A Proper Marriage. Doris Lessing
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soon when I asked you – but we old women must be allowed our weaknesses …’
Martha was astounded by that ‘old women’; but there was no suggestion of coyness in it. She tried to peer through the dark, for she was longing to see how Mrs Talbot must look before she had created herself for her public. All she could see was a slender figure in an insinuating rustle of silks, perched on the bed. Mrs Talbot lit a cigarette; almost at once the red spark was crushed out again; Martha saw that this flutter was due simply to a routine being upset.
‘I rang up my hairdresser when I heard your voice, I told him not to come this morning. I’m sure it won’t hurt me to show an inch or so of grey just for once. When you reach the age of going grey, Matty darling, don’t be silly and dye your hair. It’s an absolute martyrdom. If I had only known …’
Martha was now able to see better. Mrs Talbot’s face came out of the shadow in a splash of white. It was some kind of a face mask. ‘Shall I go out till you are dressed?’ she suggested awkwardly.
But Mrs Talbot rose with a swirl of silk and said, ‘If you don’t mind it all, Matty, I’d adore you to stay.’ There was a nervous gasp of laughter; she was peering forward to see Martha, to find out her reaction. It occurred to Martha that the apology, the deference, was quite sincere and not a pose, as she had assumed. Mrs Talbot’s nervousness was that of a duchess who had survived the French Revolution and timidly continued to wear powdered curls in the privacy of her bedroom because she did not feel herself in the new fashions.
Martha saw the slight figure rise, go to the window, and tug at a cord. At once the room was shot with hazy yellow light. Mrs Talbot was wearing a shimmering grey garment with full flounced sleeves; she was covered in stark-white paste from collarbones to hairline, and from this mask her small eyes glimmered out through black holes. Her pale smooth hair was looped loosely on her neck; there was no sign of grey. She sat before a large dressing table and dabbed carefully at her face with tufts of cotton wool. The room was long, low, subdued, with shell-coloured curtains, dove-grey carpet, and furniture of light, gleaming wood which looked as if it had been embroidered; it had a look of chaste withdrawal from the world; and Mrs Talbot was a light, cool, uncommitted figure, even when she was poised thus on her stool, leaning forward into her mirror, her submissive charm momentarily lost in a focus of keen concentration. Her skin was emerging patchily from under the white paste, and she muttered, ‘In a minute, Matty.’
Soon she rose and went to an old-fashioned washstand, where a graceful ewer stood in a shining rose-patterned basin. It was clear that taps running hot and cold would be too much of a modern note in this altar to the past. Mrs Talbot splashed water vigorously over her face, while the air was pervaded by the odour of violets. In the meantime Martha, still examining every detail of the room, had noticed the bed. It was very big – too big, she thought involuntarily, for Mrs Talbot. Then she saw it was a double bed, with two sets of pillows. She must readmit Mr Talbot, whom she had again forgotten. This bed, untidy and sprawling, gave Martha the most uncomfortable feeling of something unseemly: it was, she saw, because a man’s pyjamas lay where they had been flung off, on the pillow. There were of maroon-striped silk, and strongly suggested the person of Mr Talbot, as did a jar of pipes on the bed table. So uncomfortable did this make Martha that she turned away from the bed, feeling her face hot. Mrs Talbot, however, returning from her ablutions, could not be aware of how Martha was feeling, for she carelessly rolled 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