Martha Quest. Doris Lessing

lad, who occasionally lifted puzzled blue eyes towards this girl who walked around and around him, crying with rage, and insisting, ‘It’s not fair, it’s not fair!’ Finally she said, as the hot smell of blood reeked across the sunlight, ‘You’re no better than a butcher!’ With this, she marched away across the red clods of the field, trying to look indifferent. Martha had long since decided that this incident belonged to her childhood, and therefore no longer concerned her; and it made her uncomfortable that Billy might still be remembering it. Altogether the mere idea of Billy aroused in her an altogether remarkable resentment; and she chose not to think of him.

      This was on a Wednesday. During the next day or two she could scarcely eat or sleep; she was in a condition of restless expectation that was almost unbearable. The Saturday dance seemed like an entrance into another sort of life, for she was seeing the Van Rensbergs’ house magnified, and peopled with youthful beings who had less to do with what was likely than with that vision of legendary cities which occupied so much of her imagination. The Quests were watching, with fearful amazement, a daughter who was no longer silent and critical, but bright-eyed and chattering and nervous: a proper condition for a girl going to her first dance.

      Martha was agonized over what to wear, for Marnie, who had been wearing grown-up clothes since she was about thirteen, would of course have evening dresses. Mrs Quest hopefully offered a frilly pink affair which had belonged to a ten-year-old cousin, saying that it came from Harrods, which was a guarantee of good taste. Martha merely laughed, which was what Mrs Quest deserved for she was seeing her daughter as about twelve, with a ribbon in her hair, an Alice-in-Wonderland child, for this vision made the idea of Billy less dangerous. There was a quarrel: Martha began sarcastically to explain why it was that even if she had been twelve she could not have worn this pink frilled georgette to the Van Rensbergs’ house, since nice little English girls were not for export. At length, Mrs Quest withdrew, saying bitterly that Martha was only trying to be difficult, that she needn’t think they could afford to buy her a new one. She had the pink dress ironed and put on Martha’s bed; Martha quickly hid it, for she was really terrified at what the Van Rensbergs might say if they ever caught sight of that charming, coy, childish frock.

      On the Friday morning she telephoned Mr McFarline, and was down at the turn-off waiting for him before nine in the morning.

      Mr McFarline drove more slowly than usual to the station. He was nervous of Martha, who had accepted ten shillings from him, like a child, but who was now using him with the calm unscrupulousness of a good-looking woman who takes it for granted that men enjoy being used. She was looking, not at him, but out of the window at the veld; and he asked at last, ‘And what’s the great attraction at the station?’

      ‘I’m going to buy material for a dress,’ she announced.

      He could think of no approach after that impersonal statement that might make it possible to joke with her, or even ask her for a kiss; and it occurred to him that the stern young profile, averted from him as if he were not there, was not that of a girl one might kiss. Mr McFarline was made to think, in fact, of his age, which was not usual for him. Two years before, this girl and her brother had come riding on their bicycles, over to his mine, eating chocolate biscuits, and listening to his tales of adventurous living, accepting his generous tips with an equally generous embarrassment. No more than two years ago, he had slapped Martha across the bottom, pulled her hair, and called her his lassie.

      He said sentimentally, ‘Your father has no luck, but he’s got something better than money.’

      ‘What’s that?’ asked Martha politely.

      He was driving along a piece of road that was dust between ruts, on a dangerous slant, and it was not for several seconds that he could turn his eye to her face. She was looking at him direct, with a slow quizzical gleam that made him redden. An outrageous idea occurred to him but he dismissed it at once, not because he was afraid of his neighbours knowing his life, but because Martha was too young to acknowledge that she knew: there was something in her face which made him think of his children in the compound, and even more of their mothers.

      With a short, amused laugh, Martha again turned to the window.

      He said gruffly, ‘It’s a fine thing for your father, a daughter like you. When I look at you, lassie, I wish I had married.’

      Once again Martha turned to look at him, her eyebrows raised, her mouth most comically twisted. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you couldn’t marry them all, one can see that.’

      They had reached the station, and he dragged at the brakes. His heavy, handsome face, with its network of tiny red veins, was now a uniform purple. Martha opened the door, got out and said, very politely, ‘Thanks for the lift.’ She turned away, then over her shoulder gave him a delightful amused smile, which at once infuriated Mr McFarline and absolved him of guilt. He watched her walk away, in her rather stiff awkward manner, to Socrates’ store; and he was swearing, Damn little … Then he, too, laughed and went off to town in the best of spirits, though at bottom he was very shocked; for when he was drunk he enjoyed thinking of himself as a sinner, and it was in these moods that the local charities were sent such generous cheques.

      Martha went into the Greek store. It was empty. Socrates was behind the counter, as usual, reading a murder story. He greeted her as ‘Miss Quest’, and showed her what materials he had, apologizing for not having anything good enough for such a fine young lady. He was a short, plump man, with black eyes like raisins, and a pale, smooth skin, and a manner of suggesting that Mr Quest owed him a hundred pounds; and Martha said coldly, ‘No, I’m afraid you’re quite right, you have nothing very attractive, have you?’ She walked out, reluctantly, for there was a piece of green figured silk she would have liked to buy.

      On the veranda she stood hesitating, before plunging into the glare of that dusty space, where the sunlight lashed up from tin roofs and from the shrinking pond. A dark greasy cloud held light like a vast sponge, for the sun rayed out whitely from behind it, like incandescent swords across the sky. She was thinking apprehensively, I hope he doesn’t get angry and send Daddy a bill. She was also thinking, Damned little dago; and checked herself, with guilt, for ‘dago’ was a word she had outlawed.

      She narrowed her eyes to a slit of light, and walked out towards the Cohens’ store. She parted the bead curtain with relief, though blindly, and expected her eyes to clear on the sight of Mr Cohen; but it was Joss who stood there, palms down on the counter, like a veritable salesman, waiting for a native to make up his mind over a banjo. This man, seeing a white person enter, moved aside for her, but she saw Joss’s eyes on her, and said in kitchen kaffir, ‘No, when you’ve finished.’ Joss gave a small approving nod; and she watched the man finger the instrument, and then another, until at last he began counting sixpences and shillings from a piece of dirty cloth that was suspended from his neck. The banjo cost thirty shillings, which was two months’ wages to this farm-worker, and when he left, clutching the instrument with a childlike pleasure, she and Joss exchanged looks which left nothing to say. She even felt guilty that she was coming to buy anything so frivolous as an evening frock; and with this feeling was another, an older one: helpless anger that her father’s debt of a hundred pounds at Sock’s store was more than the farm-worker might earn in the whole of his short life.

      Joss said, ‘And what can I do for you?’ and she watched him pull out the heavy rolls of stuff and stack them along the counter.

      ‘Why are you still here?’ she asked, acknowledging to herself that she had come to get some news of him.

      ‘Delay over the sale. Sock’s working a pretty point. He knows we’re keen to sell out.’

      ‘And so you can’t start university. I don’t see why you should sacrifice yourself,’ she said indignantly.

      ‘My, my, listen to the rebel who never leaves home,’ he remarked, raising his eyes to the fly-covered ceiling, while he competently slipped yards of pink cotton from hand to hand.

      ‘That isn’t why I don’t leave home,’ said Martha stiffly, as if he had been accusing her of wrong feelings.

      ‘You don’t say,’ he said, sarcastically; and then, more gently, when she