Martha Quest

  And when she threaded her way between the crowded tables, smiling automatically, like royalty, at the people who greeted her, shaking her head with playful regret when they asked her to join them, she could see Donovan energetically defending the empty seat beside him, and knew that he was very angry: he looked exactly like his father, morose and bad-tempered.

  ‘Matty dear,’ he said shrilly, as she struggled to her seat, ‘what’s all this about your mamma and my mamma? My mamma has telephoned me for the third time, and she is really furious.’

  ‘I’m not responsible for my mother,’ Martha said flatly, and added, ‘For God’s sake get me a drink.’

  He ordered two enormous glass jugs of the strong local beer, and went on: ‘What are we to do, Matty? I told my mamma that I hadn’t seen you for as good as a week, you’ve practically thrown me over, but she wouldn’t listen.’

  This was an invitation to confess what she had been doing, but Martha said impatiently, ‘Yes, but what’s happened?’

  ‘Why haven’t you been seeing me? A little bird told me that you were all mixed up with the local Reds, and that won’t do you any good, Matty dear. Did you know the police go to their meetings? They’ll put you in prison one of these days.’

  Martha laughed crossly, and said, ‘Oh don’t be such a baby.’

  The beer was slammed down in front of them by one of the hurrying waiters, and Martha seized hers and drank half of it.

  ‘You’re getting quite a little toper, Matty dear,’ said Donovan unpleasantly.

  ‘Well, one must do something,’ said Martha defensively. She unconsciously glanced at her fingers: on both hands, they were stained to the middle joints with nicotine. As she decided she would cut down smoking, she reached for her bag and lit a new one from the stub of the last, and thought, I’ll stop smoking when this business with my mother is settled.

  ‘They’re a bunch of Jews, too,’ said Donovan gracefully. ‘After knowing me for so long, you should have learned discrimination.’

  ‘But they aren’t all Jews—’ Martha began, and stopped, furious with herself. ‘I thought you had asked me here to discuss our respected parents?’ she inquired at last, and with that rueful smile she knew put him at a disadvantage.

  ‘You’re a naughty girl,’ said Donovan, more gently. ‘My mamma says she wants to see us. It’s a crisis, Matty, a crisis.’

  A group of lads in black-and-white-striped jerseys and white shorts, which exposed what seemed to be several yards of long, thick, red-brown thighs, entered the lounge and emitted a series of shrieks and yodels, began slapping the seated men nearest to them across the shoulders, and bending over the girls with yearning, sentimental faces.

  ‘Now here are the Sports Club crowd,’ said Donovan sulkily. ‘If you let them sit here, it’s the end, really it is.’

  Seeing Martha, the lads let out a yell expressing agonized frustration, and came pushing towards her. ‘Matty, Matty,’ they moaned inarticulately, ‘beautiful Matty.’ They were watching a passing waiter, and, even as they paid their fee to beauty, reached out for mugs of beer and turned their backs as the waiter protested, ‘Baas, baas, someone else paid for this beer.’

  ‘Beautiful,’ continued the ringleader, ignoring the waiter, ‘why are you so toffee-nosed, why—’

  ‘This table is engaged,’ said Donovan, rising to the bait as he had been intended to.

  ‘Keep your hair on,’ said the sportsman, and he lifted his glass mug and tilted his head back, exposing a long, lumpy throat, and began to drink.

  ‘Down, down, down,’ chanted the people at the tables nearby. ‘Here’s to Donny, drink it down…’ The Adam’s apple moved steadily up and down, the golden liquid sank in its foam, and everyone began to clap. The young man set down his mug, which had held nearly a quart of beer, and looked about proudly, so that the applause grew louder. Then he shook his hands together in self-congratulation over his head, and, his eyes happening to fall on Martha, turned up his eyes and staggered away, clutching his brow in a parody of despair. Everyone laughed, while Donovan sat moodily silent.

  ‘If you can tear yourself away from these fascinating athletes, Matty darling, let’s go and face my mamma.’

  ‘I still don’t know what we have to face,’ said Martha, rising.

  They went out; while Martha acknowledged the homage from various young men, who were putting on the despairing faces required of them by convention, with a careless smile.

  ‘It must be nice to be such a success,’ said Donovan spitefully, as the swing doors revolved behind them, for Martha had a self-satisfied look on her face, although she was reminding herself that it was a convention and meant nothing.

  They drove in silence to the Andersons’ house, where a message had been left by Mrs Quest: ‘Sorry have no time to see you again, must go and get Daddy from hospital, such a pleasant morning with Mrs Anderson, will let you know the result of the test.’

  With this piece of paper in her hand, Martha followed Donovan into the drawing room, and found Mrs Anderson poised amid clouds of mulberry chiffon on her purple satin chair. She was smiling, but looked annoyed.

  ‘Now, I want to speak to you young people frankly,’ she began, and Donovan muttered, ‘Oh, hell,’ and flung himself down on a settee and took up Vogue. ‘No, Donny, it’s for you too, and you must listen. Now both of you must realize that you are very young and…’ Here she paused, gave them a doubtful glance and took a cigarette from a tortoiseshell cigarette case. She lit it slowly, and it appeared that the impulse of anger that had carried her thus far was already failing her.

  Martha sat on the end of the settee, at Donovan’s feet, and tried to smile. ‘I don’t know what my mother has been saying,’ she said, ‘but I think you are jumping to conclusions.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ interrupted Mrs Anderson impatiently, though she sounded relieved. ‘I expect you think I’m an interfering old lady—’ here she laughed and looked flirtatiously at Donovan, who was looking at her coldly, ‘but I feel that your mother has perhaps—I mean—’ She paused and sighed. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, and she put her hands to her forehead in a helpless way, ‘I’m so tired and cross and…’ Impulsively she rose, came to Martha and kissed her, but Martha accepted the embrace stiffly. ‘Well, I daresay I got the wrong idea,’ she murmured, and looked in appeal at both of them.

  ‘I think you have, Mamma dear,’ said Donovan icily, throwing aside Vogue and sitting up. ‘Matty and I are ever so platonic, you’ve no idea, and it’s very upsetting to have you two dirty-minded old girls behaving like this.’

  ‘Donny!’ gasped Mrs Anderson, and she began to cry, pressing a piece of ivory-coloured silk to her eyes in such a way that it would damage neither the silk nor her make-up. Donovan, with elaborate courtesy, handed her a handkerchief, and now she began to cry in earnest, in great shuddering sobs. ‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ she wept. ‘You must forgive me. I don’t know why, but I was so upset, and Mrs Quest was—I mean—’

  ‘Well, don’t cry, Mamma,’ said Donovan gracefully. ‘But I really do think you should tell us what this is all about. You can’t summon Matty and me for an audience, and then get us all upset, and suddenly say that you’re sorry and leave it like that.’

  He stood poised on one hip, a brown suede shoe extended easily in front of him, looking sternly down at his mother, who shook herself, laughed as she saw the black streaks on the handkerchief, dabbed her eyes again and said clumsily, ‘Mrs Quest was talking as if you were getting married. I told her that you were both too young, and that we hadn’t the money for Donny to marry—’

  Here Martha flushed with annoyance, and exclaimed, ‘It really is the limit!’

  ‘Yes, Matty, I’m sorry—but…Oh dear, it is so difficult. You see, we are really very poor, and…’

  Matty suddenly laughed, thinking of the oblique semi-poverty of her home, and of this expensive house, and of the secret luxurious life of Mrs Anderson: also, like a black screen against which this minor anomaly was
exposed stood that knowledge she had brought with her from her earliest years: the fact that the poverty of the Quest family represented unimaginable and unreachable wealth to the black serfs who supported them.

  ‘It’s not a joke, Matty,’ said Mrs Anderson, who was annoyed, although she smiled in the rueful, charming way that Martha herself used when pleading false claims. ‘After all Mr Anderson’s retired, and we’re not rich. I have some money but not much, and living is so expensive these days, isn’t it?’ So too the millionaire, indicating his several houses, his cars, his yacht: ‘But it all costs a lot to keep up,’ he says indignantly.

  ‘Well, Mamma,’ said Donovan, giving judgement, ‘I think you’re a naughty old girl, and I’m cross with you.’

  Mrs Anderson brightened and reached up to kiss him. He generously extended his cheek. ‘I’m afraid I have a dinner engagement,’ she said in her normal gracious tone, standing up. ‘You two can look after yourselves. Don’t forget Mr Anderson’s tray—tell the boy scrambled egg, he’s sick of boiled eggs, he says.’ She smiled humorously. ‘Good night, dears, and forgive a silly old woman.’ And she swept out, touching her hair delicately with one hand and her smudged and blackened eyes with the other; she was frowning now, at the thought of the time it would take to do her face, for she was very late.

  Martha and Donovan, left alone, did not immediately look at each other. They were irritable. They understood that this scene had raised certain problems; and Martha, for her part, was waiting for him to put these problems into words—for a man should surely take the initiative?

  And so he did, but not as she expected. ‘Well, Matty,’ he remarked at last, plucking at the beautiful rose and copper gladioli whose arrangement must have cost Mrs Anderson so much trouble, ‘well, it seems that we’re supposed to make love,’ and he looked at her gloomily, even resentfully.

  She gave a snort of astonished and offended laughter. She stopped, then laughed again. She looked at Donovan, who was regarding her with puzzled annoyance, and went off into a peal of laughter that grew hysterical and broke into a fit of coughing. And then silence. She sighed; she was very tired and depressed.

  ‘It’s all very well,’ said Donovan resentfully, ‘it’s all very well.’ Again that critical, almost angry look; and now there was anger in the look she directed at him; for a few moments their eyes challenged each other, and then dropped away; and if Mrs Quest or Mrs Anderson had looked in then, she might have been surprised, and even disappointed, to find this couple separated by several feet of carpet and apparently on the verge of a bad quarrel.

  ‘I suppose we had better eat,’ said Donovan at last.

  With the relieved knowledge that the moment of crisis was postponed, they went to the dining room, where Donovan regained his good humour ordering his father’s scrambled eggs. And after that they went as usual to the pictures; and again as usual, on to McGrath’s, where Donovan seemed to find no objection to sharing a large table with about a dozen others.

  ‘Our Donny-boy’s in good form tonight,’ said Maisie, who happened to be near Martha, under escort of one of the sportsmen.

  And Donovan was—gay, malicious and amusing. He seemed determined to eclipse the sportsmen; he made fun of them, told spiteful stories at their expense, and then took the sting from it by telling stories against himself; and at midnight withdrew triumphantly with Martha, saying, ‘And now, Matty, you must get your beauty sleep, or you’ll lose your looks and then none of us will love you any more.’

  The sportsmen gallantly insisted that they would love Matty, and all their girls, forever; but without their usual assurance, and this was not only because of Donovan’s triumph but because of the discordant note he always introduced.

  On the pavement he said lightly, with the astonishing frankness which was possible only because he could not hear the discordancy, ‘You must admit, Matty, that I’m much more entertaining than those oafs, who have all their brains in their thighs?’ And when she assented he continued, ‘I really think you’d better stick to me, you know. The last girl I took out deserted me for them, and really you should have seen her, she was so bored I could have cried for her.’

  ‘And what happened to her?’ asked Martha curiously,

  ‘She got married—a businessman from Nairobi,’ he said, as if this served her right, a sentiment which Martha could not help sharing; though she began to dissent from it when he continued, ‘All you girls get married, you have no strength of mind at all. I really do feel that all this sex is overrated, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Martha humorously, ‘I haven’t tried yet.’

  But he would not accept the humour. He pressed her arm urgently, and looked down into her face and insisted, ‘Well, don’t you think so? All you girls want to be made love to, and really…’ His face faded in disgust.

  Although Martha had every intention of agreeing for the sake of good nature, she began to laugh; and he waited until this rather strained laughter was finished, and muttered bad-temperedly, ‘Women are oversexed, that’s what I think.’

  She began to chatter, in her social manner, about a book on the sexual customs of the Bantu, which she had just read; and thought it ill-tempered of him not to accept what she imagined was a pleasant way out of personal comment: she was saying that among primitive races girls were judged to be sexually mature long before they were in civilized communities.

  But he remained silent until he dropped her at her door, and slid his customary good-night kiss on her cheek, saying, ‘Well, Matty, I’ve decided to take you to a dance at the Sports Club next Saturday, and risk all; I can see you are tugging at the leash.’

  ‘Poor Donovan,’ said Martha, and she laughed again, she could not help it. Suddenly what she at once described to herself as a mischievous impulse (since she was immediately overwhelmed by embarrassment at herself) made her say, ‘Kiss me properly, Don.’ She held her face invitingly under his, and half closed her eyes, thankful it was dark, for she could feel a hot flush creeping up her cheeks. She waited, watching his furious eyes through her lashes, until he clasped her and shook her hard.

  ‘Now, stop it, Matty,’ he said firmly. ‘I will not be teased. You must behave yourself, or I won’t take you to a dance.’

  On this note they parted. In her room, Martha first was angry, and then since it was her instinct to adapt herself, saw herself through Donovan’s eyes and became humiliated. Behind this confusion of feeling was another: she murmured to herself that one felt so safe with Donovan; she was relieved she was going to the Sports Club with him; and for a girl whose first article of faith was that one was entitled to lose one’s virginity as romantically and as soon as possible, this was surely an odd thing to think? The fact was, the thought of making love with Donovan was rapidly becoming impossible, even indecent: she had several times called him Jonathan, and never noticed the slip of the tongue.

  PART THREE

  In the lives of most women everything, even the greatest sorrow, resolves itself into a question of ‘trying on’.

  —PROUST

  ONE

  The Sports Club had come into existence about five years before, and in a way characteristic of the country. For when it was first suggested, at a ladies’ bridge party, Mrs Maynard said, ‘What a pity there isn’t a sports club in this town,’ and the others assented, without feeling it necessary to point out that there were several; they belonged to the employees of the railways, the post office, various businesses. From half-past four until sundown, every open space in the city was crowded with young people engaged in violent activity.

  Mrs Maynard was large, strong-minded, black-browed and energetic, the wife of a magistrate; and she was a lady. That is, in England, where she married Mr Maynard, she had belonged to the governing class by birth. Mrs Lowe-Island was a lady only because she had married Mr Lowe-Island, whose family had connections with the English aristocracy. She was a vulgar, spiteful woman who did not pride herself on saying just what she thought, because i
t had never entered her head there were occasions when one should not. She at once said, ‘I quite agree with you, dear. We need a place with some class. There should be somewhere for civil servants and people like us.’ Mrs Maynard, who, because of her upbringing, understood first of all the arts of suggestion, was naturally pained at having her thought so crudely expressed; but she did not snub Mrs Lowe-Island, because she was unsnubbable, and because in her secret heart she considered her hardly worth the effort. A third lady, Mrs Talbot, was so dissimilar to the other two that her continued friendship with them was a tribute to their mutual passion for bridge. She was a charming, elegant lady, whose chief interest was her delicate and artistic daughter; and she now murmured, with a kind of laughing tolerance which was an appeal to her companions, that it would be nice for the children to have a place where they could play games; and it is a remarkable fact that until they were mentioned the claims of youth had not occurred to the other women. Mrs Knowell, the fourth, at once exclaimed warmly and generously, ‘Oh yes, we must do something for the young people, my Douggie loves rugger, though I keep telling him he’ll break his neck.’

  There was a silence, for it was apparent that here was a conflict in intention. But Mrs Knowell was aflame with excitement, and soon began talking again, and in a few minutes the Sports Club was built and furnished, and in the throes of an inaugural ball. They laughed at her, teased her; particularly Mrs Maynard and Mrs Lowe-Island, for they had imagined the Sports Club as a large shadowy veranda, with native servants standing like willing statues around the walls, plenty of sundowners, and that laughter which is the result of personal comment, while behind this imaginary veranda was a bridge room, filled with elderly ladies.

  That evening Mrs Maynard talked to her husband, who expressed agreement by saying it was a paying proposition; Mrs Lowe-Island talked until Mr Lowe-Island said he was no snob, but there were times when…Mrs Talbot told her daughter tenderly that it was bad to spend so much time on her water colours, a game of tennis occasionally would help avert the migraine and fainting fits to which, like a Victorian maiden, she was addicted. And Mrs Knowell telephoned her son at the office, which he had forbidden her to do, and irritated him until he said, ‘Yes, but for goodness’ sake, Mater, tell me another time.’