A Proper Marriage (22 page)

My information, however, is that this is not the case. An interesting similarity, this; between the good ladies of the city, who are moaning with horror over their bridge tables about your friend Solomon’s exploit, and your friend Solomon himself, whose imagination is no less romantic. However, I was writing to say that
I am delighted you are having a baby. Since you are probably still bathed in the sweats of the honeymoon, you will not agree with me when I say that children are the only justification of marriage. I should like to be godfather to your (I hope) daughter. Naturally, I hasten to say, without the benefit of religion. If I’m not mistaken, this would be against your principles? I should like, however, to be ‘in’ on it. I wanted a daughter more than anything.

This last sentence touched Martha deeply, coming as it did after the painful self-punishments of the rest of the letter. It was to the writer of that sentence she sent an affectionate reply, ignoring the rest.

Almost at once various other letters arrived, and, her nose being as acute as it was to sense any form of spiritual invasion, she was becoming aware that the people who are sucked irresistibly into the orbit of marriage are by no means the same as those who respond to the birth of a child. Mr Maynard, for instance, could be witty about marriage, but not about daughters. Mrs Talbot was never anything but tender about daughters, sighed continually over the children she had not had, sent a charming note of congratulation to Martha, but for some weeks saw very little of the young couple, for she had become absorbed in the wedding of a friend of Elaine’s, who needed all her attention. Various elderly ladies, scarcely known to Martha, rushed into her flat, folded her in their arms, offered her their friendship, and lingered, talking about their own children with the wistful, discouraged look which always made Martha feel so lacking.

Above all, the elder Mrs Knowell, who had done no more than send sprightly telegrams of congratulation from the other end of the colony about the wedding, suddenly arrived in person. That creature in Martha which was the animal alert for danger against her cub waited tensely for the arrival of a possible enemy; and the other raw nerve was sounding a warning: this woman was likely to be
a
forecast of her own fate. For – she had worked it out with mathematical precision – since men were bound to marry their mothers, then she, in the end, would become Douglas’s mother. But she was committed to be like her own mother. And if the two
women were not in the least alike? That did not matter; in its own malevolent way, fate would adjust this incompatibility too, and naturally to Martha’s disadvantage.

As Mrs Knowell entered the room, Martha’s defences went down. They had been erected in the wrong quarter. She had been expecting something gay, jolly, with the self-conscious eccentricity of the letters and telegrams. Mrs Knowell stood hesitating, kissed Martha carefully, and took her seat like a visitor. At once she took out a cigarette. Martha unconsciously curled out of sight her own stained fingers, and looked at the big, rather nervous hands, soaked in nicotine. This was something altogether different from what she had been waiting for! Mrs Knowell was a tall woman, big in the bone, yet with thick flesh loose about her. She had heavy brown eyes, the whites stained yellow; she wore a mass of faded yellow hair in a big untidy bun. Her skin was sallow, and as a concession to what was expected of her she had put a hasty rub of yellowish lipstick across a full sad mouth. She wore a yellowish-brown dress. Nervous exhaustion came from her like a breath of stale air. She watched Martha as she made the tea, and made conversation, in a way which said clearly that she had come prepared not to interfere or infringe. It positively made Martha nervous. Her talk quite contradicted the heavy watchful eyes: it was gay and amusing; this was the personality which enabled her friends from what she herself referred to as her ‘palmy’ days to entertain her with a warm amused affection as a persistent
enfant terrible.
That gay old child, flitting erractically from one house to another, dropping in on a bridge game from a town seventy miles away, or suddenly taking flight in the middle of a two-week visit on an irresistible impulse to see a friend at the other end of the colony, was a creation of such tact that Martha found herself undermined by pity and admiration.

Mrs Knowell was not of the first generation of pioneering women. She had ridden in covered waggons in the months-long journey from the south, but without need to take cover against hostile tribes. She had lived in the remote parts of the country, but the rifle which leaned against the wall was
against wild animals and not a native rising. Her husband had been farmer, miner, policemen, businessman, as opportunity offered; he had made several fortunes and lost them in the casual way which was then customary. She had borne eight children, and kept two alive. The daughter in England was married to a small-town solicitor; they kept up a bright and entertaining correspondence.

Mrs Knowell had succeeded in imposing on everyone who knew her this gallant and independent old lady, the jolly old girl; yet, if that heavy yellow stare, that tight defensive set of her limbs, that tired dry undercurrent to her voice meant anything, it was that her battles had been fought not against lions and flooded rivers or the accidents of a failing gold reef. She was in every way of the second generation; and Martha, impulsively ignoring the ‘amusing’ remarks, as if she were insulted that such a fraud should be offered to her, spoke direct to what she felt was the real woman, out of her deepest conviction that anything less than the truth was the worst of betrayals, and more - that this truth should be an acknowledgment of some kind of persistent dry cruelty feeding the roots of life. Nothing else would do.

Mrs Knowell responded slowly, with a nervous gratitude. She tentatively mentioned the baby; Martha talked of it without defences. Mrs Knowell, released by this new baby into her memories of her own, spoke of them as she had obviously intended not to do. She began talking of the way they had died - blackwater, malaria, a neglected appendix. She began telling a long story, in a heavy, slow, tired voice, of an occasion when she had found herself alone on a farm, fifty miles from anywhere, her husband having gone to buy some cattle. She had been pregnant with her second child, her first having died. She had slept each night with locked and barricaded doors, a revolver under her pillow. In the day she had been frightened to move away from the house. Martha could imagine it, the lonely farmhouse, blistering in the heat, the empty veld stretching for miles all around. ‘Of course,’ said Mrs Knowell, smiling drily, ‘I never told Philip I was lonely.’ Into this loneliness had come riding a young policeman on his rounds. ‘He was so kind to me, Matty - he
was so kind.’ Martha, who had been expecting the story to continue, found it had reached its conclusion. Mrs Knowell stirred herself, and remarked, ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this, I never talk about it.’ Martha, who was triumphant at that admission, which it was her need, for some reason, to gain, replayed, as it were, in her head, like a recording, that story of the weeks of loneliness, in the light of that final ‘He was so kind to me’ - and found it enough.

She was being very kind to Mrs Knowell. She liked her enormously, and knew Mrs Knowell liked her. It was understood that Mrs Knowell would stay to lunch, would spend the afternoon with Martha, and in the evening the three of them would go out somewhere. Into this scene burst Douglas, cheerfully rubbing his hands, and embraced his mother with the words, ‘Well, Mater, what have you been up to?’

There was a short pause, while the currents changed, and Mrs Knowell visibly rallied the bright old lady. She offered some hilarious stories about the people she had just been staying with. Her weeks in that house had been one long picnic of jam-making, bottling, pickling. She had cut her finger — she wagged it before them, laughing. Now she was departing south, and had taken the opportunity to drop in and see the dear children.

Douglas invited his mother to admire Martha’s health and attractiveness. She did so. Both Douglas and Martha became offhandedly practical about the whole affair; Douglas began to tease his mother about her preoccupation with such old-lady-like things as embroidered pillowcases and lace-edged dresses. Mrs Knowell preserved her amused sprightliness for a while, but became noticeably silent, while Martha chattered brightly, in a hard voice, about unhygienic sentimentality - this was not at all as she had been alone with her.

After a while Mrs Knowell suggested wistfully that it was such fun to make things for a new baby; and saw them exchanging glances in tolerant silence.

‘But it is!’ she cried out. ‘I’d love to have the chance of making little things again.’

‘Now come off it, Mater,’ said Douglas cheerfully. ‘We’re not going to have any of
that.’

After a while she got up and remarked that as she was going to play bridge with Mrs Talbot that afternoon she must hurry away.

Douglas, relieved, teased her about being a frivolous old woman. She bravely announced that she had taken one shilling and sixpence off Mrs Talbot the last time she had played with her.

In a flurry of jokes, kisses, promises to meet soon, she departed. Martha was left with the memory of those yellowing tired eyes resting on her in hurt disappointment. She felt a traitor. And yet, by themselves, they had understood each other so well!

Douglas was speaking with grateful enthusiasm about his mother’s capacity for enjoying herself so much at her age - Martha reminded herself that, after all, Mrs Knowell was only fifty. Douglas went on to remark practically that at least they needn’t expect any interference from her, she always had far too much on her own plate to bother about other people. Martha was on the point of repudiating this comfortable evasion of the truth, but let the moment go.

Mrs Knowell departed from the city that evening, after sending a small parcel by Mrs Talbot’s houseboy, containing a dozen long muslin dresses, exquisitely embroidered and tucked, with a note saying; ‘These were Douglas’s when he was a baby. I offered them to my daughter, but she said they were not practicable. But if you can’t use them, then they’ll do as dusters. I really haven’t time to see you dear children again, I must get off to the Valley, they’re having a picnic on Sunday, and I wouldn’t miss that for worlds.’

Later, Mrs Talbot remarked that Mrs Knowell had been as erratic as ever: she had promised to stay a week, and left after half a day. She was really so wonderful for her age.

Martha was sitting down the next morning to write a nice letter to the old lady, to make some amends for the unpleasant way she knew she had behaved, when a native messenger arrived from Douglas’s office. There was a note saying:
‘Well, we’re off! War’s just been declared.’ After the signature, the words, ‘Matters appear extremely serious.’

Martha tried to
feel
that matters were extremely serious. Outside, however, a serene sunlight, and the pleasant bustle of an ordinary morning. She switched the wireless on – silence. Then the telephone rang. Alice, in tears, repeating angrily, ‘And now Willie’s bound to go and I’ll be alone.’ Then Stella, who also wept: the situation demanded no less.

But, having put the receiver down, she stood listening to the silence as if there was something more, some other
word
that needed to be said; she heard now that same dissatisfaction in the voices of the two women who had ceased speaking, and were doubtless engaged in busily telephoning others to find whatever it was they all needed. ‘They say that war has been declared, Matty?’ It was this incredulous query which floated in her inner ear. She was extremely restless. She looked at the blue squares of park and sky which opened the walls of the flat, and it seemed menacing that nothing had changed. She went out into the streets. There, surely, the war would be visible? But everything was the same. A knot of people in sober argument stood on the pavement’s edge. She approached them and found them talking about the prices of farm implements. She walked through the streets, listening for a voice, any voice, speaking of the war, so that it might seem real. After a while she found herself outside the offices of the newspaper. There clustered a small crowd, faces lifted towards windows where could be seen the large indistinct shapes of machinery. They were hushed and apprehensive; here danger could be felt. But Martha saw after a minute that they were all older people; she did not belong with them.

She went home to the wireless set, which was playing dance music. It was now lunchtime, and she wished Douglas might come home. At the end of half an hour she was disgusted to find herself making angry speeches of reproach to him in her mind - a conventional jailer wife might do no less! Nothing, she told herself, was more natural than that he should find the bars and meeting places of the city more exciting than coming home to her. She would do the same
in his place. And so she waited until afternoon in a mood of impatient expectancy; and when the door at last opened, and he came in, she flew at him and demanded, ‘What’s the news? What’s happened?’ For surely something must have!

But it appeared that nothing had happened. In both their minds was a picture of London laid in ruins, smoking and littered with corpses. But it seemed that while they thought of London, of England, the imaginations of most were moving far nearer home. Douglas announced ruefully that women were already sitting shuddering in their homes, convinced that Hitler’s armies might sweep down over Africa in ‘a couple of days’, and more - the natives were on the point of rising. In any colony, a world crisis is always seen first in terms of native uprising. In fact it seemed that the dark-skinned people had only the vaguest idea that the war had started, and the authorities’ first concern was to explain to them through wireless and loudspeaker why it was their patriotic task to join their white masters in taking up arms against the monster across the seas in a Europe they could scarcely form a picture of, whose crimes consisted of invading other people’s countries and forming a society based on the conception of a master race.