these pyjamas together and tucked them under the pillow, observing, ‘Men are always so untidy.’ Then she sat herself on the edge of the bed, with the air of one prepared to devote any amount of time to friendship.
And now they must talk. There would follow the proper talk. Martha saw the gleam of affection in Mrs Talbot’s eyes and was asking herself, Does she really like me? If so, why? But Mrs Talbot was talking about Douglas: how he was such a dear boy, how he was always so clever and helpful, and with such a sense for these horrid, horrid financial things; and then – impulsively – how lovely it was that he had married such a sweet girl. At this Martha involuntarily laughed; and was sorry when she saw the look of surprise on this delightful lady’s face. She rose from her chair and began walking about the room, touching the curtains, which slipped like thick silken skin through her fingers, laying a curious finger on the wood of the dressing table, which had such a gleaming softness that it was strange it should oppose her flesh with the hardness of real wood. Mrs Talbot watched without moving. There was a small, shrewd smile on her lips.
‘Are you shocked, Matty, at all this fuss?’ she asked a little plaintively; and when Martha turned quickly to see what she could mean, she continued quickly, ‘I know it all looks so awful until it’s tidied up; Elaine is so sweet, she comes in and tidies everything for me, and then this is a lovely room, but I know it must look horrid now, with face creams and cotton wool everywhere. The trouble is …’ Here she tailed off, with a helpless shrug which suggested that there was nothing she would like better than to relapse into the comfortable condition of being an old woman, if only she knew how. Martha involuntarily glanced at Mr Talbot’s side of the bed and then blushed as she guiltily caught Mrs Talbot’s eyes. But it was clear that this was one thing she could not understand in Martha; she looked puzzled.
After a short pause she said, ‘I hope you’ll be friends with Elaine, Matty. She’s such a sweet thing, so sensitive, and she doesn’t make friends easily. Sometimes I feel it is my fault – but we’ve always been so much together, and I don’t know why it is, but …’
Now Martha’s look was far more hostile than she had intended; and Mrs Talbot’s thick white skin coloured evenly. She looked like an embarrassed young girl, in spite of the faint look of wear under her eyes. Martha could not imagine herself being friends with that gentle, flower-gathering maiden; she could not prevent a rather helpless but ironical smile, and she looked direct at Mrs Talbot as if accusing her of being wilfully obtuse.
Mrs Talbot cried out, ‘But you’re so artistic, Matty, and you would have so much in common.’
Martha saw tears in her eyes. ‘But I’m not at all artistic,’ she observed obstinately – though of course with a hidden feeling that she might prove to be yet, if given the chance!
‘But all those books you read, and then anyone can see …’ Mrs Talbot was positively crying out against the fate that persisted in making Martha refuse to be artistic. ‘And Elaine is so sweet, no one knows as well as I do how sweet she is and – but sometimes I wonder if she’s strong enough to manage things the way all you clever young things do. You are all so sure of yourselves!’
Here Martha could not help another rueful smile, which checked Mrs Talbot. She was regarding Martha with extraordinary shrewdness. Martha, for her part, was waiting for the proper talk to begin; what was it that Mrs Talbot wanted to say to her?
Mrs Talbot sighed, gave the shadow of a shrug, and went back to her dressing table. Here she applied one cream after another, with steady method, and continued to talk, in between pauses for screwing up her mouth or stretching her eyelids smooth. ‘I would so much like Elaine to get married. If she could only get properly married, and I needn’t worry any more … There is no greater happiness, Matty, none! She meets so few people, always my friends, and she is so shy. And you meet so many people, Matty, all you young people are so brave and enterprising.’
For the life of her Martha could not see Elaine with the wolves of the Club, with the boys, the kids and the fellows. ‘I don’t think Elaine would like the sort of men we meet,’ observed Martha; and she caught another shrewd glance. She felt there were things she ought to be understanding, but she was quite lost.
‘There’s your Douglas,’ said Mrs Talbot, a trifle reproachfully. ‘He’s such a nice boy.’
Surely, wondered Martha, Mrs Talbot could not have wanted Douglas for Elaine? The idea was preposterous – even brutal.
‘So kind,’ murmured Mrs Talbot, ‘so helpful, so clever with everything.’
And now Martha was returned, simply by the incongruity of Douglas and Elaine, into her private nightmare. She could not meet a young man or woman without looking around anxiously for the father and mother; that was how they would end, there was no escape for them. She could not meet an elderly person without wondering what the unalterable influences had been that had created them just so. She could take no step, perform no action, no matter how apparently new and unforeseen, without the secret fear that in fact this new and arbitrary thing would turn out to be part of the inevitable process she was doomed to. She was, in short, in the grip of the great bourgeois monster, the nightmare repetition. It was like the obsession of the neurotic who must continuously be touching a certain object or muttering a certain formula of figures in order to be safe from the malevolent powers, like the person who cannot go to bed at night without returning a dozen times to see if the door is locked and the fire out. She was thinking now, But Mrs Talbot married Mr Talbot, then Elaine is bound to marry someone like Mr Talbot, there is no escaping it; then what connection is there between Douglas and Mr Talbot that I don’t see?
But Mrs Talbot was talking, ‘I’ll show you something, Matty – I would like to show you, I don’t everyone.’
Mrs Talbot was searching hurriedly through her drawers. She pulled out a large, leather-framed photograph. Martha came forward and took it, with a feeling that the nightmare was being confirmed. It was of a young man in uniform, a young man smiling direct out of the frame, with a young, sensitive, rueful look. ‘Hardly anybody knows,’ Mrs Talbot cried agitatedly, ‘but we were engaged, he was killed in the war – the other war, you know – he was so sweet, you don’t know. He was so nice.’ Her lips quivered. She turned away her face and held out her hand for the photograph.
Martha handed it back and returned to her chair. She was thinking, Well, then, so Elaine must get engaged to that young man; is it conceivable that Mrs Talbot sees Douglas like that?
But more: her mother, Mrs Quest, had been engaged to such another charming young man. This boy, weak-faced and engaging, smiled up still from a small framed photograph on her mother’s dressing table, a persistent reminder of that love which Mr Quest could scarcely resent, since the photograph was half submerged, in fact practically invisible, among a litter of things which referred to her life with him. Martha had even gone so far as to feel perturbed because this boy had not appeared in her own life; she had looked speculatively at Douglas with this thought – but no, weak and charming he was not, he could not take that role.
She sat silent in her chair, frowning; when Mrs Talbot looked at her, it was to see an apparently angry young woman, and one very remote from her. She hesitated, came forward, and kissed Martha warmly on her cheek. ‘You must forgive me,’ she said. ‘We are a selfish lot, we old women – and you probably have troubles of your own. We forget …’ Here she hesitated. Martha was looking through her, frowning. She continued guiltily: ‘And to have children – that’s the best of all, I wish I had a dozen, instead of just one. But Mr Talbot …’ She glanced hastily at Martha and fell silent.
There was a very long silence. Martha was following the nightmare to its conclusion: Well then, so Elaine will find just such a charming young man, and there’s a war conveniently at
