Martha Quest. Doris Lessing

second incident was similar. Charlie, the office-boy, came round with a tray of tea, and then went to speak to Mrs Buss, while she let those dedicated hands rest on the keys like someone not prepared to be interrupted.

      ‘No,’ she said loudly, ‘no, Charlie, it’s no good.’ And she began typing.

      Charlie raised his voice over the noise; she typed faster; he cried, ‘Madam!’

      She stopped suddenly, in a dramatic silence, glared at him, shouted ‘No!’ and at once rattled on.

      Charlie gave an immense, good-natured shrug, and went out. Immediately, Mrs Buss rested her hands, looked around the office, and demanded breathlessly, ‘What do you think of that for cheek?’ The girls laughed sympathetically and, it seemed, did not need to be told why it was cheek.

      Martha, who was at sea, looked closely at Charlie when he came back to collect the empty cups. He was a tall and handsome young man, with a dark bronze skin, a small toothbrush moustache, and careless eyes. He was whistling a dance tune under his breath.

      Mrs Buss watched him over her jigging hands, and then protested sharply, ‘Charlie!’

      ‘Yes, madam?’ he answered at once, turning to her.

      ‘We know you’re a dancing champion, you don’t have to whistle like that,’ she said, without expecting an answer, for she tore a sheet of paper out of her machine and inserted another without looking at him.

      Charlie stopped his muted whistle; and then, with his black and gallant eyes fixed on her, sidled past her towards Mr Cohen’s door.

      ‘It’s all right, I’ll get his cup,’ she said firmly, flushed with anger. She glared at him; he looked back with, it seemed, appreciation of the duel, for his eyes were snapping with amusement.

      ‘Charlie,’ she said furiously, ‘you’re not going to ask Mr Cohen for that money!’

      ‘No, madam,’ he agreed, and gave a large and fatalistic shrug. With a humorous look at her, he went out and began a shrill whistle just outside the door.

      ‘Did you ever see anything like it?’ asked Mrs Buss, faint with indignation. ‘He’d go past me, into Mr Cohen’s office, and ask for an advance!’

      Suddenly Martha asked, ‘What does he earn?’ and knew at once she should not have asked, or at least not in that tone of voice.

      Mrs Buss said aggressively, ‘He earns five pounds a month. It’s more than he’s worth, by about four pounds. Have you ever heard of an office-boy earning that much? Why, even the head cook at McGrath’s earns only seven! Mr Cohen’s so softhearted …’ She was overcome by inarticulate indignation, and continued to type like a demon.

      Martha reflected uneasily that she herself was to earn twelve pounds ten shillings, and an altogether unreasonable protest was aroused in her; for if she supported the complete equality of all races, then she must applaud this small advance towards it. On the other hand, because of her upbringing, she was shocked. She asked the blonde young woman next to her what Charlie did in the office, and was told that he delivered letters by hand, sent others to the post, made the tea and ran errands for the girls in the office.

      ‘He’s a real character, Charlie is,’ the girl added good-humouredly.

      ‘Mr Cohen makes a joke. He says, “The two best-dressed men in town are my brother” – that’s Max, you know – “and my office-boy.”’ She looked at Martha to make sure she would laugh, and when Martha did she continued, ‘I like Charlie. He’s much better than most of the niggers, and that’s saying something, isn’t it?’

      Martha agreed absent-mindedly that it was, while she argued with the voices of her upbringing. She had never heard of a native being paid more than twenty shillings a month. Her father’s boss-boy earned twenty, after ten years’ service. With half her emotions she commended Mr Cohen for his generosity, both to herself and to Charlie, and with the other she fought down an entirely new fear – new to her, that is: she could not help feeling afraid that the gap between her and Charlie was seven pounds and ten shillings, in hard cash.

      At half past four something happened which cannot be described as an incident, since she understood it occurred every day. The girls were covering their typewriters when the door swung open and in came a tall, fair woman, who simply nodded at Mrs Buss and stood waiting. Mrs Buss lifted her telephone receiver.

      ‘Here’s our beauty,’ muttered the blonde girl to Martha. ‘I wouldn’t mind her clothes, would you? These Jews always give their wives everything they want.’

      Well, of course; what could Mr Cohen’s wife be called, if not ‘beauty’? But Martha was troubled by something else – that she was not the only female creature prepared to overlook Mr Cohen’s appearance. It had never entered her head that there could be a Mrs Cohen; but almost immediately the balance was redressed by a fresh conviction of injustice. Mrs Cohen was not, Martha decided, in the least beautiful; whereas Mr Cohen was – in any sense that mattered. Conventionally, she might be called tall, slim and elegant; Martha preferred to describe her as bony, brassyhaired and over-dressed. She wore a clinging white crepe afternoon suit, a white cap with dangling black plumes, and a great deal of jewellery. The jewellery was sound, but colourful. When Mr Cohen came out in answer to Mrs Buss’s call, Martha was still able to feel sorry for him; but she was at once forced to examine this emotion when she understood that all the women around her were feeling the same thing.

      ‘Poor man,’ said Mrs Buss calmly, as she came pushing her own narrow hips this way and that around the sharp desks, and pulling on black suede gloves. ‘Poor man. Oh, well, it’s not my affair.’ And she went out, at a discreet distance from her employer and his wife, watching them jealously.

       Chapter Two

      When Martha arrived in the room she was prepared to call her home, her mother and father were there, and she was angry. She had not expected them for at least a week; it seemed to be monstrously unfair that she had been tormented for years by those terrible preparations for the excursions over a seventy-mile stretch of road, and now, it seemed, there was no more necessity for preparations. Mr and Mrs Quest, like anybody else, had ‘come in for the afternoon’. Mr Quest was talking about the Great War with Mrs Gunn, the landlady, when Mrs Quest gave him an opportunity, for she was concerned to get Mrs Gunn to agree that girls were headstrong and unsatisfactory. Martha could hear this talk going on in the back veranda, through the fanlight of her room, which opened on to it. She sulkily refused to join them, but sat on her bed, waiting for what she expected would be a battle.

      The room was large, and plainly furnished. The iron bed was low and spread with white, and reminded her of her own. There was simple brown coconut matting on the red cement floor, and a French door opened into a small garden filled with flowers. Beyond the garden lay a main road, and the noise was difficult for a country person who had learned not to hear only the din of thunder, the song of the frogs, the chirping crickets. As she sat waiting on her bed, Martha was conscious of strain. She understood that her eardrums, like separate beings, were making difficult and painful movements to armour themselves against the sound of traffic. There was a quivering sensitiveness inside her ears. A big lorry roaring down the tarmac ripped across tender flesh, or so it felt; the ching-ching of a bicycle bell came sharply, almost as if it were in the room. She sat listening and painfully attentive, and at the same time marked the progress of the conversation next door. Her father was winning Mrs Gunn’s attention; it was becoming a monologue.

      ‘Yes, that was two weeks before Passchendaele,’ she heard. ‘And I had foreknowledge of it, believe it or not. I wrote to my people, saying I expected to be killed. I felt as if there was a black cloud pressing down on me, as if I was inside a kind of black velvet hood. I was out inspecting the wire – and then the next thing I knew, I was on the hospital ship.’

      That these words should be following her still made Martha feel not only resentful