COV02 - A Proper Marriage

by Doris Lessing

  Instead she went to the front veranda, where the day’s News had been flung down, and opened the paper to find the report of last night’s meeting. It merely said that a large sum of money had been collected for our gallant allies at a well-attended meeting. She threw it aside, and went to Caroline. She bathed her, fed her, despatched her to the garden with Alice, and waited for Jasmine to ring her. Time went past and Jasmine did not ring. Martha therefore rang Jasmine. The small quiet voice said that she could not come to see Martha, because she had a meeting. It was then ten in the morning.

  In the last twelve hours, the banal and tired sound of the word ‘meeting’ had quite vanished for Martha; and she sat and thought wistfully of those adventurous gatherings from which she was shut out. She saw Jasmine on the platform yesterday, so efficient, so self-effacing, devoted. Nothing could have appeared more glamorous than such a role.

  The outward form of her day was untroubled by the violence of her impatience. She looked after Caroline and attended to the housework as usual; she felt herself to be a completely different person. Later she remembered that William was coming. She did not want to see William. She wanted Jasmine, who had, like herself, been brought up in this country, fed on the colour bar and race hatred. For William things seemed altogether too easy; he had been born, or so it seemed, with pamphlets in his hand and clear convictions in his head.

  When he arrived, she offered him tea like a hostess, quite determined to say nothing to him of what she felt; besides, he was nothing but a boy. He shed packets of books and papers on to chairs, removed his jacket, flung down his cap. He would never be anything but a civilian. He was one of the thousands of British soldiers who went through the war out of intellectual conviction: it was a war against fascism and it was his duty to fight. But he never felt anything but a civilian dressed up. The difference between men like William and the passionate soldiers of the war could be seen the moment those other groups entered the colony to train as pilots - the Greeks, the Yugoslavs, the French, the Poles.

  As things were, William had an afternoon off between doing clerk’s work for the Air Force and addressing a meeting on Hegel, and he was prepared to take an interest in Martha.

  In the camp it was said, with the mixed pride and contempt appropriate for occupation forces, that the women in the town were a pushover. His tone towards Martha was of a tentative gallantry, but Martha at once reacted against it. She felt that this commonplace flirtatiousness was nothing less than an insult to the revolution itself. She was cold and polite. He instantly became - as she put it - sensible, and she was able to like him again.

  He began talking of the meeting last night — not a bad show at all he considered; but she interrupted him. ‘Look, I want to know …’ Her tone was warm and eager, startling in contrast to the coldness of only a minute before. ‘I’ve been thinking - well, if there’s something going on, I want to be part of it.’

  ‘What makes you think anything is going on?’ he inquired.

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ she said crossly.

  He reflected for a moment, perched on the arm of a chair, and seemed embarrassed. After a while he suggested, ‘You could join the committee of Help for Our Allies.’

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ protested Martha.

  ‘But it’s very important work.’ Then he confirmed her instinct that there were further degrees of initiation, by remarking, ‘How about Sympathizers of Russia?’

  She felt snubbed. ‘Look,’ she said, direct, humorous, but resentful. ‘You don’t have to - flannel, like this. If there’s a Communist group, I want to join it.’ She leaned forward eagerly, as if expecting to be absorbed into it that very instant.

  ‘But there isn’t one,’ he said.

  She did not believe him. Seeing her disappointment, he said, ‘There really isn’t. I can’t go into it all now, but it’s not as easy as that.’

  She was remembering the group of people against the wall the night before; they had the appearance of a welded whole, with their exchanged glances and shared understanding.

  ‘Besides,’ he went on, in a light but uncomfortable voice, ‘what would the old man say?’

  ‘Old man?’ she said stiffly.

  ‘Wives of civil servants really can’t do this sort of thing.’

  ‘You talk as if he were an idiot,’ she said angrily. ‘He’s progressive. He - reads the New Statesman,’ she concluded triumphantly.

  But at this he let out an involuntary and delighted chuckle, and got up, with the unmistakable air of a man escaping from a situation.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she said quickly.

  He sat down again slowly, looking at her very seriously. He had half hoped to have a casual affair with her - though without any intention of being disappointed if he did not. He was a very practical young man, and he understood quite well that this warmth, this eagerness — she was looking at him now with an earnestness that he found quite delightful - would make anything casual impossible. But he had sized up the state of affairs in the colony within a week of arriving in it, and he had no intention of getting involved in this mess of broken marriages and passionate love affairs. His plans for the future were definite, and did not include burdening himself with a spoilt colonial woman.

  But she was attractive; and that eager sincerity was warming him out of common sense. He was on the point of being in love with her.

  As for Martha, she had understood that he was not at all a mere boy, a child. On the contrary, compared with Douglas it was he who was the man. He was not like the immature young men that emerge from the universities, he was not like the boys of the Club. He had come from something quite different: a small, decent, upper-working-class family with roots in the labour movement. He had gone steadily and sensibly through school, and afterwards taken courses at night schools to study what he needed to know while he learned printing. The war had given him leisure, which he devoted to philosophy and physics. He was not ambitious, but he knew what he wanted. Which was to get through the war, take a few more courses, and qualify for what interested him - he wanted to be an engineer. In due course he would make a sensible marriage.

  Martha asked, in that eager way which invited him to share with her the exquisite and unique experience which was his life, ‘Tell me, I want to know, how did you join the Communist Party?’

  ‘I was never a member of the Party,’ he said at once.

  She wilted away from her eagerness as if finally disillusioned. She appeared critical.

  He found himself piqued; unpleasant to lose this approval so soon! He set himself to explain. ‘I didn’t approve of the Party’s policy during the phony war. So I didn’t join. I had reservations.’

  The way he said ‘the Party’ struck her as comical. Not for the first time. After all, at least half the reporters, writers, civil servants, etc. - the intellectuals, in short - have at some time or another been in, around, or near the Communist Party, and ever afterwards they refer to it as ‘the Party’ as if there could never be another, even while most passionately engaged in pretending they know nothing of it. But William might say ‘the Party’ in that familiar, easy way; he was not in it. Her vision of him had collapsed. From being a wholehearted crusader, he had become a cautious dealer in reservations. She had been regarding the alert, intelligent young face topped by the metal-bright hair as if it had been the face of the revolution itself; now she listened to a quiet analysis of the Stalin-Hitler pact and the phony war and heard a note she knew far too well; it was this: if William had been in charge of policy during that period, it would not have been as inefficient, clumsy and inadequate as it had been with other people in charge.

  Martha frowned. She was thinking uncomfortably that she was doomed to be, not attracted to - she would not admit that yet - but with people who administered other people; more, people who were the dissatisfied administrators whom Fate or - and here she carefully tested the new phrase - The Logic of History did not recognize for what they were, by nature far more efficient than
those whom Fate or Logic actually chose as its servants. There are people, warmhearted and enthusiastic, but unfortunately liable because of these very qualities to a prolonged juvenescence: Martha could not bear that people tended to fall into types. It was to Douglas rather than to William that she remarked grudgingly, ‘Well, that may be so, but perhaps you wouldn’t have done any better yourself if you’d been running the show.’

  He stopped himself in a long sentence which dissected the reasons why Harry Pollitt was right and not wrong in his first assessment of ‘the line’ – he used the phrase with a sort of jaunty respect - and his look at Martha changed. That warmth and enthusiasm of hers must be met. He wavered, and fell over on the wrong side of his barrier of caution. It was in a new voice, humorous, light and intimate, that he said, ‘No, Matty — I would have been much more efficient.’

  She laughed at once. They looked at each other - and then away. It was too early for either of them to acknowledge that their hearts were beating fast.

  He rose, and said, ‘I must be downtown in half an hour.’

  ‘I’ll run you down in the car,’ she said at once.

  He refused quickly - it was imperative that he should be alone to think. But he smiled intimately at her before he left, swinging his pack over his shoulder, and cramming on the little cap which made him a soldier again.

  He walked rapidly off, as if really in a hurry, until out of sight of the house, and then strolled comfortably under the trees. He was thinking that he had been irresponsible to encourage Martha about that Communist group she had set her heart on. The truth was that he did not know himself what was happening.

  Some months ago, when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, the left wing of the old discussion circle had suggested setting up Help for Our Allies. This was given immediate approval. Quite soon there was an organization with an office, typewriters, filing cabinets and a letterhead on which appeared the names of about fifty prominent citizens. On the committee, which was very large, were all the members of the discussion circle, from Messrs Perr, Forester and Pyecroft down to Boris Krueger and Jasmine.

  But no sooner was this running satisfactorily than the minority - Boris, Betty, Jasmine and their allies - seethed into activity with a new organization, Sympathizers of Russia. These two organizations, even to an unsophisticated eye, offered food for thought. The left wing of the Help for Our Allies formed the committee of the Sympathizers, together with a whole ferment of new people, chiefly from the Air Force, who regarded the first committee with calm contempt as cautious temporizers. For a while Jasmine had been secretary of both organizations. She was so efficient that it was a pity to waste her.

  About two weeks ago, a new dissatisfaction had set in.

  It had begun at the moment when Mr Perr, in a humorous voice which nevertheless reeked of suspicion, remarked at a meeting of the Help for Our Allies Committee that the said committee had no intention of being run by a Communist faction. At this, eyes had met all around the long table, some hurt, some puzzled. No one knew of a Communist faction. As for the majority of the committee, simple people who were unpolitical on principle, they were upset, and found it all unpleasant. For they did not understand the law that people like Mr Perr who have been called Communists in popular gossip spend nine-tenths of their time proving their bona fides by attacking Communists. That committee meeting left an unpleasant taste in every mouth. As for the left wing itself, Jasmine, Betty, Boris and William, they made inquiries of each other, and concluded that Mr Perr was suffering from the mania only to be expected of him. At this point, a certain Jackie Bolton, sergeant, administration, recently posted to the city from another down south, took them to tea at a certain café downtown, and informed them they were a lot of skulking petty bourgeois who refused to face up to their responsibilities. He, Jackie Bolton, was about to form a Communist group, and invited them to join.

  But, while all their hearts leaped to this proposal, they did not at once agree. ‘Matters should be discussed,’ said Jasmine. That was three days ago.

  Since then there had been a tense atmosphere in all the committee, and people tended to go off in pairs talking earnestly, looking at other couples similarly engaged with suspicious inquiry. No one knew what was going on; but they felt instinctively that Jasmine was the key to everything. Jasmine patiently cautioned them all: They must be responsible and sensible, they must not do things in a hurry. As for herself, she felt a Communist group to be premature.

  Sergeant Jackie Bolton waited for twenty-four hours, and then spoke to William in the mess. ‘That crowd in town are all useless,’ was the burden of his message. He invited William to meet him at Black Ally’s Café to talk it all over.

  It was to this interview that William was going. He was feeling very uncomfortable about it. To a young man like William, who, as has been said, was sensible and matter-of-fact, there was something disagreeable about Jackie Bolton, who was the tall, dark, hollow-cheeked, saturnine man whom Martha had noticed exuding sarcastic disparagement at the Help for Our Allies meeting. William did not like heroics - Jackie was heroic on principle; William did not like intrigue - Jackie breathed out conspiracy with every word he spoke; he did not like drama — Jackie was dramatic. But he was going to meet him nevertheless; he could not refuse, because of that bond which, during the war, was stronger than any other, that between men wearing the same uniform.

  Black Ally’s was filled with aircraftsmen – it was by consent a place for the Air Force – and William entered the sordid little café with a feeling of being at home. The two men removed their caps, unbuttoned their jackets, and settled down to plates of eggs and chips.

  Jackie was confidential and conspiratorial, with his large urgent black eyes, his hollow bony face, his manner of silent laughing - he would heave with laughter, without letting out a sound. He wanted to start a Communist group, led by himself, from certain men in the Air Force and a few sound types, from town, excluding ‘all the Jasmines and Bettys and Borises’, who were nothing but social democrats of the worst kind, and infected with Trotskyism to boot.

  William listened in silence. He wanted to commit himself. The phrase ‘those types in town’ was a bugle of solidarity. He was strongly bound to Jackie by the feeling of being in exile, and their good-humoured contempt for this city. He almost agreed. Then Jackie remarked that he had never been a member of the Party. He added that he considered himself a freelance of the revolution. William was chilled by that phrase. He hesitated and temporized and tried to change the subject.

  He said that Matty Knowell was ripe - meaning politically; but the sergeant gave it another meaning by heaving his hollow shoulders soundlessly; and William smiled stiffly - he was on the borderline still; Matty was not yet his girl, but on the other hand he felt a strong current of sympathy for her. He frowned and said he thought Jackie was altogether too sweeping; there was Jasmine, for instance: ‘She’s a good type.’

  ‘Better than the others,’ admitted Jackie. He added, laughing, ‘I had supper with her last night.’ William felt no sexual loyalty towards Jasmine, so they were able to pursue this point. They remained there for about two hours, taking the taste of the camp food out of their mouths with repeated orders of eggs and chips, drinking cup after cup of very strong tea. By that time it had been agreed that Jasmine had possibilities; Matty was to be sounded by Jackie that evening. They were both capable of education; so were all the men in uniform who had ever shown the slightest interest in politics. The male civilians, however, were all beyond hope.

  They would have, they reckoned, some fifteen or twenty people as a nucleus. But still William would not commit himself. He left the sergeant with the promise that he would think it all over. He walked away uptown from the café, and already Jackie’s influence was waning. He found himself distrusting the man. He decided to ring up Jasmine herself, and abide by her decision.

  He rang her up from the nearest telephone. She was due at a meeting in an hour, she said, but could give him twenty mi
nutes of her time afterwards. The calm sense of the girl’s voice satisfied William that he had done right.

  On the same afternoon there was another encounter, between two men who have not yet been mentioned.

  The Help for Our Allies Committee was sitting. Mr Perr was chairman. The proceedings were harmonious and orderly. But there was one item on the agenda which might cause friction. The secretary of the Sympathizers of Russia – the signature was Jasmine’s - had sent a letter proposing that the two organizations should hold a joint meeting to celebrate the anniversary of the November Revolution. Mr Perr spoke strongly against it. Four others, all members of the old discussion circle, were equally upset at the thought that Aid for Our Allies had anything to do with politics or revolutions. The majority of the committee - housewives, clergymen and so on - could see nothing against it. The heroism of Stalingrad made even the November Revolution respectable. Besides, it had happened a long time ago.

  The two men in question were both silent until the end of the discussion, though Mr Perr repeatedly looked towards them, inviting them to speak. One was a Scotsman, a bulky bluff corporal with a broad sensible face and shrewd grey eyes; the other was Anton Hesse, a German refugee, a young man of about thirty, of middle height, very thin, very fair - he had that extreme Northern fairness, hair so blond it was almost white, very keen blue eyes of the kind which look as if there is white ice behind the iris. Anton Hesse had been on the committee since its formation. Andrew McGrew had been posted up from G—, a small southern town where he had served on the counterpart of this committee. His sensible, calm appearance inspired confidence; when he rose to speak, Mr Perr visibly relaxed.