COV02 - A Proper Marriage

by Doris Lessing

  About midday the plane touched down, and the boy was lifted, still fast asleep, on to the ambulance.

  Chapter Four

  As Douglas walked past the iron-and-brick offices at the airport, he saw a man he knew behind a table. He went in. ‘How’s tricks?’ he asked, grinning with pleasure as he watched the face clear through surprise into welcome. They slapped each other around the shoulders for a few minutes, laughing. Then Douglas said, ‘How about giving me a clearance to get home and see my wife?’

  The friend remembered he was also authority, hesitated, then said, ‘I suppose it’s all right – come back this afternoon.’

  Douglas walked out towards the gates of the airport. He could see Perry and the others nosing around the open doors of the offices to find old friends who might similarly release them. He thought he should wait for them. Then he quickly went out into the road. He stopped in surprise. Only a year ago, the tarmac had crossed an empty grass-filled vlei to the airport. Now it was bordered on both sides by new suburbs of little villas. He felt like Rip Van Winkle. He began to walk the three miles to the centre of the town. Soon a car drew up beside him, to give a lift to the soldier. A new mode of manners, this; he climbed in, and, although five minutes before he had felt like a civilian, allowed himself to be treated with the affable but rather wistful friendliness civilians offer to uniforms. They were talking all the way in of how the influx of thousands of Air Force personnel was unbalancing the country - they had practically taken it over; you could not get into cinemas, hotels, dance halls. One said that the money they brought with them made up for it - the country was on a boom of prosperity. They might have been talking of occupation troops. Then Douglas saw the pavements full of grey-blue uniforms, and felt a stranger in his own town. It happened that the car passed the big block where his department was housed. On an impulse he asked to be set down.

  He walked into the department and was greeted thankfully by his chief, who asked if he could start work next day. Warmed and flattered, Douglas mentioned the red tape that would have to be unwound before he could put on his own clothes again. His chief waved all this aside: five minutes on the telephone to the suitable person would settle all that. He settled it forthwith; the interests of the country demanded that Douglas need do no more than pay a call for form’s sake at a certain office the next day. Douglas began to feel himself at home.

  There was still a slight undercurrent between him and his chief: after all, he had gone over the man’s head to get into the Army. At the end of an hour it had vanished. They had discussed problems of reorganization - there were precisely half the people in the office that there were in peacetime, with twice the amount of work. Then, in the deferential, rather boyish way which he used when asking for things that were his right, Douglas mentioned various personal financial matters; the chief suggested they might lunch over it. They went to the Club. In the bar were Perry and the others. This was the last chance they had of playing the part of old campaigners to older men who had been prevented from going to the wars. They took it. At three, the chief said this was all very well, but he had to get back to work. Douglas went with him. The financial situation was dealt with in half a dozen sentences on the pavement edge.

  Then he turned to walk home. He was a little drunk. It occurred to him that he had been in the town five hours, and Martha might be hurt that he had not rung her. I’ll give her a surprise, he thought, deciding to forget the five hours. As he neared the block of flats, he saw a young woman wheeling a child coming towards him. He thought like a soldier, Not bad, not bad at all! Then he saw it was Martha. He stopped and watched her approach with a proud and proprietary smile. She was slimmer than she had been, and rather pale. She was wearing a short, tight, flowered dress, and red sandals that showed brown bare feet; and looked, in short, attractive. She was staring vaguely in front of her, and as he moved to block her way she frowned discouragingly at the soldier. Then she froze, looking at him for a long moment while she turned white, and then, suddenly, bright pink. Blinking slowly, she came to life with a stiff, nervous smile.

  They embraced. For both there was something false and unpleasant in this embrace. They separated, and took refuge from the difficulties of the moment in Caroline. Douglas bounced the child up in the air a few times: he was deeply moved at the sight of this pretty little girl who was his daughter. When he set the laughing child carefully back in the push-chair, he said to Martha, ‘Nice work - you’ve made a good job of her.’ He was gazing proudly at her. He was thinking that this was a wife and child to be proud of. He even glanced around to see if anyone was watching. But people were hurrying by: the streets were much fuller than they had been - strangers, always strangers. He thought it would be nice to take Martha and Caroline up to the Club of an afternoon.

  She smiled uncomfortably at his compliment, however, and lifted the front wheels of the push-chair around in a way which jerked Caroline so that she clutched the handrails with both hands.

  ‘Hey, you’re giving her rather a bouncing, aren’t you?’ he asked; but received no reply. They walked back to the flats, a couple of hundred yards away.

  ‘Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?’ she asked carefully.

  ‘Well – I thought I’d drop in.’ He laughed and rubbed his hands. ‘And then last night …’ He launched into an account of how he and Perry and some of the lads had given it a bang last night in G—, a ghastly little dorp in the bush miles from anywhere. Bobby - she remembered Bobby - sent her love. They’d all had a hell of a party, and his mouth this morning was like a parrot’s cage. Luckily he’d slept some of it off in the aircraft, but, what with one thing and another, he thought it was quicker to come home himself than to telephone. Martha listened, with a new and discouraging detachment. Douglas felt let down. She had always risen in cheerful complicity to accounts of the boys’ activities.

  ‘Will you have to stay in uniform?’ was her next question.

  ‘I saw old Keen. He wants me back as soon as he can get me. He’s fixed it. I’ll be back at the office tomorrow.’

  She turned her eyes towards him cautiously. Cautiously she inquired, ‘You went to the office first?’

  ‘Well, I was passing – I wanted to have everything fixed to surprise you.’

  ‘When did you get in?’

  ‘About three hours ago’ – he softened it a little.

  She said nothing. Caroline was twisting herself up on her knees in the chair, and Martha pushed her down with one hand as she wheeled. ‘Oh, stop it, Caroline,’ she said roughly.

  They were in the hall of the flats. Martha undid the straps and lifted the child out. Douglas promptly caught her up on his shoulders. The family party slowly mounted the stairs.

  ‘I’ve got a fine piece of news,’ announced Douglas. ‘I asked Keen what he thought of my raising money for a house - he’ll fix that. He even knows of a house going for us. How’s that?’ he ended proudly.

  She inquired, after a pause, in the manner of one wishing to give him the benefit of any doubt, ‘We’ll be moving into a house of our own?’

  ‘That’s the ticket - yes. It’s a big house, too, Matty. You know it - it’s the Rellors’ old house on the corner of McKechnie Street.’

  ‘But it’s enormous!’ exclaimed Martha. She stared at him, appalled.

  ‘But, Matty,’ he said in an injured voice, ‘we’ll have our place, we’ll be buying our own place - and there’ll be a garden for Caroline. And’ - here he rubbed his hands and laughed – ‘we’ll be having another kid soon, eh?’

  Her look was now steady and critical.

  ‘I say, now - Matty!’ he exclaimed, clutching at her arm. But they were at their door. She pulled her arm away, and opened it.

  On the divan was seated a young man in the blue uniform, reading a newspaper. He stood up, smiling shyly but pleasantly as they entered, looking at them with very clear, very blue eyes. He was rather slight - not tall; his hair was a springy bright brown, though against the pal
e skin it looked dark. As Martha said hurriedly, ‘This is William, Douglas. My husband has suddenly pitched up, William,’ he held out his hand with a perfect ease and friendliness.

  Martha glanced at the two hands, one white, fine, almost effeminate, the other a large red-brown paw; hairs glinted on it. She was looking at her husband’s hands as she said, ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll make some tea.’ Then she saw Douglas was annoyed at finding a stranger there, and said in a way which made both men look quickly at her, ‘If you’d found five minutes to let me know you were coming—’ She bit off, and gave a tight smile. Then she went out, taking Caroline with her.

  She dropped the child into the playpen, and, as she began to protest, handed her a rusk. Caroline took it and was quiet, Martha went quickly into the little kitchen. She assembled cups on a tray, and carelessly banged the kettle on to the hotplate. She did not know what she was doing. That sudden vision of the soldier who was her husband had been a shock to her which only now began to make itself felt. She was trembling; she cracked a cup as she dropped it on to the saucer.

  Douglas, in khaki with the pack on his shoulder, a red-brown man with fat knees, a good stone heavier than he had been, and reeking of beer, had seemed to her gross and commonplace. His round, rather fat red face, grinning proudly at her, had been a revelation of what he really was. She could not now remember her vision of him of even half an hour before. It was quite impossible that this man should be her husband. She was married to one of the boys; he would always, all his life, be one of the boys. At sixty he would still be a schoolboy. There was no escape from it. The condition of being a woman in wartime, she thought angrily, was that one should love not a man, but a man in relation to other men. Whether it was Douglas with the boys, or the boys of the Air Force, it was all the same - and it was precisely this thing, dangerous, and attractive, which fed the intoxication of war, heightened the pulse, and drugged them all into losing their heads. You loved not a man, but that man’s idea of you in relation to his friends. But that had been true here, in this country, long before the war. Well, she would not; never again!

  At this point, guilt, the unfailing goad, gave a warning twinge, but at far lower pressure than usual. She ignored it, and was very angry. He bounced back grinning into her life after a year without a word or a warning, and naturally went first to the boys - she was an afterthought. The lonely, proud, self-contained life she had made for herself was invaded just like that, by his choosing to come: thus Martha, choosing to forget that, after all, he could not help it. And now he would bounce into bed with her; the thought filled her with revulsion. That it should do so succeeded in rousing the saving guilt: she could not stand seeing herself as a bestower of sexual favours, so she hastily began to recreate the coarsened soldier into something masculine and strong and attractive.

  She lifted the tea tray and marched with it into the other room. The two men were getting on famously. The sight of Douglas on the edge of the divan with his fat putteed legs sprawling filled her again with derision. He was being the administrator; he was absorbed by a description of how the airmen’s sleeping huts were laid out in relation to mess halls and recreation rooms. William was making a sort of map with bits of matches on the carpet. He had a quiet, sensible way of explaining things that clearly appealed to Douglas. Martha poured tea and handed them cups, filled with an anger she could not have explained. The business of drinking tea, however, interrupted the plan of how the air camp would have been laid out if either Douglas or William had been asked to do it; and they again became aware of Martha and were silent.

  ‘Let’s have Caroline in?’ suggested Douglas.

  ‘No - she must stay in her pen for at least half an hour.’

  ‘But why?’ he protested rather wistfully.

  ‘Timetable. She’ll be making a fuss soon enough as it is,’ she added.

  Caroline was already grumbling outside; the noise was irritating Martha, they could see. William was sipping his tea with the obvious desire to leave as soon as he could. In a moment he had set down his cup and got up. ‘I must be getting along,’ he remarked. Martha and Douglas said nothing to dissuade him. He stood smiling, while his blue eyes were thoughtfully examining Martha and Douglas. ‘Do you want to join the group?’ he asked Martha direct. ‘Shall we send you notices? Or perhaps you’d rather think it over now that things have changed.’ This last was a hasty statement in reply to her nervous silence. He gave a long diagnostic look at Douglas, then formally shook hands with him. He went out with a pleasant nod at Martha.

  ‘What group?’ asked Douglas uneasily.

  ‘Discussion group,’ said Martha shortly. William had dropped in casually twice before. His manner was always friendly, but impersonal: Martha had understood that his coming was because he felt it his duty to support and encourage her towards a different view of life. She had almost decided to join the group that contemplated splitting off the old one in order - as William explained vaguely but firmly - to get down to brass tacks. The phrase appealed to Martha.

  ‘Do you know him well?’ asked Douglas jealously. She looked up at him for some time in silence; her eyebrows went up. He coloured up and said firmly, ‘What does he mean by the group? A political group?’

  She said with a sudden aggressiveness, ‘Ever since we’ve been married you agreed I wasn’t only to housekeep and mind babies.’

  They were on the edge of a quarrel about the group, since it was taboo to be jealous. ‘Well, I didn’t say you shouldn’t,’ he hastened to conciliate. Then, as she preserved silence: ‘You know, Matty, I’m in the Service, and I must be careful. You know old John lost his job because of his wife.’

  She flushed and said, ‘His wife drank, didn’t she?’

  ‘Well, but, Matty, I have to go slow.’

  ‘Since I suppose three-quarters of the male population is in the Service one way and another, it seems a useful way of keeping you quiet.’

  ‘But, Matty, we have the vote.”

  ‘The vote!’ she said derisively. He was puzzled. They looked at each other across a wider gulf than they knew.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, brightening, ‘there’ll be so much work to do in the new house, you won’t have time.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Martha. He shot her a startled, uneasy look. Martha had not, previously, been capable of saying ‘Quite’. He smelled the influence of the British invasion. But what was particularly unsettling was her tone, calm and dismissing and fatalistic, as if she accepted a long-foreseen calamity.

  ‘Surely,’ he said, in the voice of an injured boy, ‘surely you’re pleased to have a house of your own.’

  Again her eyebrows rose, and she said, ‘There’s nothing in the world I want more.’ Then she burst into laughter, and kissed him on the cheek, moving away immediately as he grabbed at her.

  ‘There’s Caroline,’ she said hastily. Caroline had in fact begun to yell with impatience. Martha went out. Silence from Caroline. Then Douglas followed her. Martha had gone past Caroline to the bedroom. He made some hasty apologetic noises at his daughter and went into the bedroom.

  Martha was arranging Caroline’s night things on the bed. She glanced up, startled, as he entered; then seemed to remind herself that he had a right to. He watched her for a while, then went across and put his arms around her from behind.

  ‘I’ve been missing you, Matty,’ he began.

  She stiffened and said gaily - and it was the first time he had heard the warm, amused gaiety which was how he had thought of her in the Army - ‘Oh, so have I.’ She turned round and kissed him. After a moment she pulled away and said, ‘Well, I must get Caroline washed.’

  ‘Oh, damn Caroline,’ he said huskily. ‘Let’s forget her for a while.’ She appeared not to hear him. He said in an offended voice, ‘Where are my civvies?’

  ‘Packed in your trunk. If you’d let me know, I’d have got them cleaned and ready for you.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  He found some old flannels, p
ulled on a sweater. ‘It’s good to be in my own clothes again – I’ve put on weight,’ he said rather appealingly.

  She responded quickly, with, ‘Oh, it’s not so bad.’ But the clothes were straining round him, she thought he looked gross.

  ‘Look, Matty, how about putting Caroline in the car and running up for a drink at the Club?’

  She paused and looked at him, Caroline’s nightdress in her hand. He could not read her expression. ‘You know,’ she said, cautiously, ‘things are not as they used to be here.’

  He exploded in a peevish shout. ‘Oh, come on, don’t be such a wet blanket.’

  The hatred between them then was so strong it frightened them both. Without comment, she reached for a jersey, slipped it on, walked out, picked up Caroline and waited at the door, all in the manner of someone obeying an order. He would have liked to slap her.

  They went in silence down the stairs. In the car, he slid with satisfaction into the driver’s seat and said, ‘It’s good to be driving the old bus again.’

  She seemed to be very occupied with Caroline, and they drove without speaking to the Club. When they reached the turn, he stopped the car, and looked at the building, smiling twistedly. It stood unchanged in its green playing fields, the large white beautiful house, very dignified, the late afternoon sun shining full on it. He started the car again, and drove rapidly towards it, parked hastily, jumped out, smiling with eagerness. She walked quietly beside him to the veranda.

  As they went up the steps she did not look at him, but went hurriedly ahead and found a table. He stood unconsciously staring about him on the steps. His face was sagging with helpless disappointment. The long deep veranda was crowded with people, as it always had been; but they were all new faces, save for some of the girls who smiled and waved at him. The grey-blue of the Air Force filled the place like a – well, it was wartime, after all! He came across to Martha, and sat down clumsily. Martha glanced at his face and then away. He had gone a queer yellowish colour and was breathing hard. This was the real moment of coming home; she was very sorry for him. She did not want to be sorry, it made a guilty maternal love stir in her. She thought determinedly that the lumpish reddened face with its spoilt protruding underlip was that of a schoolboy, but longed to comfort him nevertheless. They ordered beer, and drank it quickly, while Martha kept Caroline near her. In the old days the Club babies went from table to table, lap to lap. Now there was formality and a sense of closed groups who were not willing to be disturbed. A couple of the girls came up and greeted Douglas. Every second word was Air Force slang, and it was clear they had other interests than returning crocks from up north.