LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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