Martha Quest. Doris Lessing

one link missing was joy of any kind. The married couples walked themselves cheerfully around; partners of marked family resemblance stuck together as if their very features bound them; the only members of the party who seemed unbound by these invisible fetters were several small girls between nine or ten and fifteen, who danced together, politely adjusting their movements, while their eyes watched the older members of their society with patient envy, as if anticipating what must seem to them a delicious freedom. The women wore ordinary dresses, the young men stiff suits, in which they looked ugly, or the easy khaki of their farmwear, which made them into handsome peasants. Martha was again humiliated because of her dress, though there was no criticism, only detached curiosity, in the glances she received.

      She looked instinctively towards her partner for support, feeling that his appreciation would sustain her. And this time she really looked at him, and not at the mental image created by the idea of dancing, of one’s ‘first dance’. He was a half-grown, lanky youth, with light hair plastered wetly across a low forehead, and the heavy muscles of shoulders and arms – too heavy for the still boyish frame – distorted the neat clerkly suit. He was regarding her with embarrassed pride, while he jerked her loosely around the dancing space, one stride after another, his arms pumping, with a check at each corner so that they might achieve a change of direction. The truth came into her mind, and at the same moment she stammered out, ‘I don’t know your name’, and he at first stretched his mouth into a polite laugh, as at a jest, and then stopped dead, and dropped his arms, and stood staring at her, while his blunt and honest face went crimson.

      ‘What’s my name?’ he asked; and then, to save them both: ‘You’ve got a funny sense of humour.’ Again he held her in a dancing position, while his limbs laboured through the movements dictated by his mind, and they continued self-consciously around the veranda.

      ‘Well, I haven’t seen you for so long,’ she apologized, and again, even as she spoke, understood that it was he who had sat beside his father at the station; she could not imagine how she had failed to see Billy in this young man.

      ‘Oh, all right, all right,’ he muttered; and then suddenly burst out singing, in Afrikaans, which was as good as saying, ‘We have nothing to say to each other.’

      Others joined in; it was a folk tune, and the small jazzy tune stopped, and someone put on another record. Now all the people on the veranda had arranged themselves quickly into two long lines, facing each other, while they clapped their hands. Martha, who had never seen the old dances, shook her head and fell out, and, as soon as the dancing began, found the spontaneous joy of movement that had been lacking in the other. Everyone enjoyed himself, everyone smiled, and sang; for the few minutes the music lasted, every person on the veranda lost self-consciousness and became part of the larger whole, the group; their faces were relaxed, mindless, their eyes met those of the men and women they must meet and greet in the dance with an easy exchange. It was no longer their responsibility; the responsibility of being one person alone, was taken off them. And soon the music stopped, and the other, newer music, with its wailing complaint, took its place. But Martha had fled, to collect herself, into the kitchen, where Mrs Van Rensberg was arranging the supper.

      Marnie ran after her, pulled her aside and said, ‘It’s all right. I’ve told him you didn’t mean it, you’re not stuck-up, you’re just shy.’

      Martha was resentful that she had been thus discussed, but found herself being pushed forward into Billy’s arms, while Marnie patted them both encouragingly, saying, ‘That’s right, that’s the idea, don’t take offence, man, the night is yet young.’

      Billy held her at arm’s length, and gave her troubled but pleading glances; and she chattered brightly, on a note she knew was false. But she felt cold, and nervous. She wished bitterly she had not come; and then that she was better able to adjust herself, and the small tight critical knot in her could dissolve, and she become one with this friendly noisy crowd of people. She set herself to be nice to Billy, and for this he was half grateful, or at least took it as better than nothing. As the night slowly went by, and they made repeated trips to the buffet inside, where there were ranks of bottles of Cape brandy, and ginger beer, another illusory haze formed itself, within which she was able to persuade herself that Billy was the culmination of the last few days of helpless waiting: even, indeed, that the white frock had been made for him.

      By midnight the house was filled with singing and laughter and the thin churning gramophone music could be heard only in snatches. The crowd had a confined look; the rooms were too full, and couples continually moved to the veranda steps, laughing and hesitating, because outside the ground was churned to a thick red mud, and the moon shone on the puddles left by the storm. Some made a tentative step down, while the others shouted encouragement; then owned themselves beaten, and went to find a private corner in one of the busy rooms, or in the kitchen, where Mrs Van Rensberg stood, hour after hour, slicing the bread, piling cream and fruit on the cakes. Martha saw Marnie seated on the knee of a strange youth while both talked to Mrs Van Rensberg; and she wished enviously that her own mother might be as tolerant and generous. For while she watched Marnie, as a guide to how she might behave herself, she knew it was impossible for her to do the same: she was not so much shocked as dismayed at the way Marnie was with one young man after another, as if they were interchangeable. She saw, too, that it was not her formal dress but the fact that she was dancing only with Billy that set her apart from the others. Yet she could not have gone with anyone else; it would have driven across the current of feeling which said that Billy – or rather, what he represented – had claimed her for the evening; for alcohol had strengthened the power of that outside force which had first claimed her four days before, at the moment she agreed to go to the dance. She was not herself, she was obedient to that force, which wore Billy’s form and features; and to the others it seemed as if she was as helpless to move away from him as he was reluctant to let her go. This absorbed couple who moved in a private dream were felt to be upsetting; whichever room they entered was disturbed by them; and at length Mr Van Rensberg broke the spell by arresting Martha as she trailed past him on Billy’s arm, by pointing his pipestem at her and saying, ‘Hey, Matty, come here a minute.’ She faced him, blinking and visibly collecting herself. The soft look on her face disappeared and she became watchful, gazing straight at him.

      Mr Van Rensberg was a short, strong, thickset man of about sixty, though his round bristling black head showed not a trace of grey and his weathered face was hardly lined. He wore a dark-red scarf twisted thick around his bull neck, though it was swelteringly hot; and over it the small black, mordant eyes were as watchful as hers.

      ‘So your father lets you come visiting us, hey?’ he demanded.

      Martha coloured; and half laughed, because of this picture of her father; and after a hesitation she said, consciously winsome and deferential, ‘You used to come visiting us, not so long ago.’ She checked herself, with a quick glance at the others – for there were several people listening; she feared he might resent this reminder of his long friendship with the Quests.

      But he did not take her up on this point. With a kind of deliberate brutality, he lifted his pipestem at her again, and demanded, Did she admit that the English behaved like brutes in the Boer War?

      At this, she could not help laughing, it was (to her) such an irrelevance.

      ‘It’s not a funny matter to us,’ he said roughly.

      ‘Nor to me,’ said Martha, and then, diffidently: ‘It was rather a long time ago, wasn’t it?’

      ‘No!’ he shouted. Then he quietened, and insisted, ‘Nothing has changed. The English are arrogant. They are all rude and arrogant.’

      ‘Yes, I think that’s true,’ said Martha, knowing it was often true; and then could not prevent herself asking that fatally reasonable question, ‘If you dislike us so much, why do you come to a British colony?’

      There was a murmur from the listening people. There seemed to be many more people in the room than before, they had been crowding in, and Martha found herself thinking how different was this man’s position in his household to her father’s: the silence was due to him as a spokesman, he was a patriarch in a culture where the feared and dominating father is still key to the family