Martha Quest (23 page)

Soon the veranda was half empty, and there remained a few couples in evening dress. Martha was feeling a little sick, for she had hardly eaten all day; but Donovan was talking to the two girls, who were leaning towards him and laughing with a flattering attention; and so she gave up all idea of dinner, pulled a plate of potato chips towards her, and began eating them with the ruminant concentration which means a person is eating not for pleasure but from necessity.

She heard laughter, glanced up, and saw that the people around her were amused. ‘I’m starved,’ she said firmly, and went on eating.

Binkie got up from his chair, came to hers, and crouched beside her, his arm lightly about her waist. ‘Beautiful,’ he said, ‘we can’t have this, we’ll give you some dinner.’

She looked hestitatingly towards Donovan. She had never said to herself that he was mean; and it was with another shock that she saw that here he was known to be, for the glances people directed towards him were spitefully amused. She was hurt for his sake, and said gaily that no, she didn’t want dinner, Donovan was quite right, she was slimming and—

Donovan waved a careless hand towards her, and said, ‘Matty, dear, do go, if you want to.’ Hurt again, this time on her own account, she got to her feet, and thanked Binkie, and said she would like to
have dinner with him. And so it was that, at the very beginning of the evening, she was separated from Donovan; it was rather as if he had pushed her away, for she left, smiling an apologetic farewell, and he did not so much as look at her.

Martha walked beside Binkie with the same gentle, submissive gesture that had until five minutes before been Donovan’s due; the mere fact that he had asked her to dine with him was as if her emotions had been gathered up, twisted together, by him. And he certainly put his arm around her as they went down the veranda, crooning, ‘My baby’s having dinner with me’ but the circular look he directed around the veranda over her head was keen and critical and he was summoning his subjects by a nod or a wave of his free hand; for having dinner with Binkie was a communal affair.

A dozen wolves, therefore, with their girls, crowded into cars, and drove down to McGrath’s dining room, which they entered royally, welcomed by hosts of waiters. For Binkie’s ‘gang’ might go berserk, had been known to wreck the dining room, but they paid liberally, tipped fabulously. On the other hand, McGrath’s was the senior hotel in the colony, and here came important visitors from England and the Continent; McGrath’s must maintain its reputation, and, therefore, the waiters’ welcome was apprehensive.

They were given a centre table in the big room, which was chocolate brown and gilt, like the lounge. It was already decorated for Christmas. The headwaiter and the wine waiter, both white men, greeted each wolf by name, were offered Christian names in return, and were slapped across the shoulders. They took orders in voices that were pointedly lowered; while the deferential eyes implored, Please, Mr Maynard do please behave yourself, and persuade your gang to do likewise! The headwaiter, Johnny Constoupolis, even pointed out to Binkie that Mr Player, who was the head of the big company which in fact controlled the colony, was sitting with his wife in a corner under the palms by the band. But at this information Binkie leaped to his feet, and roared out a greeting to Mr Player, so loudly that everyone in the room looked round.

Johnny was distressed, not merely because of the danger that other respectable clients might be annoyed, but because his feeling for the important Mr Player was prayerful; the dark, suave, tired little Greek served the great man with the exquisite tact that had gained him this position; and from Mr Player’s table he crossed continually to Binkie’s, whose father, he knew, was also an important man, an educated man; and in his heart he shuddered with amazement and awed fear, as at madness. These young people were all mad. They spent money like dirt; Binkie might throw away twenty pounds on one of these dinners; he owed money everywhere, even to Mr Player himself; they all behaved like licensed lunatics, as if there was no future, as if they had no plans to become important men themselves, with wives and children. And their idea of themselves seemed to be accepted by everyone else. Johnny knew that if this was going to be one of the evenings when the wolves decided life owed them a holocaust, and began singing and tearing down the decorations, and dancing on the tables, then the other people, including Mr Player, would regard them with the pained tolerance due to a pack of momentarily overexcited children. Strange and even terrible to the little Greek, who had left his beloved country with his family twenty years before, to rescue them all from poverty so profound that it haunted him even now. Never would Johnny the Greek lose his fear of poverty; never would he lose the knowledge that from one minute to the next a man might lose his precious foothold among the fed and honoured living, and slip down among the almost nameless ghosts; Johnny remembered hunger, that common denominator; his mother had died of tuberculosis; his sister had died of starvation in the Great War, a weightless bundle of rags. At Johnny’s shoulder was always the shadow, this fear; and now he stood behind Binkie Maynard’s chair, in McGrath’s dining room, very slightly bowed forward, and took their orders for the meal, while he kept his dark and sorrowful eyes carefully veiled, lest what he felt might show.

He knew that he must spend time taking orders, while the wolves yearned over the girls, insisting that their slightest wish should be ful
filled; but once this ritual was over, it did not matter what food was actually brought, for they would not notice. They did not care about food, or even about wine. If they ordered wine, they might spend five minutes debating about a title on the wine list, and forget what they had ordered when the bottle arrived. They did not understand, they understood nothing, they were barbarians; but they must be given reverence, for one day (though the gods alone knew how this metamorphosis was to be effected) they would be the grave and responsible fathers of the city, and these girls their wives.

Martha ate the hotel dinner with appetite, if not with enjoyment. The menu was long and in French, and this was the most expensive meal the colony could offer.

They ate a thick white soup, which tasted of flour and pepper; round cheese puffs, the size of cricket balls and tasting of nothing in particular; boiled fish with gluey white sauce; roast chicken, hard white shreds of meat, with boiled stringbeans and boiled potatoes; stewed plums and fresh cream; and sardines on toast. They were all drinking brandy mixed with ginger beer. Halfway through, Binkie began urging them all to ‘put some speed into it, kids’ for he was already anxious because the dance might begin without him.

At the end, he flung down silver, handfuls of it, while the waiters smiled and bowed towards him, though their intent eyes were already calculating how much silver, and how it would divide between them. The girls were protesting, as usual, with maternal pride, that Binkie was a crazy kid. They returned in a body to the Sports Club. Martha was thinking, with guilty affection, of Donovan, but could not immediately find him. She was already claimed by Perry, the large blond athlete.

The Club was now filled with people in evening dress, and the band was playing. She found Donovan sitting with a girl whom Martha knew to be Ruth Manners. He waved his hand towards her, like an acquaintance, while he cast a disparaging look at Perry. Martha looked for help to Binkie, who said with that disconcerting frankness, ‘Better off with us, baby, he doesn’t even feed you properly.’ But her
eyes were still appealing; and they groaned and sighed and shrugged, and fetched chairs and placed tables together, until Donovan was at the head of a large circle of people, and Martha was facing him.

Ruth Manners was a thin, delicate girl with a narrow white face, short dark springy hair, long nervous hands. Her features were irregular: the thin scarlet mouth twisted to one side when she smiled, her thin nose was a little crooked, her eyebrows were like circumflex accents, sharp and black over pale and watchful eyes. She spoke carefully, with controlled vowels, she moved with care; at every moment, she was conscious of how she must appear. And this consciousness, together with the delicate look—her eyelids were slightly reddened and heavy, the white cheeks had an irregular fading flush—gave her an intellectual look. Yet she was very elegant, with an elegance that none of the other women present could approach. She wore a jade-green dress of heavy thick crepe, which was pleated loosely from the waist, and held around the narrow figure with a flame-coloured sash. The top was cut low, front and back, the material lying lightly over small flat breasts that were like a child’s. Her shoulders and neck were thin and bony, of a frail whiteness that looked as if it might so easily flush, like her cheeks, into unbecoming red. And yet, though she was not pretty, and her body—so Martha jealously said to herself—would be better covered up, she undeniably possessed the quality that Donovan admired so much. Her assurance seemed to say, One doesn’t have to be attractive, one may have an undesirable body, but what of it? I have this other thing. And Martha, because of that assurance, lost hers. She felt herself to be dowdy and altogether lacking, in spite of the homage of the wolves.

Ruth and Donovan made a pair, and knew it. They talked easily to each other, where they sat side by side at the head of the table, in a light, flirtatious, bantering way that was so much
not
the way of the Club that the rest were a little subdued, listening with uncomfortable attention.

Seeing that he had an audience, Donovan leaned back in his graceful way, and took Ruth’s hand and said, ‘Well, girls and boys, we
should all go to England. You see what it does for us? Now, look at Ruth’s dress, Matty dear—you see? It’s got what we poor colonials can’t achieve.’

Ruth laughed and said, ‘Poor Don, but you were in England yourself last year.’

Now, Martha had never been told that Donovan had been to England, and she found this extraordinary. She saw that he was annoyed; for he frowned, and hestitated, before making the best of it and saying, ‘Yes, Ruthie, but I had no opportunities to improve myself, for I went under escort with my mamma, and she was much too busy buying clothes in Harrods and Derry and Toms, and I had to go with her, because she can’t buy anything without me, as you know.’

These two shops, which had been presented to Martha all her childhood as synonyms for ‘niceness’, now lost their dull sound, for they could also provide Mrs Anderson’s conventional smartness. But Ruth looked amused and tolerant at the names; and there was an allowance of spite in her careful drawl, which said plainly that she found Donovan a little ridiculous. ‘But surely you couldn’t have spent three months doing nothing but buying clothes—even at Harrods?’

Donovan was annoyed, but he maintained the light note. ‘My dear Ruthie, you have the advantage of a mamma who wants to do her best for you. You should have pity for us less fortunate breeds.’

‘Poor Donny-boy,’ said Ruth, with her short laugh.

‘Yes,’ said Donovan, now launching himself on the effort to be amusing even at his own cost. ‘Yes, it was a great disillusion to me, going to England. You know the way we all think of it—but after all, when one gets there, there are certain limitations one overlooks beforehand. I sat in the Cumberland—because we colonials always go to the Cumberland, and nothing will make my mamma see that there is no need to emphasize an already too obvious fact—and I ate ravishing cream cakes all day, with my father, who grumbled all the time because he said England was over-civilized, though I don’t think for a moment he knew what he meant by that. We sat and waited for
Mamma to return, laden with yet fresh parcels, from various little expeditions of her own—because my mamma can always be trusted to amuse herself, wherever she is. It was the only time I can ever remember that my papa and myself had anything in common. I said, ‘Papa dear, you may like the wide open spaces, and you’re welcome to them, but as for me, I’m simply made for decadence. Why don’t you give me some money, and I shall apprentice myself to some dress designer, and thus find my niche.’

‘Poor Donny-boy,’ said Ruth again, this time sincerely.

‘So my papa said nothing would give him greater pleasure, he disliked anomalies like myself, but unfortunately, since Mamma had spent the money destined to last three months in the first three weeks, and he had had to cable for more, there was none left over for either of us.’ Donovan ended on a squeal of laughter, which sounded so resentful that only Ruth was able to join him. The others sat silently watching; and Martha heard Perry mutter, ‘For crying out loud, for crying out loud, come and dance, I can’t take it.’ He roughly pulled Martha up, and they went inside to dance; and again he complained, ‘For crying out loud,’ with a reminiscent disgust, as they took the floor.

Perry, because of the character imposed on him, was obliged to stop every few moments, shoot up his arms, and yell like a tormented soul, while people turned to laugh; or he broke suddenly into writhing give, his head crushed back on his neck, his eyes closed, while he crooned, in a thick, blind, whining voice, in imitation of a Negro singing. In between, he pushed Martha conventionally around the room, in a rectangular progress, and the straight blue eyes assessed her, while his face held its sentimental look.

Martha watched his eyes; she was becoming obsessed by the need to look at the eyes of these people and not their bodies; for they were serious, anxious, even pleading; while all the time their bodies, their faces, contorted into the poses required of them. It was as if their surfaces, their limbs, their voices, were possessed, it was an exterior possession that did not touch them, left them free to judge and com
ment. Martha continually felt a shock; looking from Perry’s eyes to his jerking, shuddering impersonations of Negro singing, she felt uneasy. In the meantime, she danced, smiling brightly, replying to him in the jargon. Towards the end of the dance, encouraged by the intelligent seriousness of the blue eyes, she rebelled, and talked in her normal voice about Donovan, about Ruth, while she felt his arms tightening, his eyes clouding. But she went on; she was resentful because he would not accept her as
herself—
whatever that might mean; for was she not continually at sea, because of the different selves which insisted on claiming possession of her? She meant, she wanted to establish contact with him, simply and warmly; she wanted him to recognize her as a reasonable being. When he rolled up his eyes, and pretended to shudder, and said, ‘Oh, baby, but the way you talk,’ she kept a determined smile, and waited until he finished, and continued with what she was saying. And, slowly, she succeeded. He was beginning to talk normally, if in a gruff and unwilling voice, when the music stopped, and they had to return to the veranda. There Ruth and Donovan still sat by themselves; and now their voices were lowered, and they looked unwelcomingly around at the invasion of returning dancers. They went on talking. But if their earlier sophisticated talk had upset Binkie because it disturbed the atmosphere, this exclusiveness was much worse. When the music struck up again, Binkie went to dance with Ruth. He hated dancing, but it was his duty; he never danced unless there was a couple too much occupied with each other.