Doris Lessing - A Proper Marriage

‘Oh, well,’ said Alice indulgently, ‘don’t waste any breath on that. Everyone knows that more kids get frustrated than ever get born, and half the women who have them didn’t want to have them, but if the Government wants to make silly laws, let them get on with it, that’s what I say, I suppose they’ve got nothing better to do. Don’t worry, dear. If you get yourself in a fix just give me a ring and I’ll help you out, you don’t want to lose sleep over the Government, there are better things to think about.’

Stella said with quick jealousy, ‘I’ve already told Matty, I’m just around the corner, and God knows I’ve got enough experience, even though I’m not a nurse.’

Surprised, Alice relinquished the struggle for the soul of Martha – she had not understood there was one.

‘Well, that’s all right, then, isn’t it?’ she agreed easily.

They had now reached the flats. They were a large block, starkly white in the sunlight. The pavement was so heated that its substance gave stickily under their feet; and its bright grey shone up a myriad tiny oily rainbows. A single tree stood at the entrance; and on this soft green patch their eyes rested, in relief from the staring white, the glistening grey, the hard, brilliant blue of the sky. Under the tree stood a native woman. She held a small child by one hand and a slightly larger one by the other, and there was a new baby folded in a loop of cloth on her back. The older children held the stuff of her skirt from behind. Martha stopped and looked at her. This woman summed up her uncomfortable thoughts and presented the problem in its crudest form. This easy, comfortable black woman seemed extraordinarily attractive, compared with the hard gay anxiety of Stella and Alice. Martha felt her as something simple, accepting – whole. Then she understood that she was in the process of romanticizing poverty; and repeated firmly to herself that the child mortality for the colony was one of the highest in the world. All the same …

Alice and Stella, finding themselves alone in the hall, came back and saw Martha staring at the tree. There was nothing else to look at.

‘It’s all very well for us,’ remarked Martha with a half-defiant laugh, seeing that she was being observed. ‘We’re all right, but how about her?’

Alice looked blank; but Stella, after a spasm of annoyance had contracted her face, broke into a loud laugh. To Alice she said boisterously, ‘Matty is a proper little Bolshie, did you know? Why, we had to drag her away from the Reds before she was married, she gets all hot and bothered about our black brothers.’ She laughed again, insistently, but Alice apparently found no need to do the same.

‘Come along, dear,’ she said kindly to Martha. ‘Let’s have a drink and get it over with, if you don’t mind.’

Martha obediently joined them. But Stella could not leave it. She said brightly, ‘It’s different for them. They’re not civilized, having babies is easy for them, everyone knows that.’

They were climbing the wide staircase. Alice remarked indifferently, ‘Dr Stern has a clinic for native women. Every Sunday morning. I tell him he’s so keen on everybody having babies that he can’t even give Sunday a rest.’

Stella involuntarily stopped. ‘Dr Stern treats kaffirs?’ she asked, horrified. It appeared that he was in imminent danger of losing a patient.

‘He’s very goodhearted,’ said Alice vaguely. The words restored her own approval of Dr Stern. ‘He only charges them sixpence, or something like that.’ She continued to drag herself up the staircase, ahead of the others.

Stella was silent. Her face expressed a variety of emotions, doubt being the strongest. Then Dr Stern effected in her that small revolution in thinking which crosses a gulf to philanthropy. She remarked, still dubiously, ‘Well, of course, we should be kind to them.’

Martha, three steps below her, laughed outright. Alice looked at her in surprise, Stella with anger.

‘Well, if everyone was like you, they’d get out of hand,’ Stella said sourly. ‘It’s all very well, but everyone knows they are nothing but animals, and it doesn’t hurt them to have babies, and …’ She added doubtfully, ‘Dr Stern is always modern.’

‘He’s making a study about it,’ said Alice. She was waiting for them on the landing. ‘It’s not true they are different from us. They’re just the same, Dr Stern says.’

Stella was deeply shocked and disturbed; she burst into her loud vulgar laughter. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’

‘But it’s scientific,’ said Alice vaguely.

‘Oh, doctors!’ suggested Stella, in precisely the same indulgent tone Alice had previously used for ‘the Government’.

Martha, arrived beside them on the landing, said bitterly, ‘It seems even Dr Stern is only interested in writing papers about them.’

Alice was offended. ‘Well, so long as they get help, I don’t suppose they mind, do you? And he’s very kind. How many doctors can you think of would work as hard as he does all the week and every night and then spend all Sunday morning helping kaffir women with their babies? And for as good as nothing, too.’

‘Well, sixpence is the same for them as ten shillings would be for us,’ protested Martha.

Alice was really angry now. ‘It’s not the same for Dr Stern.’

‘Whose fault is that?’ demanded Martha hotly.

Stella cut the knot by opening the door. ‘Oh, let’s have a drink,’ she said impatiently. ‘Don’t take any notice of Matty. Douggie’ll put some sense into her head. You can’t be a Red if you’re married to a civil servant.’

They went inside. Martha was acutely depressed at the finality of what Stella had said. She began to take out glasses and syphons, until Stella took them impatiently out of her hands. She sat down, and let Stella arrange things as she wished; with the feeling she had done this many times before.

Alice was unobservant and relaxed in a deep chair, puffing out clouds of smoke until she was surrounded by blue haze. ‘For crying out loud, but I’m tired,’ she murmured; and, without moving the rest of her body, she held out her hand to take the glass Stella put into it.

The room was rather small, but neat; it was dressed with striped modern curtains, light rugs, cheerful strident cushions. Stella’s taste, as Martha observed to herself bitterly, although telling herself again that it was her own fault. Well, she’d be gone soon, and then …

She took the glass Stella handed her, and let herself go loose, as Alice was doing.

Stella, accompanied apparently by two corpses, remained upright and energetic in her chair, and proceeded to entertain Alice with an amusing account of ‘their’ honeymoon.

‘… And you should have seen Matty, coping with the lads as if she were an old hand at the game. No wedding night for poor Matty, we were driving all night, and we had two breakdowns at that – the funniest thing you ever saw. We got to the hotel at two in the morning, and then all the boys arrived, and it wasn’t until that night we all decided it was really time that Matty had a wedding night, so we escorted them to their room, playing the Wedding March on the mouth-organs, and the last we saw of Matty was her taking off Douggie’s shoes and putting him into bed.’ She laughed, and Martha joined her. But Alice, who had not opened her eyes, remarked soothingly that Douggie was a hell of a lad, but Matty needn’t worry, these wild lads made wonderful husbands, look at Willie, he’d been one of the worst, and now butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

The thought of her husband made her sit up, and say in a determined voice that she really must go; Willie was a pet lamb, he never worried about anything – but all the same, she wasn’t going to start setting a bad example. She struggled out of her chair, drained her glass, and nervously pressed Martha’s hand. ‘Sorry, dear, but I really must – I’ll see you soon, I expect, my Willie and your Douglas being such friends. And now I really …’ She smiled hastily at Stella, waved vaguely, and hurried out. They could hear her running down the stairs on her high heels.