A Proper Marriage (34 page)

Maisie woke at once, opening her eyes straight into Martha’s and smiling in her easy friendly way. ‘Hey, Martha, have we been asleep?’ She looked down at the man, whose
face was half buried in her bosom, and yawned. ‘I picked your car because I knew you wouldn’t mind. Lord, this boy’s heavy.’

‘Who is he?’

‘He’s the Air Force.’

‘Well, of course.’

‘You know, Matty, I like these English boys, don’t you? It’ll be awfully hard to go back to our own after knowing them. They treat us quite differently, don’t they?’ A pause, and another yawn. ‘I never get any sleep. They read more books. They talk about things. They’ve got culture, that’s what it is.’

Maisie’s husband had been killed flying in Persia. That had been six months before.

‘He’s very nice, this one,’ she went on reflectively. ‘He wants to marry me. Men are funny, aren’t they, Matty? I mean, the way they are always wanting to get married. I suppose it’s because they are going to get killed.’

‘Are you going to marry him?’

‘Well, I suppose so, if it’s going to make him happy. I don’t see the sense in it, myself. I look at it this way: Supposing he doesn’t get killed after all - a lot don’t, they just finish their turn, and then go to the ground. Well, then, he’ll be English, and he’ll want to live in England. But I like it here and then we’ll be married and have to get divorced.’ She shifted herself, with infinite gentleness, into a different position, carefully catching her lower lip between white teeth as his head rolled into the crook of her arm. He opened his eyes, stirred, sat up.

‘This is Matty. I told you - she’s all right.’

‘How do yo do?’ inquired an educated English voice.

‘How do you do?’ said Martha.

‘Do you mind giving us a lift back to town, Matty? That’s why we came into your car. Don hasn’t got to fly tomorrow. He’s got a weekend pass.’

Martha backed out, and drove through the big gates past the sentry. ‘When are you getting married?’ she asked.

‘Tomorrow,’ said the young man promptly, in a tender
proprietary tone, to which Maisie responded good-humouredly, ‘Oh, you’re a crazy kid.’

Martha observed in the mirror that they were once more embraced, and was careful not to speak again. She was feeling cold and lonely and left out. Now she regretted behaving so stiffly with Thomas.

She was able to drive to Maisie’s room without having to ask for instructions. She stopped outside another white gate, banked with shrubs whose glossy leaves glinted in the starlight. She waited for them to realize that the car was no longer in motion.

Maisie came unhurriedly out of the embrace, saying, ‘Thanks a lot, Matty, do the same for you sometime.’ As she got out, linked to her young man, she inquired politely, ‘And how’s your Douggie?’

‘He’s doing fine.’

‘Did you hear that a crowd of our boys tore Mogadishu to pieces a while back? You know how they are when they get into one of their moods.’

Don politely thanked Martha. ‘It’s very kind of you.’

‘Not at all.’

He bent his head over Maisie’s fair gleaming curls as they walked into the house where she had her room. Martha watched them going inside, cheeks laid together, dancing a half-mocking half-dreamy sliding step. She wished that her principles would allow her to cry. But this would not do; she efficiently let out the clutch, and drove herself back to the flat, feeling herself to be the only cold, sober, isolated person in a moon-drugged city given over to dancing, love and death. She felt as if she had shut the door against her own release. Then she remembered that tomorrow night she would be taken to a meeting packed full — she hoped against hope - of dangerous revolutionaries. She was enabled to retire to bed alone with philosophy.

At half past seven the following evening, Mr Maynard folded his napkin and rose from the dinner table, although the meal had reached only the roast-beef stage and there were guests.

‘Spending an evening with your chums?’ inquired his wife
briskly. The word ‘chums’ was the one she used to deprecate that group of elderly gentlemen who were Mr Maynard’s favourite company, and whom she felt as an irritating but not dangerous comment on her own activities.

‘No, I’m dropping down to the Left people.’

The ladies let our arch little cries of dismay. They were Mrs Talbot, pale in clouds of grey chiffon and pearls; Mrs Lowe-Island, her stubby, sunburnt sixty-year-old body upright in pink taffeta; and Mrs Maynard herself - sage-green lace and an amber necklace that fell to her waist.

Mr Maynard was prepared to forgo his pudding, but not his brandy; he sipped it standing. Mrs Lowe-Island, born to be that indispensable lieutenant who must say and do what her superiors find beneath them, cried, ‘Now that everything is so serious, and the Huns are attacking us in North Africa, I can’t see how anyone can waste time with a bunch of agitators - it’s encouraging them.’

Mr Maynard smiled, and set down his brandy glass. Mrs Maynard was absorbed in her pudding, but it was to her that he remarked, ‘Even with the Huns at our gate, I feel we might keep a sense of proportion.’

Mrs Maynard took another spoonful, but Mrs Lowe-Island said indignantly, ‘They might sweep down over the whole continent in a couple of weeks.’

‘I’m sorry you have so little confidence in our armies.’

‘Oh - but we know Hitler is quite unscrupulous.’

Mr Maynard laughed. He was on his way to the door.

His wife inquired, ‘You are taking that Quest girl?’

‘You don’t mean that young Mrs Knowell?’ exclaimed Mrs Lowe-Island.

‘She’s a sweet girl,’ said Mrs Talbot reproachfully. ‘She’s a darling thing - and so artistic!’

Mrs Lowe-Island quivered. Mrs Maynard spooned in the last of her pudding in a way which said that the cook would be spoken to about it in the morning, and firmly rang the bell.

From the door, Mr Maynard saw that in the centre of the living room stood a card table, with fresh packs of cards laid out; while on subsidiary tables here and there were piled
dockets of papers, files, lists, pencils: his wife intended to indulge both her passions that evening.

‘Who’s your fourth?’ he asked.

‘Mrs Anderson.’ The name was merely dropped.

‘Ah,’ Mr Maynard said, and looked curiously at his wife.

‘Mrs Anderson is such a sweet, dear woman,’ said Mrs Talbot, fingering her thick pearls. ‘Now that her son is in uniform, she’s taking such an interest in things. And when she’s always so busy, too.’

‘Busy,’ cackled Mrs Lowe-Island, flushing angrily. ‘We could all be busy if we took as much interest in men as she does.’

‘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.