Martha Quest (26 page)

She lay yawning in the bath, and then heard herself thinking, What if there is a war? What would happen here? She was thinking that she would take lessons in nursing, and volunteer for service overseas—her blood quickened at the idea of it—and she was picturing herself a heroine in the trenches; she was leaning over a wounded man
in the slime and debris of no man’s land—the phrase gave her a pang of poetic delight; she would…But she suddenly leaped out of the bath in disgust at herself, saying, ‘I’m doing it too.’ She was not only furious, she was puzzled. These highly coloured fantasies of heroism and fated death were so powerful she could only with a great effort close her mind to them. But shut them out she did; and came staggering, out of the bathroom, telling herself she had a right to be tired, she had not slept that night.

She found Mrs Gunn on the veranda wearing a faded pink nightgown that dragged over her huge sagging breasts. Her dull red hair was uncombed and her eyes bloodshot. ‘Well, dear,’ she asked, interest beginning to rouse her, ‘did you have a nice time?’

For a moment Martha wondered what she meant; then she said brightly, ‘Yes, lovely, thank you.’

Mrs Gunn nodded enviously. ‘That’s right dear, you must enjoy yourself when you’re young.’

Martha laughed, at once animated in response to this demand that she should be. ‘I’m going out again tonight,’ she said, and spoke as if she could hardly wait for that night to begin.

In this town due honour was paid to holidays. Every year, from the beginning
of December, work in the offices began perceptibly to slacken. Young Mr Robinson, for instance, would return hurriedly at four in the afternoon, just to sign his letters, after an early festival lunch. Mr Cohen announced that every girl might take three mornings off (in rotation, of course) to do Christmas shopping. Charlie was kept running to and from the post office, with sacks full of Christmas cards. And that Christmas of 1938 had a feverishness, almost a desperation, about it that seemed to involve the whole town. There were dances every night, often three or four of them, at McGrath’s, in the Sports Club; while the Knave of Clubs, the city’s only night club, was open every evening instead of twice a week.

There was a new, dangerous spirit in the Sports Club itself. An incident occurred that would have seemed incredible only a few weeks before. Two of the wolves were found fighting, publicly, over a new girl just arrived in town, Marnie Van Rensberg; a shocked and fearful Binkie appealed to them, exhorted—and, for once, failed. The young people of the Club saw something quite new: two wolves not merely not on speaking terms, but with packs of followers who tended to
wrangle over the rights and wrongs of the case at the bar, even at meetings which were ostensibly about tennis courts or hockey fields. And they saw it passively—that was the extraordinary thing; this new wind blowing, this disruptive force, was so strong that it even seemed proper and normal that three couples should suddenly get married, that the young men should fight, and with real passion: Binkie had a bruise on his cheek, from trying to separate them.

Meantime, all over the Club were large notices: ‘Christmas 1938, Enjoy Yourselves’ and ‘Give the New Year a Bang of a Start!’ and ‘Let’s Give it Stick!’

That dance Martha attended was the last at which Binkie was to give the signal to ‘break it up’ there was already too much of a breaking-up spirit. The Club was full of invisible tensions. That cold orgiastic spirit which he deliberately invoked of a Saturday evening, had been invoking for years, was a pale wraith beside the brooding excitement that was on every face. And although the unwritten law still held—but it would not for long—that there should be no politics in the sacred circle, there was one evening when a girl remarked aloud, in a silence, in a sudden dreamy voice, as if she had not known she was going to speak at all, ‘Well, this may be the last Christmas…I mean to say—’ Then she blushed, and looked guiltily about her. Binkie exhorted her hastily to play the game, that wasn’t the spirit; but no one else spoke, and eyes met thoughtfully, in swift glances, and turned away, frowning in deeper speculation. And these faces wore, though unconsciously, a new look: there were moments when they were stern and dedicated as if they were listening to a distant bugle. It was a look which had the power to pierce like a warning. Binkie, seeing it, would yell to the band, who were perhaps already packing away their instruments, to give them a break, man, give them another tune. The band would most likely oblige. Although, once, two o’clock had been the limit, at two o’clock the musicians had firmly but gently shaken their heads and gone home, now they might play until half-past two, even three, in the morning. Afterwards, everyone went down to the Knave of Clubs. No one slept, it seemed. Night
after night they were up till the sun rose, they went to work as usual, and they met again by five in the evening. For into this timeless place, where everything continued dreamlike year after year, had come, like a frightening wind, a feeling of necessity, an outside pressure.

And during those heightened, tense days, Stella and Andrew, Donovan and Ruth, Martha and Perry went about together everywhere, for no better reason than that chance had brought them together, and a kind of inertia made it impossible for them to part. They were friends, they loved each other, a gentle, tender nostalgia made every meeting as vivid as a parting. They met in the Mathews’s flat immediately after work, and drank and danced or talked until morning, when exhaustion at last caught up with them, and they would fall like logs around the flat, and sleep on the floor, in chairs, or even tumbled across the big double bed, three or four of them together, in a sexless affection—or perhaps it would be more true to say that during that time the forces of sex hung balanced so precariously that no member of the group of six dared to make a movement one way or the other. During that three weeks, Martha might drive to a dance inside the circle of Donovan’s arms, and return from it enclosed within the same gentle protective pressure—this time, from Perry. She might dance half the evening with Andrew, locked in tender nostalgia, and watch Stella across the room, cheek to cheek with Donovan; she might fling herself down on the divan for an hour to catch some sleep, on coming to the flat straight from the office, and wake up to find beside her any one of the three men, who roused himself good-naturedly at her stirring, and then hastened to fetch her, and himself, a brandy. And so it went on. Such dreamlike, compelled amity, such good nature, such tender appreciation, had surely never existed? They felt as if something miraculous had descended upon them; and yet it all vanished, and from one moment to the next.

It was at the Christmas-tide dance at the Sports Club. The band played until three; and at the moment the music finally stopped, Stella was with Donovan under the musicians’ platform. The pair sang ‘God Save the King’ hand in hand; and then, in terror lest the evening
might end, Stella leaned over to one of the musicians and said, ‘Come and join us, Dolly—and bring your girl, if you’ve got one.’ He nodded with a grateful smile, and indicated that he would come when his violin was safely stowed away. Martha, who was with Andrew, linked arms with Stella, and, as Ruth and Penny came alongside Andrew, and the six of them, pressed side to side, danced slowly across the floor to the table, Martha heard Donovan say in a low grumbling voice he had not used for so long she was startled, ‘Why did you ask that damned—I mean, why did you make him come?’

And if Donovan’s voice was bad-tempered, Stella’s was tart. ‘You were going to say “damned little Jew,” I think?’

‘Jew or not, who cares,’ said Donovan, so unwillingly that Stella’s eyes hardened, and she took her arm away from his. ‘He’s loathsome. Adolph
King—
trying to pretend he’s not a Jew.’

‘Here, you two,’ said Andrew pleasantly, but warningly. ‘What’s going on?’ He dropped Martha’s arm, and went between his wife and Donovan, and began to laugh them out of their anger. And so they reached their table; and it was so long since this mood of tenderness had been disturbed by even a word or a jarring silence, that all six were troubled, and waited apprehensively for the arrival of Adolph King, who apparently had the power to stir up trouble.

Soon he came, a small, compact man, with a pale face that now glistened with the hours of music-making, smallish eyes of that red-brown, hot colour that goes with a smouldering temperament, and small, pale, rather beautiful hands; while his smile was eager and grateful, but indicated he was ready to take offence at a word.

He stood smiling uncertainly by an empty chair, which Stella pushed out towards him with a warning look at the others from her expressive eyes. Too expressive: he saw that look, and the smile was like the baring of a dog’s teeth. But only for a moment; the gratitude settled back as he took his chair. Now, this gratitude had nothing to do with his position as music-maker; for all the members of the band also belonged to the Club, and, on evenings when they were not playing themselves, might stand with the crowd, urging their colleagues
to play one more, just one more, exactly as if they too, and perhaps the next evening, would not be shaking their heads with the same smiling obduracy. So the uneasy gratitude was altogether troubling, and Martha felt it as she watched him talk with Stella. They were all watching, Donovan’s face dark and hostile, Andrew quiet, supporting his wife by an occasional remark which caused Adolph to turn that quick smile in his direction, while Perry, lying back loosely in his chair, glanced alternately at Adolph and Donovan. He seemed to be remembering how much he disliked Donovan.

Donovan made a remark to Ruth in a low voice, and then let out his squeal of laughter; she answered shortly, seeming not to agree. Then Donovan turned to Martha and said, ‘Well, Matty, what do you think of Jew-boys who change their names?’

She replied coldly that she did not see why they should not; though in fact she was struggling with a feeling that it was cowardly—she was remembering what Solly had said about Jews who changed their names. She turned to Perry and asked him, ‘Do you know him? Is he nice?’

Perry remarked indifferently that Dolly was a nice kid, he was good-natured too, he often played on by himself when the rest of the band had packed up and gone home. ‘He’s a good violinist,’ he added appreciatively, as if unaware of what all this feeling was about.

Donovan was furious. After a few moments’ silence, he said loudly to Ruth, ‘Shall we go?’ Ruth looked round slowly, blinking her tired, heavy-lidded eyes, and nodded. She and Donovan rose, and once again Stella’s eyes sparkled indignation and reproach. But Donovan lounged over to her, kissed her cheeks, and said, ‘We’ll drop in tomorrow, Stella dear.’ He turned away, ignoring Adolph.

Ruth said goodbye to every person individually, smiling especially at Adolph, which caused him to flush and make an instinctive movement as if he were going to rise from his chair. Ruth ignored this movement, and, smiling her steady social smile, followed Donovan.

Martha and Perry, at the other end of the long table, were now by themselves.

‘A precious plant, our Donny-boy,’ said Perry at last, giving considered judgement, and for himself, not out of that compelled group amity in which he had been stuck with the rest of them, like flies in treacle, for the three weeks which seemed like so many months.

Martha said hurriedly, ‘You should remember his—he has a bad time at home,’ though until she spoke she had not known she thought he had a bad time.

Perry’s blue eyes rested on her thoughtfully, while he crooned, ‘You’ve a good heart, baby, you stick up for your friends.’

Involuntarily, she frowned, and looked away; things hung on balance. For the first time in weeks she was thinking, What am I doing here?

Then Perry said in a low voice, ‘Come home with me now, baby?’ She hesitated, looking up the table to where the group of three were now laughing together, a little too loudly. ‘Come on, they’re all right,’ Perry said urgently, and hauled that long body of his to its feet; he always looked as if he were troubled by his own size, as if he must keep firmly in his head, which was such a long way from his feet, that those feet were too big and might get him into trouble.

Martha also stood up, saying, ‘I think I’ll be getting home to bed.’

Stella and Andrew at once exclaimed in dismay that it was too early, she must see Boxing Day in, they must all come and have breakfast at the flat. Martha shook her head, smiling, feeling her arm gripped tight by Perry’s big paw.

‘I’ll drop in tomorrow,’ she said, as Donovan had done, and then, afraid that her going might be interpreted in the same way as his, walked up the length of the table to the man they called Dolly, held out her hand, shook his, and said that she hoped she would see him again. She saw Stella’s approving nod, and Andrew smiling at her. As for Dolly himself, she was embarrassed by that effusively grateful smile.

She went out with Perry, feeling nervous and excited, for she felt the pressure of his eyes on her. She was wearing a dress of flowered
crepe, which she had bought on an impulse, and which was neither what she liked or what Donovan liked, for all he had said when he saw it was, ‘Well, Matty,
dear
!’ It was going to cost her ten shillings a month for the next year, and she regretted buying it. But the pressure of Perry’s arm around her waist seemed to absolve her of bad taste.

They drove in silence back to her room, and he got out of the car without speaking and followed her to the door. She was looking for her key, hoping that no one they knew might choose that moment to drive down the street. A couple of cars from the Club swept by, hooting a greeting, and she muttered a bad-tempered ‘Damn!’ as she fitted the key, and hastily went in. Again she hesitated, and found the problem solved by Perry, who simply lifted her up and carried her to the bed.

‘Shhhh!’ she could not help warning him; for Mrs Gunn slept the other side of the thin wall.

‘Never mind, kid,’ Perry crooned, and leaned over her admiringly. He looked for so long that she began to see herself through his eyes, approving the flushed face, heavy eyes, loosened hair. He bent to kiss her, and she let this image of herself dissolve, and shut her eyes, preparing to be lost. But the kiss persisted, and its hardness seemed to demand resistance, his mouth was boring down into hers so that it hurt, and as her mind remarked; He’s calculating, he’s testing me, she flashed awake and became conscious again of every part of herself as he might see it. She was locked in watchful resistance. He lay down beside her, and began pressing her to him. Her mind was schooled in poetic descriptions of the love act from literature, and in scientific descriptions from manuals on sex; it was not prepared for the self-absorbed rite which he was following. When he reached for her hand, and pulled it towards the front of his body, it stiffened; he pulled harder, and moaned, ‘Give me a break, kid, give me a break’ while at the same time he fumbled with her breasts.

She sat up, and demanded angrily, ‘What the hell is it you want me to do?’ An entirely rhetorical remark, which he was taking seriously; for he was adjusting his face to that look of doglike and abashed
devotion which exasperated her, and she hurried on, examining with hostility the hostile look in his eyes: ‘You’re absolutely disgusting!’ and then realizing she was misunderstood, she stood up, shook back her hair, and said coldly, ‘It’s quite all right to mess around, like kids, but to—to make love properly, I suppose you’d be shocked!’ She was furious. She saw him slowly gather that great body of his to a sitting position, and thought, How silly he looks. He was so astonished that he had not yet time to be shocked, so she hurried on: ‘I wonder how many years you’ve been—messing with girls in cars. After dances there’s nothing you don’t do—but the thing itself.’ His inarticulateness, which was after all verbal, and nothing to do with the way he thought, was affecting her, for as each precise phrase came to her mind, licensed by her reading, she could not help discarding it, under compulsive pressure from a nervous prohibition; she was slowly growing furious with herself because of her clumsy, childish speech.