A Proper Marriage

A loud and cheerful voice sounded beside them. ‘Why, Mr Maynard,’ exclaimed Stella, grasping his hands and thus taking Martha’s place in front of him. ‘Why, Mr Maynard, how lovely to see you.’

‘How do you do?’ inquired Mr Maynard formally; in his manner was that irritation shown by a man who finds a woman attractive when he does not like her. He moved away, smiling urbanely at Martha. ‘I shall leave you in the hands of your matron – matron of honour?’ With this he nodded and left them. He was thinking irritably, Wanting it both ways … and then: Am I supposed to supply the part of priest and confessor as well? She should have got married in church. Nevertheless, he was left with the feeling of a debt undischarged, and he glanced back to see the two young women crossing the street, and apparently engaged in violent argument.

‘But I’ve just made the appointment,’ said Stella angrily. ‘And she’s had to cancel someone else. You can’t change your mind now.’

‘I’m not going to have my hair cut,’ said Martha calmly. ‘I never said I would. You said so.’ It was perfectly easy to resist now; it had been impossible ten minutes ago. She gave a glance over her shoulder at the firm and stable back of Mr Maynard, who was just turning the corner.

‘She’s a very good hairdresser, Matty – just out from England. Besides,’ added Stella virtuously, ‘you look awful, Matty, and it’s your duty to your husband to look nice.’

But at this Martha laughed wholeheartedly.

‘What’s funny?’ asked Stella suspiciously. But she knew that this amusement, which she never understood, was Martha’s immunity to her, and she said crossly, ‘Oh, very well, I’ll cancel it again.’

She went into Chez Paris; and in half a minute they were continuing on their way.

‘We’ll be late for the doctor,’ said Stella reproachfully, but Martha said, ‘We are ten minutes early.’

The doctor’s rooms were in a low white building across the street. Looking upwards, they saw a series of windows shuttered against the sun, green against the glare of white.

‘Dr Stern’s got the nicest waiting room in town, it’s all modern,’ said Stella devotedly.

‘Oh, come on,’ Martha said, and went indoors without looking back.

On the first floor was a passage full of doors, all marked ‘Private’. Stella knocked on one of these. It opened almost at once to show a woman in a white dress, who held its edge firmly, as if against possible assault. She looked annoyed; then, seeing Stella, she said with nervous amiability, ‘It’s lovely to see you, dear, but really I’m busy.’

‘This is Matty,’ said Stella. ‘You know, the naughty girl who married Douggie behind everyone’s back.’

The young woman smiled at Martha in a friendly but harassed way and came out into the passage, shutting the door behind her. She pulled a half-smoked cigarette from her deep white pocket, lit it, and puffed as if she were starved for smoke. ‘I really shouldn’t, but the doctor’ll manage,’ she said, drawing deep breaths of smoke. She was a thin girl, with lank wisps of thin black hair, and pale worried blue eyes. Her body was flat and bony in the white glazed dress, which was a uniform, but no more than a distant cousin of the stiff garments designed by elderly women to disguise the charms of young ones. ‘My Willie knows your Douggie – they’ve been boys together for years,’ she said with tired indulgence.

Martha was by now not to be surprised at either the information or the tone, although she had never heard of Willie.

‘My God, but I’m dead,’ went on Alice. ‘Dr Stern is my pet lamb, but he works himself to death, and he never notices when anyone else does. I was supposed to leave an hour ago.’

‘Listen,’ said Stella quickly, ‘that’s easy, then. Just slip Matty quickly in for her appointment, then we’ll all go and have a drink.’

‘Oh, but I can’t dear,’ said Alice feebly; but Stella gave her a firm little push towards the door; so that she nodded and said, ‘All right, then, there’s lots waiting from before you, but I’ll manage it.’ She slipped the crushed end of cigarette back into her pocket, and went into the room marked ‘Private’.

Martha followed Stella into the waiting room. It was full. About fifteen or twenty women, with a sprinkling of children, were jealously eyeing the door into the consulting room. Martha edged herself into a seat, feeling guilty that she was about to take priority. Stella, however, stood openly waiting, with the look of one for whom the ordinary rules did not apply.

Almost at once the consulting-room door opened, and a bland voice bade a lady goodbye; she came out blushing with pleasure and giving challenging looks to those who still waited.

‘Come on,’ said Stella loudly, ‘now it’s us.’

She pushed Martha forward, as Alice looked around into the waiting room, and said in the kindly nervous voice which was her characteristic, ‘Yes, dear – it’s you, Mrs Knowell.’

Stella went beside Martha to the door; but there Alice held out one barring hand, with a professional look, and pulled Martha forward with the other. The door shut behind Martha, excluding Stella.

This was a large, quiet room, with a white screen in one corner which was bathed in greenish light from the shutters over the window. An enormous desk filled half the outer wall, and behind it sat Dr Stern, his back to the light. Over an efficient white coat a smooth pale heavy-lidded face lifted for a moment, the pale cool eyes flicked assessingly over Martha, and dropped again as he said, ‘Please sit down.’

Martha sat, and wondered how she should start: she did not really want any advice. She looked at the top of Dr Stern’s head, which was bent towards her as he flicked quickly through some papers. He had a mat of thick black crinkling hair; his neck was white, thin – very young. She saw him suddenly as a young man, and was upset. Then he said, ‘If you’ll excuse me for one moment …’ and glanced up again, before continuing to leaf through the papers. The upwards look was so impersonal that her anxiety vanished. She yawned. A weight of tiredness settled on her, with the cool silence of the room. A patch of yellow sunlight slanted through the slats of the blind on to the desk. Her eye was caught by it, held. She yawned again. She heard his voice: ‘Allow me to congratulate you on carrying off young Knowell – I’ve known him quite a time.’ He sounded quietly paternal; and she was reminded again that he was probably no older than Douglas, who had agreed enthusiastically to Stella’s insistence that Martha should see the doctor at once: ‘Yes, Dr Stern’s just the ticket – yes, you go along, Matty, and get to know him, he’ll show you the ropes.’

Yet, since Martha knew the ropes, there was nothing to say. Her eyes still fixed by the yellow patch of light, she let herself slide deeper into the comfortable chair, and Dr Stern inquired, ‘Sleepy?’

‘Haven’t had much sleep,’ she agreed, without moving.

Dr Stern looked at her again and noticed that she, in her turn, was unhappily regarding Alice, who was folding something white behind the white screen.

‘It’s all right, Mrs Burrell, just go next door for a moment. I’ll call you.’ Alice went out, with a kind, reassuring smile at Martha. ‘And leave the door open,’ said Dr Stern, for Martha’s benefit, which she did not appreciate: she would have preferred it shut.

And now Dr Stern, whose handling of the situation had been by no means as casual as it appeared, gave a swift downwards glance at his watch. Martha noticed it, and sat herself up.

‘Well, Mrs Knowell,’ he began smoothly, and, after a short silence, went on to deliver a lecture designed for the instruction of brides. He spoke slowly, as if afraid of forgetting some of it from sheer familiarity. When he had finished, Martha said obstinately that according to authority so and so another method was preferable. He gave her a quick look, which meant that this was a greater degree of sophistication than he was used to; almost he switched to the tone he used with married women of longer standing. But he hesitated. Martha’s words might be matter-of-fact, but her face was anxious, and she was gripping her hands together in her lap.

He went off at a tangent to describe a conference on birth control he had attended in London, and concluded with a slightly risky joke. Martha laughed. He added two or three more jokes, until she was laughing naturally, and returned to the subject by a side road of ‘A patient of mine who …’ Now he proceeded to recommend the method she had herself suggested, and with as much warmth as if he had never recommended another. His calm, rather tired, remote voice was extremely soothing; Martha was no longer anxious; but for good measure he concluded with a little speech which, if analysed, meant nothing but that everything was all right, one should not worry, one should take things easy. These phrases having repeated themselves often enough he went on to remark gently that some women seemed to imagine birth control was a sort of magic; if they bought what was necessary and left it lying in a corner of a drawer, nothing more was needed. To this attitude of mind, he said, was due a number of births every year which would astound the public. He laughed so that she might, and looked inquiringly at her. She did laugh, but a shadow of worry crossed her face. He saw it, and made a mental note. There was a silence. This time his glance at his watch was involuntary: the waiting room was full of women all of whom must be assured, for various reasons, that everything was all right, there was nothing to worry about, of course one did not sleep when one was worried, of course everyone was worried at times – of course, of course, of course.

Again Martha saw the glance and rose. He rose with her and took her to the door.

‘And how’s your husband keeping?’ he asked.

‘Fine, thanks,’ said Martha automatically; then it struck her as more than politeness and she looked inquiringly.

‘His stomach behaving itself?’

‘Oh, we’ve both got digestions like an ostrich,’ she said with a laugh, thinking of the amount they had drunk and eaten in the last few weeks. Then she said quickly, ‘There’s surely nothing wrong with his stomach?’ Her voice was full of the arrogance of perfect health. She heard it herself. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ she repeated. The solicitude in her voice rang false.

‘I believe I’ve been indiscreet,’ said Dr Stern. ‘But he is silly not to tell you. Ask him.’ And now he smiled, and held out his hand, saying that if she wanted help, if she just wanted to drop in for a chat, she must give him a ring. Martha wrung the hand, and left his room with the same look of soft, grateful pleasure that the previous patient had worn.

The other women watched her critically; they found that confused, self-confessing smile ridiculous. Then, as Stella rose to join her, they lost interest and turned their eyes back to the closed door.

‘Well, was he nice, did you like him?’ asked Stella urgently; and Martha said reticently that he was very nice.

Nothing more, it seemed, was forthcoming; and Stella urged, laughing, ‘Did you learn anything new?’ And it occurred to Martha for the first time that she had not. Her sense of being supported, being understood, was so strong that she stopped in the passage, motionless, with the shock of the discovery that in fact Dr Stern had said nothing at all, and in due course Douglas would be sent a bill for half a guinea – for what?

Stella tugged at her arm, so that she was set in motion again; and Martha remarked irritably that Dr Stern was something of an old woman, ‘sitting all wrapped up behind his desk like a parcel in white tissue paper, being tactful to a blushing bride.’

At once Stella laughed and said that she never took the slightest notice of what he said, either; as for herself and her husband, they had used such and such a method for three years, and she distinctly remembered Dr Stern telling them it was useless.

‘Well,’ asked Martha ungratefully, ‘what did you send me for, then?’

‘Oh!’ Stella was shocked and aggrieved. ‘But he’s so nice, and so up to date with everything, you know.’

‘He can’t be much older than you are,’ remarked Martha, in that same rather resentful voice. She was astounded that Stella was deeply shocked – at least, there could be no other explanation for her withdrawal into offended dignity. ‘If you don’t want a really scientific doctor then …’ Belatedly, Martha thanked her for the service; but they had reached the door marked ‘Private’, where they must wait for Alice; and Stella forgot her annoyance in the business of wriggling the door handle silently to show Alice they were there.

On the other side of the door, Alice was holding the handle so that it should not rattle, and watching Dr Stern to catch the right moment for announcing the next patient. Usually, having accompanied a patient to the door, he went straight back to his desk. This time, having shed his calm paternal manner over Martha’s farewells, he went to the window and looked down at the street through the slats in the shutter. He looked tired, even exasperated. Alice expected him to complain again about being a woman’s doctor. ‘I can’t understand why I get this reputation,’ he would grumble. ‘Nine-tenths of my practice are women. And women with nothing wrong with them.’

But he did not say it. Alice smiled as she saw him adjust the shutter so that the patch of sun, which was now on the extreme edge of the desk, should return to the empty space of polished wood nearer the middle. He turned and caught the smile, but preferred not to notice it. He frowned slightly and remarked that in three months’ time Mrs Knowell would be back in this room crying her eyes out and asking him to do an abortion – he knew the type.

Alice did not smile; she disliked him in this mood. Her eyes were cold. She noted that his tired body had straightened, his face was alert and purposeful.

He seated himself and said, ‘Make a card out for Mrs Knowell tomorrow.’ He almost added, laughing, ‘And book her a room in the nursing home.’ But he remembered in time that one did not make this sort of joke with Mrs Burrell, who was sentimental; his previous nurse had been better company. All the same, he automatically made certain calculations. January or February, he thought. He even made a note on his pad; there was a complacent look on his face.

‘That will do, Mrs Burrell. Thank you for staying over your time – you mustn’t let me overwork you.’ He smiled at her; the smile had a weary charm.

Alice did not respond. Her criticism of him formed itself in the thought, he has to have his own way over everything. And then the final blow: Heaven preserve me from being married to him, I wouldn’t have him as a gift.

‘Who’s next?’ he asked briskly.

‘Mrs Black,’ said Alice, going to the other door to call her in.

‘She ought to be starting her next baby soon,’ he remarked.

‘Have a heart,’ she said indignantly. ‘The other’s only six months old.’

‘Get them over young,’ he said. ‘That’s the best way.’ He added, ‘You ought to be starting a family yourself.’

Alice paused with her hand on the knob of the door, and said irritably, ‘The way you go on! If I catch you with less than five when you get married …’

He looked sharply at her; he had only just understood she was really annoyed; he wished again that he might have a nurse with whom he did not have to choose his words. But she was speaking:

‘You Jews have got such a strong feeling for family, it makes me sick!’

He seemed to stiffen and retreat a little; then he laughed and said, ‘There’s surely every reason why we should?’

She looked at him vaguely, then dismissed history with ‘I don’t see why everybody shouldn’t leave everybody else alone.’

‘Neither do I, Mrs Burrell, neither do I.’ This was savage.

‘You’re the sort of man who’d choose a wife because she had a good pelvis,’ she said.

‘There are worse ways of choosing one,’ he teased her.

‘Oh, Lord!’

‘Let’s have Mrs Black. Okay – shoot.’

Alice opened the door and called, ‘Mrs Black, please.’ She shut the door after the smiling Mrs Black, who was already seating herself; and, as she crossed the room on her way out, heard his voice, calmly professional: ‘Well, Mrs Black, and what can I do for you?’

She joined Martha and Stella, saying, ‘Wait, I must tell the other nurse …’

She came back almost at once, pulling out the frayed cigarette stub from her pocket and lighting it. Then she began tugging and pushing at the wisps of black hair that were supposed to make a jaunty frame for her face, but were falling in lank witch locks. ‘Oh, damn everything,’ she muttered crossly, pulling a comb through her hair with both hands, while the cigarette hung on her lip. Finally she gave a series of ineffective little pats at her dress, and said again, in a violent querulous voice, ‘Oh, damn everything. I’m going to give up this job. I’m sick to death of Dr Stern. I’m just fed up.’

Martha and Stella, momentarily united in understanding, exchanged a small humorous smile, and kept up a running flow of vaguely practical remarks until they had reached the hot pavement. They glanced cautiously towards Alice: she had apparently recovered. Stella immediately dropped the female chivalry with which women protect each other in such moments, and said jealously, ‘I wouldn’t have thought Dr Stern would be so hard to work for.’

‘Oh, no, he’s not,’ agreed Alice at once, and without the proprietary air that Stella would have resented. ‘Anyway, I’m really going to give it up. I didn’t train as a nurse to do this sort of thing. I might as well be a hotel receptionist.’

‘You’re mad to work when you’re married,’ said Stella. ‘I’ve given notice to my boss. Of course, we’re quite broke, but it’s too much, looking after a husband then slaving oneself to death in an office.’

Alice and Martha in their turn exchanged an amused smile, while Stella touched it up a little: ‘Men have no idea, they think housework and cooking get done by miracles.’

‘Why, haven’t you got a boy, dear?’ inquired Alice vaguely, and then broke into Stella’s reply with ‘Do you like Dr Stern, Matty? If not, I shan’t bother to make out a card for you.’

‘One doctor’s as good as another,’ said Martha ungraciously. ‘Anyway, I’m never ill.’

‘Oh, but he’s very good,’ exclaimed Alice, at once on the defensive. ‘He’s really wonderful with babies.’

‘But I’m not going to have a baby, not for years.’

‘Oh, I don’t blame you,’ agreed Alice at once. ‘I always tell Willie that life’s too much one damned thing after another to have babies as well.’

‘What do you do?’ inquired Martha, direct.

Alice laughed, on the comfortable note which Martha found so reassuring. ‘Oh, we don’t bother much, really. Luckily, all I have to do is to jump off the edge of a table.’

They were at a turning. ‘I think I’ll just go home, dear, if you don’t mind,’ said Alice. ‘Willie might come home early, and I won’t bother about a drink.’

‘Oh, no,’ protested Stella at once. ‘We’ll all run along to Matty’s place. You can ring Willie and tell him to come along.’

And now Martha once again found herself protesting that of course they must all come to her flat; an extraordinary desperation seized her at the idea of being alone; although even as she protested another anxious voice was demanding urgently that she should pull herself free from this compulsion.

‘Oh, well,’ agreed Alice good-naturedly, ‘I’ll come and drink to your getting married.’

Martha was silent. Now she had gained her point she had to brace herself to face another period of time with both Stella and Alice. She thought, Let’s get it over quickly, and then … And then would come a reckoning with herself; she had the feeling of someone caught in a whirlpool.

The three women drifted inertly down the hot street, shading their eyes with their hands. Alice yawned and remarked in her preoccupied voice, ‘But I get so tired, perhaps I’m pregnant? Surely I’m not? Oh, Lord, maybe that’s it!’

‘Well, jump off a table, then!’ said Stella with her jolly crude laugh.

‘It’s all very well, dear, but this worrying all the time just gets me down. Sometimes I think I’ll have a baby and be done with it. That’d be nine months’ peace and quiet at least.’

‘What’s the good of working for a doctor if he can’t do something?’ suggested Stella, with a look at Martha which said she should be collecting information that might turn out to be useful.

Alice looked annoyed; but Stella prodded, ‘I’ve heard he helps people sometimes.’

Alice drew professional discretion over her face and remarked, ‘They say that about all the doctors.’

‘Oh, come off it,’ said Stella, annoyed.

‘If Dr Stern did all the abortions he was asked to do, he’d never have time for anything else. There’s never a day passes without at least one or two crying their eyes out and asking him.’

‘What do they do?’ asked Martha, unwillingly fascinated.

‘Oh, if they’re strong-minded, they just go off to Beira or Johannesburg. But most of us just get used to it,’ said Alice, laughing nervously, and unconsciously pressing her hands around her pelvis.

Stella, with her high yell of laughter, began to tell a story about the last time she got pregnant. ‘There I was, after my second glass of neat gin, rolling on the sofa and groaning, everything just started nicely, and in came the woman from next door. She was simply furious. She said she’d report me to the police. Silly old cow. She can’t have kids herself, so she wants everyone else to have them for her. I told her to go and boil her head, and of course she didn’t do anything. She just wanted to upset me and make me unhappy.’ At the last words Stella allowed her face and voice to go limp with self-pity.

‘The police?’ inquired Martha blankly.

‘It’s illegal,’ explained Alice tolerantly. ‘If you start a baby, then it’s illegal not to have it. Didn’t you know?’

‘Do you mean to say that a woman’s not entitled to decide whether she’s going to have a baby or not?’ demanded Martha, flaring at once into animated indignation.

This violence amused both Stella and Alice, who now, in their turn, exchanged that small tolerant smile.

‘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 …