A Proper Marriage (64 page)
‘Go back to him,’ she was saying, ‘it serves you right.’ The door shut in Martha’s face.
That cold dark door shut in her face made Martha go sick inside for a moment. Then she said in a bright angry voice, ‘Well, so much for that.’ She turned to Douglas and said, ‘And now let’s go home.’ She set off walking, not caring whether he followed or not. She no longer cared about him one way or the other.
He came up level with her. ‘Lord, what a performance,’
she remarked, laughing angrily. ‘What’s it all about? You don’t believe in it, I don’t believe in it - what do we do it for, then?’
‘I suppose you arranged that so as to have a witness?’ he asked suddenly.
‘What do you mean?’ She had no idea what he was talking about.
They walked the distance in silence. She was not at all afraid of him now. He was not there, for her.
When they reached the bedroom, she said at once, ‘And now I’m going to sleep.’ She fell on the bed fully dressed, and added casually, ‘I shall leave you tomorrow morning.’
She saw a look of satisfied misery on his face. He let out a calculated groan, collapsed on the bed face down. But he was asleep at once.
In the morning he was quite changed. He looked almost obsequious.
‘I
’ll help you to pack,’ he said.
‘I think that’s taking it too far,’ she said. ‘Besides, I am packed.’
‘Well, you’d better take the car for your things.’
‘Oh - I don’t need it.’
‘I suppose
he
will come and fetch them.’
The truth was that she had almost forgotten William.
‘I
’ll tell you one thing,’ he said, in a firm agonizing voice, ‘I shan’t give you a divorce.’
‘I haven’t asked for one,’ she pointed out. Then she added spitefully, ‘I suppose it hasn’t entered your head that I could divorce you for what happened in Y—?’
His face changed. Far from not having thought of it, she saw, he had worked it all out, and had already probably taken legal advice. He had a crafty considering look, and was blinking his eyes, framing a noncommittal answer which would not give him away, when she said with a sort of gay contempt, ‘My poor Douglas, my poor, poor Douglas.’
She picked up her suitcase and looked about. She had forgotten nothing.
‘Do take the car, Matty,’ he pleaded sentimentally.
‘Oh, well, I give up,’ she said. ‘Good, I’ll be delighted to use it. I’ll bring it back in half an hour.’
He carried her case to the car. When they reached it, they saw Mrs Talbot and Elaine coming towards them under the trees, which were lit with early-morning sunlight. They wore pale summer dresses and large straw hats. It was about nine in the morning.
Martha thought. What can have happened to get Mrs Talbot out of bed so early? Then Douglas went forward to welcome them. He had slumped into a pose of weary suffering. His smile at Mrs Talbot was the quivering smile of a child. He shook Elaine’s hand wordlessly. Martha stood dumb. An idea had come into her mind: Obviously Elaine would marry Douglas. Nothing could be more satisfactory. All the same, she felt a pang at the thought of Elaine in her place, Elaine with Caroline. Almost, almost, she gave in and went back.
The three of them, Mrs Talbot, Elaine and Douglas, were standing in a group beside the car, waiting for her to get in.
Suddenly Douglas’s face worked again. ‘Matty, you haven’t said goodbye to Caroline - surely you’ll see her before you go?’
That was for the benefit of Mrs Talbot and Elaine. She saw them exchange the briefest of shocked, comprehending smiles.
She got into the car, which was filled with books at the back. Her two suitcases were beside her. Her eyes were half blinded with tears. But she blinked them clear, and drove away.
As she reached the corner of the street she saw Mr Maynard come strolling down under the trees on his way to the Courts. He raised his hand, and she stopped.
‘Deserting?’ he inquired.
‘Quite so.’
‘You look extraordinarily pleased about it.’ It was true, she was now so elated she felt as light as an air bubble. ‘Well, what are you going to do now?’
She misunderstood him and said, ‘I’m going to drop my things in my room, look for a job, and then - there are five hundred envelopes to be addressed before tomorrow morning.’ She said it as if describing the height of human bliss.
‘Well, well, well,’ he commented.
She slowly let out the clutch.
‘I suppose with the French Revolution for a father and the Russian Revolution for a mother, you can very well dispense with a family,’ he observed. She pushed in the clutch again and looked at him from behind that veil which was between her and the rest of the world. After a while she conceded, ‘That is really a very intelligent remark.’
‘Not at all.’
‘I really am in a hurry, Mr Maynard.’
‘So I can see. I’m not going to forgive you for leaving my goddaughter,’ he said, smiling painfully.
‘I haven’t asked you to,’ she said coldly, wincing. She shrugged herself up in the driver’s seat as if chilly, and her face looked pinched and bleak.
‘Well, good luck, at any rate,’ he said suddenly, rather gruff.
Her smile at him was painful. She was going to cry, he could see. He hastily raised his hat, and walked off in one direction, while the car slid off in another.
was born of British parents in Persia in 1919 and moved with her family to Southern Rhodesia when she was five years old. She went to England in 1949 and has lived there ever since. She is the author of more than thirty books—novels, stories, reportage, poems, and plays. Doris Lessing lives in London.
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“Very impressive…. Portrays modern woman in all her complexity.”
—Literary Horizons
An unconventional woman trapped in a conventional marriage, Martha Quest struggles to maintain her dignity and her sanity through the misunderstandings, frustrations, infidelities, and degrading violence of a Failing marriage. Finally, she must make the heart-breaking choice of whether to sacrifice her child as she turns her bock on marriage and security.
A Proper Marriage
is the second novel in Doris Lessing’s classic Children of Violence series of novels, each a masterpiece in its own right, and, taken together, an incisive and all-encompossing vision of our world in the twentieth century.
“I read the Children of Violence novels and began to understand how a person could write about the problems of the world in a compelling and beautiful way. And it seemed to me that was the most important thing I could ever do.”—B
ARBARA
K
INGSOLVER
“A totally modern work. Martha Quest is, above all, ironically perceived by the author in whose hands irony is an instrument of compassion.”—New
Republic
“One cannot praise the writing too highly … She plays on language as on an instrument with the severe discipline of a professional master.”—Best
Seller
“With deceptive simplicity she reveals more about the private depths of mind and soul than perhaps one ought to know.” —
Daily Telegraph
A
LSO BY
D
ORIS
L
ESSING
N
OVELS
The Grass Is Singing
The Golden Notebook
Briefing for a Descent into Hell
The Summer Before the Dark
The Memoirs of a Survivor
The Diaries of Jane Somers:
The Diary of a Good Neighbor
If the Old Could …
The Good Terrorist
The Fifth Child
“C
ANOPUS IN
A
RGOS
: A
RCHIVES
” S
ERIES
Re: Colonized Planet S-Shikasta
The Marriages Between Zones Three,
Four, and Five
The Sirian Experiments
The Making of the Representative for
Planet Eight Documents Relating to the Sentimental
Agents in the Volyen Empire
“C
HILDREN OF
V
IOLENCE
” S
ERIES
Martha Quest
A Proper Marriage
A Ripple from the Storm
Landlocked
The Four-Gated City
S
HORT
S
TORIES
This Was the Old Chief’s Country
The Habit of Loving
A Man and Two Women
The Temptation of Jack Orkney and Other Stories
African Stories
The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches
The Making of the Representative for Planet Eight (Music by Philip Glass)
P
OETRY
Fourteen Poems
N
ONFICTION
In Pursuit of the English
Particularly Cats
Going Home
A Small Personal Voice
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
The Wind Blows Away Our Words
Particularly Cats … And Rufus
African Laughter
The Doris Lessing Reader
A Proper Marriage
was first published in the United Kingdom by Michael Joseph in 1954. First U.S. edition (in one volume together with
Martha Quest)
was published by Simon & Schuster in 1964.
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First HarperPerennial edition published 1995.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lessing, Doris May, 1919–
A proper marriage: a novel / Doris Lessing. — 1st ed.
p, cm. — (Children of violence series)
ISBN 978-0-06-204793-9
1. Married women—Zimbabwe—Fiction. 2. British—Africa, Southern—Fiction.
I. Title. II. Series: Lessing, Doris May, 1919– Children of violence.
[PR6023.E833P76 1995]
823’.914—dc20
95-33114
07 08 09
RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-04793-9
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