A Proper Marriage (37 page)

‘Well, then - there’s this question of the war. Would you like to represent your — followers, on a committee for raising funds, eh?’

Mr Matushi appeared to reflect. Then he said, ‘Our people all support the war against fascism.’

Mr Maynard let out a surprised grunt. ‘Eh?’ It was the word ‘fascism’; as far as he was concerned, England was fighting Germany again. ‘So, you do, do you?’

‘Our people are well aware of the danger Hitler represents to the civilized world.’

‘I don’t suppose that more than half of one per cent know who Hitler is.’

‘In that case, it is not … democratic’ - Mr Matushi hesitated delicately over the word – ‘to make them soldiers in this war, is that not so, Mr Maynard?’ He stooped before Mr Maynard, stubborn, gentle, expressing with every line of his body an infinite willingness to wait.

Mr Maynard looked at him heavily, and said, ‘Be that as it may, it would be appreciated if a well-known and acknowledged leader - a man like yourself - would represent your people on the committee.’

Mr Matushi smiled gently. ‘Perhaps there might be a better man for the position? A person like myself, fined in the courts, might not be - acceptable?’

Mr Maynard’s black eyebrows shot up, and he said severely, ‘Matushi, if you don’t keep the law, it’s my job to fine you. That’s all there is to it.’

Mr Matushi was smiling, biting his lips, smiling again; he shook gently with laughter. ‘But, Mr Maynard, you are a very good magistrate, we all know that; we all know you as a very just man.’

There was no resentment in his manner, not even the impertinence which Mr Maynard was certainly looking for - nothing, apparently, but that genuine bubbling amusement. Suddenly he stopped his long body from the slight pervasive shaking, and said, ‘Mr Maynard, our people will do everything they can in this terrible war. They will fight
well. It is only fifty years since we were honourably defeated by your soldiers. Our soldiers have already gone to fight with your soldiers against fascism for democracy.’ He waited, stooping and smiling.

‘Good night, Matushi,’ said Mr Maynard.

‘Good night, sir.’ He stood to one side while Mr Maynard and Martha went down the stairs before him, and then followed at a polite distance. They reached the street.

‘What did you fine him for?’

‘For not having a pass after nine o’clock.’

Martha was silent with hostility.

‘I don’t make the laws, I am their servant.’

Martha laughed angrily.

He looked at her in surprise. ‘Personally I should be in favour of issuing educated men - comparatively educated, that is - with a special pass to exempt them from carrying other passes. I believe it is under consideration now.’

‘Why not abolish passes altogether?’

‘Why not? I suggest you put pressure on your Parliamentary representative to that effect.’

Martha laughed again.

‘I am firmly of the opinion that the sooner a middle class with privileges is created among the Africans, the better it will be for everyone. Unfortunately, the majority of the whites are so bogged down in intelligent considerations such as that they wouldn’t have their sisters marrying black men, that they are too stupefied to see the advantages of such a course.’

Martha was several years from understanding this remark, and felt herself to be as stupid as that majority he had dismissed so contemptuously.

They proceeded in silence down the empty moonlit street, Mr Maynard strolling along, putting one firm leg before the other under a heavy, massive body, hands behind his back, narrowed thoughtful eyes directed ahead. ‘They are all the same, these African agitators. You can buy any one of them for ten shillings.’

‘Has Mr Matushi been bought?’

‘They all overreach themselves, if you give them time.’

‘One of these days they’ll fight you with their bare hands.’

‘I don’t doubt it. In the meantime I shall continue to do my duty in that station of life into which it has pleased God to call me.’

Martha considered this for a time; and then inquired, really wanting to know: ‘I don’t see why you go to these meetings?’

For the first time, Mr Maynard showed signs of discomfort. He said hastily, heavily humorous, ‘I’m an interested observer of life.’

‘You behave as if you were God,’ said Martha at last.

They had reached the pavement outside the block of flats.

‘If you are genuinely interested in uplifting humanity, which is right and proper at your age, then there are many things you could do.’

‘Oh no, you don’t,’ said Martha abruptly. Mr Maynard raised his brows. Martha was embarrassed because of the hostility that had sounded in her voice; she did not really understand what she had said. ‘It was very sweet of you to take me out,’ she said like a schoolgirl.

‘So you have already said. Are you going to ask me up for a drink?’ he inquired, facing her massively, so that she had to look up into his face. She felt him to be powerful and dangerous; she remembered him on the second landing. She said, ‘Caroline wakes so early in the mornings.’

Up went those brows. ‘But I thought Caroline was with your mother?’ Then he said, ‘Well, I won’t obtrude myself. Good night.’ He turned and went striding off along the street.

Martha went indoors in a ferment of embarrassment. He had made her feel gauche and unaccomplished. Yet there had been nothing of the ironical gentleman about him on the second landing among closed doors and the unpleasant, disreputable smell. She felt that the incident had been an insult to both of them. If she chose to remember it, she would never be able to feel liking for him again. She proceeded to forget it, with the vague thought, I suppose it’s because he’s so old; that generation - kissing hastily on staircases is the sort of thing they did.

She proceeded to think of Mr Matushi; she could not
understand his extraordinarily gentle amusement. If I were Mr Matushi, she thought angrily, I would … But she could think of nothing but that she would have slapped Mr Maynard’s face. Which would have earned him a sentence for assaulting a white man.

She went to bed in a mood of severe self-criticism.

As for Mr Maynard, he strolled through the moonlight, hands behind his back, and the memory of Martha’s nervous hostility rankled. He felt he had been encouraged and then rebuffed. He proceeded to comfort himself by thinking of various romantic episodes. At the same time, he reflected on the meeting; he dwelt particularly on that moment when Mr Perr had laughed when he remarked that he could not understand why left-wing intellectuals always insisted on being so uncomfortable when they met. The grateful, almost obsequious note in that laugh caused another, but quite disconnected, image to float into his mind: the face of old Thompson-Jones, Minister of Finance, with whom he would be playing golf tomorrow.

Chapter Two

The two rooms at the top of the block of flats were filled with light from the sky as soon as the sun, splendid, enlarged and red, swelled up over the horizon of suburb-clotted hills, pulling behind it filaments of rose-and-gold cloud. By half past five fingers of warm yellow were reaching over the big bed, over Caroline’s cot. Martha lay warm in the blankets, listening to Caroline wake. She always woke the moment the child first stirred, as if an alarm had gone off; she woke instantly if Caroline murmured in her sleep at night. Caroline gurgled, and strove with her limbs until the covers were off. She sat up. Martha, through eyes kept half closed, saw the tiny energetic creature in its white gown rolling over and stretching, two small rosy feet playing in the air, while the voice tried itself: a soft chuckle, then a deep, self-absorbed murmur; silence, and a sudden shriek of triumphant vitality as the cot shook and rattled with her movements. The low meditative murmur began again; Caroline, crouching on all fours, looked steadily at the white blanket while she listened to her own voice; there was a look of thoughtful surprise on the small face. She dropped sideways, rolled to her back, her legs stuck straight up, she grunted and puffed while her face reddened. She lay there, rocking her legs from side to side, silent for the moment, apparently waiting with docile patience to hear what new sound her throat would bring forth. A high single note, like a bird’s; another, a fifth lower; a long silence, and again a triumphant yell. Caroline clambered resolutely to her feet, clutched the edge of the cot, put her chin on it, and looked out of the window at the sun. The big yellow ball swam now in a clear sky. Caroline blinked at it; beads of sweat clung
under her short black curls. She squeezed her eyes shut, and rocked, humming, from one foot to another, the sun sharply etching her rosy face with shadow and warm light. She opened her eyes cautiously; the sun still filled her eyes with its dazzle. She turned her head slightly, and, frowning with determination, put up a clenched fist over one eye, and opened the other at the sun: it was still there, hanging in the blue square of the window. She stretched out one fist and spread it into a shaft of yellow light that swam with golden dust; the small fingers moved wildly, then clutch! They shut on nothing. Caroline looked down, puzzled, at her empty palm. She tried again; her hand went clutch! clutch! at the mote-filled sunlight. Then she stretched out both hands to the sun, a look of desperate desire on her face. She let out a high, angry, baffled yell and shook the bars of her cot furiously. She lost her footing, rolled over, and lay on her back, legs waving comfortably in the warm sunlight, contentedly trying out her voice.

Martha shut her eyes and tried to sleep again. She could not. There was this band of tension, felt deeply as a web of tight anxiety, between her and the child. Every moment, every sound Caroline made reverberated through Martha. Relax! said Martha to herself, but she felt tension in every limb. She was waiting for that moment when Caroline’s high shriek peremptorily sounded the summons for the day to begin.

And yet, during those three days while Caroline had been with her grandmother, Martha had slept, waked, gone about living as if Caroline did not exist, had never existed. Not for a moment had Martha felt anxiety; she had scarcely thought of the child. She came home; and again Martha was caught up into the rhythm of this other small life. Her long day was regulated by the clock to Caroline’s needs; and she went to bed at night exhausted by Caroline’s experience.

She lay now, eyes closed to a narrow slit, the sun making rainbows on her eyelashes, so that she might see it as Caroline had just seen it, and knew that her reluctance to get out of bed was simply boredom at the thought of the day ahead. She wished it were already the end of the day, and
Caroline safely in bed and asleep. Then her, Martha’s, life might begin. And yet the hours of evening were as restless and dissatisfied; she always went to bed early to put an end to them. Her whole life was a hurrying onwards, to get it past; she was back in the tension of hurry, hurry, hurry; and yet there was nothing at the end of it to hurry towards, not even the end of the war, which would change nothing for her.

At this point in her reflections, she again told herself to relax: her inability to enjoy Caroline simply filled her with guilt. Yet she could not relax into Caroline; that would be a disloyalty and even a danger to herself. Cycles of guilt and defiance ruled her living, and she knew it; she had not the beginnings of an understanding what it all meant.

Caroline was now chanting steadily, with a note of urgency in her voice that Martha knew. Her limbs involuntarily stiffened; she made them lie loose.

Caroline bundled herself over, dragged herself hand over hand up the bars of the cot, rested her chin on the rail and looked at her mother. Martha saw the small, white-gowned girl, her alert bright black eyes shrewdly watching her. Caroline let out a shriek of warning and waited, Martha suddenly laughed, won over into tender amusement. Caroline surveyed her mother for a moment, and shook the bars like a monkey. In an instant, Martha had swung her legs over, lifted Caroline out and set her on the big bed.

The book prescribed rusk and orange juice. Martha fetched them. Caroline staggered around the room on her unsteady little legs, sucking the rusk into a sticky fawn-coloured paste.

The small white-painted room was filled with sunlight, like a glass bowl full of quivering bright water. Martha took a bath: the bathroom was shot with needles of sunlight; the water rocked in the white bath in spangles and opals of light. Then she dressed swiftly in one of the brief coloured dresses that gave her so much pleasure to wear. How lovely to wear so little, to feel her brown smooth limbs coming out of the slip of coloured linen; she was all free and her own
again; she was light and supple, and the stains and distortions of pregnancy belonged to another epoch. How lovely then to wash the little girl, and see her in her fresh pretty cotton dress, the delicate pink feet balancing so surely and strongly over the floor.

By seven every morning Martha and her daughter were dressed and ready for the day, and they ate breakfast together; or rather, Martha drank tea and painfully did not care that Caroline would not eat.

Ever since the day Mr Maynard had entered on the unpleasant scene of Caroline being fed, when Martha had seen it sharply through his eyes, she had forced herself, and with an effort that exhausted her, not to care about Caroline’s eating. She must break this bond! That was how she felt it: as something compulsive and deadly that would most certainly affect the child’s whole future. So Martha no longer cared, on principle. But at the beginning it had not been so easy. She prepared the messes suitable for Caroline’s age, set them on the wooden platform before the child, put a piece of linoleum under the high chair, and retired with a cup of tea and a book, forcing herself not to look at her.