A Proper Marriage (33 page)

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.

Mrs Quest brought in the small girl, and sat crooning over her, with an access of tenderness that touched and disarmed Martha; but Caroline was striving like an unwilling captive in the arms that held her. Mrs Quest laughed ruefully and set her down, and she unsteadily staggered back to the veranda, while the two women watched her with the same small, proud smile, in which was a touch of regret.

‘She’s very small for her age,’ said Mrs Quest dubiously. ‘I hope you are giving her enough to eat.’

Martha jumped as if stung. Mrs Quest rose hurriedly, and said she might just as well take Caroline now for a few days, it would give Martha a rest. Martha nearly protested, then allowed herself to slide into apathy – for why not? Then Mrs Quest added that Caroline needed to be fed up a little, and Martha turned away helplessly, silenced by the knowledge that she was certainly a failure, she could no more manage Caroline than Mrs Quest had managed her. Grandmothers, she reflected, falling back with relief on the abstraction, are better with their grandchildren than with their own children. And she even dwelt wistfully on a charming picture, Mrs Quest tenderly relaxed with Caroline, a picture that had the same soothing, ideal quality as that Mr Maynard saw when he looked at
her
with the child.

In a few minutes Mrs Quest had left with Caroline, and the flat was empty. Martha was, as always, uncomfortably surprised that as soon as Caroline was away from her it was as if she had never had a child at all; whereas as long as they
were together that invisible navel string twanged like a harshly plucked string at every movement or sound the child made. She sat down and consciously tried to pull herself together; she felt herself to be a hopeless failure; she was good for nothing, not even the simple natural function that every female should achieve like breathing: being a mother. As she sat there, her eye came to rest on a half-closed drawer from which papers protruded. She jumped up, and, without reading what she had written, tore them up. It was a letter to Douglas. She had fallen into the habit of writing him long letters about – as he put it – what she really felt. The letters that reached him, however, were amusing accounts of Caroline’s development, Alice’s struggles with her son, Stella’s enjoyable sufferings in childbirth. Pride forbade her to post her ‘real’ letters, which were in effect passionate complaints that he had ever married her if he intended to leave her at the first opportunity; despairing admissions of incompetence with Caroline; and her hatred of the life she led.

The letters she got from him filled her with dismay she would not acknowledge. The incidents of his army life he found as humorous as she did hers. Besides, he continually urged her broad-mindedly, as was the spirit of their compact, to get out and have a good time; which she interpreted, from a deeper instinct than she would admit to processing, as the voice of guilt itself.

She was about to sit down and describe the visit of Mr Maynard in terms which would make him sound like an avuncular priest, when the telephone rang.

She approached it with caution. Since that moment three nights before when six or seven young men had burst in to claim their comrade, it had been ringing with suggestions that she might go to this dance or that. She had reacted with stiff coldness. She was hurt that the victim himself had made no sign. She had not told the whole truth to Mr Maynard. Thomas Bryant had collapsed on to the divan in more than alcoholic breakdown. He had wept on her breast like a child - he had lost his nerve, he would never be able to go up again, he wished he had been killed when the
aircraft had tipped over on its wing that morning. Martha had cradled him, and felt such a depth of emotion that afterwards she could not bear to think of it. It was terrible to her that weakness should have so strong an appeal. And yet it had been a perfect intimacy - for the few minutes before he went limp into sleep. That he should
not
have rung up seemed to her like a slap in the face. Now she took down the receiver, and a hearty embarrassed voice thanked her for holding his head; it was a jolly good show, he said. Then, after a short pause, he said it was a lovely day; Martha laughed in amazement; encouraged by this sound, he invited her for dinner that night. Martha agreed at once.

She ran off to prepare her dress and herself for the occasion: it was shortly after midday. While she bathed and curled her hair and anointed her body, her whole being was dedicating itself anew. She might have never been the wife of Douglas and the mother of Caroline. Her fantasies of the night ahead centred on the intimate talk, a continuation of that existing intimacy, a complete truthfulness which would sanctify what would follow. This, however, never approached even the threshold of consciousness. At the most she imagined a kiss. But until the kiss, fantasy must sleep. She was crying out for a romantic love affair; she had been waiting for months for just this moment; not for one second had the idea entered her head. There is no such thing as a female hypocrite.

When Thomas Bryant entered the flat at eight that night, she had been dressed and ready for over an hour. This was one of the evenings, she knew, when she was beautiful - though why the spirit of attraction should visit her as it did, she did not know; no man had ever explained it to her.

She welcomed him casually, like an old friend; she saw at once he did not recognize her. He looked uncertainly about the flat, and then at the divan on which he had slept.

‘Mrs Knowell?’ he inquired formally.

Martha laughed involuntarily; saw his startled shamed look; then hastily covered for him: he remembered nothing of what had happened, and she must not tell him. ‘It was a
terrible evening, wasn’t it - we were all drunk as owls,’ she remarked flippantly, and saw the relief on his face.

‘I’m very sorry,’ he said. ‘You must let me make amends.’

She offered him a drink, and he arranged his length carefully on the divan, as if he distrusted it. He was very tall and rather slight, though broad-shouldered. He was fair, with a clear, ruddy English skin, and blue eyes inflamed by flying and late nights. They observed Martha with approval. The boys had told him she was a nice little piece; it was an understatement. He could not remember ever having seen her before; he remembered a crowd of vaguely amiable girls. He had decided to take her out to dinner somewhere where he would not meet his friends, behave pleasantly, take her home early, and take care not to see her again. Something like that was owed to a woman whom he remembered dimly as a maternal and practical presence. Now he changed his plans instantly: he would take his prize among his brother officers.

Martha, examining him, saw that he wore his uniform carelessly; that his whole person expressed a sort of humorous resignation to the absurdity of uniforms and war - a studied, self-conscious repudiation of anything serious, particularly his own death, which, since his training would be complete in a couple of weeks, was not likely to be delayed longer than a few months at most. She felt a pity for him which was betrayed even in the way she handed him a glass of whisky; he might already be a figure on a war memorial.

He tossed it down, and said, ‘Let’s go.’ He stood up. ‘Shall we dance instead?’

She said immediately she would love to. Somewhere in her was spreading a shadow of desolation. She felt insulted. She became very gay.

All the way to the camp he asked her minute questions about the make of the car, its performance, how much it cost to run. She thought of cars as objects invented to take one efficiently from one place to another; she had never really believed anyone could be seriously interested in such matters. He was offering her the merest small change of conversation; and she answered politely.

At the gates in the great black fence, the sentry stood aside as the young officer held out a piece of paper. There was a newly built hall, surrounded by ranks of parked cars. They entered the hall. It was already full. A band of uniformed men played from a platform.

Martha looked around and knew all the women present. A year ago, they had been dancing in the arms of the local men; now they were moving with equal compliance in the arms of the Air Force, and using with perfect ease the new language. She saw Alice dancing past. She waved. Alice waved back, then stopped, spoke to her partner, and came over.

The young officer stood aside politely while Alice took Martha’s elbow and said, ‘Hey, Matty, so we’re back in circulation - it’s awful, isn’t it?’ She let out her high giggle, and added, ‘I’m browned off with everything. I don’t see why we shouldn’t – God knows what Willie’s up to up north.’

Martha, who had felt a stab of jealous shock on behalf of the absent Willie, now agreed instantly that Douglas always said she must go and enjoy herself, At this Alice suddenly smiled, the women smiled ironically, exchanged a look, and separated.

Thomas Bryant returned to Martha, and edged with her around in the space between the dancers and the tables. She suddenly stopped. She had thought of this as going out with Thomas Bryant; she had imagined being with
him.
She saw a long table, around which sat a dozen young officers, half of whom had rung her during the last week. She looked at Thomas, unconsciously reproachful. He glanced curiously at her face: she was scarlet. He avoided looking at his friends, who had already made a space for them, and led Martha to another small table. They sat. Her back was now to the other table. Glancing at him, she saw him looking over her shoulder at his friends. She turned swiftly, and saw them grinning at him; his face expressed a half-sheepish triumph. She hated him. When he summoned the black waiter and suggested champagne, she said she would drink lemonade. They got up to dance, like two wooden things.
He was drinking heavily again. After a few dances, he had sunk into the collective wash of emotion; the whole roomful of people was dancing in the anonymous throb of music. That was what he most wanted, she could see: not to have to think, to let himself go into it, to let his mind flow out and away from the terrible necessity of his days. And he wanted to be with a girl whose face he would not have to remember next day. Well, then, he would. She loosened and danced in the beat of the drums.

Quite soon, a grinning young man tapped Thomas on the shoulder. ‘Why don’t you come and join us?’

He looked awkwardly at Martha; she said at once, ‘Why, we’d love to.’

At the end of that dance she went easily with him to the other table. She disliked him now so much it did not matter what she did. She was now that woman who says, ‘So that’s what you want me to be - very well, then, I’ll show you how well I can do it.’ She danced cheerfully with the young men to whom she had been so cold on the telephone. Choosing a moment when Thomas was at the bar, she asked one of his friends to tell him she had a headache - she chose the most casually insulting formula she knew - and left, quickly, to find her car. She was now trembling - with cold, she told herself. It was a cold night, the great stars glittering in their patterns as they had on so many dancing nights.

As she got into the car, she saw two people sitting in the back seat. A young woman, lazily disposed in one corner, supported the head and shoulders of a young officer who lay stretched along the seat. Martha peered through the half-dark and saw that the girl was Maisie. Both were asleep.

She sat for a while, watching the bright soft dresses of the women flowing against the neat close shapes of the men as couples passed up and down the steps in the yellow light that fell from the apertures of the hall. Then she grew impatient, and leaned over and shook Maisie’s bare white shoulder.