COV02 - A Proper Marriage

by Doris Lessing

  The fact is that as soon as Douglas returned from the office for lunch, the day was already nearly at evening. For he returned finally at four; and after that, it was only a question of time before their eyes met on a query: at the Sports Club, everyone they knew would be delighted to see them, and afterwards there would be dancing there or at the hotels. It seemed as if the day was only a drab preliminary to the night, as if the pageant of sunset was meant only as a curtain-raiser to that moment when the lights sprung up along the streets, and with them a feeling of vitality and excitement. For in the hotels, the clubs and the halls, the orchestras struck up at eight and from every point in the town dance music was flowing like water from a concealed reservoir of nostalgia hidden below it. These were the nights of African winter, sharp, clear, cold, a high and luminous starlit dark lifting away from the low, warm glitter of city lights. In the white courts of the hotels, braziers offered a little futile heat to the cold dry air, and groups of young people formed and dissolved around them: there was no room for everyone inside, there was no room for all the people who needed, suddenly, to dance.

  Night after night, they moved from the Club to the Plaza and on to McGrath’s; and the self-contained parties that began the evening expected to dissolve into a great whole as midnight approached. By midnight they were dancing as if they formed one soul; they danced and sang, mindless, in a half-light, they were swallowed up in the sharp, exquisite knowledge of loss and impending change that came over the seas and continents from Europe; and underneath it all, a rising tide of excitement that was like a poison. Uniforms were appearing here and there, and the wearers carried themselves with self-effacing modesty, as if on a secret mission, but conscious that all eyes in the room were fixed on them. The rumours were beginning. This regiment was going to be called up, they were going to conscript the whole population; but the question of conscription was surely an irrelevance when every young man in the town was thinking only of the moment when he could put on a uniform - and that before it was decided what the war was to be fought about. They were all longing to be swallowed up in something bigger than themselves; they were, in fact, already swallowed up. And since each war, before it starts, has the look of the last one, it did not matter how often stern and important young men assured hushed audiences that the world could not survive a month of modern warfare, they would all be bombed to pieces by new and secret weapons; it was necessary only for the orchestra to play ‘Tipperary’ or ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ - which they did on every conceivable occasion - for the entire gathering to become transformed into a congregation of self-dedicated worshippers of what their parents chose to remember of 1914.

  In between dances, groups formed to discuss what was happening in Europe - or rather to exchange the phrases they had read that morning in the Zambesia News. The fact that this newspaper was contradicting itself with the calmest of assurance from day to day did not matter in the least; there was going to be a war, and night after night youth danced and sang itself into a condition of preparation for it. Their days and work, their loves and love-making, were nothing but a preparation for that moment when hundreds of them stamped and shouted in great circles to the thudding drums, felt less as sound than as their own pulses; this was the culmination of the day, the real meaning of it, the moment of surrender.

  Then the music stopped suddenly and disastrously, the managers came forward bowing with strained politeness, ignoring the pleas and imprecations about their hard-heartedness - and the masses of young people streamed out into the still, frost-bound air, under the glitter of the Cross. It was at this point that Martha and Douglas were reminded that they were married; for ‘the gang’ - those of them that remained unbound to the girls whose one preoccupation it was to get married to the doomed as quickly as possible - went off shouting and stamping to the fun fair, which they kept going until early morning. The young married couples departed to one of the flats; and it was then that it became apparent there was a certain difference of viewpoint between husbands and wives. Stella, Alice, Martha, might have been part of that single yearning heart only half an hour before, but now they tended to fall silent, and even exchanged tolerant glances as their respective young men held forth on their plans for joining up. For it is a strain on any marriage, which after all is likely to begin with the belief that it must provide satisfaction and happiness for at least a few years, when one of the partners show signs of such restlessness to ‘rush off to the wars’ - as the girls acidly put it - the moment a war, any war, offers itself.

  By the time Martha and Douglas reached home, reached the small, brightly lit, untidy bedroom, still littered with their day clothes and filled with the loud, sad, bitter music from the fun fair - for the wheel was still dragging its glittering load of cars in its circle - by this time, their elation was flagging, and there was a feeling of anticlimax. Now, drenched and submerged by the music, which it was impossible to keep out even with shut windows, Martha crept closer to Douglas and demanded the assurance that he did not really want to leave her; just as Stella and Alice were doing in their bedrooms. Douglas, manfully clasping Martha to him, murmured reassurances and looked over her head at the glitter of the wheel. He had not known how intolerably boring and empty his life was until there was a chance of escaping from it; and the more fiercely he determined not to be left out of things, the more tightly he held Martha and consoled her. He was holding a warm, confiding bundle of female flesh, he wished only to love her and be proud of her – for, above all, his pride was fed by her anxious demands for his love; but it was all no use. For, just as he was playing a role which was surely inconsistent with what he thought – the young hero off to the wars for adventure - so she began to speak in the ancient female voice which he found utterly irritating. After a long silence, during which he hoped she might have gone to sleep so that he might dream of adventure without guilt, a small, obstinate, ugly voice remarked that there would be wars so long as men were such babies. At this point he would loosen his grip and lie stiff beside her, and begin to explain in an official tone that surely, Matty, she must see they must be prepared … But it was no use; that official tone carries no conviction any longer, not even to the people who use it. She sniggered derisively; and he felt foolish.

  They rolled apart and lay without touching; even apologizing in an offhand, hasty way if they happened to touch by accident. Douglas soon fell asleep. Martha could not sleep while the wheel turned and churned out music. She was in a mood of angry self-contempt for being infected by that dangerous undertow of excitement. For she had caught herself daydreaming of being a nurse, and no less than a ministering angel. But, alas, alas, we know all about that ministering angel; we know what she comes to in the end; and Martha could only return to thoughts of her father. She considered the undoubted fact that while Mr Quest might expatiate about the inefficiency and corruption of the leaders of his war, about the waste of life, the uselessness of the thing, while he might push into Martha’s hands books like All Quiet on the Western Front with an irascible command that she should read it and understand that that was war, while he might talk of that war with the bitter, savage consciousness of betrayal, yet there was always an undercurrent of burning regret. Then he had been alive. ‘The comradeship,’ he would exclaim, ‘the comradeship! I’ve never experienced that since!’ and then the terrible ‘It was the only time in my life I was really happy.’

  When the wheel stilled at last Martha was able to sleep; and in the morning she was a different creature, easily able to withstand the insinuations of the ministering angel in the white coif, and prepared to look soberly at the alternatives - or rather at a single alternative, for the possibility of in fact settling down to a life of tea parties, sundowners, and in due course, children, was out of the question. She was trying to form the confusion of feelings that afflicted her to fit the sharp, clear view of life held by Solly and Joss - that was how she saw it. What she actually wanted, of course, was for some man to arrive in her life, simply
take her by the hand, and lead her off into this new world. But it seemed he did not exist. And so she read the newspapers, and enjoyed the cynicism they produced in her. There was the Zambesia News, for instance, at that period in a state of such uneasy uncertainty. On the one hand it was reminding its readers about the atrocious nature of Hitler’s Germany; on the other it seemed to be suffering from a certain reluctance to do so. Hard to forget that these same atrocities, concentration camps and so on, had been ignored by the Zambesia News, as by its betters, until it was impossible to ignore them; while even now, like those great exemplars overseas, it showed real indignation only over Hitler’s capacity for absorbing other countries. Nor was she able to feel any less derisive when she read the great exemplars themselves, the newspapers from Home. As for that other, deeper knowledge, the pulse that really moved her, gained from her almost religious feeling for literature, a knowledge that amounted to a vision of mankind as nobility bound and betrayed - this was vanishing entirely beneath the pressure of enjoyable cynicism which was being fed by everything about her, and particularly by her own behaviour. For despite all her worried introspection, her determination to act rationally if only it was possible to find out what rational behaviour should be, the fact was that her sluggish days were nothing but a preparation for the first drink at sundown, which led to that grand emotional culmination at midnight when she joined the swinging circle of intoxicated dancers controlled by the thudding of the drums.

  It was about six weeks after her marriage that all this confusion was shaken into a single current by the fact that she was violently sick one morning. Lethargy caused her to murmur consolingly that it must be the result of not sleeping enough - probably nothing but a hangover. But she succeeded in forgetting it.

  Two days later, in Stella’s flat, after a dance, it happened that Maisie was there. She was wearing a dress of white tulle, frilled and flounced like a baby’s bassinette, and from it her plump shoulders, her lazy pretty face, emerged with a placid enjoyment of life which apparently had not been disturbed by the fact that she had become engaged to one of the young men who was training to be a pilot. She came to sit by Martha, murmuring vaguely, ‘Well, Matty …’ as if they saw each other every day. In fact they did, at dances but from across the room. She bent down to rip off a strip of dirty white from the bottom of her dress where it had been trodden on, rolled it up, and tossed it into the corner of the room; and sat looking speculatively at Martha, her fair face flushed and beaded with the heat. ‘You look fine, you don’t show yet,’ she remarked good-naturedly, looking frankly at Martha’s stomach.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Martha.

  Maisie was startled. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologized hastily. ‘I thought …” Someone spoke to her, and she took the opportunity to get up and sit somewhere else. From time to time during the rest of the evening, she glanced towards Martha, but with the determination not to catch her eye. She left before Martha did, arm in arm with her pilot, including Martha with the rest of the room in a large, vague smile of farewell.

  Afterwards Martha said indignantly to Douglas that it was the limit, people were saying she was pregnant. To which he replied a little awkwardly that some of the lads from the Club had suggested this was the case.

  ‘Do you mean to say they think we got married because we had to?’ she exclaimed, furious; for she felt this was an insult towards them as free beings able to do as they wished.

  But he misunderstood her indignation, and said, laughing, ‘After all, Matty, since most of the people who get married get married because they have to …’

  She laughed, but she was very uneasy.

  Again she forgot about it, until there was a letter from her mother, which immediately caught her attention because of its casual tone. At the end of it was an inquiry as to how she felt. Again she burned with indignation - there was a conspiracy against her!

  For some days, there was no reason to think of it; then she got a charming letter from Mrs Talbot, which had the same hurried apologetic manner as her speech. She asked why Matty did not drop in to see her one morning, she would so like to have a proper talk.

  The letters were always on thick white paper, in a fine-pointed black hand; they gave an impression of casual elegance which made Martha curious, for never had she known anyone whose letters were not utilitarian. The letters, like Mrs Talbot herself, spoke of an existence altogether remote from this colonial town. But what was this life which Mrs Talbot seemed so anxious Martha should share? And what was this proper talk?

  ‘We have supper or spend the evening with them at least two or three times a week,’ Martha pointed out to Douglas, quite bewildered.

  ‘Oh, go and see her, Matty, she’ll be pleased.’

  Martha had discovered that Mrs Talbot was not, as one might infer from her appearance, about thirty-five, but over sixty; she was very rich, but in a way seemed to apologize for the unpleasant fact that there was such a thing as money in the world at all. During those evenings, she would take Douglas – apologizing first – into an inner room, and they would discuss investments and properties. ‘There are no flies on Mrs Talbot,’ he said appreciatively. And then, always: ‘She’s an absolute marvel, a wonder! Why, Matty, would you think she was a day over thirty. Isn’t she terrific?’

  ‘But Elaine …” pointed out Martha jealously.

  ‘Oh, Elaine’s all right, she’s a nice kid,’ said Douglas, dismissing her.

  That Elaine should be thought of as a nice kid made Martha laugh - it was easier to tolerate the amazing Mrs Talbot. For at the bottom of an uneasy disapproval of that lady was Martha’s physical arrogance - the pride of the very young. She was young and whole and comely; secretly she felt a fierce, shuddering repulsion for the old and unsightly. For a brief ten years - she was convinced that thirty was the end of youth and good looks - she was allowed by nature to be young and attractive. For Mrs Talbot to be beautiful at sixty was not fair.

  ‘She can’t be sixty,’ she had protested hopefully. But she was.

  Martha told Douglas that she didn’t want to have a proper talk with Mrs Talbot; but on the morning after getting the letter she found herself disinclined for that ‘work’, and set off on impulse for Mrs Talbot’s house. It was half past nine; the morning was well advanced for a society which began work at eight. Martha walked through the park and along the avenues: the house was one of the delightful houses of the older town. It was almost hidden from the street by trees and flowering bushes. The door opened immediately from the garden path, and not off a wide veranda. The house had an introspective, inward-turning look because of this discreet black door with its shining door knocker. Mrs Talbot’s house, like herself, could not help suggesting the England one knew from novels. The door might be flanked on either side by poinsettias, ragged pointed scraps of scarlet silk fluttering on naked, shining silken stems, but one felt they were there only to suggest an ironical contrast.

  Martha rang, and was admitted by a native servant, and shown into a small side room kept for just this purpose. She summoned her memories of what she had read, and then saw, as she had expected, a tray on a stand, littered with visiting cards. At this it occurred to her that the phrase ‘dropping in’ might have a different meaning to Mrs Talbot than it had for herself and her friends. Before she could recover herself, Mr Talbot came in. She had seen very little of him; he went to the Club in the evenings when his wife entertained. He was wearing a dark silk dressing gown, was tall and heavily built, with a dark, heavy face, and he came stooping forward with his hand outstretched, apologizing for his dressing gown. She was embarrassed because of her thoughts about him: She did not like him. She did not like the way he would come into his wife’s drawing room, on his way out, a man paying forced tribute to women’s amusements; besides, he suggested a spy - his look at Mrs Talbot always made her uncomfortable. Finally, he was an old man, and distasteful because he had a sardonic, intimate manner with her that made it impossible to dismiss him so easily. He was fo
rcing her now to think of him as a man, and she stammered a little as she said she had come to see Mrs Talbot. He said very politely that he didn’t think his wife was up yet, but that Martha might care to wait?

  She said at once, no - of course not; she was only on a walk, and she would come up another time.

  He held her eyes with his while he inquired if she would like to see Elaine.

  Martha said yes, she would like to very much.

  Mr Talbot stood aside for her to precede him out of the door, and she felt uncomfortable as she passed him, as if he might suddenly put out his hands and grasp her. In the passage, he indicated the drawing-room door, and apologized again for his dressing gown. Then he opened another door; Martha caught a glimpse of a large brown-leather chair, a pipe smoking on a small table, a litter of newspapers; he went inside, having held her eyes again in another direct glance.

  She went into the drawing room, feeling its contrast with the brown masculine study he had gone into. It was large, low-ceilinged, rather dim. It was carpeted from wall to wall with a deep rosy, flowing softness that gave under her feet. It was full of furniture that Martha instinctively described as antiques. It was a charming room, it was like an Edwardian novel; and one could not be in it without thinking of the savage country outside. Martha kept looking out of the windows which were veiled in thin pale stuffs, as if to assure herself this was in fact Africa. It might have vanished, she felt, so strong was the power of this room to destroy other realities.

  Elaine came forward, from a small sunny veranda enclosed by glass and filled with plants in such a way that it suggested a conservatory. Elaine was wearing a loose linen smock, and she was doing the flowers.