Doris Lessing - A Proper Marriage

Martha’s eyebrows at once went up. ‘Really? I understood that you did – judging from novels, at least. Though of course in England you’d call it something else probably, you people.’

‘Who is “you people”?’ he asked, annoyed.

Martha looked at him as if suspecting a deliberate dishonesty, and then remarked, blushing because she had to put it into words, ‘Why, the upper classes, of course, who else?’

Ironically stiff, he remarked, ‘My son Binkie also uses the phrase “you people” – and in the same way.’

‘For all that, he’ll end up by being a magistrate.’ And Martha laughed with real enjoyment and looked straight at him, expecting him to share it.

He did not laugh. He was hurt. ‘You are exempt from this law?’

The shaft went home at once. She lost her shell of confidence, her face contracted, she looked at him from a haze of anxiety before turning away from him. He had no idea why this should be so.

He was contrite. Then he said apologetically, ‘Well, thank you. I daresay Binkie will turn up at midnight again. I don’t know why he imagines he can miss three days at the office without even ringing up to apologize – his chief rang me this morning.’ He heard his own voice becoming so bitter that he hastened to restore his balance by sarcasm. ‘Don’t imagine I am inquiring on my own account. As far as I am concerned, I decided long ago it would be no loss to society if Binkie did fall prey to the crocodiles. But my wife will have a sick headache until he returns.’

Under the impression that he had ended the interview on a note which must leave him whole in her eyes, he was about to turn away with a ‘Good afternoon’, when he saw her offering him a look of such ironic pity that he stopped.

She smiled and he found himself returning her smile. ‘Well, Mr Maynard,’ she remarked in precisely his own tone of cool self-punishing sarcasm. ‘If Binkie has learned to ignore sick headaches, then it must be because he knows he’d be doing someone out of a pleasure if he did not.’ But this logical sentence crumbled, and she added awkwardly, ‘I mean, everyone knows about sick headaches … Besides – they’re so old-fashioned,’ she went on angrily. And then: ‘Not that everything doesn’t just go on, even when one might think they had no right to exist any longer.’

Ignoring the last part of this, he seized upon the first with an ironical ‘Well, well!’ His relations with his wife had been conducted on this principle, but he would have considered it unchivalrous to do more than talk blandly about ‘the female element’ when with his male friends. Yet here was a representative of this same element who seemed to feel no disloyalty in putting what he had imagined to be a male viewpoint. It occurred to him, first, that he was out of touch with the young; secondly, a note had been struck which he instinctively responded to with gallantry.

Instilling gallantry into his voice, and a gleam of ironic complicity into his eyes, he moved nearer and said, ‘You interest me enormously.’

At once she frowned, and even moved away. He dropped the tone; but held it in reserve for a later occasion.

Then he lowered his voice like a conspirator, and inquired expanding his eyes with a look of vast inquiry, ‘Tell me, Mrs Knowell, is it the fashion now for young people to take their honeymoons in crowds? In my young days a honeymoon was an opportunity to be alone.’

‘You know quite well we did our best to get away without Binkie and the gang,’ said Martha resentfully.

‘I was referring to the other couple, the Mathews.’

For a moment it was touch and go whether she would repudiate them; but another loyalty was touched, for she laughed and asserted that they had all had a marvellous time and it was absolutely gorgeous.

Mr Maynard watched her, then raised his heavy brows and said drily, ‘So it would appear.’

He had expected her to succumb in confusion to this pressure; instead she suddenly chuckled, and met his eyes appreciatively. He said quickly, ‘Our generation has not made such a success of things that we can expect you to follow our example.’ This seemed to him the extreme of magnanimity, but she smiled sceptically and said, ‘Thanks.’

There was another pause. Martha was thinking that his eighteenth-century flavour had, after all, its own piquancy – not fifty yards away the farmers still lounged and argued prices and the weather and the labour question, while almost at their elbow arched the great marble doors of the cinema.

But surely Stella should be returning by now? And all this talk of generations had a stale, dead ring. Martha reacted violently against Mr Maynard, particularly because of that moment when he had invited her to flirt a little. She thought confusedly that there was always a point when men seemed to press a button, as it were, and one was expected to turn into something else for their amusement. This ‘turning into something else’ had landed her where she was now: married, signed and sealed away from what she was convinced she was. Besides – and here her emotions reached conviction – he was so old! She wished now, belatedly, that she had snubbed him for daring to think that she might have even exchanged a glance with him.

He was inquiring, in a voice which engaged her attention, ‘I wonder if I might take this opportunity to inquire whether “the kids” – or, if you prefer it, “the gang” – behaved so badly that I may expect a bill for damages.’

This was, underneath the severity, an appeal. Martha at once replied with compassion, ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure it will be all right.’

He retreated from the pity into gruffness, remarking, ‘I live in terror that one day Binkie’ll behave in such a way that I’ll have no alternative but to resign – not that you would see any misfortune in that,’ he added.

Martha conceded that she was sure he was a marvellous magistrate; she sounded irritable. Then, as he did not move, she began to speak, giving him the information he was obviously waiting for, in the manner of one who was prepared to turn the knife in the wound if he absolutely insisted. ‘Binkie and the gang caught up with us that night about twelve. We shook up one of the hotels and made them open the bar …’

‘Illegal,’ he commented.

‘Well, of course. We – I mean the four of us – sneaked out while the gang were “giving it stick”’ – here she offered him an ironic smile, which he unwillingly returned – ‘and we drove all night till we reached the hotel. The gang came after us about eight in the morning. Luckily the hotel wasn’t full and there was room for everyone. The gang didn’t behave so badly, considering everything. The manager got very angry on the last day because Binkie – you remember those baboons that come up to the hotel for food? Well, Binkie and the gang caught one of the baboons and made it drunk and brought it on to the veranda. Well, it got out of control and started rampaging. But they caught it in the end, so that was all right. The baboon was sick,’ she added flatly, her mouth twisting. ‘Binkie and the baboon were dancing on the lawn. It was rather funny.’

‘Very funny.’

‘It was – very. However,’ she pointed out coldly, ‘since the gang have been tearing the place to pieces for years, and no one has got hurt, they can’t be so crazy as they make out.’

‘Except for young Mandolis, who went over the edge of the Falls three years ago.’

She shrugged. An allowable percentage of casualties, apparently. Then she added, in a different voice, hard and impatient, ‘There’s going to be a war, anyway.’

‘Since this will be my second world war, I have the advantage of knowing that those follies we commit under the excuse of wartime are not cancelled out when it’s over. On the contrary.’