COV02 - A Proper Marriage

by Doris Lessing

She asked Martha, with charming formality, if she would like to come to the sun porch, and Martha followed her. There was a small grass chair, and Martha sat on it and watched Elaine fitting pink and mauve sweet peas into narrow silver vases like small fluted trumpets.

  Elaine said that her mother was never up before eleven, and accompanied this remark by a small smile which did not invite shared amusement, but rather expressed an anxious desire that no one should find it remarkable. Elaine, standing by her trestle, with her copper jugs of water, her shears, her rows of sweet peas and roses, her heavy gauntlets, had the air of a fragile but devoted handmaid to her mother’s way of life. Martha watched her and found herself feeling protective. This girl should be spared any unpleasantness which might occur outside the shining glass walls of the sun porch. Her fragility, her air of fatigue, the blue shadows under her eyes, removed her completely from any possibility of being treated by Martha as an equal. Martha found herself censoring her speech; in a few minutes they were making conversation about gardening. Then a bell shrilled from close by, and Elaine hastily excused herself, laid down her flowers, and went to a door which led to Mrs Talbot’s bedroom.

  In a few minutes she came back to say that her mother was awake and was delighted to hear that Martha had come to see her. If dear Matty did not mind being treated so informally - and here Elaine again offered a small anxious smile, as if acknowledging at least the possibility of amusement - would she like to come into the bedroom? Martha went to the door, expecting Elaine to come with her; but Elaine remained with her flowers, a pale effaced figure in her yellow smock, drenched in the sunlight that was concentrated through the blazing glass of the sun porch.

  Martha’s eyes were full of sunlight, and in this room it was nearly dark. She stood blinded just inside the door, and heard Mrs Talbot murmuring affectionate greetings from the shadows. She stumbled forward, sat on a chair that was pushed under her, and then saw that Mrs Talbot was up and in a dressing gown, a dim figure agitated by the delight this visit gave her, but even more agitated by apologies because she was not dressed.

  ‘If I’d known you were coming, Matty darling … But I’m so terribly lazy, I simply can’t get out of bed before twelve. It was so sweet of you to come so soon when I asked you - but we old women must be allowed our weaknesses …’

  Martha was astounded by that ‘old women’; but there was no suggestion of coyness in it. She tried to peer through the dark, for she was longing to see how Mrs Talbot must look before she had created herself for her public. All she could see was a slender figure in an insinuating rustle of silks, perched on the bed. Mrs Talbot lit a cigarette; almost at once the red spark was crushed out again; Martha saw that this flutter was due simply to a routine being upset.

  ‘I rang up my hairdresser when I heard your voice, I told him not to come this morning. I’m sure it won’t hurt me to show an inch or so of grey just for once. When you reach the age of going grey, Matty darling, don’t be silly and dye your hair. It’s an absolute martyrdom. If I had only known …’

  Martha was now able to see better. Mrs Talbot’s face came out of the shadow in a splash of white. It was some kind of a face mask. ‘Shall I go out till you are dressed?’ she suggested awkwardly.

  But Mrs Talbot rose with a swirl of silk and said, ‘If you don’t mind it all, Matty, I’d adore you to stay.’ There was a nervous gasp of laughter; she was peering forward to see Martha, to find out her reaction. It occurred to Martha that the apology, the deference, was quite sincere and not a pose, as she had assumed. Mrs Talbot’s nervousness was that of a duchess who had survived the French Revolution and timidly continued to wear powdered curls in the privacy of her bedroom because she did not feel herself in the new fashions.

  Martha saw the slight figure rise, go to the window, and tug at a cord. At once the room was shot with hazy yellow light. Mrs Talbot was wearing a shimmering grey garment with full flounced sleeves; she was covered in stark-white paste from collarbones to hairline, and from this mask her small eyes glimmered out through black holes. Her pale smooth hair was looped loosely on her neck; there was no sign of grey. She sat before a large dressing table and dabbed carefully at her face with tufts of cotton wool. The room was long, low, subdued, with shell-coloured curtains, dove-grey carpet, and furniture of light, gleaming wood which looked as if it had been embroidered; it had a look of chaste withdrawal from the world; and Mrs Talbot was a light, cool, uncommitted figure, even when she was poised thus on her stool, leaning forward into her mirror, her submissive charm momentarily lost in a focus of keen concentration. Her skin was emerging patchily from under the white paste, and she muttered, ‘In a minute, Matty.’

  Soon she rose and went to an old-fashioned washstand, where a graceful ewer stood in a shining rose-patterned basin. It was clear that taps running hot and cold would be too much of a modern note in this altar to the past. Mrs Talbot splashed water vigorously over her face, while the air was pervaded by the odour of violets. In the meantime Martha, still examining every detail of the room, had noticed the bed. It was very big - too big, she thought involuntarily, for Mrs Talbot. Then she saw it was a double bed, with two sets of pillows. She must readmit Mr Talbot, whom she had again forgotten. This bed, untidy and sprawling, gave Martha the most uncomfortable feeling of something unseemly: it was, she saw, because a man’s pyjamas lay where they had been flung off, on the pillow. There were of maroon-striped silk, and strongly suggested the person of Mr Talbot, as did a jar of pipes on the bed table. So uncomfortable did this make Martha that she turned away from the bed, feeling her face hot. Mrs Talbot, however, returning from her ablutions, could not be aware of how Martha was feeling, for she carelessly rolled these pyjamas together and tucked them under the pillow, observing, ‘Men are always so untidy.’ Then she sat herself on the edge of the bed, with the air of one prepared to devote any amount of time to friendship.

  And now they must talk. There would follow the proper talk. Martha saw the gleam of affection in Mrs Talbot’s eyes and was asking herself, Does she really like me? If so, why? But Mrs Talbot was talking about Douglas: how he was such a dear boy, how he was always so clever and helpful, and with such a sense for these horrid, horrid financial things; and then - impulsively - how lovely it was that he had married such a sweet girl. At this Martha involuntarily laughed; and was sorry when she saw the look of surprise on this delightful lady’s face. She rose from her chair and began walking about the room, touching the curtains, which slipped like thick silken skin through her fingers, laying a curious finger on the wood of the dressing table, which had such a gleaming softness that it was strange it should oppose her flesh with the hardness of real wood. Mrs Talbot watched without moving. There was a small, shrewd smile on her lips.

  ‘Are you shocked, Matty, at all this fuss?’ she asked a little plaintively; and when Martha turned quickly to see what she could mean, she continued quickly, ‘I know it all looks so awful until it’s tidied up; Elaine is so sweet, she comes in and tidies everything for me, and then this is a lovely room, but I know it must look horrid now, with face creams and cotton wool everywhere. The trouble is …’ Here she tailed off, with a helpless shrug which suggested that there was nothing she would like better than to relapse into the comfortable condition of being an old woman, if only she knew how. Martha involuntarily glanced at Mr Talbot’s side of the bed and then blushed as she guiltily caught Mrs Talbot’s eyes. But it was clear that this was one thing she could not understand in Martha; she looked puzzled.

  After a short pause she said, ‘I hope you’ll be friends with Elaine, Matty. She’s such a sweet thing, so sensitive, and she doesn’t make friends easily. Sometimes I feel it is my fault - but we’ve always been so much together, and I don’t know why it is, but …’

  Now Martha’s look was far more hostile than she had intended; and Mrs Talbot’s thick white skin coloured evenly. She looked like an embarrassed young girl, in spite of the faint look of wear under her eyes. Martha could not imagine herself
being friends with that gentle, flower-gathering maiden; she could not prevent a rather helpless but ironical smile, and she looked direct at Mrs Talbot as if accusing her of being wilfully obtuse.

  Mrs Talbot cried out, ‘But you’re so artistic, Matty, and you would have so much in common.’

  Martha saw tears in her eyes. ‘But I’m not at all artistic,’ she observed obstinately - though of course with a hidden feeling that she might prove to be yet, if given the chance!

  ‘But all those books you read, and then anyone can see …’ Mrs Talbot was positively crying out against the fate that persisted in making Martha refuse to be artistic. ‘And Elaine is so sweet, no one knows as well as I do how sweet she is and - but sometimes I wonder if she’s strong enough to manage things the way all you clever young things do. You are all so sure of yourselves!’

  Here Martha could not help another rueful smile, which checked Mrs Talbot. She was regarding Martha with extraordinary shrewdness. Martha, for her part, was waiting for the proper talk to begin; what was it that Mrs Talbot wanted to say to her?

  Mrs Talbot sighed, gave the shadow of a shrug, and went back to her dressing table. Here she applied one cream after another, with steady method, and continued to talk, in between pauses for screwing up her mouth or stretching her eyelids smooth. ‘I would so much like Elaine to get married. If she could only get properly married, and I needn’t worry any more … There is no greater happiness, Matty, none! She meets so few people, always my friends, and she is so shy. And you meet so many people, Matty, all you young people are so brave and enterprising.’

  For the life of her Martha could not see Elaine with the wolves of the Club, with the boys, the kids and the fellows. ‘I don’t think Elaine would like the sort of men we meet,’ observed Martha; and she caught another shrewd glance. She felt there were things she ought to be understanding, but she was quite lost.

  ‘There’s your Douglas,’ said Mrs Talbot, a trifle reproachfully. ‘He’s such a nice boy.’

  Surely, wondered Martha, Mrs Talbot could not have wanted Douglas for Elaine? The idea was preposterous - even brutal.

  ‘So kind,’ murmured Mrs Talbot, ‘so helpful, so clever with everything.’

  And now Martha was returned, simply by the incongruity of Douglas and Elaine, into her private nightmare. She could not meet a young man or woman without looking around anxiously for the father and mother; that was how they would end, there was no escape for them. She could not meet an elderly person without wondering what the unalterable influences had been that had created them just so. She could take no step, perform no action, no matter how apparently new and unforeseen, without the secret fear that in fact this new and arbitrary thing would turn out to be part of the inevitable process she was doomed to. She was, in short, in the grip of the great bourgeois monster, the nightmare repetition. It was like the obsession of the neurotic who must continuously be touching a certain object or muttering a certain formula of figures in order to be safe from the malevolent powers, like the person who cannot go to bed at night without returning a dozen times to see if the door is locked and the fire out. She was thinking now, But Mrs Talbot married Mr Talbot, then Elaine is bound to marry someone like Mr Talbot, there is no escaping it; then what connection is there between Douglas and Mr Talbot that I don’t see?

  But Mrs Talbot was talking, ‘I’ll show you something, Matty - I would like to show you, I don’t everyone.’

  Mrs Talbot was searching hurriedly through her drawers. She pulled out a large, leather-framed photograph. Martha came forward and took it, with a feeling that the nightmare was being confirmed. It was of a young man in uniform, a young man smiling direct out of the frame, with a young, sensitive, rueful look. ‘Hardly anybody knows,’ Mrs Talbot cried agitatedly, ‘but we were engaged, he was killed in the war — the other war, you know — he was so sweet, you don’t know. He was so nice.’ Her lips quivered. She turned away her face and held out her hand for the photograph.

  Martha handed it back and returned to her chair. She was thinking, Well, then, so Elaine must get engaged to that young man; is it conceivable that Mrs Talbot sees Douglas like that?

  But more: her mother, Mrs Quest, had been engaged to such another charming young man. This boy, weak-faced and engaging, smiled up still from a small framed photograph on her mother’s dressing table, a persistent reminder of that love which Mr Quest could scarcely resent, since the photograph was half submerged, in fact practically invisible, among a litter of things which referred to her life with him. Martha had even gone so far as to feel perturbed because this boy had not appeared in her own life; she had looked speculatively at Douglas with this thought - but no, weak and charming he was not, he could not take that role.

  She sat silent in her chair, frowning; when Mrs Talbot looked at her, it was to see an apparently angry young woman, and one very remote from her. She hesitated, came forward, and kissed Martha warmly on her cheek. ‘You must forgive me,’ she said. ‘We are a selfish lot, we old women - and you probably have troubles of your own. We forget …’ Here she hesitated. Martha was looking through her, frowning. She continued guiltily: ‘And to have children - that’s the best of all, I wish I had a dozen, instead of just one. But Mr Talbot …’ She glanced hastily at Martha and fell silent.

  There was a very long silence. Martha was following the nightmare to its conclusion: Well then, so Elaine will find just such a charming young man, and there’s a war conveniently at hand so that he can get killed, and then Elaine will marry another Mr Talbot, and for the rest of her life, just like all these old women, she’ll keep a photograph of her real and great love in a drawer with her handkerchiefs.

  ‘There’s nothing nicer than children, and you look very well, Matty,’ said Mrs Talbot suddenly.

  Martha emerged from her dream remarking absently, ‘I’m always well.’ Then she heard what Mrs Talbot had said; it seemed to hang on the air waiting for her to hear it. She thought tolerantly, She’s heard a rumour that I’m pregnant. She smiled at Mrs Talbot and remarked, ‘I shan’t have children for years yet - damn it, I’m only nineteen myself.’

  Mrs Talbot suppressed an exclamation. She surveyed Martha up and down, a rapid, skilled glance, and then, colouring, said, ‘But, my dear, it’s so nice to have your children when you’re young. I wish I had. I was old when she was born. Of course, people say we are like sisters, but it makes a difference. Have them young, Matty - you won’t regret it.’ She leaned forward with an urgent affectionate smile and continued, after the slightest hesitation, ‘You know, we old women get a sixth sense about these things. We know when a woman is pregnant, there’s a look in the eyes.’ She put a cool hand to Martha’s cheek and turned her face to the light. Narrowing her eyes so that for a moment her lids showed creases of tired flesh, she looked at Martha with a deep impersonal glance and nodded involuntarily, dropping her hand.

  Martha was angry and uncomfortable; Mrs Talbot at this moment seemed to her like an old woman: the utterly impersonal triumphant gleam of the aged female, the old witch, was coming from the ageless jewelled face.

  ‘I can’t be pregnant,’ she announced. ‘I don’t want to have a baby yet.’

  Mrs Talbot let out a small resigned sigh. She rose and said in a different voice, ‘I think I shall have my bath, dear.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Martha quickly.

  ‘You and Douggie’ll be coming to dinner tomorrow?’

  ‘We’re looking forward to it very much.’

  Mrs Talbot was again the easy hostess; she came forward in a wave of grey silk and kissed Martha. ‘You’ll be so happy,’ she murmured gently. ‘So happy, I feel it.’

  Martha emitted a short ungracious laugh. ‘But, Mrs Talbot!’ she protested - then stopped. She wanted to put right what she felt to be an impossibly false position; honesty demanded it of her. She was not what Mrs Talbot thought her; she had no intention of conforming to this perfumed silken bullying, as she most deeply felt it to be. She could not go on,
The appeal in the beautiful eyes silenced her. She was almost ready to aver that she wanted nothing more than to be happy with the dear boy Douglas, for Mrs Talbot; to have a dozen children, for Mrs Talbot; to take morning tea with Elaine every day, and see her married to just such another as Douglas.

  Mrs Talbot, arm lightly placed about her waist, gently pressed her to the door. She opened it with one hand, then gave Martha a small squeeze, and smiled straight into her eyes, with such knowledge, such ironical comprehension, that Martha could not bear it. She stiffened; and Mrs Talbot dropped her arm at once.

  ‘Elaine, dear,’ said Mrs Talbot apologetically past Martha to the sun porch, ‘if you’d like to run my bath for me.’

  Elaine was now painting the row of pink and mauve sweet peas in the fluted silver vases. ‘Ah!’ exclaimed Mrs Talbot delightedly, moving forward quickly to look at the water colour. She leaned over, kissing Elaine’s hair. The girl moved slightly, then remained still under her mother’s restraining arm. ‘Isn’t this lovely, Matty, isn’t she gifted?’

  Martha looked at the pretty water colour and said it was beautiful. Elaine’s glance at her now held a real embarrassment; but she remained silent until her mother had gained her meed of admiration.

  Then Mrs Talbot waved goodbye and returned to her bedroom; and Elaine rose, and said, ‘Excuse me, Matty, I’ll just do Mummy’s bath - she likes me to do it, rather than the boy, you know.’ Martha looked to see if there was any consciousness here of being exploited, but no: there was nothing but charming deference.

  They said goodbye, and Martha, as she turned away, saw Elaine knocking at the door that led into Mrs Talbot’s bedroom. ‘Can I come in, Mummy?’

  Martha walked away down the street, thinking of that last deep glance into her eyes. Nonsense, she thought; it’s nothing but old women’s nonsense, old wives’ superstition. There seemed nothing anomalous in referring to the youthful Mrs Talbot thus at this moment. ‘How can there be a look in my eyes?’