Martha Quest. Doris Lessing

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СКАЧАТЬ the start they’re not getting something for nothing.’

      Martha was ready to be sarcastic at this remark; but Mrs Gunn came over and kissed her, and she was warmed by gratitude into good humour.

      ‘If you want anything, just come to me. I know young things don’t want to be nagged at, but think of me like a mother.’

      ‘Thank you, Mrs Van R – Mrs Gunn,’ said Martha gratefully, and Mrs Gunn went out.

      Martha gazed around the room with as much dislike as if it had been contaminated. She looked into her drawers, and every crease and fold of her clothing spoke of her mother’s will. But she had paid the rent till the end of the month, and she could not afford to move. She flung all the clothes out onto the floor, and then rearranged them to her own taste, though no outsider would have seen any difference; she pushed the bed back to what she imagined had been its old position, but she was unobservant and did not accurately know what that position had been. Having finished, she was very tired; and although it was early, she undressed, and stood by the door and watched the cars go racing past, while their lights spun over her in blotches and streaks of gold, and over the flowers in the garden, touching them into sudden colour. Beyond the garden and the street, there were black shapes of trees against a dim night sky. It was the park. And beyond, the city; but she imagined its delights in terms of what she had read of London and New York. She dreamed of the moment when she would be invited to join these pleasures, while her eyes remained on the trees and she unconsciously compared their shapes with those of the skyline on the farm; and soon it was as if the farm had stretched itself out, like a long and shadowy arm across the night, and at its end, as in the hollow of a large, enfolding palm, Martha stood like a pigmy and safely surveyed her new life. And when she awoke in the morning and saw the sunlight warm and yellow over the coconut matting, she wondered sleepily if the water-cart brakes had given, for it was making such a noise; and she sat up, while the new room rearranged itself about her; and now her ears had been informed by her brain that this was not the water-cart but a delivery van, they began to ache in protest.

      At the office that day, she was left to ‘keep her eyes open’ until after the lunch hour. Then Mr Max Cohen brought her a document to copy. She was so nervous, she had to start afresh three time; and when he came to fetch it, all that had been achieved were the words ‘Memorandum of an Agreement of Sale’ typed raggedly across the top of the sheet. She shrank under his impatient assurance that it did not matter in the least, and she must take her time. Her fingers were heavy and trembling, and her head was thick. To type two pages of his small neat writing into something clean and pleasant to look at seemed to her, just then, an impossibly difficult task. He went home without coming to her desk again; and she flung a dozen sheets of paper into the wastepaper basket, and decided she would come early next morning and do it before anyone else arrived.

      Mrs Buss, on her way out, asked, ‘Have you got any certificates?’ Martha said no, she had learned to type at home. Mrs Buss said nothing consoling, but merely nodded absent-mindedly, for her eyes were on the elegant Mrs Jasper Cohen.

      Martha left the office so humiliated she could hardly see where she was going. She was filled with a violent revulsion against the law and everything connected with it. What she said to herself was, I won’t spend the rest of my life typing this stupid jargon.

      She stood at the corner of the street, with Mr Jasper Cohen’s money – or rather what was left of it – in her handbag, and watched a crowd of carefree young people going into McGrath’s Hotel, and felt sick with envy. Then she crossed the street and went into the offices of the Zambesi News. She was going to see Mr Spur, an old journalist, whom she had known ‘as a child’ – that is to say, she had spent a month’s holiday with him and his wife about four years before. She was in the building about half an hour, and when she came out her face was hot with embarrassment. It had been so painful she could not bear to remember what had happened. What she must remember was that she had no qualifications whatsoever.

      She understood, finally, the extent of the favour Mr Cohen was doing her; and next morning she was at her desk in a very chastened frame of mind. Her eyes were certainly opened, but she had no time to use them, for long before that first document was finished, several more arrived on her desk, and it was lunchtime before she knew it. She was very incompetent. She tried to persuade herself that the papers she sent in, neatly clipped and tied with green tape in the form of the exquisite, faultless documents Mrs Buss turned out with such ease, were satisfactory. Mr Max Cohen received them with a noncommittal glance and a nod; and later Martha saw Mrs Buss doing them again. She was given no more. For a whole day she sat idle at her desk, feeling sick and useless, wishing that she could run away, wondering what would happen.

      The fair, plump girl, Miss Maisie Gale, who sat next to her said consolingly, ‘Don’t lose any sleep over it. Just do what you can get away with, that’s my motto.’

      Martha was offended, and replied with a stiff smile. Later, she was told to go to Mr Jasper Cohen’s office, and she went, while her heart beat painfully.

      The ugly man was waiting quietly in his chair. It seemed to Martha that the pale face was paler than ever, and the flat, brownish-mauve lips moved several times before any sound came out. Then he pulled himself together. He settled the ungainly body firmly back in his chair, lifted a pencil with that fat protuberant hand, and said gently, ‘Miss Quest, I think we were mistaken in putting you on to skilled work so soon. I thought you said you had learned to type.’

      ‘I thought I had,’ said Martha ruefully; and she was conscious that in using that tone she was again trading on the personal relation.

      ‘Well, well, it doesn’t matter; it couldn’t have been easy, learning by yourself, and I propose you take the following course. Will you go down to the Polytechnic and take lessons in shorthand and typing for a few months, and in the meantime you can work with Miss Gale. You must learn to file too, and it won’t be wasted, in the long run.’

      Martha eagerly assented, and at the same time registered the fact that working with Miss Gale was beneath her. She was surprised and flattered, for all the women in the office seemed so immeasurably above her, in their self-assurance and skill, that she saw them through a glowing illusion. She understood, too, that Mr Cohen was now about to give her a lesson, very kindly and tactfully, and she must listen carefully.

      ‘You see, Miss Quest, you are very young – you won’t mind me saying that, I hope? It is obvious you are intelligent, and – well, if I may put it like this, you’re not considering getting married next week, are you?’ He was smiling, in the hopeful but uncertain way of a person who finds it hard to make amusing remarks; and Martha quickly laughed, and he gratefully joined in. ‘No. Of course not. At eighteen there’s plenty of time. You shouldn’t marry too quickly. In this country I think there’s a tendency – however, that’s not my affair. Well, most girls work in an office simply to pass the time until they get married – nothing wrong with that,’ he hastened to assure her. ‘But my policy – our policy – is, I think, rather unusual: that we do not believe married women make bad workers. Some firms dismiss women as soon as they marry, but you will have noticed that all our senior girls are married.’

      Martha saw, with fresh humiliation, that she had been expected to notice things of this sort, and she had not.

      ‘My policy – our policy – is, that there is no reason why girls should not have a good time and work well too, but I would suggest to you that you don’t get into the way of some girls we have – oh, they’re very useful, and we couldn’t do without them, but they seem to think that because they will get married one day, that is all that can reasonably be expected of them.’ Here Martha glanced quickly at him; there was a resentful note that could have nothing to do with herself. Again Mr Cohen eased his great body in his chair, fingered the pencil, seemed to be on the point of speaking, and then said abruptly, СКАЧАТЬ