A Proper Marriage

by Doris Lessing

  They took holidays at the Cape once in four or five years, gave sundowner parties to each other once or twice in the month, and went dancing or to the cinema two or three times in the week. They were, in short, extremely comfortable, and faced lives in which there could never be a moment’s insecurity. ‘Security’ was the golden word written up over their doorways, security was so deeply part of them that it was never questioned or discussed: the great climax of their lives would come at fifty or fifty-five, when their houses, gardens and furniture would be their own, and the pensions and policies bore fruit.

  But if there is a type of man who instinctively chooses ‘the Service’, is there, then, a type of woman who inevitably marries him? This was the question that troubled Martha. She was uneasy because she had adapted herself so well to this life; some instinct to conform and comply had dictated that she must quell her loathing, as at entering a trap, which she had felt at the idea of being bound by a house and insurance policies until the gates of freedom opened at fifty. She was instinctively compliant, enthusiastic, and took every step into bondage with affectionate applause for Douglas. But she never felt that she really lived in this house, whose furniture had been chosen by the woman who lived in it before her, whose garden had been designed by someone else. She did not feel like Douglas’s wife or Caroline’s mother. She was not even bored. It was as if three parts of herself stood on one side, idle, waiting to be called into action.

  She was secretly and uneasily curious as to how these other women felt, and therefore did she go to the morning tea parties, therefore did she change her dress, brush her hair, take up her handbag and make her way to the circle of women.

  On the veranda of one of their houses was set a circle of grass chairs, a table with cakes and biscuits. The babies crawled around their feet, or played on the lawns outside.

  The women looked sharply at each other’s dresses and at the food provided, while they discussed economy. Money chimed through their talk like a regulator of a machine. For all the heavy insurances, the mortgages, the hire-purchase, the servants, were made possible because of their ingenuity with money. They could all make attractive and expensive-looking clothes for themselves, their children and even their husbands out of a few shillings’ worth of stuff bought at the sales; they continually discussed recipes which might cut the grocers’ bills by a fraction; they would haggle at their back doors with the native vendors over a penny like old women in a market place; they all knitted and sewed and patched and contrived like poor men’s wives. There were sharp scenes between husbands and wives at every month’s end; there was a continual atmosphere of contended silver shillings. They were all perpetually short of ready money, because of their god, a secure and comfortable middle age. They sighed out, ‘When we retire …’ as if they were saying, ‘When the prison gates are opened …’

  Martha could not ask Douglas for five shillings to last until the end of the week without a sharp sense of failure; and, since she had caught herself using a coaxing little voice to wheedle it out of him, she had reacted sharply into a stiff pride which meant she would go without meals secretly if he did not come home for them, to save the few pence they would cost. Yet, while she resented this necessity to spend all her time on running up dresses, petticoats, shirts, and clothes for Caroline on the sewing machine; while she never ceased to be conscious of the time that went on bottling, pickling and preserving, it was all a great pride and satisfaction to her. She found that when she had nothing to do she would unpick an old dress to make it into a new one, for the sheer satisfaction of getting something for nothing; just as she would spend two hours making a pudding that looked like an illustration out of Mrs Beeton, so that she might feel pride in the knowledge that it cost less than the rice pudding the cook would have made in its stead.

  It was the time of these women which supported the whole edifice; their willingness to sink their youth in acquiring multifarious small talents, which softened the road to that great goal, comfortable middle age.

  Martha had been sucked into the pattern; with part of herself she connived at it. Weeks and months would go by, and then she found herself sitting up in bed at night, sweating with fear, and she would be afraid to go to sleep again: she suffered a mild repetition of that period in her childhood when she would lie awake night after night, rigid in the bed, forcing her eyes open to prevent herself slipping into a terrible dream country. Then it all passed and she became lazy and comfortable, willingly spending all her time making and mending and contriving; and she would say to herself, Yes, I shall have another baby. For that was the crux of it. If she had another baby, she would be committed to staying here; she would live in the pattern till she died. Yet that other Martha who stood idly by all this while, waiting to be used, never believed for one moment that she would stay; it was inconceivable.

  Caroline was three years old. Martha knew her female self was sharply demanding that she should start the cycle of birth again. There were moods when a slow, warm, heavy longing came up, when the very sight of Caroline filled Martha with a deep physical satisfaction at her delightful little body and charming little face; and this was at the same time a desire to hold a small baby in her arms again. If she looked at one of her friends’ babies in this mood, the craving was painful and insistent, and the adventure of being pregnant filled her entirely. She thought that in nine months from now, if she chose, she could hold in her arms something new and extraordinary - a new creature created from her, Martha. And what was nine months? Nothing! said Martha to herself, forgetting how the nine months of carrying Caroline had been a period out of ordinary time. Yet she did not altogether forget. And she did not choose to begin again.

  She was looking curiously, and with a certain deep uneasiness, at the peremptory charm of that little individual, Caroline. She knew that before Caroline was born she had seen her as ‘a baby’ merely, something felt in the deep, driving egotism of maternity as an extension of herself and dependent upon her. Yet here she was, not at all a baby, but a creature who became every day more independent, strong-willed, determined. Caroline was that hard and unalterable fact which turned Martha’s life, in spite of a pleasant and helpful nursegirl, into a routine which began at five sharp every morning, when the light first showed, and ended at seven in the evening, when she went to bed. The rhythm of Caroline’s needs was in sharp discord with her own; she adjusted herself, she did what was necessary, but it was her sense of duty which regulated her. Being a mother, or rather, the business of looking after a child, as distinct from carrying and giving birth to one, was not a fulfilment but a drag on herself. Yet no sooner had she looked at this fact, admitted it, than the voices of guilt made themselves heard; and they were given sanction by the mood of deep physical tenderness and longing for another baby.

  It was a mood which was acknowledged in the circle of women. One of them, picking up a small baby with an eager wistfulness which told everything, would say, half humorous and half resentful, ‘I’m as broody as hell again, but I can’t start another baby until we’ve finished paying for the washing machine.’

  But it was observable that this same young woman announced a short time later that she had started a baby, and that — with a self-conscious look - it was because she and her husband had agreed it was only fair to have a baby as soon as possible to be a companion to little George or Betty. Which deceived nobody.

  This event would be succeeded, not by general discussions, for every physical phenomenon but one was discussed with the utmost frankness in the group - sex was taboo - but by a series of tête-à-têtes about that other cycle of anxiety. There were earnest, anxious discussions in the half-humorous grumbling tone which paid loyalty to the situations they found themselves in. For if young Letty Jones could ‘start a baby’ when, as they knew very well, she had not meant to, and simply because the sharp physical yearning for a baby had confused her out of her efficiency, then what was to prevent the same thing happening to themselves? If they could not ‘plan�
�� this, as they planned everything else in their regulated lives, they felt at the mercy of what they most dreaded. They felt insecure, in short. Besides, having a baby at all, for every one of them, was a nuisance, a painful duty, which must at least be fitted into their lives in the most convenient way. The voice of their female selves was a lure whose ambiguous and double-dealing nature they understood very well - they were not supported by the book for nothing.

  Once pregnant, however, there was a compulsive satisfaction in the endless discussions of the morning sickness and the indigestion and the childbeds, in the knitting and making; while what the doctor said provided unlimited material for rivalries and comparisons. Each defended her own doctor with the fervent conviction of disciples; women who shared a doctor tended towards real intimacy on account of it; while more than once sharp words about another’s doctor caused periods of ‘not speaking’ which had to be ended by the united efforts of the whole group.

  Yet in spite of the grumblings, the complaints of how children tie one so, how one can never get out at night without so much fuss about arranging for the cook boy to stay and then he gets grumpy, and nurses are more trouble than they’re worth, ‘but I must have one or I’ll be worn out, my doctor says I’m run down and must take it easy’; in spite of the half-humorous despair that one looks like a sack of potatoes, ‘and my stomach’s like the back of an American car, and I crave for ice cream and pickles every night, isn’t it funny, every night at eleven I go into the pantry and eat ice cream and pickles, and my husband says I’m mad, I’ll kill him going on like this, and I get so fat when I’m pregnant, it takes me a year to lose it after and I can’t get into my clothes …’ ‘Oh, no, I get so thin, my husband says I’m like a broomstick, and I lose my breasts after the milk, but they say Sister Mellors downtown does massage and you can get your breasts back if you try’; in spite of the satisfaction with which the free women looked at their sister, enormous, clumsy, flushed with heat, distressed with the weight (‘She doesn’t carry well, does she?’ ‘Oh, no, well, I don’t either, it takes everyone differently …’ ‘All the same, if I looked like a cow, like she does, I’d never have a baby at all’) - in spite of all this, there was something irresistibly satisfying about the process of self-destruction, self-narrowing. Which they all believed it to be.

  Martha found herself looking at pregnant Mrs du Preez, swollen and hideous, and thinking even while she passed her hands with secret delight over the admirable smooth lines of her own body, How nice, that moment when your stomach pushes out, and you put on a maternity dress. Such is the power of the voice, which was speaking in her more and more often.

  But she did not succumb. Douglas was urging her not to put it off any longer. ‘It’s not fair to Caroline, she’ll be too old to enjoy the kid when we do eventually have it.’ Recently he had said, half joking, for he was one of those who believe in the absolving power of humour, ‘I’ll hide that damned thing one of these nights, and that’ll make up your mind for you!’ She had turned on him sharply, sick with anger and fear, feeling her deepest self threatened. He had coloured and stammered out, ‘But, Matty, it was only a joke …’

  After a while she laughed, and even kissed him. But it had been a moment that had the power to set a strain between them. For some months the subject was avoided. Martha was nervously grateful that he said nothing. She thought vaguely that soon she would have a baby – soon, not now. She did not go so often to the women’s tea parties. She would sit on her bed, looking worriedly at an enormous basket filled with socks and shirts she should be mending, and drift off into an abstracted daydream that was like a drug against any sort of action. Or she would take a fork to the back garden, where the vegetable beds lay, and work there for hours on end, letting the heat of the sun drug her into warm, slow well-being. It was as if she were waiting for something.

  One morning she was kneeling on an old grain sack on the wet black soil, turning the thick rich tilth over and smoothing it ready for the new lettuces. This being October, the air was so dry she could feel the dampness being sucked up in damp hot waves all around her. She was wondering why she was drawn here so often to do work which the garden boy did so much better, for digging in a tame vegetable bed with a little fork was the barest imposture of ‘nature’, which was presumably what she was in search of. And why was it that nothing but the veld she had been brought up on, the sere, empty, dry vleis, the scrubby little trees, the enormous burnt windy spaces of the high veld, could satisfy her feeling for what nature should be? Dryness, barrenness, stunted growth, the colours that are fed from starved roots - thin browns and greys, dull greens and sad yellows - and all under a high, dry, empty sky: these were what she craved. The thought of a planned and comfortable country, filled with prosperous villas in green and fruitful acres, was dismaying and distasteful. It was at this point that she heard Mrs Quest’s voice raised in command from the front garden. She sat back on her heels, felt a surge of anger rise in her; then she conscientiously set herself to fork vegetables as if nothing were happening.

  Two or three times a week, Mrs Quest drove across the few avenues which separated her house from her daughter’s, and entered the establishment like a demon of constructive energy - told the cook how to clean vegetables, informed him he was a lazy thief, lectured the nursegirl for laziness, called the houseboy in from under the tree where he was cleaning shoes to confront him with dust under the sideboard, and finally cornered Martha with a list of her deficiencies as a housekeeper. She would then depart, satisfied that she had done what was right, yet conscious that the results were not what she had intended. She told her husband and her friends that Martha ruined her servants, squandered money, and neglected Caroline. She did not really mean any of it, of course. But when she discussed her daughter, these remarks came welling up from some deep crack in her nature; it was almost as if she had never really made them. But they were repeated, finally they reached Martha herself, and she went to Douglas.

  He was patiently amused, and urged her to take no notice. Martha, almost in tears, said that her cook was upset, the nurse in tears, the houseboy threatening to give notice.

  ‘Oh, well, Matty, this sort of thing happens in half the houses in town. I am sure the cook understands quite well.’

  ‘I can scarcely go to the cook and tell him my mother isn’t responsible for what she does!’

  ‘He won’t take any notice. Now, Matty, just pretend to listen, humour the old girl, and keep your hair on!’ With this he slid an apologetic kiss on to her cheek and found something else to do. This was particularly galling to Martha because she noticed it was how the husbands of her women friends evaded their complaints about their mothers. For every one of these young married couples had one or two mothers-in-law dependent upon them for emotional satisfaction, pathetic middle-aged women left high and dry by society with nothing to do.

  Tolerant humour was infuriating. Pride forbade that she should be humoured, and she had now ceased to appeal to Douglas. More, she had succeeded in preserving a tight-lipped forbearance during her mother’s assaults. She kept her complaints for the circle of women, which was the one place where she was really understood.

  On this particular morning, Martha was left to fork vegetables for no more than half a minute before Mrs Quest came round the corner of the house in that rapid, forceful way of hers, her face set with determination and disapproval. So dramatic was her arrival, so urgent, that Martha instinctively rose, fork in hand, to face a calamity.

  ‘What on earth is the matter?’ she exclaimed.

  Mrs Quest stopped at six yards, and said, ‘My dear! Do you realize what’s going on - you really should be more careful.’

  Martha understood that nothing had happened after all, bent to the garden bed, jabbed the fork once or twice in the earth, leaving it upright, and followed her mother as she energetically marched back to the front. As they rounded the corner, Caroline could be heard crying angrily from the veranda. She was standing in the playpen, shak
ing its bars with both hands. Martha went to lift her out.

  ‘I put her in there, she’s safe there,’ said Mrs Quest. ‘Do you know, she was sitting on the garden boy’s lap.’ A look of disgust twisted her face. ‘And that lazy thing Alice, or whatever her name is, was just sitting doing nothing.’

  Martha set Caroline down. The little girl squatted in front of Alice and began wiping the tears off her face, while Alice smiled painfully and wiped the tears off hers. The garden boy, his whole body expressing sullen hate, was forking over some nasturtiums.

  Martha was as usual seething with futile anger. But she was determined to show none. She said politely to her mother, ‘If you’ll excuse me …’ and walked over to Alice, who saw her coming and bent her face sideways, looking at the earth while she stirred a twig round and round in the red dust. Caroline was sitting on her knees, with an arm around Alice’s neck.

  ‘It’s all right, Alice,’ said Martha awkwardly.

  Alice looked up, the whites of her eyes very clear in her round, brown, pleasant face. She smiled, then dropped her eyes bashfully while some more tears splashed out. She was comforted, however.

  Martha handed the child a red hibiscus flower, which she took and began to pull to pieces; and then went towards the garden boy. He kept his eyes sullenly lowered, and went on digging. Martha hesitated over various phrases, and finally brought out: ‘If you’d like to go to the back, Silas …’

  He rose, shooting at her a look of such black hate that she winced.

  ‘It’s quite all right, Silas, you can play with Caroline if you like.’

  ‘I’m not a nurse for Miss Caroline,’ he said angrily. He walked off.

  Martha went back to the house. Her mother was not to be seen, but, hearing a loud and agitated voice from the back, Martha ran through the house to the kitchen. There stood the old cook, eyes bent to the floor, holding his face expressionless, while Mrs Quest banged open cupboards and stooped to look under the stove. Martha watched in silence. Suddenly Mrs Quest straightened herself from a prolonged inspection of a bottom shelf, and fished out a piece of old newspaper in which were half a dozen onions and a heel of stale loaf. ‘There!’ she announced triumphantly. ‘They steal from under your nose and you take no notice.’