A Proper Marriage (57 page)

‘You needn’t think I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I know - you’d go away with him.’

‘Well, of course,’ she said, surprised. ‘That’s what I meant.’ She added inevitably, ‘You’ve just been in Y—with Mollie.’

He got up, and began prowling blindly about the room. He was beside himself with anger. ‘Mollie’s a sweet kid,’ he said. ‘She’s not a whore — like you.’

‘Oh, I don’t doubt that she has preserved her virginity against all comers. But, for all that, you’ve been spending hours of every night in the backs of cars, doing everything but. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the same thing.’

He suddenly picked her brushes and hand mirror off the table and flung them crashing against the wardrobe. She remained still. She was now bitterly regretting what she had just said – she was as bad as he was. And that wasn’t the point at all! She looked steadily at him, and knew she was no longer afraid of him. She had been – very afraid. It was because - she saw this from an inward-looking gleam in the puffed eyes - he had slid over into that mood of self-controlled hysteria which she knew well. It was as if he were saying to invisible onlookers, ‘Look how I’m treated! Look how I’m behaving!’ It was with her nerves that she understood that it was not genuine. She waited for him to speak.

Then again he abruptly left the room. She watched him cross the lawn to where Caroline was playing. She was
amazed to see him clutch the child to him. He was making a scene of being an anguished father, and for her benefit. The indecency of it appalled her. She turned away, took up some sewing, and was working at it when he came back. She saw he was furious because she had not been watching him.

‘I think you should leave Caroline out of it,’ she said coldly.

He sat down again and watched her.

‘Oughtn’t you to go to the office?’ she asked at last. He did not reply. ‘Because I said I’d go downtown to the Aid offices to do some work - I could drop you if you like.’

‘I won’t let you use the car.’

‘Oh, well, then, I’ll walk.’ She put away her sewing and got up, while he watched her with a steady, hysterical gaze. ‘I’ll be back for lunch,’ she said.

She was walking down the garden path, when she heard him pounding up behind her. Her nerves shrank apprehensively; then steadied again. One glance at him reassured her. She did not understand this controlled hysteria, so self-conscious and displaying, but she did know that in proportion to the degree he succumbed to it, she became cold and impervious.

At the gate she turned, and was about to walk off down under the trees, when he said sentimentally, ‘Why don’t you get into the car with me?’

She shrugged as if he were a madman, and climbed in beside him. She expected him to park the car outside his office, but he said, ‘Where do you want to go?’

She gave the address. He parked the car and got out with her. She understood he was coming in with her to see whether William would be there. She wanted to laugh again, with that fatal upwelling of pure contempt. She said lightly, ‘You know, William will be working at the camp at this hour of the morning.’

He did not reply. They went together up the stairs of a big block of offices, and entered the door of the Help for Our Allies Committee. Jasmine was typing under the window. She nodded at Martha, smiled at Douglas, and went on with her work. Douglas stood watching while Martha collected
papers and arranged another typewriter for herself, Then he said, in a perfectly normal voice, for Jasmine’s benefit, ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it. See you at lunchtime.’ He went out again.

For a while the two women typed in silence. Then Jasmine inquired casually, ‘Well, how’s it going?’

‘Awful,’ said Martha briefly. Then: ‘Men are really quite extraordinary.’ She fitted paper into the machine and began on a new letter.

‘Does he mind about you doing this work?’

Martha paused, thinking. She did not know what it was he really minded. For she did not believe in his jealousy for William - she had not felt jealousy herself, so she did not believe in it. More, she did not believe that Douglas
really
loved her, as she put it; really loving, now, meant the exquisite fragile relationship with William. Finally, she thought, Anyway, there’s Mollie – he’s got no right to be jealous. But under all these was the abiding thought, I don’t see how he can complain that I am what I always said I was. For at this moment she forgot the years of feminine compliance, of charm, of conformity to what he wanted. They had all been a lie against her real nature and therefore they had not existed.

At last she said, ‘I’ve no idea at all what he’s really angry about. All I know is, he’s not angry about what he thinks he’s angry about.’ She went on with her typing, forgetting Douglas entirely in the fascination of the work.

Before they parted for lunch, Jasmine gave a small intimate grimace, and squeezed Martha’s arm. ‘Well, good luck with the battle. All that’s wrong with him,’ she pronounced in her maidenly and demure way, ‘is that his property instinct is outraged.’ The night before, they had been discussing the freeing of women from male tyranny in the eastern parts of the Soviet Union.

‘Oh, well - obviously,’ agreed Martha at once.

She walked home. Douglas was not there. Her suspicion as to where he might be was confirmed when Mrs Talbot rang her up and suggested in a murmuring, intimate voice that she might like to come and visit an old woman tomorrow morning. Martha agreed. She was again in that
mood in which a woman says silently to a man, Very well, then, I will behave as you want me to - that’ll put you to shame!

But it was now, as she put down the receiver, that she said for the first time, I must leave him; it’s all useless. For she had a very clear picture of Douglas, who was now engaged in going from person to person to enlist sympathy. Yet she shrank from the finality of it. No, when he came back, he’d be sensible again and they could discuss it all …

She spent the afternoon reading and making notes - she was to give a lecture that night.

Douglas came in rather late. One glance showed him to be in the same mood. She mentioned that Mrs Talbot had rung her up; she expected him to be embarrassed, but he said in that sentimental voice, ‘Yes, Matty, do go and see her - she’ll help you.’

‘I suppose I must expect telephone calls from - who else?’

‘Oh, Matty,’ he murmured like a lover, while he stared at her with swollen and hate-filled eyes, ‘you must listen to reason, you know.’

But by now he seemed to her like a madman. She finished her dinner quickly, and said, ‘Why don’t you come with me to the meeting? There’ll be at least half a dozen civil servants there, it’s really quite respectable,’ she could not prevent herself adding.

He simply kept the glare of his eyes fixed on her. But it was a blind glare, for he was seeing himself, the object of pity and sympathy for Mrs Talbot and - but she did not know who were the others.

‘Why not come? It’s very interesting, after all.’

He kept silence, so she got her things and left him as he settled on a chair on the veranda with the look of a watchdog settling for the night, head on paws.

‘My mother’s coming in to stay,’ he remarked as she left. She did not reply. This did frighten her. She drove down to the meeting in a state of pure terror. It was not of Douglas, but of society. She could see her mother-in-law, her own mother, Mrs Talbot, the Maynards, massed behind him. They were all much stronger than she was. But as soon as
she walked into the room where Jasmine nodded at her with a look of understanding, and William smiled over at her in calm support, as soon as she felt herself surrounded by people to whom ‘personal problems’ were the unimportant background to their real responsibilities, her fear vanished.

There were about forty people in the room. This was a meeting of a subsection of the Sympathizers of Russia.

She was already reading her paper, which was about education in the Soviet Union, when she saw that Joss was seated in a corner. He was in uniform. He was on leave from up north. And in another corner sat Solly, also in uniform. She felt confused at delivering a paper in front of those young men who had been her mentors in childhood. But she kept her voice steady, and continued, not looking at either of them.

During the discussion that followed, neither of these men spoke at all. Anton Hesse controlled it, in that calm, correct way of his, which - as she saw with dismay - caused Sergeant Bolton to smile with sarcastic forbearance. It upset her that there could be personal antagonisms inside the group itself. But she was already familiar with this atmosphere where everyone in a room was in willing respectful submission to Anton, who was able to answer any problem with two paragraphs at least (one always felt he was reading from an invisible book) of clear and grammatical prose, while they were held in sympathy with Sergeant Bolton, who leaned forward intently, holding their eyes with his, one after another, and spoke with a sort of gentle intimate persuasion. It was extraordinary, this contrast between the open sarcastic antagonism of his attitude towards Hesse and McGrew and that intimate current of sympathy he established with the neophytes. There was an intellectual pole and an emotional one.

When the meeting was over, about half the people left. The rest stood about, looking at each other. It had been decided there must be a meeting to ‘settle things once and for all’. They were all waiting for it to start. In the meantime, no one seemed ready to take the lead. Sergeant Bolton sat lounging on his part of the bench, from time to time
exchanging smiles with whoever looked his way; while Hesse and McGrew sat silent in their corner, one smoking a pipe, the other a cigarette.

Martha wondered why they did not start at once. Then she saw that people were looking towards Solly, who stood by himself against the wall, with a sarcastic smile on his face. She heard Jasmine whisper, ‘Damned Trotskyite’, and it hurt her that Solly should be thus cast out.

She protested to Jasmine, ‘Oh nonsense, he’s perfectly all right.’

Jasmine merely smiled. She nodded towards Solly so that Martha might see what was going forward. Solly and Joss were now isolated against one wall. They were exchanging a long stare. Both were rather pale, but smiled steadily, tight-lipped. The resemblance between them was striking at that moment, though they were so dissimilar. Solly was still a tall, lanky, unco-ordinated-looking youth. Joss was more solid, squat, and stronger in his khaki than he had been out of it. But both faces showed a keen, hard intelligence, a grim antagonism. Then Martha saw, with a suddenly pounding heart, how Solly let his eyes waver away from Joss’s stare. He looked for a moment under his brows at the others. He was still smiling, and very pale.

‘Well, good luck to your - decisions,’ he said, blurting it out. To Martha it sounded like an appeal. Then he turned and slammed hastily out of the room.

Immediately the people in the room seemed to flow together in a long sigh of relief. It was only then that Martha understood that his staying there had been a demonstration, and it struck her as both childish and offensive. She looked towards Joss, who still remained against the wall, with an odd twisted smile, looking after his brother. Then he too sighed and looked around. At once several people went up, and one after another took him by the arm and spoke in low voices. Martha thought, I’ll ask him what to do, too. But she had to wait until the others had finished. Joss nodded and listened and smiled, but seemed not altogether happy in this position.

When she at last was able to go up to him, he first smiled,
remembering their childhood, and then stiffened when she began to speak. She clumsily tumbled out her problem; then she saw he was embarrassed. ‘I don’t see why everyone comes and expects me to sort out problems,’ he said with an unwilling smile. ‘I’ve been back on leave two days, and every person in this room without exception has been to ask my advice.’

She said, ‘It’s the price you have to pay for being the big man from the Party down south.’

He grinned, but said finally, ‘In the first place it’s all nonsense. I have no – authority. And secondly, I’ve been in the Army for two years.’ She looked so disappointed that he said, ‘You should think it all out carefully, and then do what you decide to be best.’ He added, ‘It’s not a small thing, breaking up a marriage.’

She was indignant that Joss should offer so conventional a viewpoint.

‘But if you can’t stick it, then leave, of course.’

She went on hastily, offering him a confused picture of quarrelling and misunderstanding – she bickered with her mother, her husband was forbidding her to work in politics: it was as if they were back in the district, and she was bringing him her problems as usual. But she saw that he was looking past her, and she turned to see that everyone was seated and engaged in making conversation so as not to hear what she was saying. She retreated in confusion to a chair, and Joss crossed the room and sat beside Hesse and McGrew. The three men sitting there inspired the deepest respect in them all. They represented the Party itself. They also inspired resentment. For everyone clamoured to start a group, and these three argued steadily against it. It was understood now that Joss, who could take an outside view of affairs, would finally decide it.

Anton Hesse glanced around, saw that everyone was looking towards him, turned to Joss, and said, ‘You know what the situation is. I propose to analyse the position as I see it. Afterwards the others can argue against me.’