A Proper Marriage Read online

  The great man nodded affably towards Douglas, and said, ‘I quite agree.’ Again he allowed a pause for considered thought, and that slow, circling grey stare. Then he began to speak; and Martha heard with amazement the liberal point of view expressed by this pillar of reaction, this man who was a symbol of ‘the Company’. It was a shock to everything she had believed possible. And now many people who had been silent came in. Martha looked from face to face and tried to see what connected the champions of progress. At first she failed. Then she saw that mostly they were ‘business’ as opposed to ‘civil service’. The talk went on, and it was not until she had heard the phrases ‘greater efficiency’, ‘waste of labour’, etc., etc., often enough, that she understood.

  What she had understood was finally crystallized by Mr Player’s summing up. He said that the whites were ruining their own interests; if the blacks (Martha noted that his use of the emotional word was calculated) were not to revolt, they must be fed and housed; and he, Mr Player, blamed above all the Editors of the Zambesia News, for persistently feeding the public with nonsense. For the last ten years, said Mr Player, ignorance had been pandered to by a policy that could only be described as monstrously stupid; any expression of a desire for improvement on the part of the natives was immediately described as impertinence, or sedition, or even worse. We were, after all, living in the twentieth century, concluded Mr Player, while he directed his grey stare towards a man halfway down the veranda.

  Following the searchlight of that stare, Martha saw at the end of it an uncomfortable, flushed gentleman angrily clutching at a glass of whisky. Since it was obvious that Mr Player did nothing casually, it followed that this gentleman must be connected with the press. As soon as Mr Player had finished, he remarked aggressively that the press was not concerned with fostering the interests of any particular section of the population. His look at Mr Player was pure defiance.

  Mr Player stared back. Then he said that it was in no one’s interest that the blacks (this time the word was a small concession to the press) should be ill-fed and ill-housed into a condition where they weren’t fit for work. He paused and, having narrowed his eyes for a final stab, said, ‘For instance, I hear that on the Canteloupe Mine a policy of proper feeding and housing is gaining quite remarkable results.’ He elaborated this policy for some time. It occurred to Martha belatedly that this same mine was almost certain to be connected with the Company, and that Mr Player himself had originated this enlightened policy. Mr Player redirected his stare towards him, and remarked, ‘Some people might wonder why something that is after all an experiment is not considered newsworthy by a paper which claims to represent everybody?’

  The victim grew redder, resisted for a moment, then said clumsily, ‘Well, of course, we are always ready to print genuine news.’

  At once Mr Player removed his gaze and elaborated his theme in a different key for a while, then passed to another. He did not look towards the News again. They all listened in silence – the Service, business, two members of Parliament, the press - while Mr Player continued to express views which ninety per cent of the white population would consider dangerous and advanced. Obstinate, even ironical faces seemed to suggest that it was all very well for Mr Player, who did not have to answer to this same ninety per cent, but only to investors overseas. One felt that no slighter provocation than this could have provoked them even to think of these investors, particularly as such thoughts were likely to be followed by others - such as, that the Company indirectly owned a large part of the News and most of the businesses who used its advertising space.

  A telephone rang inside the long room which could be glimpsed through the open French windows. A native servant emerged, anonymous in his white ducks and red fez, to say Mr Player was wanted on the telephone. The secretary of the secretary made a movement towards rising; and subsided as Mr Player rose with a sharp look at him. He sat stiffly beside Ruth, discomfited. There was a long silence, while they listened to the voice inside. Then Mrs Brodeshaw remarked with a smile that Mr Player had a horse running in a race in England. There was a burst of relieved, admiring laughter.

  Martha was looking at Mr Maynard, who did not laugh, but appeared bored and indulgent. Her persistent, speculative stare had its effect, for he got heavily to his feet and came down towards her. He sat down, saying, ‘If you young women will change your hair styles every day, what can you expect?’

  ‘I cut it,’ said Martha awkwardly - everyone had watched him coming to join her. Then Mrs Brodeshaw mentioned her roses, and conversation began again.

  ‘Did Binkie come back?’

  ‘He returned last night,’ said Mr Maynard. A glance at him showed his face momentarily clenched; a second, blandly indifferent. ‘His mother is a different woman as a result,’ he remarked; but at this point Mr Player returned. Everyone looked expectantly prepared to triumph or commiserate over the horse in England, but Mr Player sat down, and leaned over to murmur something to the young secretary. He was pink with importance.

  Mr Maynard watched the scene, holding his glass between two loosely cupped hands, and said, ‘That is a very pretty young man.’

  ‘Oh, very!’ she agreed scornfully.

  ‘Have you noticed that the type of immigrant is changing? The era of the younger sons is passing. A pity - I am a firm believer in younger sons. Now we have what the younger sons, such as myself, for instance, left England to escape from.’ The idea of Mr Maynard as a younger son made Martha laugh; and he gave her a quizzical look. ‘Now, in the old days – but you wouldn’t remember that.’ He glanced at her and sighed. Martha felt she was being dismissed. He did not continue. Instead he asked, in a casual but intimate voice that referred to yesterday’s encounter, ‘Well, what do you make of it all?’ He glanced around the long veranda and then at her.

  Martha blurted out at once, ‘Awful. It’s all awful!’

  He gave her another glance and remarked, ‘So I thought. I have been looking at you and thinking that if you must feel so strongly you’d better learn to hide it. If I may give you advice from the height of my - what? fifty-six years.’

  ‘Why should I hide it?’ she demanded.

  ‘Well, well,’ he commented. ‘But it won’t do, you know!’

  ‘You didn’t even know it was me, you didn’t recognize me,’ she accused him.

  ‘I have noticed,’ he swerved off again, ‘that at your age women are really most extraordinarily unstable in looks. It’s not till you’re thirty or so that you stay the same six months together. I remember my wife …’ He stopped frowning.

  There was a conversation developing at the bottom of the veranda. Martha heard the words ‘the war’, and sat up.

  ‘Mr Player must naturally be concerned with the international situation,’ remarked Mr Maynard. ‘A man who controls half the minerals in the central plateau can hardly be expected to remain unmoved at the prospect of peace being maintained.’

  Martha digested this; what he was saying had, to her, the power to blast everyone in this house off into a limbo of contempt. It was more difficult for her to understand that for him it was enough to say it. She could find nothing polite enough to express what she felt. He looked at her again, and it disconcerted her because he saw so clearly what she would have liked to say.

  ‘My dear Mrs Knowell, if I may advise you–’ But again he checked himself, and said, ‘Why should I? You’ll do as you like, anyway.’

  ‘What advice?’ she asked, genuinely.

  But now he fidgeted his large and powerful dark-clad limbs in his chair, and said with the gruffness which was his retreat, ‘Let’s leave it at this: that I’m profoundly grateful I’m nearly sixty.’ He paused and added scathingly, ‘I can leave it all safely in the hands of Binkie.’

  ‘There are other people,’ she remarked awkwardly; she was thinking of Joss and Solly. Suddenly it occurred to her that there was an extraordinary resemblance between this dignified man and the rebel in the settlement in the Coloured quarters. Of
course! It was their savage and destructive ways of speaking.

  But now he remarked, ‘I daresay one attaches too much importance to one’s own children.’ He sounded tired and grim. She was immediately sorry for him. She was trying to find words to express it, when he nodded down towards the end of the veranda to direct her attention there.

  Colonel Brodeshaw was speaking. ‘… a difficult problem,’ she heard. ‘If we conscript the blacks, the question of arming them arises. It’ll come up before the House in due course …’ Once again, this gathering was being used as a sounding board. This time there was no doubt, no cleavage of opinion, no need even for discussion. From one end of the veranda to the other, there was a murmur of ‘Obviously not. Out of the question.’ It was so quickly disposed of that Colonel Brodeshaw had the look of an orator on a platform who has been shouted at to sit down in the middle of a speech. He murmured, ‘Well, it’ll not be settled as easily as all that.’ People looked towards Mr Player; it appeared he had no views on the matter. Mrs Maynard announced finally, ‘If they learn to use arms, they can use them on us. In any case, this business of sending black troops overseas is extremely shortsighted. They are treated as equals in Britain, even by the women.’ There was no need to say more.

  Mr Maynard remarked, ‘One of the advantages of living in a society like this, though I don’t expect you’ll appreciate it yet, is that things can be said. Now, in Britain it would take a very stupid person to talk in such a tone. In the colonies there is an admirable frankness which makes politics child’s play in comparison.’

  ‘It’s revolting,’ she said angrily.

  ‘Well,’ he said, flipping his forefinger against his glass again, ‘well, when this colony has reached the stage where a gathering like this talks about uplifting the masses of the people, you’ll find that politics will be much more complicated than they are now.’

  ‘Mr Player has just been talking about it.’

  ‘But with what engaging truth, with what disarming frankness. Enlightened self-interest - it has taken us long enough to reach it. Why, only a year ago, I remember, the suggestion by dieticians that Africans were not conveniently equipped by nature to subsist healthily on mealie meal and nothing else was treated as the voice of revolution itself. We advance, we advance! Now, in my youth, my “class” – as you so refreshingly have no inhibitions in putting it - were for the most part outspokenly engaged in putting the working classes in their place. But when I paid a visit to England last year, how different things were! The working classes were undoubtedly just where they used to be, but everyone of my “class” seemed concerned only to prove not only that they were entitled to a good life, but that they had already achieved it. Further, it was almost impossible to hold a conversation with my friends and relations, because their speech was full of gaps, pauses, and circumlocutions where words used to be. With what relief did I return to this country, where a spade is still called a spade and I can use the vocabulary that I was taught to use during my admirable education. I can no longer say, ‘The kaffirs are getting out of hand’, that is true. But I can say, ‘The blacks need firm treatment.’ That’s something. I am grateful for it.’

  Martha did not know what to say. She could not make out from this succession of smooth and savage sentences which side he was on. As she put it, with a straightforwardness which she imagined he would commend, ‘If you think it’s terrible, then why do you …?’

  ‘But I didn’t say I thought it was terrible. On the contrary, if there’s one thing my generation has learned it is that the more things change, the more they remain the same.’

  Martha reached out her hand to take his glass. ‘You’re going to break it,’ she warned. He had in fact broken it - there was a mess of wet glass in his hand. He glanced at it, with raised brows, then reached for a handkerchief. Martha was looking around to see if the incident had been noticed. But everyone was listening to Mrs Brodeshaw, who was explaining how she was forming a women’s organization in preparation for the war.

  A servant came forward to remove the bits of glass.

  ‘We old men,’ Mr Maynard said apologetically, ‘are full of unaccountable emotions.’

  ‘I know,’ said Martha at once. ‘You’re like my father - what upset you was the 1914 war, wasn’t it?’

  He looked exceedingly uncomfortable, but assented.

  ‘You really seemed to think it was going to change things, didn’t you?’

  ‘We did attach a certain importance to it at the time.’

  She heard her name called. Donovan was grinning at her with a gay spite which warned her. ‘You don’t agree, Matty dear, do you?’ he was calling down the veranda.

  ‘I wasn’t listening.’

  Mrs Talbot came out with apologetic charm, ‘Donovan was telling us that you were a pacifist. I don’t blame you, dear, war is so utterly dreadful.’ She broke off with a confused look around her.

  ‘But I’m not a pacifist,’ said Martha stubbornly.

  Mr Maynard broke in quickly with ‘All my generation were pacifists - until 1914.’

  There was a burst of relieved laughter. Donovan looked at Martha; she looked back angrily. He turned back to Ruth with a gay shrug.

  Martha saw that Mr Maynard had been protecting her. She said in a low voice, ‘I don’t see why one shouldn’t say what one thinks.’

  ‘Don’t you? Oh, well, I’m sorry.’

  This depth of irony succeeded in making her feel very young and inadequate. It was a snub to those real feelings she was convinced she must share with everybody, nothing less would do! After a moment she said, ‘All the same, everyone here is planning for the war, and we don’t know yet who the war is going to be fought against.’

  She had spoken rather more loudly than she had meant; the gentleman from the press had heard her. He said irritably, ‘You’d agree, I hope, that one must be prepared for a war?’ This was the substance of the leader in that morning’s News.

  Mr Maynard answered for her, in a smooth voice, ‘I daresay the younger generation, who will have the privilege of being killed, are entitled to know what for?’ He had acquired another glass, and was engaged in flipping this one too with his fingernail. The journalist’s look was caught by the gesture; he watched it for a moment; then some women sitting near asked him deferentially for his opinion on the international situation. He proceeded to give it. Martha listened to his string of platitudes for a few moments, then heard Mr Maynard again: ‘Another of life’s little disillusionments: you’ll find the newspapermen are as stupid as they sound. One reads what they say, when young, with admiration for the accomplished cynicism they display; when one gets older one discovers they really mean what they write. A terrible blow it was to me, I remember. I had been thinking of becoming one myself. But I was prepared to be a knave, not a fool.’

  He had meant her to laugh, but she was unable to. She wanted to protest. Fear of his contempt for her clumsiness kept her silent. She was prepared to be thought wrong-headed, but not naïve. He was using much more powerful weapons than she was to understand for a very long time.

  ‘Come,’ he said, ‘let me fill up your glass.’ It was her third, and she was beginning to be lifted away from herself.

  ‘Tell me,’ he inquired, having refilled his own, ‘if it is not too indiscreet, that is: What decided you to get married at the age of - what is it? Seventeen?’

  ‘Nineteen,’ said Martha indignantly.

  ‘I do apologize.’

  She laughed. She hesitated a moment. She was feeling the last three months as a bewildering chaos of emotion, through which she had been pulled, will-less, like a fish at the end of a string, with a sense of being used by something impersonal and irresistible. She hesitated on the verge of an appeal and a confession; an attempt, at the very least, to explain what it had been like. She glanced at him, and saw him lounging there beside her, very large, composed, armed by his heavy sarcastic good looks.

  ‘If I may say so,’ he remarked with a pleasan
tly pointed smile which was like a nudge to proceed, ‘ninety-nine people out of a hundred haven’t the remotest idea why they got married - in any case you are under the illusion that you are a special case.’

  With this encouragement, she took a sip from her brandy and ginger beer and began. She was pleasantly surprised that her voice was no less cool, amused and destructive than his own. She noted, also, that words, phrases, were isolated in deprecating amusement - as Solly had used the language that morning. It was as if she were afraid of the power of language used nakedly. ‘Well,’ she began, ‘not to get married when it is so clearly expected of us was rather more of an act of defiance than I was prepared to commit. Besides, you must know yourself, since you spend most of your time marrying us, that getting married is our first occupation - the international situation positively demands it. Who one marries is obviously of no importance at all. After all, if I’d married Binkie, for instance, I’m sure that everyone — with the exception of your wife, of course - would have been just as delighted …’

  He laughed: ‘Go on.’

  ‘Though it would have been no less potentially disastrous than the marriage I’m committed to. Love,’ she noted how she isolated the word, throwing it away, as it were, ‘as you would be the first to admit, is merely a question of …’ ‘In short,’ she concluded, after some minutes of light-hearted description of the more painful experiences of the last few weeks, ‘I got married because there’s going to be a war. Surely that’s a good enough reason.’ There was not even an undertone of dismay to be heard in her voice.