A Proper Marriage by Doris Lessing

Author:Doris Lessing [Doris Lessing]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780007406920
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Two

Martha waited for that first appointment with Jasmine like a girl going to her lover. She was dressed and ready two hours before the time, and was just about to start when Jasmine telephoned to say that unluckily she had an unexpected meeting. But she would meet Martha at eight outside McGrath’s so that they might both go to yet another meeting, organized by Help for Our Allies. Jasmine felt, she said in that small demure voice, that Martha would find it interesting.

Martha set herself to wait another two hours, conscious that much of her enthusiasm was ebbing. There is something in the word ‘meeting’ which arouses an instinctive and profound distrust in the bosoms of British people at this late hour of their history. And then the name ‘Help for Our Allies’ had a childish sound, with strong overtones of tract and even charity. Martha had lapsed back into her condition of irritated distaste long before the time appointed, and it was with an effort of will that she roused herself to go to the car. She waited outside the hotel for some twenty minutes before Jasmine and William appeared, each carrying armfuls of books and leaflets. There was between these two such a look of shared mission that Martha felt lonely and excluded as she followed them into McGrath’s ballroom, which was released for this one evening from mess dinners and war charity dances.

The place was full. Seven or eight hundred people were crowded into the big ugly hall. Martha saw that they were all well-dressed and comfortable citizens, and her confusion was completed when she noticed Mr Maynard and Mrs Maynard seated side by side in the front row – large, imposing, black-browed, and apparently pleased to shed approval on the proceedings by being there.

She was hurried to an empty seat by Jasmine, who at once left her and pushed her way through the crowds to the platform, where she sat at a table with a group of people whom Martha did not know. Looking at her programme, however – it was beautifully printed on expensive paper – she saw that the speakers included two clergymen, two members of the Cabinet, a leader of the Social Democratic Party. These gentlemen beamed protective approval at Jasmine, a small demure figure in bright flowered silk.

Jasmine whispered for a moment to a tall, thin man, the Minister for Native Affairs, who stood up and began to speak. He spoke for about ten minutes about the glorious heroism of our Russian allies, interrupted at every moment by storms of applause. All around Martha people were sitting leaning forward, hands poised ready for the next point where they might clap approval; faces were smiling and flushed. When the tall thin man sat down, they applauded for a long time, and they began again before the next speaker could open his mouth.

Yet were these not the same citizens who had been reading and approving the Zambesia News in its phase of, recently,

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