A Proper Marriage (52 page)

Altogether there was a feeling of movement, stir and excitement which communicated itself to Martha. But above all was she struck by the difference in tone of the paper from a year ago about the war. She rummaged in a cupboard, and found a pile of dead newspapers. Two years ago, the Russians had been dastardly and vicious criminals plotting with Hitler to dominate the world. A year ago they were unfortunate victims of unscrupulous aggression, but unluckily so demoralized that as allies they were worse than useless. Now, however, they were a race of battling giants.

While not reading the newspapers is a practice to be condemned, there are times when it can yield interesting results. For the thought which naturally presented itself to Martha was, How did the editor of this same newspaper picture his readers? There was no connection between the headlines of two years ago, a year ago, and today.

There was a knock on the door; Alice said she had brought Caroline in to be fed. Martha said that for this once she would leave the child to her. She remained sitting on the
edge of the bed, trying to collect her ideas, which were in a state of extraordinary confusion.

It was quite clear that the group, however it was now constituted, were ‘doing something’ at last. But what? Martha began to indulge in attractive daydreams of herself going among people, like a heroine from an old Russian novel. Common sense told her to desist. If Jasmine, or William, or anyone else had been going among the people, then there would have been a much stronger reaction than a couple of indignant letters to the press. The colour bar made that form of agitation impossible.

Suddenly, and without any warning, that feeling of staleness came over her, a sort of derisive boredom. She could not account for it, but the picture of a small group of people, middle-class every one of them, having meetings, running offices, even going among the people, struck her as absurd, pathetic - above all, old-fashioned. Here it was again, the enemy which made any kind of enthusiasm or idealism ridiculous.

The life she was living seemed dignified and attractive.

But no sooner had she come to this conclusion than disgust rose against it; and she thought with tender longing of these new possibilities; nothing could have seemed more heroic and admirable than Jasmine, William and the rest. Yet almost at once, and in proportion to the strength of her desire to join them at once, derision arose, that stale disgust.

She remained, tossing from one mood to the other, motionless on the edge of the bed, while the darkness came down outside and the street lights shone out.

There were steps in the middle of the house, the door opened, the lights crashed on. Douglas came in. He said in a jolly voice, ‘What are you doing, sitting in the dark?’ But there was a cautious look on his face.

She roused herself and said, ‘Oh, nothing.’

He looked at the mess of newspapers on the bed, and said contemptuously, ‘Oh, that rubbish!’ - meaning world affairs in general - and she saw that the self-satisfied note in his voice was of the same quality as her own mood of gloomy fatality.

She hastily folded up the papers, with a movement as if she were concealing something from him. ‘Is Caroline in bed?’

He opened the door into the next room. Caroline was being watched at her supper by Alice.

He returned, and said sentimentally, ‘Matty, surely you can give the child her supper at least.’

She shut down her anger, and remarked, ‘The doctor says she is perfectly well.’

‘Oh - that’s a good thing.’ He stood looking at her with a tentative indignation.

‘And I’m perfectly well, too,’ said Martha abruptly, smiling in a way which she meant to be unpleasant.

‘That’s good.’ This was bluff and hearty; he turned away to hang up his jacket in the wardrobe. ‘I’ve got some news,’ he began, still in a bluff voice, which made her stiffen defensively. ‘Old Billy in Y — has got leave, and they want me to go down and take his place for a few weeks.’

‘Well, are you going?’

He turned sharply, and gve her a consciously reproachful look, biting his fat lips. ‘You could come, too,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘There’s a house.’

‘But, Douglas, what are we to do with this one? Just shut it up?’

‘Oh, well, if you feel like that …’ ‘How long are you going for?’

‘Three weeks.’ He looked at her again, sideways. ‘What did old Stern have to say?’

‘Nothing much — but there really isn’t any need to worry about Caroline’s well-being.’ Again it was a moment when the hatred between them shocked and dismayed them both.

‘Well, perhaps, it’s just as well we’ll - have a break for a few weeks, eh, Matty?’ He came over and stood a few inches from her, smiling in appeal.

She at once responded by rising and kissing him - but on the cheek, for her lips, which had intended to meet his, instinctively moved past in revulsion. This revulsion frightened her so much she flung her arms about him and warmly embraced him.

The act of love immediately followed.

There is a type of woman - although whether she is a modern phenomenon or has always existed is not a question for novelists - who cannot bear to be found wanting physically. In Martha’s case, it worked like this: her mother had a rooted dislike for all matters sexual; therefore it was a matter of pride for Martha not only to be attractive sexually, but to be
good in bed.
There are hundreds of thousands of young women in our society who when all else fails - they may be inefficient at their work, and bored wives and mothers - find solace in the belief that they are good in bed. Not for one moment have they ever paused in their determination to be better than their parents by flying this particular flag. But they have no hesitation in taking from their parents the romanticism which becomes the moral support not of free love - Martha came too late to believe in that; it was associated with the Twenties and thus had a stale and jaded sound to it - but of a determined hedonism, an accomplished athleticism, since ‘the book’ lays all doubts and suspicions, above all by the variety and ingenuity of the physical attitudes it recommends. Douglas could hardly be blamed for not understanding the thoroughness of Martha’s dislike for him, since that prohibition prevented her from ever expressing it in bed. The moment she did so, it would have meant the complete collapse of the romantic picture she maintained of him. A young woman of this type will expend immense energy on arranging her image of her husband into something admirable and attractive. And this as a question of principle. Such a young woman will confuse all bystanders by being charmingly devoted to her husband, angrily defending him against every word of criticism until the very moment she leaves him. After which she will not have one good word to say for him.

On this particular occasion Martha was irritable and, when she realized it, apologetic. She finally escaped with the abrupt remark, ‘I must go and see how Caroline is.’

‘Oh, but, Matty, she’s got the nurse, and I’m going away for weeks.’

‘But she mustn’t be neglected,’ she said, laughing in a way
which told them both that the moment of reconciliation had been a failure. They ate dinner in silence, avoiding each other’s eyes.

Next day, Douglas left for Y—, which was a couple of hundred miles south, a small administrative centre.

They embraced affectionately at parting. Then Douglas said sentimentally, ‘Do look after Caroline, Matty.’ He added, ‘You have so much to give her.’ He had taken to using the last phrase, half guiltily, meaning that he knew she intended that what she had to give would not all be swallowed in children and housekeeping, whereas he was determined it should be.

She said involuntarily, ‘Don’t be so damned dishonest.’

He muttered angrily, ‘I hope you’ll be in a better temper when I come back.’

After a few moments of guilt, not so much at what she had said, but because she had allowed herself to see him as clumsy and ridiculous, she went indoors, feeling deliciously alone and free.

She read a little, played with Caroline, sewed for a while, as if she had no intention of spending the three weeks of freedom in any other way. Then, without knowing until the moment she lifted down the receiver that she was going to do so, she telephoned Jasmine.

Jasmine was calm, unsurprised, and very efficient about dates and places.

Martha arranged to meet her and William the following evening, to talk things over.

Chapter Two

Martha waited for that first appointment with Jasmine like a girl going to her lover. She was dressed and ready two hours before the time, and was just about to start when Jasmine telephoned to say that unluckily she had an unexpected meeting. But she would meet Martha at eight outside McGrath’s so that they might both go to yet another meeting, organized by Help for Our Allies. Jasmine felt, she said in that small demure voice, that Martha would find it interesting.

Martha set herself to wait another two hours, conscious that much of her enthusiasm was ebbing. There is something in the word ‘meeting’ which arouses an instinctive and profound distrust in the bosoms of British people at this late hour of their history. And then the name ‘Help for Our Allies’ had a childish sound, with strong overtones of tract and even charity. Martha had lapsed back into her condition of irritated distaste long before the time appointed, and it was with an effort of will that she roused herself to go to the car. She waited outside the hotel for some twenty minutes before Jasmine and William appeared, each carrying armfuls of books and leaflets. There was between these two such a look of shared mission that Martha felt lonely and excluded as she followed them into McGrath’s ballroom, which was released for this one evening from mess dinners and war charity dances.

The place was full. Seven or eight hundred people were crowded into the big ugly hall. Martha saw that they were all well-dressed and comfortable citizens, and her confusion was completed when she noticed Mr Maynard and Mrs Maynard seated side by side in the front row - large,
imposing, black-browed, and apparently pleased to shed approval on the proceedings by being there.

She was hurried to an empty seat by Jasmine, who at once left her and pushed her way through the crowds to the platform, where she sat at a table with a group of people whom Martha did not know. Looking at her programme, however - it was beautifully printed on expensive paper – she saw that the speakers included two clergymen, two members of the Cabinet, a leader of the Social Democratic Party. These gentlemen beamed protective approval at Jasmine, a small demure figure in bright flowered silk.

Jasmine whispered for a moment to a tall, thin man, the Minister for Native Affairs, who stood up and began to speak. He spoke for about ten minutes about the glorious heroism of our Russian allies, interrupted at every moment by storms of applause. All around Martha people were sitting leaning forward, hands poised ready for the next point where they might clap approval; faces were smiling and flushed. When the tall thin man sat down, they applauded for a long time, and they began again before the next speaker could open his mouth.

Yet were these not the same citizens who had been reading and approving the
Zambesia News
in its phase of, recently, pitying these same heroes for their ragged and enslaved condition, and, not so long before that, execrating them for their barbarity?

To Martha it was quite inexplicable, and she looked for enlightenment towards the wall where William stood leaning together with a group of others. Boris and Betty were there, and some men in uniform. Martha saw that as the applause crashed out and the speakers paused, smiling with the deprecating modesty suitable to such moments, this group tended to exchange glances under eyebrows slightly raised. When they applauded, which they did promptly, it was without that self-abandoning enthusiasm which apparently had everyone else in its grip, but in a measured way. Yet surely if there was any group of people in this room entitled to be delighted, even grateful, that the Soviet Union was being honoured in this fashion, it was this one? Their
faces expressed - what was it? It was a sort of patient irony, and to Martha, who was in the first flush of adolescent longing to fling herself wholeheartedly into a cause, their look of irony was like a chill of cold water. She positively hated them for not flinging themselves away in abandoned applause, like the others. Then, turning her eyes back towards the platform, she happened to notice Mr and Mrs Maynard, and on their faces too was precisely that look of reserve; they too exchanged glances, with a tightening of the lips, and they clapped decently and firmly, and as if to a time limit. Martha looked more closely among the throng of eager citizens, and saw that there were several others - a couple of journalists from the
News,
a row of people near the Maynards, Colonel Brodeshaw and his wife - who were similarly doling out their applause to measured limits. From which she had to conclude that there were two groups of people in the room who were in command of themselves and their thoughts, and the look of irony which both had was in fact a rather contemptuous resignation towards the hundreds in the grip of mass emotion.

After about two hours of speeches and applause, Jasmine rose and suggested that they might ask one of the men who were ‘actually doing the fighting’ to say a few words. William came forward and climbed on the platform. His uniform was greeted with fervour. He waited patiently for silence, his notes held ready in his hand. Then he said that of course men in the Forces were not allowed to take a part in politics, but raising money for our allies was obviously a different matter. He then, with a rapid glance downwards towards his notes, began to speak on that subject which filled Martha’s thoughts. He had a quiet, easy, informal way of talking, not at all the professional manner with which they had been wooed for the last two hours, and it was noticeable that there were a few moments’ chill. And there seemed to be a few people who considered that an analysis of what he called the campaign of lies about the Soviet Union was not really unpolitical. But in a short while he had the whole crowd roaring with laughter, although there was a note of discomfort in it. He had with him (or rather,
Jasmine produced them obligingly from behind the table) a pile of
Zambesia News
for the past four years, and proceeded to discover and expose the contradictions and improbabilities that newspaper had offered its readers - who were now laughing delightedly, or so it seemed, at themselves. As a final feat, he took a single issue from the year before, and reduced it in a few moments to the most abject nonsense, while the crowd chuckled and the
News
reporters, who were seated at a special table to one side, took notes with expressions of calm and democratic indifference.