassion, ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure it will be all right.’
He retreated from the pity into gruffness, remarking, ‘I live in terror that one day Binkie’ll behave in such a way that I’ll have no alternative but to resign – not that you would see any misfortune in that,’ he added.
Martha conceded that she was sure he was a marvellous magistrate; she sounded irritable. Then, as he did not move, she began to speak, giving him the information he was obviously waiting for, in the manner of one who was prepared to turn the knife in the wound if he absolutely insisted. ‘Binkie and the gang caught up with us that night about twelve. We shook up one of the hotels and made them open the bar …’
‘Illegal,’ he commented.
‘Well, of course. We – I mean the four of us – sneaked out while the gang were “giving it stick”’ – here she offered him an ironic smile, which he unwillingly returned – ‘and we drove all night till we reached the hotel. The gang came after us about eight in the morning. Luckily the hotel wasn’t full and there was room for everyone. The gang didn’t behave so badly, considering everything. The manager got very angry on the last day because Binkie – you remember those baboons that come up to the hotel for food? Well, Binkie and the gang caught one of the baboons and made it drunk and brought it on to the veranda. Well, it got out of control and started rampaging. But they caught it in the end, so that was all right. The baboon was sick,’ she added flatly, her mouth twisting. ‘Binkie and the baboon were dancing on the lawn. It was rather funny.’
‘Very funny.’
‘It was – very. However,’ she pointed out coldly, ‘since the gang have been tearing the place to pieces for years, and no one has got hurt, they can’t be so crazy as they make out.’
‘Except for young Mandolis, who went over the edge of the Falls three years ago.’
She shrugged. An allowable percentage of casualties, apparently. Then she added, in a different voice, hard and impatient, ‘There’s going to be a war, anyway.’
‘Since this will be my second world war, I have the advantage of knowing that those follies we commit under the excuse of wartime are not cancelled out when it’s over. On the contrary.’
Again he had made a remark at random which went home. Mr Maynard, whose relations with his fellow human beings were based on the need that they should in some way defer to him, found that this young woman, who until now had clearly recognized no such obligation, was all at once transformed into a mendicant. She had come close to him, and was clutching at his sleeve. Her eyes were full of tears. ‘Mr Maynard,’ she said desperately, ‘Mr Maynard …’ But he was never to know what help she was asking of him. Afterwards he reflected that she was probably about to ask him if he could divorce her as rapidly and informally as he had married her, and was irrationally wounded because it was in his capacity as a magistrate that she was demanding help.
A loud and cheerful voice sounded beside them. ‘Why, Mr Maynard,’ exclaimed Stella, grasping his hands and thus taking Martha’s place in front of him. ‘Why, Mr Maynard, how lovely to see you.’
‘How do you do?’ inquired Mr Maynard formally; in his manner was that irritation shown by a man who finds a woman attractive when he does not like her. He moved away, smiling urbanely at Martha. ‘I shall leave you in the hands of your matron – matron of honour?’ With this he nodded and left them. He was thinking irritably, Wanting it both ways … and then: Am I supposed to supply the part of priest and confessor as well? She should have got married in church. Nevertheless, he was left with the feeling of a debt undischarged, and he glanced back to see the two young women crossing the street, and apparently engaged in violent argument.
‘But I’ve just made the appointment,’ said Stella angrily. ‘And she’s had to cancel someone else. You can’t change your mind now.’
‘I’m not going to have my hair cut,’ said Martha calmly. ‘I never said I would. You said so.’ It was perfectly easy to resist now; it had been impossible ten minutes ago. She gave a glance over her shoulder at the firm and stable back of Mr Maynard, who was just turning the corner.
‘She’s a very good hairdresser, Matty – just out from England. Besides,’ added Stella virtuously, ‘you look awful, Matty, and it’s your duty to your husband to look nice.’
But at this Martha laughed wholeheartedly.
‘What’s funny?’ asked Stella suspiciously. But she knew that this amusement, which she never understood, was Martha’s immunity to her, and she said crossly, ‘Oh, very well, I’ll cancel it again.’
She went into Chez Paris; and in half a minute they were continuing on their way.
‘We’ll be late for the doctor,’ said Stella reproachfully, but Martha said, ‘We are ten minutes early.’
The doctor’s rooms were in a low white building across the street. Looking upwards, they saw a series of windows shuttered against the sun, green against the glare of white.
‘Dr Stern’s got the nicest waiting room in town, it’s all modern,’ said Stella devotedly.
‘Oh, come on,’ Martha said, and went indoors without looking back.
On the first floor was a passage full of doors, all marked ‘Private’. Stella knocked on one of these. It opened almost at once to show a woman in a white dress, who held its edge firmly, as if against possible assault. She looked annoyed; then, seeing Stella, she said with nervous amiability, ‘It’s lovely to see you, dear, but really I’m busy.’
‘This is Matty,’ said Stella. ‘You know, the naughty girl who married Douggie behind everyone’s back.’
The young woman smiled at Martha in a friendly but harassed way and came out into the passage, shutting the door behind her. She pulled a half-smoked cigarette from her deep white pocket, lit it, and puffed as if she were starved for smoke. ‘I really shouldn’t, but the doctor’ll manage,’ she said, drawing deep breaths of smoke. She was a thin girl, with lank wisps of thin black hair, and pale worried blue eyes. Her body was flat and bony in the white glazed dress, which was a uniform, but no more than a distant cousin of the stiff garments designed by elderly women to disguise the charms of young ones. ‘My Willie knows your Douggie – they’ve been boys together for years,’ she said with tired indulgence.
Martha was by now not to be surprised at either the information or the tone, although she had never heard of Willie.
‘My God, but I’m dead,’ went on Alice. ‘Dr Stern is my pet lamb, but he works himself to death, and he never notices when anyone else does. I was supposed to leave an hour ago.’
‘Listen,’ said Stella quickly, ‘that’s easy, then. Just slip Matty quickly in for her appointment, then we’ll all go and have a drink.’
‘Oh, but I can’t dear,’ said Alice feebly; but Stella gave her a firm little push towards the door; so that she nodded and said, ‘All right, then, there’s lots waiting from before you, but I’ll manage it.’ She slipped the crushed end of cigarette back into her pocket, and went into the room marked ‘Private’.
Martha followed Stella into the waiting room. It was full. About fifteen or twenty women, with a sprinkling of children, were jealously eyeing the door into the consulting room. Martha edged herself into a seat, feeling guilty that she was about to take priority. Stella, however, stood openly waiting, with the look of one for whom the ordinary rules did not apply.
Almost at once the consulting-room door opened, and a bland voice bade a lady goodbye; she came out blushing with pleasure and giving challenging looks to those who still waited.
‘Come on,’ said Stella loudly, ‘now it’s us.’
She pushed Martha forward, as Alice looked around into the waiting room, and said in the kindly nervous voice which was her characteristic, ‘Yes, dear – it’s you, Mrs Knowell.’
Stella went beside Martha to the door; but there Alice held out one barring hand, with a professional look, and pulled Martha forward with the other. The door shut behind Martha, excluding Stella.
This was a large, quiet room, with a white screen in one corner which was bathed in greenish light from the shutters over the window. An enormous desk filled half the outer wall, and behind it sat Dr Stern, his back to the light. Over an efficient white coat a smooth pale heavy-lidded face lifted for a moment, the pale cool eyes flicked assessingly over Martha, and dropped again as he said, ‘Please sit down.’
Martha sat, and wondered how she should start: she did not really want any advice. She looked at the top of Dr Stern’s head, which was bent towards her as he flicked quickly through some papers. He had a mat of thick black crinkling hair; his neck was white, thin – very young. She saw him suddenly as a young man, and was upset. Then he said, ‘If you’ll excuse me for one moment …’ and glanced up again, before continuing to leaf through the papers. The upwards look was so impersonal that her anxiety vanished. She yawned. A weight of tiredness settled on her, with the cool silence of the room. A patch of yellow sunlight slanted through the slats of the blind on to the desk. Her eye was caught by it, held. She yawned again. She heard his voice: ‘Allow me to congratulate you on carrying off young Knowell – I’ve known him quite a time.’ He sounded quietly paternal; and she was reminded again that he was probably no older than Douglas, who had agreed enthusiastically to Stella’s insistence that Martha should see the doctor at once: ‘Yes, Dr Stern’s just the ticket – yes, you go along, Matty, and get to know him, he’ll show you the ropes.’
Yet, since Martha knew the ropes, there was nothing to say. Her eyes still fixed by the yellow patch of light, she let herself slide deeper into the comfortable chair, and Dr Stern inquired, ‘Sleepy?’
‘Haven’t had much sleep,’ she agreed, without moving.
Dr Stern looked at her again and noticed that she, in her turn, was unhappily regarding Alice, who was folding something white behind the white screen.
‘It’s all right, Mrs Burrell, just go next door for a moment. I’ll call you.’ Alice went out, with a kind, reassuring smile at Martha. ‘And leave the door open,’ said Dr Stern, for Martha’s benefit, which she did not appreciate: she would have preferred it shut.
And now Dr Stern, whose handling of the situation had been by no means as casual as it appeared, gave a swift downwards glance at his watch. Martha noticed it, and sat herself up.
‘Well, Mrs Knowell,’ he began smoothly, and, after a short silence, went on to deliver a lecture designed for the instruction of brides. He spoke slowly, as if afraid of forgetting some of it from sheer familiarity. When he had finished, Martha said obstinately that according to authority so and so another method was preferable. He gave her a quick look, which meant that this was a greater degree of sophistication than he was used to; almost he switched to the tone he used with married women of longer standing. But he hesitated. Martha’s words might be matter-of-fact, but her face was anxious, and she was gripping her hands together in her lap.
He went off at a tangent to describe a conference on birth control he had attended in London, and concluded with a slightly risky joke. Martha laughed. He added two or three more jokes, until she was laughing naturally, and returned to the subject by a side road of ‘A patient of mine who …’ Now he proceeded to recommend the method she had herself suggested, and with as much warmth as if he had never recommended another. His calm, rather tired, remote voice was extremely soothing; Martha was no longer anxious; but for good measure he concluded with a little speech which, if analysed, meant nothing but that everything was all right, one should not worry, one should take things easy. These phrases having repeated themselves often enough he went on to remark gently that some women seemed to imagine birth control was a sort of magic; if they bought what was necessary and left it lying in a corner of a drawer, nothing more was needed. To this attitude of mind, he said, was due a number of births every year which would astound the public. He laughed so that she might, and looked inquiringly at her. She did laugh, but a shadow of worry crossed her face. He saw it, and made a mental note. There was a silence. This time his glance at his watch was involuntary: the waiting room was full of women all of whom must be assured, for various reasons, that everything was all right, there was nothing to worry about, of course one did not sleep when one was worried, of course everyone was worried at times – of course, of course, of course.
Again Martha saw the glance and rose. He rose with her and took her to the door.
‘And how’s your husband keeping?’ he asked.
‘Fine, thanks,’ said Martha automatically; then it struck her as more than politeness and she looked inquiringly.
‘His stomach behaving itself?’
‘Oh, we’ve both got digestions like an ostrich,’ she said with a laugh, thinking of the amount they had drunk and eaten in the last few weeks. Then she said quickly, ‘There’s surely nothing wrong with his stomach?’ Her voice was full of the arrogance of perfect health. She heard it herself. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ she repeated. The solicitude in her voice rang false.
‘I believe I’ve been indiscreet,’ said Dr Stern. ‘But he is silly not to tell you. Ask him.’ And now he smiled, and held out his hand, saying that if she wanted help, if she just wanted to drop in for a chat, she must give him a ring. Martha wrung the hand, and left his room with the same look of soft, grateful pleasure that the previous patient had worn.
The other women watched her critically; they found that confused, self-confessing smile ridiculous. Then, as Stella rose to join her, they lost interest and turned their eyes back to the closed door.
‘Well, was he nice, did you like him?’ asked Stella urgently; and Martha said reticently that he was very nice.
Nothing more, it seemed, was forthcoming; and Stella urged, laughing, ‘Did you learn anything new?’ And it occurred to Martha for the first time that she had not. Her sense of being supported, being understood, was so strong that she stopped in the passage, motionless, with the shock of the discovery that in fact Dr Stern had said nothing at all, and in due course Douglas would be sent a bill for half a guinea – for what?
Stella tugged at her arm, so that she was set in motion again; and Martha remarked irritably that Dr Stern was something of an old woman, ‘sitting all wrapped up behind his desk like a parcel in white tissue paper, being tactful to a blushing bride.’
At once Stella laughed and said that she never took the slightest notice of what he said, either; as for herself and her husband, they had used such and such a method for three years, and she distinctly remembered Dr Stern telling them it was useless.
‘Well,’ asked Martha ungratefully, ‘what did you send me for, then?’
‘Oh!’ Stella was shocked and aggrieved. ‘But he’s so nice, and so up to date with everything, you know.’
‘He can’t be much older than you are,’ remarked Martha, in that same rather resentful voice. She was astounded that Stella was deeply shocked – at least, there could be no other explanation for her withdrawal into offended dignity. ‘If you don’t want a really scientific doctor then …’ Belatedly, Martha thanked her for the service; but they had reached the door marked ‘Private’, where they must wait for Alice; and Stella forgot her annoyance in the business of wriggling the door handle silently to show Alice they were there.
On the other side of the door, Alice was holding the handle so that it should not rattle, and watching Dr Stern to catch the right moment for announcing the next patient. Usually, having accompanied a patient to the door, he went straight back to his desk. This time, having shed his calm paternal manner over Martha’s farewells, he went to the window and looked down at the street through the slats in the shutter. He looked tired, even exasperated. Alice expected him to complain again about being a woman’s doctor. ‘I can’t understand why I get this reputation,’ he would grumble. ‘Nine-tenths of my practice are women. And women with nothing wrong with them.’
But he did not say it. Alice smiled as she saw him adjust the shutter so that the patch of sun, which was now on the extreme edge of the desk, should return to the empty space of polished wood nearer the middle. He turned and caught the smile, but preferred not to notice it. He frowned slightly and remarked that in three months’ time Mrs Knowell would be back in this room crying her eyes out and asking him to do an abortion – he knew the type.
Alice did not smile; she disliked him in this mood. Her eyes were cold. She noted that his tired body had straightened, his face was alert and purposeful.
He seated himself and said, ‘Make a card out for Mrs Knowell tomorrow.’ He almost added, laughing, ‘And book her a room in the nursing home.’ But he remembered in time that one did not make this sort of joke with Mrs Burrell, who was sentimental; his previous nurse had been better company. All the same, he automatically made certain calculations. January or February, he thought. He even made a note on his pad; there was a complacent look on his face.
‘That will do, Mrs Burrell. Thank you for staying over your time – you mustn’t let me overwork you.’ He smiled at her; the smile had a weary charm.
Alice did not respond. Her criticism of him formed itself in the thought, he has to have his own way over everything. And then the final blow: Heaven preserve me from being married to him, I wouldn’t have him as a gift.
‘Who’s next?’ he asked briskly.
‘Mrs Black,’ said Alice, going to the other door to call her in.
‘She ought to be starting her next baby soon,’ he remarked.
‘Have a heart,’ she said indignantly. ‘The other’s only six months old.’
‘Get them over young,’ he said. ‘That’s the best way.’ He added, ‘You ought to be starting a family yourself.’
Alice paused with her hand on the knob of the door, and said irritably, ‘The way you go on! If I catch you with less than five when you get married …’
He looked sharply at her; he had only just understood she was really annoyed; he wished again that he might have a nurse with whom he did not have to choose his words. But she was speaking:
‘You Jews have got such a strong feeling for family, it makes me sick!’
He seemed to stiffen and retreat a little; then he laughed and said, ‘There’s surely every reason why we should?’
She looked at him vaguely, then dismissed history with ‘I don’t see why everybody shouldn’t leave everybody else alone.’
‘Neither do I, Mrs Burrell, neither do I.’ This was savage.
‘You’re the sort of man who’d choose a wife because she had a good pelvis,’ she said.
‘There are worse ways of choosing one,’ he teased her.
‘Oh, Lord!’
‘Let’s have Mrs Black. Okay – shoot.’
Alice opened the door and called, ‘Mrs Black, please.’ She shut the door after the smiling Mrs Black, who was already seating herself; and, as she crossed the room on her way out, heard his voice, calmly professional: ‘Well, Mrs Black, and what can I do for you?’
She joined Martha and Stella, saying, ‘Wait, I must tell the other nurse …’
She came back almost at once, pulling out the frayed cigarette stub from her pocket and lighting it. Then she began tugging and pushing at the wisps of black hair that were supposed to make a jaunty frame for her face, but were falling in lank witch locks. ‘Oh, damn everything,’ she muttered crossly, pulling a comb through her hair with both hands, while the cigarette hung on her lip. Finally she gave a series of ineffective little pats at her dress, and said again, in a violent querulous voice, ‘Oh, damn everything. I’m going to give up this job. I’m sick to death of Dr Stern. I’m just fed up.’
Martha and Stella, momentarily united in understanding, exchanged a small humorous smile, and kept up a running flow of vaguely practical remarks until they had reached the hot pavement. They glanced cautiously towards Alice: she had apparently recovered. Stella immediately dropped the female chivalry with which women protect each other in such moments, and said jealously, ‘I wouldn’t have thought Dr Stern would be so hard to work for.’
‘Oh, no, he’s not,’ agreed Alice at once, and without the proprietary air that Stella would have resented. ‘Anyway, I’m really going to give it up. I didn’t train as a nurse to do this sort of thing. I might as well be a hotel receptionist.’
‘You’re mad to work when you’re married,’ said Stella. ‘I’ve given notice to my boss. Of course, we’re quite broke, but it’s too much, looking after a husband then slaving oneself to death in an office.’
Alice and Martha in their turn exchanged an amused smile, while Stella touched it up a little: ‘Men have no idea, they think housework and cooking get done by miracles.’
‘Why, haven’t you got a boy, dear?’ inquired Alice vaguely, and then broke into Stella’s reply with ‘Do you like Dr Stern, Matty? If not, I shan’t bother to make out a card for you.’
‘One doctor’s as good as another,’ said Martha ungraciously. ‘Anyway, I’m never ill.’
‘Oh, but he’s very good,’ exclaimed Alice, at once on the defensive. ‘He’s really wonderful with babies.’
‘But I’m not going to have a baby, not for years.’
‘Oh, I don’t blame you,’ agreed Alice at once. ‘I always tell Willie that life’s too much one damned thing after another to have babies as well.’
‘What do you do?’ inquired Martha, direct.
Alice laughed, on the comfortable note which Martha found so reassuring. ‘Oh, we don’t bother much, really. Luckily, all I have to do is to jump off the edge of a table.’
They were at a turning. ‘I think I’ll just go home, dear, if you don’t mind,’ said Alice. ‘Willie might come home early, and I won’t bother about a drink.’
‘Oh, no,’ protested Stella at once. ‘We’ll all run along to Matty’s place. You can ring Willie and tell him to come along.’
And now Martha once again found herself protesting that of course they must all come to her flat; an extraordinary desperation seized her at the idea of being alone; although even as she protested another anxious voice was demanding urgently that she should pull herself free from this compulsion.
‘Oh, well,’ agreed Alice good-naturedly, ‘I’ll come and drink to your getting married.’
Martha was silent. Now she had gained her point she had to brace herself to face another period of time with both Stella and Alice. She thought, Let’s get it over quickly, and then … And then would come a reckoning with herself; she had the feeling of someone caught in a whirlpool.
The three women drifted inertly down the hot street, shading their eyes with their hands. Alice yawned and remarked in her preoccupied voice, ‘But I get so tired, perhaps I’m pregnant? Surely I’m not? Oh, Lord, maybe that’s it!’
‘Well, jump off a table, then!’ said Stella with her jolly crude laugh.
‘It’s all very well, dear, but this worrying all the time just gets me down. Sometimes I think I’ll have a baby and be done with it. That’d be nine months’ peace and quiet at least.’
‘What’s the good of working for a doctor if he can’t do something?’ suggested Stella, with a look at Martha which said she should be collecting information that might turn out to be useful.
Alice looked annoyed; but Stella prodded, ‘I’ve heard he helps people sometimes.’
Alice drew professional discretion over her face and remarked, ‘They say that about all the doctors.’
‘Oh, come off it,’ said Stella, annoyed.
‘If Dr Stern did all the abortions he was asked to do, he’d never have time for anything else. There’s never a day passes without at least one or two crying their eyes out and asking him.’
‘What do they do?’ asked Martha, unwillingly fascinated.
‘Oh, if they’re strong-minded, they just go off to Beira or Johannesburg. But most of us just get used to it,’ said Alice, laughing nervously, and unconsciously pressing her hands around her pelvis.
Stella, with her high yell of laughter, began to tell a story about the last time she got pregnant. ‘There I was, after my second glass of neat gin, rolling on the sofa and groaning, everything just started nicely, and in came the woman from next door. She was simply furious. She said she’d report me to the police. Silly old cow. She can’t have kids herself, so she wants everyone else to have them for her. I told her to go and boil her head, and of course she didn’t do anything. She just wanted to upset me and make me unhappy.’ At the last words Stella allowed her face and voice to go limp with self-pity.
‘The police?’ inquired Martha blankly.
‘It’s illegal,’ explained Alice tolerantly. ‘If you start a baby, then it’s illegal not to have it. Didn’t you know?’
‘Do you mean to say that a woman’s not entitled to decide whether she’s going to have a baby or not?’ demanded Martha, flaring at once into animated indignation.
This violence amused both Stella and Alice, who now, in their turn, exchanged that small tolerant smile.
‘Oh, well,’ said Alice indulgently, ‘don’t waste any breath on that. Everyone knows that more kids get frustrated than ever get born, and half the women who have them didn’t want to have them, but if the Government wants to make silly laws, let them get on with it, that’s what I say, I suppose they’ve got nothing better to do. Don’t worry, dear. If you get yourself in a fix just give me a ring and I’ll help you out, you don’t want to lose sleep over the Government, there are better things to think about.’
Stella said with quick jealousy, ‘I’ve already told Matty, I’m just around the corner, and God knows I’ve got enough experience, even though I’m not a nurse.’
Surprised, Alice relinquished the struggle for the soul of Martha – she had not understood there was one.
‘Well, that’s all right, then, isn’t it?’ she agreed easily.
They had now reached the flats. They were a large block, starkly white in the sunlight. The pavement was so heated that its substance gave stickily under their feet; and its bright grey shone up a myriad tiny oily rainbows. A single tree stood at the entrance; and on this soft green patch their eyes rested, in relief from the staring white, the glistening grey, the hard, brilliant blue of the sky. Under the tree stood a native woman. She held a small child by one hand and a slightly larger one by the other, and there was a new baby folded in a loop of cloth on her back. The older children held the stuff of her skirt from behind. Martha stopped and looked at her. This woman summed up her uncomfortable thoughts and presented the problem in its crudest form. This easy, comfortable black woman seemed extraordinarily attractive, compared with the hard gay anxiety of Stella and Alice. Martha felt her as something simple, accepting – whole. Then she understood that she was in the process of romanticizing poverty; and repeated firmly to herself that the child mortality for the colony was one of the highest in the world. All the same …
Alice and Stella, finding themselves alone in the hall, came back and saw Martha staring at the tree. There was nothing else to look at.
‘It’s all very well for us,’ remarked Martha with a half-defiant laugh, seeing that she was being observed. ‘We’re all right, but how about her?’
Alice looked blank; but Stella, after a spasm of annoyance had contracted her face, broke into a loud laugh. To Alice she said boisterously, ‘Matty is a proper little Bolshie, did you know? Why, we had to drag her away from the Reds before she was married, she gets all hot and bothered about our black brothers.’ She laughed again, insistently, but Alice apparently found no need to do the same.
‘Come along, dear,’ she said kindly to Martha. ‘Let’s have a drink and get it over with, if you don’t mind.’
Martha obediently joined them. But Stella could not leave it. She said brightly, ‘It’s different for them. They’re not civilized, having babies is easy for them, everyone knows that.’
They were climbing the wide staircase. Alice remarked indifferently, ‘Dr Stern has a clinic for native women. Every Sunday morning. I tell him he’s so keen on everybody having babies that he can’t even give Sunday a rest.’
Stella involuntarily stopped. ‘Dr Stern treats kaffirs?’ she asked, horrified. It appeared that he was in imminent danger of losing a patient.
‘He’s very goodhearted,’ said Alice vaguely. The words restored her own approval of Dr Stern. ‘He only charges them sixpence, or something like that.’ She continued to drag herself up the staircase, ahead of the others.
Stella was silent. Her face expressed a variety of emotions, doubt being the strongest. Then Dr Stern effected in her that small revolution in thinking which crosses a gulf to philanthropy. She remarked, still dubiously, ‘Well, of course, we should be kind to them.’
Martha, three steps below her, laughed outright. Alice looked at her in surprise, Stella with anger.
‘Well, if everyone was like you, they’d get out of hand,’ Stella said sourly. ‘It’s all very well, but everyone knows they are nothing but animals, and it doesn’t hurt them to have babies, and …’ She added doubtfully, ‘Dr Stern is always modern.’
‘He’s making a study about it,’ said Alice. She was waiting for them on the landing. ‘It’s not true they are different from us. They’re just the same, Dr Stern says.’
Stella was deeply shocked and disturbed; she burst into her loud vulgar laughter. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’
‘But it’s scientific,’ said Alice vaguely.
‘Oh, doctors!’ suggested Stella, in precisely the same indulgent tone Alice had previously used for ‘the Government’.
Martha, arrived beside them on the landing, said bitterly, ‘It seems even Dr Stern is only interested in writing papers about them.’
Alice was offended. ‘Well, so long as they get help, I don’t suppose they mind, do you? And he’s very kind. How many doctors can you think of would work as hard as he does all the week and every night and then spend all Sunday morning helping kaffir women with their babies? And for as good as nothing, too.’
‘Well, sixpence is the same for them as ten shillings would be for us,’ protested Martha.
Alice was really angry now. ‘It’s not the same for Dr Stern.’
‘Whose fault is that?’ demanded Martha hotly.
Stella cut the knot by opening the door. ‘Oh, let’s have a drink,’ she said impatiently. ‘Don’t take any notice of Matty. Douggie’ll put some sense into her head. You can’t be a Red if you’re married to a civil servant.’
They went inside. Martha was acutely depressed at the finality of what Stella had said. She began to take out glasses and syphons, until Stella took them impatiently out of her hands. She sat down, and let Stella arrange things as she wished; with the feeling she had done this many times before.
Alice was unobservant and relaxed in a deep chair, puffing out clouds of smoke until she was surrounded by blue haze. ‘For crying out loud, but I’m tired,’ she murmured; and, without moving the rest of her body, she held out her hand to take the glass Stella put into it.
The room was rather small, but neat; it was dressed with striped modern curtains, light rugs, cheerful strident cushions. Stella’s taste, as Martha observed to herself bitterly, although telling herself again that it was her own fault. Well, she’d be gone soon, and then …
She took the glass Stella handed her, and let herself go loose, as Alice was doing.
Stella, accompanied apparently by two corpses, remained upright and energetic in her chair, and proceeded to entertain Alice with an amusing account of ‘their’ honeymoon.
‘… And you should have seen Matty, coping with the lads as if she were an old hand at the game. No wedding night for poor Matty, we were driving all night, and we had two breakdowns at that – the funniest thing you ever saw. We got to the hotel at two in the morning, and then all the boys arrived, and it wasn’t until that night we all decided it was really time that Matty had a wedding night, so we escorted them to their room, playing the Wedding March on the mouth-organs, and the last we saw of Matty was her taking off Douggie’s shoes and putting him into bed.’ She laughed, and Martha joined her. But Alice, who had not opened her eyes, remarked soothingly that Douggie was a hell of a lad, but Matty needn’t worry, these wild lads made wonderful husbands, look at Willie, he’d been one of the worst, and now butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
The thought of her husband made her sit up, and say in a determined voice that she really must go; Willie was a pet lamb, he never worried about anything – but all the same, she wasn’t going to start setting a bad example. She struggled out of her chair, drained her glass, and nervously pressed Martha’s hand. ‘Sorry, dear, but I really must – I’ll see you soon, I expect, my Willie and your Douglas being such friends. And now I really …’ She smiled hastily at Stella, waved vaguely, and hurried out. They could hear her running down the stairs on her high heels.
‘Alice is just an old fusser,’ said Stella, settling herself comfortably. ‘If Willie isn’t tied to her apron string she can’t sit still.’ Martha said nothing. ‘That’s no way to keep a man. They don’t like it. You should manage them without them knowing it.’
Martha observed irritably that Stella and Alice talked about husbands as if they were a sort of wild animal to be tamed.
Stella looked at her, and then remarked in an admonishing way that Martha was very young, but she’d soon learn that the way to keep a lad like Douggie was to give him plenty of rope to hang himself.
Irritation was thick in the air, like the tobacco smoke that now made a heavy bluish film between them. Martha was praying, I wish she’d go.
Stella made a few more remarks, which were received in silence. Then she looked angrily across and said that if she were Matty she’d have a good sleep and then take life easy.
She rose, and stood for a moment looking at the mirror inside the flap of her handbag. Everything was in order. She shut the handbag, and gazed around the little room; she adjusted a cushion, then turned her gaze towards Martha, who was sprawling gracelessly in her chair.
Martha looked back, acknowledging the discouragement that filled her at the sight of this woman. Stella must have gained this perfect assurance with her maturity at the age of – what? There were photographs of her at fifteen, showing her no less complete than she was now.
It appeared that the moment for parting had at last arrived. Martha struggled up. And now Martha was filled with guilt. For Stella’s face showed a genuine concern for her; and Martha reminded herself that Stella was nothing if not kind and obliging – for what was kindness, if not this willingness to devote oneself utterly to another person’s life? Martha was too tired even to instil irony into it. She kissed Stella clumsily on one of her smooth tinted cheeks, and thanked her. Stella brightened, blushed a little, and said that any time Matty wanted anything she had only to … At last she left, smiling, blowing a kiss from the door, in precisely that pose of competent grace which most depressed Martha.
The moment she was alone, Martha rummaged for a pair of scissors and went with determination to the bathroom. There she knelt on the edge of the gleaming and slippery bath, and in an acutely precarious position leaned up to look into the shaving mirror. It was too high for her. There was a large mirror at a suitable height next door, but for some reason this was the one she must use. Nothing in her reflection pleased her. She was entirely clumsy, clodhopping, graceless. Worse than this, she was filled with uncomfortable memories of how she had looked at various stages of her nineteen years – for she might be determined to forget how she had felt in her previous incarnations, but she could not forget how she had looked. Her present image had more in common with her reflection at fifteen, a broad and sturdy schoolgirlishness, than it had with herself of only six months ago.
Her dissatisfaction culminated as she put the scissors to the heavy masses of light dryish hair that fell on her shoulders. She remembered briefly that Stella had laid stress on her hair being properly cut; but the mere idea of submitting herself to the intentions of anybody else must be repulsed. Steadily, her teeth set to contain a prickling feverish haste, she cut around her hair in a straight line. Then she fingered the heavy unresponsive mass, and began snipping at the ends. Finally she lifted individual pieces and cut off slabs of hair from underneath, so that it might not be so thick. From the way the ends curved up, she could see that Stella might be right – her hair would curl. At last she plunged her head into water and soaped it hard, rubbing it roughly dry afterwards, in a prayerful hope that these attentions might produce yet another transformation into a different person. Then she swept up the cushions of hair from the floor and went into the bedroom. It was after six, and night had fallen. She switched on the light, to illuminate the cheerful room whose commonplace efficiency depressed her; and stood in front of the other mirror trying to shape the sodden mass of hair into waves. She thought her appearance worse than before. Giving it up in despair, she switched off the light again and went to the window. She was thinking with rueful humour that now she was undeniably longing for Douglas to come so that he might reassure her; whereas for most of the last week she had been struggling with waves of powerful dislike of him that she was too well educated in matters psychological not to know were natural to a newly married woman. Or, to put this more precisely, she had gone through all the handbooks with which she was now plentifully equipped, seized on phrases and sentences which seemed to fit her case, and promptly extended them to cover the whole of womankind. There was nothing more paradoxical about her situation than that, while she insisted on being unique, individual, and altogether apart from any other person, she could be comforted in such matters only by remarks like ‘Everybody feels this’ or ‘It is natural to feel that’.
She leaned against the sill, and tried to feel that she was alone and able to think clearly, a condition she had been longing for, it seemed for weeks. But her limbs were seething with irritation; she could not stand still. She fetched a chair and sat down, trying to relax. Behind her, the two small and shallow rooms were dark, holding their scraps of furniture in a thinned shadow, which was crossed continually by shifting beams of light from the street. Under her, the thin floor crept and reverberated to footsteps behind the walls. Above her, feet tapped beyond the ceiling. She found herself listening intently to these sounds, trying to isolate them, to make them harmless. She shut her mind to them, and looked outwards.
The small, ramshackle colonial town had become absorbed in luminous dark. A looming pile of flats was like a cliff rising from the sea, and the turn of a roof like a large elbow half blocking the stars. Below this aerial scene of moon, sky, roofs and the tops of trees, the streets below ran low and indistinct, with lights of cars nosing slow along them among the isolated yellow spaces which were street lamps. Whiffs of petrol-laden dust and staled scent from flowers in the park a hundred yards away drifted down past her towards the back of the building, where it would mingle with the heavier, composted smell: the smell which comes rich and heavy out of the undertown, the life of African servants, cramped, teeming, noisy with laughter and music. Singing came now from the native quarters at the back; and this small lively music flowed across the dark to join the more concentrated bustle of noise that came from a waste lot opposite. The fun fair had come to town; and over the straggling dusty grass, showing yellow in the harsh composite glare from a hundred beating lights, rose swings and roundabouts and the great glittering wheel. Once a year this fair visited the city on its round of the little towns of southern Africa, and spilled its lights and churning music for a few hours nightly into the dark.
The great wheel was revolving slowly, a chain of lights that mingled with the lamps of Orion and the Cross. Martha laid her wet and uncomfortable head against the wall, and looked at the wheel steadily, finding in its turning the beginnings of peace. Slowly she quietened, and it seemed possible that she might recover a sense of herself as a person she might, if only potentially, respect. It was really all quite simple, she assured herself. That this marriage was a foolish mistake must certainly be obvious to Douglas himself; for if humility can be used to describe such an emotion, Martha was genuinely humble in thinking of him and herself as involved in an isolated act of insanity which a simple decision would reverse. His personality and hers had nothing to do with it. The whole graceless affair had nothing to do with what she really felt or – surely? – what he felt, either.
The dragging compulsion which had begun to operate when they met, which had made it impossible for her to say no at any stage of the process, seemed broken. It would be easy, she thought, to tell Douglas when he entered the room that they must part at once; he must agree. For since he shared her view that the actual ceremony was no more than a necessary bit of ritual to placate society, it followed he would view a divorce in the same light.
Thus Martha – while her eyes hypnotically followed the circling of the great wheel. But at the back of her mind was an uncomfortable memory. It was of Stella roaring with laughter as she told the story, while her husband laughed with her, of how she had, the day after their wedding, run back to her mother, because she had decided she didn’t want to be married at all, and most particularly not to Andrew; after some months of marriage, it seemed that Stella found this mood nothing but a joke. The fact that what she was feeling now might be nothing but what everybody felt filled Martha with exhaustion. She remained clinging to the sill, while tiredness flowed into her, an extreme of fatigue, like the long high note on the violin that holds a tension while the ground swell of melody gathers strength beneath it. Her limbs were so heavy she could hardly prevent herself from sliding off the chair; while her mind, like a bright space above a dark building, was snapping with activity. The small, clear picture of Stella laughing at her own story was succeeded by another: she saw Binkie, large, fat, heavy, grotesquely dancing with the baboon on the lawn outside the hotel; she saw herself laughing at the scene, arm in arm with Douglas. Finally, she saw a small yellow flower on the very edge of the Falls, drenched with spray and tugging at its roots like a flag in a gale, but returning to its own perfect starred shape whenever the wind veered. She could not remember having actually seen this flower. It was frightening that she could not – yet there was something consoling about it, too. She tried again and again to place the moment she had seen it; her mind went dark with the effort, as if a switch had been turned down. Then she heard, with a movement of slow, swelling sadness, the music from the amusement park. And now she understood that she was looking back at the hectic elation of those four days with regret – nostalgia was invading her together with the rhythm of the false cheap music. Yet the truth was she had disliked every moment of the time. She jerked herself fully awake; that lie she had no intention of tolerating. She stood up, and told herself with a bleak and jaunty common sense that she needed a good night’s sleep.
The outer door crashed open; the light crashed on. A cheerful young man came towards her, whirled her up in his arms, and began squeezing her, saying, ‘Well, Matty, here we are in our own place at last, and about time, too!’ With this he gave her a large affectionate kiss on the cheek, and set her down, and stood rubbing his hands with satisfaction. Then it seemed that something struck him; doubt displaced the large grin, and he said, ‘But, Matty, what’ve you done to yourself?’
Turning away quickly, Martha said, ‘I’ve cut off my hair. Don’t look at it now, it’ll be all right in the morning.’
Taking her at her word, he said, ‘Oh, all right, changed your hair style, eh?’ And he rubbed his hands again, with pleasure: she could see he took it as a compliment to himself that she should. ‘Sorry I was late, but I ran into some of the boys and I couldn’t get away. Had to celebrate.’ His proprietary look half annoyed her; but she could feel the beginning of fatal pleasure. From the way he looked at her and rubbed his hands, she knew that he had again been congratulated on his acquisition; and while she puzzled over the knowledge that this could have nothing to do with herself, she could not help feeling less heavy and unattractive.
‘They think I’m a helluva lucky…’ he announced; and at the thought of the scenes in the bar with the boys, a reflection of his proud and embarrassed grin appeared on his face. He swooped over to her, ground her tightly to him, and announced, ‘And so-so I am.’
Then, still holding her, but loosening his grip because his mind was on them and not on her, he began telling her some of the things they had said, in a comradely way, sharing the pleasure with her. At first she said, half anxiously, half pleased, ‘And what else?’ ‘And what did they say then?’ Until suddenly she jerked away from him, angry and red, and said, ‘I don’t think that’s funny, that’s disgusting.’
The very image of an offended prude, she turned her back on him; while, half shamefaced, half sniggering, he looked at her and said at last, ‘Oh, come off it, Matty, don’t put on an act.’
Martha undressed in silence, flinging crumpled blue dress, knickers, petticoat, in all directions. She stood naked. In the mood she was in, it had nothing to do with coquetry.
To Douglas, however, this was not apparent. He found the naked and angry girl an argument for forgiveness. Flinging off his own clothes, he bounced on to the bed, and moved over to give her room. Still frowning, she moved chastely in beside him; for the fact that they were annoyed with each other made the act of getting naked into bed on a level with sitting beside him at breakfast. She was irritated to discover that he did not understand this. She was on the point of turning over away from him, when the instinct to please turned her towards him. Love had brought her here, to lie beside this young man; love was the key to every good; love lay like a mirage through the golden gates of sex. If this was not true, then nothing was true, and the beliefs of a whole generation were illusory. They made love. She was too tired to persuade herself that she felt anything at all. Her head was by now swimming with exhaustion.
‘God, but I’m tired, Matty,’ he announced, rolling off her. He yawned and said with satisfaction, ‘How many hours have we slept during the last fortnight?’
She did not reply. Loyalty towards love was forcing her to pretend that she was not disappointed, and that she did not – at that moment she was sick with repulsion – find him repulsive. But already that image of a lover that a woman is offered by society, and carries with her so long, had divorced itself from Douglas, like the painted picture of a stencil floating off paper in water. Because that image remained intact and unhurt, it was possible to be good-natured. It is that image which keeps so many marriages peaceable and friendly.
She listened, smiling maternally, while he calculated aloud how many hours they had slept. It took him several minutes: he was nothing if not efficient.
‘Do you realize we couldn’t have slept more than about three hours a night during the last six weeks?’ he inquired proudly.
‘Awful, isn’t it?’ she agreed, in the same tone.
After a pause: ‘It’s been lovely, hasn’t it, Matty?’
She agreed with enthusiasm that it had. At the same time she glanced incredulously at him to assure herself that he must be joking. But he was grinning in the half-dark. She simply could not comprehend that his satisfaction, his pleasure, was fed less by her than by what other people found in their marriage.
Her silence dismayed him. He gripped her arm, pressed it, and urged, ‘Really, everyone’s been awfully good to us, haven’t they, Matty? Haven’t they? They’ve given us a hell of a start?’
Again she enthusiastically agreed. He lay alert now, feeling her worry and preoccupation. Then he suddenly inquired, ‘Did you see the doctor? What did he say?’
‘Oh, nothing much,’ she said, sleepy and bad-tempered. ‘He doesn’t seem to know more than we do, only he does the big-medicine-man act awfully well.’
But Douglas could not agree with this. ‘He’s very good, Matty – very good indeed.’
Her motherliness was warmed by his anxiety, and she at once assured him that he had been very kind and she had liked him enormously.
‘That’s all right, then. You’ll be all right with him.’ A pause. ‘Well, what did he recommend? Those effells are a pain in the neck, only for bachelors.’ He laughed proudly.
‘He made a joke about them.’
‘What did he say?’ She told him. ‘He’s a helluva lad, Dr Stern, isn’t he, Matty? Isn’t he?’
She hesitated. Besides, she did not want to think now about the machinery of birth control, which suddenly appeared to her distasteful. But since from the beginning it had been a matter of pride to be efficient, gay and matter-of-fact, she could not say that she detested the jellies and bits of rubber which from now on would accompany what Dr Stern had referred to as her love life as if it were something separate from life itself; she could not now say what for the moment was true: that she wished she were like that native woman, who was expected to have a baby every year. She wished at the very least that it should not all be made into a joke. She wanted to cry her eyes out; nothing could be more unreasonable.
Suddenly Douglas observed, ‘We’ve just done it without anything. I suppose that’s a bit silly, eh, Matty?’
‘Oh, it’ll be all right,’ she said hastily, unwilling to move. She felt it would be ‘all right’ because since the ‘act of love’ had been what Dr Stern described as unsatisfactory, she felt it had not occurred at all. She was unaffected, and therefore it would be unfair, if not unnatural, that a child might result from it.
‘Because you’d better get out of bed and go to the bathroom,’ he suggested uneasily.
‘Judging from the book of words,’ she said, with a dry anger that astounded even herself, ‘those little dragons of yours go wriggling along at such a rate it would be too late by now.’
‘Well, maybe it would be better than nothing,’ he urged.
‘Oh, I’m too tired to move,’ she said irritably. ‘Besides,’ she added firmly, ‘I’m not going to have a baby for years. It would be idiotic, with a war coming.’
‘Well, Matty…’ But he was at a loss for words in the face of this irrationality. ‘At any rate,’ he announced firmly, ‘we mustn’t take any more chances at all. Actually we’re being helluva fools. It’s not the first time.’
‘Oh, it’ll be all right,’ she agreed amenably, quite comfortable in the conviction, luckily shared by so many women who have not been pregnant, that conception, like death, was something remarkable which could occur to other people, but not to her.
‘Did you tell Dr Stern about your periods?’ he persisted.
‘What about them?’ she asked irritably, disengaging herself from his arm and lying parallel to him, not touching him.
‘Well, you did say they were a bit irregular.’
‘Oh, do stop fussing,’ she cried, tormented. ‘According to the book of words thousands of women have irregular periods before they have a baby and it doesn’t mean a thing.’
‘But, Matty, do be reasonable,’ he implored.
She was silent. Even more did she want to weep. But this would have meant abandoning herself to him, and to explanations of what she could not explain herself – a feeling of being caged and trapped. Until two weeks ago, her body had been free and her own, something to be taken for granted. She would have scorned to fuss about, or even to notice, a period that was heavy or one that chose not to come at all. And now this precious privacy, this independence, so lately won from her mother’s furtive questioning, was being threatened by an impertinent stranger.
‘Matty,’ he said again, ‘don’t you think you’re being unreasonable?’
‘I’m so tired I could scream,’ she muttered defiantly.
Silence. Music from the waste lot came throbbing into the room. The big wheel, glittering with the white lights, revolved steadily, Like a damned wedding ring, she thought crossly, abandoning herself to anger, since she was not free to cry.
‘I do hope you’ll be in a better humour in the morning,’ said Douglas coldly, after a pause.
Her mind began producing wounding remarks with the efficiency of a slot machine. She was quite dismayed at the virulence of some of the things that came to her tongue. She cautiously turned her head and saw his face showing in the steady flicker of lights. He looked young – a boy, merely; with a boy’s sternness. She asked, in a different tone, ‘Dr Stern said something about your stomach.’
His head turned quickly. Guardedly he said, ‘What did he tell you,?’
‘Nothing – only mentioned it. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Oh – I don’t know.’
The pride that concealed a weakness appealed to her. She reached out her hand and laid it on his arm above the elbow. It stiffened, then responded.
‘I’ve an ulcer – nothing much. I just go on the tack when I feel it.’
She could not help a pang of repulsion from the idea of an ulcer; then another of pity. ‘I thought you had to have a special diet for ulcers?’
‘Oh – don’t fuss.’ He added, contrite, ‘I lay off fats when it starts up.’
‘You’re very young to have an ulcer,’ she remarked at last. Then, thinking this sounded like a criticism, she tightened her fingers about the thick warm flesh. It was slack. He was asleep, and breathing deeply.

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