Marjorie and Colin walked away together. Martha saw that Marjorie now had her hand inside Colin’s broad elbow. It was a contrite and affectionate hand, and Martha thought: She’s feeling guilty, because she resents him so much … I really must talk to Anton tonight.
Jasmine and Martha lingered on the pavement. Both of them had watched Colin and Marjorie go off, and their smile at each other afterwards was accompanied by a dry lift of the brows.
‘I’m not going to get married,’ said Jasmine suddenly, startling Martha, for this self-contained girl never spoke about ‘personal matters’.
It was dusk: cars were streaking past in showers of light; the stars were coming out.
Jasmine said: ‘There was that business with Jackie – I must have been mad. I mean, not to have an affair, but thinking of marrying.’ She spoke without heat, good-natured and rueful, ‘I loved that other man – you never knew him, he was killed in the Spanish Civil War.’ She paused, frowning, and sighed. ‘There’s something about marriage, whenever I see it, I feel … but of course you’ve been married and I haven’t.’ In the dusk she was a small figure: always Jasmine gave this impression, against all the facts of what she was and the life she led, of smallness, forlornness, and isolated courage. ‘I’m not going to get married,’ she announced. She shyly squeezed Martha’s arm and said: ‘And don’t you go and get married either, Matty. There’s no sense in your breaking up one marriage and then getting married again, is there?’ She nodded, and trotted off to where her car was parked, leaving Martha thinking: She knows I’m in a dilemma about Anton, and she’s warning me. Yet she admires Anton.
It’s like someone outside a danger-zone warning someone in it. And if the position were reversed, I’d certainly warn her – if she gave me the chance, which she wouldn’t, because she’s far too reserved – not to get married to anyone yet.
Martha was meeting Anton in an hour for supper. She knew she ought to use that hour for thinking, but she walked off up the street towards Maisie’s flat, which was five minutes away. All the members of the group had assured themselves and each other that it was only right to leave Maisie and Andrew alone together as much as possible because of the delicate situation they were in.
Martha excused herself by thinking: Well, it’s only for an hour. The door was opened, however, by Tommy, and behind him she could see Athen from Greece, sitting at his ease and smiling with pleasure at, presumably, Maisie. Martha went in. It was a two-roomed flat, furnished hastily and cheaply. This front room had a couple of chairs bought at a sale, and a divan in one corner covered with an army blanket. Maisie sat upright on one of the hard chairs, her hands folded loose in her plump lap. She wore a blue maternity smock and the mound of her pregnancy showed firm and placid behind the folds of blue. Her fair glistening hair had evidently just been brushed, for it was not untidy, as it ordinarily was, but she was not made up. She looked young and appealing, and she was smiling with calm attention at Athen. Tommy, his urchin hair standing up all over his head, was pouring out tea which he had just made for them. He was handing Maisie a cup of tea as if it were a present. Altogether, the pretty, lazy girl had the look of someone worshipped and adored.
She greeted Martha with a Hi there!, smiled, but did not move. Martha felt at peace. She sat on the divan beside Athen the Greek, and thought: There’s Maisie, in such a complicated mess, and she’s quite calm and happy – I never was. I never do anything right. I should have been happy when I was pregnant, but I was fighting everything.
Athen was talking to Maisie about the guerrillas in the mountains. The thin dark keen face was frowning with attention for the words he was using, because his English was uncertain, but his eyes smiled gently and steadily at Maisie. And she, Martha knew, was not listening: the words, guerrilla, war, fighting, communist, fascist, went by her, she was forming no picture at all of what they meant. She merely liked Athen and his feeling for her.
Athen, realizing this, stopped talking and said: ‘But you must ask your husband to explain all this to you.’
She said: ‘Andrew tells me all this stuff.’ She shrugged. Martha noted how her shoulders moved in a tranquil acceptance of the shrug while the heavy hips remained planted on the chair; the lower part of her body was absorbed in a life of its own.
Envy shook Martha. She thought, Lord help me, I’m going to start wanting another baby just because Maisie’s having one. Stop it, stop it at once – in less than an hour I’ll be meeting Anton.
Andrew came in, unbuttoning his jacket and flinging off his cap. Maisie turned her head towards him, the blue of her eyes deepening in a smile.
The group of course wondered secretly about the relations of these two. While they wondered, they felt ashamed – or rather, felt they should be ashamed.
Andrew said: ‘How’s it, Maisie?’ and poured himself tea while Maisie watched him. She had the appearance of a very young girl who has just been introduced to a man her parents think will make a suitable husband and to whom, half against her will, she is attracted.
The outward form of their life was that of two people on trial with each other.
The two rooms were arranged as separate rooms. The inner room, where Maisie slept, was a girl’s room. It had a single bed covered with a fat shining blue eiderdown, and all kinds of trinkets and bits of nonsense stood on her dressing-table — small dolls, china ladies and so on. There were two photographs on a shelf of her two dead husbands, but none of Binkie, her baby’s father.
As for Andrew, it was understood that the bed covered with an army blanket was his: he camped in this front room when he had a pass for the night or for the week-end.
He turned with a cup of tea in his hand, and examined Maisie frankly: he had not seen her for three days. Since his marriage he had changed a good deal. Before, gruffly goodhumoured, practical, responsible, he was a man with whom one associated no sentiment. A little sentimentality perhaps: the conventional sentimental jokes and tributes to emotion of a man who has no time for it. But now the broad face had softened and his eyes had acquired a new expression, as if they were saying: ‘Hullo! I didn’t expect this …’
It became clear to the three visitors at the same moment that Andrew wanted them to go. He had taken two steps towards Maisie, but propriety stopped him, and he remained standing by Athen. He even exchanged half a dozen camp jokes with the Greek, but it was pure form, for his eyes kept returning to Maisie.
Tommy jumped up, in confusion, exclaiming that he had to go off and get some supper.
Athen, who had been watching the couple with grave approval, rose also, saying: ‘I’ll come with you, Tommy.’ Martha followed them to the door.
Maisie and Andrew nodded a good-bye to their visitors, and their eyes instantly returned to each other, in the prolonged, serious, respectful gaze that the group knew so well, and which always made them envious.
As they left the room they heard Andrew’s voice: ‘Well, lass? And how’s that little bastard been since I left you?’
Maisie’s voice, queenly, and kind: ‘You shouldn’t use that word bastard, Andrew, because it’s not right, don’t you see?’
Then their laughter, warmed by the wonder of joy.
Tommy said in a shocked whisper: ‘That’s a funny joke, I don’t think.’
Athen laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder and said: ‘No, it’s good — all of it is very good, comrade.’
On the pavement they stood, the three of them, looking up at the uncurtained windows a few feet above them, whose light seemed shed from the happiness of Maisie and Andrew. Athen’s and Martha’s eyes meeting, they unconsciously exchanged a regretful smile. Tommy, still crimson, fierce with incomprehension, said angrily: ‘Well, I don’t get it. That’s not even his kid. It’s someone else’s kid.’ He stubbed his foot again and again against the pavement edge, glaring away from the lighted windows to a group of scrubby gum-trees that stood in a waste lot a few yards off.
Athen said gently: ‘But, Comrade Tommy, don’t you se
e what selfishness it all is – my child, my son, my daughter don’t you see, that’s all finished now? Well, it will soon be finished in the world. What it is is just: a baby is being born. A new human being. That’s all, comrade.’
Tommy’s face twisted into an unwilling grin.
Athen smiled: his smile on the lean stern Southern face was extraordinarily tender. He said: ‘When a baby is born it is born to everyone – don’t you see that? It is my child and your child and Martha’s child.’
Tommy said: ‘I don’t think that’s why Andrew is so pleased with himself. I mean, he’s pleased because he likes Maisie. I don’t think the baby’s got anything to do with it.’
Athen said: ‘He likes Maisie and so he likes the baby too. But it is because Maisie is a good girl. She is a good good girl.’
Martha sighed, and Athen heard it. She saw the stern little man look at her in comprehension. She imagined it was disapproval. He said: ‘Maisie is a lucky one, she has a gift.’
‘What gift, why lucky?’ insisted Tommy, almost in despair, still angrily banging his toe at the pavement.
Athen said, not looking at Martha: ‘It has seemed to me like this for a long time – that this is a time which is difficult for women. Some women know it and fight. Some women, like Maisie, they don’t know it.’
‘All the same,’ said Tommy. ‘All the same – it’s not Andrew’s kid at all.’
‘Andrew is a good man,’ Athen pronounced. ‘He is a good comrade. Yes, there are very good people in the world in spite of everything. ‘
And you are a good man too, Martha thought, adding involuntarily: I would be perfectly safe with this man. Instantly the word safe confused her. What do I want with safety? What do I mean, safe? Well, then, is Anton a good man? But now she felt even more confused.
Athen said to Tommy: ‘And now we will go and eat before the meeting, comrade.’ He gave the obstinately unhappy boy his stern, gentle smile, and said: ‘And you are a good boy too, Tommy. You should not make things so hard for yourself. Life is simple, comrade. All the real things are very simple. Why do you make it so difficult? What is this now? A baby is being born and a woman needs a man to look after her. That’s all, that’s all, Comrade Tommy. It is a good man and a good woman and they help each other. That’s all, and nothing else.’
Martha said: ‘I’ll see you both at the meeting,’ and walked off. She wanted to cry, and was frightened because of the tears threatening her. At the corner, under the bunch of dusty gum-trees, she turned to watch the two men out of sight: the small fine-made Greek, who had his hand on the shoulder of the big clumsy youth, his face leaned towards him in persuasion. She thought: I wish I had had somebody like Athen to explain things to me when I was eighteen. She thought: Here it is again, this feeling that I am being shut out of something beautiful and simple. Well, it’s nothing but sentimentality.
Yet she did not really believe it was sentimental: there was something very good about Athen being with Tommy, and in the relation between Mrs Van and Johnny Lindsay, the old miner.
The smell of dry dust filled her nostrils; an odour of dry sun-harshened leaves descended from the darkening gum-trees above. She thought: and it was a moment of illumination, a flash of light; I don’t know anything about anything yet. I must try and keep myself free and open, and try to think more, try not to drift into things.
The heavy bells from the Catholic Church down the road tumbled out a warning of the time: it was seven, and she began walking very fast towards Black Ally’s. Already the old feeling of impatience was snapping at her heels and the moment of knowledge had gone.
Why should I be so afraid to face Anton now? It’s absurd to feel caged. It might have been any one of these men, any one, it was simply luck, or some kind of choice I don’t understand. But not my choice. If Jasmine had been sick, Anton would have – kissed her on the forehead, and I would be thinking of Jasmine now as she is thinking of me – Don’t be a fool.
She was in a fever of irritable bewilderment. At the door of Black Ally’s she remembered she had not agreed to meet Anton here but at the Grill down the street.
She liked the atmosphere of Black Ally’s although the food was so bad. The Grill was expensive and was used for special occasions. She thought that ever since Anton had ‘kissed her on the forehead’ he had been taking her formally to the Grill once or twice a week. On these occasions his manner towards her was different.
Why does he do it? I don’t like it, she thought, feeling she was unjust, but too full of irritation to care. It’s the way he does it – everything so careful and so planned, as if he were saying: Tonight I shall sleep with you and this is a preparation for it. Most of the week I’m a comrade, a friend, and then he turns me into something else. I simply don’t like any of it.
She reached the Grill, which was a small room, flashing with white linen and well-polished cutlery and highly uniformed waiters. Anton waited in a corner. He rose at the sight of her and stood, slightly bowed, until she sat down, reaffirming her decision to end the thing: this tall stiff pale man, watching me from his pale eyes – good Lord, he’s got nothing to do with me, and never could have. Well, I’ll say something when we reach the end of the meal.
Meanwhile, Anton was ordering. It pleased him to treat her as if she were still convalescent, and he said with a heavy, fatherly playfulness: ‘You must have a good underdone steak – yes.’ And he smiled at her as if he were surprised it could be so easy and so pleasant to smile.
She put her elbows on the table and chattered to him about the meeting that afternoon in a way she knew irritated him. She was giving him all the essential information, but making fun of it, including the six communists. ‘We imagined we went there to influence them, but it turns out we’re part of some plot of Mrs Van’s …’ She saw his forehead set into patience against her irresponsibility which he had no intention of condoning but which, since this was a special occasion, he would make allowances for.
Lately, with her, the set of his shoulders and the careful bend of his head had become more easy, more relaxed. Tonight he had regained his self-contained watchfulness something that caught at her heart because it was a protection against possible pain and she knew it.
‘What’s the matter?’ she inquired, seeing that there was something very much the matter and she ought to have noticed it before.
He said: ‘There is something, yes, but let us finish our food first.’
Now they ate in silence.
Martha was thinking: Perhaps he wants to break it off? Perversely, a feeling of loss and panic swept over her. She noted this with dismay: I’d be capable of talking him into going on simply because it was he who wanted to break it off! Well, if that’s what it is, I’ll resist a little, so as not to hurt his feelings, and then agree.
Having reached this decision she talked of Maisie and Andrew, although she knew he disapproved of the couple. She was even making some kind of a test of it: if he said something warm and generous about them, it would mean they could be happy together.
She saw he was not listening. He said: ‘Matty, something has happened and we must make a decision.’
He talked slowly, every word weighed. It appeared that his employer had taken him aside that morning and told him the CID had paid an informal visit to say that Anton Hesse, an enemy alien, was known to be having an affair with a British woman. Such relationships were frowned upon. It had been pointed out, but in such a way that it need not be taken as an actual threat, that in the past enemy aliens misconducting themselves had been returned to the internment camp. The employer had been ‘very upset’. He had not said in so many words that he insisted on Mr Hesse breaking off this affair, but – flurried, bad-tempered from guilt, apologetic for his bad temper, and very verbose – had talked for two hours, finally divesting himself of any responsibility, leaving it on the shoulders of the CID whose very existence he of course totally deplored. The matter had in fact been conducted in the great British tradition: no one had actu
ally threatened anyone, or brought any direct pressure to bear; not only the employer but the CID man had been extremely uncomfortable; it was nobody’s fault; nevertheless, the effect was that Anton must toe the line or lose his job and possibly return to the internment camp.
Martha noted that the stiff resentment in Anton’s voice was due to only one thing, as usual: that he was anti-fascist and anti-Hitler and yet treated like an enemy.
He was not even trying to influence her. He was stating the position as simply as he could.
When she tried to interrupt he said: ‘Wait, Matty, wait. You must let me say everything first.’
He finished with: ‘And so if we analyse the position it is this: we must break this off, or we must get married and become respectable. And that is not the lightest decision to make.’
And so he ended, leaving it to her.
Martha was silent. She saw how he had, as she put it, gone into his shell. She noted how his mouth had set in patient resignation. He has taken it for granted, she thought, that she would decide to break it off.
‘You must think it over,’ he said. ‘You must say nothing now, but you think it over when you’re alone.’
He really cares for me, she thought; it was interesting that this was the first time she had told herself he cared for her.
‘Supposing we break off,’ she asked, ‘is it still a bad mark against you, having an affair with a British girl?
He said reluctantly: ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ He added: ‘And of course it is not sensible, taking part in all these communist activities – it is more than possible that this is these gentlemen’s way of warning me against all this running around at meetings.’
It was this remark that made up Martha’s mind for her. She thought: Andrew could marry Maisie to help her out that was a good thing to do, everyone feels it. (She did not remind herself now that everyone felt it except Anton.) And if I marry Anton, and it’s nothing but a formality after all, ft will make things easy for him.
She obeyed his insistence that she should not make up her mind now, but later, when that evening’s meeting was over, she took his hand hurriedly on the pavement as he was turning away from her with a quiet, patient: ‘Good night, Matty,’ and said: ‘Don’t worry about anything, Anton. We’ll get married.”