A Proper Marriage. Doris Lessing

‘I can’t understand why I get this reputation,’ he would grumble. ‘Nine-tenths of my practice are women. And women with nothing wrong with them.’

      But he did not say it. Alice smiled as she saw him adjust the shutter so that the patch of sun, which was now on the extreme edge of the desk, should return to the empty space of polished wood nearer the middle. He turned and caught the smile, but preferred not to notice it. He frowned slightly and remarked that in three months’ time Mrs Knowell would be back in this room crying her eyes out and asking him to do an abortion – he knew the type.

      Alice did not smile; she disliked him in this mood. Her eyes were cold. She noted that his tired body had straightened, his face was alert and purposeful.

      He seated himself and said, ‘Make a card out for Mrs Knowell tomorrow.’ He almost added, laughing, ‘And book her a room in the nursing home.’ But he remembered in time that one did not make this sort of joke with Mrs Burrell, who was sentimental; his previous nurse had been better company. All the same, he automatically made certain calculations. January or February, he thought. He even made a note on his pad; there was a complacent look on his face.

      ‘That will do, Mrs Burrell. Thank you for staying over your time – you mustn’t let me overwork you.’ He smiled at her; the smile had a weary charm.

      Alice did not respond. Her criticism of him formed itself in the thought, he has to have his own way over everything. And then the final blow: Heaven preserve me from being married to him, I wouldn’t have him as a gift.

      ‘Who’s next?’ he asked briskly.

      ‘Mrs Black,’ said Alice, going to the other door to call her in.

      ‘She ought to be starting her next baby soon,’ he remarked.

      ‘Have a heart,’ she said indignantly. ‘The other’s only six months old.’

      ‘Get them over young,’ he said. ‘That’s the best way.’ He added, ‘You ought to be starting a family yourself.’

      Alice paused with her hand on the knob of the door, and said irritably, ‘The way you go on! If I catch you with less than five when you get married …’

      He looked sharply at her; he had only just understood she was really annoyed; he wished again that he might have a nurse with whom he did not have to choose his words. But she was speaking:

      ‘You Jews have got such a strong feeling for family, it makes me sick!’

      He seemed to stiffen and retreat a little; then he laughed and said, ‘There’s surely every reason why we should?’

      She looked at him vaguely, then dismissed history with ‘I don’t see why everybody shouldn’t leave everybody else alone.’

      ‘Neither do I, Mrs Burrell, neither do I.’ This was savage.

      ‘You’re the sort of man who’d choose a wife because she had a good pelvis,’ she said.

      ‘There are worse ways of choosing one,’ he teased her.

      ‘Oh, Lord!’

      ‘Let’s have Mrs Black. Okay – shoot.’

      Alice opened the door and called, ‘Mrs Black, please.’ She shut the door after the smiling Mrs Black, who was already seating herself; and, as she crossed the room on her way out, heard his voice, calmly professional: ‘Well, Mrs Black, and what can I do for you?’

      She joined Martha and Stella, saying, ‘Wait, I must tell the other nurse …’

      She came back almost at once, pulling out the frayed cigarette stub from her pocket and lighting it. Then she began tugging and pushing at the wisps of black hair that were supposed to make a jaunty frame for her face, but were falling in lank witch locks. ‘Oh, damn everything,’ she muttered crossly, pulling a comb through her hair with both hands, while the cigarette hung on her lip. Finally she gave a series of ineffective little pats at her dress, and said again, in a violent querulous voice, ‘Oh, damn everything. I’m going to give up this job. I’m sick to death of Dr Stern. I’m just fed up.’

      Martha and Stella, momentarily united in understanding, exchanged a small humorous smile, and kept up a running flow of vaguely practical remarks until they had reached the hot pavement. They glanced cautiously towards Alice: she had apparently recovered. Stella immediately dropped the female chivalry with which women protect each other in such moments, and said jealously, ‘I wouldn’t have thought Dr Stern would be so hard to work for.’

      ‘Oh, no, he’s not,’ agreed Alice at once, and without the proprietary air that Stella would have resented. ‘Anyway, I’m really going to give it up. I didn’t train as a nurse to do this sort of thing. I might as well be a hotel receptionist.’

      ‘You’re mad to work when you’re married,’ said Stella. ‘I’ve given notice to my boss. Of course, we’re quite broke, but it’s too much, looking after a husband then slaving oneself to death in an office.’

      Alice and Martha in their turn exchanged an amused smile, while Stella touched it up a little: ‘Men have no idea, they think housework and cooking get done by miracles.’

      ‘Why, haven’t you got a boy, dear?’ inquired Alice vaguely, and then broke into Stella’s reply with ‘Do you like Dr Stern, Matty? If not, I shan’t bother to make out a card for you.’

      ‘One doctor’s as good as another,’ said Martha ungraciously. ‘Anyway, I’m never ill.’

      ‘Oh, but he’s very good,’ exclaimed Alice, at once on the defensive. ‘He’s really wonderful with babies.’

      ‘But I’m not going to have a baby, not for years.’

      ‘Oh, I don’t blame you,’ agreed Alice at once. ‘I always tell Willie that life’s too much one damned thing after another to have babies as well.’

      ‘What do you do?’ inquired Martha, direct.

      Alice laughed, on the comfortable note which Martha found so reassuring. ‘Oh, we don’t bother much, really. Luckily, all I have to do is to jump off the edge of a table.’

      They were at a turning. ‘I think I’ll just go home, dear, if you don’t mind,’ said Alice. ‘Willie might come home early, and I won’t bother about a drink.’

      ‘Oh, no,’ protested Stella at once. ‘We’ll all run along to Matty’s place. You can ring Willie and tell him to come along.’

      And now Martha once again found herself protesting that of course they must all come to her flat; an extraordinary desperation seized her at the idea of being alone; although even as she protested another anxious voice was demanding urgently that she should pull herself free from this compulsion.

      ‘Oh, well,’ agreed Alice good-naturedly, ‘I’ll come and drink to your getting married.’

      Martha was silent. Now she had gained her point she had to brace herself to face another period of time with both Stella and Alice. She thought, Let’s get it over quickly, and then … And then would come a reckoning with herself; she had the feeling of someone caught in a whirlpool.

      The three women drifted inertly down the hot street, shading their eyes with their hands. Alice yawned and remarked in her preoccupied voice, ‘But I get so tired, perhaps I’m pregnant? Surely I’m not? Oh, Lord, maybe that’s it!’

      ‘Well, jump off a table, then!’ said Stella with her jolly crude laugh.

      ‘It’s all very well, dear, but this worrying all the time just gets me down. Sometimes I think I’ll have a baby and be done with it. That’d be nine months’ peace and quiet at least.’

      ‘What’s the good of working for a doctor if he can’t do something?’ suggested Stella, with a look at Martha which said she should be collecting information that might turn out to be useful.

      Alice looked annoyed;