A Proper Marriage. Doris Lessing

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СКАЧАТЬ implements lounged a group of farmers in their khaki; past them came a city man in smooth grey flannel. Martha’s eyes followed this man, the only moving object in the heat-stilled street. She was deep in worried introspection. Into this grey lake plopped the thought, I know that man, don’t I? It was enough to restore a little sight to her eyes, and she watched him coming towards her, while with another part of her mind she was thinking, When Stella comes out I shall tell her I won’t have my hair cut – as if this act of defiance would in itself be a protest against her whole situation.

      The man was tall, rather heavy; the grey flannel which encased him was like a firm outer skin to his assurance. His large elderly face had the authority of a commanding nose, jowled cheeks, strong hazel eyes deep under thick black brows. It was that English face which, with various small deviations, has been looking down so long from the walls and countless picture galleries of country houses. Handsome it was, but more – every feature, every curve, had an impressive finality, an absolute rightness, as if the atoms which composed it had never had a moment’s hesitation in falling where they did.

      Martha thought: here is another person who is complete – finished in his way as Stella is in hers. Whereas she herself was formless, graceless, and unpredictable, a mere lump of clay. She rejected even the sight of him, and returned to her own preoccupations.

      Mr Maynard was also preoccupied, whether pleasantly or not could be deduced only by a certain sarcastic twist of the lips. He noticed a girl standing listlessly by a pillar, and was about to walk past her, when he slowed his pace: he ought to know her. Then he remembered that less than a week before he had married her to her husband. She was looking through him; and at once he was annoyed that she should not remember such an important figure at what was surely an important occasion. This annoyance was succeeded by a more sincere pressure: she, if anyone could, would be able to tell him where his son Binkie was.

      He stood firmly before her, blocking her preoccupied stare, and said, ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Knowell.’

      Martha glanced hastily sideways to see whom he was addressing, then blushed. She looked closely at him, and then exclaimed, ‘Oh – Mr Maynard!’

      ‘And how,’ inquired Mr Maynard, cutting short this mutual embarrassment, ‘do you find the married state?’

      She considered this seriously, then said, ‘Well, I’ve only been married five days.’

      ‘A very sensible attitude.’

      She looked at him and waited. He was struck by her tiredness, and the unhappy set of her mouth. That critical look, however, checked in him the instinct to instruct. He was not a magistrate and the descendant of magistrates and landowners for nothing. He found himself searching for the right tone.

      She saved him the trouble by asking, ‘Has Binkie come home yet?’

      ‘I thought you would be able to tell me.’

      ‘The last we saw of him was when he left the Falls at two last night. He said he was going to swim across the Falls if it was the last thing he did. It probably would be, too,’ she added dispassionately.

      Mr Maynard winced. ‘He was drunk, I suppose?’

      ‘Not drunk.’ This, it seemed, she found crude. But she added, ‘No more than usual.’

      Mr Maynard looked sharply at her, saw this was not criticism but information willingly given, and said, ‘I suppose the fact that the river is full of crocodiles wouldn’t deter him?’

      ‘Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t really do it,’ she said quickly, on a maternal note. ‘They rushed off in a horde saying they would. Three years ago they say one of them tried to jump across to that little island – you know the one, when the river is low – and he went over the edge. We reminded them about it just as they left. Besides, Binkie’s far too sensible.’

      ‘Binkie’s sensible?’ exclaimed Mr Maynard, very bitterly.

      Martha, feeling that she was included in the bitterness, moved slightly away with ‘Well, I’m not responsible for Binkie.’

      He hesitated, then again moved in front of her. ‘Young woman, it would interest me very much to know why you think Binkie is sensible. He drinks like a fish. He never does any work if he can help it. He is continually either giving it a bang or tearing the place to pieces.’ He heavily isolated these last phrases, and handed them to her, as it were, like a challenge.

      After a pause for reflection Martha observed, ‘He always knows what he’s doing.’ This comment, it appeared, was enough.

      ‘You amaze me. You really do amaze me, you know.’ He waited for more.

      Martha offered him a sudden friendly smile, and said, ‘I shouldn’t worry. In twenty years’ time he’ll be a magistrate, too, I shouldn’t wonder.’ She laughed, as if this in itself was funny.

      ‘My youth was not misspent. We neither gave it a bang nor tore the place to pieces.’

      Martha’s eyebrows at once went up. ‘Really? I understood that you did – judging from novels, at least. Though of course in England you’d call it something else probably, you people.’

      ‘Who is “you people”?’ he asked, annoyed.

      Martha looked at him as if suspecting a deliberate dishonesty, and then remarked, blushing because she had to put it into words, ‘Why, the upper classes, of course, who else?’

      Ironically stiff, he remarked, ‘My son Binkie also uses the phrase “you people” – and in the same way.’

      ‘For all that, he’ll end up by being a magistrate.’ And Martha laughed with real enjoyment and looked straight at him, expecting him to share it.

      He did not laugh. He was hurt. ‘You are exempt from this law?’

      The shaft went home at once. She lost her shell of confidence, her face contracted, she looked at him from a haze of anxiety before turning away from him. He had no idea why this should be so.

      He was contrite. Then he said apologetically, ‘Well, thank you. I daresay Binkie will turn up at midnight again. I don’t know why he imagines he can miss three days at the office without even ringing up to apologize – his chief rang me this morning.’ He heard his own voice becoming so bitter that he hastened to restore his balance by sarcasm. ‘Don’t imagine I am inquiring on my own account. As far as I am concerned, I decided long ago it would be no loss to society if Binkie did fall prey to the crocodiles. But my wife will have a sick headache until he returns.’

      Under the impression that he had ended the interview on a note which must leave him whole in her eyes, he was about to turn away with a ‘Good afternoon’, when he saw her offering him a look of such ironic pity that he stopped.

      She smiled and he found himself returning her smile. ‘Well, Mr Maynard,’ she remarked in precisely his own tone of cool self-punishing sarcasm. ‘If Binkie has learned to ignore sick headaches, then it must be because he knows he’d be doing someone out of a pleasure if he did not.’ But this logical sentence crumbled, and she added awkwardly, ‘I mean, everyone knows about sick headaches … Besides – they’re so old-fashioned,’ she went on angrily. And then: ‘Not that everything doesn’t just go on, even when one might think they had no right to exist any longer.’

      Ignoring the last part СКАЧАТЬ