A Proper Marriage (44 page)

Perry was watching a drift of wet cloud making rainbows in the bright sun, and humming ‘Roll Out the Barrel’
between his teeth, the shrewd hard blue eyes narrowed and abstracted, the mouth tight, the jaw solid. He shifted himself once or twice carefully to take the weight of the boy more comfortably, then settled down himself with his eyes shut. Douglas went back to talk to the stretcher cases.

About midday the plane touched down, and the boy was lifted, still fast asleep, on to the ambulance.

Chapter Four

As Douglas walked past the iron-and-brick offices at the airport, he saw a man he knew behind a table. He went in. ‘How’s tricks?’ he asked, grinning with pleasure as he watched the face clear through surprise into welcome. They slapped each other around the shoulders for a few minutes, laughing. Then Douglas said, ‘How about giving me a clearance to get home and see my wife?’

The friend remembered he was also authority, hesitated, then said, ‘I suppose it’s all right – come back this afternoon.’

Douglas walked out towards the gates of the airport. He could see Perry and the others nosing around the open doors of the offices to find old friends who might similarly release them. He thought he should wait for them. Then he quickly went out into the road. He stopped in surprise. Only a year ago, the tarmac had crossed an empty grass-filled vlei to the airport. Now it was bordered on both sides by new suburbs of little villas. He felt like Rip Van Winkle. He began to walk the three miles to the centre of the town. Soon a car drew up beside him, to give a lift to the soldier. A new mode of manners, this; he climbed in, and, although five minutes before he had felt like a civilian, allowed himself to be treated with the affable but rather wistful friendliness civilians offer to uniforms. They were talking all the way in of how the influx of thousands of Air Force personnel was unbalancing the country - they had practically taken it over; you could not get into cinemas, hotels, dance halls. One said that the money they brought with them made up for it - the country was on a boom of prosperity. They might have been talking of occupation troops. Then Douglas saw the pavements full of grey-blue uniforms, and felt a stranger in his
own town. It happened that the car passed the big block where his department was housed. On an impulse he asked to be set down.

He walked into the department and was greeted thankfully by his chief, who asked if he could start work next day. Warmed and flattered, Douglas mentioned the red tape that would have to be unwound before he could put on his own clothes again. His chief waved all this aside: five minutes on the telephone to the suitable person would settle all that. He settled it forthwith; the interests of the country demanded that Douglas need do no more than pay a call for form’s sake at a certain office the next day. Douglas began to feel himself at home.

There was still a slight undercurrent between him and his chief: after all, he had gone over the man’s head to get into the Army. At the end of an hour it had vanished. They had discussed problems of reorganization - there were precisely half the people in the office that there were in peacetime, with twice the amount of work. Then, in the deferential, rather boyish way which he used when asking for things that were his right, Douglas mentioned various personal financial matters; the chief suggested they might lunch over it. They went to the Club. In the bar were Perry and the others. This was the last chance they had of playing the part of old campaigners to older men who had been prevented from going to the wars. They took it. At three, the chief said this was all very well, but he had to get back to work. Douglas went with him. The financial situation was dealt with in half a dozen sentences on the pavement edge.

Then he turned to walk home. He was a little drunk. It occurred to him that he had been in the town five hours, and Martha might be hurt that he had not rung her. I’ll give her a surprise, he thought, deciding to forget the five hours. As he neared the block of flats, he saw a young woman wheeling a child coming towards him. He thought like a soldier, Not bad, not bad at all! Then he saw it was Martha. He stopped and watched her approach with a proud and proprietary smile. She was slimmer than she had been, and rather pale. She was wearing a short, tight, flowered dress,
and red sandals that showed brown bare feet; and looked, in short, attractive. She was staring vaguely in front of her, and as he moved to block her way she frowned discouragingly at the soldier. Then she froze, looking at him for a long moment while she turned white, and then, suddenly, bright pink. Blinking slowly, she came to life with a stiff, nervous smile.

They embraced. For both there was something false and unpleasant in this embrace. They separated, and took refuge from the difficulties of the moment in Caroline. Douglas bounced the child up in the air a few times: he was deeply moved at the sight of this pretty little girl who was his daughter. When he set the laughing child carefully back in the push-chair, he said to Martha, ‘Nice work - you’ve made a good job of her.’ He was gazing proudly at her. He was thinking that this was a wife and child to be proud of. He even glanced around to see if anyone was watching. But people were hurrying by: the streets were much fuller than they had been - strangers, always strangers. He thought it would be nice to take Martha and Caroline up to the Club of an afternoon.

She smiled uncomfortably at his compliment, however, and lifted the front wheels of the push-chair around in a way which jerked Caroline so that she clutched the handrails with both hands.

‘Hey, you’re giving her rather a bouncing, aren’t you?’ he asked; but received no reply. They walked back to the flats, a couple of hundred yards away.

‘Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?’ she asked carefully.

‘Well – I thought I’d drop in.’ He laughed and rubbed his hands. ‘And then last night …’ He launched into an account of how he and Perry and some of the lads had given it a bang last night in G—, a ghastly little dorp in the bush miles from anywhere. Bobby - she remembered Bobby - sent her love. They’d all had a hell of a party, and his mouth this morning was like a parrot’s cage. Luckily he’d slept some of it off in the aircraft, but, what with one thing and another, he thought it was quicker to come home himself than to
telephone. Martha listened, with a new and discouraging detachment. Douglas felt let down. She had always risen in cheerful complicity to accounts of the boys’ activities.

‘Will you have to stay in uniform?’ was her next question.

‘I saw old Keen. He wants me back as soon as he can get me. He’s fixed it. I’ll be back at the office tomorrow.’

She turned her eyes towards him cautiously. Cautiously she inquired, ‘You went to the office first?’

‘Well, I was passing – I wanted to have everything fixed to surprise you.’

‘When did you get in?’

‘About three hours ago’ – he softened it a little.

She said nothing. Caroline was twisting herself up on her knees in the chair, and Martha pushed her down with one hand as she wheeled. ‘Oh, stop it, Caroline,’ she said roughly.

They were in the hall of the flats. Martha undid the straps and lifted the child out. Douglas promptly caught her up on his shoulders. The family party slowly mounted the stairs.

‘I’ve got a fine piece of news,’ announced Douglas. ‘I asked Keen what he thought of my raising money for a house - he’ll fix that. He even knows of a house going for us. How’s that?’ he ended proudly.

She inquired, after a pause, in the manner of one wishing to give him the benefit of any doubt, ‘We’ll be moving into a house of our own?’

‘That’s the ticket - yes. It’s a big house, too, Matty. You know it - it’s the Rellors’ old house on the corner of McKechnie Street.’

‘But it’s enormous!’ exclaimed Martha. She stared at him, appalled.

‘But, Matty,’ he said in an injured voice, ‘we’ll have our place, we’ll be buying our own place - and there’ll be a garden for Caroline. And’ - here he rubbed his hands and laughed – ‘we’ll be having another kid soon, eh?’

Her look was now steady and critical.

‘I say, now - Matty!’ he exclaimed, clutching at her arm. But they were at their door. She pulled her arm away, and opened it.

On the divan was seated a young man in the blue uniform, reading a newspaper. He stood up, smiling shyly but pleasantly as they entered, looking at them with very clear, very blue eyes. He was rather slight - not tall; his hair was a springy bright brown, though against the pale skin it looked dark. As Martha said hurriedly, ‘This is William, Douglas. My husband has suddenly pitched up, William,’ he held out his hand with a perfect ease and friendliness.

Martha glanced at the two hands, one white, fine, almost effeminate, the other a large red-brown paw; hairs glinted on it. She was looking at her husband’s hands as she said, ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll make some tea.’ Then she saw Douglas was annoyed at finding a stranger there, and said in a way which made both men look quickly at her, ‘If you’d found five minutes to let me know you were coming—’ She bit off, and gave a tight smile. Then she went out, taking Caroline with her.

She dropped the child into the playpen, and, as she began to protest, handed her a rusk. Caroline took it and was quiet, Martha went quickly into the little kitchen. She assembled cups on a tray, and carelessly banged the kettle on to the hotplate. She did not know what she was doing. That sudden vision of the soldier who was her husband had been a shock to her which only now began to make itself felt. She was trembling; she cracked a cup as she dropped it on to the saucer.

Douglas, in khaki with the pack on his shoulder, a red-brown man with fat knees, a good stone heavier than he had been, and reeking of beer, had seemed to her gross and commonplace. His round, rather fat red face, grinning proudly at her, had been a revelation of what he really was. She could not now remember her vision of him of even half an hour before. It was quite impossible that this man should be her husband. She was married to one of the boys; he would always, all his life, be one of the boys. At sixty he would still be a schoolboy. There was no escape from it. The condition of being a woman in wartime, she thought angrily, was that one should love not a man, but a man in relation to other men. Whether it was Douglas with the boys, or the
boys of the Air Force, it was all the same - and it was precisely this thing, dangerous, and attractive, which fed the intoxication of war, heightened the pulse, and drugged them all into losing their heads. You loved not a man, but that man’s idea of you in relation to his friends. But
that
had been true here, in this country, long before the war. Well, she would not; never again!

At this point, guilt, the unfailing goad, gave a warning twinge, but at far lower pressure than usual. She ignored it, and was very angry. He bounced back grinning into her life after a year without a word or a warning, and naturally went first to the boys -
she
was an afterthought. The lonely, proud, self-contained life she had made for herself was invaded just like that, by his choosing to come: thus Martha, choosing to forget that, after all, he could not help it. And now he would bounce into bed with her; the thought filled her with revulsion. That it should do so succeeded in rousing the saving guilt: she could not stand seeing herself as a bestower of sexual favours, so she hastily began to recreate the coarsened soldier into something masculine and strong and attractive.

She lifted the tea tray and marched with it into the other room. The two men were getting on famously. The sight of Douglas on the edge of the divan with his fat putteed legs sprawling filled her again with derision. He was being the administrator; he was absorbed by a description of how the airmen’s sleeping huts were laid out in relation to mess halls and recreation rooms. William was making a sort of map with bits of matches on the carpet. He had a quiet, sensible way of explaining things that clearly appealed to Douglas. Martha poured tea and handed them cups, filled with an anger she could not have explained. The business of drinking tea, however, interrupted the plan of how the air camp would have been laid out if either Douglas or William had been asked to do it; and they again became aware of Martha and were silent.

‘Let’s have Caroline in?’ suggested Douglas.

‘No - she must stay in her pen for at least half an hour.’

‘But why?’ he protested rather wistfully.

‘Timetable. She’ll be making a fuss soon enough as it is,’ she added.

Caroline was already grumbling outside; the noise was irritating Martha, they could see. William was sipping his tea with the obvious desire to leave as soon as he could. In a moment he had set down his cup and got up. ‘I must be getting along,’ he remarked. Martha and Douglas said nothing to dissuade him. He stood smiling, while his blue eyes were thoughtfully examining Martha and Douglas. ‘Do you want to join the group?’ he asked Martha direct. ‘Shall we send you notices? Or perhaps you’d rather think it over now that things have changed.’ This last was a hasty statement in reply to her nervous silence. He gave a long diagnostic look at Douglas, then formally shook hands with him. He went out with a pleasant nod at Martha.

‘What group?’ asked Douglas uneasily.

‘Discussion group,’ said Martha shortly. William had dropped in casually twice before. His manner was always friendly, but impersonal: Martha had understood that his coming was because he felt it his duty to support and encourage her towards a different view of life. She had almost decided to join the group that contemplated splitting off the old one in order - as William explained vaguely but firmly - to get down to brass tacks. The phrase appealed to Martha.