COV02 - A Proper Marriage

by Doris Lessing

  Perry stiffened, rolled his eyes sideways, but did not move,

  ‘Well, I’ve had trouble with my stomach off and on for years,’ said Douglas, with a wary look at the braced Perry. ‘It flares up from time to time. I had a sudden bad go last week. Usually I just shut up about it and diet myself as well as you can on army food. But it was a really bad go - they got me into hospital. I’d only been there half an hour when orders came to evacuate. I was never examined. They flew a bunch of us down to the next town. We were evacuated from there again almost at once. The next thing was, we were all shoved on to a plane, and here we are. I’m sure I could carry on in the Army. I’m quite fit apart from the ulcer, and it’s not bad.’ He ended on a frank appeal.

  ‘You can’t feed an ulcer in the Army,’ said the doctor pleasantly. ‘And you’re better out.’

  Douglas’s mouth was bitter. ‘No one examined me, I was just pushed off.’ Suddenly the lips quivered. He turned away, blinking. God help us! thought the doctor, astounded - here it is again.

  Perry had slowly risen, was sitting on the edge of his bed, ‘Hey, what about me? What about me, Doc?’ He rose, fists clenched.

  Deliberately ignoring him, the doctor said to Douglas, ‘Get inside a minute, I’ll call you.’ He was embarrassed at what he was going to do.

  Douglas hesitated, then rose, then stood still. He was staring like a child at the doctor. At last he turned and stumbled indoors.

  Perry, crouching low, was on the point of springing at the doctor.

  ‘Damn it,’ said the doctor easily, ‘take it easy, now.’ His voice was deliberately kind, paternal.

  Perry quivered all over, then sat. His lower lip, thrust out aggressively, worked. Tears sprang from his eyes. The doctor moved over and put a hand on his shoulder. Perry seemed to swell, then subsided. The doctor sat beside him, arm lightly across his shoulder, and began to talk, in a low, persuasive voice.

  Douglas, standing behind the gauze door, looking suspiciously out, was amazed and upset at the scene. Then he turned away, and sat on the table inside. He could still hear the doctor’s almost maudlin voice soothing Perry like a child. He could hear Perry heaving up great sobs and complaining that the officer had it in for him, the sergeant had it in for him, he’d never had a chance.

  The back door cautiously opened; the orderly’s head came around it. He came in with a tray of boiled eggs, and laid it before Douglas. Seeing a dangerous gleam in Douglas’s fixed blue stare, he hastily slipped out again.

  The sentimental murmuring had ceased. Douglas looked out. Perry was lying face down on the red blankets. His fists, hanging down each side of the bed, were being banged slowly and with method on the floor - there was a streak of blood on the knuckles. The doctor was standing upright, filling a syringe against the light. Then he swiftly bent, jabbed the needle into Perry’s forearm, and moved quickly back: he expected Perry to attack him, But Perry was whimpering, face down, ‘You’re a good chap, Doc, thank you, Doc.’

  Douglas saw the doctor shut his eyes, sigh, and open them again, as he stood motionless, syringe in hand. If he sticks that thing into me I’ll kill him, thought Douglas. But the doctor dismantled the syringe and put it away. Then he stood up and braced himself: there was still Douglas. He came into the inner room. Douglas stood waiting for him belligerently.

  ‘He’ll sleep for a couple of hours and then he’ll be all right,’ said the doctor cheerfully.

  ‘You’re sending us home?’ began Douglas, standing square in front of him.

  The doctor suddenly snapped, ‘Yes, I am. I’m sick to death of the lot of you. You’ve no right to be in the Army in the first place. How did you get in? Told a lot of lies, I suppose. Bloody clever.’ He paused, and added, ‘Hundreds of pounds spent on you, you crack at the first strain, and you have to be sent back home. What do you think this is, a picnic?’

  Douglas looked at him incredulously. Seeing the familiar swelling and reddening, the working lower lip, the doctor snapped, ‘Oh, shut up, shut up, shut up - go to hell and shut up.’

  ‘Who’s in charge here?’ said Douglas after a pause, the official in him coming to the rescue.

  The doctor stared, laughed angrily, and said, ‘You can go and see Major Banks if you like — he’s over there.’ He painted at the building opposite, picked up his case, and went out past Perry without looking at him. He strode across the dust and vanished into the building. Douglas looked at the eggs; he was unconsciously grinding his teeth. Then he followed the doctor out.

  A deep shady veranda surrounded the main building; off it rooms opened. Inside one of them sat Major Banks under a spinning electric fan, dealing with piles of papers. He looked up, irritated, as Douglas strode in, slamming the door. His eyes narrowed. Douglas stopped in the middle of the room, saluted hastily, came forward.

  ‘Well, Doug, how are you?’ said the Major, rising and holding his hand out over the table. Douglas shook it. They had known each other for years. ‘Sit down.’ Douglas sat. He was looking at the papers, the files, the ink banks, the paper clips: the fetters from which he had escaped.

  ‘The doctor’s been talking to me about you,’ said Major Banks.

  Douglas allowed himself a bitter smile. But he accepted a cigarette with a ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Major Banks was a lean, fibrous, olive-skinned man, with very keen, bright, light-blue eyes: they looked odd in that burnt face. ‘Active service’s out, Doug,’ he said finally. ‘But if you want me to fix you up on the administrative side, I’ll do it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Douglas with hostility.

  ‘You’re wise. I’ll be spending the rest of the war in happy spots like this one - nice prospect.’

  ‘If I’ve got to sit behind a desk I’d rather do it at home.’

  ‘They should never have let you go, anyway. I know your chief was sick when you left.’

  ‘They didn’t let me go. I worked a point,’ said Douglas, grinning proudly.

  ‘So I gathered,’ said the Major drily. He added, ‘How’s your wife - she’ll be glad to see you.’

  ‘Oh, she’s fine, fine,’ said Douglas proudly. ‘We’ve a kid, did you know?’

  ‘Lucky chap. Well - perhaps you’ll join me for a drink later.’

  ‘Alcohol’s out - I’ve got an ulcer.’

  ‘Bad luck.’ The Major picked up some papers.

  Douglas rose. He saluted; the Major casually, half jocular, returned it. As Douglas reached the swing doors, someone started shouting from a room near by. He stopped. The sound was disturbing for a reason he could not define.

  ‘That’s your pal, Simmons,’ said the Major. ‘He’s gone clean off his rocker. Still, it’s just as well to get the crocks out of the way before the fighting starts.’

  Douglas went red. He looked with helpless affront at the oblivious Major, now bent over his papers. The shouting stopped. Silence. He slammed the door again, walked out across the square and entered the little gauze-covered house. Perry was lying face downwards, exactly as he had been, the unclenched hands knuckled loose on the floor. He was deeply asleep. The native orderly was back on the steps with his hand piano. The soft, brooding, tinkling melodies went on and on together with the pigeon’s cooing. Douglas sat on the edge of his bed and sank into thought. His mouth was dry with loss. It seemed to him that everything he had ever wanted was being snatched from him. All his adult life he had sat in an office; now after a year’s brief reprieve he was being sent back to it. He could see his future life stretching ahead, nothing unexpected, nothing new from one year’s end to the next. Holidays every five years or so, retirement, death. He felt like an old man.

  The year of discomfort and boredom in the Army was already arranging itself in a series of bright scenes, magical with distance. He thought of the men whom he had known all his life, been to school with, worked with, played with, now up north in ‘the real thing’ at last. It seemed that his whole life had led without his knowing it to the climax of being with those men, his fellow
s, his friends, parts of himself, in real fighting, real living, real experience at last, And he was out of it. A few days before it started, he had been kicked out. A crock, he thought bitterly.

  His eyes rested on Perry, sprawled out loose a couple of feet away. There was something childish about those big open fists resting on their knuckles on the floor, something appealing and childish about the closed lids fringed with sandy lashes. Tenderness, a warm protectiveness, filled him. He thought, He’ll have a stiff neck lying like that. He got up, and, using all his strength, turned the big man over on his back. He was winded when he’d achieved it. He stood up, panting. His eyes were wet; he’d be out of uniform in a couple of days. Never again would he know the comradeship of men. Never. Never. He shut his eyes to steady himself. He opened them at last and looked out. It was very still out there. Thick black shadows lay stretched over the sand now. A couple of scraggy hens scratched below the steps. The orderly had dropped off to sleep, sprawled over the steps, the hand piano hanging from his fingers.

  The insignificant, dreary little dorp seemed to him what he was returning to — this would be his life now. There stirred a small thought of Martha; he let it die again, and a pang of fondness for her went with it. What he felt for Martha was nothing, nothing at all compared with his year among soldiers. Rage filled him. He was filled with a need to tear, to destroy - he stood still, fists clenching and unclenching, his mind teeming images of destruction. Next morning he would be put on the plane home; he would step straight off the plane into domesticity and the office from eight to four.

  A sharp pain stabbed in his stomach; he remembered he had an obligation towards himself. He went inside, and spooned out two of the cold wet eggs on to bread, and began to eat the insipid mess with disgust. He saw a pepper pot standing on the tray, and shook pepper violently all over the eggs, with a savage delight in disobeying prohibitions. Feeling slightly sick at last, he went back to the veranda, thinking he might sleep. Then he saw across the square a black-lettered sign on a small store: ‘Joseph’s Bar’.

  He walked over and went in.

  A fat, pale Greek youth was wiping glasses behind the bar. There was no one else in the place. Douglas asked for ginger beer and sat down. There was a single round table against the wall opposite the bar counter, with half a dozen upright wood chairs around it. In peacetime an occasional merchant or government official passed through; the bar was used by them and the local storekeepers.

  Douglas took a mouthful of the prickly tepid ginger beer and let it stand. A loud offhand voice was heard just out of sight. Then Bobby came slowly past the open doorway. Her pale hair was now tidy, and bobbing up at the ends. She did not look in. Douglas called out, ‘Hey there, Bobby.’ She gave a start, but began to smile before she saw him. Douglas grinned proudly at the thought that she must have watched him enter the bar.

  She came in and sat down. She was flushed with the heat. She asked for a whisky, and Douglas’s mouth filled unpleasantly as she began sipping it. Then she crossed her legs, blew out smoke, and fixed her pale-grey eyes attentively on him. The top buttons of her tunic were undone. Under it he could see a thin pink strap, rather grubby, loose on her shoulder. He felt a mixture of tenderness and repulsion at the sight.

  ‘So you’ve had it - bad luck,’ she remarked in the jocular loud voice which she had decided was suitable to her role as female soldier. But she looked sympathetic.

  Douglas began to talk. After a while she asked after Martha. He produced photographs. Caroline stood on two sturdy legs smiling attractively up at her father from the small card square.

  ‘That’s a fine kid,’ Bobby said sentimentally, and refixed her eyes on his at once. In her attitude was something touchingly devotional. She appeared to be saying that she was completely at his service.

  She ordered a second whisky. His ginger beer was still nearly full. He almost succumbed, and then said, ‘I’d better be strong-minded, hey?’

  ‘That’s the ticket,’ she said. ‘Mucking bad luck.’

  It grated on him; he thought of Martha as a contrast. But the thought of Martha was not balm at all. The truth was, he had been relieved to get away from the atmosphere of bottles and napkins, and, more than this, from Martha’s extraordinary tension during those months, when competent gaiety followed irritated exhaustion, and both seemed in some subtle way a criticism of him. But a more recent doubt was working in him. ‘Heard any news from home?’ he asked her casually.

  ‘Lazy sods, they don’t write. But I got a letter from Bogie – you remember Bogie? She says she’s having a wonderful time with the boys from Home.’

  Douglas said with a quick laugh, ‘Yes, they all seem to be giving it stick, all right.’ But his gaze still rested on her face with persistent suspicious inquiry, and she went on:

  ‘I heard that Bella’s marrying the Air Force, old Sam’s breaking his heart over it.’

  ‘Pretty bad show, that.’

  ‘I heard news of Matty, come to think of it. She was at a dance at the air camp.’

  ‘Oh, yes, she told me about it,’ he said with an effort, frowning.

  ‘Matty was always one for the boys. Lucky Matty, she hasn’t got a figure like a sack of potatoes,’ she said, and laughed painfully.

  ‘Oh, you do fine,’ he responded after a pause. He looked unhappily round. ‘I think I’ll be a devil and have a drink,’ he said. He went over to the fat silent Greek, who polished glasses and watched these evidences of world war with an unquenchable curiosity. He fetched back two whiskies.

  ‘Here’s to the Army,’ he said with quiet misery. He drained his down, and sat grinning at her. ‘Well, I’m all right, how are you doing, are you all right?’

  She drained her third quickly, and responded to the rallying call. ‘Oh, I’m all right, I’m fine, are you all right?’

  He took the two glasses to the counter to be refilled. She watched him, smiling maternally. He came back and this time sat in the chair next to her. ‘Let’s give it a bang. Let’s give it stick.’

  ‘Oh, you’re a crazy kid.’

  She began questioning him again about up north, with an eager determination to hear every detail, prompting him when he hesitated on the edge of something he would normally gloss over for a woman. It was as if she were taking part by proxy. She listened, her pale-pink lips slightly open in a wistful greed. At first he was gruffly disapproving, then he let it go and softened to her. Poor old Bobby, she was having a bad time in this dorp, she was a nice kid.

  A shadow fell over them. Perry stood at the door, stooping inwards. Behind him the sun was sending up a last wild flare of red into the soft grey sky. The dust expanse had shrunk and dimmed. A group of Africans walking through had a soft and distant look in this thin light, and their voices were high and excited: they were hurrying to get indoors before the night came down.

  Perry looked at them. Douglas noted that he was rather yellow, his eyes were inflamed, but he seemed quiet enough. He looked at the whiskies and said, ‘That’s an idea.’ He went to the bar, nodded at the Greek, drained his glass with slow determined thirst, handed the glass back. He leaned on his elbow watching them. He took his second glass and stood there holding it for a while untasted, while the Greek took an oil lamp off the iron hook suspended from a rafter in the middle of the room, removed the glass funnel, lit the wick, fitted back the funnel, and hung the lamp up again. It swung steadily. A drop of paraffin dropped to the brick floor, then another. The smell of paraffin was strong.

  The Greek returned to the other side of the counter. Perry still leaned there considering the seated couple, as if from a long distance. He looked very handsome beside the pale, fat youth with his sad olive-coloured eyes; conventionally handsome - square-jawed, hard-mouthed, strong. He was looking now direct at Bobby, and she shifted uncomfortably under it, fiddling with her bobs of pale hair.

  ‘Come and sit down, man, damn it,’ said Douglas.

  Perry at once came across and sat down, as if he had needed an in
vitation. He gazed steadily at Bobby until she met his eyes.

  ‘So you’ll be going on up north?’

  ‘Yes, next month.’

  ‘Following the Army?’

  ‘That’s my job.’

  ‘Nice work if you can get it.’

  She gave a nervous look at Douglas, who laughed and said, ‘Come off it, Perry man.’

  Perry laughed, a calculated silent heave from his chest, and fingered his glass while he looked at Bobby. She had wriggled her chair an inch nearer to Douglas, but she was looking, fascinated, over at Perry and she was flushed.

  The orderly came in, addressing Perry and Douglas equally. ‘Baas, shall I bring your dinner here?’

  ‘Get out,’ said Perry.

  ‘It’s OK, Jim,’ said Douglas quickly.

  The man backed and vanished into the now thick dusk.

  ‘What’ve you got to eat?’ said Perry loudly to the barman.

  ‘We don’t cook.’

  ‘So, you don’t?’

  ‘There’s the mess. Since the war started there’s been only the Army.’

  Perry’s jaw was thrust out. Seeing it, Douglas appealed, ‘Couldn’t you do us something? We’re fed to the teeth with army grub.’

  The Greek hesitated.