Martha Quest

  ‘The woman’s page!’ said Martha indignantly.

  It was only afterwards that it occurred to her that he might perhaps have inquired, ‘Why do you come asking for a job when you despise the paper so thoroughly?’ But there was only one paper; if she was going to be a journalist, then she would have to make use of it.

  She went back home, and dreamed of herself as a journalist, as a window dresser, applied for a job as chauffeur to a rich old lady, and was thankful when she was turned down, on the grounds of her youth. She decided she would become an inspired shorthand writer, like Mr Skye; and answered an advertisement to help a mother across the sea to England with her three young children. This woman, a rather supercilious middle-class female whom Martha instinctively loathed, asked Martha if she liked children. Martha said frankly that no, she did not, but she wanted to go to England. The woman laughed, and there was a moment of indecision, which was ended when the lady noticed her husband’s eyes resting on Martha with rather too much appreciation. Martha was naïve enough to think she had lost this opportunity because of her clumsy answer, and once again made resolutions, in privacy, to control her tongue, to behave sensibly.

  But she was still working at Robinson’s; she was, in fact, neither a journalist, a chauffeur, a shorthand writer, nor on her way to England.

  For a few days then she dreamed of herself as a writer. She would be a freelance. She wrote poems, lying on the floor of her room; an article on the monopoly press; and a short story about a young girl who…This story was called ‘Revolt’. She dispatched these to the Zambesia News, to the New Statesman and to the Observer, convinced that all three would be accepted.

  She remembered that as a child she had had a talent for drawing. She made a sketch there and then of the view of the park from her door; it really wasn’t too bad at all. But the difficulty with being a painter is that one must have equipment. Ah, the many thousands of hopeful young writers there are, for no better reason than that a pencil and writing pad take up less room than an easel, paints, and drawing boards, besides being so much less expensive.

  Martha, then, would be a writer: it came to her like a revelation. If others, then why not herself? And how was she to know that one may live in London, or New York, a village in Yorkshire, or a dorp in the backveld, one may imagine oneself as altogether unique and extraordinary (so powerfully does that pulse towards adventure beat), but one behaves inevitably, inexorably, exactly like everyone else. How was she to suspect that at least a hundred young people in the same small town stuck in the middle of Africa, kept desks full of poems, articles and stories, were convinced that if only…then they could be writers, they could escape into glorious freedom and untrammelled individuality—and for no better reason than that they could not face the prospect of a lifetime behind a desk in Robinson, Daniel and Cohen.

  Almost immediately, the article on the monopoly press was returned from the Zambesia News, and the rejection slip dismayed Martha so much that she let the idea of being a freelance writer slip away.

  And all the time that she dreamed with a fierce hunger of escape, and doing something vital and important, the other secret pulse was beating. There she stood, behind the curtain listening to the slow throbbing of the dance music, and wanted only to dance, dance all night; not at the Sports Club, but with some group of young people who were faceless, almost bodiless, imagined as a delicate embodiment of the dance music itself.

  About ten days after she had quarrelled with Donovan, she was telephoned at the office by Perry, to ask if she were free the following evening, for there was a visiting team of cricketers from England; would she like to be one of the girls?

  Martha refused. She was now finally sickened by her own inconsistency—so she said, as she proudly put down the receiver, suppressing a surge of longing and regret that she was wilfully refusing an evening of delicious pleasure. Nonsense, she told herself, it would not be pleasure, she would be bored. The thought that remained in her mind was that she was now casually rung up to fill in—to be ‘one of the girls’.

  That evening, however, there was a letter from her mother. She picked it up gingerly. She was accustomed to reading the first paragraph of a letter from home and then flinging it in a crumpled mess of paper, into the wastepaper basket.

  My Darling Girl,

  I sent Sixpence in to the post this afternoon, expecting a letter from you, and there wasn’t. It really is unfair of you. I’ve not heard for a week, and you know how worried Daddy gets over you, he can’t sleep at night worrying about you, and besides, we cannot afford to send boys in like this, and I’ve only got three now, I sacked Daniel for stealing, I missed my pearl brooch and I know he took it, but of course he denied it, though I sent for the police, and they gave him a good hiding, and they searched his hut, I expect he’s hidden it in the thatch, so I have a lot of work to do, my new cook can’t even boil an egg, they really are an ignorant lot, and so it’s not fair of you to make me send in the boy for nothing.

  I had a letter from Mrs Anderson, she told me she hasn’t seen you, I wrote to her asking about you, since you never say anything, and if you’ve quarrelled with Donovan, I do think you might have told me, because it puts me in a false position, with his mother. She seemed to think you might marry, she was pleased, though of course you are too young, but he’s such a nice boy, one can see that, and of course there’s money there too…

  Martha threw away the letter; there were twelve pages of it, crossed and re-crossed like the letters one reads of in Victorian novels—the letters of leisure. But as the crumpled ball flew across the room and landed rather short of the wastepaper basket, a postscript written in darker ink caught her eye, and in unwilling curiosity she went to pick it up.

  I found my brooch this morning, it fell into a flour sack in the storeroom. But he’s a thief in any case, I know he took my silver spoon, though of course he said he didn’t. They’re all thieves, every one, and the trouble with you Fabians is that you’re all theory and no practice. One has to know how to handle kaffirs. The Zambesia News said last week the Fabians in England were complaining in Parliament again about how we treat our niggers!!! I’d like to get a few of them here, and then they’d see how filthy and dirty and disgusting they all are, and thieves and liars every one, and can’t even cook, and then they’d change their tune!!!!

  The effect of this letter on Martha was hardly reasonable. After half an hour of violent anger, a feeling of being caged and imprisoned, she went to the telephone, rang the Sports Club, asked for Perry, and told him she would be delighted to help entertain the visiting cricketers tomorrow.

  THREE

  In the event, the visiting sportsmen seemed disinclined to make much of the girls provided for them.

  The dance was held at McGrath’s. The big dining room now showed its oblong of bare boards, for the tables were pushed against the wall, their stained brown surfaces showing faded rings from wet glasses. The musicians were on the platform in their bower of ferns and potted shrubs. The tables in this room were mostly occupied by the young married crowd, while the cricketers, with the Sports Club men and the girls, were in the lounge, around a long improvised table that stretched almost from wall to wall of the enormous room. But the cricketers drifted off to the bar and remained there, and the girls, who were after all not forced by any pressure from statistics into being good-natured wallflowers, soon drifted off in the arms of local men, who had come prepared to remain womanless for the evening. Martha danced when she was asked, and quite late in the evening returned to the table to find that half a dozen or so of the cricketers were now seated at the table, for the girls had become absorbed elsewhere. They did not seem to mind, they were drinking and talking and looking at their watches, though one of them rose and asked Martha to dance. She tried to talk, but found it difficult, and, being the prig that she was, was disgusted that people whose names were commonplaces in the news, idols of England, talked of by the Sports Club crowd with reverence, were like schoolboys i
n conversation. She was surprised, in short, that athletes were not intellectual, for somewhere within her was still a notion that famous people must necessarily be brilliant in every way. Besides, only that morning the Zambesia News had devoted three columns to the opinions of the captain of the team: the international situation, he said, was uncertain, but if sportsmen of all countries could play together regularly, unhindered by their governments, peace would be assured; all day businessmen, Rotary members, and civil servants had been quoting this judgement with approval and saying, yes, he must be a fine chap.

  Martha danced with this same man later, and was piqued that he was as bored as she—or rather, his attitude was so different from the Colonial men that she at first thought he was bored. She was accustomed to wait for attentive appreciation, while he, it seemed, wanted her to flatter him. When the dance was over, she sat down, shaking her head at an invitation to dance again, and reminded herself that ‘millions of women’ would envy her, but was unable to find pleasure in the thought. For McGrath’s was ugly, the band was bad, and though she was drinking steadily as usual, her brain was critically alert. She wished herself back in bed. At the same time, she observed herself chatting brightly; her face stretched in a smile, just like the few other girls who remained; and when a pert ‘amusing’ remark ended unexpectedly in a yawn, she shook herself irritably into attention, and rearranged the smile.

  Maisie, who happened to be there, remarked in that indolent voice, ‘Ohh, our Matty’s been having too many late nights.’ This was offered to general entertainment, and received with laughter, while Maisie was teased about her own popularity. Through this she smiled sleepily, and then she said in a low voice to Martha, ‘For crying out loud, these English boys give me the pip, they’re so stuck-up, you’d think they were doing us a favour.’ She then got up to dance with one of them, offering herself to him with a meekly submissive movement of her body as she slid into his arms, while her eyes arched upwards in attentive silence. Over his shoulder she winked at Martha, which lit her face into spiteful but resigned mockery. She was danced away, the very image of a willing and admiring maiden.

  It was at this point that Martha found herself addressed by the routine ‘Hullo, beautiful, why haven’t we met before?’ She got up to dance, the responsive smile already arranged in her eyes. She saw that this was a young man she had seen occasionally at the Club. His name was Douglas Knowell, which inevitably became Know all. He was a cheerful, grinning young man, of middle height, rather round than lean, with a round fleshy face, light-blue eyes, a nose that would have been well shaped had it not been flattened by an accident of sport, and palish hair plastered with water into a dull sodden mat. He bounced rather than danced Martha around the room, and from time to time let out a yell of triumph, while Martha automatically soothed and admonished him into civilized behaviour.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked at last flirtatiously, and he said, ‘Ah, that’s asking, but I know who you are.’

  ‘Then you have the advantage,’ she said, wanting him to tell her his name, for she was perhaps a little piqued that he had not made any attempt to get to know her before.

  ‘Adam,’ he said, twinkling his blue eyes at her in a consciously merry look; and Martha glanced at him, startled, for this was more literary than one might expect from a wolf, and she knew that he was one of the senior members of the pack: he had helped Binkie start the Club, so she had been told.

  ‘What a pity I can’t be Eve, since you know my name,’ she said, and instinctively dropped, without knowing it, the maternal note from her voice.

  ‘Oh, but you can be Eve, you are,’ he shouted, drawing her closer, in his reckless bouncing dance around the room.

  When the band stopped playing, Martha was startled that it was so late; she had enjoyed herself. Douglas told her it was a matter of luck he had come at all, he had not been going out much recently. ‘So I’m in luck, because you are rather—rather a fine,’ he said, with a beaming pressure from his eyes.

  ‘I’m what?’ she asked, startled.

  ‘You’re really a fine,’ he said again, using the adjective as a noun, which was a trick of his, as was his way of isolating each word as if considering it, so that his slangy speech had a curious effect of pedantry.

  She asked him why he had not been going out, why he was so seldom at the Club, and he replied, quite in the code of the pack, that he was studying for an exam, and besides, he was on the tack.

  Habit almost made Martha approve, ‘That’s the ticket, kid, that’s the style,’ but instead she asked bluntly, ‘Why, do you drink too much?’

  He replied seriously that now he was too old for rugger, he was not as fit as he had been, he must keep his weight down, and besides, the doctor said he was getting an ulcer. Now, most of the men at the Club had stomach ulcers, and they all spoke of it in this same way, a protective way; they said, ‘No, that’s not my line, I can’t eat that,’ or ‘My ulcer won’t allow me that,’ like a mother crooning over a baby. They addressed that part of themselves which was the ulcer as if promising to protect and look after it. They sounded proud of it.

  She said flippantly, ‘Having ulcers is positively an occupational disease of a wolf.’

  ‘What’s that?’ he demanded quickly, ready to be offended; then he laughed and repeated, smiling with his eyes, ‘Yes, you-you are really-really rather a fine.’ And now Martha noted that stammer which was no stammer, not a nervous thing, but a trick of speech.

  But she liked him, she was warmed by him; she went home looking forward to having tea with him the next day. ‘Having tea,’ too, was exciting. One did not ‘have tea’ with a wolf, it was a meal that had no social place in their lives. Douglas was already appearing to her as something new and rare, he was so different from the Sports Club men!

  And so they ate strawberries and cream at McGrath’s, and she insisted on paying for her own, for he said casually he had sold his car, he could not afford it. If one could not afford a car, that was a confession of poverty indeed; for a reliable secondhand car could be bought at twenty-five pounds, and the most junior clerk owned one as a matter of course. Martha pitied him for this cheerful confession, and wondered at what must be a romantic reason for it, because he was fairly high in his department; at his level in the Service, one was not poor. But all this was confused in her mind, she was always vague about money; all she felt was a pitying admiration; and after tea, when he asked her to walk with him to the office, as he intended to work late, she went willingly.

  When they reached the big block of Government offices, it was natural she should go in with him. His office was a large and airy room overlooking the tree-lined avenue. She wandered around it, trying to be interested in calculating machines and other appurtenances of finance; for she always felt an instinctive revulsion when confronted with what she still referred to as arithmetic. In fact, it chilled her so much that she was wondering if she might politely take her leave, when she caught sight of a magazine lying on the desk, and darted forward to pick it up, exclaiming, ‘You didn’t tell me you took the New Statesman!’ She might have been saying, ‘Why, we are members of the same brotherhood!’

  ‘Yes, I do take it, it’s a fine-fine paper,’ he said.

  She looked at him with wide and delighted eyes; she even unconsciously went across to him and took his hand. ‘Well,’ she said inarticulately, ‘how nice, well then…’ Suddenly she saw herself behaving thus, and flushed, and dropped his hand, moving away. ‘All the same,’ she said resentfully, ‘it’s nice to meet someone who—In the Club, everyone is practically mentally deficient!’

  He laughed with pleasure at this sincere flattery, and they began to talk, testing each other’s opinions. Or rather, Martha flung down her opinions like gages, and waited for him to pick them up; and when she said aggressively that she thought the natives were shockingly underpaid, and waited for him to say, ‘It’s no good spoiling kaffirs, they don’t understand kindness,’ and he said instead: ‘Oh, yes, it would be
desirable if there were a change of policy,’ she gave a large, grateful sigh, and relapsed into the silence of one who has at last come home. But it was an expectant silence. It seemed to her that now their friendship was on an altogether new plane; and when he said, ‘I ought to be doing some more work,’ she exclaimed, as if he were insulting their friendship, ‘Oh, no, you must come home with me to my room, I’ve just got a new parcel of books from England, I wired for them.’

  And so he went with her, not so much surprised as bewildered. For Martha had all at once turned into something quite different. She would have been indignant had anyone told her that weeks of the Sports Club atmosphere had altered her manner. Martha Quest, at McGrath’s or at a dance at the Club, was either a bored, sullen, critical young woman with a forced smile or a chattering ninny with a high and affected laugh. Now her acquired manner dropped from her, and she could be natural. She was herself.

  ‘Herself’, in her room, making tea, and then sitting on the floor with the new books spread out all around her, was completely childlike. Her hair fell out of the careful loose waves and was pushed hastily back, her eyes were bright and fixed on his with a delighted wonder; she talked quickly, as if the shock of finding a fellow spirit was so exquisite that she could not hurry fast enough to the next confirmation of it. She was altogether confiding and trustful. Not to tell him everything would have been a betrayal of their relationship; she felt as if she had known him forever; the world was suddenly beautiful, and the future full of promise.