Martha Quest

  She did not sleep. Soon she rose and filled the bath, and lay in it while the water cooled, listening to the iron roof creeping and tensing with the heat. Through the open fanlight she could hear Mrs Gunn’s sighs and complaints, where she sat on the veranda. The thunder muttered and growled like an animal. Soon she fell to inspecting her own body according to that other standard, ‘long, lean, narrow,’ but it was difficult to respect that standard when she saw herself naked, and soon, with frank adoration, she fell into a rite of self-love. Her limbs lay smooth and light in the water, her thighs seemed to her like two plump and gleaming fishes, she scattered water over her white belly, and watched the drops fall like rough jewels and slide to a perfect quivering silver globule in her navel. Meantime, her body lay unmoved and distant, congealing into perfection under the eyes of this lover; while Martha thought of Mrs Gunn’s groaning sweaty body, and was fiercely grateful for her own; she thought of the ugly scar across her mother’s stomach, and swore protectively to her own that it would never, never be so marred; she thought of Mrs Van Rensberg’s legs, and with tender reassurance passed her hands over her own smooth brown legs, murmuring that it was all right, all right, nothing would harm them.

  A few heavy drops fell like stones on the iron roof; there was a swish and a swirl of rain and wind and dust; the thunder cracked overhead and the rain plunged like a steel barrage. Her spirits rose like a kite, till she was singing inside the din at the top of her voice; and faintly, through the thunder, the crashing rain, the gurgling bath water, Mrs Gunn could be heard chanting relief like a prayer of thankfulness to the rain god. Martha left the bathroom, her depression flooded away with the bath water, and found that around the table on the back veranda Mrs Gunn and her daughter were drinking tea, their faces bright and soft and smiling. Martha stood by the table in her red dressing-gown and drank tea with them, and they talked and watched the rain drive in gleaming spears beyond the faded green mosquito gauze, and the irritable tension of the early afternoon was so far away there was no need to apologize for it. Mrs Gunn put her arm around Martha’s hips and said she was her girl, she was her daughter, now that her own had left her; and the young woman at the other end of the table laughed, and they all laughed, and the rain fell endlessly, everything rushed and gurgled and swam, and they laughed again when the thunder came crashing dangerously over the roof like armies, so loud that they could hear no sound of voices, though they were shrieking at each other like grinning maniacs. With a pantomime of laughing regret, Martha indicated she must go and dress; and was sorry to leave them. She could not understand how she had so disliked Mrs Gunn earlier; and Mrs Gunn’s daughter, who had a new baby, and was therefore usually an object of repulsion to Martha, seemed delightfully simple and womanly as she sat there beside her mother, nursing the dribbling, mouthing infant.

  She wanted to go to that dance more than she had ever wanted anything; her whole being was poised and dedicated; and when Donovan came in, shrieking with laughter over his damp evening clothes, he found Martha bright-eyed and chattering and amenable, ready to be sewn into her dress.

  But it took such a long time. Donovan wiped off her makeup, and made her shut her eyes while he painted her face again. He arranged and rearranged her hair. She was compliant, but impatient. At the end, he led her triumphantly to the long mirror, and said, ‘Now, then, Matty…’

  Martha looked, and, in spite of her pleasure, was uneasy. It was not herself, she felt. The simplicity of that white dress had been given a touch of the bizarre—no, that was not it; as she regarded herself, she was instinctively forming herself to match that young woman in the mirror, who was cold, unapproachable, and challenging. But from the cool, remote face peered a pair of troubled and uneasy eyes.

  As she saw that glance—her own, it seemed—Donovan came forward quickly, and said, ‘Now, listen, Matty, you really must see that you must change yourself for a dress like this. Don’t you see?’ He bent towards her, his hand hovering, ready to seize on what was wrong. ‘Look,’ he said finally, ‘your eyes too. Lift your head.’ As she remained motionless, his palm raised her head. ‘With those cheekbones,’ he said, ‘look, your eyes should be like this.’ With something like horror, Martha saw him slide his own eyes slantingly sideways, into a languid, distant gleam. ‘You see?’ he demanded triumphantly. He did it again. For a flash of a second, he was terrifyingly herself; and she stared at him in fascinated disgust. This time her laugh was nervous, and he dropped his hand, and looked at her and flushed.

  ‘You really are—extraordinary,’ she said at last, slowly; and the dislike she felt was strong in her voice. The silence was a long one; it was a moment of decision between them. Martha, looking helplessly at him, saw, but remotely, that if she was confused and unhappy, so was he; he had a sullen and little-boy look about him that should have claimed her pity, but merely irritated her; and across this barrier flowed a faint guilt that she could not, for the life of her, say something comforting; it was terrifying, in a different way, to see that assured young man so distressed and lost.

  At last he sat himself down, flinging one leg moodily over the other, and he remarked, ‘I should have been a dress designer. I would have been a very good one, Matty dear.’ That light, ‘Matty dear,’ fed back his self-belief; he was already recovering. ‘But if one is raised in the colonies, then what can one do but go into statistics and wait for one’s chief to retire!’ Here he laughed with genuine bitterness; and Martha understood that if anything bound them it was their mutual conviction that if they had been born into other circumstances, if only…

  ‘Well,’ she said awkwardly, ‘don’t let’s quarrel. You’d better give me up as a bad job, you know. I don’t think I’m cut out for a mannequin!’ She was laughing at him, but she longed for—what? Some gesture that might express that thing they shared? She felt he should have put his arms around her in a light and brotherly way, and thus the whole incident would have been put behind them.

  Instead, he laughed again, angrily, and said, ‘Oh, well, to hell with everything, Matty. Let’s go to the party, and astonish them all.’

  At the door, she saw that the rain had stopped. A dusky sunset was reflected in the lake which lay between them and the gate.

  ‘I suppose you expect me to carry you, like a he-man on the films,’ he said. ‘But I shan’t. Now, don’t let the mud get on your skirts.’

  He shrieked in gay alarm as she began balancing her way cautiously from the step to a rocking stone, and from there to a small point of brick that stood blackly amid the rosy waters. And here she stood, precariously, laughing at herself, and at him, for he was agitatedly dancing on the steps, saying, ‘Matty, Matty, do be careful.’ There was something about that shrill and helpless exhortation which turned her mood into defiance. She looked calmly about her: there were six feet of muddy water between her and the gate. ‘To hell with it,’ she remarked; and fell all at once into her element. She lifted her crisp white skirts in a bunch around her waist, and composedly walked in her gold shoes, the water lapping cool around her ankles, to the sidewalk, saying, ‘Oooh, it’s lovely, it’s lovely, Don,’ like a child paddling.

  In a series of leaps, he came splashing across to join her. ‘Matty,’ he said, in distressed and incredulous astonishment, ‘Matty, you’re mad. I suppose you haven’t even paid for those shoes yet.’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said recklessly, letting her skirts fall, and laughing at him, despising him, most sincerely, from the bottom of her heart.

  ‘But your feet are wet,’ he complained.

  ‘My feet are so wet,’ she mimicked him cruelly. ‘Oh, dear, I might get a cold.’ She stopped, already feeling herself uncertain. After all, the shoes were expensive; after all it was rather childish. ‘Oh, don’t be such an old woman,’ she said crossly, and got into the car. ‘They won’t notice my feet,’ she said coaxingly at last. ‘They’ll be looking at your beautiful dress.’ She lifted her feet and examined them. The gold leather had dulled, and was crinkling;
there was a faint brown tidemark around her ankles. She could not help looking at them with satisfaction; the elegant, cool white dress seemed quite remote from her, a mere surface to her body, which continued strongly upwards from those reckless strong ankles.

  She shook her head to loosen her hair, and laughed heartlessly when he said, ‘You look like a nice open-air girl, if that’s what you want. But for heaven’s sake, Matty, do move carefully, I’ve just tacked you into that dress so as not to spoil the line, and if you bounce about it’ll fall off. I suppose you’d like that.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said lightly; but she imagined herself thus suddenly exposed, and laughed on a thrill of excitement. ‘Of course,’ she said again, and saw his face darken with irritated annoyance.

  They arrived at the Club. The veranda was illuminated by strings of coloured lights, and a large electric sign said: ‘Three weeks to Christmas—Let it Rip, Boys and Girls.’

  The large room was cleared for the dance, and was empty. On the main veranda young men and women were drinking, some in evening dress, some not yet changed from their sports clothes. Martha knew most of them by sight, and was greeted by intimate sisterly smiles from the girls, the usual howls and whistles from the men. Her resentment at this had been not so much dulled as pushed away into that part of herself she acknowledged to be the true one. As for Donovan, she saw he was being received with queries: ‘Well, stranger, you back?’—a statement, in fact, which meant that in spite of what he said he was no stranger to the Club. She expected they would sit by themselves, if she expected anything at all—for this way of hers, submitting herself to a person or a place, with a demure, childish compliance, as if she were under a spell, meant that she did not consciously expect or demand; she might dream about things being different, but that, after all, commits one to nothing.

  Far from leading Martha away from the others, Donovan held a court for a few minutes, while he debated aloud, gaily, with a frank rudeness, whether Binkie’s table or another’s would suit him best. At last he took Martha’s hand and seated her at a table where Binkie and his lieutenants and their girls were drinking and eating peanuts, saying, ‘And now here you are, Matty, all among the huskies.’

  He then sat himself between two girls, and ignored Martha completely, which at first annoyed her, and then relieved her, for now she was free to behave as she pleased.

  It was about seven in the evening. Beyond the dark spines of the blue gums, the sunset faded in a hushed and tender glow; the playing fields were shimmering green under the water; the clubhouse itself was surrounded by a churned mass of red mud. It was the cloistral hour, the hour of silence, as if the very fact that in the trees, and in the veld that was no more than half a mile’s walk distant, the little creatures and birds were sinking into sleep aroused, in these people, though briefly, the memory of that other cycle submerged in their blood. The lights were not switched on; they sat in a flushed half-dark, and unconsciously their voices lowered, though they were teasing each other about the mud on their clothes and because some were reluctant to cross the mud to the cars so that they might go and dress. Martha showed her shoes and made a funny story out of wading through the water; halfway through it she became nervous, because she realized it put Donovan in a bad light, but continued, avoiding his eyes; and the young man next to her said that if he had been there he’d have carried Matty in his arms through the flood. He was a big, blond-fleshed youth, his fair hair crinkled tight over his head, with a reddish glint in it; and in a square, burnt, determined face were blue and direct eyes. Martha thought it remarkable that this young man, whom she knew to be manager of a big insurance company, should be content to appear like a buffooning schoolboy. She began talking to him rather awkwardly, about a book she had just read. He answered reluctantly. When she persisted, he gave a public sigh, which drew all the expectant eyes towards him, and said mournfully, ‘Baby, baby, you’ll be the death of me.’ Then he indicated Martha with an outstretched thumb, and said, ‘She’s intelligent. This baby’s got brains.’ And he laughed and rolled up his eyes and shook his head with a kind of subsiding shudder into himself. Martha flushed, and, as soon as the conversation had got under way around them, began talking ‘amusingly’, as she was expected to do. The uneasy blue eyes fixed on her in relief; his face cleared, and she understood that all was well. Soon he got up, saying that he must go and change; but Matty must remember he would die for her, she killed him, and he insisted on the first dance.

  Soon the veranda was half empty, and there remained a few couples in evening dress. Martha was feeling a little sick, for she had hardly eaten all day; but Donovan was talking to the two girls, who were leaning towards him and laughing with a flattering attention; and so she gave up all idea of dinner, pulled a plate of potato chips towards her, and began eating them with the ruminant concentration which means a person is eating not for pleasure but from necessity.

  She heard laughter, glanced up, and saw that the people around her were amused. ‘I’m starved,’ she said firmly, and went on eating.

  Binkie got up from his chair, came to hers, and crouched beside her, his arm lightly about her waist. ‘Beautiful,’ he said, ‘we can’t have this, we’ll give you some dinner.’

  She looked hestitatingly towards Donovan. She had never said to herself that he was mean; and it was with another shock that she saw that here he was known to be, for the glances people directed towards him were spitefully amused. She was hurt for his sake, and said gaily that no, she didn’t want dinner, Donovan was quite right, she was slimming and—

  Donovan waved a careless hand towards her, and said, ‘Matty, dear, do go, if you want to.’ Hurt again, this time on her own account, she got to her feet, and thanked Binkie, and said she would like to have dinner with him. And so it was that, at the very beginning of the evening, she was separated from Donovan; it was rather as if he had pushed her away, for she left, smiling an apologetic farewell, and he did not so much as look at her.

  Martha walked beside Binkie with the same gentle, submissive gesture that had until five minutes before been Donovan’s due; the mere fact that he had asked her to dine with him was as if her emotions had been gathered up, twisted together, by him. And he certainly put his arm around her as they went down the veranda, crooning, ‘My baby’s having dinner with me’ but the circular look he directed around the veranda over her head was keen and critical and he was summoning his subjects by a nod or a wave of his free hand; for having dinner with Binkie was a communal affair.

  A dozen wolves, therefore, with their girls, crowded into cars, and drove down to McGrath’s dining room, which they entered royally, welcomed by hosts of waiters. For Binkie’s ‘gang’ might go berserk, had been known to wreck the dining room, but they paid liberally, tipped fabulously. On the other hand, McGrath’s was the senior hotel in the colony, and here came important visitors from England and the Continent; McGrath’s must maintain its reputation, and, therefore, the waiters’ welcome was apprehensive.

  They were given a centre table in the big room, which was chocolate brown and gilt, like the lounge. It was already decorated for Christmas. The headwaiter and the wine waiter, both white men, greeted each wolf by name, were offered Christian names in return, and were slapped across the shoulders. They took orders in voices that were pointedly lowered; while the deferential eyes implored, Please, Mr Maynard do please behave yourself, and persuade your gang to do likewise! The headwaiter, Johnny Constoupolis, even pointed out to Binkie that Mr Player, who was the head of the big company which in fact controlled the colony, was sitting with his wife in a corner under the palms by the band. But at this information Binkie leaped to his feet, and roared out a greeting to Mr Player, so loudly that everyone in the room looked round.

  Johnny was distressed, not merely because of the danger that other respectable clients might be annoyed, but because his feeling for the important Mr Player was prayerful; the dark, suave, tired little Greek served the great man with the exquisite tact t
hat had gained him this position; and from Mr Player’s table he crossed continually to Binkie’s, whose father, he knew, was also an important man, an educated man; and in his heart he shuddered with amazement and awed fear, as at madness. These young people were all mad. They spent money like dirt; Binkie might throw away twenty pounds on one of these dinners; he owed money everywhere, even to Mr Player himself; they all behaved like licensed lunatics, as if there was no future, as if they had no plans to become important men themselves, with wives and children. And their idea of themselves seemed to be accepted by everyone else. Johnny knew that if this was going to be one of the evenings when the wolves decided life owed them a holocaust, and began singing and tearing down the decorations, and dancing on the tables, then the other people, including Mr Player, would regard them with the pained tolerance due to a pack of momentarily overexcited children. Strange and even terrible to the little Greek, who had left his beloved country with his family twenty years before, to rescue them all from poverty so profound that it haunted him even now. Never would Johnny the Greek lose his fear of poverty; never would he lose the knowledge that from one minute to the next a man might lose his precious foothold among the fed and honoured living, and slip down among the almost nameless ghosts; Johnny remembered hunger, that common denominator; his mother had died of tuberculosis; his sister had died of starvation in the Great War, a weightless bundle of rags. At Johnny’s shoulder was always the shadow, this fear; and now he stood behind Binkie Maynard’s chair, in McGrath’s dining room, very slightly bowed forward, and took their orders for the meal, while he kept his dark and sorrowful eyes carefully veiled, lest what he felt might show.

  He knew that he must spend time taking orders, while the wolves yearned over the girls, insisting that their slightest wish should be fulfilled; but once this ritual was over, it did not matter what food was actually brought, for they would not notice. They did not care about food, or even about wine. If they ordered wine, they might spend five minutes debating about a title on the wine list, and forget what they had ordered when the bottle arrived. They did not understand, they understood nothing, they were barbarians; but they must be given reverence, for one day (though the gods alone knew how this metamorphosis was to be effected) they would be the grave and responsible fathers of the city, and these girls their wives.