A Proper Marriage

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 activity.

‘Look,’ she said flatly, ‘it’s like this. Ever since I can remember, they’ve been on that farm, stuck in poverty like flies on flypaper. All the time, daydreams about all kinds of romantic escapes – for years I believed it all. And now suddenly everything becomes perfectly simple, and don’t you see, it was all for nothing. That’s the point – it was all for nothing.’

She heard her voice rising dramatically, and stopped, irritated with herself.

Douglas was watching her. There was a look in his eyes which struck her. She looked down at herself. She was wearing a thin nightgown. She saw that he was finding her attractive in this mood. She was completely furious. With a gesture of contempt she picked up a dressing gown and covered herself. Then she said flatly, ‘I can see I am being ridiculous.’ Then, since he looked hurt and shamefaced, she began hurriedly, in an impulse to share it with him, ‘The whole point is this: if it wasn’t the sweepstakes, it was a gold mine or a legacy. In the meantime, nothing but the most senseless poverty –’

But again she heard that dramatic note in her voice, and stopped short. That was not what she felt! She was unable to say what she meant in a way that sounded true. Silence – and she was filling with helpless exhaustion. Suddenly she thought, It’s all so boring. She felt obscurely that the whole thing was old-fashioned. The time for dramatic revolts against parent was past; it all had a stale air. How ridiculous Solly was, with his communal settlements, and throwing up university – for what? It had all been done and said already. She had no idea what was the origin of this appalling feeling of flatness, staleness and futility.

‘Oh, well,’ she began at last, in a cheerful hard voice, ‘it all doesn’t matter. Nothing one does makes any difference, and by the time we’re middle-aged we’ll be as stupid and reactionary as our parents – and so it all goes on, one might as well get used to it!’

‘Now Matty!’ protested Douglas, helplessly, ‘what on earth do you expect me to do about it? I’ll stand by you, of course, if that’s what you want.’ He saw her face, which wore an unconscious look of pure hopeless fear, and decided it was enough. He got out of bed, and came to her. ‘Now, don’t worry, I shall look after you, everything’s all right.’

At this Martha clung to him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said brightly and falsely. ‘I’m an awful fool.’

He kissed her, patted her here and there in an affectionate and brotherly way, and then said, ‘For God’s sake, I shall be late for the office. You should have woken me before.’ He went whistling into the bathroom, and began shaving.

She went back to bed, propped a hand mirror on a ridge of blanket, and tried to brush her hair into shape. She did not want to be noticed, and each time Douglas came in to fetch something she hastily turned away. But when he at last came in fully dressed, he remarked, ‘Your hair doesn’t do too badly like that.’ He was now in very good spirits. He announced, rubbing his hands, that he must not be late. There would be some sort of show at the office for him – this was the first day he would be at work since his marriage. As he picked up some papers, and gave his usual efficient glance around to see what he might have forgotten, he remarked, ‘And don’t forget the sundowner party tonight at the Brodeshaws.’

Martha said quickly, ‘Douglas …’

He stopped on his way out. ‘I’m awfully late.’

‘Douglas, why can’t we go to England – or somewhere?’ she inquired resentfully. ‘After all, you said …’

But he cut in quickly, ‘There’s going to be a war, and we can’t take chances now.’

The newspaper was lying over the bedclothes – one glance at the headlines was enough. But she persisted. ‘But it would be much better there than here if the war comes – at least we would be really in it.’

‘Now look, Matty, I really am late.’ He went out, hastily.

For some time she remained where she was, surrounded by the lanky sheets of newsprint, by scraps of letter, by the hand mirror, the brush, a tangle of the new white wedding linen. The headlines on the newspaper filled her with nothing but the profoundest cynicism. Then she saw a small book lying open on the bed, and pulled it towards her. She saw it was Douglas’s engagement book, and left it; for it was certainly her strongest principle that, a wife who looked at her husband’s letters or pockets was the blackest sort of traitor to decency. But the little book still lay open, at arm’s length. It was, after all, only an engagement book; and these engagements would concern herself. Compromising with her principles by not actually touching it, she moved closer and read the entries for the next two weeks. There was not a day free of sundowner parties, dances, lunches. Most of the names she did not know. The little book, lying beside the crumpled newspaper with its frightening black headlines, provided the strongest comment on her situation. She saw Solly’s letter, with its emphatic scrawl of an address, foundering among billows of sheet. Her anxiety focused itself sharply with: I’ve got to get out of it all. She got up, and dressed rapidly. Her clothes were all crushed from packing; there was nothing to wear but the blue linen from yesterday. But what she looked like, she assured herself, would be quite irrelevant to Solly, who was now monastic and high-minded in his communal settlement. In a few minutes she had left the untidy flat behind, and was in the street.

And no sooner had she turned the corner which shut out the flats, than it seemed as if not only they but her marriage did not exist – so strong was her feeling of being free. She was regarding her marriage, the life she was committed to, with a final, horrified dislike. Everything about it seemed false and ridiculous, and that Matty who apparently was making such a success of it had nothing to do with herself, Martha, now walking at leisure down this street on a cool fine morning. It was only a short walk to the Coloured quarters, and she went slowly, loitering along the pavements under the trees, picking off leaves from the hedges, pulling at the long grass which forced itself up wherever there was a gap in the pavement.

What puzzled her most was that she was a success. The last few weeks, confused, hectic, hilarious, had one thread running through it: the delight of other people in this marriage. How many had not embraced her, and with the warmest emotion! Everyone was happy about it – and why? For – and this was surely the core of the matter? – how could they be so happy, so welcoming, when they didn’t know her? She, Martha, was not involved in it at all; and so in her heart she was convicting them of insincerity. They could not possibly mean it, she concluded at last, dismissing all these friends and acquaintances, the circle into which she was marrying. The whole thing was a gigantic social deception. From the moment she had said she would marry Douglas, a matter which concerned – and on this point she was determined – no one but their own two selves, some sort of machinery had been set in motion which was bound to involve more and more people. Martha could feel nothing but amazed despair at the thought of the number of people who were so happy on their account.

And now she began walking as quickly as she could, as if running away from something tangible. She was already, in mind, with Solly, who would most certainly help her, rescue her; she did not quite know what he would do, but the truth of her relations with the Cohen boys, difficult, sometimes, but at least based on what they really thought and felt, could not possibly betray her now.

The street he had chosen to live in was in the most squalid part of town. She could not help smiling sourly as the poverty deepened around her: nothing less than the worst would do for Solly! Once these houses had been built for the new settlers. They were small and unpretentious, simple shells of brick covered with corrugated iron. Now each house held half a dozen families. Each was like a little town, miserable ragged children everywhere, washing hanging across doorways, gutters running filthy water. Between two such concentrated slums was a small house high on its foundations, in the centre of a fenced patch of garden. There were no other gardens in the street, only untidy earth, littered with tins, bits of cloth, trodden grass. Here, inside the new fence, was rich dark earth, with neat rows of bright green vegetables. The gate was new, painted white, and on it was a large board which said ‘Utopia’. Martha laughed again: that touch of self-derision was certainly Solly’s, she thought.

She was opening the gate when she heard a voice. A youth with a watering can emerged from a small shed and demanded what she wanted.

‘I’ve come to see Solly Cohen,’ she said, with a touch of defiance, for she had not, until now, remembered those other members of the community who might forbid her.

He was very young, Jewish, and every inch of him an intellectual, though it appeared he wanted to look like a peasant. After a pause, he nodded reluctantly, and turned away.

Martha went on up the path. There was a smell of hot sun on hot earth, the smell of evaporating water. Small bunches of brilliant green lettuce studded the dark earth, drops of water hung glistening in their leaves. They had just been watered; she could hear the deep soft drinking sound of water being sucked into dry soil. She walked slowly, for the pleasure of hearing it. She remembered how on the farm, after a storm, the tiny mealie plants held in their centres a single round, perfect drop of glittering water … But she was being observed, and by someone who resented her being there. She hurriedly climbed the steps. Whatever squalor had been here was cleaned away. The veranda, a small patch of dark-red cement between low grey walls, was polished and gleaming. The front door was newly painted a bright, strong blue. New paint, and cleanliness, and the windows were sparkling! She opened the blue door and found herself in the living room. It was empty. It was not a large room, but looked so because it had so little in it. The red cement floor had a piece of striped purple-and-yellow matting on it. There were half a dozen low wooden chairs, painted yellow. The walls had books all round them. That was all. To find this room in this street … But at this moment, a door was pushed open and Solly entered. His face showed blank surprise; then he hastily adjusted his expression.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked unwillingly.