An Impossible Marriage

by Pamela Hansford Johnson

  ‘No, it’s not,’ I said.

  ‘It sounds like it to me.’

  ‘Well, it’s not.’

  A silence fell; we might have been quarrelling.

  Then he patted my knee in a kindly fashion, put his hand on mine. ‘I’m proud of you, you know. It’s just that I can’t realise it.’

  ‘Are you proud?’ I could not help asking. I wanted him to desire me, and was frightened that he should see this in my face, for it made me ashamed.

  ‘Of course I am,’ he said pacifically, patting my knee, ‘I’ve just said so. I’ll spell it if you like.’

  Yes,’ I began, ‘but––’

  ‘But what?’ he prompted me. He looked pleased.

  But this I could not tell him. For some reason, perhaps because he was afraid of harming the child whom he now appeared to want, he would not touch me. For weeks he had not come near me. And I was strained with desire. It was not the desire of love; it was a harsh bodily need, that made me contemptuous of myself and also, curiously, of him—an anticipatory contempt, as if I had asked him for satisfaction as some hot and needy woman might ask a stranger, and he had, as to a stranger, derisively given it. I might have been driven to hint at something of this need had I believed I could still attract him; but I felt the resentment of the woman who, carrying a lover’s child and for his sake losing her looks, realises that this is the last sacrifice he can possibly be expected to thank her for.

  ‘I don’t know what I was going to say.’ I smiled at him because, at this moment, he was happy and I could not hurt him.

  ‘Funny girl,’ he said, not at all curious.

  ‘Do you remember us coming here once before?’

  I remembered it well enough: on that evening we had fallen from pleasure in each other’s company into an anger which now seemed to me inexplicable. We had made up the quarrel, but it was marked out for me as being the first quarrel to leave a sad, stale aftertaste in the mouth.

  ‘You had a hat I didn’t like. A red one. Garish,’ he added, with one of his lofty looks, as if he were the arbiter of all taste. Then he took my hand. ‘But you looked pretty, even if a trifle ridiculous.’

  ‘You told me so,’ I said, suddenly recalling the trivial cause of a misery that had been quite new, quite bewildering ‘It was tactless of you.’

  ‘My dear girl,’ said Ned with something of his old, imperious jauntiness, ‘when you get to know me better, which may still take some years, you will realise that I am only tactless on purpose. I have no patience with people who don’t work out their tactlessness beforehand.’

  This, he thought, contained a truth of some weight, and perhaps it did; but the only words to hold my attention were ‘some years’. Years and years, I thought, and I am so tired. Yet I said, to quieten the last of a jealousy that had now no relevance, ‘Did you think Iris looked pretty?’

  ‘So-so. Nothing special.’

  I suggested he had thought her special that night when she had made him give her the carnation.

  ‘No, I didn’t. I never liked her much. But then, that evening, I wasn’t much liking you.’

  Our next news of Iris came at the beginning of December. There was an announcement in The Times that she had been married in Paris to Jaime Silvera de Castro, of Brazil.

  I telephoned Caroline to ask if she had seen it, but she had not. She had no news.

  ‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘we shall have to wait.’ For I did not think Mrs. Allbright would remain umbrageously uncommunicative for very long, and so it turned out. One morning she called upon me. She was wearing new furs and a great deal of make-up; her manner, too, was different. She swayed towards the sofa as if she were unaccustomed to walking at all, being brought from point to point, perhaps in a sedan chair; and when she sat down it was with something of the deliquescent grace of a candle in hot weather.

  ‘My dear Christine, you must forgive us both for our secrecy. You must be generous. But it was all so sudden and we were in such a whirl. . . .’ She gave me a quick look to see whether I believed it.

  ‘Iris,’ she said, ‘has sacrificed her career.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I replied, to help her on.

  ‘Sacrificed it, just as it was coming to fruition. Just as C. B. Cochran was showing an interest in her.’

  Mrs. Allbright closed her eyes and let her mouth tighten for a moment in pain and regret. She opened them again. Leaning forward, she put her hand earnestly upon my arm. But never mind. Jaime is such a dear, even if he is rather old-fashioned—he can’t bear the thought of his wife performing in public—that Iris makes the sacrifice willingly.’ She added, in quite a different tone, ‘Now she can go and ruin her figure with babies, for all I care. She was always dog-lazy.’

  Drawing out a little gilt case, she opened it to display pastel-coloured cigarettes, blue, pink and green, tipped with gold.

  ‘She is going out with Jaime next month. They will settle in Buenos Aires, where his work is. I only hope,’ said Mrs. Allbright, weary again, that riches won’t spoil my little girl. All I ever asked her to be was natural.’ She paused. ‘May I tell her you wish her every good fortune?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, and knew a pang of envy. Ned and I were not rich. I should never be able to go even to Paris now, let alone to the Americas. I thought: She will go and see nothing at all, it will be wasted on her. What I could have done with it! What I could have seen! ‘I’ll write to her,’ I added. ‘Will you give me her address in Paris?’

  Mrs. Allbright wrote it down for me. ‘I shall join them eventually, when Iris has her own home. I shall be a poor relation, shan’t I? Though Jaime has been very generous. He has helped me already.’ She glanced at her furs. ‘I have to force him not to give me things.’

  When she rose to go she held me apart for a second and studied me. ‘You must be near your time.’

  I confirmed this.

  ‘How exciting it will be for you! Well, Christine, you may turn out to have had all the luck after all.’

  I asked her how this could possibly be.

  She said, in a curious, thick voice, ‘It’s not as if you’d had a career to give up. She could have got on. She knew I wanted it. I could have seen her name in lights.’ Her eyes were magnified by tears, the great, rainy tears that Iris wept so easily; but these were tears of anger and disappointment. She burst out, ‘But she was up against me, always. Whatever I wanted she did the opposite. After all my dreams for her, she marries a greasy man old enough to be her father, or nearly—you married one a good deal older than you were, but then, you hadn’t anything to lose.’

  She looked old and sick. She shut her eyes tight while the tears squeezed themselves like seed pearls between the lids.

  ‘It’s just that you’re upset, losing her so suddenly,’ I suggested.

  ‘Yes, that’s it. That’s all it is. I’ll get over it.’ She pulled out a heavily scented handkerchief and dried her face. ‘Mothers are so selfish!’ she cried, as if repeating in scorn words that had been flung at her—and she went away.

  December was a month for news. Within a few days of this visit Caroline rang me up to tell me her husband had left her. ‘He’s got another woman,’ she said, in her edged way, ‘who doesn’t know his dread secret. So he can be easy with her as he can’t be with me: do you see the point? He’s left me the flat and all that dwells therein.’ I said I supposed she would divorce him.

  ‘Such complications, dear, you simply don’t know. I could, I suppose. But he wouldn’t like it. You see, he’s a Catholic.’

  I was amazed by this. She had never even hinted at such a thing.

  ‘Oh, we kept it quiet, because my people hated it and his were furious, and we had one of these awkward mixed marriages where I had to promise to bring the children up R.C.—very funny, that, when you come to think of i
t.’ She hesitated. Then she said, That’s why we never asked anyone. I expect everyone was huffy. I bet you were, really. But then, my marriage was shrouded in gloom, in any case, so I suppose no one really noticed.’

  ‘Why did you never tell me?’ I asked.

  ‘You know how hard I used to find it, telling things. I’ve been somewhat cured of that by events. Now I positively babble.’

  I asked her if I should come and see her.

  ‘You’re my co-mate,’ said Caroline, and if I wanted anyone it would be you. But at present I just feel like sitting very quiet with the blinds down. Wait till I’m better company, and I’ll ring you.’

  Chapter Ten

  It was the middle of the night, warm in bed, cold without, frost ticklish as snuff in the room. My watch had phosphorescent hands. I had timed the intervals: twenty minutes—then fifteen—now ten. Not indigestion.

  ‘Ned.’

  A heave in the trough of sheets.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I hate to wake you—I wouldn’t if I could help it.’

  ‘Well, then, don’t.’

  ‘I think it’s beginning.’

  ‘What is?’ Another heave: then the light flashing up, showing us to each other. ‘Oh, my God!’ He was out of bed in a bound. ‘I’ll fetch Emilie.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Just ring the doctor!’

  ‘But Emilie ought to be here.’

  ‘I tell you I don’t want Emilie.’

  ‘Oh God! The doctor—what’s his number?’

  Ned blundering across the room and out to the telephone, one pyjama-leg rucked above his knee.

  He came back. ‘He says you’d better get to hospital. I’ll ring them up.’

  He did so: returned again. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘I am quite all right,’ I said, feeling set apart, calm, enthroned upon the edge of this adventure. ‘I should like a cup of tea while I dress.’

  Everything was packed: the list of necessities had reached me months ago.

  I tried to smoke, but that made me sick. Ned was white and solemn. We sat side by side on the bed, our arms around each other’s shoulders. We did not talk much.

  ‘There it goes again.’

  ‘There what goes?’ Ned said, jumping.

  ‘The pain.’

  ‘Oh God!’

  ‘It’s nothing. It’s hardly anything yet.’ I relished the thought of the pain to come. It would be exciting. There had been so little excitement lately, not for me. For Iris, and for Caroline, if you called it excitement. Not for me.

  ‘I’ll put on the fire,’ Ned said. ‘It’s as cold as the grave in here.’

  ‘It’s funny,’ I said, ‘but if you look at that box on the cupboard from this angle it’s exactly like a head in a top hat.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘You do see it?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I see it all right. Have some more tea.’

  ‘We’ve done nothing about Christmas,’ I said.

  ‘We don’t have to hang paper-chains.’

  ‘You’ll be all right at Maddox Street.’ We had arranged that if the child came before Christmas Ned should go to his family.

  We waited. The time seemed very long. Then the door bell rang and for a little while there was activity. Ned came with me to the hospital and was almost at once dismissed and told to telephone. I was examined by the doctor; a little fat nurse came to carry out the humiliating preparations for childbirth. Then I was given more tea and told to ring if I wanted anything. I had a small room to myself, the walls painted a smooth and shining grey. There was a chair, a locker, and against the far wall a white cupboard with a touch of Heppelwhite grace about it that bore the words ‘Eclamptic Equipment’. In the ceiling a white light burned brightly and sometimes swung in a high draught, throwing over the walls a reflection like a tolling bell. It had been cold in the ambulance, or perhaps I had been afraid without knowing it. Here I did not feel lonely: I still felt enthroned, apart, dedicated. All the same, I badly needed something to read, so I rang the bell.

  This time another nurse came in, an Irishwoman with coppery face and hair, and a look of constantly expecting some wonderful surprise.

  ‘You gave me a fright you did!’ she said, when I told her what I wanted. ‘I tore along like mad, thinking you’d hurried yourself up.’ I understood that she was scolding me; but nevertheless she went and fetched me an old magazine, with a girl in a bathing-dress upon the cover.

  Beyond the frosted window the darkness had thinned away. There was an upper pane of clear glass, and soon I could see beyond it a single fraying cloud, streaked like a daisy with pink. I began to wonder if Ned would come soon to see how I was getting on, for I felt it would be a comfort to talk to somebody. I tried to think about him, about our life together; and as I lay in the growing dawn, in that quiet waiting-room of birth, it seemed to me that ours was a very ordinary life, perhaps no more unhappy, no more happy, than the lives of most married people. It struck me now as remarkable that few women seemed to speak with any excitement about their husbands. Marriage was perhaps unexciting in its essence; probably everyone but myself had known that already. I tried to take comfort from this thought, but a shadow of depression lay about it, and I turned over on my side to read the only part of the magazine I had not already read, which was the advertisement page.

  The Irish nurse came in to ask me how I was getting on, and if I wanted anything. I told her I was all right. I should have liked her to stay and talk to me, but she seemed very busy. When she had gone, I thought how odd it was that nobody should seem much interested in me or my baby; yet why should they have been? Birth, of course, was as common here as butter in a grocer’s shop. All the same, I felt a sudden wish to cry a little because time was so long.

  I think I must have slept for a little while. At last I grew aware (having consulted my watch) that I could reasonably ring the bell again. ‘It’s every four minutes,’ I said.

  It was better now. I had something to occupy me, something in which I could participate. They let me walk about the room. Between the pains I was perfectly calm; indeed, for three and a half minutes out of the four pain was unthinkable. I did not know how anyone could possibly have felt it. But in a while I knew the first touch of panic; for the pain I was now experiencing was not easy to bear, and I felt, indeed, that if it got any worse I should be hard put to endure it.

  The nurse who had brought me the magazine studied my face thoughtfully. I think we’d better get you along to the labour ward.’

  They put me on a trolley, and I set out on a strange, dizzying, half-hilarious progress (Macheath to the gallows, I thought), down corridors of light and dark green, into a room all white and silver. ‘That’s the girl!’ one of the nurses called to me. She had the jolly, rather uneasy smile of somebody playing a practical joke. ‘One, two, and oops we go! Doctor will be here in a minute.’

  When he came the Irish nurse told him that I was having good pains. I thought it a strange adjective.

  After that there was hustle and attentiveness; they touched me when I dreaded to be touched, rallied me, applauded me, told me I was doing well. I thought: Tomorrow must come. Before I know where I am it will all be over, and I shall say to myself, ‘Why, it happened the day before yesterday.’ Time has to pass.

  I found myself panting, a harsh and ugly noise. ‘Degrading,’ I managed to say.

  I heard the doctor laugh. He told me to go on panting: that it was good for me.

  ‘Like a steam-engine,’ I said, proud that my voice sounded so normal. Then I was engulfed by an agony so extreme to my experience that it felt like some preposterous insult.

  ‘That’s right, that’s right,’ said the doctor. You’re doing fine.’

  In front of my eyes was the lightning-edged scarlet of pain, wh
ich is like the colour that lodges under the lids when one tries to sleep in the sun. I did not think of the child, only of pain, only of myself, only of being brave or not brave. I had a fear of being torn in two. ‘But don’t worry,’ said the cold critic, still present within me and unassailable, ‘nobody ever is torn in two.’

  ‘I think,’ said the doctor, that we shall now put you to sleep.’

  Another man was standing at my bed. I could see the edge of his white coat.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, as if I had been offered theatre tickets; ‘that will be nice.’ I added, in a gabble, ‘Just wait till this pain passes—’

  We’ll make it pass. You’ve been very good. Now you shall go to sleep.’

  The beautiful anaesthetic was like the fall of velvet over the photographer’s camera. I was the camera under the velvet, observing with the dark behind me. I saw a green mountain and a river with a water-snake of blue glass, swimming with kingly grace towards me. Then, almost at once, ‘Well, there you are, you can wake up; you’ve got a nice little boy.’

  ‘Have I?’ I said. ‘Oh, good.’

  I saw him held up above the basin, a struggling puppet of vermilion satin, all mouth; his roars split the room. He was wrapped in a blanket and given to me, his small face tight and sulky as if he had been turned out of heaven during a party.

  Well, I thought, well.

  I kissed him; he did not seem to belong to me. I touched his little hand and loved him, whoever he belonged to. Then I felt I could kiss the doctor, the anaesthetist, the midwife nurse; I was full of triumph.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much, doctor, nurse.’ I was glad I was in a fit state to be courteous. I was proud of such courtesy.

  But the doctor was not there, nor was the anaesthetist. ‘Gone to get their breakfast,’ said the nurse. I felt it a little callous of them to hurry off so thoughtlessly to their meal. I had a sense of anti-climax.

  The baby had disappeared; I could not remember it being taken from me.