Martha Quest. Doris Lessing

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СКАЧАТЬ she moved carefully to the small square mirror that was nailed to the centre of the window, over the dressing table. She did not look at the things on the dressing table, because she disliked them. For many years, Mrs Quest had been describing women who used cosmetics as fast; then she saw that everyone else did, and bought herself lipstick and nail varnish. She had no instinct for them and they were the wrong colour. Her powder had a musty, floury smell, like a sweet, rather stale cake. Martha hastily put the lid on the box and slipped it into a drawer, so as to remove the smell. Then she examined herself in the mirror, leaning up on her toes, for it was too high; Mrs Quest was a tall woman. She was by no means resigned to the appearance her mother thought suitable. She spent much time at night, examining herself with a hand mirror; she sometimes propped the mirror by her pillow, and, lying beside it, would murmur like a lover, ‘Beautiful, you are so beautiful.’ This happened when Mrs Quest had made one of her joking remarks about Martha’s clumsiness, or Mr Quest complained that girls in this country matured so early.

      She had a broad but shapely face, with a pointed chin, severe hazel eyes, a full mouth, clear straight dark brows. Sometimes she would take the mirror to her parents’ bedroom, and hold it at an angle to the one at the window, and examine herself, at this double remove, in profile; for this view of herself had a delicacy her full face lacked. With her chin tilted up, her loose blonde hair falling back, her lips carefully parted in an eager expectant look, she possessed a certain beauty. But it seemed to her that her face, her head, were something quite apart from her body; she could see herself only in sections, because of the smallness of the mirror. The dresses her mother made looked ugly, even obscene, for her breasts were well grown, and the yokes emphasized them, showing flattened bulges under the tight band of material; and the straight falling line of the skirt was spoiled by her full hips. Her mother said that girls in England did not come out until at the earliest sixteen, but better still eighteen, and girls of a nice family wore dresses of this type until coming out. That she herself had not ‘come out’, and that her family had not by many degrees reached that stage of niceness necessary to coming out, was not enough to deflect her. For on such considerations is the social life of England based, and she was after all quite right in thinking that if only she had married better, or if only their farming had been successful, it would have been possible to arrange with the prosperous branch of the family that Martha should come out. So Martha’s sullen criticisms of her snobbishness had no effect at all; and she would smooth the childish dresses down over Martha’s body, so that the girl stood hunched with resentment, and say with an embarrassed coyness, ‘Dear me, you are getting a pouter pigeon, aren’t you?’

      Once, Mrs Van Rensberg, watching this scene, remarked soothingly, ‘But, Mrs Quest, Martha has a nice little figure, why shouldn’t she show it?’ But outwardly the issue was social convention, and not Martha’s figure; and if Mrs Van Rensberg said to her husband that Mrs Quest was going the right way to make Martha ‘difficult’ she could not say so to Mrs Quest herself.

      This afternoon was a sudden climax after a long brooding underground rebellion. Standing before the mirror, she took a pair of scissors and severed the bodice from the skirt of her dress. She was trying to make the folds lie like Marnie’s, when the door suddenly opened, and her father came in. He stopped, with an embarrassed look at his daughter, who was naked, save for a tiny pair of pink drawers; but that embarrassment was having it both ways, for if Martha was still a child, then one could look at her naked.

      He said gruffly, ‘What are you doing?’ and went to a long cupboard beside his bed, formed of seven petrol boxes, one above another, painted dark green, and covered by a faded print curtain. It was packed with medicine bottles, crammed on top of each other so that a touch might dislodge them into an avalanche. He said moodily, ‘I think I’ll try that new stuff, I’ve a touch of indigestion,’ and tried to find the appropriate bottle. As he held them up to the light of the window, one after another, his eyes fell on Martha, and he remarked, ‘Your mother won’t like you cutting her dresses to pieces.’

      She said defiantly, ‘Daddy, why should I wear dresses like a kid of ten?’

      He said resentfully, ‘Well, you are a kid. Must you quarrel all the time with your mother?’

      Again the door swung in, banging against the wall, and Mrs Quest entered, saying, ‘Why did you run off, Martha, they wanted to tell you about Stephanie, it really is rude of you –‘ She stopped, stared, and demanded, ‘Whatever are you doing?’

      ‘I’m not wearing this kind of dress any more,’ said Martha, trying to sound calm, but succeeding only in her usual sullen defiance.

      ‘But, my dear, you’ve ruined it, and you know how badly off we are,’ said Mrs Quest, in alarm at the mature appearance of her daughter’s breasts and hips. She glanced at her husband, then came quickly across the room, and laid her hands on either side of the girl’s waist, as if trying to press her back into girlhood. Suddenly Martha moved backwards, and involuntarily raised her hand; she was shuddering with disgust at the touch of her own mother, and had been going to slap her across the face. She dropped her hand, amazed at her own violence; and Mrs Quest coloured and said ineffectually, ‘My dear …’

      ‘I’m sixteen,’ said Martha, between set teeth, in a stifled voice; and she looked towards her father, for help. But he quickly turned away, and measured medicine into a glass.

      ‘My dear, nice girls don’t wear clothes like this until –’

      ‘I’m not a nice girl,’ broke in Martha, and suddenly burst into laughter.

      Mrs Quest joined her in a relieved peal, and said, ‘Really my dear, you are ridiculous.’ And then, on a more familiar note, ‘You’ve spoiled that dress, and it’s not fair to Daddy, you know how difficult it is to find money …’ She stopped again, and followed the direction of Martha’s eyes. Martha was looking at the medicine cupboard. Mrs Quest was afraid that Martha might say, as she had said to her, that there must be hundreds of pounds worth of medicines in that cupboard, and they had spent more on Mr Quest’s imaginary diseases than they had spent on educating her.

      This was, of course, an exaggeration. But it was strange that when Martha made these comments Mrs Quest began arguing about the worth of the medicines: ‘Nonsense, dear, you know quite well it can’t be hundreds of pounds.’ She did not say, ‘Your father is very ill.’ For Mr Quest was really ill, he had contracted diabetes three or four years before. And there was an episode connected with this that neither Martha nor Mrs Quest liked to remember. One day, Martha was summoned from her classroom at school in the city to find Mrs Quest waiting for her in the passage. ‘Your father’s ill,’ she exclaimed, and then, seeing that Martha’s face expressed only: Well, there’s nothing new in that, is there?, added hastily, ‘Yes, really, he’s got diabetes, he must go to the hospital and have tests.’ There was a long silence from Martha, who at length muttered, like a sleep-walker, ‘I knew it.’ Almost the moment these words were out, she flushed with guilt; and at once she hastened to the car, where her father sat, and both women fussed over him, while Mr Quest, who was very frightened, listened to their assurances.

      When Martha remembered that phrase, which had emerged from her depths, as if it had been waiting for the occasion, she felt uneasy and guilty. Secretly, she could not help thinking, He wanted to be ill, he likes being ill, now he’s got an excuse for being a failure. Worse than this, she accused her mother, in her private thoughts, of being responsible.

      The whole business of Mr Quest’s illness aroused such unpleasant depths of emotion between mother and daughter that the subject was left alone, for the most part; and now Mrs Quest said hastily, moving away to the window, ‘You’re upsetting your father, he worries about you.’ Her voice was low and nagging.

      ‘You mean you worry about me,’ said Martha coldly, unconsciously dropping her voice, with a glance at her father. In a half-whisper СКАЧАТЬ