‘Of course not,’ said Martha vaguely. That went without saying.
‘What do you mean, of course not?’ he said crossly. ‘You may think you’re better men than your parents, but we didn’t mean to have you, the doctor said we were neither of us in a fit state, but you happened along nine months to the day. But then we didn’t anticipate the wedding ceremony. We were both having severe nervous breakdowns, due to the Great Unmentionable’—he snarled this phrase over at her, but without any real emotion, so that she smiled patiently—‘so we were taking all the necessary precautions, or rather your mother was, she’s a nurse, so it’s in her line, that sort of thing. So I thought I’d better point out, children have a habit of resulting from getting married.’
Since her earliest years Martha had been offered the information that she was unwanted in the first place, and that she had a double nervous breakdown for godparents, and so the nerve it reached now was quite dulled; and she merely repeated casually that she had no intention of having children for years and years.
Mr Quest remarked with relief that that was all right, then, and—his duty as father done—began talking about what they would do when they left the farm. If Martha had been listening, she might have noted that these plans were much more sensible and concrete than they ever had been; but she was not listening.
Soon the sun grew too warm, and they moved their chairs under the sheltering golden shower, and now faced outwards to the Dumfries Hills. They were low and clear today; the rocks and trees showed across the seven miles of distance as if the heights of this hill and the height of that range shared a dimension where the ordinary rule of space did not apply. Martha felt she could lean forward over the lower slopes of ground between (where the Afrikaans community lived) and stroke the bluish contours of those brooding sunlit hills.
The servant brought morning tea, with the message that the Little Missus and the Big Baas must take it by themselves, for the Big Missus and the New Baas had gone off to the vegetable garden.
‘He’s being awfully tactful, isn’t he?’ remarked Mr Quest half sarcastically. ‘He’s being so well behaved. Well, I daresay that’s the way to get on in this world.’ This was the nearest he had got to comment or criticism; and Martha invited him to continue with a glance and a receptive silence. He said: ‘Sex is important in marriage. I do hope that is all right. Your mother, of course…However…’ He paused, with a guilty glance at her, and Martha was filled with triumph, though she could not have said why. ‘All your generation’ (and the usual irritation was applied to the surface of his words) ‘take it in your stride, or so I understand.’ The look he gave her was an unwilling inquiry. How much she would have liked, then, to talk to him! She had even leaned forward, opened her mouth to begin, though she did not know what it was she was going to say, when he said hastily, ‘So that’s all right, then, isn’t it?’ He handed her his cup for some more tea. There was a silence, but it lagged on unbroken. Martha was now restrained by that reiterated ‘young people’, ‘your generation’ she owed it to her contemporaries to treat the whole subject with nonchalance. And soon he began talking about a girl he had been in love with before he met Mrs Quest. ‘Lord, I was in love,’ he said longingly, trying to sound amused. ‘Lord, Lord, but I had a good time—but that was before I married, before the war, so it wouldn’t interest you.’ He was silent, smiling thoughtfully over at the Dumfries Hills, his whitening eyebrows lifted in perverse and delighted comment, while he occasionally glanced towards Martha, and then withdrew his eyes as if those glances were the results of thoughts he would rather not own.
As for Martha, she was now unhappy and restless, and wished that Douglas would return from the vegetable garden.
Immediately after lunch, it was time for them to go back to town. During the drive, Martha was telling herself that the last hurdle was past, she had ‘obtained her parents’ permission’. She used the phrase half humorously, half with spite, for she was feeling, contradictorily enough for a girl who refused formalities with such vehemence, that surely there had been something wrong with that weekend at home? Surely (or so she dimly felt) she should have had to fight, face real opposition, only to emerge a victor at the end, crowned by the tearful blessings of her father and mother? Surely there should have been some real moment of crisis, a point of choice? Alas for the romantic disposition, always waiting for these ‘moments’, these exquisite turning points where everything is clear, the past lying finished, completed, in one’s shadow, the future lying clear and sunlit before! For, looking back on the weekend, Martha felt nothing but that she had been cheated; her mother’s attitude and her father’s seemed equally wrong and perverse.
So, as usual, she gave an impatient shrug, and dismissed the whole thing; soon that door would be closing on her past; all the mistakes and miseries of her time in town would be forever behind her. She had merely to live through five days to the wedding. She asked Douglas what her mother had arranged with him, intending that the undertone of sarcasm should provoke him, but he did not hear it. He replied enthusiastically that everything would be fine, everything would be satisfactory. He continued to talk of various details, and Martha understood, and with amazement, that she would not be getting married under the aegis of the Club; she had had a vague idea that surely they would all be there, wolves and virgins. For Douglas was remarking casually, as if he were not a senior member himself, that they ‘must keep it dark, we don’t want that crazy bunch spoiling it.’ He added with mixed pride and shame that if Binkie knew the exact time and place he’d turn it into a proper-proper scrum. Mr Maynard, it seemed, had promised to keep it all secret, even from his son.
As they entered the town, rather late in the evening—for they had stopped to visit a tobacco-farmer friend of Douglas on the way—Martha happened to glance down towards the Club, and saw a crowd of people massed under the illuminated trees. ‘Let’s drive past,’ she suggested, and they did so. ‘What on earth is going on?’ There were three packing cases stood on end on the pavement, and on these stood three men. ‘An open-air meeting?’ she suggested; and Douglas said critically, ‘Gang of cranks.’ She asked coldly why one shouldn’t have an open-air meeting, but he was frowning, and looked disturbed.
He stopped the car at a distance, and they leaned out; the moon was pouring out light, and it was easy to see. The crowd was entirely white, save for half a dozen native stragglers who were on the outskirts of the crowd, ready to move off if challenged. Policemen stood waiting, white policemen, and their expression of scandalized interest was shared by most of the listening people. The speaker on the tub was a short, strongly built man with rough copper-coloured hair; fragments of Irish speech came floating over the heads of the crowd; ‘humanity’, ‘drift to war’, ‘fascism’, Martha heard and looked at Douglas to share her excitement. But his expression was that of an official faced with something new. It was not usual to have open-air meetings, there was something lawless about them, and therefore he disapproved. It was as simple as that. Martha felt her heart sink, looking at the frowning, rather pompous face. Then she turned to look again. It was rather beautiful. The trees were shining with an intense green, like trees seen through water, and they shook in a faint wind. Overhead, moon-illuminated clouds drifted quietly. The light shone on the rough copper hair of the speaker, and his eyes glittered steadily. Martha could hardly hear what he said. He was speaking about the necessity for making a pact with Russia to defeat Hitler; the faces of the audience had the passive, watchful look of public opinion faced with something it allows but does not approve. Then Martha, looking into the shadows behind the three men on the boxes, saw Joss and Solly, and Jasmine Cohen; they were with the people Martha had met at the tea party at the school; there was also a rather slight, tall young woman with fair hair wound around her head in plaits, like a school-teacher’s; and Martha found herself vividly jealous of this girl. She longed to leave the car, to go over to the Cohens, and stay with them. The impulse to do so surged up in her, and d
ied as a tired shrug at the thought of undoing all the arrangements that had been made. She turned away quickly, afraid they might have seen her. She was afraid of how they might criticize Douglas; she could see him through their eyes only too clearly.
She saw Douglas looking at her with a cold antagonism. ‘Finished?’ he inquired, as if he had been listening only to please her. He started the car.
‘How conventional you are,’ she remarked acidly, as they went down the street.
‘Trying to draw attention to themselves,’ he said, for some reason red with anger, his eyes protruding. She had never seen him like this.
She said, with quiet dislike, that the essence of a public meeting was to draw attention to oneself.
He was feeding the petrol into the car so fast that it choked, spluttered, stopped. They rolled down the street in silence, while he tried to start the car. When it started, he turned to her, and demanded like a child in a temper, ‘If you’ve changed your mind, Matty, now’s the time to say so,’ and she inquired, ‘About what?’ though she knew quite well. His face grew more red, and seemed to puff out; his eyes were inflamed. She was now wondering sincerely why he was so extremely angry. She asked, reasonably, if he thought there was any necessity to lose his temper over a meeting he did not agree with. He was silent, breathing heavily; she was more and more astonished; at the same time, she was revolted; she thought he looked vulgar and ugly, puffed out and red with temper, his neck swelling over his collar. She said to herself that now she could free herself, she need not marry him; at the same time, she knew quite well she would marry him; she could not help it; she was being dragged towards it, whether she liked it or not. She also heard a voice remarking calmly within her that she would not stay married to him; but this voice had no time to make itself heard before he turned to her, and asked again, this time quietly and pleasantly, for his anger had subsided, whether she wanted to change her mind. She replied that she did not.
They went straight to the Mathews’s flat, where they were welcomed with food and, above all, drink.
Next day Martha and Douglas moved into their new flat, so that Binkie and his lieutenants could not find them; and lived there like people under siege, while the Mathews brought them supplies. All four spent the time in a state of wild excitement, like a permanent picnic. Also, there were curtains to hang and furniture to arrange, which Stella took it for granted was her prerogative. Martha was rather surprised at the way Douglas recklessly bought whatever took his fancy or hers; the delivery vans were rolling up several times a day with carpets and cupboards and bales of stuff, and when she said nervously, ‘Look, darling, if you’re broke, there’s no need to have all this stuff, surely?’ he exclaimed with a whoop that one only got married once. ‘But you did say you were short of money,’ she suggested, still nervous, for she could not rid herself of the feeling that to make detailed inquiries about his finances would be an unpardonable interference. Besides, he was paying the forty pounds she owed as a result of not being able to live on her salary, and she felt guilty about it. Douglas said that he had saved some money, he had about a hundred pounds, and he was heavily insured and could borrow on it. In fact, what he said now was in contradiction to what he had said before, but Martha as usual shrugged her shoulders. For the Quests’ attitude towards money could hardly be described as practical.
This letter arrived from Mr Quest on the day before the wedding.
Dear Douglas,
My wife tells me I should make inquiries as to your financial position, which I forgot to do; she, however, seems to have fairly accurate information, so I take it everything may be considered satisfactory. [At this point, that prickling irritability that always lay in Mr Quest, like a poisoned well, made itself felt through the words of the letter.] At any rate, under instructions, I am making a formal inquiry as to whether you are able to properly keep and maintain my daughter; which you are quite entitled to resent, since I have never been able to maintain her properly myself. I expect my wife will discuss the whole thing with you in due course. I am informed we are providing the linen and the blankets, but since my debt to the Land Bank is due for repayment, I trust you will discourage my wife in any unnecessary generosity.
Yours sincerely,
Alfred Quest
P.S.—I do hope everything goes well with the arrangements. I am persuading my wife not to come in to town until the day itself. I take it this will meet with your approval.
This letter was read by Douglas with an amused grin; while Martha hoped nervously that her father’s persuasion might in fact keep her mother out of town, though she doubted it. Then he let out a whoop, and did a war dance around the room among the bottles and ham rolls and eggs, and said, ‘We’re all right, aren’t we?’
For he was very well pleased with everything. The wedding was working out well, for the arrangements were by no means as casual as might appear.
The people who were to be invited were all ‘old friends’ of his whom she had not been told of until that moment. Mr Maynard, for instance, that respected magistrate; Douglas’s voice had a ring of satisfaction when he mentioned him. There was a Mrs Talbot too; Martha knew her as a very rich and respected lady, who, it seemed, had known Douglas since he was a child. She was giving them a generous cheque. There was to be present, too, a certain member of Parliament, a Colonel Brodeshaw, who had been a friend of Douglas’s father. The head of the department and his wife were to drop in for a glass of champagne afterwards; for there was to be a garden party at Government House that same afternoon, which it was hardly reasonable to expect them to miss, even for a wedding.
It was being impressed on Martha that the wolves, though it seemed Douglas did not consider himself to be one, were also the rising young men of the town, with futures to consider. It made her uneasy, until she comforted herself with the thought, Well, we’re leaving the town, anyway, we’re going to Europe.
When Douglas asked her whom she wanted to invite, she looked at him in amazement, and replied that she didn’t mind. For she persisted in feeling that all this was quite unimportant, her only part in it was to get through with the distasteful business as quickly as possible. And since this feeling remained with her to the end, there is very little to say about the wedding itself. Mrs Quest, certainly, was too upset to describe her emotions when she arrived at ten in the morning in order to ‘dress the bride’ and found that most of the wedding guests were already seated around the bedroom—where Martha was trying to pack—perched in the bed, on top of the dressing table, even on the floor.
Martha was ‘quite wild with happiness’. This is what Stella and Mrs Quest told each other, as they fought, with deadly politeness over who was to arrange the buffet. The two women loathed each other at first sight, and, in consequence of this passion, were inseparable all day. Martha and Douglas were laughing and making jokes against themselves and this unorthodox wedding, trying to finish packing amid clouds of confetti, and drinking champagne in tumblers. At lunchtime about twenty people, already slightly tipsy, were seething about the tiny flat eating sandwiches and drinking, while Mr Quest, looking resigned but slightly irritated, sat in a corner, flirting with Stella when she came near him, which was not often, since she had to keep an eye on Mrs Quest.
It could be said, then, that the wedding began at about ten in the morning; there was no moment at which poor Mrs Quest might emotionally take leave of Martha. Shortly after lunch, Mr Maynard arrived, looking urbane. He shook Douglas by the hand and called him ‘my boy’, was pleasant to Martha, and then suggested that as he had to marry four other hopeful couples that afternoon he would be obliged if they might get it over, otherwise he’d never get finished with the business. Mrs Quest hurried her husband into a position where he could give Martha away, for she had not understood that it was unnecessary in this kind of ceremony.
There was a long pause of unwillingly suspended emotion while Martha signed about nine different documents—‘In triplicate, too!’ she exclaimed aloud, ex
asperatedly, while her mother said, ‘Hush, dear,’ and Douglas said soothingly, ‘It’s all right, Matty, I thought we might as well get it all done with.’ What the documents were she had no idea.
Mr Quest, seeing that his presence was not needed, retired to stand by Stella, who could now give her attention to fascinating him, and succeeded completely. This afternoon she was brilliantly attractive. She wore sleek black, and a hat streaming with bright green feathers, and supplied a cosmopolitan smartness to the dowdy colonial gathering. Martha was atrociously dressed, and knew it, but had decided it was of no importance.
Mrs Quest waited anxiously immediately behind Martha’s left shoulder, and at the crucial moment when the ring must be put on she grasped Martha’s elbow and pushed forward her arm, so that everyone was able to see how Martha turned around and said in a loud, angry whisper, ‘Who’s getting married, me or you?’
The group then dissolved in tears, kisses, congratulations, and alcohol. In this manner, therefore, was Martha Quest married on a warm Thursday afternoon in the month of March, 1939, in the capital city of a British colony in the centre of the great African continent. Afterwards she could remember very little of the occasion. She remembered a wild elation, under which dragged, like a chain, a persistent misery. She remembered (when time had sorted out what was important from what was not) that someone had been saying that Hitler had seized Bohemia and Moravia, while everyone exclaimed it was impossible. She had heard the information with the feeling she must hurry, there was a terrible urgency, there was no time to waste.
She remembered too, that as she and Douglas, Stella and Andrew were about to leave on their joint honeymoon (for, as Stella was explaining to everyone, she had never had a proper honeymoon before), Mrs Quest stood shaking Mr Maynard by the hand, her face lit by the timid charming smile which was so strange a contrast with the formidable masculine face, while Mr Maynard smiled his usual tolerant comment on life and people.