Martha Quest (21 page)

But the Club was flourishing. The subscription might be low, but there were few people under thirty in the city who were not members. For that matter, there were few under sixty, for, while a casual visitor might assume that this was devoted to youth, such was the prestige of the place that people felt impelled to join. ‘There’s the New Year’s Dance,’ they said. ‘It’s worth it, just for that. It’s such a nice atmosphere—not noisy, like McGrath’s.’

But it was nothing if not noisy; what they meant was that the section of the community which the bridge-playing ladies had at first hoped would exclusively use it did in fact come to the big dances,
although in closed groups. The important civil servants, the big businessmen, with their wives and daughters, sat at large tables, smiled with a not too obvious benevolence, and tended to leave unobtrusively at midnight, before ‘things began to break up’.

‘Here, break it up there,’ Binkie yelled, or: ‘Come on, let’s—tear—it—to—pieces!’ And this meant that the groups, the couples, were expected to abandon any remnant of partiality and throw themselves into the dancing, yelling crowd, while Binkie stood, dripping with perspiration, his tie crooked, waving his beer mug and ordering the waiters to fetch free drinks for the band, who played and smiled, smiled and played, until their jaws and arms must have ached; and when, at two o’clock, they smiled and shook their heads and began to pack their instruments, they were at once surrounded by a crowd of remonstrating, reproachful young men, bribing them with drink for just one more, one more, always one more; while the girls stood smiling a little self-consciously, and, if the band were adamant, said soothingly, maternally, ‘Now, kids, it’s late, you know, we’ve got to get to work tomorrow.’

In 1935, ‘the gang’ were certainly all kids, between sixteen and twenty-one or two. And in 1938 they still called themselves kids, though in the daytime, between the hours of eight and four or four-thirty, these children were ambitious young businessmen, rising civil servants, and the girls were their secretaries; and if someone demanded, ‘Where’s Bobby, why haven’t we seen Bobby lately?’ the girl who felt herself responsible for him would say with a faraway, devoted look in her eyes, ‘He’s got an exam,’ and everyone nodded understandingly, with a sympathetic sigh.

The girls were, it was assumed, responsible for the men. Even the child of seventeen who had left school the week before, and was at her first dance, taking her first alcohol, would instantly assume an air of madonna-like, all-experienced compassion; she did not giggle when this wolf or that moaned and rolled his eyes and said, ‘Beautiful, why haven’t I seen you before, I can’t take it, I’m dying,’ as he clutched his forehead and reeled back from the vision of her unbear
able attractions. She smiled a small, wise smile, and might, even before her first visit into the grown-up world was over, find herself exhorting him to ‘go on the tack’, with a flushed, earnest look of sisterly regard. For they were always going on the tack; a dozen pairs of sympathetic eyes would follow the consciously heroic youth as he wandered down the veranda with a glass of orange juice in his hand; and they asked anxiously, ‘How goes it, Frankie?’ ‘Keeping it up, Jolly?’ And he would shake his head, and groan and suffer, with one experienced eye on his public—since he was bound to have done this at least a dozen times before.

The public: it was all so public, anything was permissible, the romances, the flirtations, the quarrels, provided they were shared. These terms, however, were never used, for words are dangerous, and there was a kind of instinctive shrinking, and embarrassment, against words of emotion, or rather, words belonging to that older culture, to which this was an attempt at providing a successor.

If two young men were seen in angry argument, Binkie or one of the older members would hastily go to them, saying sentimentally, ‘Break it up, old man, break it up, kids,’ and the contestants would be led back to the flock, smiling apologetically, smiling if it killed them. When a couple remained too long together, dated each other too often, half a dozen self-appointed guardians of public safety would watch them, and at last surround them, with ‘Hey, hey, what’s this?’ A young man would say, ‘You can’t do this to me, Betty,’ and for the moment he represented all the young men; and a girl would say, in sour warning (and that sour personal note held a deeper note of danger), ‘And who were you with last night?’ smiling at the culpable youth with the assurance of a representative so that he accepted the rebuke as a public one, though with unacknowledged resentment because it was also personal.

This system of shared emotions might have been designed to prevent marriage; but if by chance a couple managed to evade Binkie’s vigilance and the group jealousy, and presented themselves engaged, they would be received with a groan of protest; it was felt, deeply, as
a betrayal; and if they braved it out, shaking their heads smilingly at Binkie’s private warnings that ‘Man, your work’ll suffer,’ and ‘You don’t want to tie yourself down to kids at your age, baby,’ then the group, like one of those jellylike spores which live by absorption, swelled out and surrounded the couple, swallowing the marriage whole. They might marry provided they married from the Sports Club, with Binkie or one of the senior wolves as best man, and rejoined the Club at once after the briefest possible honeymoon, prepared to share their joys and sorrows with the rest. But these marriages tended to dissolve rather quickly. There were more than one couple, now returned to the fold as units, who danced with their ex-husbands, ex-wives, in the usual sentimental good-fellowship, even made love to them afterwards, though within the prescribed limits, and in the prescribed place, a parked car; and if these limits proved irresistibly piquant, after the freedom of marriage, so that the couple seemed inclined to link up again, Binkie was likely to take both aside, but separately, saying, ‘Now, you’ve tried it once, it didn’t work, now don’t fall for it again.’ And then, as a desperate second best: ‘At any rate, have a bang with someone else. There’s Tom’ (or Mabel, as the case might be). ‘Now, Tom’s a good sort, why don’t you have a bang with him?’

There were already half a dozen children, club children, who slept in their prams through sundowners and dances, and grew up on the veranda among the hockey sticks, beer mugs and bare legs, like a doom made visible.

A newcomer, hearing the sentimental refrain, ‘Look, there’s Betty, a nice kid, Betty,’ would turn to see a tall young woman in brief shorts and sandals, her face brown and dried by a thousand afternoons of hockey and tennis, her hair tied on the top with a pink or blue ribbon, and imagine that the ‘kid’ was the small girl she led by the hand, who was likely to be wearing the same coloured shorts above fat and dimpled legs, and a hair ribbon tied in exactly the same way as her mother’s.

And so it all went on, through ’35, ’36, ’37, ’38; during that
Christmas season of 1938, it was as if the Club had existed forever, that it would exist forever; it was like a fairy story, drenched in nostalgic golden light, where everyone is young, nothing changes. The tranquil blue gums at the foot of the playing fields, the banked jacarandas at the back of the golf course, the hedges of hibiscus, splashed with vivid scarlet over the glossy thick green—these enclosed a magic circle, and inside it nothing could happen, nothing threatened, for some tacit law made it impossible to discuss politics here, and Europe was a long way off. In fact, it might be said that this club had come into existence simply as a protest against everything Europe stood for. There were no divisions here, no barriers, or at least none that could be put into words; the most junior clerk from the railways, the youngest typist, were on Christian-name terms with their bosses, and mingled easily with the sons of Cabinet ministers; the harshest adjective in use was ‘toffee-nosed’, which meant snobbish, or exclusive; and even the black waiters who served them were likely to find themselves clapped across the shoulders by an intoxicated wolf at the end of the dance: ‘Good old Tickey,’ or ‘There’s a good chap, Shilling,’ and perhaps even their impassive, sardonic faces might relax in an unwilling smile, under pressure from this irresistible flood of universal goodwill.

On that Saturday morning, Martha was embarrassed because she
wanted to leave at twelve instead of at one, and did not like to ask the favour of Mr Cohen. She was in an almost agonized condition, out of all proportion to the cause; partly due to the fact that she had hardly been near the Polytechnic for a week. With one part of her mind she was making resolutions to do nothing ‘for at least three months’ but study shorthand and speed typing; while with the other she guiltily imagined herself walking into Mr Cohen’s office and telling him about the dress she wanted to buy: for she intended to use the charm, the almost stammering diffidence which she knew she should banish from her personality here at work.

At twelve, when she at last rose to her feet, gripping the desk because her knees were shaking, Mr Robinson’s door opened, and he called through it, ‘Come here a moment, Miss Quest.’ He added impatiently, ‘If you don’t mind,’ conforming to the etiquette imposed by Mr Cohen.

Martha went to his office and found she was being given a long and complicated document; on a closer look, she found it was one she had already typed that morning.

‘Miss Quest,’ said Mr Robinson, with a rather strained smile and embarrassed look, ‘you must have been thinking about something else when you typed this.’

Mr Robinson was a young man about twenty-five and he was serving his articles. There was nothing youthful about him. He was lean, of middle height, of the athletic build, though he tended to carry himself in an energetic curve, like a half-tensed bow. He was altogether grey and legal-looking; his light hair lay stiffly back, brushed with oil to a dun conformity; his mouth was thin, set, impatient; and his fine grey eyes, deep-set and intelligent, had not yet learned to soften into tolerance. He had a good knowledge of the law, but he was not yet a good lawyer, and would find it hard to become one. He tended to get impatient with difficult clients, and more than once he had emerged from his office looking prickly and bitter, after the women had listened for some minutes to his angry voice shouting against another, saying, ‘In university they don’t tell you the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.’ With the women, he was curt, and then softened his orders and reprimands with a stiff smile. It was understood that when Martha was really efficient she would become Mr Robinson’s personal secretary; but neither of them looked forward to this arrangement. He liked Mrs Buss, whom he overloaded with work, although she was supposed to work exclusively for Mr Cohen.

Now he was trying his best to be pleasant, but failed: and Martha withdrew with the spoilt document, looking as irritable as he did.

She was relieved. Now she would not be in time to buy the dress before the shop closed. She was saved from spending twenty pounds on a model dress, which she would pay for at the rate of ten shillings a month. The decision had been made for her, her mind was set free, and she typed out the document almost as fast and neatly as Mrs Buss and returned to lay it on Mr Robinson’s desk well before one o’clock.

‘Wait a minute,’ he snapped; then, hastily: ‘Please.’ He reached for the document, read it through, then looked up at her with his
awkward smile. ‘If you can do it like this now, why couldn’t you before?’ he demanded.

Martha hesitated, then watched herself rushing gaily into a story about the dress; she wanted to shop, for she should never have started; the fatal nervous compulsion, similar to that which had made her tease Donovan to kiss her, had her in its grip, and she could neither stop nor speak naturally. He was uncomfortable, for he could never tolerate the personal, and by the time she had come stammering to an end they were both red and uneasy.

‘If you’ll take my advice, Miss Quest—though it’s nothing to do with me, of course—you’ll keep clear of these sharks who try and get you girls in their grip. I get them here as clients, crying their eyes out when it’s too late. A dress for twenty pounds—it’s ridiculous for a child of your age,’ he finished, as if he were an old man himself. Then, with a glance at her sulky face: ‘Well, it’s your affair. Please send Mrs Buss in. If she’s got time, of course.’

Martha went out and found the big office half empty. She took her bag, and quickly left by herself, avoiding the others, and hurried along Main Street to the window where the dress was displayed.

Just before the war, women were supposed to be tall, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, long-legged. Martha’s room may have been littered with books, but it was also plentifully supplied with magazines, where all the women conformed to that shape, and when she saw her reflection, when she imagined herself in this dress or that, she continually strained her mental image of herself upwards, thinning it, posing it; when she saw herself ideally, crossing a room, under fire from admiring eyes, it was in the guise of this other, imposed woman. As for Donovan, he saw her as so much raw material for his own needs. This dress, however, had the power to destroy these false images, and she examined it with love, almost with physical pain, for the shop was closed, and now she would never buy it. She knew that the moment this dress clothed her body she would be revealed to herself, and to others, as something quite new, but deeply herself. That dress was made to clothe the person she knew herself to be. It
was of a brilliant dark blue, of fine, transparent silky stuff. Its bodice was close and moulded, lightly sewn with tiny brilliants, and the skirt had knots and ribbons of the same brilliants gleaming from the folds. It was a romantic dress, with its lightly draped shoulders and great flowing skirt; but as she tested the word ‘romantic’ she could not helping thinking of Donovan, and at once began to feel uncertain, for she knew it was not what he would have chosen for her.

And as she thought, dubiously, of Donovan, she heard a car hooting, and turned to see Donovan himself, trying to keep his place in the stream of Saturday lunchtime traffic. The street was a river of hot and shining metal, the cars were creeping, nose to tail, and she ran along the kerb until she was able to leap in beside him.

‘What are you doing day-dreaming beside our wicked Mr Louise’s window, Matty dear?’ he enquired.

She explained, making herself sound flippant, and disguising all she really felt about that dress; and he said, ‘But, Matty, you know you must have my personal supervision. I saw that dress this morning, and really, Matty, you should have learned better by now. It’s very pretty and womanly and all that, but it’s not smart. Now, don’t worry. I’ll come with you, and you’ll see, I’ll make you the belle of the ball.’

She laughed, and after a moment submitted herself to him, and felt grateful; for a moment, however, she had felt the beginnings of something very different, a strong resisting dislike of his pressure on her.

In her bedroom, he took out the two evening dresses she owned, and laid them on the bed, and at once became serious and thoughtful. He sat beside them, fingering the material, and frowning; it was a physical communion between those dresses and himself, from which she was excluded.

There was a knock on the door, and Mrs Gunn came in, and Martha knew it was because she had heard a man’s voice.

‘Oh, it’s you, Mr Anderson,’ she said, in doubtful relief.

Donovan, with hardly a glance at her, said that he was busy.

At a movement of Mrs Gunn’s head, Martha followed her on to
the back veranda. ‘You won’t take it amiss,’ said Mrs Gunn, ‘but my daughter made it a rule never to have a man in her room. Not that I’d say a word against Mr Anderson, but…’

Mrs Gunn’s pale and fleshy face was glistening with sweat, her dry reddish hair was dark in streaks, her dress was soaked from the armpits to the waist: hers was not a type to stand the heat. She went on complainingly, ‘I had a letter from your mother, she worries about you, I said I’d look after you, but…’

Martha said angrily that she could look after herself.

Mrs Gunn was hurt, and said she didn’t want to interfere. Martha replied that in that case she might refrain from doing so.

Their voices had risen, and they heard Donovan calling, ‘Matty, come here, I want you.’

The two quarrelling women, who liked each other and knew it, exchanged an apologetic and humorous smile.

Mrs Gunn said plaintively, ‘It’s the heat, Matty. My temper’s awful this weather.’

Martha felt an impulse to kiss her, but it was impossible for her to kiss women; she said rather drily that she did not think there was any need to worry about Mr Anderson.

Mrs Gunn’s pale and worried eyes lit with malicious speculation; they met Martha’s and suddenly both women began to laugh. ‘You’re all right,’ said Mrs Gunn, laughing hoarsely, with a helpless shaking movement of her big tormented body. She put her arms around Martha and kissed her, and Martha tried not to stiffen against this damp, strong-smelling embrace. ‘You’re all right,’ said Mrs Gunn again, and Martha nodded and laughed, and with a guilty look rejoined Donovan.

‘When you disgusting girls have finished,’ he said in a light but gruff voice. ‘You’re as bad as my mother, she’s always giggling with
women
. You have no discrimination, Matty. I’ve told you that before. You always get yourself mixed up with people.’

Martha shrugged impatiently and went to the french window. The lunchtime traffic had thinned to an occasional car that raced past
impatiently. The tarmac road glistened oilily, the sun poured down, there was a strong smell of warm tar. The sky was ominous, spaces of intense hot blue between heavy thunderclouds. The trees in the park were motionless, the flowers in the garden hung stricken, with curling leaves. Martha was now both irritable and sad. She did not want to go to the dance, everything disgusted her. Worse, she did not understand these violent fluctuations of mood; it was as if half a dozen entirely different people inhabited her body, and they violently disliked each other, bound together by only one thing, a strong impulse of longing; anonymous, impersonal, formless, like water. She stood there, silent, at the open door, while gusts of hot, tar-smelling air came off the street. Slowly she settled into a mood of rich melancholy, where at least she felt at home, though she distrusted it so persistently; thus had she stood, as a child, watching the slow changes of the veld, where the cloud shadows dissolved like flocks of birds, watching the movements of rain along the hills: at
that
moment she saw herself as a lethargic person, doomed, without energy.

She wished Donovan would go away, for she knew that soon she must rouse herself to meet his wishes; for of course she would go dancing that night, and, long before then, would be vividly, electrically excited. The thought of this other person she would soon become exhausted her anew, and she said crossly to Donovan, ‘I do wish you wouldn’t fuss so. What does it matter what I look like?’

He did not reply, and she looked over her shoulder to see an expression on his face which meant ‘These female vagaries’?—but no, it meant, ‘Coquetry’! And he was impatient of it. ‘
Really
, Matty,’ was all he said; and then: ‘And now come here, I’m ready to start work.’

She went listlessly to his side, but he said, ‘Now take off your dress, Matty—no, don’t start these girlish giggles, I really do find them so tiresome.’

She slowly removed her dress, pointing out to herself that this was the first time she had been seen undressed by a man, and wishing that it did not seem so unimportant. Standing in her petticoat, she
saw Donovan scrutinizing her shoulders and arms, and he even put out his hand and slowly turned her around, to examine her back.

‘That’s a good girl,’ he said approvingly, screwing up his eyes with a professional look.

He led her to the mirror, lifted her arms, and gently pulled over her head the white cotton dress she had made for the Van Rensbergs’ dance. ‘This has distinct possibilities, Matty, but anyone can look pretty.’ He crouched at her feet and shook out the skirt, and Martha saw a pale, tired-looking girl with untidy hair looking back at her from the mirror. ‘Now just look at it,’ said Donovan. ‘You see?’

She saw that it was similar in shape to that dark-blue dress she coveted; it was, if one may use the term of something which has so many forms, the basic type of an evening dress: small fitting top, full skirt; but the blue dress took its beauty from the fine material, and the delicate tracery of glinting beads, and the suggestion of half-concealed shoulders. Obstinately, despite what he said, she yearned for it; and submitted to being shaped into something very far from the girl who could wear that soft, flowing gown.

Donovan kneeled below her and worked on the white dress. He was quite absorbed, and she turned passively between his hands like a dummy. She felt not a trace of self-consciousness when he reached up to pull the stuff across her breasts, even when he pushed them up with his hands, high into the stiff sharp folds with which he intended to emphasize them.

Mrs Gunn knocked again, and entered with a big parcel. She was panting, her hair was falling damply across her face, and though she summoned energy enough to look drily at the absorbed young man on his knees in front of the girl, her remark, ‘My God, isn’t it awful?’ referred to the heat. ‘It’s going to rain, shouldn’t be surprised,’ she said, going out. Thunder was rolling gently among the banked clouds overhead.

Martha looked down at Donovan’s dark head, usually so sleek and close. A strand of the rather coarse hair had fallen loose, and hung stiffly over his forehead, and for some reason Martha found that stiff
lock repulsive; also the plane of forehead, which showed reddish, coarse-grained, and wet with sweat. There were flakes of sodden dandruff on the line of the parting, which showed dead white, like the belly of a fish. She began to move irritably under his working hands, and restrained herself with difficulty when he said, ‘Now, then, Matty, we must suffer in the cause of beauty, be a good girl.’

She told herself that she was bored, looked away, and saw the parcel lying on her bed. Books. Cautiously, she leaned the top half of her body sideways, and extended an arm to pull the parcel closer, and Donovan said, ‘Matty, there’s a time and place for everything.’