Martha Quest. Doris Lessing

he said, and sat down, reached for the newspaper, and covered himself with it.

      ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘We will go in after lunch, and Martha can help me get ready.’

      Her husband’s defiant eyes were hidden by the newspaper, which nevertheless gave a small protesting shake; but Martha’s eyes were lifted towards her, with the sullen enquiry. ‘Why do we have to get ready for half an hour’s trip?’

      ‘Oh well – you know – with everything …’ Mrs Quest lapsed into confusion.

      ‘Good Lord,’ said Martha irritably, ‘to hear us talk, you’d think we were off to England or something.’

      This was a familiar joke, and allowed Mrs Quest to give her girlish and rather charming laugh; though no one else laughed. ‘Well, with this family I’ve got, and no one lifts a finger but me …’ This was not a grumble, but an appeal that please, please, for pity’s sake, they should laugh, this irritable, resisting couple, and make things easier. She sighed, as Martha’s face remained glum and the newspaper was held firmly upright against her.

      Next morning at breakfast she said, ‘Don’t forget we’re going to the station.’

      Now he was resigned, ‘Must we?’

      ‘Yes, we must. Besides, you know you’ll enjoy it once we get there.’

      This was a mistake. ‘I do not enjoy it. I loathe it. Besides, we haven’t any petrol.’

      ‘There’s a spare tin in the storeroom,’ said Mrs Quest firmly. And now there was no help for it; Mr Quest groaned, and accepted his fate; and as he went off to the garage he even looked interested; the cloud of introspection was lifting, and his eyes intently followed what his hands did. It always worried Martha, made her uneasy, to see how those brooding eyes must concentrate, force themselves outwards, watching his hands as if they were clumsy creatures that were separate from himself.

      The garage was a roof of tin over two walls of plastered logs, open at each end; and he reversed the car slowly out into the bush, so that it bounced and jerked over the rough ground, and then forwards into an empty space. Then he got out, and stood frowning at the car. It was a very old Ford; the paint had gone; there were no side curtains – they had been lost somewhere; one door was tied with rope; and a part of the canvas hood, which had decayed into holes, was thatched over. He had bought it for thirty pounds, ten years before.

      ‘The engine’s as good as ever,’ he murmured proudly. And he called Martha to say, ‘It isn’t the body of a car that matters. Only fools pay good money for paint and varnish. What matters is the engine.’ He liked to have Martha there when he attended to the car; he would even send the servant to fetch her. Now, Martha did not mind about how cars looked; but she was irritated because of this one’s extreme slowness; so her face was as absent and dreamy as his own while he fetched water in a watering can, and fed the radiator, and took off the rope from the useless handle and retied it. Slowly, because he got no response to his remarks, he began glaring at her. ‘It’s all very well,’ he would begin, ‘it’s all very well for you …’ More often than not, the sentence was never finished, for a humorous look would come over her face, and their eyes met.

      ‘Oh, Daddy,’ she protested, grumbling, ‘why is it all very well, I haven’t said a word!’ Here she might begin edging away, with longing glances at the house. It was so hot; the heat and light glittered into her eyes from the battered old car. ‘Where are you going?’ he demanded, sounding offended; and she returned to sit on the running board, opening the book she had held in her hand. Now he was mollified, and he sounded cheerful, as he stroked the warm thatch on the roof, and said, ‘I always did like thatching, there’s something about the look of a nice piece of thatch. I remember my cousin George – he was an expert thatcher, back home. Of course, he knew his job, not like these damned niggers, they slam it on any old how. When you go back to England, Matty, the first thing you must do is go to Colchester and see if George’s kids are half the man their father was – if so, you’ll see a piece of thatching you’ll find nowhere else in the world. Matty!’ he shouted at her bent and absorbed head.

      ‘What?’ she asked, exasperated, lifting her eyes from the book.

      ‘You’re not listening.’

      ‘I am listening.’

      ‘It’s all very well for you,’ came the grumbling voice.

      When he had fiddled with the car for an hour or so, he came back to the house, followed by Martha, and demanded tea. He would not go down the farm that day. And then, about twelve o’clock, he began worrying that the lunch was late and they would never get off that afternoon.

      ‘But Alfred,’ said poor Mrs Quest, ‘first you won’t go at all, and then you start fussing hours before –’

      ‘It’s all very well, you haven’t got to nurse a twenty-year-old car over these roads.’

      Martha gritted her teeth in anger. Standing on the hill, one could see the other farmers’ cars racing through the trees, like tiny black beetles, the red dust spurting up behind them. Other people made the journey to the station in a few minutes.

      After lunch, the anxious Mr Quest went to the car and again tested the radiator. It was likely to be empty; and then he would call for half a dozen eggs, and break them one after another into the cavity. The eggs would form a sticky sediment over the leaky bottom of the radiator. Once someone had suggested mealie meal, which he had tried immediately, with all the cautious enthusiasm of the scientific experimenter. ‘There must be something in it,’ he murmured as he poured handfuls of the white floury stuff into the car. But halfway along the track, the cap shot off with an explosion, and lumps of porridge flew all over the windscreen, so that the car came to a blind and sliding stop against a large tree. ‘Well,’ said Mr Quest thoughtfully, ‘that’s interesting. Perhaps if one used a finer grain it might …’

      On the whole, eggs were more predictable; though it was important not to drive too fast, and to stop frequently, so that the engine might cool, as otherwise the water might boil the clotted egg off the bottom of the radiator, and then …

      After lunch Mr Quest called peremptorily, ‘May! Matty! Come on, the engine’s started, we must go.’ And Mrs Quest, half laughing, half grumbling, ran to the car, adjusting her hat, while Martha followed unhurriedly, with a look of exhausted resignation.

      The car was poised at the edge of a flattish space, on the brow of the hill. Mr Quest sat urgently forward, clasping the brake with one hand, hugging the steering wheel with the other.

      ‘Now!’ he exclaimed, letting go the brake. Nothing happened. ‘Oh, damn it all,’ he groaned, as if this were the last straw. ‘Come on, then.’ And he and Mrs Quest began swinging back and forth in their seats, so the car was joggled inch by inch over the edge, and slid precariously down the rutted pebbly road to the foot of the hill, where there was a great ditch. Into this it slid, and stopped. ‘Oh, damn it all,’ Mr Quest said again, on a final note, and looked around at his women in an aggrieved way.

      He tried the starter, without much hope. It worked at once, and the car flew up over the edge of the ditch in a screeching bounce, and down the track between the mealie fields. The maize stood now in its final colouring, a dead silvery gold, dry as paper, and its whispering against the wind was the sound of a myriad fluttering leaves. Below this Hundred Acres Field lay the track, the old railroad track, and now Mr Quest stopped the car, got out, took off the radiator cap, and peered in. There was a squelchy bubbling noise, and a faintly rotten smell. ‘It’s all right so far,’ he said, with satisfaction, and off they went.

      Halfway, they stopped again. ‘At three and a half miles, the petrol ought to show …’ murmured Mr Quest, looking at the petrol gauge. For it was seven miles to the station. Or rather, it was five and three-quarters; but just as it was seven miles to the Dumfries Hills (in fact, six) and seven to Jacob’s Burg (at least nine), so the distance to the station must be seven miles, for to have a house in the dead centre of a magically determined circle offers satisfaction beyond