Martha Quest. Doris Lessing

her face was hot with embarrassment. It had been so painful she could not bear to remember what had happened. What she must remember was that she had no qualifications whatsoever.

      She understood, finally, the extent of the favour Mr Cohen was doing her; and next morning she was at her desk in a very chastened frame of mind. Her eyes were certainly opened, but she had no time to use them, for long before that first document was finished, several more arrived on her desk, and it was lunchtime before she knew it. She was very incompetent. She tried to persuade herself that the papers she sent in, neatly clipped and tied with green tape in the form of the exquisite, faultless documents Mrs Buss turned out with such ease, were satisfactory. Mr Max Cohen received them with a noncommittal glance and a nod; and later Martha saw Mrs Buss doing them again. She was given no more. For a whole day she sat idle at her desk, feeling sick and useless, wishing that she could run away, wondering what would happen.

      The fair, plump girl, Miss Maisie Gale, who sat next to her said consolingly, ‘Don’t lose any sleep over it. Just do what you can get away with, that’s my motto.’

      Martha was offended, and replied with a stiff smile. Later, she was told to go to Mr Jasper Cohen’s office, and she went, while her heart beat painfully.

      The ugly man was waiting quietly in his chair. It seemed to Martha that the pale face was paler than ever, and the flat, brownish-mauve lips moved several times before any sound came out. Then he pulled himself together. He settled the ungainly body firmly back in his chair, lifted a pencil with that fat protuberant hand, and said gently, ‘Miss Quest, I think we were mistaken in putting you on to skilled work so soon. I thought you said you had learned to type.’

      ‘I thought I had,’ said Martha ruefully; and she was conscious that in using that tone she was again trading on the personal relation.

      ‘Well, well, it doesn’t matter; it couldn’t have been easy, learning by yourself, and I propose you take the following course. Will you go down to the Polytechnic and take lessons in shorthand and typing for a few months, and in the meantime you can work with Miss Gale. You must learn to file too, and it won’t be wasted, in the long run.’

      Martha eagerly assented, and at the same time registered the fact that working with Miss Gale was beneath her. She was surprised and flattered, for all the women in the office seemed so immeasurably above her, in their self-assurance and skill, that she saw them through a glowing illusion. She understood, too, that Mr Cohen was now about to give her a lesson, very kindly and tactfully, and she must listen carefully.

      ‘You see, Miss Quest, you are very young – you won’t mind me saying that, I hope? It is obvious you are intelligent, and – well, if I may put it like this, you’re not considering getting married next week, are you?’ He was smiling, in the hopeful but uncertain way of a person who finds it hard to make amusing remarks; and Martha quickly laughed, and he gratefully joined in. ‘No. Of course not. At eighteen there’s plenty of time. You shouldn’t marry too quickly. In this country I think there’s a tendency – however, that’s not my affair. Well, most girls work in an office simply to pass the time until they get married – nothing wrong with that,’ he hastened to assure her. ‘But my policy – our policy – is, I think, rather unusual: that we do not believe married women make bad workers. Some firms dismiss women as soon as they marry, but you will have noticed that all our senior girls are married.’

      Martha saw, with fresh humiliation, that she had been expected to notice things of this sort, and she had not.

      ‘My policy – our policy – is, that there is no reason why girls should not have a good time and work well too, but I would suggest to you that you don’t get into the way of some girls we have – oh, they’re very useful, and we couldn’t do without them, but they seem to think that because they will get married one day, that is all that can reasonably be expected of them.’ Here Martha glanced quickly at him; there was a resentful note that could have nothing to do with herself. Again Mr Cohen eased his great body in his chair, fingered the pencil, seemed to be on the point of speaking, and then said abruptly, ‘I think that’s all. You will forgive me for making these remarks. I feel, we feel – in short, you have undoubted capacities, Miss Quest, and I hope you will use them, for efficient secretaries are rare. Which is remarkable, when you think of it, since most women these days seem to train to be secretaries?’ On that query he paused and reflected and then said, ‘I hope you don’t feel that being a secretary is not a worth-while career?’

      Martha assured him that she wanted to be an efficient secretary, even while she felt quite indignant; she felt herself capable of much more. She thanked him, went back to her desk, and once again sat idle. She was waiting for someone to direct her; then she understood she was now expected to direct herself, and went to Mrs Buss, asking for information about the Polytechnic.

      Mrs Buss’s face cleared into a gratified relief that seemed to Martha offensive; and she took a piece of paper from her desk, with clear directions as to classes and times. Then she delivered herself – with a pause between each, for assent – of the following remarks: ‘I’m glad you’ve got some sense … You don’t want to get like these girls here, sitting with their eyes on the clock, just waiting till their boy friends fetch them at half past four, and out all night and then so tired next day they just sit yawning … There’s plenty of work here, believe me, for those with the intention to do it.’ And finally, her china-blue eyes fixed on Martha’s: ‘When you’ve got someone to work for as good as Mr Cohen, then you work your best?’ Martha said yes; but it was not enough. ‘I’ve worked for my living since I was fifteen, and in England till two years ago, and in England girls are expected to be efficient, it’s not like here, where they can get married for the asking, and I’ve never known anyone like Mr Cohen.’ Martha said yes; and Mrs Buss insisted challengingly, ‘He’s got a heart as big as his body,’ and this time Martha said yes with real feeling, and she was released.

      And now Martha was able to understand – but only since it had been pointed out to her – the real division in this closely packed mass of women. When Miss Gale leaned over and whispered, like a schoolgirl, ‘Get off easily?’ she replied coldly, ‘I’m going to the Polytechnic,’ and Miss Gale shrugged and looked indifferently away, like one who does not intend to show she feels her cause has been deserted. But Martha looked away from this group she had been put into with envy and admiration for the four secretaries and for the two accountants who sat side by side over their big ledgers. She intended, in fact, to emulate the skilled; and her eyes, when she regarded the complacent Miss Gale, were scornful. These women had in common not that they were younger, or even more attractive, than the others, but a certain air of tolerance; they were paying fee to something whose necessity they entirely deplored.

      After work, Martha walked the hundred yards or so to the Polytechnic, which was further down Founders’ Street. It was a low brown building, though now it swarmed with activity; and its front was barricaded by stacked bicycles. Martha, as usual doing nothing by halves, enrolled herself for classes which would take up every evening of her week, and walked home through the park, where the paths already glimmered pale among the darkening trees, her mind filled with visions of herself in Mrs Buss’s place, though they were certainly lit by the highly coloured experimental glow that had coloured earlier visions of herself as a painter, a ballet dancer or an opera singer, for like most people of her age and generation she had already tasted every profession, in mind at least.

      When she reached her room, she imagined for a moment she had come to the wrong place, for through the light curtains across the french door she could see a shape she did not know. She hesitantly entered at last, and there stood a young man who asked, ‘Martha Quest? My mother had a letter from your mother and –’ He stopped, and looked appreciatively at Martha; for until then he had been speaking with a politeness that said quite plainly, ‘I’m doing this because I’ve been told to.’

      He was a youth of about twenty. Martha, who had known only the physical, open-air men of the district, and the Cohen boys, who were all she had met of the student type, and her brother, who was a student because it was expected of him, found in Donovan Anderson something quite new. He was a rather tall, broad-framed handsome young man, wearing a sharply-cut light summer suit, and a heavy gold signet