COV02 - A Proper Marriage

by Doris Lessing

  ‘Oh!’ breathed Mrs Talbot.

  Mrs Maynard turned her head slightly, and surveyed the areas of wrinkled burnt skin about the ruched pink taffeta. ‘I should say that men took an interest in her,’ she observed suddenly, her lips compressed over a laugh. Mrs Talbot and she exchanged a rapid malicious glance.

  A short pause, while Mrs Lowe-Island looked from one to the other, smiling sourly. She blundered on: ‘I hate to think what she spends on clothes.’

  Mrs Maynard now surveyed the small puffed pink sleeves on Mrs Lowe-Island’s upper arms, and remarked, ‘It is so pleasant to sit through a dull committee with a woman like Mrs Anderson, who is always a thing of beauty. It’s a rare talent to dress suitably for one’s age - it seems.’

  Again Mrs Lowe-Island appeared puzzled. Mr Maynard inquired, ‘So she’s already on committees, is she?’

  ‘She is coming to talk things over tonight,’ said his wife discouragingly.

  ‘What! In the inner councils already!’

  ‘Her husband is being so efficient with the recreation centres,’ said Mrs Talbot.

  ‘I can imagine. And what’s she providing - the entertainment?’

  Mrs Maynard frowned. ‘Mrs Anderson is really very efficient.’

  ‘I was always convinced of it. There’s nothing I admire more than that kind of efficiency. The art of living in a small town is one of the most difficult to acquire. Or perhaps it is inborn?’ Here he looked full at Mrs Talbot; her eyes veiled themselves, she faintly coloured.

  Alert to danger, Mrs Maynard glanced from one to the other, and said energetically, ‘Perhaps you and Mrs Talbot might discuss it later - privately. As you usually do,’ she added, with a pleasant smile. ‘Because you are going to be late for your meeting.’

  She saw Mrs Lowe-Island’s small black eyes fastened on Mrs Talbot. Mrs Maynard rose, and laid her hand lightly on Mrs Talbot’s shoulder. ‘Bless you, dear,’ she said. Mrs Talbot’s face did not change at all; her shoulder shrank away slightly, then stood firm under the slight pressure.

  Mr Maynard was looking warningly at his wife. She met his eyes, and raised her heavy black brows mockingly. Then she allowed her hand to slide away from the grey chiffon shoulder, and went towards the living room. They all followed her.

  It was a long, low-ceilinged room, painted white, with pale rose-and-green hangings. It was a room appropriate for tea, cards and gossip; and in the middle of it stood Mrs Maynard, upright, hands on her hips, looking at her card indexes and files.

  ‘Mrs Brodeshaw is probably dropping in later,’ she informed Mr Maynard.

  ‘So the Players are extending their scope?’

  ‘Not Mrs Player, Mrs Brodeshaw,’ Mrs Lowe-Island said, and stopped. Her stiff bulky little body quivered under the pink taffeta; the tolerant silence was another affront. She looked from one to another discreet face, and dropped into an ingratiating smile.

  ‘I wish success to your councils,’ Mr Maynard said, and strode off across the veranda.

  ‘I do think it’s odd that Mr Maynard should go to the meetings of those people.’

  ‘So boring, I should have thought,’ said Mrs Maynard casually. She seated herself at the card table, split the seal off a pack, and remarked, ‘It wouldn’t be a bad thing if we could get a representative of the Left League, Book Council, whatever it is.’

  ‘Oh, yes, they are such terribly sweet people, really,’ urged Mrs Talbot.

  ‘You keep in touch so cleverly with everything.’

  Mrs Lowe-Island flushed again and insisted, ‘They tell me they have niggers at their meetings.’

  Mrs Maynard half closed her eyes, and remarked, ‘Aggie, dear, there are parts of Africa where Africans sit in Parliament.’

  ‘But we don’t want that to happen here.’

  ‘It surely depends how it happens?’ Her smile at Mrs Lowe-Island was an invitation to allow the mills of thought to begin to turn; but Mrs Lowe-Island snapped, ‘I wouldn’t sit down in the same room with a kaffir.’

  ‘No one has asked you to yet.’

  Mrs Lowe-Island swelled; then the round reddened little face twisted itself into a smile; the small black eyes wavered, uncertain.

  ‘Will you cut?’ inquired Mrs Maynard.

  ‘What I think is,’ breathed Mrs Talbot, ‘everybody should get together and learn to like each other. I mean, when you meet anybody, you like them really … I don’t see why people should dislike each other, and all this bickering …’

  ‘Bless you, dear. Would you like a higher chair? Your pearls are getting mixed up with the cards.’

  Mr Maynard, having looked at his watch and discovered he was late, amended his pace very slightly, and made his way under the moon-filled branches of the trees which lined the avenues that led towards young Mrs Knowell.

  His mind was working comfortably along two different channels. He was thinking that in the ‘Left Club’ or ‘Socialistic League’ - his contempt for the organization was demonstrated by the fact that he could never remember, or rather, refused to use, its proper name - were some very able men, who, if the Government had any sense, would be made use of in this national emergency. For the purposes of his dissatisfaction he chose to think of the Government as some clearly defined machinery with which he had nothing to do. Besides, he was an amateur, a looker-on, a dropper-in; he was not implicated. Therefore he turned over in his mind the names of the men in question like a woman fingering silks she had no intention of buying. But there rose the vague thought, One might have a word with old Thompson-Jones.

  At the same time, he was conscious of a steady chagrin which he defined as due to Martha. He was a handsome man; many women had found him so; Martha was an attractive young woman; there was nothing in the laws of nature to prevent her from thinking of him as a man; it was clear that never, not for a moment, had she done so. To that woman who makes a man feel for the first time that he is getting old is due a regard which is not so easily defined. He remembered the moment yesterday when she had leaned forward and asked emotionally why he cared about her; and thought of it as an opportunity lost. He knocked on the door of the flat, and waited, suitable remarks preparing themselves on his tongue.

  Martha appeared at once, so that he was reminded he was late; and he apologized. He thought she looked very young, and rather appealing. He turned out the light for her, shut the door behind her, and, as they descended the broad stone stairs, tucked her arm under his. She suffered it to remain there a moment, then it dropped out from its own weight.

  ‘You’ll be cold,’ he remarked. She wore one of her slips of coloured linen, arms and legs bare.

  ‘But it’s so hot,’ she said.

  He conceded to himself that for him a coat was something one put on when one went out in the evening. For Martha there was a different approach, apparently, He reflected that his wife had sets of clothes suitable for occasions; he could deduce from what she wore what she intended to do. That sage-green lace, for instance, was essentially for bridge with ulterior purposes; whereas, had she worn bunchy silver brocade, he would have diagnosed a late intimate call from the wife of the Prime Minister, or even the Governor’s wife.

  Whereas Martha might have been going shopping, for a picnic, or to the pictures.

  She continued to walk beside him in silence. The moon was large, clear silver, directly above them. The little town was glaring white, black-shadowed, everything sharp and defined. The road glittered saltily. The street lamps were round bright-yellow globes.

  ‘Do you often go to these meetings?’ inquired Martha.

  ‘Occasionally.’

  ‘What are they talking about tonight?’

  Mr Maynard considered. ‘I don’t know.’ Then, seeing her surprise: ‘The deficiencies of education, I believe.’

  ‘Well, that should keep them busy.’

  ‘Surely education’s better than it used to be?’

  She was puzzled. ‘Oh, you mean in England.’

  ‘You consider they should discuss
education here?’

  ‘We live here.’

  Mr Maynard considered this in silence.

  Aggressively she said, ‘They just talk and talk.’

  ‘I apologize,’ he began, bringing unnecessary batteries of sarcasm to bear, ‘for taking you to a function of which you disapprove so strongly.’

  And now she slipped her arm into his. ‘It’s very sweet of you. It really is.’

  At once he tightened the grip of his elbow intimately. She impatiently pulled hers away, then shot him an apologetic and embarrassed look. ‘It’s so hot,’ she said again.

  As they turned the corner of a street into that small area of the town which was the business area, she stopped and looked down a few hundred yards of shop fronts and office blocks. ‘It’s growing with the war, isn’t it?’

  He had never really considered it as a town at all; he tried to see it through Martha’s eyes, and failed. ‘You’ve never been out of the colony?’ His voice was compassionate.

  She burst out, ‘I hate it. I loathe it. I wish I could take the first train out of it. It’s like a – Victorian novel. They talk about their servants at tea parties, and say the lower orders are ungrateful. They even go so far as to pay them twelve pounds a year, like our grandmothers, and say they are spoilt. It’s all so boring, things happen the same way over and over again. And in fifty years’ time, people will be saying about now, “How backward they were then!” But in the meantime, they fight and make speeches and write articles over every sixpence, and all the time with moral language, religion, and all the rest of it. What’s it all about, that’s what I want to know? It’s all so stupid and unnecessary.’

  ‘We’ll be late,’ he said, walking forward hastily - not away from the idea, which seemed to him sensible, but from the emotion she put into it. ‘For a girl of your age, I can think of better things to care about.’ There was no reaction to this. After a while he conceded, ‘I admit that this place is only to be borne by those, like myself, who have had their fill of big cities and know that there is really very little difference - We turn in here, I believe.’

  They were now in the street which lower down became very disreputable and petered out in the slums where the Coloured people lived. They entered a large old, ugly building, and began to mount a spiral iron staircase that was lit by one dull-yellow electric bulb.

  ‘I worked here once,’ said Martha.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Oh, about two years ago.’ Clearly, it might have been a decade. ‘You know what’s so awful about you?’ she inquired angrily.

  ‘I shall be pleased to be told.’

  ‘You don’t really care about anything.’ She was sullen and aggressive. Then, looking at him, she was overcome with discomfort, and let out a short embarrassed laugh which was half flirtatious. ‘Well, you don’t, do you?’

  They stood now on the second landing, which was in the darkness. Above them, over several twists of the iron stairway, came a glimmer of yellow. Doors stood shut and discreet all around them. There was a faint stale smell of urine.

  Mr Maynard suddenly put his arms about Martha, kissed her, and said, ‘So, I don’t?’

  She gave him a cold shocked look, pulled away, and went up the stairs in front of him. He followed resignedly.

  On this third landing, the doors which studded the dim and dirty corridors stretching away all around them showed brown and peeling under that dingy yellow light. One door stood open, light spilled out, there were people inside. On the door was ‘Contemporary Politics Discussion Circle’ in small white letters on the cracked brown paint. They entered. The meeting had already begun. They slipped into empty spaces separated from each other. Martha looked around, and saw faces she had seen before.

  It was a large room, with discoloured whitewashed walls, a bare board floor, yellow electric light bulbs hanging from loosely knotted flex. There were rough wooden benches all around the walls. A plain wooden table stood at one end, and from behind it spoke a long, bony, bespectacled figure - Mr Pyecroft himself. He was speaking with great deliberation, mouthing over the long, many-syllabled words. There were about twenty people present, among them three young men in the grey-blue uniform.

  On the walls hung two portraits, one of Mr Nehru and one of Lenin. She had never seen a picture of Lenin before, and the name had had a flavour of something unpleasant, furtive, shady. She saw a strong man, gazing calmly into the future over his little pointed beard. The contrast between the two images confused her. She began to listen to what was being said. Mr Pyecroft was talking about the provisions for education for village children in Wales in 1910; and although occasionally a match scraped or feet shifted, everyone was listening absorbedly. Martha thought that in 1910 Lenin was alive; she saw him against the background of Tolstoy and Chekhov; in 1910 children in Wales were suffering conditions not much better than Russian children - why, then, had there been no Lenin in Wales? And the way African children lived now … she looked around the room. If there existed a Lenin here, presumably he would be in this room? She looked from face to face, and her spirits sank; and she had again ceased to listen.

  Opposite her she saw a small dark girl smiling, and recognized Jasmine. She smiled back. Jasmine’s eyes turned with a look of inquiry towards Mr Maynard, and Martha felt herself grow hot. She saw Mr Maynard through Jasmine’s eyes. She was embarrassed. He was seated on his part of the wooden bench stiffly, taking more room than anyone else, arms folded, legs stretched out in front, eyes lowered to the floor. The dark, decided face showed no sign of emotion of any kind. Yet from time to time he lifted the bold hazel eyes and looked with a peculiar intentness at various people: Mr Pyecroft himself, Mr Perr, Mr Forester. This intent gaze made Martha uncomfortable, as if she were responsible for it; then, seeing a derisive, critical smile on Jasmine’s face, and one that was meant to be noticed, she reacted in the other direction: in comparison with these careless, nondescript people. Mr Maynard was impressively dignified and sure of himself. If he were cut across, he would show solid clean grain right through; he was all of a piece.

  But Mr Pyecroft was still talking. He was now in Scotland and quoting a passage from Scott. People stirred and livened and laughed as Mr Pyecroft read; a fresh current of life ran through them, and they shifted themselves more comfortably for another effort at listening.

  Then Martha saw everybody’s eyes turn towards the door. A tall, stooping man stood there smiling; he was an African, dressed carefully in shabby clothes that had been darned and patched everywhere. He carried a briefcase under his arm. Mr Pyecroft stopped for him; he had continued talking as Mr Maynard and Martha came in.

  Everyone nodded and smiled, made way for him beside them. Half a dozen packets of cigarettes were at once stretched out towards him. He seated himself between Jasmine, who smiled at him like an old friend, and a small fair woman whom Martha remembered seeing before somewhere. He accepted a cigarette, and looked towards the speaker; at once everyone, reminded of their obligations, did the same. But Martha continued to look at him. This was the first time in her whole life, and she was now twenty-one – the first time in a life spent in a colony where nine-tenths of the population were dark-skinned - that she had sat in a room with a dark-skinned person as an equal. Again her spirits lifted, and she felt these were people to live and die for. She looked with envy at Jasmine, and at the fair woman on the other side, who had been whispering something to him. She was a tiny, thin creature, with fair braids wound around her head. She had a small, round, bright-coloured face, small brown quick eyes, a big generous nose, a wide emotional mouth. On her other side sat a large, fattish young man, pale, with black-rimmed spectacles: Jewish obviously, and very much an intellectual. From her whispering to the African, she turned to him, the young man, and they exchanged a warm, intimate, deep smile. Martha saw they were in love; passion shone out all at once from the dingy room, and even from the measured sentences of Mr Pyecroft. Martha warmed to them, warmed to them all. Then, directed by another cautiou
s sardonic look, this time from the tiny fair girl’s young man, she looked towards Mr Maynard, who was steadily regarding the African under his heavy brows.

  Martha caught a whisper from near her: some women were talking. One said, in a low humorous voice, ‘That’s Magistrate Maynard – he fined Mr Matushi two pounds or twenty days last week.’ ‘Dirty bastard,’ came the reply. A great many eyes turned towards Mr Maynard, who was impervious to such atmospheres, obviously, for he remained calm and absent in his space of bench, a monument of detachment.

  Mr Pyecroft had raised his voice. ‘And now for my conclusions,’ he said. He took off his spectacles, paused, laid down his papers. Eyes which had been directed at Mr Maynard, at Mr Matushi, centred on him again. Martha found herself gripped by what he was saying. The dead statistics, cautious assessments, hedged facts, were flowing together outwards on words that had the nobility that emanated from the picture of Lenin, from the couple in love, from Mr Matushi. She listened as if to her own deepest voice speaking. People, said Mr Pyecroft, were warped and twisted by the system; vast capacities for good lay in everyone; only the tiniest proportion of humankind had ever been given what was needed to raise them from brutes; he painted a picture of the world crowded with miserable, stunted, light-starved creatures, like animalcula writhing under a stone which needed only to be removed. But by Mr Pyecroft? If one shut one’s eyes and listened to the words, then anything was possible, any belief, any vision of good; if one looked at him, that cautious lean gentleman, with his humorous, almost jaunty self-deprecation, the vision collapsed. He was flushing an extraordinarily moving description of new and ennobled humanity with the dry phrases, ‘And so much for the set piece of the evening; now I’ll leave the subject open for discussion.’

  People stirred, and moved their limbs about: those benches were very hard. No one was eager to begin. After a long minute’s silence, Mr Pyecroft remarked humorously that it appeared he had exhausted the subject. At once Mr Perr, in considered words, presented what he described as ‘a small contribution’. It appeared that Mr Pyecroft had misquoted some figures from Scotland. Then the young pale Jew next to the fair girl began to speak. His English was slow, correct, and he would pause without embarrassment for as long as he needed to find the exact word. He asked them to consider the following proposition: In countries where there had been education for the working classes for any length of time, no revolution had been achieved. Revolutions occurred in countries where the masses had ‘never been made-’ he hesitated over the word - ‘moulded - formed,’ he brought out triumphantly, ‘by the ruling classes.’ Could there, then, be a case, he asked them to consider, for progressives such as themselves to fight against popular education instead of for it?