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Mrs Quest said: ‘You look tired.’
‘I am tired.’
‘And you’re much too thin.’
‘It’s one of my thin phases,’ said Martha vaguely. Flames of rage leaped unexpectedly in Mrs Quest … ‘one of my thin phases’… so like her, cold, unfeeling, just like her!
‘Then why don’t you eat more?’ said Mrs Quest with an angry titter.
‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ll just get fat again by myself.’
Martha sat down and lit a cigarette. Light from the door fell over her mother. Martha saw, under the rug, a brownish skirt, and a pink woollen jersey. Martha looked incredulously at the jersey. How was it possible for a woman, for any woman at all, to wear such a hideous salmon-coloured thing? Why, to touch it must be positively painful.
‘I had a letter from Jonathan.’
‘Oh, good. You said so actually.’
‘He’s getting better. Of course his arm will never be what it was.’
‘Of course not,’ said Martha, with an unpleasant intention Mrs Quest was sure of but chose not to analyse.
‘I’ve been talking things over with your father. He quite agrees with me that it would be wise to go and live in England near Jonathan. If he decides to live there.’
‘Oh, then my father’s better?’ Martha got up, ready to go in. But at her mother’s gesture, she sat down again.
‘The doctor was here, he said perhaps your father has turned the corner. He wasn’t feeling up to the Victory Parade this morning, but he’s been quite rested all day, and in fact he slept all afternoon without drugs.’
‘Good.’
Again Martha got up, ready to go in.
‘I’ve gone back to smoking,’ said Mrs Quest pathetically, almost demanding that her daughter should congratulate her on her long self-sacrifice.
‘Well, you were quite marvellous to give it up,’ said Martha politely. ‘I simply can’t think how you do it.’ She had turned herself away, mostly from the salmon-pink sweater. It seemed to her that everything impossible about her mother was summed up by the sheer insensitivity, the hideousness, of that thick, rough, pink object.
‘Mrs Maynard was very disappointed we could not go to the Victory thing. She’s starting a committee for the problems of Peace, and she says she wants you on it. I can’t imagine why, when you’re such a flibberty-gibbet.’ Mrs Quest brought out this last sentence with a nervous titter, simultaneously looking at her daughter in appeal. She knew quite well that Martha was far from being a flibberty-gibbet, but the phrase had come, because of Mrs Quest’s nervousness, her unhappiness on the point of Mrs Maynard, from battles in Martha’s childhood.
Martha stared at the pink jersey. She was quite white, raging inside with the need to say a thousand wounding things. With an unbelievable effort, she managed to stay silent, smiling painfully, thinking: I hope she has the sense to shut up now, because otherwise …
Mrs Quest went on: ‘Well, surely you can say something, it’s quite an honour to be asked to Mrs Maynard’s things!’
Martha began: ‘Mrs Maynard wants me on the committee because of …’ She stopped herself just in time from saying: Because of Maisie.
‘What were you going to say?’ said Mrs Quest, wanting to know so badly that her casualness about it grated. Suspicion was flaming through her: there was something odd about Mrs Maynard’s wanting Martha in the first place; and now there was something odd about Martha’s manner.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Martha. ‘Don’t worry. She doesn’t really want me, you know.’
The words ‘don’t worry’ made Mrs Quest sit straight up saying: ‘What do you mean, why should I care if Mrs Maynard wants you!’
Martha escaped, saying with a vague bright smile: ‘I’ll just go and see if …’ On the way to the bedroom Martha was muttering: ‘They’ll do for me yet, between them, they’ll get me yet if I don’t watch out.’ The smells of medicine and stool filled her nostrils. Her father had just had an enema and the whole house knew it. Martha allowed herself to think, for a few short moments, of her mother’s life, the brutal painfulness of it – but could not afford to think for long. It made her want to run away now, this minute – out of this house and away, before ‘it’ could get her, destroy her.
In the bedroom, a small, grey man was asleep, against pillows.
‘Father,’ said Martha, in a low voice, bending down.
‘Is that you, old chap?’ said Mr Quest, in the voice which meant that he didn’t want to wake up.
‘How are you?’
‘Oh, much the same, I suppose.’
She stayed there a few moments, but he kept his eyes shut. Anguish, the enemy, appeared: but no, she was not going to weep, feel pain, suffer. If she did, they would get her, drag her down into this nightmare house like a maze where there could be only one end, no matter how hard one ran this way, that way, like a scared rabbit.
‘Did you get to that Victory thing?’ asked the old man in a normal voice, as she straightened herself to leave.
‘No. Well, is it likely?’
‘She wanted me to go.’
‘So I hear.’
Mr Quest’s lips moved: he planned a humorous remark. Martha waited. But he lost interest and said: ‘Well, good night, old chap.’
‘Good night.’
‘He’s asleep,’ said Martha to her mother on the veranda, just as she had done the night before. She went to the bicycle and slid herself on the seat.
‘I don’t know how you can bicycle decently in a skirt as tight as that.’
‘I wasn’t thinking about bicycling decently,’ said Martha, sullenly. Then she smiled. Mrs Quest smiled too. ‘And where are you gallivanting off to now?’
Martha sat on her bicycle, with one foot on the wall of the steps. She smiled steadily. She was thinking she might say: Well, as it happens, I’ve got to meet Athen – he’s a communist newspaper-seller from Greece. Maisie’s on the thorny path to hell, he thinks. Maisie? Well, she’s the mother of Binkie Maynard’s by-blow. Yes, I did say Binkie Maynard. And the reason why Mrs Maynard wants me in her gang is so she can get her hooks into Maisie. And that’s why she’s being nice to you – if that’s the word for it. Yes, and Athen wants me to give Maisie a helpful lecture of a moral nature … The sheer imbecility of this caused Martha to smile even more brightly. She said: ‘See you soon,’ and bicycled off. At the foot of the garden she turned briefly to take a last look at the pink jersey which from here seemed a small, pathetic blob which said: Help me, help me, help me.
Mrs Quest went in to her supper, alone. She had ordered enough for two, had even cooked some jam tart. Martha is so fond of it, she had thought. Though she knew quite well Martha never ate sweets of any kind. Imagining the scene, where she put a slice of tart, with its trickles of sweet cream, before Martha, but she shook her head, Mrs Quest’s eyes filled with rejected tears.
She ate a good deal, though she was not hungry, and smoked several cigarettes. Then she listened to the nine o’clock news. All over Europe people danced among ruins, danced in a frenzy of joy because of the end of the war. Mrs Quest sat imagining the scenes in London. As a small girl she had been taken by her father to join the rioting crowds on Mafeking night. She re-created those memories and filled London with them in her mind. Then, the radio ceased to talk of victory, the day was over. Mrs Quest ‘settled her husband for the night’ – which meant, this evening, since he was half-asleep and did not want to be awakened, giving him an injection and another sedative, in case he woke in the early dawn, which is what he dreaded more than anything. Mrs Quest patted her little white dog, went to the kitchen to find him a tit-bit from the refrigerator, then she went to bed herself. Her powerful unused energies surged through her, and soon she was again lying wakeful, thinking in hatred of her daughter. The fantasy of expulsion from Mrs Maynard’s drawing-room had gone a stage further. Mrs Maynard had arranged for Martha’s arrest for ‘communist activities’. Martha was in front of judge and jury. Mrs Quest, chief witness, was testifying that Martha had always been difficult: ‘She’s as stubborn as a mule, your honour!’ But with careful handling, she would become a sensible person. Martha was let off, by the judge, on condition that she lived in her mother’s house, in her mother’s custody.
Mrs Quest drifted towards sleep. The scent of roses came in through the window, and she smiled. This time they remained in her hand – three crimson roses. The brutal woman, her beautiful mother, remained invisible in her dangerous heaven. The painful girl, Martha, was locked in her bedroom, under orders from Court and Judge. Mrs Quest had become her own comforter, her own solace. Having given birth to herself, she cradled Mrs Quest, a small, frightened girl, who lay in tender arms against a breast covered in the comfort of bright salmon-pink, home-knitted wool.
Martha bicycled through streets which tried to create Victory night. Knots of people walked about with feather blowers and balloons. In the hotels they were dancing. Sometimes a car went past with its hooter screeching. But it was no good. Hard enough for most of these people to feel the war; how then were they to feel the peace? Besides, the Colony’s men were still up North, or in Burma, or in England, or in prison camps.
In the office was evidence of a just-concluded political meeting. The ash-trays were filled with mess, and the air was foul. Whose meeting? Probably one of the African groups. There were two or three now. But there was a new African leader, so it was rumoured, called Mr Zlentli, and he had nothing to do with the white sympathizers, so he would not have been here.
Martha sat down, doing nothing about tidying the place, simply submitting to the fug and the mess. She was waiting to argue with Athen. It was Athen’s contention that she, Martha, should make Maisie leave her job as barmaid, and take what he called ‘a job for a nice girl’. It was Martha’s contention that if Athen did not want to take on Maisie himself, then he should not interfere. Last time he had raised the question, Martha said: ‘Athen, if you’re so concerned, then why don’t you save Maisie by marrying her?’
To which he had replied by nodding and saying: ‘Yes, I had thought of it. She is a good girl and she needs a man to look after her. But I think it would not be a good thing for Maisie to be made a widow again.’
When the door opened, it was Thomas Stern who came in. He wore the uniform of the medical corps, and carried in his hand a bundle of civilian clothes. He smiled at Martha and said: ‘You’ll excuse me, but I’m going to change.’ He proceeded to do so, while she turned her back and looked out over the dark town. The National Anthem seemed to be oozing from a dozen different sources, played at different rates and in different manners.
‘Tonight is more than I can take,’ said Thomas Stern. ‘Otherwise I would offer to escort you around the celebrations.’ He arrived beside her, on the bench.
He now wore a thick brown sweater. His broad face was scarcely less brown. He smiled at Martha from six inches’ distance and she smiled back. There was a total lack of haste, of urgency, in this exchange. They regarded each other steadily, then he took her hand and held it against his cheek.
‘What a pity I have to go back to the farm tonight.’
‘And that I have to see Athen!’
‘Are you having an affair with Athen?’
‘Good heavens, no!’
He now held her hand pressed down with his on his warm knee.
‘Why shouldn’t you?’
‘Have you seen Athen’s new suit?’
‘Of course.’
‘Has he talked to you about it?’
‘Martha, I tell you, there are some things spoiled people like you don’t understand.’
‘Rubbish. But I believe that Athen has sentenced himself to death because he is ashamed of liking nice wine and looking beautiful in his new suit.’
Thomas regarded her steadily. Her hand, between his hot knee and his large hand, seemed to be melting into his flesh. He was waiting for her to stop being childish.
‘Just imagine all the people today who are secretly sorry the war is over because now they have to start living.’
‘Yes, but Athen is not one of them. Why are you so angry with him? I agree with him. There’s nothing wrong with being a barmaid, but it’s not for Maisie. It’s not good for her. I went into the bar to see her. Athen is right.’
‘What she needs is a husband, so what’s the use of …’ Martha’s voice grew steadily more angry. ‘She’s in love with Athen.’
‘When it comes to women and love, then I have nothing to say. Yes, she needs a husband. If I wasn’t married, I’d offer myself, if it would make you happy.’
‘Well, I’m not going to tell Maisie that she should be a shop assistant or something. Why don’t you, or Athen, tell her, instead of getting at me about it?’
Thomas regarded her very seriously for some moments. Then he smiled. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Martha.’
‘What?’
‘You’re thinking: This Thomas, what a damned peasant.’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘Well, I am. I’m a peasant. I’m a Polish peasant. I’m a Jewish Polish peasant.’
‘Well then?’
‘You’re looking even thinner and sicker than before. What’s wrong with you?’
‘Everything, everything, everything. And besides, it has only just recently occurred to me that I’m a neurotic, and I don’t like the idea.’
‘Well, of course, all women in the West are neurotic.’
Now Martha started to laugh. She loved Thomas because with him, there was nothing for it but to laugh.
‘And you find me attractive because I’m all thin and tense and difficult?’
‘Of course. When I was a boy in our village, all us clever young men, we used to go to town to see American films and look at the women. We knew what was wrong with them. We understood Western women absolutely. We used to make jokes.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Yes. Just like Africans now. They look at white women in exactly the same way we used to look at women in the films or in the magazines. So of course I’m delighted to see you all tensed up and decadent, comrade Martha. It’s the fulfilment of my favourite fantasy.’
Martha laughed again. All the same, part of her was saying: But this isn’t what I want. For one thing, I’ll be going to England soon.
‘And your wife?’ she said.
Thomas’s hands dropped like stone. ‘Yes, Martha,’ he said, looking dejected. ‘You’re right to ask but there’s nothing I can say. I don’t know.’ He got up, went across the room, fiddled with the door of the pamphlet cupboard, then turned back to face her.
‘The thing is, Martha, I have affairs all the time, you know that.’
She waited, merely looking at him curiously. She thought: I didn’t want to have an affair with Solly because he’s so childish. He’s an idiot. Now I’m afraid to have an affair with Thomas because he’s not childish.
But in any case, what’s the point, if I’m leaving.
Thomas came back, sat close to her, and put his two large hands on her shoulders, where they spread slow, calm areas of warmth.
‘This evening I said to myself: I’ll find Martha, then I’ll take her for a drive or something. Then I thought: No, that’s not for us, we don’t need that kind of thing. But in any case, I have to go back to the farm because my little girl isn’t well.’
They sat looking at each other, with a soft curiosity.
‘Listen, Martha. I’ve got a week’s leave, so I’m going to the farm for a week. Then I’ll be back in town.’
He spoke as if everything was settled. They had never even kissed, but it was as if they had already loved each other. He did not kiss her now. He got up and said: ‘Well, Martha …’
She smiled, she supposed, but could not say anything. She had understood that to be with Thomas would be more serious than anything yet in her life, yet she did not know how she knew this, and she was not sure it was what she wanted. A few weeks ago she had thought: Thomas, or Joss – a man. Now here was Thomas and he was sucking her in to an intensity of feeling simply by standing there and claiming her.
From the door he smiled and nodded: ‘I’ll ring you when I get back into town.’
He went out. Athen did not come, so Martha cycled home through the streets full of drunks where the National Anthem still sounded from every other building. Anton and Millicent, both dressed up, were just about to go out to one of the hotels. They all greeted each other with smiling amiability: they had agreed they were to be ‘civilized’ and even, if possible, friends. Martha was invited to join them at McGrath’s: as Millicent said, a war doesn’t end every day. But on the whole she thought not: they went out, and she went to bed.
Chapter Four (#ulink_763cb3e5-6145-506f-bb49-7d6cf23ef6e1)
‘Public opinion changes.’
A couple of decades, a decade, in these rapid days even a year, demonstrate how suddenly the season of a belief can turn. Into its own opposite, the rule seems to be – or at least, often enough to make it safe to ignore the exceptions.
