Martha Quest

  But Martha had resolved not to smoke in the office, and kept it up for half the morning; and she worked as well as she could for thinking of the evening ahead of her. At half past four she went dutifully to the Polytechnic, and stayed there until Donovan fetched her at seven.

  THREE

  At the end of a month she found she had passed one examination, and moved to another room in the Polytechnic where she took shorthand from a Mr Skye, a small, dark, restless man who encouraged his pupils by taking it for granted that they would all, and very soon, be doing two hundred words a minute, as he could. This was friendly of him, but not the best method for someone like Martha, who already tended to think too much of an end before she had mastered a beginning. His restlessness fed itself by speeding up his girls; for after reading a long passage (which he must have read a thousand times before) he would say impatiently, ‘Now, that’s fine. You did that in ten minutes. You did get it, didn’t you? Now let’s speed it up.’ There were good-natured groans, but everyone picked up her dulled pencil and flew after his reading. At the end he came round, glancing rapidly for form’s sake over their shoulders, saying, ‘Fine, fine, you did get it.’ And by this means when Mrs Buss asked her how she was getting along, Martha was able to say that her speed was one hundred and twenty.

  ‘You’re a fast worker,’ said Mrs Buss unbelievingly, and Martha laughed and said that she was. Mrs Buss spoke to Mr Cohen, and Mr Cohen invited Martha into his office for dictation, which she managed better than he had expected but much worse than she had. So she was now promoted, not to the status of the skilled, but somewhere in between; half her time she spent helping Maisie with the filing and copying, and for the rest did easy letters for Mr Cohen, and even, when Mrs Buss was pressed, some of the more simple documents. She felt an altogether unreasonable astonishment that the work she had put in at the Polytechnic had, in fact, lifted her one degree up the ladder towards efficiency; as if the progress of painfully learning a thing could have nothing to do with her for herself. But it was considered to be only a beginning; she felt it to be a beginning—and yet…

  The truth was, she was slackening off. She was really tired; and she had every reason to be. Since she had come to town, she had been carried on the same impulse which had first made her take flight from the farm. She had never paused to think where she was going, she was too busy. She woke early for the delight of finding herself alone and no pressure on her but the necessity to be at the office more or less on time. She forced herself to give as much attention to the dry legal stuff as she could, pretending that it did not bore her intolerably. She ate sandwiches at lunchtime, and read alone in the office. After work in the afternoon, she went, most days, to the Polytechnic, was picked up by Donovan and went on with him to a sundowner party, where they ate as many peanuts and snacks as they could, since as Donovan pleasantly but frankly pointed out, they got them for nothing. She was seldom in bed before one or two in the morning. She even woke hungry.

  This business of food: how little one should take it for granted! For it might be considered strange that until thirteen or fourteen Martha’s appetite was so hearty it was positively embarrassing; and now that hungry and affectionate child had vanished so completely that she could not eat without feeling guilty and promising restitution to herself by giving up the next meal. On the other hand, she would suddenly turn aside into a shop, without even knowing she had intended to, and buy half a dozen slabs of chocolate, which she would eat, secretly, until she was sickened and very alarmed, saying she must be careful, for she would certainly lose her figure if she went on like this. And when her mother sent in parcels of butter, fresh farm cheese, eggs, exactly as she had when Martha was at school, Martha gave them to Mrs Gunn, saying airily that it was a nuisance to have the smell in her room. But for all this, she was putting on weight; for if she did not eat she drank, as everyone did. From the first sundowner, gulped down hastily to give her vitality after the hours of work, she drank steadily through the evening until she arrived back in her room in the small hours, slightly tipsy, if not drunk. She was only doing as everyone else did; and if someone pointed out to her, ‘You are living on sandwiches, sundowner snacks and alcohol, you are sleeping three hours a night,’ he would probably have got for his pains a dark and uncomprehending stare; for that was not how life felt to Martha; it was a rush of delicious activity, which, however, was just beginning to flag.

  It was six weeks or so after she had come to town that Joss walked into the office, in the same dark businessman’s suit he had worn in the red dust of the station and behind the counter of the kaffir store; and as he passed through, asked her to come and have tea with him. He was leaving that night for Cape Town, where the university term was just starting. He dismissed Martha’s rather embarrassed objections, saying that of course old Uncle Jasper wouldn’t mind. He went into his uncle’s office.

  Maisie said, without envy, ‘You’ve got all sorts of irons in the fire, haven’t you?’ She was smiling at Martha, while she filed her nails.

  But Martha said indignantly, ‘I’ve known Joss for years.’

  Maisie nodded. ‘I’ve known marriages come out of boy-and-girl romances before.’ She held up her white hand and looked at it critically, flicked a bit of cuticle dust from a shining red nail, and added, ‘Of course, romancing with a Jew-boy is one thing, and marrying’s another, I can see that.’ She glanced up, and her frank blue eyes grew startled: what had she said to earn that deadly and contemptuous stare from Martha? ‘It’s not my affair, of course,’ she said hastily, looking hurt.

  Joss returned, saying, ‘It’s OK.’ Martha picked up her bag and followed him out. They went to McGrath’s lounge, which in the morning was filled with shopping women. The band played, the palms quivered as the great doors unceasingly swung; and Martha ordered beer, from habit, when asked what she would have. Joss had been going to have tea, but ordered beer, and then looked straight at her and demanded, ‘What’s the matter with you? Don’t tell me my uncle is working you too hard? You look like something the cat’s brought in.’

  She did not have to mind this, for he looked concerned and affectionate. She said, laughing, ‘Your uncle’s an angel. He’s the sweetest thing that ever lived.’

  He drank his beer and regarded her, half with admiration and half critically. Martha knew this criticism was of the new skilled vivacity which was part of her equipment, as girl about town; she had not learned it, it had offered itself to her, together with a new vocabulary and the ability to drink all night without showing it unpleasantly.

  ‘You look to me as if you could do with some sleep,’ he remarked.

  ‘I could,’ she laughed. ‘I’m exhausted. You’ve no idea how exhausting life is.’

  She chatted on and he listened, nodding from time to time; and when she paused, thinking it was his turn to be self-revealing, he replied to the real sense of what she had said: ‘So now you’ve got all the boys queuing up, eh?’

  She coloured, because now she could see she had been boasting, and he went on:

  ‘It’s all very well, Martha Quest, but—’ He stopped, looking annoyed, and added, ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’

  She wanted it to be his affair, and said ‘Go on.’

  ‘Who’s the boy friend?’ he asked bluntly.

  ‘I haven’t got one,’ she said quickly; and it was true, for, sitting with Joss, the sober, the responsible, the intelligent and manly Joss, how could she own to Donovan?

  ‘Good,’ he said simply, without impertinence or self-interest. ‘You’d better be careful, Martha. After all, if you wanted to get married, you could have stayed on the farm.’

  ‘But I’m not getting married,’ she laughed; and he said quietly, ‘That’s the ticket,’ and looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got to pack. My mother’s busy settling in the new house. They’ve bought a plot in a new suburb called Wellington or something like that, but in the meantime they’ve got something temporary. Our store has got “Sock’s Kaffir Emporium
” written over it now,’ he ended, looking at her so that she might share his regret and amusement, which she did.

  ‘I wish you weren’t going away,’ she said impulsively, holding out her hand; and he took it and squeezed it before replacing it gently in her lap, as if rebuking her for being careless with it. ‘When are you coming back? Are you going to work with your uncles when you’ve finished university? Will you be away long?’ she chattered, in an effort to keep him.

  ‘My uncles want me, but I want to go overseas,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ she breathed out, and with such envy that he glanced quickly at her and said gently, ‘Never mind, your turn will come.’ She found her eyes swimming; it seemed to her, just then, that Joss was the only person she had ever known who knew exactly how she felt, with whom she might behave as she liked—and get away with it, a critical voice added inside her.

  He came with her to the door of the office. ‘And how does my Uncle Jasper strike you?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s very nice,’ she said, but he pointed out impatiently, ‘Surely you can see he’s very ill?’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  He gave her a rather irritated look. ‘My cousin’s business isn’t helping much—though of course Abe was right to go.’

  She looked at him helplessly.

  ‘Surely you know about my cousin?’

  ‘No one ever mentioned him,’ she excused herself.

  ‘My Cousin Abraham went off to Spain last year, and no one’s heard a word from him for months.’

  ‘The Spanish Civil War?’ she asked doubtfully.

  Again that look. ‘What’s the matter with you? A bit out of touch, aren’t you?’ She nodded guiltily. ‘Well, my aunt treats my Uncle Jasper as if it was all his fault. And it is, too—her son would never have the guts or intelligence to know one side of the Spanish business from the other…’ Here Martha looked down, blushing. ‘But Uncle Jasper may be a slow old man, but he’s all right. And Abe’s all right too,’ he concluded, and sounded envious and sad. ‘I should have gone. If it wasn’t for my parents, I’d have gone, I should have gone in any case.’ Here he stopped, looking guilty. ‘Even that romantic fool, my brother, had that much sense.’

  ‘You mean Solly’s in Spain?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘No, he got as far as England and then he got mixed up with some girl, and now he’s on his way back. But at least he started in the right direction.’

  ‘Give Solly my—regards,’ she said reverently.

  ‘I’ll give him your love,’ he said promptly; and she was delighted to hear that he sounded grudging. ‘He always had a soft spot for you. God knows why,’ he added, smiling; and this shy smile completely transformed what was a rather solemn and stiff face. ‘Good luck,’ he said, and walked away from her. He called back, ‘I’ve given your name to some friends of mine.’ And he ran quickly down the iron staircase.

  Back at her desk, she repeated to herself that Joss was going away; to her, he was off overseas, Cape Town being merely a resting place in his voyaging; she thought of him as a citizen of Europe, with the freedom of the big cities, and melancholy and envy fused into a bitter, frustrated sadness. And yet, while she was seeing herself, attractive and intelligent Matty, caged behind the desk of a legal office, she heard Maisie ask, ‘Pleasant dreams?’ and understood—even as she indignantly asked, ‘What do you mean?’—that she had been smiling. Maisie only gave her a good-natured laugh and yawned.

  Under the spell of Joss, Martha completely repudiated Donovan; and this revulsion lasted through that day and the next, when there was the following letter for her:

  Dear Martha,

  I enclose a list of various people you should look up. There’s a discussion group, Left Book Club, they only talk, but it’s better than nothing. My Cousin Jasmine might be worth your while, she’s in a receptive state due to being heartbroken over my Cousin Abraham. Who else? I’m afraid stony soil, but even in the provinces (!) there is work to do, and you might perhaps lead that ass Robinson to a meeting or two, he’s going into Parliament, so it would be a good idea if he had at least one or two ideas in his head. As for my Uncle Max, he’s a born fascist, so don’t waste your time.

  Sincerely,

  Joss

  Martha read this letter with difficulty—as an English person reads Scots dialect, for instance. There were a number of assumptions in it that it seemed Joss took for granted were hers as well; and this was flattering, but she felt ignorant. He made no secret of the fact that he considered her lazy, but at the same time it appeared she possessed a quality which would enable her to influence others. What quality, then, was it? It was as if he were handing on a torch. Reading the letter again, she was struck by a grudging and acrimonious undertone, and when she came to the word ‘fascist’ it sounded exaggerated, so that she suddenly giggled, and Mrs Buss looked inquiringly over the desks.

  She glanced down the list of addresses, seven of them, and felt a curious disinclination, as mental images of seven (at least) new people to be approached and known rose in her mind. Martha Quest, who thought of herself as so adventurous, so free and unbounded—the fact was, even the idea of picking up a telephone and making herself known to a new person troubled her: she made excuses, she could not do it.

  But the difficulty was solved when the telephone rang and a small, precise, slow voice introduced itself as Jasmine’s, with a suggestion that Martha should go to such an address on the following afternoon. It was not a meeting, but Martha might find it interesting. There was a lazy, even slighting, tone to this voice, which struck Martha: Jasmine, like Joss, seemed more struck by what this new group of people lacked than by what they possessed; and this contempt extended itself, or so it seemed, to Joss himself, for when the name was introduced the voice poised on an upward note, as if it expected Martha to join in a good-natured laugh. Martha did not laugh, feeling indignant on Joss’s behalf; but she said she would be there tomorrow.

  She told Donovan, when he telephoned to book her for the usual sundowner party, that she was engaged; and even was irrational enough to feel hurt when he remarked huffily that in that case he would take someone else.

  On the following afternoon she spent a long time getting dressed; and then, ten minutes before she was due to be fetched, flung off the clothes that had been suggested, even created, by Donovan—white linen slacks and a checked shirt—in favour of a simple dress. In her mind, the man who was coming to fetch her was identical with Joss; they stood for the same thing. What social current, flowing through such devious channels, reached this room, so that Martha felt that the casual gamin-like appearance Donovan liked was wrong—even that the linen dress as arranged by Donovan was too sophisticated? She arranged a coloured scarf loosely around her neck, clasped an embroidered belt at her waist, and let her hair fall in untidy curls. There was a touch of the peasant in her now, and she went to meet Mr Pyecroft with confidence. At once she was disappointed, for he struck her as elderly. As they drove uptown, she chattered in her ‘attractive’ manner, although she felt obscurely, without being able to alter it, that there was a discrepancy between her appearance and the manner that had been brought into being by Donovan.

  It was a beautiful afternoon; there had been a storm, and the sky was full and clear, with shining masses of washed clouds rolling lightly in bright sunlight. The trees in the park glistened a soft, clean green; the puddles on the pavements reflected foliage and sky; and as the car turned into the grounds of the school where Mr Pyecroft was headmaster, these puddles became ruffled brown silk, and above them, all down the drive, grew massed shrubs, glistening with wet. On a deep-green lawn were several deck-chairs. From them two men rose as Martha approached; and again she thought, disappointedly, But they are old.

  They were, in fact, between thirty and forty; they wore flannels, open shirts, sandals; they were of the same type: all long, thin, bony men, with intellectual faces, spectacles, thinning hair. It would be untrue to say that Martha made any such
observations or even compared them with Joss. When she met people, she felt a dazzled and confused attraction of sympathy, or dislike. Now she was in sympathy; she responded to the half-grudging deference older men offer a young girl. She answered their questions brightly, and was conscious of her appearance, because they were.

  Mr Pyecroft said that his wife would not be long, she was giving the children their tea; the other two men also apologized for the absence of their wives, and Martha accepted these social remarks not at their social value, but with the statement which she imagined sounded light and flippant, but actually sounded hostile: ‘Children are a nuisance, aren’t they?’

  Soon three women came from a veranda of the big school building, shepherding half a dozen children and two native nannies to another lawn, about a hundred yards away, which was sheltered by a big glossy cedrelatoona tree. As soon as the women appeared, the voices of the men acquired a touch of heartiness that had not been there before, grew louder; and they turned their shoulders on these domestic arrangements with an uneasy determination which at once struck Martha, for she felt it herself. She was watching the scolding and fussy women as if her eyes were glued to them in fierce horror; she said to herself, Never, never, I’d rather die; and she reclined in her deck-chair with a deliberate coolness, a deliberately untroubled look.

  When Mrs Pyecroft, Mrs Perr, and Mrs Forester came to join the men, they apologized, laughing, together and separately, for being a nuisance, and explained how the children had been troublesome, and went into details (and in a way that made it seem as if it were an accusation against the men themselves) of how Jane was off her food, while Tommy was in a trying psychological phase. The men listened, politely, from their chairs; but they were not allowed to remain in them, for it appeared that the whole group must be rearranged, an operation which took a great deal of time. Martha was more and more hostile and critical—the women seemed to her unpleasant and absurd, with their fuss and demands; she was as much on the defensive as if their mere presence were a menace to herself.