A Proper Marriage (26 page)

As soon as Martha was home she rushed to wash off the experience in a deep clean bath. She now hated to think of the mud of the vlei in her pores. ‘Not,’ she remarked to the crouching baby, ‘that it makes any difference to you whether
it’s clean or dirty water outside, does it?’ The child lurched, and the whole balance of Martha’s stomach changed as it went into a new position. The skin on the lower slopes was breaking into purple weals; on the upper part of the thighs were red straining patches. Her breasts were heavy, bruised-looking. But the woman who only a few months before had enjoyed such ecstasies of self-worship had apparently died. She felt no more than a pang for the lost perfection. She traced the purple stretch marks with one finger, and felt something like satisfaction mingled with half-humorous appreciation of the ironies of her position. She reminded herself that she would never be perfect again. She told herself that never again would she look herself over, finding not one mark or faulty line on her body. It was gone, that brief flowering. It crossed her mind that perhaps, when it came to being old - at thirty or even sooner, for she was still proudly revolting away from the thought of being old - when it came to that moment of renunciation, perhaps she would feel no more than this amused ironical appreciation? But it was an intolerable thought, to be pushed indignantly away.

Later Willie and Douglas came in. It was nearly midnight and they were rather drunk. They played the role of humble apologetic husbands for a little; then Willie went off to Alice, and Douglas reverted at once to his usual self. ‘Sorry, Matty,’ he said nicely, ‘but I didn’t want to miss it - I knew you wouldn’t mind.’

By now she did not; the fact that she didn’t was making him uneasy, she saw. An old instinct came up, and she found herself grumbling humrously: who would be a woman, stuck at home, while the boys go off and have fun. He brightened as he listened. Then he came over to her and put his arms about her.

Chapter Three

Weeks before the babies were born, the two women sat waiting, while each twinge, each shift of pressure, a pang down the thigh, caused them to alert: was that the beginning of the pains? For both women had scorned Dr Stern’s calculations, and had arrived at dates a week earlier than his.

‘It might as well be born now,’ said Alice. ‘I’ve only got to give the finishing touches, so to speak.’ From which Martha understood that her feelings were shared, an incredulous relief that she had so far successfully sheltered the creature and it was now a human being. The fact that it might be born safely now was merely a step to believing that it would be.

But every morning they awoke to deserts of time. Both would turn over, to sleep away another hour or so. At least when they were unconscious time resumed its proper shape.

Then Martha’s self-allotted period was up. A day passed, then another. She rushed in a frenzy of disappointment to the other extreme, and exclaimed that there was no reason at all why she should not have to wait another month. Alice reached her day and passed it. Both women slumped into an irritated depression which made them snap at each other; they found each other repulsive to look at, exasperatingly self-absorbed. After spending every day together for months, they withdrew into solitude, alone with their swollen discomfort like animals in a cave.

One morning Willie rang to say that Alice had started pains at twelve the night before, and now had a son. At this announcement, making the extraordinary adventure so banal, Martha fell into a state of sullen resignation. She
drove out to see Alice, entering the nursing home with the feeling of a rightful inmate unjustly treated as a visitor, and found her seated bolt upright in bed, looking flushed, bright-eyed and very pretty, her black hair curled for the first time in months. She greeted Martha with casual triumph, and announced that nothing would ever induce her to have another baby, and if women knew what they were in for, they’d think twice. Martha heard this as if it were meant for someone else. If she had ever thought of childbirth as an ordeal, it was - she was convinced - because people were weak-minded enough to allow it to be one. She watched the gay and elated Alice with a hurt conviction that she was betraying her, Martha, by so completely repudiating the condition she had been in only yesterday. She might never have been so clumsy, heavy, waddling, misshapen.

Martha went home in despair. She informed Douglas that she was convinced the child would not be born for at least another month. Douglas pointed out that Dr Stern had predicted tomorrow. But Martha scorned Dr Stern. The contrast between Alice, now two beings, and herself, still one, was too great. Having finally given up, or so it seemed, the intention ever to have a baby at all, she spent the evening sorting books that would provide the basis for a study course on economics. She was sitting on the floor surrounded by them, when there was a small stabbing pain in her vitals. She frowned with alert concentration; then told herself that she was sick of imagining that every twinge was the herald of the end. She was about to get undressed when she felt another. There was no doubt it was of a completely different quality from all the other stabs and twinges. She prowled cautiously about the room, admonishing the child to keep still, so that she might listen better to the activities of her muscles. The child was seething and striving like a wrestler. It was momentarily still on the third stab of pain. Martha was lifted on a wave of excitement; she cried out, ‘Hurray, this is it!’ and, like some sort of savage creature, proceeded to dance in heavy lopsided triumph around the room. Never had she felt such a soaring elation as this.

Douglas, who was on the point of sleeping, awoke at once,
inquired practically if she was sure, and began to dress. He was delighted. It was a moment of pure delight for both of them, being alone thus, the lights of the city dimming all around them, while they were setting off on such an adventure. Martha announced her intention of walking to the nursing home. Douglas’s satisfaction in a wife who had such a carefree attitude was submerged in concern. She was put into the car, together with the case which had been packed for the last two months, and driven rapidly to the home. She had established, by the time she had reached there, that the pains were coming every five minutes; it troubled her that this was not what the book said was correct.

The nursing home was flooded with light. From some room down the corridor came a subdued chorus: several scores of babies were yelling there. A door opened; the orchestra swelled up into a cacophony of protest. It shut; the sound subsided again. A very young nurse came hurrying past. She saw Martha, exclaimed, ‘Oh, damn, here’s another!’ then suggested impatiently that Martha should sit down and wait. Martha sat obediently, while the distant orchestra swelled up and down as the door opened and shut; and nurses in uniform went hurrying past, carrying half a dozen bundled babies each, with the satisfied proficiency of waiters balancing several piles of plates at once. Finally a large, fat nurse went briskly past, wheeling a tea trolley with six bundles of babies on the top layer and six on the bottom. Martha saw a dozen twisted searching heads, a dozen open mouths nuzzling for absent breasts. Doors opened and shut. The sound of hungry crying diminished. All at once there was silence over the building; the unshaded lights glared down into an intensity of stillness, long white corridors, gleaming emptily away in all directions.

At last there emerged an immensely tall, thin, springlike woman, a long white glazed pillar of efficiency, from which peered two calm, brisk dark eyes. She laid her hand on Martha’s shoulder, consideringly, rocked her slightly back and forth a little, then said, ‘Let me see, what’s next? Oh, yes, of course, the forms.’ Martha and Douglas were invited
into an office, and found themselves engaged in that indispensable preliminary to every vital activity - filling in forms in triplicate. Douglas complied efficiently; Martha felt disappointed that this adventure should be interrupted by such banalities. When it was over, Miss Galbind told Douglas that he must go away and ring up in the morning. ‘Be a good boy, don’t ring up every five minutes - we’re coping with the Easter rush.’ While Martha subdued her indignation that she was included in anything so ordinary as an Easter rush, Miss Galbind received Douglas’s conscious grin with a relieved and even coquettish smile. Encouraged, she proceeded, ‘Why you young people restrict your fun and games to certain times of the years, I can’t think.’

Douglas laughed. The two stood together, laughing; while Martha waited on one side. She had decided that she wanted Douglas to go; she noted that while Miss Galbind was made ageless by the uniform - she could not be more than thirty-five – it also enabled her to call Douglas a good boy and to flirt with him.

Douglas squeezed her shoulder encouragingly, and said he would go off and find Willie so that they might give it a bang. With this he departed, rubbing his hands. A nurse came rushing down the long brightly lit corridor, calling out for Miss Galbind, who again invited Martha to sit down and wait a while - ‘Unless there is any hurry, dear?’ She went off on her soundless springlike feet. Martha was again left alone in the entrance hall. She walked up and down for some half an hour, from the big door that stood open, like a door of a sanctuary, showing the star-crowded sky and the distant glow of the city across the ridge, to another door - large, white, closed, on which was painted ‘No Admittance’. She was listening to the rhythm of her muscles. Five minutes to the second. She was extraordinarily impatient; it seemed to her intolerable that nature should be thus bound by the clock; all the needs of her being demanded that this baby should be born forthwith, without any further nonsense. In her mind, it was already born. A nurse who came past, holding her face down tenderly to a white silent bundle, aroused in Martha a flood of impatient tenderness. It was
reassuring to see that busy young woman in a moment of love snatched from the white-glaring, painfully shining, bare, heartless efficiency. Martha wondered if Alice was asleep. She wished she might go and talk to her. She looked longingly towards the door of her room, but did not dare to go towards it.

At last another nurse came hurrying along, and said in a harassed way that she was terribly sorry to leave Martha so long, but there were five babies being born, there wasn’t a bed to put Martha in just now – would she mind filling in time by having a bath?

Martha was shown into a bathroom, and told to ring the bell if she needed anything. She was undressing when a second nurse put her head around the door and said hopefully that she could see from Martha’s face that she was the sensible sort, not like some, who carried on in a way you wouldn’t believe. As she spoke, a door opened somewhere near, and Martha heard a woman screaming on a high note, ‘Mother … Mother … Mother …’

‘Listen to that!’ said the nurse, a girl of perhaps twenty, with a round, pink, disapproving face surrounded by light wisps of shining fair hair. ‘And she’s only just started.’

Martha understood, from the fresh face, and the voice, that the girl was newly from England; she at once felt the appropriate reaction: What right has
she
to criticize us? Besides, she was such a baby, thought Martha, from the immense superiority of her proud belly, her primed breasts.

The girl gave Martha another encouraging smile, and said that if everybody was as sensible as Martha, life would be much easier. With this she left her alone.

Martha flung her cotton smock off, with the triumphant thought that she would never have to wear it again. She heaved herself into the deep hot water and looked at her stomach. It was now almost square, mottled and streaked purple, glistening with strain. The baby was as tense as a knot; and Martha’s every muscle was braced with the intention of hurrying the process. She lay stiff in the water, her eyes on the watch. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. The pains came steadily, like the strokes of a bell, and, each time, Martha’s whole body tensed against them.

She lay there for nearly an hour; the water was getting cold. The woman across the corridor was moaning steadily. The noise was beginning to get on Martha’s nerves; or rather, her intention that it should not succeed in fermenting in her an angry irritation. Five minutes - Martha found herself exhausted, and lapsed into tired indifference. It was into this lull of absence that there shot a new intense pain, strong enough to make her catch her breath. She got quickly out of the bath, and put on the ugly calico garment provided for her. She caught a glimpse in the steam-dewed mirror of a fat, bedraggled shining-faced slut with a look of frowning concentration. She combed her hair, and made up her face. Thus armed, she walked out into a deserted corridor, still gleaming timelessly with regular white lights. Lines of shut doors stretched to either side. She walked to the right, and was met with a door marked ‘Labour Ward’. She stood there, listening to the woman moaning inside. It opened abruptly, and a nurse came out, who, seeing Martha, pushed her gently to one side, and then ran fast down the corridor and out of sight. Martha walked back in the other direction and found herself in front of an open door. Inside were half a hundred white cradles, silent under a low shaded light, and at a long central table sat the fat nurse whom Martha had seen wheeling the loaded trolley. She exclaimed, ‘What are you doing here?’ then glanced keenly at Martha’s face, and said in a different voice, regulated to kindness, ‘You fed up with waiting?’ She regarded Martha cautiously over a poised needle. Then she inched the needle into the white stuff she held, and pushed it away over the shining table. Everything in that room shone, even in the subdued light. The walls were very white, the floor black, with pools of shining light moving over it. The cribs were white, the nurse’s glazed uniform was white. Piles of white napkins, white baby clothes, were stacked everywhere. Martha suddenly found herself gripping the table’s edge.