COV02 - A Proper Marriage

by Doris Lessing

  ‘Matty, let me tell you this. The man I really loved, the one that was killed - well, sex had nothing to do with it. Nothing!’

  Martha was regarding her with discomfort. Mrs Talbot was being dishonest, she thought. ‘Do you mean,’ she asked seriously, ‘that sex has nothing to do with love?’

  ‘Oh, how I hate it all!’ cried out Mrs Talbot.

  She collected herself, and said quickly in a low voice, ‘Matty, you are making a great mistake. All that’s got nothing to do with marriage - nothing at all! It never did have. If you want to have love affairs, if you feel like that – well … I never talk about it, never. But, Matty, you can have love affairs if you want – oh!’ And here she finally broke down, and leaned against the back of her chair, weeping.

  ‘Well,’ remarked Martha, conscientiously pointing out to herself that what Mrs Talbot found ugly was not the fact but the talking about it. ‘Well, I think it’s all revolting. I don’t think I really understand what you’re saying.’ Mrs Talbot, head collapsed back against the chair, was now regarding her with an unhappy but acute gaze. ‘If you’re in love with a man, you sleep with him. If you’re not — you don’t. And I’m not going to stay married to Douglas and call him a dear boy and treat him like an idiot.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Mrs Talbot helplessly, ‘I really don’t. It’s all so easy, really, Matty. Everything can be arranged - if you want. There’s no need for all this. And you’ll only be unhappy.’

  ‘I think I’d better be going,’ said Martha. She went towards the door.

  Mrs Talbot came after her. ‘Matty,’ she said appealingly, ‘but what are you going to do? Of course, you’ll probably get married, and you’re quite attractive.’ Here she blushed, at this unintended exposure of her real assessment of Martha’s charm. ‘But, Matty, I’m sure that boy hasn’t any money. He’s not even an officer, is he? Of course, I know that quite nice people are in the ranks these days.’

  ‘Look,’ said Martha awkwardly, ‘I don’t think you really understand any of this, you know.’

  ‘Go and see your mother and talk it over, do, Matty.’

  Martha stopped. It had never entered her head to do so. But it occurred to her as strange that she had not, until this moment, wondered what her parents knew.

  ‘They’re so unhappy,’ urged Mrs Talbot.

  ‘They know?’ asked Martha hopelessly.

  ‘Oh, Matty, Matty!’ cried Mrs Talbot in despair. ‘How could they not know?’

  Martha kissed Mrs Talbot’s cheek, automatically inclined forward for that purpose, and offered her a hurried unhappy smile. Then she escaped.

  No sooner had she reached home than there was a telephone call from Mrs Brodeshaw, reminding her that she had promised to help with the concert that night. Would she take the car down to the Coloured area, and bring certain children to the hall at seven o’clock?

  Martha said that she would. Afterwards she realized that she had committed herself to stay in the house for another day. But lethargy was setting in again. She was thinking that tonight she would have a really sensible discussion with Douglas, when the telephone rang. It was Douglas; and she listened to his sentimentally urgent voice saying that he was so glad she had stuck to her promise to help with the concert. ‘That’s the ticket, Matty,’ he said. ‘That’s the stuff.’

  The telephone went silent while she was still thinking of appropriate things to say. For what was this sentimental appeal about? He would surely feel about the concert exactly as she did; yet he was making it a personal triumph for himself that she should go. But if he was indulging in unreal emotions, what was she doing? One thing answered another, always: she looked from outside, for one shocked moment, at that frozen obstinacy she called pride, and hastily averted her eyes from it. For if she ceased to maintain it, even for a moment, she would be lost; she could positively feel, rising inside her, a satisfied self-pity - which was the emotion that would well up from the cracked surface of that ‘pride’. But she would not let it crack. She must behave like this, there was nothing else she could do. She would go to that concert, and then — wait and see. Something would happen, something she did not understand was working itself out.

  She was very tired - she had not slept; she was hungry - she could not remember when she had eaten properly. She hurriedly ate some stale cake she found in the pantry, and set off for the offices downtown. They were empty. She spent the rest of her day addressing piles of envelopes in solitude. She did not leave the offices until it was time to fetch the children for the concert. She walked home to get the car; Douglas had left it there for this purpose, and gone off somewhere on his own.

  She drove off downtown. She felt, as usual, that she was entering a new world when she turned into the squalid little street she was looking for. Extreme poverty lay a hundred yards from wealth - as, indeed, it tends to do, but in this case it coincided with a physical ghetto. Five parallel streets, each about half a mile long, held the Coloured community. This was still the nineteenth century. She, Martha, could expect to live to a ripe old age; and if she bore a child it did not enter her head it might not live. Here people would die in early middle age, and babies died like flies in their first year. She, Martha, had never had anything more urgent to worry about than whether her emotional life was or was not satisfactory. Here were debt and anxiety and dirt and an atmosphere of a doom which might strike at any moment through illness or death. This was the other world - or rather, how nine-tenths of the people of the world lived - and all she could feel about it was that everything that could be said about poverty had already been said; poverty was boring; there was no need for it to exist, and therefore she felt as if it already did not exist. It had, as Anton might say, been by-passed by history. But Anton would certainly not approve of this feeling of almost exasperated boredom: it occurred to her that joining the Communist Party did not make one a Communist. She was feeling, as she drove through these squalid streets, exactly as she always did: she had not been issued, as she had vaguely expected, with a completely new set of emotions.

  She left the car in the street, while the usual swarm of ragged urchins gathered about it. She entered the building where she would find the children she must drive to the hall. It was built in three sides around a courtyard. A gutter ran dirty water down the middle, washing flapped over her head. All around the veranda which opened off the court stood dark-skinned men and women and children, watching her curiously. She felt like an intruder. She asked to be directed, and found a door standing open in a corner. It was a small room. Evidently a family lived here, for it had two large broken-down beds, a wooden table on which lay a loaf of bread in a bit of newspaper, some wooden chairs, and a wood stove. It seemed full of people. Two little girls detached themselves from the mass, and came shyly forward, while a large fat Coloured woman chivvied at them to be good with the kind lady.

  It was all false and unpleasant, the high subservient voice of the woman, the thin little girls with their dirty hair and their ragged frocks, the smell of poverty, sharp and sour. The only honest thing in the place was a young man lounging against a wall, lounging of set purpose, radiating a calculated insolence and resentment. But no one else seemed to resent her. She went rapidly from room to room, and assembled another five little girls, all as ragged and as dirty as the first two. As she left, a whole group of women stood calling admonishments and threats after their children, in order to impress her with their respectability and their willingness to oblige.

  She took the children to the car, and helped them in. None of them had been in a car before, she realized. The little girl sitting next to her was trembling and shrinking away. Martha understood she was afraid of her and asked her name. A small high voice piped, ‘Flora!’

  At once the others offered their names - a chorus of Sandra, Marie and Anne. Then they began a high nervous giggle which upset Martha. She understood that the firm kind patronage of a Mrs Maynard would at once set these children at their ease. She asked shyly
what they were to do at the concert, and they burst out singing, ‘Three little girls from school are we …’

  ‘No, Sandra, not girls, Miss Pattern sez maids.’

  ‘Meds,’ corrected the small sharp-eyed imp who was Sandra. And they began again cheerfully, ‘Three little meds from school are we …’

  They kept it up until they reached the hall, where Martha parked the car and helped them out. They stood uncertainly, hands devoutly folded in front of them in a way which suggested the influence of the Church, and watched her with bright curious eyes. She led them to a room at the back of the hall, and ushered them into a scene of crowded confusion.

  Mrs Maynard, in a black lace dinner frock, was helping Mrs Anderson strip half a dozen brown infants naked and clothe them in neat white dresses. Martha saw that among the white women were Stella, Stella’s mother, Mrs Talbot, Mrs Lowe-Island, and Mrs Brodeshaw. A rotund priest stood beaming in one corner.

  She retired to the hall itself. It was a barn of a place, with a plain board floor, and walls stained a sad mustard colour, but strings of little coloured bulbs were festooned everywhere, and someone had tied bunches of red balloons over the doors. The place was full, since it was the first time people of colour had entertained a white audience. The News had made a point of it that morning. There was a feeling of expectant curiosity, made benevolent by those names on the programme: Mrs Maynard, Mrs Player, Mrs Brodeshaw.

  After a long wait, the curtain, a heavy piece of dark-green serge, jerked slowly to one side on its brass hooks, and there stood Miss Pattern, a representative for this occasion of the Roman Catholic Church. She was wearing thick linen of electric blue, over which a faded little face peered with a mixture of encouragement and apology. She raised her hand nervously, silence fell, and she began to speak.

  She had been asked by the committee - of which she was proud to be a member - to introduce this concert, which, she felt sure everyone would agree, was a novel and enterprising attempt to introduce one section of the community to another. Perhaps some people might feel that it was not altogether - how should she put it? - advisable to let our less fortunate brothers, to whom we stood in the position of parents and guides, start running before they could walk, but children have to begin sometime, don’t they? And many people, among whom she was happy to say were some of great prestige and influence, felt that art was the greatest of the barrier-breakers, and she was sure that everyone present would be proud to attend at the first occasion when people of colour, or, as they preferred to be called (she emphasized this), the Coloured community, entertained a white audience. It was a landmark in the cultural life of their city. A happy event. (Here she blushed, stopped, then courageously continued.) She would like to make a few more points, if the distinguished audience would indulge her. The more enlightened members of the community, among whom she felt sure were all the members of this audience, could feel that a new wind was blowing. Times were changing. Ideas were abroad. It was natural that their fellow citizens … (she paused, looked at them firmly, and repeated) fellow citizens should want to be in the stream of change. It was much better that such movements, or perhaps she should say tendencies, should be guided and encouraged by people of experience and common sense, than left to be prey of those agitators and trouble-makers who unfortunately were always ready to exploit discontent.

  She paused again, seemed about to go on, then leafed through her notes, shifting one piece of paper behind another. ‘I think that’s all I have to say, ladies and gentlemen.’ She bowed forward from her waist, with a nervous smile, and retired backstage.

  There was some perfunctory applause. Then, since it was observed that Mrs Player and Mrs Brodeshaw and Mrs Maynard were clapping loud and firm from the front seats, the audience took it up again. The sound died in a ragged volley as a small girl smiling a stretched, fixed smile appeared where Miss Pattern had stood. Martha recognized her with difficulty as one of those she had brought from the slum. She was now shiningly clean; her pigtails stood stiffly out to each side of her head, tied with large pink bows; her dress was starched white. She stood for some moments stretching her head hopefully to one side, as if listening, before they realized she had forgotten her lines. Then she proceeded to repeat, phrase for phrase, in a high tense shriek, a speech whispered to her from behind a fold of green serge. Unfortunately, it was impossible to understand a word of it. She retired, in confusion, to a storm of clapping, and shouts of ‘Shame!’ from some rowdies at the back, who had come under the impression that the concert was the work of the Sympathizers of Russia - apparently Miss Pattern’s speech had confirmed their worst suspicions. But they were hushed sternly by the loyalists.

  A gramophone began playing very loudly. ‘The Blue Danube.’ About fifty children flocked on to the stage, jigging and prancing, every face stretched in a prescribed smile. There was no attempt to follow the rhythm. After five minutes or so, the gramophone abruptly stopped again. Some continued to jig wildly, others stopped. Confusion. The gramophone set off in the middle of a bar, and then the green serge folds on either side shook violently. The music stopped finally with a loud squawk, and the children dived in all directions off the stage.

  There was loud derisive laughter from the back. But Mrs Maynard turned and delivered a frowning stare at them.

  There followed a short sketch between a little girl in a poke bonnet and crinolines and a little boy in blue knee pants. Neither wore shoes. It was a proposal of marriage, which evoked cries of ‘How sweet!’ from the front rows, and more raucous insinuating laughter from the back. After a pause, during which the stage remained empty, the same two walked down the stage as a bride and bridegroom - white butter muslin and black casement cloth — while all the other children flung confetti at them.

  Then came three little girls against a bevy of other little girls: ‘Three Little Maids From School Are We’; but, as Martha had hoped, they had forgotten ‘maids’, and sang ‘girls’.

  Then a long, long pause. The audience fidgeted, and the stage remained empty. A hitch, obviously. Miss Pattern emerged and, smiling with complicity towards the audience, proceeded to play some Chopin waltzes. Her eyes were fixed anxiously on some point off stage, Suddenly she sharpened her pace, brought the waltz to a galloping end, and rose, hastily gathering her music. She almost ran off, as a little boy of about twelve was propelled on by an invisible push from someone. He was wearing a child’s Red Indian headdress, white shirt, white shorts, no shoes. He came very slowly and reluctantly to the front of the stage, sweating with terror, and, with wandering eyes and long intervals of silence, proceeded to recite selected portions from Hiawatha. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of a line; his mouth remained open for a while, then he bolted off the stage. Tumultuous applause.

  And now it was the interval.

  Martha worked her way to the back, and was delighted to find that groups of earnest and enraged Zambesians were forming a committee to protest to ‘the Prime Minister himself if need be’ because of this insult to white civilization.

  She returned to her seat, hoping for the worst.

  It appeared that protests had already been received during the interval, for the second half of the programme began with a speech by Mrs Maynard herself. She delivered it with great firmness, eyes and rings flashing, her black lace swaying, looking at the back rows. They must move with the times, she informed them decisively. Did they realize that the Coloured community lived in conditions which would disgrace pigs? (Ironical cheers from the back.) The whole area was a breeding ground for disease, which, as anybody with a ha’p’orth of sense would realize, was no respecter of persons or colour bars. If this concert did nothing else, it might make the white community realize what a danger spot it tolerated in its midst.

  There were a couple more cheers, rather enfeebled, apparently by the processes of thought. Mrs Maynard stood, subduing them all by her presence, for a few silent moments, then retired to her seat.

  The programme resumed without incident. The
Southern Sambos did an Irish jig with great spirit. A chorus sang ‘Tipperary’. There was a vivacious rendering of that inevitable song ‘Hold Him Down, the Zulu Warrior’. Then another pause. It was prolonged. The barrackers at the back plucked up courage and began booing. Mrs Maynard stood up in the front row, and glared at them over the intervening rows. Then something unexpected happened. Towards the middle of the hall a solid mass of grey-blue indicated the presence of the Air Force; half a hundred aircraftsmen, tired of the cinema, had come in search of entertainment. Now they began shouting, ‘Up with Uncle Joe!’ and ‘Progress, that’s what we want!’ One yelled, ‘Down with the colour bar!’

  Some of the more solid citizens were observed leaving their seats and slipping out of the side doors.

  Then Miss Pattern came slowly on to the stage. She was very nervous. She apologized for the delay, but the committee had been wondering whether to allow the next item in view of the - response of the audience. She had to make quite clear that the committee took no responsiblity for the next item. The leaders of the Coloured community had suggested it. It had been agreed to because … She hesitated some moments, and then remarked firmly, ‘Anyway, it shows the sort of thing we’ve got to contend with. The sketch was written by a Coloured boy, a South African Cape Coloured, now in England.’ Another pause. ‘There is talent among them - real talent. It should be directed. It must be directed,’ she cried out, on the verge of tears, and ran off the stage.

  And now the audience leaned forward intently. The stage was completely dark.

  Then a white patch gleamed in the darkness and a high, shrill voice said, ‘I am Asia. I am the teeming millions of Asia. I am …’ There was a sudden chorus of boos from the back.

  Another white patch appeared, and a second voice shouted desperately, ‘I am India …’ But the rest of this was lost in tumult.

  The white patches were agitatedly swaying in the darkness on the stage, and shrill isolated voices could be heard: Hunger, Poverty, Misery.