rhythm of the false cheap music. Yet the truth was she had disliked every moment of the time. She jerked herself fully awake; that lie she had no intention of tolerating. She stood up, and told herself with a bleak and jaunty common sense that she needed a good night’s sleep.
The outer door crashed open; the light crashed on. A cheerful young man came towards her, whirled her up in his arms, and began squeezing her, saying, ‘Well, Matty, here we are in our own place at last, and about time, too!’ With this he gave her a large affectionate kiss on the cheek, and set her down, and stood rubbing his hands with satisfaction. Then it seemed that something struck him; doubt displaced the large grin, and he said, ‘But, Matty, what’ve you done to yourself?’
Turning away quickly, Martha said, ‘I’ve cut off my hair. Don’t look at it now, it’ll be all right in the morning.’
Taking her at her word, he said, ‘Oh, all right, changed your hair style, eh?’ And he rubbed his hands again, with pleasure: she could see he took it as a compliment to himself that she should. ‘Sorry I was late, but I ran into some of the boys and I couldn’t get away. Had to celebrate.’ His proprietary look half annoyed her; but she could feel the beginning of fatal pleasure. From the way he looked at her and rubbed his hands, she knew that he had again been congratulated on his acquisition; and while she puzzled over the knowledge that this could have nothing to do with herself, she could not help feeling less heavy and unattractive.
‘They think I’m a helluva lucky…’ he announced; and at the thought of the scenes in the bar with the boys, a reflection of his proud and embarrassed grin appeared on his face. He swooped over to her, ground her tightly to him, and announced, ‘And so-so I am.’
Then, still holding her, but loosening his grip because his mind was on them and not on her, he began telling her some of the things they had said, in a comradely way, sharing the pleasure with her. At first she said, half anxiously, half pleased, ‘And what else?’ ‘And what did they say then?’ Until suddenly she jerked away from him, angry and red, and said, ‘I don’t think that’s funny, that’s disgusting.’
The very image of an offended prude, she turned her back on him; while, half shamefaced, half sniggering, he looked at her and said at last, ‘Oh, come off it, Matty, don’t put on an act.’
Martha undressed in silence, flinging crumpled blue dress, knickers, petticoat, in all directions. She stood naked. In the mood she was in, it had nothing to do with coquetry.
To Douglas, however, this was not apparent. He found the naked and angry girl an argument for forgiveness. Flinging off his own clothes, he bounced on to the bed, and moved over to give her room. Still frowning, she moved chastely in beside him; for the fact that they were annoyed with each other made the act of getting naked into bed on a level with sitting beside him at breakfast. She was irritated to discover that he did not understand this. She was on the point of turning over away from him, when the instinct to please turned her towards him. Love had brought her here, to lie beside this young man; love was the key to every good; love lay like a mirage through the golden gates of sex. If this was not true, then nothing was true, and the beliefs of a whole generation were illusory. They made love. She was too tired to persuade herself that she felt anything at all. Her head was by now swimming with exhaustion.
‘God, but I’m tired, Matty,’ he announced, rolling off her. He yawned and said with satisfaction, ‘How many hours have we slept during the last fortnight?’
She did not reply. Loyalty towards love was forcing her to pretend that she was not disappointed, and that she did not – at that moment she was sick with repulsion – find him repulsive. But already that image of a lover that a woman is offered by society, and carries with her so long, had divorced itself from Douglas, like the painted picture of a stencil floating off paper in water. Because that image remained intact and unhurt, it was possible to be good-natured. It is that image which keeps so many marriages peaceable and friendly.
She listened, smiling maternally, while he calculated aloud how many hours they had slept. It took him several minutes: he was nothing if not efficient.
‘Do you realize we couldn’t have slept more than about three hours a night during the last six weeks?’ he inquired proudly.
‘Awful, isn’t it?’ she agreed, in the same tone.
After a pause: ‘It’s been lovely, hasn’t it, Matty?’
She agreed with enthusiasm that it had. At the same time she glanced incredulously at him to assure herself that he must be joking. But he was grinning in the half-dark. She simply could not comprehend that his satisfaction, his pleasure, was fed less by her than by what other people found in their marriage.
Her silence dismayed him. He gripped her arm, pressed it, and urged, ‘Really, everyone’s been awfully good to us, haven’t they, Matty? Haven’t they? They’ve given us a hell of a start?’
Again she enthusiastically agreed. He lay alert now, feeling her worry and preoccupation. Then he suddenly inquired, ‘Did you see the doctor? What did he say?’
‘Oh, nothing much,’ she said, sleepy and bad-tempered. ‘He doesn’t seem to know more than we do, only he does the big-medicine-man act awfully well.’
But Douglas could not agree with this. ‘He’s very good, Matty – very good indeed.’
Her motherliness was warmed by his anxiety, and she at once assured him that he had been very kind and she had liked him enormously.
‘That’s all right, then. You’ll be all right with him.’ A pause. ‘Well, what did he recommend? Those effells are a pain in the neck, only for bachelors.’ He laughed proudly.
‘He made a joke about them.’
‘What did he say?’ She told him. ‘He’s a helluva lad, Dr Stern, isn’t he, Matty? Isn’t he?’
She hesitated. Besides, she did not want to think now about the machinery of birth control, which suddenly appeared to her distasteful. But since from the beginning it had been a matter of pride to be efficient, gay and matter-of-fact, she could not say that she detested the jellies and bits of rubber which from now on would accompany what Dr Stern had referred to as her love life as if it were something separate from life itself; she could not now say what for the moment was true: that she wished she were like that native woman, who was expected to have a baby every year. She wished at the very least that it should not all be made into a joke. She wanted to cry her eyes out; nothing could be more unreasonable.
Suddenly Douglas observed, ‘We’ve just done it without anything. I suppose that’s a bit silly, eh, Matty?’
‘Oh, it’ll be all right,’ she said hastily, unwilling to move. She felt it would be ‘all right’ because since the ‘act of love’ had been what Dr Stern described as unsatisfactory, she felt it had not occurred at all. She was unaffected, and therefore it would be unfair, if not unnatural, that a child might result from it.
‘Because you’d better get out of bed and go to the bathroom,’ he suggested uneasily.
‘Judging from the book of words,’ she said, with a dry anger that astounded even herself, ‘those little dragons of yours go wriggling along at such a rate it would be too late by now.’
‘Well, maybe it would be better than nothing,’ he urged.
‘Oh, I’m too tired to move,’ she said irritably. ‘Besides,’ she added
