A Proper Marriage (23 page)

Douglas was stern, subdued, authoritative. Martha was only too ready to find this impressive. Almost, she found her dissatisfactions fed. But it was soon clear that Douglas too was waiting for that
word,
that final clinching of emotion. He moved about the flat as if it was confining him, and suggested they should drop across to the Burrells. They met the Burrells and the Mathews coming in. They went in a body up to the Sports Club, where several hundred young people were waiting for the wireless to shape what they felt into something noble and dramatic.

By evening, the hotels were full. To dance would be heartless and unpatriotic; but to stay at home was out of the question. The bands were playing ‘Tipperary’ and ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ to packed, silent masses of people who seemed to find it not enough. They stood waiting. They were waiting for the King’s speech, and with a nervous hunger that began to infect Martha. The pillars of the long, low
white dance room were wreathed in flags; when the band struck up ‘God Save the King’ the wind of the music seemed to stir the Union Jacks hanging bunched over their heads. When the slow, diffident voice floated out over the crowd, it was noticeable that a stern, self-dedicated look was deepening on all the faces around her. Douglas, she saw, was standing to attention, his face set and proud. So were Willie and Andrew. Alice, however, appeared miserable; and Stella, whose facial muscles were set into a mould of devoted service, was steadily tapping her small gold-covered foot, not impatiently, but as if preserving some rhythm of her own. As for Martha, she found these three young men, stiff as ramrods, with their fists clenched down by their sides, rather ridiculous. After all, she was pointing out to herself, even while her throat muscles tightened irritably against an unaccountable desire to weep - she resented very much that her emotions were being roused by flags, music and solemnity against her will - after all, if any of these young men were to be asked what they thought about the monarchy, their attitude would rather be one of indulgent allowance towards other people’s weaknesses. She glanced sideways towards Alice, and Stella; involuntarily they glanced back, and, not for the first time or last time, acknowledged what they felt by a small, humorous tightening of the lips.

The speech was over. The enormous crowd breathed out a sigh. But they remained there, standing, in silence. The courtyards were packed, the bars crammed, the big room itself jammed tight. For some people it was clear that the word had been said – they were released. A few groups disengaged themselves from the edges of the crowd and went home: mostly elderly people. Everyone else was waiting. The band again struck up ‘Tipperary’. Then it slid into a dance tune. No one moved. Stern glances assailed the manager, who stood in acute indecision by the pillar. He made a gesture to the band. Silence. But they could not stand there indefinitely; nor could they go home. Soon people were standing everywhere, glasses in their hands, in the dance room itself, the verandas, the bars, the courts. The
band remained on its platform, benevolently regarding the crowd, their instruments at rest. At last they began playing music which was neutral and inoffensive; selections from
The Merry Widow
and
The Pirates of Penzance.
And still no one went home. The manager stood watching his patrons with puzzled despair. Clearly he should be giving them something else. At last he approached a certain visiting general from England, who was standing at the bar. This gentleman climbed up beside the band, and began to speak. He spoke of 1914. The date, and the words Verdun, Passchendaele, the Somme, were like a bell tolling, and led to the conclusion of the speech, which was: ‘… this day, September the third, 1939.’ Heightened and solemn it was; and the hours they had been living through, so formless and unsatisfactory, achieved their proper shape, and became a day they would remember always; it could be allowed to slide back into the past, and become another note of the solemn bell pealing the black dates of history.

There was nothing more to be said. The general, with a long, half-appealing look at his audience, as if to say ‘I’ve done my best,’ climbed from the platform, hastily adjusting his tunic. The band rose and gathered their instruments. Now they could all go home.

As the Knowells, the Burrells, and the Mathews reached the pavement, Stella remarked in a humorous, apologetic voice that she thought she was going to have a baby. It fell flat.

Alice said pleasantly, ‘That’s nice, dear.’ She clutched her husband’s arm, and said, ‘Do let’s go home.’ Her voice had risen in a wail of tears.

The days went by slowly, as slowly as if people had been wrenched out of a habit; as to live in exactly the same way as before was in itself something unexpected and impossible. A ship was sunk thousands of miles away. An army crossed to France, arousing in the older people memories that apparently fed them with certainty about what was going to happen next. In Britain, the Government bickered, and the newspapers put it into the language of dignified disagreement. Anticlimax deepened. It was as if the date for
the beginning of a tragic winter had been announced, and a late summer persisted in shedding a tentative sunlight.

Martha went back to her divan. Where the bright pinnacles of the trees in the park, persistent green against the persistent blue, showed in the open squares in the white wall, Martha sat watching patterns of sunlight shift and lengthen across the floor, watching the blue convolutions of smoke from her cigarette dissolve into a yellowish haze. Sometimes she stretched out her arm and received the warmth of the sun direct through her skin on behalf of the new creature within; it seemed to her that the sudden glow was answered by an increased vigour of its movements. Or, smoothing down the cotton stuff of her tunic over the swelling mound she watched the wall of flesh pulse, or how the weight of flesh distributed differently – as if a sleeper turned in his sleep. It was as if on the floor of a dark sea a half-recognized being crouched, moving sometimes against the change of the tides. Or she looked at the blue vein on her wrist and thought it swollen, and was glad because its larger weight of impurities guaranteed the fresh strength of the new red current that fed the infant. She had succumbed entirely to that other time. She had even tried to remember the flood of excitement that had swept through her, and so short a time ago, at the words: Only five months, four and a half months, four months … For now these seemed immensely long epochs; she could hardly see the end of a day from its beginning.

She was alone from early in the morning till dark. Douglas was spending all his time with the boys, rocking delightedly on every fresh current of rumour. It was understood that he was going on active service very soon. He felt guilty in his own delight in it. He even felt uneasy because Martha concurred so easily. For he did not understand that five months, in this new scale of time, seemed so immensely long. It was as if he was planning to leave her in a distant future. Naturally he would go! To put any pressure on him not to would be unpardonable — she would always refuse to play any such role. But the fact was, the outside noises of war seemed like increasingly distant thunder.

One morning there came a little note from Mrs Talbot saying it would give her great pleasure if dear Douglas and Matty would come with her to the station to see a friend off to England. Douglas reported that Elaine had become engaged to a young man from the Cape.

The long grey station was hot with evening sunlight. The train, that perfect symbol of the country, stood waiting. Behind the engine stretched the coaches; one or two white faces showed from the windows of each. At the extreme end, there was a long truck, like a truck for cattle, confining as many black people as there were whites in the rest of the train. In between, a couple of ambiguous coaches held Indians and Coloured people, who were allowed to remain provided no white person demanded their seats.

Halfway down the train was a concentration of white faces. These were young men, the sons of fathers who had been able to afford their learning to fly, but not to risk their jobs before war actually started. Outside the windows stood groups of well-dressed elderly people. At a window away from the others leaned a youth of perhaps twenty, not more. He was slight and pale, with a shock of light straw-coloured hair. His face was sensitive and intelligent, his eyes direct and blue, very serious. Elaine stood beneath, looking up at him. So isolated were they, that when Mrs Talbot appeared at the station entrance, in an impulsive movement of love which would carry her across to join her daughter, she was checked. Her eyes overflowed. She turned to Douglas and held out her arms, in a helpless gesture of emptiness, before slowly letting them fall.

Douglas at once went to her, laid a hand on her shoulder, and said stoutly, ‘Bear up, Mrs Talbot.’

Her whole body shook; she let her head droop beside his for a moment; then she raised a sad face. ‘It’s awful - they’ve only been together a few days.’

She looked across to where Elaine and her lover still gazed at each other. She took a step forward, and stopped as if afraid to disturb them. Douglas supported her and led her towards the window. Mr Talbot emerged from the entrance.
He nodded at Martha formally; again she felt herself instinctively shrink away from him. He was now looking at his wife. Douglas, with a small bow, released Mrs Talbot to her husband’s protection; but as Mr Talbot showed no signs of supporting her as she needed to be, Douglas replaced his comforting arm. Martha watched Mr Talbot’s hard close look at his wife. Again she felt shrinking discomfort, which was almost fear. Experience gave her no clue to that jailer’s look; but she could not remove her puzzled gaze from that saturnine pillar of a man who stood erect, dark, concentrated with watchfulness, just behind his wife. She felt protective towards Mrs Talbot. He remained perfectly still, watching, while his wife allowed her head to fall in a momentary gesture of despair on Douglas’s shoulder, and while Douglas squeezed and patted her shoulders consolingly and exchanged with her a smile of intimate sympathy. Finally Mrs Talbot took two helpless steps forward by herself, and was within the orbit of the lovers. Elaine smiled quietly out from that charmed circle at her mother; but immediately turned her eyes back towards the young man.

A few paces away a score of youths were saying goodbye to their families, who were preserving a brave cheerfulness which was becoming increasingly unbearable.

The engine suddenly let out a long shriek. Elaine gathered herself up in a movement as if she would fling herself after her lover, but she let herself sink back. Mrs Talbot was now clinging to the girl. The train moved; the sunlight flashed along its windows. A chorus of goodbyes broke out. They all watched the boyish, grave, charming face; then he lifted his hand in salute, and withdrew: the window was empty. Elaine remained standing on the extreme edge of the platform, stiff in the arms of her mother, gazing after the train, while the groups of people dissolved about them. Mrs Talbot was weeping openly. Elaine seemed to awaken, she smiled at her mother, put her arm about her, and walked beside her to the arched entrance: they went out of sight. Mr Talbot, whose gaze had never left his wife, nodded formally to Martha, gave a stiff bow to Douglas, and strode after the two women.

Douglas remained gazing after the train, whose smoke was settled in sunlit clouds over the platform. Martha, who knew he was feeling nothing but envy of the young men who soon would be in the Air Force in England, looked away from him. Close by, she saw Maisie, shaking the hands of an elderly couple who were urging her to come home with them. Their smiles were stiff and determined: Maisie had married their son that morning. They had been prevented by the taboos from saying that she was of the wrong class; now it was appropriate that their son’s wife should come home ‘at least for the evening’, as they repeated disapprovingly. ‘He would have wanted it,’ the lady murmured, sighing, to her husband.

Maisie was standing lazily before them, her weight slumped on to one plump hip, her loose fair curls shining in a haze of sunlight. There was an ink mark on her yellow skirt. She was repeating with a forbearance as marked as theirs, ‘Thank you, thank you so much, but I have an appointment this evening.’ Her face continued polite; theirs were increasingly resentful. At last, putting an end to it, she said directly, ‘I am sure you mean it kindly.’ And hurried away.

Her face changed into a strained blank gaze. Through it came a glimmer of recognition. She came walking towards Martha, the good-natured blue eyes heavy with shock. Martha instinctively put out a hand to steady her as she came to rest, still looking after the train.

‘So they’ve gone, eh?’ Maisie said. She was incredulous.

Douglas said kindly, ‘Bad luck,
I
’m sorry.’

She looked through him, turned the round blue eyes on Martha and said, ‘We got married this morning. I said to Dickie, “What’s the point? It makes no difference to us, and it only gets them down.”’ She jerked her shoulder towards her parents-in-law, who were standing hypnotized, listening a few paces off. ‘I said to him, “After all, with their ideas from England, they can’t help it, so why get them all upset for nothing?” But he’d got a bee in his bonnet, so I married him. Men are romantic, aren’t they?’ she ended on an
inquiry, wanting confirmation from Martha. The parents-in-law were exchanging looks in which, as Martha could see, their intention to show a democratic forbearance was rapidly vanishing under fury that this young woman should have no idea of her good fortune. Maisie, who had forgotten them, went on: ‘As long as it made him happy, I don’t mind. I wouldn’t mind having a baby, really,’ she added, frankly inspecting Martha. ‘You don’t show much, either, considering.’