Martha Quest (38 page)

As they entered the town, rather late in the evening—for they had stopped to visit a tobacco-farmer friend of Douglas on the way—Martha happened to glance down towards the Club, and saw a crowd of people massed under the illuminated trees. ‘Let’s drive past,’ she suggested, and they did so. ‘What on earth is going on?’ There were three packing cases stood on end on the pavement, and on these stood three men. ‘An open-air meeting?’ she suggested; and Douglas said critically, ‘Gang of cranks.’ She asked coldly why one shouldn’t have an open-air meeting, but he was frowning, and looked disturbed.

He stopped the car at a distance, and they leaned out; the moon was pouring out light, and it was easy to see. The crowd was entirely white, save for half a dozen native stragglers who were on the outskirts of the crowd, ready to move off if challenged. Policemen stood waiting, white policemen, and their expression of scandalized interest was shared by most of the listening people. The speaker on the tub was a short, strongly built man with rough copper-coloured hair; fragments of Irish speech came floating over the heads of the crowd; ‘humanity’, ‘drift to war’, ‘fascism’, Martha heard and looked at Douglas to share her excitement. But his expression was that of an official faced with something new. It was not usual to have open-air meetings, there was something lawless about them, and therefore he disapproved. It was as simple as that. Martha felt her heart sink, looking at the frowning, rather pompous face. Then she turned to look again. It was rather beautiful. The trees were shining with an intense green, like trees seen through water, and they shook in a faint wind. Overhead, moon-
illuminated clouds drifted quietly. The light shone on the rough copper hair of the speaker, and his eyes glittered steadily. Martha could hardly hear what he said. He was speaking about the necessity for making a pact with Russia to defeat Hitler; the faces of the audience had the passive, watchful look of public opinion faced with something it allows but does not approve. Then Martha, looking into the shadows behind the three men on the boxes, saw Joss and Solly, and Jasmine Cohen; they were with the people Martha had met at the tea party at the school; there was also a rather slight, tall young woman with fair hair wound around her head in plaits, like a school-teacher’s; and Martha found herself vividly jealous of this girl. She longed to leave the car, to go over to the Cohens, and stay with them. The impulse to do so surged up in her, and died as a tired shrug at the thought of undoing all the arrangements that had been made. She turned away quickly, afraid they might have seen her. She was afraid of how they might criticize Douglas; she could see him through their eyes only too clearly.

She saw Douglas looking at her with a cold antagonism. ‘Finished?’ he inquired, as if he had been listening only to please her. He started the car.

‘How conventional you are,’ she remarked acidly, as they went down the street.

‘Trying to draw attention to themselves,’ he said, for some reason red with anger, his eyes protruding. She had never seen him like this.

She said, with quiet dislike, that the essence of a public meeting was to draw attention to oneself.

He was feeding the petrol into the car so fast that it choked, spluttered, stopped. They rolled down the street in silence, while he tried to start the car. When it started, he turned to her, and demanded like a child in a temper, ‘If you’ve changed your mind, Matty, now’s the time to say so,’ and she inquired, ‘About what?’ though she knew quite well. His face grew more red, and seemed to puff out; his eyes were inflamed. She was now wondering sincerely why he was so extremely angry. She asked, reasonably, if he thought there was any
necessity to lose his temper over a meeting he did not agree with. He was silent, breathing heavily; she was more and more astonished; at the same time, she was revolted; she thought he looked vulgar and ugly, puffed out and red with temper, his neck swelling over his collar. She said to herself that now she could free herself, she need not marry him; at the same time, she knew quite well she would marry him; she could not help it; she was being dragged towards it, whether she liked it or not. She also heard a voice remarking calmly within her that she would not stay married to him; but this voice had no time to make itself heard before he turned to her, and asked again, this time quietly and pleasantly, for his anger had subsided, whether she wanted to change her mind. She replied that she did not.

They went straight to the Mathews’s flat, where they were welcomed with food and, above all, drink.

Next day Martha and Douglas moved into their new flat, so that Binkie and his lieutenants could not find them; and lived there like people under siege, while the Mathews brought them supplies. All four spent the time in a state of wild excitement, like a permanent picnic. Also, there were curtains to hang and furniture to arrange, which Stella took it for granted was her prerogative. Martha was rather surprised at the way Douglas recklessly bought whatever took his fancy or hers; the delivery vans were rolling up several times a day with carpets and cupboards and bales of stuff, and when she said nervously, ‘Look, darling, if you’re broke, there’s no need to have all this stuff, surely?’ he exclaimed with a whoop that one only got married once. ‘But you did say you were short of money,’ she suggested, still nervous, for she could not rid herself of the feeling that to make detailed inquiries about his finances would be an unpardonable interference. Besides, he was paying the forty pounds she owed as a result of not being able to live on her salary, and she felt guilty about it. Douglas said that he had saved some money, he had about a hundred pounds, and he was heavily insured and could borrow on it. In fact, what he said now was in contradiction to what he had said before, but Martha as usual shrugged her shoulders. For
the Quests’ attitude towards money could hardly be described as practical.

This letter arrived from Mr Quest on the day before the wedding.

This letter was read by Douglas with an amused grin; while Martha hoped nervously that her father’s persuasion might in fact keep her mother out of town, though she doubted it. Then he let out a whoop, and did a war dance around the room among the bottles and ham rolls and eggs, and said, ‘
We’re
all right, aren’t we?’

For he was very well pleased with everything. The wedding was working out well, for the arrangements were by no means as casual as might appear.

The people who were to be invited were all ‘old friends’ of his
whom she had not been told of until that moment. Mr Maynard, for instance, that respected magistrate; Douglas’s voice had a ring of satisfaction when he mentioned him. There was a Mrs Talbot too; Martha knew her as a very rich and respected lady, who, it seemed, had known Douglas since he was a child. She was giving them a generous cheque. There was to be present, too, a certain member of Parliament, a Colonel Brodeshaw, who had been a friend of Douglas’s father. The head of the department and his wife were to drop in for a glass of champagne afterwards; for there was to be a garden party at Government House that same afternoon, which it was hardly reasonable to expect them to miss, even for a wedding.

It was being impressed on Martha that the wolves, though it seemed Douglas did not consider himself to be one, were also the rising young men of the town, with futures to consider. It made her uneasy, until she comforted herself with the thought, Well, we’re leaving the town, anyway, we’re going to Europe.

When Douglas asked her whom she wanted to invite, she looked at him in amazement, and replied that she didn’t mind. For she persisted in feeling that all this was quite unimportant, her only part in it was to get through with the distasteful business as quickly as possible. And since this feeling remained with her to the end, there is very little to say about the wedding itself. Mrs Quest, certainly, was too upset to describe her emotions when she arrived at ten in the morning in order to ‘dress the bride’ and found that most of the wedding guests were already seated around the bedroom—where Martha was trying to pack—perched in the bed, on top of the dressing table, even on the floor.

Martha was ‘quite wild with happiness’. This is what Stella and Mrs Quest told each other, as they fought, with deadly politeness over who was to arrange the buffet. The two women loathed each other at first sight, and, in consequence of this passion, were inseparable all day. Martha and Douglas were laughing and making jokes against themselves and this unorthodox wedding, trying to finish packing amid clouds of confetti, and drinking champagne in tumblers. At
lunchtime about twenty people, already slightly tipsy, were seething about the tiny flat eating sandwiches and drinking, while Mr Quest, looking resigned but slightly irritated, sat in a corner, flirting with Stella when she came near him, which was not often, since she had to keep an eye on Mrs Quest.

It could be said, then, that the wedding began at about ten in the morning; there was no
moment
at which poor Mrs Quest might emotionally take leave of Martha. Shortly after lunch, Mr Maynard arrived, looking urbane. He shook Douglas by the hand and called him ‘my boy’, was pleasant to Martha, and then suggested that as he had to marry four other hopeful couples that afternoon he would be obliged if they might get it over, otherwise he’d never get finished with the business. Mrs Quest hurried her husband into a position where he could give Martha away, for she had not understood that it was unnecessary in this kind of ceremony.

There was a long pause of unwillingly suspended emotion while Martha signed about nine different documents—‘In triplicate, too!’ she exclaimed aloud, exasperatedly, while her mother said, ‘Hush, dear,’ and Douglas said soothingly, ‘It’s all right, Matty, I thought we might as well get it all done with.’ What the documents were she had no idea.

Mr Quest, seeing that his presence was not needed, retired to stand by Stella, who could now give her attention to fascinating him, and succeeded completely. This afternoon she was brilliantly attractive. She wore sleek black, and a hat streaming with bright green feathers, and supplied a cosmopolitan smartness to the dowdy colonial gathering. Martha was atrociously dressed, and knew it, but had decided it was of no importance.

Mrs Quest waited anxiously immediately behind Martha’s left shoulder, and at the crucial moment when the ring must be put on she grasped Martha’s elbow and pushed forward her arm, so that everyone was able to see how Martha turned around and said in a loud, angry whisper, ‘Who’s getting married, me or you?’

The group then dissolved in tears, kisses, congratulations, and alcohol. In this manner, therefore, was Martha Quest married on a warm Thursday afternoon in the month of March, 1939, in the capital city of a British colony in the centre of the great African continent. Afterwards she could remember very little of the occasion. She remembered a wild elation, under which dragged, like a chain, a persistent misery. She remembered (when time had sorted out what was important from what was not) that someone had been saying that Hitler had seized Bohemia and Moravia, while everyone exclaimed it was impossible. She had heard the information with the feeling she must hurry, there was a terrible urgency, there was no time to waste.

She remembered too, that as she and Douglas, Stella and Andrew were about to leave on their joint honeymoon (for, as Stella was explaining to everyone, she had never had a proper honeymoon before), Mrs Quest stood shaking Mr Maynard by the hand, her face lit by the timid charming smile which was so strange a contrast with the formidable masculine face, while Mr Maynard smiled his usual tolerant comment on life and people.

‘Mr Maynard, you must agree with me, it’s
such
a relief when you get your daughter properly married!’

And Mr Maynard replied, ‘Unfortunately I have no daughter, but if I had, it would be my first concern.’ He involuntarily frowned as he glanced at his watch, and added, ‘I must ask you to excuse me, I’m late for my next, I cannot understand what is coming over our gilded youth, I’ve never known such a year for weddings.’ He hastily flung a handful of confetti in the direction of the departing car, and hurried off on foot to the Magistrate’s Court, which was just down the road.

Halfway there, he saw the wedding car trying to turn down a side street, away from half a dozen pursuing cars. ‘The pack are on the scent,’ he murmured, as he caught sight of Binkie leaning out of the front car, his mouth open in a yell, his eyes staring excitement. The car recklessly shot across the corner of the pavement. It skidded. The following car collided with it. There was a general
screeching of brakes, a smashing of glass, and yells and shrieks of all kinds. The Mathews’s car, hooting derision, sped rocking down the main road south.

Mr Maynard scrupulously averted his eyes from the accident, for he was likely to have to judge it in court—if it came to court, which he hoped they would have the sense to avoid. Really, he thought, it would be the limit if he had Binkie up in front of him on a charge of—what? He glanced over his shoulder. The cars, locked together, were surrounded by a mass of humanity, girls and boys; but they were not arguing with each other, but standing over a black man who had apparently been knocked down. ‘Damn the boy,’ said Maynard furiously, meaning his son. From behind a building, he peered out cautiously. No, the native was getting to his feet and shaking himself. And now it looked as if silver rain were falling from heaven around the man, for the wolves were flinging handfuls of money at him, slapping him on the shoulder, and assuring him he was all right, no bones broken. They were already climbing back into the undamaged cars, to resume the chase after the Mathews’s car.