A Proper Marriage

FROM A HANDBOOK ON HOW TO HAVE A BABY

Chapter One (#ulink_bd03f4c7-eea1-59b3-9cac-d13355bb9b5d)

Mrs Quest joyfully ran into the house and announced they were to have a grandchild.

Mr Quest lowered his newspaper and exclaimed, ‘What! Oh Lord!’

‘Oh, my dear,’ she said impatiently, ‘it’s the best thing that could happen, it’s so nice for her. It’ll settle her down, I’m so happy.’

He listened for some time to his wife’s cheerful planning of the child’s future; it was not until the young man was due for university that he remarked uncomfortably, ‘It’s all very well …’

But she swept on, illuminated by decision. The boy – he was to be named Jeffrey, after Mrs Quest’s father – was to be saved by a proper education from Martha’s unconformities; he would be, in fact, the child Mrs Quest had always longed for, the person her own two children had obstinately refused to become. Her eyes were wistful, her face soft. Mr Quest regarded it with increasing discomfort, for it could not but bear witness to what he hadn’t been able to do for her.

‘I think on the whole Sandhurst would be better,’ she concluded at last. ‘We’ll see that his name is put down in good time. I’ll write tomorrow. My father always wanted to go to Sandhurst, instead of Uncle Tony – it was the great disappointment of his life.’

Mr Quest removed his gaze from the Dumfries Hills, whose blue coils were wreathed in smoke – a veld fire had been raging there unchecked for some weeks – and turned his eyes incredulously on his wife. Then he flung down his newspaper, and let out a short laugh. ‘Damn it all!’ he protested.

Mrs Quest was gazing at the great blue buttresses of the mountain range. She heard his voice; her smile became a little tremulous. She swiftly glanced at him, and dropped her eyes.

‘One may presume the child’s parents will have something to say in the matter?’ he inquired. Then, dismayed by the pitiful incomprehension on her face, he suddenly put back his head and let out a roar of angry laughter.

‘But I mean to say,’ she protested, ‘you know quite well what she is, she’s bound to have all sorts of ideas …’

‘Oh, well,’ he commented at last, ‘you fight it out between you.’ He lifted his paper. ‘It will be time for my medicine in five minutes,’ he added abstractedly.

Mrs Quest continued to dream her dreams, while she watched the light change over the mountains. It was an hour of pure happiness for her. But her husband’s withdrawal began to affect her. Soon the wings of her joy had folded. She sat in silence through supper; and looked like a little girl checked in what she most wanted. After the meal, she went to old chests and cupboards, and took out baby clothes she had kept all these years and unfolded them, stroking them with remembering hands. Tears filled her eyes. Life is unfair, unfair! she was crying out in her heart, that lonely unassuaged heart that was aching now with its emptiness. For what her husband had said meant that, once again, she was to be cheated. She felt it. After a long time she carefully folded the clothes again, and put them away in their lavender and mothballs. It was time for bed. She went out in search of her husband to tell him so. He was not in the house. She looked out of the windows. Light streamed from them down the dark paths of the garden. The moon was rising over the Dumfries Hills. Mr Quest stood, a dark, still shape beyond the reach of the streaming yellow house lights, watching the moon. She left the house and walked through the rockeries, where geraniums were a low scent of dryness rising from around her feet. She put her arm in his; and they looked out together towards the Dumfries Hills, which were now lifted towards the pale transparent disc of the moon by chains of red fire, and swirling in masses of red-tinted vapour.

‘Beautiful,’ said Mr Quest, with satisfaction. Then, after a pause: ‘I’m going to miss this.’ It was a half-appeal. Mr Quest, who for years had been playing his part in framing the family’s daydreams for escape to England or to the city, was longing for some reprieve now that the move to the city was certain.

Mrs Quest said quickly, ‘Yes, but things will be much better in town.’

Their thoughts moved together for a few minutes; and then he remarked unwillingly, ‘You know, old girl – well, she is awfully young, damn it.’

Mrs Quest was silent. Now, instead of the charming young man Jeffrey, she could see nothing but the implacable face of Martha.

The drums were beating in the compound. A hundred grass huts, subdued among the trees, were illuminated by a high flaring bonfire. The drums came strongly across the valley on the wind. The taste of wood smoke was bitter on their tongues.

‘I’m going to miss it, aren’t you?’ he demanded savagely.

The sad knowledge of unfairness filled Mrs Quest again, and she cried out, ‘But we can’t die on this place, we can’t die here.’

Against this cry the drums thudded and the crickets chirped.

‘It’s time to go to bed,’ said Mrs Quest restlessly.

‘In a minute.’

They remained, arm in arm, looking out.

‘My eyes aren’t so bad, even now,’ he said. ‘I can see all the Seven Sisters.’

‘Well, you can still see them in town, can’t you?’ She added, It’s getting cold,’ as the night wind came sharp to their faces from a rustling glade of drying grass.

‘Oh, very well.’ They turned their backs to the moon and the blazing mountain, and went indoors. At the door he remarked, ‘All the same, I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t more sensible for her not to have this baby.’

‘Oh, nonsense,’ she cried gaily. But she lay a long time in the dark, and now it was Martha’s face she saw, set stubborn and satirical against her own outpourings of joy.

In the morning she rang up the neighbours to see if it was possible to get a lift into town. Nothing was said between husband and wife as she left but ‘Do what you can, old girl, won’t you?’ And she: ‘Oh, very well, I suppose you’re right.’

Two days after Mrs Quest had heard the news from the bitter Martha, she marched into the flat to see her kneeling on the floor, surrounded by yards of white satin which she was fitting to a crib. Martha swept away her mother’s protests that it was absurd and impracticable to surround a baby with white satin, and in any case, why so soon? Martha had already bought flannel and patterns and had cut out nightdresses for the baby.

Mrs Quest ignored the small protesting image of her husband, and disapproved strongly of the pattern for the nightdresses. She finished by inquiring, ‘Why not blue for the crib?’

‘Oh, so it’s going to be a boy?’ inquired Martha.

Mrs Quest blushed. After a few minutes she conceded, ‘Why, are you going to have a girl, then?’

Martha said nothing, and Mrs Quest understood that she had again confirmed her daughter’s worst ideas of her. She said with an aggressive laugh, ‘Anyway, it’s no good making up your mind you want a girl. I was sure you were a boy. I’d even chosen the name – and then look what I got!’

‘I know, you mentioned it,’ said Martha coldly. She swiftly put satin, flannel, scissors and pins into a drawer, as if concealing them, and faced her mother like – the image came pat to Mrs Quest – an animal defending her cubs.

The older woman said, laughing, ‘Well, there’s no need to look like that. After all, I have had experience and you have had none.’

Again the vision of Mr Quest hovered between them. Mrs Quest, doing her duty, said like a lesson, ‘Your father says he thinks you are too young to have a baby, and you should consider what you’re doing.’

At this Martha flung herself into a chair, and laughed helplessly; and after a moment Mrs Quest joined her in an inquiring peal.

‘I’ll make tea,’ said Martha, springing up.

They drank it while Mrs Quest explained exactly how this child should be brought up. Martha said nothing. At the end of an hour she exclaimed abruptly, her voice seething with anger, ‘You know, this is my baby.’ At once Mrs Quest’s eyes filled with tears; she was the small girl who had been slapped for something she has not done. Martha felt guilty, and told herself that her mother could not help it. She said quickly, ‘You must stay and have lunch.’

Mrs Quest had planned to stay the day. But she rose and said unhappily that she had shopping to do. She left, filled again with the conviction of bitter injustice, her heart aching with love refused.

She went back to the farm and told Mr Quest that as usual he had got hold of the wrong end of the stick, that Martha was quite wild with happiness. Then she went off into a long complaint of how Martha’s ideas about children were absurd and she was bound to ruin them.

After listening in silence for some time, Mr Quest rose and took out his writing things. ‘God knows why you two have to go on like this,’ he said bitterly. ‘Why? why? why?’ His words drifted out of the window and died among the noises of owl and cricket. He sat stiffly holding the pen between his fingers, staring out of the window to where the Seven Sisters burned low over the glare from the fireswept mountains, a pale smudge against that nearer conflagration which still sent wings of flame up into the great black starry vault of the sky. ‘One would think,’ he observed to this scene of splendour where his mind dwelt at ease, ‘that people would have some sense of proportion, considering the state the world’s in.’

A pause. He turned his pen angrily between his fingers. Mrs Quest knitted behind him in silence; she had that evening begun on a jacket for the baby Jeffrey.

‘But I suppose it makes no difference one way or the other,’ he went on. Mrs Quest, clicked her tongue protestingly.

Mr Quest, with a final, confirming glance at the stars, the fiery mountain, the empty veld, murmured, ‘After all – those stars are millions of years away, so they say …’

‘My dear,’ said Mrs Quest again, uneasily.

Mr Quest’s pen was motionless in mid-air. His eyes were wide at the sky. ‘So if one damned foolish girl wants to make a mess of her life …’ He lowered his pen carefully to the paper and began to write.

When her mother had left, Martha cupped her hands protectingly over her stomach, and murmured to the creature within that nothing would be allowed to harm it, no pressure would deform it, freedom would be its gift. She, Martha, the free spirit, would protect the creature from her, Martha, the maternal force; the maternal Martha, that enemy, would not be allowed to enter the picture. It was as one independent being to another that Martha spoke; and her hands on her flesh were light, as if even this pressure might be an unforgivable imposition.