A Proper Marriage by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online Page B

thing.’
‘But, Matty, do be reasonable,’ he implored.
She was silent. Even more did she want to weep. But this would have meant abandoning herself to him, and to explanations of what she could not explain herself — a feeling of being caged and trapped. Until two weeks ago, her body had been free and her own, something to be taken for granted. She would have scorned to fuss about, or even to notice, a period that was heavy or one that chose not to come at all. And now this precious privacy, this independence, so lately won from her mother’s furtive questioning, was being threatened by an impertinent stranger.
‘Matty,’ he said again, ‘don’t you think you’re being unreasonable?’
‘I’m so tired I could scream,’ she muttered defiantly.
Silence. Music from the waste lot came throbbing into the room. The big wheel, glittering with the white lights, revolved steadily, Like a damned wedding ring, she thought crossly, abandoning herself to anger, since she was not free to cry.
‘I do hope you’ll be in a better humour in the morning,’ said Douglas coldly, after a pause.
Her mind began producing wounding remarks with the efficiency of a slot machine. She was quite dismayed at the virulence of some of the things that came to her tongue. She cautiously turned her head and saw his face showing in the steady flicker of lights. He looked young - a boy, merely; with a boy’s sternness. She asked, in a different tone, ‘Dr Stern said something about your stomach.’
His head turned quickly. Guardedly he said, ‘What did he tell you,?’
‘Nothing – only mentioned it. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Oh – I don’t know.’
The pride that concealed a weakness appealed to her. She reached out her hand and laid it on his arm above the elbow. It stiffened, then responded.
‘I’ve an ulcer - nothing much. I just go on the tack when I feel it.’
She could not help a pang of repulsion from the idea of an ulcer; then another of pity. ‘I thought you had to have a special diet for ulcers?’
‘Oh - don’t fuss.’ He added, contrite, ‘I lay off fats when it starts up.’
‘You’re very young to have an ulcer,’ she remarked at last. Then, thinking this sounded like a criticism, she tightened her fingers about the thick warm flesh. It was slack. He was asleep, and breathing deeply.

Chapter Two
When Martha woke, she knew she had slept badly. Several times she had half roused, with the urgent knowledge that she ought to be attending to something; and this anxiety seemed to be of the same quality as that suggested by the great dragging circle of lights, which continued to flicker through her sleep like a warning. The ceiling of the small bedroom spun with light until after midnight, when the wheel was stilled; then bars of yellow light lay deep over the ceiling, over the bed, across Douglas’s face, from a room opposite, where a man must be lying awake reading, or a woman keeping vigil with a sick child.
At six she was fully awake. The sky outside was chilly white-gold haze; winter was coming. She leaned on her elbow to look out at the wheel; in this small colourless light it rested motionless, insignificant, and the machinery of the fun fair beneath it seemed tawdry and even pathetic. It no longer had the power to move her; and the fact that it had so disturbed her sleeping was absurd. But Martha had been born - or so it seemed - with the knowledge that the hours of sleep were long and busy, and of the same texture as the hours of waking. She entered sleep cautiously, like an enemy country. She knew, too, however, that for most it was a sudden dropping of a dark curtain, and regarded this other family of mankind with a simple envy, the result of her upbringing so far away from the centres of sophistication, where she would have learned to use the word ‘neurotic’ as a label that would make any further thought on the subject unnecessary, or as a kind of badge guaranteeing a superior sensibility. She was