A Proper Marriage (59 page)

The young schoolteacher cried out, ‘I protest - why aren’t there any women on the committee?’

At this all the tensions dissolved in a roar of laughter. Jasmine automatically became a member of the committee.

As the laughter subsided, Anton said, ‘I suggest this meeting be now closed. It’s very late. The committee will discuss things and call a meeting of the whole group shortly.’

They all rose. Sergeant Bolton went, smiling, over to Anton and Andrew, taking Jasmine with him. These four shortly announced they would hold a committee meeting there and then. The others had better get home to bed.

They all walked down the dark stairway in silence. There was no need to say anything. They were together, dedicated and promised, and on the pavement they wrung each other’s hands, smiling at each other without speaking.

Then William came up to Martha, and said, ‘Is everything all right, Matty?’

She had to think before she remembered what he meant.

‘Oh, yes - I expect it will sort itself out,’ she said hurriedly. Her mind was still on what had happened. ‘I don’t think we should have let Boris go like that,’ she said.

‘Oh, Jackie knows what he’s doing.’ He was speaking out of the service loyalty, she could see. ‘You should see him with the lads on the camp — he’s marvellous,’ he added.

She could imagine it. She saw Jackie Bolton, persuasive, understanding, almost tender - she had felt the spell herself.

He said too casually, ‘He thinks quite a lot of you.’

At first she was pleased, then she saw he was jealous because of that evening the sergeant had spent with her. She resented it.

‘Shall I come up and have a talk with the old man?’ he asked.

‘I wish you wouldn’t call him the old man,’ she said irritably.

‘Now, don’t be cross,’ he said persuasively, taking her hand. They were together in sympathy again. ‘After all - if you don’t love him, that’s all there is to it. You should simply tell him so. And that’s that.’

She laughed a little. ‘That isn’t at all that.’ And now he again seemed young and inexperienced.

‘Why don’t you get yourself a room in town and simply leave him?’

‘Oh - I don’t want to hurry things.’

‘What’s the good of dragging it out?’

‘I’d better get back home quickly - it’s after twelve.’

She was thinking again, He really is such a baby. And he was thinking, She doesn’t want to leave that comfortable life, that’s all.

They parted, without even a kiss. But as she reached the car he came after her, and took her in his arms. They clung
together in contrition because they were on edge with each other.

‘Why don’t you simply come with me to the hotel? Then you’ll have burned your boats.’ ‘But it’s so unpleasant that way.’

‘It’s so unpleasant that you have to leave him. Not how you leave him.’

She was silent. He said, ‘Are you afraid of his divorcing you or something like that?’

‘You don’t understand him. He wouldn’t do anything
ugly
- not really. He’s just in a bad mood. He’s very sensible and straightforward …’ But here she tailed off in a sigh.

A single stroke from the bell in the church across the park fell through the air, and she said, ‘I really must get back.’

She drove home, parked the car quietly, and then saw that the house was filled with light. On the veranda Douglas was sitting where she had left him.

‘Why haven’t you gone to bed?’ she inquired lightly.

‘Where have you been - why are you so late?’

‘There were two meetings.’

He ground out, ‘Was
he
there?’

‘Well, of course,’ she said, on that false light note.

She went through into the bedroom, and he followed. He was grinding his teeth — she could hear the ugly sound just behind her.

‘Did you sleep with him?’

She looked at him, astounded, ‘Of course not.’

He grabbed her wrist and twisted it. ‘Tell me the truth.’

Her wrist hurt, but pride forbade her to cry out. He dropped it, and stood looking at her with a swollen glare.

She flung her clothes off, flung on her nightgown, got into bed. ‘I’m going to sleep.’

He stood for a moment, then abruptly went to her cupboard, and began a frantic search among her things.

She sat up. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ She was herself dismayed by the light inappropriate tone she could not help using. But both of them were playing roles, she felt. None of this behaviour was genuine, either hers or his. She felt that
something would slip into place and they would become themselves.

In the meantime he was flinging her clothes out behind him like a digging terrier. He found what he was looking for, the little box that held the contraceptives. He ground his teeth again, looking at it. Then he swiftly crossed the room and put it into a drawer of his own. ‘You aren’t going to have it,’ he said.

‘But I don’t want it,’ she said, helplessly laughing.

It infuriated him. He locked the drawer and stood thinking. She could see that he was about to propel himself off into another course. Then, abruptly, he left the room. She leaned on her elbow, listening, while lights crashed on in one room after another through the dark empty house. He came back carrying Caroline, who was half awake, blinking in a sleepy smile.

Douglas aggressively presented her the child, holding her out on his two forearms. Like a tray, she thought involuntarily. He said, in the sentimental voice, ‘Look, Matty, look at this.’

She snapped out, in extreme embarrassment, ‘Oh, don’t be revolting, Douglas.’

The disgust in her voice startled him out of his own picture of himself. He stood there holding out the child who was asleep again, on his two extended forearms, blinking at her in comical bewilderment. Then he went red with shame, and rapidly retreated again back through the rooms. She saw the lights switch out methodically as he came back, and thought, He’s not at all out of control. He might imagine that he is, but he wouldn’t forget to switch the lights out if the skies were falling. It might put up the electricity bill by tuppence.

He began to undress.

Now what’s going to happen next? she wondered, out of her sense of improbability - it was not possible that this was really happening.

As he was getting into his own bed, he suddenly changed direction and flumped over on to hers. He ground her shoulders, so that she felt the balls of his thumbs deep under
the collarbone, and said viciously, ‘I’ll give you another baby - that’ll put an end to this nonsense.’

‘Oh no, you don’t,’ she remarked breathlessly. But it all seemed so much more vulgar than was probable that she looked at him with embarrassment. ‘You’re hurting my shoulders,’ she pointed out reasonably. He gripped her tighter for a moment, and pushed her shoulders back. She felt an instinct to struggle, then let herself go limp and said, ‘It’s no good trying to rape me, you know. You can’t rape women unless they want to be.’

The word seemed to check him. He let her go, and stood up, thinking, blinking at her. Then he went to his own bed. She put out her hand and switched out the lights. She lay in the dark, trying to breathe silently, but her heart was beating like a mine stamp.

She could hear him breathing heavily and irregularly across the space of darkness. Then she was asleep. She awoke with difficulty, hearing his voice, slow, persistent, as if he had already said it many times: ‘It’s no use pretending to be asleep. Wake up, Matty. Tell me, Matty — did you sleep with him, did you?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

He repeated it; she repeated it. She fell off to sleep again. Again she woke in the dark, to hear that persistent voice, this time repeating, ‘Did you sleep with Hesse?’

She laughed. ‘No, don’t be absurd.’

He went through a list of names - it occurred to her after a while that he had memorized a list of the names on the Help for Our Allies Committee. She preserved silence for a while; she was only half awake; tiredness kept dragging her into sleep, and then she would be awake with the pain of fingers digging into her shoulder.

She knew quite well that he knew she had not slept with William or anyone else. What, then, was this all about? He’s enjoying it, flashed into her mind; and the truth of this startled her completely awake. He was thoroughly enjoying the whole thing, and particularly the idea that she might have slept with twenty men. She lay in the dark, pondering: she was being confronted for the first time in her life with
that phenomenon, male jealousy when it is self-conscious, with one eye on the invisible observer; enjoyable jealousy. But she fell asleep again, and again was woken by the pain of those jabbing fingers, which pride forbade her to protest against.

Finally, towards dawn, when she was sick and dizzy with exhaustion, she said calmly, ‘Yes, I’ve slept with William, and with Anton Hesse.’ She then repeated, one after another, the list of the men on the committee. At once his fingers relaxed, and she heard him breathing deeply and regularly. She was wondering what he was thinking about now, when she realized he was asleep. It seemed that whatever he wanted had been given to him. She fell asleep again.

She woke to find him dressing. She looked with curiosity at this sturdy and apparently sane young man, and remarked, ‘Well, and how does it strike you this morning?’

But he ignored this, saying in that other voice, sentimental and pleading, ‘Now, don’t forget you must go and see Mrs Talbot, Matty.’ With this he left the room to get his breakfast.

She thought that she must immediately collect her clothes and leave him. Then she thought, No, I’ll see Mrs Talbot first.

Before he left for the office he came back, apparently normal, but with a wandering look in his eyes which told her that he was still in the grip of that hysteria, He pronounced rapidly, ‘I forbid you ever to see William again.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said promptly.

This, it seemed, was what he had expected, even what he had come for, for he ground his teeth again, gazed at her in self-consciously shocked astonishment, and went out.

Chapter Four

The door was opened by Mrs Talbot herself. The door to Mr Talbot’s study was shut, and Elaine was nowhere to be seen. Mrs Talbot was fully dressed - stiff grey silk, with white bands at throat and wrists.

Martha followed her into the drawing room and sat down. Mrs Talbot remained standing. Her eyes were filled with tears.

‘Oh, Matty,’ she cried out, ‘it can’t be true, it can’t. You can’t be leaving such a nice boy as Douglas for that other – of course I don’t know him, but …’

‘I’m not leaving Douglas for anyone,’ said Martha after a pause, during which she examined this new view of the position. The words ‘I am leaving him to live differently’ came to her tongue; she did not say them, because they sounded absurd - they should be said flippantly, in this house. Then she saw Anton Hesse in her mind’s eye and brought out aggressively, ‘I’m going to live differently.’

But Mrs Talbot’s look at her was very shrewd. ‘We all feel like this, you know, Matty dear.’

Martha thought, She means, everyone falls in love with someone else and wants to leave their husband. But Mrs Talbot was going on: ‘I remember when I was young – I was a pacifist – I quarrelled with my
fiancé
over the war … But Matty, it’s all such nonsense.’

This depressed Martha; but she summoned the memory of Anton Hesse again, and recovered her sense of purpose.

‘You don’t understand,’ she began. But what was she to explain to Mrs Talbot? She was unable to go on.

‘Oh, I do, I do!’ Mrs Talbot positively wrung her hands. ‘Oh, I was so happy thinking of you making Douggie so
happy. If Elaine could be properly married, I think my last wish would be granted, and I’d die happy. How can you break it all up like this, Matty?’ Now she was crying, and patting her eyes delicately with a fragment of silk.

‘But, Mrs Talbot, I’m not properly married. I’m bored, bored, bored, you can’t imagine. I can’t bear it. I haven’t anything in common with Douglas, and I’ve been unhappy all the time.’ For this now seemed to her the simple truth.

Mrs Talbot said in the murmuring voice. ‘But Matty, dear, you are such a well-suited couple, we could all see it. And he’s so proud of you - and you are such a good cook, and everything like that.’

Martha smiled; and Mrs Talbot said hurriedly, ‘No, don’t do that.’

‘I can’t say what I mean, let me think.’ She even turned her back for a moment, and looked out of the shaded windows. She appeared very beautiful to Martha then; and that was more persuasive than anything she had said. This elegant elderly woman in her pretty room had such a look of completeness, of harmony, that once again that group of people seemed absurd and graceless; everything they were, or said, rang false for a moment, beside Mrs Talbot.