Martha Quest (29 page)

New Year’s Day they spent in his room, lying on the bed and eating chocolates. They were silent, for they had quarrelled the evening before. He had criticized her floral dance dress, but not in a way she would have been pleased for him to use. She knew it was dowdy; if he had laughed at her because of her mistake, she would have felt more easy about it. When he took her home he said that she should make it tighter, and showed what he meant by lifting handfuls of material away from her hips. ‘You want me to look like a tart,’ she said indignantly, to which he replied by calling her a prude. She asked how he would like her to look, and he suggested Stella Mathews. To this she said, ‘There you are, then.’ She had not known that she thought Stella in bad taste, but now it became a conviction strong enough to quarrel over. They had parted without sleeping together.

This morning the omission was almost at once made good, he being in a possessive, bullying mood, and she feeling dimly guilty, though she could not have said why. Afterwards, she tried again to make him talk about his childhood in the big city down south, but he answered shortly. There was a long silence.

Suddenly he asked her if she had slept with Donovan. She laughed, and said he had good reason to know she had not. And now he said spitefully that he had thought she was not a virgin. She replied, accusingly, that he had hurt her badly that first time. He said, again
brutally, How was he to know? She was now so indignant that she remained silent, her face turned away, and he began to tease her, in his half-brutal, half-deferential way, into good humour. He interrupted himself to ask, as if the question had been wrung out of him, ‘Do tell me, I won’t mind.
Did
you sleep with Donovan?’ In spite of her annoyance, and the conviction of injustice, the idea of sleeping with Donovan seemed so absurd that she laughed wholeheartedly. He grew angry and said that Donovan was her type, while he, Adolph, was not. ‘If you say so,’ Martha said coldly, and refused to be coaxed out of her bad humour.

At five that evening, when he suggested they should go to dinner, she said she wanted to go home, she needed to sleep early, ‘for a change’. Then she added hastily that in any case, now the New Year season was over, she would not be able to see so much of him, because she must study at the Polytechnic.

‘That’s right,’ he said, grinding his teeth slightly as he looked furiously at her, ‘I knew you wouldn’t last long.’

‘It’s only till seven at night, I’m free every evening at seven,’ she said, frightened into compliance by the spark of anger in his eyes.

Every evening at seven, then, he was waiting for her in his car. She came out gaily, grateful because of the man waiting patiently, only to find that gratitude vanishing in ill-humour as he began to question her about Mr Skye: Was her instructor attractive, did he try to make love to her?

When she had turned sullen and uncommunicative, he asked her what she would like to do that evening. This always confused her; she looked back appreciatively at Donovan, who simply informed her what they were going to do. She would reply to Adolph that she did not mind; there was always a long moment of indecision, which was like a conflict between them, while they both assured the other they did not mind in the least what they did. At last she assented hurriedly to the first challenging proposal he made: Did she want to go to McGrath’s and drink? Did she want to go to the night club? This manner of his, putting himself at her disposal, offended her, as if it
were an insult. At the pictures, if she lost herself in the film, she would turn with an uneasy feeling that he was watching her; and yes, he would be leaning back sideways in his seat, his should turned to the screen, while he smilingly watched her. ‘Why don’t you look at the picture, don’t you like it?’ she asked brightly; and he replied, ‘I like looking at you’ which flattered her, but also made her feel lost and confused: she felt as if she were something that must be humoured, that he considered himself quite unimportant.

In fact, they were increasingly uncomfortable together, except during those moments immediately after lovemaking, when she lay quietly beside him, in a devoted, childlike way. She told him then that she loved him; she found herself saying all sorts of things that it embarrassed her afterwards to remember at all. For, lying close up against that warm, sleek body, which apparently had such a powerful claim on her, waves of emotion came over her which she longed might continue over those other uncomfortable times in between.

Once she murmured, not knowing she was going to say it, ‘I should like to have your children.’

‘You don’t have to say that,’ he said sarcastically; and she was hurt, for she had been sincere for that moment.

He laughed unpleasantly, and said he would never have any children.

‘Why not?’ she asked, now deeply ashamed, because he had shattered the emotion which had made the words true.

He said shortly that the women he liked would never marry a man like him. Because of these pathetic words, she began to comfort him, reassure him; but next day he remarked, ‘I wonder what will happen to you. I wonder where we will both be in ten years’ time.’ This filled her all at once with a terrible feeling of loss and impermanence; for once his tone was pleasant, and tender.

‘Why shouldn’t we get married?’ she asked, her heart sinking at the thought of it.

He laughed at her, and smoothed her hair back, gently, in a paternal way, and said she was crazy. Then, a suggestion of cruelty
returning, he held her hair close around her throat, so that it slightly choked her, and said that she would marry a good city father and become very respectable and have five nice, well-brought-up children.

She shook herself free, and said that she would rather die. The suggestion made her furious, he might have been insulting her. Afterwards, looking back on it, she marked that moment as the real end of their affair; at the time, she felt resentment, and under the resentment the old fear of loss, as if she were being cheated out of something.

This occurred about ten days after they first made love.

Two or three days later—it was a Saturday—when he asked her what she would like to do, she said that she didn’t always want to make the decisions, that she would like to do something he enjoyed, for a change.

‘Very well,’ he said, and they spent the afternoon at the races; which revealed to Martha something quite new, a circle of people quite different from the regular Sports Club crowd.

The big oval of the racecourse, fringed and tasselled by rich green grass, banked by trees in full leaf, was a little way out of the town; and outside the clubhouse strolled a crowd of people dressed like those in the magazines from England. Adolph kept pointing out important personages, whose commonplace appearance naturally disappointed Martha, who until then had assumed that the famous must necessarily reflect all one’s ideas about them, instead of insisting on mirroring forth their own. The man who caused Adolph the greatest excitement was a Mr Player, whose name was used by the people of the colony in that spitefully humorous, grudgingly admiring way that is the tribute offered to real power. Mr Player, said Adolph, knew more about horses than anyone else here.

Adolph hung about, waiting to catch the great man’s eye, and when he did he offered an effusive smile, and received a careless nod in return. Mr Player was fat and red-faced, and Martha thought him repulsive, but Adolph said admiringly that he had an eye for the women, he got all the really attractive women in the town sooner or later; which information caused Martha to look disbelieving, for while
she knew, theoretically, that women slept with men for money, she could not imagine herself doing it, which is as good as saying she did not believe it. She therefore decided that Mr Player must be kind and generous and perhaps intellectual, otherwise there was no explaining his reputation.

When Mr Player had moved out of their neighbourhood, Adolph began wandering through the crowd, his eyes busily searching; and when he had found the right kind of face, he would appear to stiffen and wait, that almost servile smile steady on his lips, until he had got what he wanted—a hurried, sometimes annoyed acknowledgment of his presence, which he received gratefully. It annoyed Martha and made her feel uncomfortable. But when the first race began, she saw Adolph transformed. For the first time, she saw him shed his awful burden of self-consciousness. He stood by the rail, forgetting her, forgetting everything, absorbed in the horses that pranced and curvetted at the starting line, gleaming in the bright sunlight, and when they streamed into movement he leaned forward, his eyes following them, his hands gripping the rail; and when it was all over, he remained motionless for a few seconds, breathing heavily, before he turned to her, with a sigh, and said, ‘If I had the money…’

He took her to the stables, where he knew all the attendants and the jockeys, knew each horse by name. He stood by a big black powerful horse for nearly half an hour, his hand lying reassuringly on its neck, talking to it in a tone Martha had never heard. It touched her deeply, this passion was something she could respect, she felt a new tenderness for him, even while she wondered at his readiness to give up his regular attendance at the racecourse ‘simply to be with me’, she said with genuine humility, instinctively seeing that whatever he might feel for her was nothing to this abiding emotion.

But when they returned to the crowd, and he resumed his game of stalking the great for recognition, her irritation came back. At the end of the afternoon, he told her sarcastically that she had been bored; she was insincere when she protested she had enjoyed it. And the racing itself did bore her, she was unable to care which horse came in
first. The crowd interested her, the clothes of the women—but most of all, and for the wrong reasons, Adolph’s behaviour. He knew this instinctively. She assured him again that she had loved every minute of it; he said roughly that she had no feeling for racing and she was a hypocrite.

When they left the racecourse, with the other cars, he drove past McGrath’s. She waited, her nerves on edge, to hear him say that of course she wouldn’t be seen dead with him in there, now it was filled with the smart crowd from the racecourse. He said it, and she found herself replying irritably that if he didn’t behave like a dog who expected to be kicked, no one would treat him like one. It was the first time she had acknowledged that he was, in fact, disliked; and no sooner were the words out than guilt overwhelmed her.

‘Look,’ she said gently, ‘think of Mr Cohen, for instance. When he comes to the Sports Club, no one dreams of thinking, Look at that Jew!’

He laughed in a hurt, strained way, avoiding her eyes, and said, ‘Which Mr Cohen? Those lawyers, maybe, but the Cohen who runs the wholesale business wouldn’t dare show his nose in the place.’

‘Then it’s nothing to do with being Jewish,’ she persisted, being reasonable at all costs; and he merely laughed again, and said she was a baby and knew nothing about life, which naturally touched her on her weakest spot, and made her cold and hostile.

She walked in front of him into McGrath’s lounge, greeting the people she knew, as usual, but understood that their smiles, their waving, were no longer approving; there was no doubt of it: the Sports Club crowd were watching her in a way which politely did
not
pass comment.

She chose a table, and waited for him to join her, which he did, smiling sheepishly. They were silent, and drank rather more quickly than usual, and when he suggested, as soon as their glasses were empty, that of course she wanted to leave now, she rose at once, and walked out.

He ran up behind her, saying, ‘Come home with me now?’ It
was more than his usual hestitating suggestion, and she replied quickly that she must go home, there were letters to write.

She had never seen him so black and stubborn as he insisted, between set teeth, ‘Now—I want you to come home with me now.’

He had never insisted before; it had always been left to her to make the decision; and now she stiffened into resistance. ‘No,’ she said coldly, ‘I’m going home.’

He grasped her wrist, and said, ‘You never come when I want you to, only when you feel like it.’

Now, this struck her as unfair; she thought of herself as soft and compliant, because she saw the whole affair only in the light shed by those tender moments after love. She pulled away her wrist, moved away from the side of his car, where she had been standing, and said she would walk home. He came hurrying after her, already nervous and apologetic.

‘You only want me to come now because—well, because you want to prove something to yourself!’ she stated, and his face darkened, and all at once it became so urgently necessary for her to escape from the whole situation that she simply turned her back on him and said, ‘Leave me alone.’ As an afterthought, she flung back over her shoulder, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

So she walked steadily down the main street, until she heard a car draw up behind her, and hastened her steps, thinking that he had followed her; but Donovan’s gay, hard voice called out, ‘Matty, where are you off to?’

She stopped, adjusting herself to the idea of Donovan, and he said, ‘Yes, Matty dear, I’ve been looking for you. Come on, jump in.’

She got into the car, asking, ‘What do you want me for?’

‘
I
don’t want you,
dear
Matty. Stella wants to speak to you about something. I said I’d never be able to tear you away from your fascinating new friend, but, as luck had it, we passed you engaged in your lovers’ tiff, so I seized the opportunity.’

‘But
why
does she want to see me?’ Martha sounded like a sulky child, and Donovan did not reply, but drove steadily along.

A car passed them, and she involuntarily glanced to see if it was Adolph. Donovan said, ‘If you want to locate your admirer, surely you know where to find him?’

‘What do you mean?’ she inquired.

They were at an intersection; her room was perhaps two hundred yards down, one way, and the Mathews’s flat a couple of blocks further on. ‘Your fascinating admirer waits here for you,’ said Donovan, indicating a vacant and grass-grown lot at the corner. ‘Yes, Matty dear, when you’ve gone to your virgin bed, he sits here, in his car, watching your room to make sure of your exclusive interest in him—the whole town’s laughing its head off about it,’ he added cruelly, and glanced swiftly sideways to see how she would take it.