Doris Lessing - A Proper Marriage

But Douglas could not agree with this. ‘He’s very good, Matty – very good indeed.’

Her motherliness was warmed by his anxiety, and she at once assured him that he had been very kind and she had liked him enormously.

‘That’s all right, then. You’ll be all right with him.’ A pause. ‘Well, what did he recommend? Those effells are a pain in the neck, only for bachelors.’ He laughed proudly.

‘He made a joke about them.’

‘What did he say?’ She told him. ‘He’s a helluva lad, Dr Stern, isn’t he, Matty? Isn’t he?’

She hesitated. Besides, she did not want to think now about the machinery of birth control, which suddenly appeared to her distasteful. But since from the beginning it had been a matter of pride to be efficient, gay and matter-of-fact, she could not say that she detested the jellies and bits of rubber which from now on would accompany what Dr Stern had referred to as her love life as if it were something separate from life itself; she could not now say what for the moment was true: that she wished she were like that native woman, who was expected to have a baby every year. She wished at the very least that it should not all be made into a joke. She wanted to cry her eyes out; nothing could be more unreasonable.

Suddenly Douglas observed, ‘We’ve just done it without anything. I suppose that’s a bit silly, eh, Matty?’

‘Oh, it’ll be all right,’ she said hastily, unwilling to move. She felt it would be ‘all right’ because since the ‘act of love’ had been what Dr Stern described as unsatisfactory, she felt it had not occurred at all. She was unaffected, and therefore it would be unfair, if not unnatural, that a child might result from it.

‘Because you’d better get out of bed and go to the bathroom,’ he suggested uneasily.

‘Judging from the book of words,’ she said, with a dry anger that astounded even herself, ‘those little dragons of yours go wriggling along at such a rate it would be too late by now.’

‘Well, maybe it would be better than nothing,’ he urged.

‘Oh, I’m too tired to move,’ she said irritably. ‘Besides,’ she added firmly, ‘I’m not going to have a baby for years. It would be idiotic, with a war coming.’

‘Well, Matty…’ But he was at a loss for words in the face of this irrationality. ‘At any rate,’ he announced firmly, ‘we mustn’t take any more chances at all. Actually we’re being helluva fools. It’s not the first time.’

‘Oh, it’ll be all right,’ she agreed amenably, quite comfortable in the conviction, luckily shared by so many women who have not been pregnant, that conception, like death, was something remarkable which could occur to other people, but not to her.

‘Did you tell Dr Stern about your periods?’ he persisted.

‘What about them?’ she asked irritably, disengaging herself from his arm and lying parallel to him, not touching him.

‘Well, you did say they were a bit irregular.’

‘Oh, do stop fussing,’ she cried, tormented. ‘According to the book of words thousands of women have irregular periods before they have a baby and it doesn’t mean a thing.’

‘But, Matty, do be reasonable,’ he implored.

She was silent. Even more did she want to weep. But this would have meant abandoning herself to him, and to explanations of what she could not explain herself – a feeling of being caged and trapped. Until two weeks ago, her body had been free and her own, something to be taken for granted. She would have scorned to fuss about, or even to notice, a period that was heavy or one that chose not to come at all. And now this precious privacy, this independence, so lately won from her mother’s furtive questioning, was being threatened by an impertinent stranger.

‘Matty,’ he said again, ‘don’t you think you’re being unreasonable?’

‘I’m so tired I could scream,’ she muttered defiantly.

Silence. Music from the waste lot came throbbing into the room. The big wheel, glittering with the white lights, revolved steadily, Like a damned wedding ring, she thought crossly, abandoning herself to anger, since she was not free to cry.

‘I do hope you’ll be in a better humour in the morning,’ said Douglas coldly, after a pause.

Her mind began producing wounding remarks with the efficiency of a slot machine. She was quite dismayed at the virulence of some of the things that came to her tongue. She cautiously turned her head and saw his face showing in the steady flicker of lights. He looked young – a boy, merely; with a boy’s sternness. She asked, in a different tone, ‘Dr Stern said something about your stomach.’

His head turned quickly. Guardedly he said, ‘What did he tell you,?’

‘Nothing – only mentioned it. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Oh – I don’t know.’

The pride that concealed a weakness appealed to her. She reached out her hand and laid it on his arm above the elbow. It stiffened, then responded.

‘I’ve an ulcer – nothing much. I just go on the tack when I feel it.’

She could not help a pang of repulsion from the idea of an ulcer; then another of pity. ‘I thought you had to have a special diet for ulcers?’

‘Oh – don’t fuss.’ He added, contrite, ‘I lay off fats when it starts up.’

‘You’re very young to have an ulcer,’ she remarked at last. Then, thinking this sounded like a criticism, she tightened her fingers about the thick warm flesh. It was slack. He was asleep, and breathing deeply.

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