Read Online A Proper Marriage by Doris Lessing - Free Book Online

the office. You should have woken me before.’ He went whistling into the bathroom, and began shaving.
She went back to bed, propped a hand mirror on a ridge of blanket, and tried to brush her hair into shape. She did not want to be noticed, and each time Douglas came in to fetch something she hastily turned away. But when he at last came in fully dressed, he remarked, ‘Your hair doesn’t do too badly like that.’ He was now in very good spirits. He announced, rubbing his hands, that he must not be late. There would be some sort of show at the office for him - this was the first day he would be at work since his marriage. As he picked up some papers, and gave his usual efficient glance around to see what he might have forgotten, heremarked, ‘And don’t forget the sundowner party tonight at the Brodeshaws.’
Martha said quickly, ‘Douglas …’
He stopped on his way out. ‘I’m awfully late.’
‘Douglas, why can’t we go to England - or somewhere?’ she inquired resentfully. ‘After all, you said …’
But he cut in quickly, ‘There’s going to be a war, and we can’t take chances now.’
The newspaper was lying over the bedclothes - one glance at the headlines was enough. But she persisted. ‘But it would be much better there than here if the war comes - at least we would be really in it.’
‘Now look, Matty, I really am late.’ He went out, hastily.
For some time she remained where she was, surrounded by the lanky sheets of newsprint, by scraps of letter, by the hand mirror, the brush, a tangle of the new white wedding linen. The headlines on the newspaper filled her with nothing but the profoundest cynicism. Then she saw a small book lying open on the bed, and pulled it towards her. She saw it was Douglas’s engagement book, and left it; for it was certainly her strongest principle that a wife who looked at her husband’s letters or pockets was the blackest sort of traitor to decency. But the little book still lay open, at arm’s length. It was, after all, only an engagement book; and these engagements would concern herself. Compromising with her principles by not actually touching it, she moved closer and read the entries for the next two weeks. There was not a day free of sundowner parties, dances, lunches. Most of the names she did not know. The little book, lying beside the crumpled newspaper with its frightening black headlines, provided the strongest comment on her situation. She saw Solly’s letter, with its emphatic scrawl of an address, foundering among billows of sheet. Her anxiety focused itself sharply with: I’ve got to get out of it all. She got up, and dressed rapidly. Her clothes were all crushed from packing; there was nothing to wear but the blue linen from yesterday. But what she looked like, she assured herself, would be quite irrelevant to Solly, who was now monastic and high-minded in his communal settlement. In a few minutes she had left the untidy flat behind, and was in the street.
And no sooner had she turned the corner which shut out the flats, than it seemed as if not only they but her marriage did not exist - so strong was her feeling of being free. She was regarding her marriage, the life she was committed to, with a final, horrified dislike. Everything about it seemed false and ridiculous, and that Matty who apparently was making such a success of it had nothing to do with herself, Martha, now walking at leisure down this street on a cool fine morning. It was only a short walk to the Coloured quarters, and she went slowly, loitering along the pavements under the trees, picking off leaves from the hedges, pulling at the long grass which forced itself up wherever there was a gap in the pavement.
What puzzled her most was that she was a success. The last few weeks, confused, hectic, hilarious, had one thread running through it: the delight of other people in this marriage. How many had not embraced her, and with the warmest emotion! Everyone was happy about it - and