COV02 - A Proper Marriage

by Doris Lessing

  The danger of this mood, felt like a heightened pulse in the town, was expressed to Mr Maynard at the breakfast table thus:

  ‘It’s all very well, but we have to think of our boys up north.’

  ‘I expect they are taking care of themselves in their own way.’

  ‘Have you heard about …’ Here followed the names of about a dozen young women. ‘They are all losing their heads.’

  ‘Provided they don’t lose them too far, I daresay all will be well at the armistice.’

  Mrs Maynard looked sharply at him, tightened her lips, held his eyes steadily with her own. When this couple had come together in 1919 after years of separation, there had been incidents to overlook on both sides. Not forgiven - no. Mrs Maynard could not forgive him that he had overlooked so easily. Yet what had happened? Nothing - she had never been unfaithful to him. There was simply a photograph of an officer, a cousin, among a bundle of old letters. As for him, he could not forgive that there was nothing to forgive. She had always fulfilled the letter of every agreement. But there burned in this handsome matron’s heart a steady flame of romance: he knew it. She had given her heart to the dead and was thus free to deal with life as she felt was right. She had never done anything to be ashamed of.

  After a few moments, he smiled and inquired, ‘What do you propose to do about it, my dear?’

  Mrs Maynard paid a number of visits, received others, was a good deal on the telephone. As a result, many young women got letters from various organizations suggesting that they might spend their time on such and such a form of war work. Strings invisibly tightened. Mrs Talbot, wan and beautiful with her daughter’s grief (the fiancé had been killed in the air over London during the Battle of Britain), dropped in to see Martha and suggested she should join the organization of women connected with the civil service.

  Martha hardly listened. Such was her naïveté that she thought it odd, even interfering, of Mrs Talbot, who had nothing to do with the Service. She gave Mrs Talbot tea, told her what news there was of Douglas - very little, save that he had just finished leave with the boys in some town in Abyssinia. And that meant - Martha calmly stated it, apparently not noticing Mrs Talbot’s indrawn breath - that he was probably having dozens of love affairs. Happening to glance at Mrs Talbot, she frowned slightly, and added that he was perfectly entitled to do so; they did not believe in jealousy. Mrs Talbot was searching for the right words to express her disturbance of mind, when Martha, unaware that any were needed, began talking of something else. Martha’s advantage in any such encounter was always her assumption that Mrs Talbot (for instance) was bound to agree with her; any suggestion that her view might not be the right one was met with a critical, almost incredulous stare.

  Some days later, Mr Maynard himself came to see Martha. Mrs Maynard had said that she intended to visit personally a number of girls who were not pulling their weight. Mr Maynard had said hastily that he would see to young Matty Knowell himself. It was an instinct of protectiveness which he did not analyse.

  As he climbed the stairs to the flat, he heard a child screaming; he had to knock several times before he was heard. Martha admitted him and asked him to sit down, announcing brightly that they would have to shout through the noise, if he didn’t mind.

  Mr Maynard did mind. He said he was prepared to wait. He disposed his large body on one of the small chairs, and watched. He was adjusting his ideas to the fact that Martha was no longer a girl with a baby, that his godchild-without-the-benefit-of-religion was now a personality. He saw a small lively girl striving energetically against the straps that bound her to a high chair, her cheeks scarlet and tear-stained, her black eyes rebellious. Caroline was small-limbed, dainty, with a fine pointed face - a delightful creature. On the platform before her was a heavy china plate, and on that a squelch of greyish pulp. Martha, planted on her two sturdy legs, faced the child like an antagonist, her own lips set as firmly as Caroline’s, who was refusing the food she was trying to push in between them. As the spoon came near, Caroline set up an angry yell, and bright sparks of tears gleamed through squeezed lashes; then the small white teeth closed tight on the metal. Martha was pale with anger, trembling with the contest, even caught the child’s nose until the mouth opened, and thrust in the spoon, leaving a mass of that unpleasant-looking pulp. Caroline choked, then began to cry differently - a miserable, helpless wail. Martha winced, then fumblingly loosened the straps, and caught Caroline up. ‘Oh, Lord,’ she cried helplessly, ‘I don’t know what to do!’ Caroline was twisting in the embrace; Martha set her on the floor, where she stood holding a chair and yelled defiance at her mother. Martha lifted her with an impatient movement, and took her out to the veranda, came back and shut the door. Silence. She passed her hand across her eyes, reached for a cigarette, lit it, and sat down. She was now pale, tense and exhausted.

  ‘Is all this really necessary?’ inquired Mr Maynard.

  Martha laughed unhappily, and said that the book ordered that if a child would not eat it should not be forced, but Caroline had not eaten a mouthful for days.

  She took great gulps of smoke, but seemed to be sitting on edge, as if waiting for the slightest sound from Caroline.

  ‘She looks very well on being starved,’ observed Mr Maynard.

  Martha frowned, and was silent. He was reminding himself of that time - so long ago - when Mrs Maynard was engaged in rearing Binkie. He could recall only his violent distaste at what had seemed an indefinite period of smells and mess; he remembered his puzzled respect for that tidy and fastidious lady his wife, who had apparently found nothing distasteful in soiled napkins and dribbling mouths. Now he looked at the high chair planted in the middle of the room, bathed in sunlight from the window. Scraps of brownish vegetable mush clung to it. There were bits of the stuff on the floor around it. Flies were settling over the plate. ‘Can’t you remove that unpleasant object?’

  Martha looked at him inquiringly, and then at the chair. She shrugged at male queasiness, and remarked, ‘If I take the chair out and Caroline sees it, she’ll start screaming again.’ But she lifted it outside, without incurring any protest, hastily wiped the bits of mess off the floor, and sat down again, still smoking. Mr Maynard observed that she was looking very attractive. She wore a slip of a yellow dress showing brown bare legs, brown well-shaped arms. Her fingernails and toenails were painted. She was scarcely recognizable as the pale plump schoolgirl he had married to her husband. She looked very young, self-contained, hard, unhappy. The dark speculative eyes watched him as if he might turn out to be an enemy.

  The shell of bright confidence dissolved as she remarked humorously, ‘I believe firmly that children should be removed from their parents at birth in their own interests.’

  Mr Maynard’s thoughts, which had left the infant Caroline, were thus returned to her. He said that children survived anything, in his experience. And returned to considering the fact which appeared to him to be confirmed by Martha’s careful attractiveness, that rumour must be right.

  ‘What are you doing with yourself

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘Having a good time?’ he probed.

  She said humorously, in a way which grated out resentment, that since children had to be fed three times a day and put to bed at half past six, there was scarcely much time left to enjoy oneself.

  Mr Maynard could not remember being discommoded by Binkie’s infancy, so he again dismissed Caroline. ‘Do you go out much?’

  ‘No,’ she said, biting it off. And then: ‘I am reading a lot.’

  But he did not take it up. He lay propped on the angles of the slight chair, like a broad solid grey plank, and observed her from his heavily accented eyes. He was convinced that no young woman living alone with a small child would go to the trouble of curling her hair and painting her twenty nails, unless it was for the purpose of attracting a man. He dismissed the reading as he dismissed Caroline, and came direct to his point. ‘It is being said that you are having an affair with an of
ficer in the Air Force.’

  ‘I have no doubt of it.’ She was flushed with anger. ‘If I were, I think I should be perfectly entitled to.’

  ‘I am not arguing the matter from its principles,’ he began, regarding this as an admission. ‘I am merely suggesting that there are ways of doing things.’

  ‘Hypocrite!’ Martha snapped out; then stiffly smiled. Her eyebrows were knitting and reknitting as if, above her gulfs of anger, tendrills of thought attempted to engage.

  Mr Maynard coloured slowly; such was the power of Martha on him: she paid no tribute at all to the authority he felt he enshrined. ‘My dear young woman, what is the point of infuriating people if an ounce of tact would save you from it?’

  It appeared a fresh outburst was imminent; then she laughed and said, ‘As a matter of fact, I haven’t had any love affairs with anybody.’

  ‘Having acknowledged your rights in the matter - ‘ he began, with humorous conciliation, but was interrupted.

  ‘Do you know what happened?’ inquired Martha, poised on the verge of what she meant him to think an amusing story.

  ‘I can’t wait to hear.’

  ‘Well, I don’t go out at nights much, because of Caroline.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask your mother to take her?’

  ‘No,’ said Martha quickly. ‘Well, I asked the woman across the corridor to watch her. She never wakes at night. There was a dance at McGrath’s – an officers’ dance, of course,’ she added disgustedly.

  ‘Well, why not?’

  She hurried past this point. ‘So they laid on the girls, as usual. You know how they ring you up and ask you if you’ll be one of the girls.’

  ‘I don’t see why not. As long as the boys are content to be boys, why shouldn’t the girls oblige?’

  She giggled. Then: ‘Well, you know how they go on - but I suppose if there is one thing we’ve all had plenty of experience in it is coping with the boys on the tear.’

  Mr Maynard coloured again, and shifted his limbs uncomfortably. ‘Quite.’

  ‘There were half a dozen at my table - you know, all very English.’ She paused for words, while Mr Maynard wondered what the word ‘English’ meant to a girl, certainly English by parentage, who had never been in England.

  ‘I am at a loss.’

  ‘Soft,’ said Martha, dismissing it. ‘You know, those deprecating types with moustaches.”

  ‘I hardly think it is the right word to use now,’ he observed.

  She looked confused and guilty, but persisted, ‘Well then, heroes one and all, I know. But what is heroism, then?’

  ‘Can’t we leave that fascinating social question aside for the moment?’

  ‘It’s easy enough to let yourself be killed.’

  ‘There are hundreds of thousands of men who are doing everything to see they will not be killed — I do hope you don’t admire them more.’

  ‘I didn’t say so,’ she said sullenly.

  Mr Maynard waited.

  ‘About twelve o’clock I was landed with one of them and he was terribly drunk. I mean, really drunk. He was swaying all over the table. I got a waiter to hold him upright. But all his brothers in arms were dancing or in the bar. I couldn’t think of anything to do. So I pushed him into my car and brought him here. Well, I could hardly take him into the men’s washrooms, could I?’

  ‘I suppose not.”

  ‘So I brought him here and he was duly sick. Then I put him to bed on that divan there, and went to bed myself. About three in the morning, a vast horde of them burst in to claim him. Very solicitous they were about his condition. It appeared he was due to fly at five. He nearly pranged the morning before, he told me …’ She tailed off. A note of defiant pity that had appeared in her voice must be disowned, apparently, for she continued, ‘They all thought it a hell of a joke.’

  This was the end of the story. Martha was scarlet with remembered humiliation. After a pause, Mr Maynard said, ‘I don’t see what you expect - you want to have it both ways.’

  ‘Why?’ she inquired reasonably. She lit a cigarette. ‘If you want to construct a story that I am having an affair with the Air Force out of that interesting little incident, then you’re welcome.’

  ‘I don’t see why I should apologize when you think you’re entitled to an affair any time you like.’

  ‘But I didn’t!’

  ‘When your practice catches up with your theory, all I want to suggest is a little more discretion.’

  ‘Did you come here to tell me that?’ she asked, amazed.

  He moved his limbs again, and said, ‘Well, no.’

  First she appeared angry; then, unexpectedly, moved. She leaned towards him and asked, stammering slightly, ‘Why - why do you care what I do?’

  And again Mr Maynard, having got through the defences of this armoured young woman, could not face the emotion he had found. He took a quick glance at her direct, inquiring eyes, averted his own, and remarked, ‘My dear girl, you can all go to the devil for all I care.’

  He was surprised and contrite that her eyes filled with tears. She got up abruptly, went outside, and returned in a few moments with the sleeping child. She sat, holding her in her arms, smoking over the soft nestling head. Mr Maynard saw that ancient symbol, mother and child, through a pale blue fog shot with sunlight. He was extraordinarily moved. Martha seemed to him altogether more amenable, conciliating – safe, in fact – thus disposed.

  He remarked, A charming picture.’

  Martha was first puzzled, then embarrassed. She at once sprang up, and deposited the baby in a receptacle outside the door.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ inquired the elderly gentleman. ‘I meant it.’

  She looked at him sardonically. ‘I am so glad you find it so satisfactory.’ Then: ‘It’s against the rules to cuddle a baby out of hours – the book says so.’

  At this point the door opened, and Mrs Quest came in. ‘Matty, why don’t you put your name on the door, I keep telling you - ‘ She saw the magistrate, and greeted him warmly.

  ‘I’m just going,’ said Mr Maynard, ‘having spent a delightful half-hour with your daughter.’

  ‘She’s an awful scatterbrain,’ said Mrs Quest instinctively, avoiding compliments to her own like a peasant afraid of the evil eye. ‘Have you ever seen such a mess as this place is in?’ She began to set it to rights forthwith. Martha sat on the arm of a chair puffing out smoke and looking stubbornly ironical.

  ‘Would you like to come with me to a meeting of that Left group tomorrow night?’ inquired Mr Maynard.

  Martha brightened. Mrs Quest’s face glazed - the pillars were rocking. She looked timidly at Mr Maynard and said, ‘You don’t mean that batch of Communists – someone said yesterday they have the CID at all their meetings.’ She gave a short scandalized laugh.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think it’s as bad as that,’ Mr Maynard soothed. He looked inquiringly at Martha.

  Mrs Quest said, ‘I’ll take Caroline, and you can go with Mr Maynard; it’s very kind of him.’

  Martha said nothing; she was looking angrily at her mother.

  Mr Maynard recognized the existence of one of the female situations which it was his principle to avoid, and said to Martha, ‘I’ll pick you up tomorrow about eight - see you then, goodbye, ladies.’ And departed.

  ‘I really don’t see why you don’t get a boy,’ said Mrs Quest irritably.

  ‘Why should I have a servant when I’ve nothing else to do?’

  ‘Everyone has one.’

  ‘That’s apparently final.’

  ‘Besides, you don’t do the housework – I’ve never seen such a mess.’

  ‘Well, I live in it.’ But now appeared that old enemy to decision of character, who pointed out to Martha that this argument was ridiculous, not because she was not entirely in the right, but because it sounded so banal. She retreated to the divan which not so long ago had supported the inebriated limbs of the Air Force officer, and watched her mother sweep and tidy the flat.
>
  Mrs Quest, relieved by ‘doing something’, began to chat good-humouredly about Mr Quest - who was much better these days, he had dropped one of his medicines yesterday - and went on from there to Mr Maynard, who must be misinformed about the Left crowd, because a man in his position couldn’t afford to get mixed up with such people.

  ‘Oh, Mother!’

  ‘But everybody knows …’ This was lost as she bent under a corner table to retrieve fallen papers. Martha sprang forward to take them from her. Mrs Quest gave them up suspiciously. Martha put them into a drawer in such a way that she might have been accusing her mother of looking at them. Mrs Quest, hurt, said she had no intention of prying into Martha’s private concerns. This reminding her of nearer preoccupations, she inquired offhand, ‘And what’s all this I hear of your going out gallivanting in the evenings?’

  ‘I can only imagine.’

  ‘I thought you said you weren’t going out - what did you do with Caroline?’

  ‘She was not neglected, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘It’s all very well,’ cried out Mrs Quest, from the depths of her heart, ‘but when I dropped in yesterday, she was quite alone and crying. As I told Mrs Talbot at bridge yesterday, you are really quite irresponsible.’

  Martha was now alert with anger. ‘I was only out for twenty minutes buying vegetables. And what’s it to do with Mrs Talbot?’

  ‘You should get a boy, and then you wouldn’t have to go out shopping. It’s ridiculous, they’ll deliver, anyway.’

  ‘I thought you said it was dangerous to have a boy in a place where there was a small girl, because he was bound to rape her?’

  They were now on the verge of a real battle, when Caroline let out the sudden, startled wail of an infant woken too soon. Martha got up, but, seeing that her mother was there before her, sat down, telling herself it was all unimportant and she should learn not to mind.