A Proper Marriage (50 page)

‘What’s the matter, old chap?’ he asked.

Martha felt her lips tremble. She was shaking with dry sobs. She saw he was extremely embarrassed - he could not stand tears.

‘Oh, Lord,’ he was saying, ‘don’t cry, there’s a good bloke.’ He handed her his large handkerchief, and she wiped her eyes and smiled.

‘You’re looking tired,’ he remarked, the glinting dark eyes looking right into her.

‘I’m fed up,’ she said, in a trembling hard voice. ‘I’m so bored I could scream. I can’t bear - anything!’ she concluded defiantly, looking straight at him. She waited for his judgment.

‘I’ve been thinking for some time things weren’t right,’ he remarked. He fished in his pocket, pulled out the old tin where he kept his cigarettes, and offered her one, lighting it with the careful old-fashioned courtesy he never forgot. ‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘I’ve not said anything to your mother.’ She looked sharply at him, but saw it was the truth. ‘She’s making various remarks,’ he added, embarrassed. ‘However …’

Another silence. Mr Quest looked down at his hands in a way which was very familiar. They were large, fine, but rather limp hands. He appeared to be surprised they were his hands. He frowned worriedly at them and remarked, ‘I really must find my nail scissors, they’ve got themselves lost somewhere.’ Almost, he allowed himself to drift off; then he
sighed, and shot her another speculative glance from under the stiff white cliffs of his eyebrows.

‘What did you do it for?’ he said suddenly, in a low reproachful voice. ‘It was so obvious it wouldn’t be any good. You weren’t even in love with him.’

‘Wasn’t I?’ she asked, surprised. She could not for the life of her remember what she had felt.

‘You weren’t in love with him, you’ve never been in love with anyone - anyone can tell it by looking at you,’ he said. That last sentence, cool, direct, the judgment of no less than an experienced man, caused her to look at him in respectful surprise. ‘I knew then it was a mistake - but no one can ever tell you anything. Can they, now?’ he added, softening it with a sort of affectionate irritation.

‘Well, so that’s that,’ he said, directing the irritation against life itself. ‘Marriage, I suppose, is a necessary institution,’ he went on after a pause, ‘but for
you
to get married at nineteen …’

‘You mean, I’ve made my bed and I must lie on it?’ she inquired reasonably.

She was not at all prepared for what followed; she thought uncomfortably that this man not only knew her much better than she ever allowed herself to think, but seemed always to be a jump ahead of her. ‘You must think it all over, Matty. Whatever you do, you must do it sensibly.’

He could only mean one thing. Yet never had Martha said to herself in so many words that she would leave Douglas. She felt that she would, sometime - but to say it was too frightening and definite.

‘Think it over. And don’t get yourself in the family way again until you’re certain,’ said Mr Quest firmly. They looked at each other. His eyes held an affection which made hers fill. But it was years since they had shown each other affection. ‘I’m very fond of you,’ he said in a low, embarrassed voice. ‘Oh, damn it all!’ he exclaimed, as his cigarette fell on to his trouser leg. He brushed off the sparks, and by the time things had been restored to order the moment had passed.

He collected his thoughts carefully, and observed, ‘I never
did like that man. I never could understand how you could marry such a - commercial traveller.’

Feebly Martha said, ‘He’s all right, you know.’

‘Yes, but, Matty! He’s - for the Lord’s sake, why couldn’t you pick a man who
is
a man?’ Again Martha felt herself reddening under the experienced male look. ‘Anyone could see with half an eye that - However, that’s that,’ said Mr Quest irritably.

Martha felt ashamed; at the same time she was supported. Everything would be all right, she felt.

He lit another cigarette for her, and smoked his own in silence.

‘It’s going to rain soon,’ he observed, looking at the sky. The banks of dark foliage about them hung limp and heavy. Clouds of mauve blossom seemed to dissolve into the sky in quivering light. The deep blue overhead was packed with thunderous cloud masses.

‘The heat’s awful,’ said Martha, irritated. She could feel herself hot and sticky under her dress. All the same, she liked it: the heat sang through her like the movements of her own blood. ‘I’ve got to take Caroline to the doctor,’ she said without moving.

‘Anything wrong?’ he asked politely.

‘Oh, no, she’s quite well.’

Mr Quest surveyed his grandchild, who was now industriously pulling lilies off their stems, and said, ‘The image of you at her age. Except for the eyes, of course. And the hair. Where did those eyes come from?’

‘Douglas’s father, I believe,’ said Martha. ‘Why?’, then, noting his look, she inquired, ‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘Well, I’ve often wondered,’ went on Mr Quest calmly. ‘After all, you don’t hold with our morals; as far as I can see there’s nothing to prevent Caroline being someone else’s child.’

Martha was extremely shocked. ‘You’re not suggesting,’ she said indignantly, ‘that I married Douglas under false pretences?’

‘I don’t see what’s to prevent you, if you’ve thrown over
conventional morality. For the life of me I can’t see why you married him - there must be some reason.’

‘There wasn’t any reason,’ she said helplessly.

‘Then you must have been in the family way.’

‘I was, but I didn’t know it.’ Here she began to laugh; for some reason she could not think of it without finding it absurdly funny. ‘There I was pregnant, and I didn’t know it, though everybody else did …’ She laughed herself out, and sat wiping her eyes.

‘I don’t see the joke,’ he said reprovingly. ‘I think it’s appalling. However, there’s some comfort in the thought that your generation is no more competent than we were - though I don’t expect you to see it.’

His look at her held a familiar irritation; the moment of understanding was over; almost at once he blew out a long cloud of smoke, watched it swirl away sluggishly into the blue air, and remarked in that other, introspective voice, ‘Did I ever tell you about that time when I came out of hospital and I was sure I was mad?’

He knew that he had; his urgent glance nevertheless appealed that she should let him tell it again. She sat in silence for some minutes listening.

‘Anyway,’ he concluded at a tangent, ‘as far as I can see, everyone is mad. Do you know, Matty, that’s the only explanation for the world that I can see - everyone’s as mad as hatters.’

She agreed politely, and, after a decent interval, said she must leave for the doctor’s. She put Caroline into the push-chair, and then kissed her father’s dry, papery cheek. He inclined it towards her absent-mindedly, murmuring, ‘Nice to see you, old chap. Drop in again soon.’ He looked at her - his eyes held a sly, evasive gleam. ‘There was something I wanted to say to you, what was it?’

She did not smile, but said seriously, ‘I must go now, Daddy.’ For that was his way of saying that if he had come out of his cloud to be her father, give her advice, support her, he did not intend to be reminded of it later. He was not going to be held responsible. There was in his smile, however, a direct mischievous quality, rather comradely,
which acknowledged the situation as plainly as words. Now she smiled back, ironically.

As she wheeled the chair away, he said firmly after her, ‘Mad. All of us. Everyone.’ And with this he reached out for a book which lay face down on the grass, propped it on his knees, and began to read.

By the time she reached the doctor’s rooms, she was ready to burst out angrily against the advice she expected him to give her. She could positively hear the male complacency with which Douglas had asked him to speak to her. And no doubt Dr Stern had replied in the same tone? ‘Women,’ they might have said; ‘you know what women are.’ Somewhere from the back of her mind floated up a memory of those words, and that tone — who was speaking? Why, of course, Mr Quest, with Mr Van Rensberg on the farm. There was that question of masculine laughter – conspiratorial almost, but most certainly deeply offensive. Mr Quest was one thing with men, another with his wife; Mr Quest half an hour before, and for ten minutes, had been something different again. Martha clung tight to that image of a man, and, thus supported, looked over at Dr Stern, waiting for him to put the pressure on. As she phrased it to herself.

But Dr Stern was being as bland as he always was. He examined the child carefully, and pronounced her to be perfectly well. On Martha’s insistence, he repeated, ‘Perfectly well - I’ll issue a certificate to that effect whenever you like!’ Their eyes met briefly; there was a comprehension in his which both upset and consoled her.

It appeared that he thought the interview over; but that was not what Douglas had implied. She said suddenly, ‘Perhaps I could see you for myself, for a moment.’

He at once nodded to the nurse, yet another young woman in the glazed white overall, who took Caroline by the hand and trotted her off into the next room.

The room was full of greenish light; light slid along the polished surface of the desk; the atmosphere of hushed professional intimacy was being re-established. Dr Stern had a card before him on his blotter. He was looking down at it,
his pale flattish face without expression. He was looking very tired.

‘Well, Mrs Knowell?’

Douglas must have been telling a lie, thought Martha. Dr Stern shot her a swift assessing glance, then pushed her card away and leaned back in his chair and yawned. ‘This weather makes me sleepy,’ he remarked conversationally. ‘And I was up all night with a baby. I don’t know why babies are always born at night - yours was, wasn’t it?’ Martha waited on edge for him to add some suggestion about her having another; he did not. ‘At this time of the year we all feel it. You look a bit done in yourself. I should take it easy, if I were you. And Caroline - all kids get pale and fretful, and we should try to keep them as quiet as possible. I get all my mothers along in October, worrying themselves sick. Just take it easy, take things easy, I tell them.’

Martha noted the recurrence of the word ‘all’; Dr Stern was feeding that need in her to be absolved by being like everybody else; it was the need that sent her off to women’s tea parties. There was a part of her brain which remained satirical and watchful, even amused, while it tried to analyse the process by which Dr Stern handled her. But the watchful other person did not prevent him from playing her like a fish on a line, she thought.

‘You know, Mrs Knowell, half the women who come in to see me have nothing wrong with them, but it doesn’t mean to say they don’t need a doctor’s advice. Now, you, as an intelligent woman, will understand that.’

Martha smiled disagreeably, at the ‘intelligent woman’; he saw the smile, but went on, ‘I prescribe a bottle of tonic. It does no harm. It might do some good. But I’m not going to prescribe a bottle of tonic for you. Your husband seems worried about you. You would be surprised how often I get worried telephone calls from young husbands.’ Here he laughed as if they shared a secret. ‘Perhaps it is just as well that husbands are - sometimes a little off the mark?’ He waited for her to laugh.

She had frozen, however; it was too clumsy. He noted her
frown, picked up his pen, and began making a series of sharp downward strokes on a scribbling pad.

Martha thought, He can’t judge people deeply; what he has got is an insight into how they react. He knows I resent it, but he doesn’t know what I resent. But she understood that his technique was working very well. She was feeling with him against the world of clumsy young husbands. She reminded herself that he was not much more than thirty, not much older than herself. And then: He didn’t even know I was pregnant when I came to him that time, and yet here I sit putting myself into his hands. For the first time she suspected that perhaps he
had
known she was pregnant, and understood her well enough to let her become too advanced to do anything about it. Perhaps all the women who came here were handled in the same way?

For the women of the suburbs, doctors do not make mistakes. At least, not their own doctors.

She thought of his wife. In the circle of women it was said that Mrs Stern was not good enough for her husband. Martha had caught a glimpse of them together one Sunday afternoon in the park. Mrs Stern was a small dark plump girl with a high-coloured face, who clung to his arm while he strolled across the grass, apparently as weary and patient as always. Martha had envied her. Being married to Dr Stern would be something quite different from being the wife of one of the boys. She had thought that proud anxious clutching of his arm rather ridiculous; now, if she, Martha, had been married to Dr Stern …

But he was speaking. ‘Before I got married myself I had all kinds of notions. But I’ve discovered that I’m not quite as clever as I thought I was. It’s one thing to give advice from outside, and another to handle things yourself. I am quite sure my wife thinks me the most clumsy of fellows.’ He looked up and smiled. It was a pleasant and disarming smile. He shrugged, as if the whole thing was beyond him; and Martha found herself smiling with him.