COV02 - A Proper Marriage

by Doris Lessing

  ‘That’s the ticket, Matty,’ he said, relieved. He rose and said, ‘I must be getting back to the office, there’s so much work. Actually, I’ve been thinking I won’t come home to lunch. I’ll take sandwiches, we’re so understaffed.’

  She said, ‘Very well,’ casually.

  He looked swiftly at her, dismayed - he seemed to feel let down. ‘It’ll mean a long day for you,’ he prompted.

  ‘I’ll miss you terribly,’ she said at once, and he kissed her affectionately and went out.

  She immediately began chiding herself for her utter dishonesty. The instinct to comply, to please, seemed to her more and more unpleasant and false. Yet she had to reassure Douglas and kiss him before he left if she was not to feel guilty and lacking as a woman.

  Pushing aside this problem, she went inside to smarten herself up for Dr Stern. But Douglas was calling her from the veranda. His voice was authoritative. She went out to him. ‘Look at that, Matty,’ he said with the sentimental note she hated. She followed his self-consciously shocked gaze, and saw Caroline asleep, sprawled on a rug under the tree, while Alice sat over her, moving a frond of leaves through the hot still air.

  She looked at him, puzzled. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘She should be sleeping in her cot,’ he said, still in that stern, sentimental voice.

  ‘But, Douglas, you yourself suggested that she should sleep under the tree in this weather — it’s cooler than on the veranda.’

  He gave her a quick, rather ashamed look: the rather fattish reddish face expressed an official indignation, however. ‘Why can’t you have the cot moved out there?’ he asked.

  ‘But the girl stays there, Caroline isn’t left,’ said Martha helplessly. ‘You know,’ she added humorously, ‘what’s happening is this: You’re in a mood of disapproving of me, my mother’s got under your skin, and you’re just looking for a stick to beat me with.’ She laughed uncomfortably and looked at him, waiting.

  He went dark red, fidgeted; it was touch and go whether he lost his temper. He put his arms around her and said in a muffled, affectionate voice, ‘Oh, Matty …’ She kissed him, feeling like a traitor to herself, and off he went to the car, beaming and happy, giving Caroline as he passed a proud and proprietary look. Alice made a kind of seated curtsy towards the master, smiling bashfully, while she continued to wave the frond of leaves over the sleeping child’s face.

  Martha went indoors again. She felt that some kind of crisis had been precipitated. But every instinct she had shrank away from it. To wait, that was what she would like to do - to drift on, and then something would happen, she did not know what. A rescue of some kind - someone would say something; she was listening unconsciously for the right pattern of words again. She decided she would go and see her father, there was over an hour before she must be at Dr Stern’s.

  When she had changed from one brief, tight bright dress into another, and painted colour into a face she thought was pale and even rather ugly, she went out to the garden with the push-chair. Caroline was now half awake, blinking up at the tree that stretched over her. Her fists were curled up beside her head - she was a baby again. Then she saw her mother, smiled, and became a little girl, scrambling energetically to her feet. Martha put her into the push-chair, and told the girl she was free until five o’clock. Alice gave her that delightful shy smile, which showed white strong teeth, and went off singing to the back garden.

  Martha rapidly wheeled the chair through the patches of shade along the side of the street. Petals fell like a slow blue rain from the masses of sun-filled blossom overhead. Caroline watched them, her eyes rather strained with the midday glare. Martha thought anxiously that perhaps the child was not well after all - she was certainly pale. Perhaps she was not eating enough, perhaps she … Martha stopped herself, and went off along the other track of worry: what was wrong with Caroline was that she, Martha, did not feel the right way about her. Do I love her? she asked herself sternly, looking with steady criticism at the little girl. The emotion of love vanished as she examined it. At this moment she felt nothing but the bond of responsibility. Then she saw Caroline’s black eyes turn towards her, and the little face opened in a warm, confiding smile. Martha’s heart went soft with tenderness. At this, the other thought came driving in: It would be much better for her if I didn’t. I must be careful not to be too much interested in what she does. But even as she was making these resolutions she felt her face soften in a protective smile, and she thought despairingly, Oh, Lord, there’s no escaping it, she’ll hate me, too. Yet the idea of her and Caroline hating each other seemed absurd.

  But the child was certainly pale, Martha thought anxiously. And there was sweat on her forehead. She went faster; only another block to go. The wheels of the push-chair made two bruised tracks through the thick carpet of petals, the light dry scent of them came up all about them, a scent so faint it was like the smell of dryness itself, a ghost merely. The flowers of light, they were: she could see how the sun shaded a single flower from a light dry mauve that was almost white to a deep purple where the shade clung. She handed a blossom to the child and watched her turn it over and over in the sun; she wondered if the little brain was absorbing the same impressions that she did - then she stopped herself. Why should Caroline see what she saw? It was blackest tyranny even to want it or think it. But here she gained the house.

  Her father was asleep under a tree in a deck chair, a white handkerchief over his face. Her mother was nowhere to be seen. She hesitated; should she go into the house? But she hated it, with its tasteless furniture and its ugly pictures. But that was not the real truth. She could not see the things that had made the landscape of her childhood - a silver tray, a row of books, the pictures themselves - without sharp pain at seeing them here: they belonged to a ramshackle, silent house in the veld, they belonged to memory. She never entered the house unless she had to. She would spend hours with her father in the garden, but could not enter that house without a confused and painful disturbance which she did not understand.

  She wheeled the push-chair as silently as she could towards her father; but as she came near, he sat up and pushed the handkerchief from his eyes, and blinked at her, his face stiff and wooden from sleep. Then it lightened into affection. He said cordially, ‘Hullo, old chap, nice to see you.’

  She put Caroline down to play, and took the deck chair beside her father. ‘How are you?’ she asked, and waited patiently while he answered the question with preoccupied attention to detail. She gathered that on the whole he was rather better than usual.

  ‘But you don’t want to be bored with my troubles,’ he said hastily at the end, and asked, equally from habit, ‘And how are things with you?’

  She hesitated. She realized she had come here to complain to him about her mother. The banality of the thing stopped her. Besides, it troubled him so, any appeal to him. She said, ‘Oh, I’m fine.’

  But he had noticed the hesitation, and was looking at her keenly. She felt uncomfortable. Nine parts of his time, Mr Quest was safe in his inner world of memory and vague philosophical speculations; but he could come out of it abruptly, and be warm, shrewd, paternal. This, if she wanted, was one of the times. She hesitated again.

  He turned his eyes away, and looked at Caroline, who was rolling over and over on the grass. ‘That’s a nice kid,’ he observed, as if seeing her for the first time. Martha laughed, and again those very shrewd and knowledgeable old eyes turned towards her.

  ‘What’s the matter, old chap?’ he asked.

  Martha felt her lips tremble. She was shaking with dry sobs. She saw he was extremely embarrassed - he could not stand tears.

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ he was saying, ‘don’t cry, there’s a good bloke.’ He handed her his large handkerchief, and she wiped her eyes and smiled.

  ‘You’re looking tired,’ he remarked, the glinting dark eyes looking right into her.

  ‘I’m fed up,’ she said, in a trembling hard voice. ‘I’m so bored I could scream.
I can’t bear - anything!’ she concluded defiantly, looking straight at him. She waited for his judgment.

  ‘I’ve been thinking for some time things weren’t right,’ he remarked. He fished in his pocket, pulled out the old tin where he kept his cigarettes, and offered her one, lighting it with the careful old-fashioned courtesy he never forgot. ‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘I’ve not said anything to your mother.’ She looked sharply at him, but saw it was the truth. ‘She’s making various remarks,’ he added, embarrassed. ‘However …’

  Another silence. Mr Quest looked down at his hands in a way which was very familiar. They were large, fine, but rather limp hands. He appeared to be surprised they were his hands. He frowned worriedly at them and remarked, ‘I really must find my nail scissors, they’ve got themselves lost somewhere.’ Almost, he allowed himself to drift off; then he sighed, and shot her another speculative glance from under the stiff white cliffs of his eyebrows.

  ‘What did you do it for?’ he said suddenly, in a low reproachful voice. ‘It was so obvious it wouldn’t be any good. You weren’t even in love with him.’

  ‘Wasn’t I?’ she asked, surprised. She could not for the life of her remember what she had felt.

  ‘You weren’t in love with him, you’ve never been in love with anyone - anyone can tell it by looking at you,’ he said. That last sentence, cool, direct, the judgment of no less than an experienced man, caused her to look at him in respectful surprise. ‘I knew then it was a mistake - but no one can ever tell you anything. Can they, now?’ he added, softening it with a sort of affectionate irritation.

  ‘Well, so that’s that,’ he said, directing the irritation against life itself. ‘Marriage, I suppose, is a necessary institution,’ he went on after a pause, ‘but for you to get married at nineteen …’

  ‘You mean, I’ve made my bed and I must lie on it?’ she inquired reasonably.

  She was not at all prepared for what followed; she thought uncomfortably that this man not only knew her much better than she ever allowed herself to think, but seemed always to be a jump ahead of her. ‘You must think it all over, Matty. Whatever you do, you must do it sensibly.’

  He could only mean one thing. Yet never had Martha said to herself in so many words that she would leave Douglas. She felt that she would, sometime - but to say it was too frightening and definite.

  ‘Think it over. And don’t get yourself in the family way again until you’re certain,’ said Mr Quest firmly. They looked at each other. His eyes held an affection which made hers fill. But it was years since they had shown each other affection. ‘I’m very fond of you,’ he said in a low, embarrassed voice. ‘Oh, damn it all!’ he exclaimed, as his cigarette fell on to his trouser leg. He brushed off the sparks, and by the time things had been restored to order the moment had passed.

  He collected his thoughts carefully, and observed, ‘I never did like that man. I never could understand how you could marry such a - commercial traveller.’

  Feebly Martha said, ‘He’s all right, you know.’

  ‘Yes, but, Matty! He’s - for the Lord’s sake, why couldn’t you pick a man who is a man?’ Again Martha felt herself reddening under the experienced male look. ‘Anyone could see with half an eye that - However, that’s that,’ said Mr Quest irritably.

  Martha felt ashamed; at the same time she was supported. Everything would be all right, she felt.

  He lit another cigarette for her, and smoked his own in silence.

  ‘It’s going to rain soon,’ he observed, looking at the sky. The banks of dark foliage about them hung limp and heavy. Clouds of mauve blossom seemed to dissolve into the sky in quivering light. The deep blue overhead was packed with thunderous cloud masses.

  ‘The heat’s awful,’ said Martha, irritated. She could feel herself hot and sticky under her dress. All the same, she liked it: the heat sang through her like the movements of her own blood. ‘I’ve got to take Caroline to the doctor,’ she said without moving.

  ‘Anything wrong?’ he asked politely.

  ‘Oh, no, she’s quite well.’

  Mr Quest surveyed his grandchild, who was now industriously pulling lilies off their stems, and said, ‘The image of you at her age. Except for the eyes, of course. And the hair. Where did those eyes come from?’

  ‘Douglas’s father, I believe,’ said Martha. ‘Why?’, then, noting his look, she inquired, ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I’ve often wondered,’ went on Mr Quest calmly. ‘After all, you don’t hold with our morals; as far as I can see there’s nothing to prevent Caroline being someone else’s child.’

  Martha was extremely shocked. ‘You’re not suggesting,’ she said indignantly, ‘that I married Douglas under false pretences?’

  ‘I don’t see what’s to prevent you, if you’ve thrown over conventional morality. For the life of me I can’t see why you married him - there must be some reason.’

  ‘There wasn’t any reason,’ she said helplessly.

  ‘Then you must have been in the family way.’

  ‘I was, but I didn’t know it.’ Here she began to laugh; for some reason she could not think of it without finding it absurdly funny. ‘There I was pregnant, and I didn’t know it, though everybody else did …’ She laughed herself out, and sat wiping her eyes.

  ‘I don’t see the joke,’ he said reprovingly. ‘I think it’s appalling. However, there’s some comfort in the thought that your generation is no more competent than we were - though I don’t expect you to see it.’

  His look at her held a familiar irritation; the moment of understanding was over; almost at once he blew out a long cloud of smoke, watched it swirl away sluggishly into the blue air, and remarked in that other, introspective voice, ‘Did I ever tell you about that time when I came out of hospital and I was sure I was mad?’

  He knew that he had; his urgent glance nevertheless appealed that she should let him tell it again. She sat in silence for some minutes listening.

  ‘Anyway,’ he concluded at a tangent, ‘as far as I can see, everyone is mad. Do you know, Matty, that’s the only explanation for the world that I can see - everyone’s as mad as hatters.’

  She agreed politely, and, after a decent interval, said she must leave for the doctor’s. She put Caroline into the push-chair, and then kissed her father’s dry, papery cheek. He inclined it towards her absent-mindedly, murmuring, ‘Nice to see you, old chap. Drop in again soon.’ He looked at her - his eyes held a sly, evasive gleam. ‘There was something I wanted to say to you, what was it?’

  She did not smile, but said seriously, ‘I must go now, Daddy.’ For that was his way of saying that if he had come out of his cloud to be her father, give her advice, support her, he did not intend to be reminded of it later. He was not going to be held responsible. There was in his smile, however, a direct mischievous quality, rather comradely, which acknowledged the situation as plainly as words. Now she smiled back, ironically.

  As she wheeled the chair away, he said firmly after her, ‘Mad. All of us. Everyone.’ And with this he reached out for a book which lay face down on the grass, propped it on his knees, and began to read.

  By the time she reached the doctor’s rooms, she was ready to burst out angrily against the advice she expected him to give her. She could positively hear the male complacency with which Douglas had asked him to speak to her. And no doubt Dr Stern had replied in the same tone? ‘Women,’ they might have said; ‘you know what women are.’ Somewhere from the back of her mind floated up a memory of those words, and that tone — who was speaking? Why, of course, Mr Quest, with Mr Van Rensberg on the farm. There was that question of masculine laughter – conspiratorial almost, but most certainly deeply offensive. Mr Quest was one thing with men, another with his wife; Mr Quest half an hour before, and for ten minutes, had been something different again. Martha clung tight to that image of a man, and, thus supported, looked over at Dr Stern, waiting for him to put the pressure on. As she phrased it to herself.r />
  But Dr Stern was being as bland as he always was. He examined the child carefully, and pronounced her to be perfectly well. On Martha’s insistence, he repeated, ‘Perfectly well - I’ll issue a certificate to that effect whenever you like!’ Their eyes met briefly; there was a comprehension in his which both upset and consoled her.

  It appeared that he thought the interview over; but that was not what Douglas had implied. She said suddenly, ‘Perhaps I could see you for myself, for a moment.’

  He at once nodded to the nurse, yet another young woman in the glazed white overall, who took Caroline by the hand and trotted her off into the next room.

  The room was full of greenish light; light slid along the polished surface of the desk; the atmosphere of hushed professional intimacy was being re-established. Dr Stern had a card before him on his blotter. He was looking down at it, his pale flattish face without expression. He was looking very tired.

  ‘Well, Mrs Knowell?’

  Douglas must have been telling a lie, thought Martha. Dr Stern shot her a swift assessing glance, then pushed her card away and leaned back in his chair and yawned. ‘This weather makes me sleepy,’ he remarked conversationally. ‘And I was up all night with a baby. I don’t know why babies are always born at night - yours was, wasn’t it?’ Martha waited on edge for him to add some suggestion about her having another; he did not. ‘At this time of the year we all feel it. You look a bit done in yourself. I should take it easy, if I were you. And Caroline - all kids get pale and fretful, and we should try to keep them as quiet as possible. I get all my mothers along in October, worrying themselves sick. Just take it easy, take things easy, I tell them.’

  Martha noted the recurrence of the word ‘all’; Dr Stern was feeding that need in her to be absolved by being like everybody else; it was the need that sent her off to women’s tea parties. There was a part of her brain which remained satirical and watchful, even amused, while it tried to analyse the process by which Dr Stern handled her. But the watchful other person did not prevent him from playing her like a fish on a line, she thought.