A Proper Marriage. Doris Lessing

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      And now Martha abdicated, as she had so often done before; for it had always, for some reason, seemed right and inevitable that Mrs Quest should prefer the delicate boy child to herself. Martha listened to the familiar story to the end, while she suppressed a violent and exasperated desire to take her mother by the shoulders and shake her until she produced, in a few sensible and consoling sentences, that truth which it was so essential Martha should have. But Mrs Quest had forgotten how she felt. She was no longer interested. And why should she be, this elderly woman with all the business of being a woman behind her?

      In a short while she returned to the war, dismissed Chamberlain with a few just sentences, and recommended Mr Churchill for his job. The Quests belonged to that section of the middle class who would be happy and contented to be conservatives if only the conservatives could be more efficient. As it was, they never ceased complaining about the inefficiency and corruption of the party they would unfailingly vote for if they lived in England.

      Towards lunchtime she left, with the advice that Martha should go and see the doctor and get a good tonic. She looked dreadful – it wasn’t fair to Douglas.

      The result of that visit from her mother was that Martha decided again she must not sink into being a mere housewife. She should at once learn a profession, or at least take some kind of job. But this decision was not as firm as it might seem from the energy she used in speaking about it to Douglas.

      She was gripped by a lethargy so profound that in fact she spent most of her time limp on that divan, thinking about nothing. She felt heavy and uncomfortable and sick. And she was clinging to Douglas with the dependence of a child. She was miserable when he left in the morning; she was waiting anxiously for his return hours before he might be expected. Pride, however, forbade her to show it, or to ask him to come home for lunch. At night, the loud sad music from the fair was becoming an obsession. She found herself waking from sleep and crying, but what she was weeping for she had no idea at all. She drew the curtains so that she might not see the great wheel; and then lay watching the circling of light through their thin stuff. She accused herself of every kind of weak-mindedness and stupidity; nevertheless, the persistent monotony of that flickering cycle seemed a revelation of an appalling and intimate truth; it was like being hypnotized.

      During the daytime she sat with a book, trying to read, and realized that she was not seeing one word of it. It was, she realized, as if she were listening for something; some kind of anxiety ran through every limb.

      One morning she was very sick, and all at once the suspicion she had been ignoring for so long became a certainty – and from one moment to the next. When Douglas came home that night she said sullenly, as if it was his fault, that she must be pregnant; and insisted when he said that Dr Stern could not be wrong. At last he suggested she should go and talk to Stella, whose virtuosity in these matters was obvious. She said she would; but when it came to the point, she shrank from the idea and instead went to Alice.

      It was a hot, dusty morning. A warm wind swept flocks of yellowing leaves along the streets. The jacarandas were holding up jaded yellow arms. This drying, yellowing, fading month, this time when the year tensed and tightened towards the coming rains, always gave her a feeling of perverted autumn, and now filled her with an exquisite cold apprehension. The sky, above the haze of dust, was a glitter of hot blue light.

      Alice was in her pink taffeta dressing gown in her large chair. She greeted Martha with cheerful indifference, and bade her sit down. On the table beside her was a pile of books, called variously Mothercraft, Baby Handling and Your Months of Preparation.

      Martha glanced towards them, and Alice said, ‘The nonsense they talk, dear, you wouldn’t believe it.’ She pushed them gently away. Then she got up, and stood before Martha, with her two hands held tenderly over her stomach. ‘I’m as flat as a board still,’ she remarked with pride. She looked downwards with a preoccupied blue stare; she seemed to be listening. ‘According to the books, it doesn’t quicken until – but now I’ve worked out my dates, and actually it quickens much earlier. At first I thought it must be wind,’ remarked Alice, faintly screwing up her face with the effort of listening.

      ‘I think I’m pregnant, too,’ remarked Martha nervously.

      ‘Are you, dear?’ Alice sat down, keeping her hands in a protective curve, and said, ‘Oh, well, when you get used to it, it’s quite interesting really.’

      ‘Oh, I’m not going to have it,’ said Martha with energy.

      Alice did not reply. Martha saw that she had gone completely into her private world of sensation, and that anything which happened outside was quite irrelevant. She recognized the feeling: what else had she been fighting against during the last few weeks?

      After a pause Alice continued the conversation she was having with herself by remarking, ‘Oh, well, to hell with everything. Who cares, anyway?’ She gave her dry nervous laugh, and reached for a cigarette.

      ‘Well, you look pleased with yourself,’ said Martha, half laughing.

      Alice frowned as these words reached her, and said, ‘Help yourself to cigarettes, dear.’

      The morning drifted past. Alice, dim and safe in her private world, smoked constantly, stubbing out the cigarettes as she lit them, and from time to time dropping remarks such as ‘It ought to be February, I think.’ When Martha roused herself to go, Alice appeared to be reminding herself that she had not been as sympathetic as she could have been. She held the door open, Martha already being outside it, and proceeded to offer various bits of advice in an apologetic voice, the most insistent being that she should at once go and see Stella.

      Martha went home, reached for the telephone, but was unable to dial Stella’s number. She shrank away from Stella with a most extraordinary dislike of her. She was thinking of Alice; and in spite of her own deep persistent misery, her knowledge that the web was tight around her, she knew, too, that she was most irrationally elated. Anyone would think that you were pleased, she said angrily to herself. With an efficiency which Stella must have applauded, she put on her dressing gown, locked the door, and took the telephone off the hook. She then drank, with calm deliberation, glass after glass of neat gin, until a full bottle was gone. Then she lay down and slept. When she woke it was four in the afternoon, and she felt nothing but a weakness in her knees. She filled the bath with water so hot that she could not put her hand into it, and, setting her teeth, got in. The pain was so intense that she nearly fainted. She was going through with this, however; and she sat in the bath until the water was tepid. When she reeled out, she was boiled scarlet, and could not touch her skin. Having rubbed cream all over herself, she lay on the bed, shrinking from the touch of the sheet, and cried a little from sheer pain. She slept again. Douglas was rattling at the locked door when she woke, and she staggered to let him in.

      Faced with a tousled, bedraggled, red-faced female, reeking of gin, Douglas was naturally upset; but he was informed in a cold and efficient voice that this was necessary. He sat wincing while Martha climbed repeatedly on to the table and jumped off, crashing down on her heels with the full force of her weight. At the end of half an hour he could no longer stand it, and forcibly put her to bed. In a small triumphant voice Martha informed him that if that didn’t shift it nothing would.

      In the morning she woke, feeling as if her limbs had been pulverized from within and as if her skin were a separate, agonized coating to her body, but otherwise whole. Douglas was astounded to hear her say, in a voice of unmistakable satisfaction, that she must be as strong and healthy as a horse. He was unable to bear it: this female with set will, tight mouth, and cold and rejecting eyes was entirely horrifying to him.

      ‘Well,’ demanded Martha practically, ‘do we or do we not want to have this baby?’

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