A Proper Marriage

The great wheel was revolving slowly, a chain of lights that mingled with the lamps of Orion and the Cross. Martha laid her wet and uncomfortable head against the wall, and looked at the wheel steadily, finding in its turning the beginnings of peace. Slowly she quietened, and it seemed possible that she might recover a sense of herself as a person she might, if only potentially, respect. It was really all quite simple, she assured herself. That this marriage was a foolish mistake must certainly be obvious to Douglas himself; for if humility can be used to describe such an emotion, Martha was genuinely humble in thinking of him and herself as involved in an isolated act of insanity which a simple decision would reverse. His personality and hers had nothing to do with it. The whole graceless affair had nothing to do with what she really felt or – surely? – what he felt, either.

The dragging compulsion which had begun to operate when they met, which had made it impossible for her to say no at any stage of the process, seemed broken. It would be easy, she thought, to tell Douglas when he entered the room that they must part at once; he must agree. For since he shared her view that the actual ceremony was no more than a necessary bit of ritual to placate society, it followed he would view a divorce in the same light.

Thus Martha – while her eyes hypnotically followed the circling of the great wheel. But at the back of her mind was an uncomfortable memory. It was of Stella roaring with laughter as she told the story, while her husband laughed with her, of how she had, the day after their wedding, run back to her mother, because she had decided she didn’t want to be married at all, and most particularly not to Andrew; after some months of marriage, it seemed that Stella found this mood nothing but a joke. The fact that what she was feeling now might be nothing but what everybody felt filled Martha with exhaustion. She remained clinging to the sill, while tiredness flowed into her, an extreme of fatigue, like the long high note on the violin that holds a tension while the ground swell of melody gathers strength beneath it. Her limbs were so heavy she could hardly prevent herself from sliding off the chair; while her mind, like a bright space above a dark building, was snapping with activity. The small, clear picture of Stella laughing at her own story was succeeded by another: she saw Binkie, large, fat, heavy, grotesquely dancing with the baboon on the lawn outside the hotel; she saw herself laughing at the scene, arm in arm with Douglas. Finally, she saw a small yellow flower on the very edge of the Falls, drenched with spray and tugging at its roots like a flag in a gale, but returning to its own perfect starred shape whenever the wind veered. She could not remember having actually seen this flower. It was frightening that she could not – yet there was something consoling about it, too. She tried again and again to place the moment she had seen it; her mind went dark with the effort, as if a switch had been turned down. Then she heard, with a movement of slow, swelling sadness, the music from the amusement park. And now she understood that she was looking back at the hectic elation of those four days with regret – nostalgia was invading her together with the rhythm of the false cheap music. Yet the truth was she had disliked every moment of the time. She jerked herself fully awake; that lie she had no intention of tolerating. She stood up, and told herself with a bleak and jaunty common sense that she needed a good night’s sleep.

The outer door crashed open; the light crashed on. A cheerful young man came towards her, whirled her up in his arms, and began squeezing her, saying, ‘Well, Matty, here we are in our own place at last, and about time, too!’ With this he gave her a large affectionate kiss on the cheek, and set her down, and stood rubbing his hands with satisfaction. Then it seemed that something struck him; doubt displaced the large grin, and he said, ‘But, Matty, what’ve you done to yourself?’

Turning away quickly, Martha said, ‘I’ve cut off my hair. Don’t look at it now, it’ll be all right in the morning.’

Taking her at her word, he said, ‘Oh, all right, changed your hair style, eh?’ And he rubbed his hands again, with pleasure: she could see he took it as a compliment to himself that she should. ‘Sorry I was late, but I ran into some of the boys and I couldn’t get away. Had to celebrate.’ His proprietary look half annoyed her; but she could feel the beginning of fatal pleasure. From the way he looked at her and rubbed his hands, she knew that he had again been congratulated on his acquisition; and while she puzzled over the knowledge that this could have nothing to do with herself, she could not help feeling less heavy and unattractive.

‘They think I’m a helluva lucky…’ he announced; and at the thought of the scenes in the bar with the boys, a reflection of his proud and embarrassed grin appeared on his face. He swooped over to her, ground her tightly to him, and announced, ‘And so-so I am.’

Then, still holding her, but loosening his grip because his mind was on them and not on her, he began telling her some of the things they had said, in a comradely way, sharing the pleasure with her. At first she said, half anxiously, half pleased, ‘And what else?’ ‘And what did they say then?’ Until suddenly she jerked away from him, angry and red, and said, ‘I don’t think that’s funny, that’s disgusting.’

The very image of an offended prude, she turned her back on him; while, half shamefaced, half sniggering, he looked at her and said at last, ‘Oh, come off it, Matty, don’t put on an act.’

Martha undressed in silence, flinging crumpled blue dress, knickers, petticoat, in all directions. She stood naked. In the mood she was in, it had nothing to do with coquetry.

To Douglas, however, this was not apparent. He found the naked and angry girl an argument for forgiveness. Flinging off his own clothes, he bounced on to the bed, and moved over to give her room. Still frowning, she moved chastely in beside him; for the fact that they were annoyed with each other made the act of getting naked into bed on a level with sitting beside him at breakfast. She was irritated to discover that he did not understand this. She was on the point of turning over away from him, when the instinct to please turned her towards him. Love had brought her here, to lie beside this young man; love was the key to every good; love lay like a mirage through the golden gates of sex. If this was not true, then nothing was true, and the beliefs of a whole generation were illusory. They made love. She was too tired to persuade herself that she felt anything at all. Her head was by now swimming with exhaustion.

‘God, but I’m tired, Matty,’ he announced, rolling off her. He yawned and said with satisfaction, ‘How many hours have we slept during the last fortnight?’

She did not reply. Loyalty towards love was forcing her to pretend that she was not disappointed, and that she did not – at that moment she was sick with repulsion – find him repulsive. But already that image of a lover that a woman is offered by society, and carries with her so long, had divorced itself from Douglas, like the painted picture of a stencil floating off paper in water. Because that image remained intact and unhurt, it was possible to be good-natured. It is that image which keeps so many marriages peaceable and friendly.

She listened, smiling maternally, while he calculated aloud how many hours they had slept. It took him several minutes: he was nothing if not efficient.

‘Do you realize we couldn’t have slept more than about three hours a night during the last six weeks?’ he inquired proudly.

‘Awful, isn’t it?’ she agreed, in the same tone.

After a pause: ‘It’s been lovely, hasn’t it, Matty?’

She agreed with enthusiasm that it had. At the same time she glanced incredulously at him to assure herself that he must be joking. But he was grinning in the half-dark. She simply could not comprehend that his satisfaction, his pleasure, was fed less by her than by what other people found in their marriage.

Her silence dismayed him. He gripped her arm, pressed it, and urged, ‘Really, everyone’s been awfully good to us, haven’t they, Matty? Haven’t they? They’ve given us a hell of a start?’

Again she enthusiastically agreed. He lay alert now, feeling her worry and preoccupation. Then he suddenly inquired, ‘Did you see the doctor? What did he say?’

‘Oh, nothing much,’ she said, sleepy and bad-tempered. ‘He doesn’t seem to know more than we do, only he does the big-medicine-man act awfully well.’

But Douglas could not agree with this. ‘He’s very good, Matty – very good indeed.’

Her motherliness was warmed by his anxiety, and she at once assured him that he had been very kind and she had liked him enormously.

‘That’s all right, then. You’ll be all right with him.’ A pause. ‘Well, what did he recommend? Those effells are a pain in the neck, only for bachelors.’ He laughed proudly.

‘He made a joke about them.’

‘What did he say?’ She told him. ‘He’s a helluva lad, Dr Stern, isn’t he, Matty? Isn’t he?’

She hesitated. Besides, she did not want to think now about the machinery of birth control, which suddenly appeared to her distasteful. But since from the beginning it had been a matter of pride to be efficient, gay and matter-of-fact, she could not say that she detested the jellies and bits of rubber which from now on would accompany what Dr Stern had referred to as her love life as if it were something separate from life itself; she could not now say what for the moment was true: that she wished she were like that native woman, who was expected to have a baby every year. She wished at the very least that it should not all be made into a joke. She wanted to cry her eyes out; nothing could be more unreasonable.

Suddenly Douglas observed, ‘We’ve just done it without anything. I suppose that’s a bit silly, eh, Matty?’

‘Oh, it’ll be all right,’ she said hastily, unwilling to move. She felt it would be ‘all right’ because since the ‘act of love’ had been what Dr Stern described as unsatisfactory, she felt it had not occurred at all. She was unaffected, and therefore it would be unfair, if not unnatural, that a child might result from it.

‘Because you’d better get out of bed and go to the bathroom,’ he suggested uneasily.

‘Judging from the book of words,’ she said, with a dry anger that astounded even herself, ‘those little dragons of yours go wriggling along at such a rate it would be too late by now.’

‘Well, maybe it would be better than nothing,’ he urged.

‘Oh, I’m too tired to move,’ she said irritably. ‘Besides,’ she added firmly, ‘I’m not going to have a baby for years. It would be idiotic, with a war coming.’

‘Well, Matty…’ But he was at a loss for words in the face of this irrationality. ‘At any rate,’ he announced firmly, ‘we mustn’t take any more chances at all. Actually we’re being helluva fools. It’s not the first time.’

‘Oh, it’ll be all right,’ she agreed amenably, quite comfortable in the conviction, luckily shared by so many women who have not been pregnant, that conception, like death, was something remarkable which could occur to other people, but not to her.

‘Did you tell Dr Stern about your periods?’ he persisted.

‘What about them?’ she asked irritably, disengaging herself from his arm and lying parallel to him, not touching him.

‘Well, you did say they were a bit irregular.’

‘Oh, do stop fussing,’ she cried, tormented. ‘According to the book of words thousands of women have irregular periods before they have a baby and it doesn’t mean a thing.’

‘But, Matty, do be reasonable,’ he implored.

She was silent. Even more did she want to weep. But this would have meant abandoning herself to him, and to explanations of what she could not explain herself – a feeling of being caged and trapped. Until two weeks ago, her body had been free and her own, something to be taken for granted. She would have scorned to fuss about, or even to notice, a period that was heavy or one that chose not to come at all. And now this precious privacy, this independence, so lately won from her mother’s furtive questioning, was being threatened by an impertinent stranger.

‘Matty,’ he said again, ‘don’t you think you’re being unreasonable?’

‘I’m so tired I could scream,’ she muttered defiantly.

Silence. Music from the waste lot came throbbing into the room. The big wheel, glittering with the white lights, revolved steadily, Like a damned wedding ring, she thought crossly, abandoning herself to anger, since she was not free to cry.

‘I do hope you’ll be in a better humour in the morning,’ said Douglas coldly, after a pause.

Her mind began producing wounding remarks with the efficiency of a slot machine. She was quite dismayed at the virulence of some of the things that came to her tongue. She cautiously turned her head and saw his face showing in the steady flicker of lights. He looked young – a boy, merely; with a boy’s sternness. She asked, in a different tone, ‘Dr Stern said something about your stomach.’

His head turned quickly. Guardedly he said, ‘What did he tell you,?’

‘Nothing – only mentioned it. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Oh – I don’t know.’

The pride that concealed a weakness appealed to her. She reached out her hand and laid it on his arm above the elbow. It stiffened, then responded.

‘I’ve an ulcer – nothing much. I just go on the tack when I feel it.’

She could not help a pang of repulsion from the idea of an ulcer; then another of pity. ‘I thought you had to have a special diet for ulcers?’

‘Oh – don’t fuss.’ He added, contrite, ‘I lay off fats when it starts up.’

‘You’re very young to have an ulcer,’ she remarked at last. Then, thinking this sounded like a criticism, she tightened her fingers about the thick warm flesh. It was slack. He was asleep, and breathing deeply.

Chapter Two

When Martha woke, she knew she had slept badly. Several times she had half roused, with the urgent knowledge that she ought to be attending to something; and this anxiety seemed to be of the same quality as that suggested by the great dragging circle of lights, which continued to flicker through her sleep like a warning. The ceiling of the small bedroom spun with light until after midnight, when the wheel was stilled; then bars of yellow light lay deep over the ceiling, over the bed, across Douglas’s face, from a room opposite, where a man must be lying awake reading, or a woman keeping vigil with a sick child.

At six she was fully awake. The sky outside was chilly white-gold haze; winter was coming. She leaned on her elbow to look out at the wheel; in this small colourless light it rested motionless, insignificant, and the machinery of the fun fair beneath it seemed tawdry and even pathetic. It no longer had the power to move her; and the fact that it had so disturbed her sleeping was absurd. But Martha had been born – or so it seemed – with the knowledge that the hours of sleep were long and busy, and of the same texture as the hours of waking. She entered sleep cautiously, like an enemy country. She knew, too, however, that for most it was a sudden dropping of a dark curtain, and regarded this other family of mankind with a simple envy, the result of her upbringing so far away from the centres of sophistication, where she would have learned to use the word ‘neurotic’ as a label that would make any further thought on the subject unnecessary, or as a kind of badge guaranteeing a superior sensibility. She was in that primitive condition where she was able to pay healthy respect to – Douglas, for instance.

She looked at him now with a rather wistful curiosity. He lay on his back, easily outstretched among the sheets and blankets. He was handsome when he slept. His face was open and rather flushed. An outflung arm, as if it had just fallen loose from the act of throwing something, lay in a calm, beautiful line from waist to shoulder. The upper part of his body emerging from the clothes, was solid, compact, the flesh clear and healthy; a light sprinkling of freckles over white, bright skin. He looked stern and dignified, sealed away from her in his sleep, and restored to the authority of good sense. Martha’s respect for him was now deep and genuine. She thought, with a simplicity which was authorized and confirmed by the dignity of his face, I shall say we must stop being married; he won’t mind.

When he woke, everything would be explained and settled.

Waiting for him to wake, she sat up and looked out. The town, no less than the fun fair, looked small and mean after the hazy splendours of the night. The two big blocks of flats opposite rose white and solid, but rain had streaked their sides into dinginess. Their windows were dead and asleep. Beyond them, half a dozen business houses, their surfaces clean with paint, glossy with money; and beyond these again, the tin-roofed shanties of the Coloured town, which marked the confines of order; for on two sides of this organized centre stretched the locations, or straggling slums where the Africans were. From a single small window she could overlook at least three worlds of life, quite separate, apparently self-contained, apparently linked by nothing but hate …But these familiar ideas, sprung in her mind by the simple act of looking through a window, were too much of a burden this morning. First Douglas should wake, and then it would be time to look out of the window. She might suggest to him, for instance, that he should at once throw up his job, and they should go and ‘live among the people’.

She sprang out of bed, but noiselessly, and went next door to the living room. There, as she expected, lay a small heap of letters where Douglas had flung them down the night before. She carried them back to bed with her. Most were of that sort which people write to those getting married, in order that they may say with pride, ‘We have had so and so many letters of congratulation.’ At least, Martha could not yet see letters of politeness in any other way. She therefore tossed them aside, and took up one from her brother, now at the University of Cape Town. It was a good-humoured letter, full of determinedly humorous tolerance; their relations were always harmonious; in order that two people may quarrel they must have something in common to quarrel over.

The next, also from the university, was from Joss Cohen. She opened it with the most vivid delight; she even held it unopened for a moment, to delay the pleasure of reading it. What she expected from it was – but what did she not expect from Joss Cohen! At last she opened it. Four lines.

Dear Matty,

Your brother mentioned that you got married last week. I must admit this was something of a surprise. However, please accept my congratulations. I hope your marriage will be happy and prosperous.

Yours,

Joss

She put it down slowly, flushing with hurt anger. It was that word ‘prosperous’ which stung her. Then she reread it, trying to revive him as he really was, since these colourless lines could have no power to evoke him. She admitted at last that she felt abandoned because he had not thought her worth even the trouble of a sarcastic phrase. Very well, then: she dropped the letter into the pile of purely formal ones.

The third was from Marnie Van Rensberg, on blue paper with a pink rose in one corner.

Dear Matty,

Mom told me your news this morning. She heard it from your Mom at the station when she went in to get the mail. I am so happy Matty now we are both married. I hope you will be very happy. I am going to have a baby in January. The doctor says February, they think they know everything. I hope it will be a boy because Dirk wants a boy. I don’t mind what it is, but for my sake I hope it’s a girl really, but who would be a woman in this world. Ha. Ha.

Affectionately, your old pal,

Marnie

The fourth was from Solly Cohen, and from the moment Martha opened it she knew she would find in it everything Joss had refused.

Well, well, Martha Quest. I’m not surprised, you are a born marrier, and I always told Joss so when he insisted something might be done with you. I hear high civil service prospects, pension, and no doubt a big house in the suburbs. If not yet, it will come, it will come. Well, well, you’ll have to be a good girl now, no naughty ideas about the colour bar – no ideas of any kind, for that matter. If there is one thing you can’t afford, dear Matty, in the station of life into which you’ve chosen to marry, god help you, it is ideas.

Well, as you will see from the address, I’m not in Cape Town any more. The higher education, being nothing but sh—, is not for me, though Joss is apparently prepared to go through with it. I’m making an effort towards communal life in the Coloured quarters of our great metropolis, a small light in a naughty world. All the boorjoys are very shocked, of course. I shall naturally not be allowed to have visitors of your sort, but if at any time you feel like dropping a line from your exalted world of tea parties, sundowners and sound incomes, I shall be pleased to read it.

Yours,

Solly

(I am not supposed to have letters unless the whole group approves, but I shall explain that a certain amount is due to you as a victim of the system.)

At first Martha allowed herself to feel angry and hurt, but almost at once she laughed, with the insight of fellow feeling. She read it again, isolated the word ‘god’, with a small g, and then the word ‘boorjoys’. That’s what you are doing it for, she thought maliciously. At once Joss seemed infinitely better than his brother; Solly was nothing but a child beside him. But at the same time she was thinking of this communal household as a refuge for herself. She had decided she would go there at once, that very morning, and ask if she might join them. She yearned towards it – a life of simplicity, conversation and ideals. And in the Coloured quarters, too … she was about to leap out of bed to pack a suitcase which would be the most final of arguments against being married, when she saw there was another letter lying among the folds of the bedclothes. It was from her mother.

My dear Girl,

I do hope you enjoyed your honeymoon, and are not too tired after it. I am just writing to say that we have finally decided to sell the farm, we have had a good offer and shall settle in town. Somewhere near you, so that I can help you now that you are married and … (Here a line was carefully scratched out, but Martha made out the word ‘baby’, and went cold with anger.) At any rate, perhaps I can be of use.

No more now, affectionately,

Mother

This letter affected Martha like a strong drug. She threw herself on Douglas.

‘What’s the matter?’ he jerked out, as he woke. He looked at her closely, and at once sat up. He yawned a little, warm and easy with sleep, then he smiled and put his arm around her.

‘Douglas,’ she announced furiously, ‘do you know, I’ve had a letter from my mother, and do you know, they’re moving into town after me, just in order to run my life for me, that’s all it is, and – ’

‘Hold your horses,’ he demanded. He absorbed this information, and said at last, ‘Well, Matty, they were bound to move in sometime, what of it?’

She froze inwardly; and after a pause, moved away again. He moved after her, and began patting her shoulders rhythmically: he was calm, matter-of-fact, sensible.

‘Now look here,’ he went on. ‘I know you have a thing about this, but you seem to think fate’s got it in for you specially or something of the sort. All girls quarrel with their mothers, and mothers interfere – you should have seen my sister and my mother before Anne went to England. They were just like a couple of cats. Of course your mother’s a bit of a Tartar. Just don’t take any notice. And in any case’– there he laughed good-temperedly – ‘you’ll be just as bad at her age,’ he teased her.

These sensible remarks struck her as the extreme of brutality; but no sooner had she felt a rush of emotional indignation than a sincere emotion took hold of her. What Douglas had said, phrase after phrase, struck straight at her deepest and most private terrors. For if she remained in the colony when she had wanted to leave it, got married when she wanted to be free and adventurous, always did the contrary to what she wanted most, it followed that there was no reason why at fifty she should not be just such another woman as Mrs Quest, narrow, conventional, intolerant, insensitive. She was cold and trembling with fear. She had no words to express this sense of appalling fatality which menaced everyone, her mother as well as herself. She wriggled off the bed, away from his warm and consoling hand, and went to the window. Outside, the sunlight was now warm and yellow, everything was activity.

‘Look,’ she said flatly, ‘it’s like this. Ever since I can remember, they’ve been on that farm, stuck in poverty like flies on flypaper. All the time, daydreams about all kinds of romantic escapes – for years I believed it all. And now suddenly everything becomes perfectly simple, and don’t you see, it was all for nothing. That’s the point – it was all for nothing.’

She heard her voice rising dramatically, and stopped, irritated with herself.

Douglas was watching her. There was a look in his eyes which struck her. She looked down at herself. She was wearing a thin nightgown. She saw that he was finding her attractive in this mood. She was completely furious. With a gesture of contempt she picked up a dressing gown and covered herself. Then she said flatly, ‘I can see I am being ridiculous.’ Then, since he looked hurt and shamefaced, she began hurriedly, in an impulse to share it with him, ‘The whole point is this: if it wasn’t the sweepstakes, it was a gold mine or a legacy. In the meantime, nothing but the most senseless poverty –’

But again she heard that dramatic note in her voice, and stopped short. That was not what she felt! She was unable to say what she meant in a way that sounded true. Silence – and she was filling with helpless exhaustion. Suddenly she thought, It’s all so boring. She felt obscurely that the whole thing was old-fashioned. The time for dramatic revolts against parent was past; it all had a stale air. How ridiculous Solly was, with his communal settlements, and throwing up university – for what? It had all been done and said already. She had no idea what was the origin of this appalling feeling of flatness, staleness and futility.

‘Oh, well,’ she began at last, in a cheerful hard voice, ‘it all doesn’t matter. Nothing one does makes any difference, and by the time we’re middle-aged we’ll be as stupid and reactionary as our parents – and so it all goes on, one might as well get used to it!’

‘Now Matty!’ protested Douglas, helplessly, ‘what on earth do you expect me to do about it? I’ll stand by you, of course, if that’s what you want.’ He saw her face, which wore an unconscious look of pure hopeless fear, and decided it was enough. He got out of bed, and came to her. ‘Now, don’t worry, I shall look after you, everything’s all right.’

At this Martha clung to him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said brightly and falsely. ‘I’m an awful fool.’

He kissed her, patted her here and there in an affectionate and brotherly way, and then said, ‘For God’s sake, I shall be late for the office. You should have woken me before.’ He went whistling into the bathroom, and began shaving.

She went back to bed, propped a hand mirror on a ridge of blanket, and tried to brush her hair into shape. She did not want to be noticed, and each time Douglas came in to fetch something she hastily turned away. But when he at last came in fully dressed, he remarked, ‘Your hair doesn’t do too badly like that.’ He was now in very good spirits. He announced, rubbing his hands, that he must not be late. There would be some sort of show at the office for him – this was the first day he would be at work since his marriage. As he picked up some papers, and gave his usual efficient glance around to see what he might have forgotten, he remarked, ‘And don’t forget the sundowner party tonight at the Brodeshaws.’

Martha said quickly, ‘Douglas …’

He stopped on his way out. ‘I’m awfully late.’

‘Douglas, why can’t we go to England – or somewhere?’ she inquired resentfully. ‘After all, you said …’

But he cut in quickly, ‘There’s going to be a war, and we can’t take chances now.’

The newspaper was lying over the bedclothes – one glance at the headlines was enough. But she persisted. ‘But it would be much better there than here if the war comes – at least we would be really in it.’

‘Now look, Matty, I really am late.’ He went out, hastily.

For some time she remained where she was, surrounded by the lanky sheets of newsprint, by scraps of letter, by the hand mirror, the brush, a tangle of the new white wedding linen. The headlines on the newspaper filled her with nothing but the profoundest cynicism. Then she saw a small book lying open on the bed, and pulled it towards her. She saw it was Douglas’s engagement book, and left it; for it was certainly her strongest principle that, a wife who looked at her husband’s letters or pockets was the blackest sort of traitor to decency. But the little book still lay open, at arm’s length. It was, after all, only an engagement book; and these engagements would concern herself. Compromising with her principles by not actually touching it, she moved closer and read the entries for the next two weeks. There was not a day free of sundowner parties, dances, lunches. Most of the names she did not know. The little book, lying beside the crumpled newspaper with its frightening black headlines, provided the strongest comment on her situation. She saw Solly’s letter, with its emphatic scrawl of an address, foundering among billows of sheet. Her anxiety focused itself sharply with: I’ve got to get out of it all. She got up, and dressed rapidly. Her clothes were all crushed from packing; there was nothing to wear but the blue linen from yesterday. But what she looked like, she assured herself, would be quite irrelevant to Solly, who was now monastic and high-minded in his communal settlement. In a few minutes she had left the untidy flat behind, and was in the street.