A Proper Marriage - Doris Lessing

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Martha – overflowed into a glance of understanding between them. The young Knowells were invited to spend the evening very soon with Mrs Talbot and Elaine, and (for of course he was so happy about the marriage, too) Mr Talbot – if he wasn’t out (‘He always has so much to do’); and the two women withdrew into chairs further away, where they proceeded to allow their reservoirs of charm to overflow on to Douglas.

      Martha was therefore left alone for a moment, looking down the great veranda, which was like a room with three walls of green leaves. The last rays of sunlight fell through the leaves, patterning the faces of the guests. Perhaps forty people were sitting, with glasses in their hands, in this green-dappled glow. Martha could see Donovan poised on the edge of his chair, addressing Ruth Manners. ‘But, my dear, it was the funniest thing you ever saw,’ she heard his light voice say, before he let it drop and leaned forward to continue the sentence in a lower key; it was a bit of gossip: the discreetly malicious smile on Ruth’s face showed it. Beside Ruth sat a young man whom Martha had not seen before. She immediately recognized him as being fresh from England, because of his pink-faced, cautious look of one on trial. From the way he and Ruth smiled at each other, it was clear they were a couple.

      Far down the veranda, in a well of green shadow, Mr Maynard was surveying the guests with his look of sardonic but controlled contempt. Beside him was that formidable lady his wife, who in a high, firm, commanding voice was saying the last word about something she felt strongly: ‘And so I said to her, “It is quite out of the question!”’ She turned to look at her husband, commanding agreement; but Mr Maynard continued to gaze in front of him, lightly flipping his fingers against the glass he held. The clink, clink, clink, came travelling softly down among the voices and laughter, like irritation made audible; and Martha looked at this black-browed energetic woman, and remembered, with a strong feeling of incongruity, that sick headaches were her weapon of choice. She was convicting Mrs Maynard of having no sense of period, when she saw Mr Anderson, sitting not far from his son, a small dapper man radiating bad temper because it was necessary to be here at all and to make conversation. He was making it, Martha saw with surprise, to Mrs Anderson, who sat near him. The fact that Mr Anderson could be persuaded to leave his solitude reminded Martha that this was an important sundowner party, and she searched for Mr Player. Remembering a brief glimpse of a large, red-faced man, she searched in vain – he could not have arrived.

      The chair beside her was still empty. Donovan rose from his place and joined her, remarking gaily, ‘Well, Matty, so here you are nicely settled at last.’ This reference to her marriage she let pass; she was looking to see if there was anything in his face which might suggest that he remembered the ugliness of their last meeting. But it seemed not. He proceeded to entertain her with a scandalous story about their hostess. To which Martha replied that the moment he left her he would undoubtedly make a spitefully funny story about her marriage. He giggled gracefully and said that he had been dining out on stories about her for the last week. ‘Really, Matty, why do you waste such an occasion for being on show? Now, look at Ruth, she’s got herself engaged, and she’s having a nice engagement party, and we’ll all give her expensive presents, and everything’s so satisfactory for her and her friends.’

      ‘On the other hand, there won’t be any funny stories about her wedding,’ she pointed out. ‘You can’t have it both ways.’

      ‘True,’ he conceded, ‘true.’

      He was looking among the guests to see if there might be someone to inspire an anecdote, when Martha inquired, ‘What’s Ruth’s young man like?’

      ‘On the way up. Secretary to the secretary of Mr Player. Money, family, everything.’ Then with his usual gay spite: ‘One could hardly expect less of Ruth, after all, considering what’s been done for her.’

      ‘Yes, but what’s he like?’ inquired Martha naïvely, looking at the neat little English face, all the features correctly in place, the small fair moustache, the sober clothes that succeeded in suggesting only what the limbs and body must be like underneath – correct, controlled, adequate.

      Donovan grinned pleasantly; then he said in a soft lowered voice which for the first time allowed that they did, after all, know each other quite well, ‘Really, Matty, you’ll never learn! Surely that’s enough!’

      Here she laughed with him, in genuine appreciation of that wit which, however, he was determined should never be more than socially agreeable. But he went on, with the astounding frankness with which he said what he really felt: ‘Anyway, Matty, if a girl marries a man with money and so on, what more can she want?’ He sounded really aggrieved. She let out a snort of laughter; saw him flush, and then he rose gracefully. ‘Well, Matty, I shall now leave you.’ His smile was cold; their eyes met unpleasantly; then he sailed, in a way which was reminiscent of his mother, across the veranda to another empty chair.

      Martha’s glass was refilled for her. She was becoming depressed as the alcohol took effect. She was disappointed that there was anyone here that she knew; and looked back to her first weeks in town, when the people she met seemed like glorious and disconnected phenomena, meteors and rockets that went shooting across her vision, only to disappear. But certainly not tamely connected in social circles. That Donovan, Ruth, even Mr Maynard, should be brought to this veranda on this evening by a mysterious connection gave her a feeling of oppression. She could feel the nets tightening around her. She thought that she might spend the rest of her life on this veranda, or others like it, populated by faces she knew only too well. It was at this point, and for the first time, that she found herself thinking, The war will break it up, it won’t survive the war. Then she was sincerely dismayed and ashamed. She said it must be her own fault that she could see no face, hear no voice, which could make her happy at the idea of being here.

      Half a dozen chairs away, Mrs Talbot and Elaine were discussing with a third lady a new method of cutting sandwiches, and, Martha noted, with precisely the same allowance of deferential charm that they had given her marriage. Opposite them, two ladies were arguing – what else? the iniquities of their servants. Mrs Maynard, at the other end of the veranda, and at the top of her confident voice, was discussing hers. Mr Maynard, from the depths of his resigned boredom, took up the theme with a slow, deliberate account of a case he had judged that morning. A native youth had stolen some clothes from his employer; the question before him, the magistrate, had been: Should the sentence be prison or an official beating? He told his story with a calm objectivity that sounded brutal. But Martha, as she watched that heavy and handsome face, saw the full, authoritative eyes move slightly from one face to another, saw suddenly that he was using this audience, which, after all, was not so arbitrarily associated, as a sort of sounding board.

      Everyone was listening now, waiting to jump into the discussion with their own opinions; for certainly this was a subject, the subject, on which they were all equipped to speak. But Mr Maynard was not yet ready to throw the ball out for play. Having concluded with the bare facts of the case, he turned to a similarly large and authoritative gentleman in a neighbouring chair, and remarked, ‘It is a question, of course, of whether a sentence should be regarded as a punishment or a deterrent. Until that is decided – and they certainly haven’t decided it even in England – I can hardly be expected to have any opinions?’

      The half-dozen people who had been leaning forward, mouths half open, ready to say what they thought, were taken aback by the depths of intellectuality into which they were expected to plunge. They waited. One lady muttered, ‘Nonsense, they should all be whipped!’ But she turned her eyes, with the rest, towards the gentleman appealed to.

      He appeared to be thinking it over. He sat easily in his chair, an impressive figure, his body and face presenting a series of wide smooth surfaces. His corpulence was smoothly controlled by marvellous suiting, the fat pink areas of cheek and chin seemed scarcely interrupted by the thin pink mouth, the small eyes. When he lifted his eyes, however, in a preliminary circling glance before speaking, it was as if the bulk of ordinary flesh, commonplace cheeks, took an unimportant position behind the cold and deliberate stare. Those eyes were not to be forgotten. It was as if the whole personality of this man struggled to disguise itself behind the appearance of a man of business who was devoted to good, but good-natured, living – struggled and failed, for the calculating, clever eyes betrayed him.

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