A Proper Marriage
The second book in the Nobel Prize for Literature winner’s ‘Children of Violence’ series tracing the life of Martha Quest from her childhood in colonial Africa to old age in post-nuclear Britain.‘A Proper Marriage’ sees twenty-something Martha beginning to realise that her marriage has been a terrible mistake. Already the first passionate flush of matrimony has begun to fade; sensuality has become dulled by habit, blissful motherhood now seems no more than a tiresome chore. Caught up in a maelstrom of a world war she can no longer ignore, Martha’s political consciousness begins to dawn, and, seizing independence for the first time, she chooses to make her life her own.
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A Proper Marriage
Book Two of the ‘Children of Violence’ series
Doris Lessing
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph 1954
Copyright © Doris Lessing 1954
Doris Lessing asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780586089996
Ebook Edition © MAY 2010 ISBN: 9780007406920 Version: 2014-09-15
Table of Contents
It was half past four in the afternoon.
Two young women were loitering down the pavement in the shade of the sunblinds that screened the shop windows. The grey canvas of the blinds was thick, yet the sun, apparently checked, filled the long arcade with a yellow glare. It was impossible to look outwards towards the sun-filled street, and unpleasant to look in towards the mingling reflections in the window glass. They walked, therefore, with lowered gaze as if concerned about their feet. Their faces were strained and tired. One was talking indefatigably, the other unresponsive, and – it was clear – not so much from listlessness as from a stubborn opposition. There was something about the couple which suggested guardian and ward.
At last one exclaimed, with irritated cheerfulness, ‘Matty, if you don’t get a move on, we’ll be late for the doctor.’
‘But, Stella, you’ve just said we had half an hour to fill in,’ said Martha as promptly as if she had been waiting for just this point of fact to arise, so that she might argue it out to its conclusions. Stella glanced sharply at her, but before she could speak Martha continued, deepening the humorous protest, because the resentment was so strong, ‘It was you who seemed to think I couldn’t get through another day of married life without seeing the doctor, not me. Why you had to fix an appointment for this afternoon I can’t think.’ She laughed, to soften the complaint.
‘It’s not easy to get an appointment right away with Dr Stern. You’re lucky I could arrange it for you.’
But Martha refused to be grateful. She raised her eyebrows, appeared about to argue – and shrugged irritably.
Stella gave Martha another sharp look, tightened her lips with calculated forbearance, then exclaimed, ‘That’s a pretty dress there. We might as well window-shop, to fill in the time.’ She went to the window; Martha lagged behind.
Stella tried to arrange herself in a position where she might see through the glass surface of reflections: a stretch of yellow-grained canvas, a grey pillar, swimming patches of breaking colour that followed each other across the window after the passers-by. The dresses displayed inside, however, remained invisible, and Stella fell to enjoying her own reflection. At once her look of shrewd good nature vanished. Her image confronted her as a dark beauty, slenderly round, immobilized by a voluptuous hauteur. Complete. Or, at least, complete until the arrival of the sexual partner her attitude implied; when she would turn on him slow, waking eyes, appear indignant, and walk away – not without throwing him a long, ambiguous look over her shoulder. From Stella one expected these pure unmixed responses. But from her own image she had glanced towards Martha’s; at once she became animated by a reformer’s zeal.
From the glass Martha was looking back anxiously, as if she did not like what she saw but was determined to face it honestly. Planted on sturdy brown legs was a plump schoolgirl’s body. Heavy masses of lightish hair surrounded a broad pale face. The dark eyes were stubbornly worried, the mouth set.
