When the wheel stilled at last Martha was able to sleep; and in the morning she was a different creature, easily able to withstand the insinuations of the ministering angel in the white coif, and prepared to look soberly at the alternatives – or rather at a single alternative, for the possibility of in fact settling down to a life of tea parties, sundowners, and in due course, children, was out of the question. She was trying to form the confusion of feelings that afflicted her to fit the sharp, clear view of life held by Solly and Joss – that was how she saw it. What she actually wanted, of course, was for some man to arrive in her life, simply take her by the hand, and lead her off into this new world. But it seemed he did not exist. And so she read the newspapers, and enjoyed the cynicism they produced in her. There was the Zambesia News, for instance, at that period in a state of such uneasy uncertainty. On the one hand it was reminding its readers about the atrocious nature of Hitler’s Germany; on the other it seemed to be suffering from a certain reluctance to do so. Hard to forget that these same atrocities, concentration camps and so on, had been ignored by the Zambesia News, as by its betters, until it was impossible to ignore them; while even now, like those great exemplars overseas, it showed real indignation only over Hitler’s capacity for absorbing other countries. Nor was she able to feel any less derisive when she read the great exemplars themselves, the newspapers from Home. As for that other, deeper knowledge, the pulse that really moved her, gained from her almost religious feeling for literature, a knowledge that amounted to a vision of mankind as nobility bound and betrayed – this was vanishing entirely beneath the pressure of enjoyable cynicism which was being fed by everything about her, and particularly by her own behaviour. For despite all her worried introspection, her determination to act rationally if only it was possible to find out what rational behaviour should be, the fact was that her sluggish days were nothing but a preparation for the first drink at sundown, which led to that grand emotional culmination at midnight when she joined the swinging circle of intoxicated dancers controlled by the thudding of the drums.
It was about six weeks after her marriage that all this confusion was shaken into a single current by the fact that she was violently sick one morning. Lethargy caused her to murmur consolingly that it must be the result of not sleeping enough – probably nothing but a hangover. But she succeeded in forgetting it.
Two days later, in Stella’s flat, after a dance, it happened that Maisie was there. She was wearing a dress of white tulle, frilled and flounced like a baby’s bassinette, and from it her plump shoulders, her lazy pretty face, emerged with a placid enjoyment of life which apparently had not been disturbed by the fact that she had become engaged to one of the young men who was training to be a pilot. She came to sit by Martha, murmuring vaguely, ‘Well, Matty …’ as if they saw each other every day. In fact they did, at dances but from across the room. She bent down to rip off a strip of dirty white from the bottom of her dress where it had been trodden on, rolled it up, and tossed it into the corner of the room; and sat looking speculatively at Martha, her fair face flushed and beaded with the heat. ‘You look fine, you don’t show yet,’ she remarked good-naturedly, looking frankly at Martha’s stomach.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Martha.
Maisie was startled. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologized hastily. ‘I thought…’ Someone spoke to her, and she took the opportunity to get up and sit somewhere else. From time to time during the rest of the evening, she glanced towards Martha, but with the determination not to catch her eye. She left before Martha did, arm in arm with her pilot, including Martha with the rest of the room in a large, vague smile of farewell.
Afterwards Martha said indignantly to Douglas that it was the limit, people were saying she was pregnant. To which he replied a little awkwardly that some of the lads from the Club had suggested this was the case.
‘Do you mean to say they think we got married because we had to?’ she exclaimed, furious; for she felt this was an insult towards them as free beings able to do as they wished.
But he misunderstood her indignation, and said, laughing, ‘After all, Matty, since most of the people who get married get married because they have to …’
She laughed, but she was very uneasy.
Again she forgot about it, until there was a letter from her mother, which immediately caught her attention because of its casual tone. At the end of it was an inquiry as to how she felt. Again she burned with indignation – there was a conspiracy against her!
For some days, there was no reason to think of it; then she got a charming letter from Mrs Talbot, which had the same hurried apologetic manner as her speech. She asked why Matty did not drop in to see her one morning, she would so like to have a proper talk.
The letters were always on thick white paper, in a fine-pointed black hand; they gave an impression of casual elegance which made Martha curious, for never had she known anyone whose letters were not utilitarian. The letters, like Mrs Talbot herself, spoke of an existence altogether remote from this colonial town. But what was this life which Mrs Talbot seemed so anxious Martha should share? And what was this proper talk?
‘We have supper or spend the evening with them at least two or three times a week,’ Martha pointed out to Douglas, quite bewildered.
‘Oh, go and see her, Matty, she’ll be pleased.’
Martha had discovered that Mrs Talbot was not, as one might infer from her appearance, about thirty-five, but over sixty; she was very rich, but in a way seemed to apologize for the unpleasant fact that there was such a thing as money in the world at all. During those evenings, she would take Douglas – apologizing first – into an inner room, and they would discuss investments and properties. ‘There are no flies on Mrs Talbot,’ he said appreciatively. And then, always: ‘She’s an absolute marvel, a wonder! Why, Matty, would you think she was a day over thirty. Isn’t she terrific?’
‘But Elaine …’ pointed out Martha jealously.
‘Oh, Elaine’s all right, she’s a nice kid,’ said Douglas, dismissing her.
That Elaine should be thought of as a nice kid made Martha laugh – it was easier to tolerate the amazing Mrs Talbot. For at the bottom of an uneasy disapproval of that lady was Martha’s physical arrogance – the pride of the very young. She was young and whole and comely; secretly she felt a fierce, shuddering repulsion for the old and unsightly. For a brief ten years – she was convinced that thirty was the end of youth and good looks – she was allowed by nature to be young and attractive. For Mrs Talbot to be beautiful at sixty was not fair.
‘She can’t be sixty,’ she had protested hopefully. But she was.
Martha told Douglas that she didn’t want to have a proper talk with Mrs Talbot; but on the morning after getting the letter she found herself disinclined for that ‘work’, and set off on impulse for Mrs Talbot’s house. It was half past nine; the morning was well advanced for a society which began work at eight. Martha walked through the park and along the avenues: the house was one of the delightful houses of the older town. It was almost hidden from the street by trees and flowering bushes. The door opened immediately from the garden path, and not off a wide veranda. The house had an introspective, inward-turning look because of this discreet black door with its shining door knocker. Mrs Talbot’s house, like herself, could not help suggesting the England one knew from novels. The door might be flanked on either side by poinsettias, ragged pointed scraps of scarlet silk fluttering on naked, shining silken stems, but one felt they were there only to suggest an ironical contrast.
Martha rang, and was admitted by a native servant, and shown into a small side room kept for just this purpose. She summoned her memories of what she had read, and then saw, as she had expected, a tray on a stand, littered with visiting
