Martha Quest (36 page)

She was hurtled along this straight road, and it seemed as if the framework of the car hardly existed; she was carried along on movement itself, the sun immediately above, naked and powerful, the loins and breast of light, while the earth’s heat rose to meet it, in a rank and swelling smell of growth and wetness. The car flung her, so it seemed, through the air; and other cars, flying past, signalled the recognition of travellers in space with the flash of sunlight from hot metal. On and on; the town was a long way behind, the farm was not yet reached; and in between these two lodestones, this free and reckless passage through warmed blue air. How terrible that it must always be the town or the farm; how terrible this decision always one thing or the other, and the exquisite flight between them so short, so fatally limited…Long before they had reached the station, the wings of exaltation had sunk and folded. Martha was bracing herself to meet her parents. She was going to fight and win. They tore through the station. She noted briefly that not only the Cohens’ store had ‘Socrates’ written over it; the Welshman had gone—it was Sock’s Imperial Garage now. The puddle by the railway lines was brimming. The sky shimmered bluely in it, and through this illusory sea floated some fat white ducks, each leaving a ruffling wake of brown water.

The car turned, with a bounce, into the farm road. In the dry season, it was thick brown dust. In the wet, it was a lane of rich, treacly red mud. Now, in the short drought, the mud had hardened in deep
fanged ruts where the wagons had passed. Binkie’s town car began to groan and rattle.

‘You can’t go fast over this road,’ said Martha, and it was the first remark she had made for half an hour. She added nervously, ‘You know, I think I ought to say…’ She stopped, feeling disloyal to her parents. It flashed across her mind that Douglas might be shocked by their poverty; but since she was now allied to him, and she would have scorned to be shocked by anyone’s poverty, this was a new and confusing sort of disloyalty. She left this problem to fend for itself, and finished what she had intended to say. ‘About my father. He wasn’t actually wounded or anything, or at least not much, just a flesh wound, but—well, the war seems to have got hold of him. He doesn’t think about anything but war and being ill,’ she concluded defiantly.

Douglas said pleasantly, being the decent young man he was, ‘Well, Matty, I’m marrying you and not your father.’

She reached for his hand. Clinging to it, she allowed herself to be comforted into security. Suddenly they reached the spot where the road entered the big field. ‘I say, this is-is something like,’ approved Douglas, slowing the car. The maize was strong and green, a warm green sea glancing off golden light, while the dark red earth showed momentarily along the dissolving lanes as the car crawled past. But Martha was looking apprehensively at the house. Now the trees had filled with leafage, the house was crouched low among them, nothing but a slope of dull thatch. She said to herself, Now, don’t let yourself be bullied, don’t give in. And with Martha in this defiant mood, they reached the homestead.

Mr and Mrs Quest were standing waiting outside the house. Mr Quest was smiling vaguely. Mrs Quest’s smile was nervously welcoming; and at the sight of it, Martha began to feel uneasy. All through her childhood, at school or when she was away staying with friends, those letters had been flung after her, terrible letters, so that reading them Martha had cried, She’s mad, she must be mad! She had returned determined to resist the maniac who had written those letters, only to see her mother smiling uncertainly, a tired-looking
Englishwoman with unhappy blue eyes. And so it was now: before Martha had even got out of the car, she knew a most familiar feeling of helplessness. Douglas glanced at her, as if to say, You’ve been exaggerating, and Martha shrugged and looked away from him.

Douglas shook Mr Quest by the hand and called him ‘sir’ when he reached for Mrs Quest’s hand, she bent forward and kissed his cheek. She was now smiling a timid welcome.

‘Well,’ she said humorously, ‘and so you crazy youngsters have come, I’m so glad.’

Martha, stunned as usual, was kissed by her mother, and received a pleasant ‘Well, old son?’ from her father. Then he said, ‘If you don’t mind, it’s time for the news, I must just go inside for a minute.’

‘Good heavens,’ said Mrs Quest, ‘so it is, we can’t miss that.’

They went inside to the front room, and turned on the wireless. Mr and Mrs Quest leaned forward in their chairs, listening intently while an announcer repeated Hitler’s assurances that he intended no further conquests in Europe. When the announcer began to talk about cricket, Mrs Quest turned the wireless down, and said with satisfaction that it wouldn’t be long now before war started. Mr Quest said that if Chamberlain didn’t listen to Churchill, England would be unprepared again, but it didn’t matter, because England always won in the end.

Martha was opening her mouth to join in angry argument, when she noted that Douglas was politely agreeing with both her parents. She therefore deflated, sat back, and listened while Mr Quest explained to Douglas that, according to prophecy, Armageddon was due almost immediately, there would be seven million dead lying around Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives would be split in twain (probably by a bomb) and God would appear, to separate the believers from the faithless. Here his voice changed, and he remarked, with an irritated eye fixed on Martha, that Douglas might not know it, but Martha was not only a socialist, which was not important, since it was only a disease natural to her age, but an atheist as well.

Martha was expecting Douglas to say that he was also an atheist,
but he merely said that he thought what Mr Quest said was so interesting, and perhaps he could borrow some pamphlets sometime.

Martha therefore sank into comforting dependence on Douglas, although somewhere within her was a protesting voice remarking that he needn’t treat her father as if he were a child. Then she told herself that he
was
a child, and Douglas was quite right. At the thought, she felt sad, and looked unhappily at her father, for he seemed even more distracted than before. He seemed to be thinner, and his hair was greying fast. The handsome dark eyes peered with a remote and angry gleam from under shelves of bristling white hair. Surely, wondered Martha, he has not changed so much in a few weeks? Was it that she had not noticed, living so close to him, that he was becoming an old man? At the thought that her father was old, her heart contracted painfully; and she said to herself, Nonsense, most of his diseases are imaginary, and anyway, people can live for years and years with diabetes. In fact, because
she
could not endure the thought that her father might die, she assured herself he was hardly ill at all. All the same, she longed to comfort him, but this was impossible, for one half of her attention was still standing at the alert, waiting for the scene which surely was due to start at any moment. She was nervously watching her mother, but quite soon Mrs Quest said she must go and give orders about lunch, the new boy was so stupid he couldn’t even lay the table, and she had to do everything herself.

Mr Quest, having finished a long explanation of how Russia was the Antichrist, and therefore the war could not start until the sides had become reshuffled in some way, remarked, ‘Well, there was something I wanted to say.’ He glanced apprehensively over his shoulder towards where his wife had gone, and said, ‘I didn’t want to say anything in front of your mother, she’s not—well she doesn’t understand this kind of thing.’ He paused, staring at the ground for a few moments, and then went on, as if there had been no interruption: ‘I suppose you two are not getting married because you’ve got to? Matty isn’t in any sort of trouble?’ He looked uncomfortably at the silent couple, the frail white skin of his face flushing. He does look old,
thought Martha miserably, trying to look courageously at this new vision of him; for, in spite of everything, she had always thought of him as a young man.

Douglas said, ‘No, sir, there’s nothing of the kind.’

Mr Quest stared disbelievingly at him. ‘Well, why get married in such a hurry, people will talk, you know.’

‘
People
,’ said Martha scornfully.

‘I daresay,’ said her father angrily. ‘Well, I don’t care, it’s your affair, but what people say causes more trouble than you seem to think.’ He paused again, and said appealingly, ‘Matty, I wouldn’t like to think of you getting married when you didn’t really want to—of course, this has nothing personal in it, Douglas.’ Douglas nodded reassuringly. ‘Because if you are in the family way, then we’ll do something about it, provided your mother doesn’t know,’ he said aggressively, with another glance over his shoulder.

The words ‘family way’ caused Martha acute resentment, and with a glance at her face, her father said, ‘Oh, very well, then, if it’s all right, I’m glad to hear it.’ He then began telling Douglas about his war, while Martha waited, with her nerves on edge, for him to say, ‘But that was the Great Unmentionable, and of course you don’t want to hear about that, you’re all too busy enjoying yourselves.’

Douglas said politely that he was very interested in everything Mr Quest said; and Mr Quest’s face brightened, and then he sighed, and said, ‘Yes, it’s starting again, and I’m out of it, they wouldn’t have me. I’m too old.’

Martha could not endure this. She abruptly got up and went out.

Her mother was returning from the kitchen. Martha braced herself for the opposition that must come, but Mrs Quest hurried past, saying, ‘I must get him his injection, and there’s his new tonic, oh, dear, and where have I put it?’ But she checked herself, and came back, saying quickly, with a downward look at Martha’s stomach, ‘You’re not—I mean, you haven’t…?’ Her eyes were lit with furtive interest.

Martha snapped out coldly, with as much disgust as Mrs Quest
might have considered due to the cause of the possible event, ‘No, I’m not pregnant.’

Mrs Quest looked abashed and disappointed, and said, ‘Oh, well, then, if you are—well, I mean, but your father shouldn’t know, it would kill him.’ She hurried away.

At lunchtime Mrs Quest inquired whether they wanted to be married at the district church, and Martha said hotly that they were both atheists, and it would be nothing but hypocrisy to be married in church. She was expecting an argument, but Mrs Quest glanced at Douglas, and sighed, and let her face drop, and finally muttered, ‘Oh, dear, it really isn’t very nice, is it?’

That evening, when Martha went to her bedroom, she sat on the edge of her bed, and pointed out to herself that not only had her parents accepted the marriage, but she could expect her mother to take full control of the thing. In fact, she already felt as if it concerned her mother more than herself. The door opened, Mrs Quest entered, and she said that she was going to come into town with Martha on Monday to buy her trousseau. Martha said firmly that she didn’t want a trousseau. They wrangled for a few moments; then Mrs Quest said, ‘Well, at least you should have a nightdress.’ She blushed furiously, while Martha demanded, ‘Whatever do I want a nightdress for?’

‘My dear child,’ said her mother, ‘you must. Besides, you hardly know him.’ At this she blushed again, while Martha began to laugh. Suddenly good-natured, she kissed her mother and said she would be delighted to have a nightdress, and it was very nice of her to suggest it.

But Mrs Quest hesitated, and then asked, ‘What kind of an engagement ring is he getting you?’

Now, neither Martha nor Douglas had thought of an engagement ring, and Martha said, ‘There isn’t any need for an engagement ring. Anyway, he can’t afford it.’

Mrs Quest took a diamond ring from her finger, and said nervously, sounding guilty, ‘Now, do be sensible, think what people will say, wear it for my sake, so people won’t think…I mean, Marnie had such a lovely ring, and…’

The usual anger rose in Martha, succeeded by a kind of apathy. She took the ring, and slipped it on her engagement finger. It was a fine ring, a conventional five-stoned affair, but it had no beauty; it was a ring that said, Here are five expensive diamonds displayed in a row. Martha thought it unpleasant; besides, the cold metal sank into her flesh like a chain. She hastily took it off, and handed it back, laughing weakly and saying, ‘Oh, no, I don’t want a ring.’

‘Now, please, Matty,’ said Mrs Quest, almost in tears.

Martha looked at her mother in astonishment. She shrugged, and put the ring back, while Mrs Quest embraced her, and again there was a guilty look on her face.

When her mother had gone, Martha removed the ring and laid it on the dressing table. She was now feeling lost and afraid. She was vividly conscious of the night outside, the vast teeming night, which was so strong, and seemed to be beating down into the room, through the low shelter of the thatch, through the frail mud walls. It was as if the house itself, formed of the stuff and substance of the veld, had turned enemy. Inside the thatch, she knew, were a myriad small creatures, spiders, working ants, beetles; once a snake had been killed—it was coiled between the thatch and the top of the wall. Under the thin and cracked linoleum that clothed the stamped mud floor, the shoots from the trees cut two decades ago were struggling upwards, sickly white, to seek the light. Sometimes they pushed the linoleum aside, and had to be cut level. Martha, hating the room, went to the window. The light of the stars was strong and white, there was a sheet of white hazy light over the mealie fields. She was even more afraid. She looked at the door leading to her parents’ room. It was open. It had stood open all night ever since she could remember. She thought now, with a half-derisive grin, how often her father had complained, ‘Can’t we shut the door now, May? The kids are old enough, they won’t choke in their sleep.’ But Mrs Quest could never bring herself to treat that door as one that might be shut. The other door, which opened into the end room, had also stood open. In fact,
it could not shut, because the lintel had swollen to a bulge. Now, however, this door was closed and fastened with a heavy padlock, of the kind that was used to secure the storeroom against the native servants. Martha went silently to examine this door, and found that the lintel had been planed flat, showing startingly white, like new wood.