COV02 - A Proper Marriage

by Doris Lessing

  Mrs Quest brought in the small girl, and sat crooning over her, with an access of tenderness that touched and disarmed Martha; but Caroline was striving like an unwilling captive in the arms that held her. Mrs Quest laughed ruefully and set her down, and she unsteadily staggered back to the veranda, while the two women watched her with the same small, proud smile, in which was a touch of regret.

  ‘She’s very small for her age,’ said Mrs Quest dubiously. ‘I hope you are giving her enough to eat.’

  Martha jumped as if stung. Mrs Quest rose hurriedly, and said she might just as well take Caroline now for a few days, it would give Martha a rest. Martha nearly protested, then allowed herself to slide into apathy – for why not? Then Mrs Quest added that Caroline needed to be fed up a little, and Martha turned away helplessly, silenced by the knowledge that she was certainly a failure, she could no more manage Caroline than Mrs Quest had managed her. Grandmothers, she reflected, falling back with relief on the abstraction, are better with their grandchildren than with their own children. And she even dwelt wistfully on a charming picture, Mrs Quest tenderly relaxed with Caroline, a picture that had the same soothing, ideal quality as that Mr Maynard saw when he looked at her with the child.

  In a few minutes Mrs Quest had left with Caroline, and the flat was empty. Martha was, as always, uncomfortably surprised that as soon as Caroline was away from her it was as if she had never had a child at all; whereas as long as they were together that invisible navel string twanged like a harshly plucked string at every movement or sound the child made. She sat down and consciously tried to pull herself together; she felt herself to be a hopeless failure; she was good for nothing, not even the simple natural function that every female should achieve like breathing: being a mother. As she sat there, her eye came to rest on a half-closed drawer from which papers protruded. She jumped up, and, without reading what she had written, tore them up. It was a letter to Douglas. She had fallen into the habit of writing him long letters about – as he put it – what she really felt. The letters that reached him, however, were amusing accounts of Caroline’s development, Alice’s struggles with her son, Stella’s enjoyable sufferings in childbirth. Pride forbade her to post her ‘real’ letters, which were in effect passionate complaints that he had ever married her if he intended to leave her at the first opportunity; despairing admissions of incompetence with Caroline; and her hatred of the life she led.

  The letters she got from him filled her with dismay she would not acknowledge. The incidents of his army life he found as humorous as she did hers. Besides, he continually urged her broad-mindedly, as was the spirit of their compact, to get out and have a good time; which she interpreted, from a deeper instinct than she would admit to processing, as the voice of guilt itself.

  She was about to sit down and describe the visit of Mr Maynard in terms which would make him sound like an avuncular priest, when the telephone rang.

  She approached it with caution. Since that moment three nights before when six or seven young men had burst in to claim their comrade, it had been ringing with suggestions that she might go to this dance or that. She had reacted with stiff coldness. She was hurt that the victim himself had made no sign. She had not told the whole truth to Mr Maynard. Thomas Bryant had collapsed on to the divan in more than alcoholic breakdown. He had wept on her breast like a child - he had lost his nerve, he would never be able to go up again, he wished he had been killed when the aircraft had tipped over on its wing that morning. Martha had cradled him, and felt such a depth of emotion that afterwards she could not bear to think of it. It was terrible to her that weakness should have so strong an appeal. And yet it had been a perfect intimacy - for the few minutes before he went limp into sleep. That he should not have rung up seemed to her like a slap in the face. Now she took down the receiver, and a hearty embarrassed voice thanked her for holding his head; it was a jolly good show, he said. Then, after a short pause, he said it was a lovely day; Martha laughed in amazement; encouraged by this sound, he invited her for dinner that night. Martha agreed at once.

  She ran off to prepare her dress and herself for the occasion: it was shortly after midday. While she bathed and curled her hair and anointed her body, her whole being was dedicating itself anew. She might have never been the wife of Douglas and the mother of Caroline. Her fantasies of the night ahead centred on the intimate talk, a continuation of that existing intimacy, a complete truthfulness which would sanctify what would follow. This, however, never approached even the threshold of consciousness. At the most she imagined a kiss. But until the kiss, fantasy must sleep. She was crying out for a romantic love affair; she had been waiting for months for just this moment; not for one second had the idea entered her head. There is no such thing as a female hypocrite.

  When Thomas Bryant entered the flat at eight that night, she had been dressed and ready for over an hour. This was one of the evenings, she knew, when she was beautiful - though why the spirit of attraction should visit her as it did, she did not know; no man had ever explained it to her.

  She welcomed him casually, like an old friend; she saw at once he did not recognize her. He looked uncertainly about the flat, and then at the divan on which he had slept.

  ‘Mrs Knowell?’ he inquired formally.

  Martha laughed involuntarily; saw his startled shamed look; then hastily covered for him: he remembered nothing of what had happened, and she must not tell him. ‘It was a terrible evening, wasn’t it - we were all drunk as owls,’ she remarked flippantly, and saw the relief on his face.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said. ‘You must let me make amends.’

  She offered him a drink, and he arranged his length carefully on the divan, as if he distrusted it. He was very tall and rather slight, though broad-shouldered. He was fair, with a clear, ruddy English skin, and blue eyes inflamed by flying and late nights. They observed Martha with approval. The boys had told him she was a nice little piece; it was an understatement. He could not remember ever having seen her before; he remembered a crowd of vaguely amiable girls. He had decided to take her out to dinner somewhere where he would not meet his friends, behave pleasantly, take her home early, and take care not to see her again. Something like that was owed to a woman whom he remembered dimly as a maternal and practical presence. Now he changed his plans instantly: he would take his prize among his brother officers.

  Martha, examining him, saw that he wore his uniform carelessly; that his whole person expressed a sort of humorous resignation to the absurdity of uniforms and war - a studied, self-conscious repudiation of anything serious, particularly his own death, which, since his training would be complete in a couple of weeks, was not likely to be delayed longer than a few months at most. She felt a pity for him which was betrayed even in the way she handed him a glass of whisky; he might already be a figure on a war memorial.

  He tossed it down, and said, ‘Let’s go.’ He stood up. ‘Shall we dance instead?’

  She said immediately she would love to. Somewhere in her was spreading a shadow of desolation. She felt insulted. She became very gay.

  All the way to the camp he asked her minute questions about the make of the car, its performance, how much it cost to run. She thought of cars as objects invented to take one efficiently from one place to another; she had never really believed anyone could be seriously interested in such matters. He was offering her the merest small change of conversation; and she answered politely.

  At the gates in the great black fence, the sentry stood aside as the young officer held out a piece of paper. There was a newly built hall, surrounded by ranks of parked cars. They entered the hall. It was already full. A band of uniformed men played from a platform.

  Martha looked around and knew all the women present. A year ago, they had been dancing in the arms of the local men; now they were moving with equal compliance in the arms of the Air Force, and using with perfect ease the new language. She saw Alice dancing past. She waved. Alice waved back, then stopped, spoke
to her partner, and came over.

  The young officer stood aside politely while Alice took Martha’s elbow and said, ‘Hey, Matty, so we’re back in circulation - it’s awful, isn’t it?’ She let out her high giggle, and added, ‘I’m browned off with everything. I don’t see why we shouldn’t – God knows what Willie’s up to up north.’

  Martha, who had felt a stab of jealous shock on behalf of the absent Willie, now agreed instantly that Douglas always said she must go and enjoy herself, At this Alice suddenly smiled, the women smiled ironically, exchanged a look, and separated.

  Thomas Bryant returned to Martha, and edged with her around in the space between the dancers and the tables. She suddenly stopped. She had thought of this as going out with Thomas Bryant; she had imagined being with him. She saw a long table, around which sat a dozen young officers, half of whom had rung her during the last week. She looked at Thomas, unconsciously reproachful. He glanced curiously at her face: she was scarlet. He avoided looking at his friends, who had already made a space for them, and led Martha to another small table. They sat. Her back was now to the other table. Glancing at him, she saw him looking over her shoulder at his friends. She turned swiftly, and saw them grinning at him; his face expressed a half-sheepish triumph. She hated him. When he summoned the black waiter and suggested champagne, she said she would drink lemonade. They got up to dance, like two wooden things. He was drinking heavily again. After a few dances, he had sunk into the collective wash of emotion; the whole roomful of people was dancing in the anonymous throb of music. That was what he most wanted, she could see: not to have to think, to let himself go into it, to let his mind flow out and away from the terrible necessity of his days. And he wanted to be with a girl whose face he would not have to remember next day. Well, then, he would. She loosened and danced in the beat of the drums.

  Quite soon, a grinning young man tapped Thomas on the shoulder. ‘Why don’t you come and join us?’

  He looked awkwardly at Martha; she said at once, ‘Why, we’d love to.’

  At the end of that dance she went easily with him to the other table. She disliked him now so much it did not matter what she did. She was now that woman who says, ‘So that’s what you want me to be - very well, then, I’ll show you how well I can do it.’ She danced cheerfully with the young men to whom she had been so cold on the telephone. Choosing a moment when Thomas was at the bar, she asked one of his friends to tell him she had a headache - she chose the most casually insulting formula she knew - and left, quickly, to find her car. She was now trembling - with cold, she told herself. It was a cold night, the great stars glittering in their patterns as they had on so many dancing nights.

  As she got into the car, she saw two people sitting in the back seat. A young woman, lazily disposed in one corner, supported the head and shoulders of a young officer who lay stretched along the seat. Martha peered through the half-dark and saw that the girl was Maisie. Both were asleep.

  She sat for a while, watching the bright soft dresses of the women flowing against the neat close shapes of the men as couples passed up and down the steps in the yellow light that fell from the apertures of the hall. Then she grew impatient, and leaned over and shook Maisie’s bare white shoulder.

  Maisie woke at once, opening her eyes straight into Martha’s and smiling in her easy friendly way. ‘Hey, Martha, have we been asleep?’ She looked down at the man, whose face was half buried in her bosom, and yawned. ‘I picked your car because I knew you wouldn’t mind. Lord, this boy’s heavy.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He’s the Air Force.’

  ‘Well, of course.’

  ‘You know, Matty, I like these English boys, don’t you? It’ll be awfully hard to go back to our own after knowing them. They treat us quite differently, don’t they?’ A pause, and another yawn. ‘I never get any sleep. They read more books. They talk about things. They’ve got culture, that’s what it is.’

  Maisie’s husband had been killed flying in Persia. That had been six months before.

  ‘He’s very nice, this one,’ she went on reflectively. ‘He wants to marry me. Men are funny, aren’t they, Matty? I mean, the way they are always wanting to get married. I suppose it’s because they are going to get killed.’

  ‘Are you going to marry him?’

  ‘Well, I suppose so, if it’s going to make him happy. I don’t see the sense in it, myself. I look at it this way: Supposing he doesn’t get killed after all - a lot don’t, they just finish their turn, and then go to the ground. Well, then, he’ll be English, and he’ll want to live in England. But I like it here and then we’ll be married and have to get divorced.’ She shifted herself, with infinite gentleness, into a different position, carefully catching her lower lip between white teeth as his head rolled into the crook of her arm. He opened his eyes, stirred, sat up.

  ‘This is Matty. I told you - she’s all right.’

  ‘How do yo do?’ inquired an educated English voice.

  ‘How do you do?’ said Martha.

  ‘Do you mind giving us a lift back to town, Matty? That’s why we came into your car. Don hasn’t got to fly tomorrow. He’s got a weekend pass.’

  Martha backed out, and drove through the big gates past the sentry. ‘When are you getting married?’ she asked.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said the young man promptly, in a tender proprietary tone, to which Maisie responded good-humouredly, ‘Oh, you’re a crazy kid.’

  Martha observed in the mirror that they were once more embraced, and was careful not to speak again. She was feeling cold and lonely and left out. Now she regretted behaving so stiffly with Thomas.

  She was able to drive to Maisie’s room without having to ask for instructions. She stopped outside another white gate, banked with shrubs whose glossy leaves glinted in the starlight. She waited for them to realize that the car was no longer in motion.

  Maisie came unhurriedly out of the embrace, saying, ‘Thanks a lot, Matty, do the same for you sometime.’ As she got out, linked to her young man, she inquired politely, ‘And how’s your Douggie?’

  ‘He’s doing fine.’

  ‘Did you hear that a crowd of our boys tore Mogadishu to pieces a while back? You know how they are when they get into one of their moods.’

  Don politely thanked Martha. ‘It’s very kind of you.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  He bent his head over Maisie’s fair gleaming curls as they walked into the house where she had her room. Martha watched them going inside, cheeks laid together, dancing a half-mocking half-dreamy sliding step. She wished that her principles would allow her to cry. But this would not do; she efficiently let out the clutch, and drove herself back to the flat, feeling herself to be the only cold, sober, isolated person in a moon-drugged city given over to dancing, love and death. She felt as if she had shut the door against her own release. Then she remembered that tomorrow night she would be taken to a meeting packed full — she hoped against hope - of dangerous revolutionaries. She was enabled to retire to bed alone with philosophy.

  At half past seven the following evening, Mr Maynard folded his napkin and rose from the dinner table, although the meal had reached only the roast-beef stage and there were guests.

  ‘Spending an evening with your chums?’ inquired his wife briskly. The word ‘chums’ was the one she used to deprecate that group of elderly gentlemen who were Mr Maynard’s favourite company, and whom she felt as an irritating but not dangerous comment on her own activities.

  ‘No, I’m dropping down to the Left people.’

  The ladies let our arch little cries of dismay. They were Mrs Talbot, pale in clouds of grey chiffon and pearls; Mrs Lowe-Island, her stubby, sunburnt sixty-year-old body upright in pink taffeta; and Mrs Maynard herself - sage-green lace and an amber necklace that fell to her waist.

  Mr Maynard was prepared to forgo his pudding, but not his brandy; he sipped it standing. Mrs Lowe-Island, born to be that indispensable lieutenant who must say and do what
her superiors find beneath them, cried, ‘Now that everything is so serious, and the Huns are attacking us in North Africa, I can’t see how anyone can waste time with a bunch of agitators - it’s encouraging them.’

  Mr Maynard smiled, and set down his brandy glass. Mrs Maynard was absorbed in her pudding, but it was to her that he remarked, ‘Even with the Huns at our gate, I feel we might keep a sense of proportion.’

  Mrs Maynard took another spoonful, but Mrs Lowe-Island said indignantly, ‘They might sweep down over the whole continent in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘I’m sorry you have so little confidence in our armies.’

  ‘Oh - but we know Hitler is quite unscrupulous.’

  Mr Maynard laughed. He was on his way to the door.

  His wife inquired, ‘You are taking that Quest girl?’

  ‘You don’t mean that young Mrs Knowell?’ exclaimed Mrs Lowe-Island.

  ‘She’s a sweet girl,’ said Mrs Talbot reproachfully. ‘She’s a darling thing - and so artistic!’

  Mrs Lowe-Island quivered. Mrs Maynard spooned in the last of her pudding in a way which said that the cook would be spoken to about it in the morning, and firmly rang the bell.

  From the door, Mr Maynard saw that in the centre of the living room stood a card table, with fresh packs of cards laid out; while on subsidiary tables here and there were piled dockets of papers, files, lists, pencils: his wife intended to indulge both her passions that evening.

  ‘Who’s your fourth?’ he asked.

  ‘Mrs Anderson.’ The name was merely dropped.

  ‘Ah,’ Mr Maynard said, and looked curiously at his wife.

  ‘Mrs Anderson is such a sweet, dear woman,’ said Mrs Talbot, fingering her thick pearls. ‘Now that her son is in uniform, she’s taking such an interest in things. And when she’s always so busy, too.’

  ‘Busy,’ cackled Mrs Lowe-Island, flushing angrily. ‘We could all be busy if we took as much interest in men as she does.’