Martha Quest

Martha had never thought of herself as a pacifist, but it seemed she was one: she played this part against her father’s need, just as, for him, she was that group of people in the Twenties who refused to honour the war, although the Twenties were the first decade of her life, and she could hardly remember them. She was creating them, however, for herself, through reading, and because of this, the mere sound of the word young, which had apparently been some sort of symbol or talisman during that decade, sprung in her a feeling of defiance and recklessness.

Similarly, when Mr Quest complained about the international ring of Jews who controlled the world (which he had taken to doing lately, after reading some pamphlet sent to him through the post), Martha argued against him, in the most reasonable and logical manner; for one does not learn so young that against some things reason is powerless. And when Mrs Quest said that all the kaffirs were dirty and lazy and inherently stupid, she defended them. And when both parents said that Hitler was no gentleman, an upstart without principles, Martha found herself defending Hitler too; it was this which made her think a little and question her feeling of being used, her conviction that when her parents raised their voices and argued at her, on a complaining and irritable note, insisting that there was going to be another war with Germany and Russia soon (this was at a time when everyone was saying another war was impossible, because whom would it benefit?), this new war was in some way necessary to punish her, Martha, who talked of the last one so critically.

Jonathan Quest, the younger brother, came home for the holidays from his expensive school, like a visitor from a more prosperous world. For the first time, Martha found herself consciously resenting him. Why, she asked herself, was it that he, with half her brains, should be sent to a ‘good school’, why was it he should inevitably be given the advantages? There was something uneasy in this criticism, for she had been telling her mother fiercely that nothing would induce her to go to a snob school, even if her eyes did get better. She was becoming aware of several disconnected strands of her thinking. And this was brought to a climax by Jonathan himself. He was a simple, good-natured boy, very like his father to look at, who spent his holidays visiting the neighbouring farmers, riding in to the station to visit Socrates the Greek, and the Cohen family at the little kaffir store. He was on the best of terms with everyone. But it struck Martha as unjust that this brother of hers who despised the Afrikaners (or rather, who took up the orthodox British attitude towards them, which was the same thing) should spend the day at the Van Rensbergs’ house like a second son, and drop in for a chat with the Cohen brothers as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Martha asked him sarcastically. ‘How do you reconcile the Jews ruining the world with going to see Solly and Joss?’

Jonathan looked uncomfortable and said, ‘But we’ve known them all our lives.’

When she looked pointedly quizzical, he said, ‘But you never go and see them at all.’

‘That’s not because I feel the way you do.’

Jonathan was embarrassed, because he would not have said he felt any way rather than another; he merely repeated what his parents said, and what he had heard at school. ‘Well, if you think Hitler all right, how do you reconcile that?’

‘But I never said he was all right, all I said was –’ She stopped and blushed; and it was his turn to look quizzical. It was true that all she had said was that Hitler’s being an upstart was no criticism of his capabilities, but in this household it was as good as a defence.

She began a long rational argument; he refused to argue, merely teasing her, ‘Matty’s lost her temper, Matty’s lost her temper,’ singing it like a child.

‘You’re nothing but a baby,’ she concluded scornfully, which was how their arguments always ended, and she turned away. Now, that act of turning away implies something one turns towards – and she picked up a book, at random, from the bookcase. This was also a familiar act. How many times had she not simply reached for the nearest book, as if to remark, ‘I have authority for what I say’?

It occurred to her that the phrase ‘Martha is a great reader’ was being used by herself exactly as her mother used it, and with as little reason. For what was she reading? She read the same books over and over again, in between intervals of distracted daydreaming, in a trance of recognition, and in always the same place, under the big tree that was her refuge, through which the heat pumped like a narcotic. She read poetry, not for the sense of the words, but for the melodies which confirmed the rhythm of the moving grasses and the swaying of the leaves over her head, or that ideal landscape of white cities and noble people which lay over the actual vistas of harsh grass and stunted trees like a golden mirage.

She went through the house searching for something different. It was full of books. Her own room had shelves packed with fairy stories from her childhood, and with poetry. In the living room, her parents’ bookcases were filled with the classics, Dickens and Scott and Thackeray and the rest, inherited from prosperous Victorian households. These she had read years before, and she now read them again, and with a feeling of being starved. One might equate the small black child with Oliver Twist – but what then? There were also, lying everywhere, books on ‘politics’ in her parents’ sense of the word, such as the memoirs of Lloyd George, or histories of the Great War. None of these seemed to have any reference to the farm, to the gangs of native labour, to what was described in the newspapers, or even to Mein Kampf, which had started this restless condition of mind.

But one day, slipped behind the rows of dusty books, she found a volume of H G Wells, and, as she held it in her hand, was very conscious of a dull feeling of resistance, a disinclination. It was so strong that she nearly put it down and reached as usual for Shelley or for Whitman; then she became conscious of what she was doing and stood wondering at herself. For she had felt this before. She looked at the book again. It was the Concise History of the World, and the name on the flyleaf was ‘Joshua Cohen’. Now, she had dropped her childish friendship with the Cohen boys from the moment Marnie had said, ‘Joss Cohen is sweet on you.’ She missed them. And yet she could not face them. At first it was because the relief of escaping the barrage of criticism was so great: there was no longer any necessity to read their books, examine her own ideas. Recently it had been because of some obscure and unadmitted shame about her strained eyes. She took the book to her refuge, the tree, and read it through; and wondered why it was that she could read the most obscure and complicated poetry with ease, while she could not read the simplest sort of book on what she called ‘facts’ without the greatest effort to concentration. She brought herself to decide she would make an effort to renew that friendship with the Cohens, for there was no one else who could help her. She wanted them to tell her what she must read. For there are two ways of reading: one of them deepens and intensifies what one already knows; from the other, one takes new facts, new views to weave into one’s life. She was saturated with the first, and needed the second. All those books she had borrowed, two years before – she had read them, oh yes; but she had not been ready to receive them.

And now what was she to do? For she had behaved very badly to the Cohen boys. She saw them at the station sometimes. Now, to avoid seeing people one has known for years is something of a feat, and Martha achieved it by the simple device of saying to herself, They wouldn’t think that of me – ‘that’ being anti-Semitism – and smiling at them constrainedly, like an acquaintance. They nodded back, and left her alone, as she apparently desired.

The village held about fifty souls, and had sprung up untidily around the first store, owned by Socrates the Greek, who was known to the farmers as Sock. There was a garage, run by a Welshman; a farmers’ hall; the station beside the railway, a long tin-roofed shack on wooden piles; a ganger’s cottage; and a hotel, also owned by Socrates, in which there was a bar, which was the real social centre of the district. These buildings were scattered over a few acres of red dust; and along the railway line was a stretch of brownish water, where ducks swam until Mrs Socrates came out to catch one for the hotel dinner, and where the oxen from the farmers’ wagons were unyoked while the wagons were loaded, and stood knee-deep in green scum, raising their eyes tranquilly as the train thundered past over their heads. There were two trains a week, and twenty miles away was the end of the line, for beyond was the long ascent to the great escarpment at the verge of the Zambesi Valley. But there was a great deal of road traffic, and all day the cars stood in the dust outside the bar.

Years before, the Quests used to make the trip in to the station twice a week, for Mrs Quest was sociable; but Mr Quest disliked being disturbed so much that now they went once a month, and Mrs Quest must begin fighting with her husband at least a week before.

‘Alfred,’ she would say, with a sort of offhand defiance, ‘remember, we are going in to the station tomorrow.’

He did not hear. Or rather, he raised vaguely irritable eyes towards her, and dropped them again, hunching his shoulders against her voice.

‘Do listen, dear. I told you, we are out of flour, and the boys need new aprons, and the sugar’s practically finished.’

He kept his eyes lowered, and his face was stubborn.

‘Alfred!’ she shouted.

‘What is it?’ he demanded, and glared at her.

Startled by the glare, which nevertheless she had been provoking and facing with obdurate strength for years, she murmured, abashed but determined, ‘We must go to the station.’

‘We can send the wagon,’ he said hastily, getting up to escape.

‘No, Alfred, you know you always say you can’t spare the wagon, and it’s silly to send the wagon for two sacks of …’ He was at the door, on his way out; but she raised her voice after him: ‘Besides, I want to see if they’ve any nice materials: I’m really down to my last rag.’

And now he stopped, and gave her another glare, in which there was guilt and reproach, for she was using the weapon he dreaded most: she was saying, The very least you can do is to let me have a little trip once a month, when you’ve made me live on this awful farm, and we’re so poor, and my children have been dragged down to the level of the Van Rensbergs and …

‘Oh, all right, all right, have it your own way,’ he said, and sat down, reached for the newspaper, and covered himself with it.

‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘We will go in after lunch, and Martha can help me get ready.’

Her husband’s defiant eyes were hidden by the newspaper, which nevertheless gave a small protesting shake; but Martha’s eyes were lifted towards her, with the sullen enquiry. ‘Why do we have to get ready for half an hour’s trip?’

‘Oh well – you know – with everything …’ Mrs Quest lapsed into confusion.

‘Good Lord,’ said Martha irritably, ‘to hear us talk, you’d think we were off to England or something.’

This was a familiar joke, and allowed Mrs Quest to give her girlish and rather charming laugh; though no one else laughed. ‘Well, with this family I’ve got, and no one lifts a finger but me …’ This was not a grumble, but an appeal that please, please, for pity’s sake, they should laugh, this irritable, resisting couple, and make things easier. She sighed, as Martha’s face remained glum and the newspaper was held firmly upright against her.

Next morning at breakfast she said, ‘Don’t forget we’re going to the station.’

Now he was resigned, ‘Must we?’

‘Yes, we must. Besides, you know you’ll enjoy it once we get there.’

This was a mistake. ‘I do not enjoy it. I loathe it. Besides, we haven’t any petrol.’

‘There’s a spare tin in the storeroom,’ said Mrs Quest firmly. And now there was no help for it; Mr Quest groaned, and accepted his fate; and as he went off to the garage he even looked interested; the cloud of introspection was lifting, and his eyes intently followed what his hands did. It always worried Martha, made her uneasy, to see how those brooding eyes must concentrate, force themselves outwards, watching his hands as if they were clumsy creatures that were separate from himself.

The garage was a roof of tin over two walls of plastered logs, open at each end; and he reversed the car slowly out into the bush, so that it bounced and jerked over the rough ground, and then forwards into an empty space. Then he got out, and stood frowning at the car. It was a very old Ford; the paint had gone; there were no side curtains – they had been lost somewhere; one door was tied with rope; and a part of the canvas hood, which had decayed into holes, was thatched over. He had bought it for thirty pounds, ten years before.

‘The engine’s as good as ever,’ he murmured proudly. And he called Martha to say, ‘It isn’t the body of a car that matters. Only fools pay good money for paint and varnish. What matters is the engine.’ He liked to have Martha there when he attended to the car; he would even send the servant to fetch her. Now, Martha did not mind about how cars looked; but she was irritated because of this one’s extreme slowness; so her face was as absent and dreamy as his own while he fetched water in a watering can, and fed the radiator, and took off the rope from the useless handle and retied it. Slowly, because he got no response to his remarks, he began glaring at her. ‘It’s all very well,’ he would begin, ‘it’s all very well for you …’ More often than not, the sentence was never finished, for a humorous look would come over her face, and their eyes met.

‘Oh, Daddy,’ she protested, grumbling, ‘why is it all very well, I haven’t said a word!’ Here she might begin edging away, with longing glances at the house. It was so hot; the heat and light glittered into her eyes from the battered old car. ‘Where are you going?’ he demanded, sounding offended; and she returned to sit on the running board, opening the book she had held in her hand. Now he was mollified, and he sounded cheerful, as he stroked the warm thatch on the roof, and said, ‘I always did like thatching, there’s something about the look of a nice piece of thatch. I remember my cousin George – he was an expert thatcher, back home. Of course, he knew his job, not like these damned niggers, they slam it on any old how. When you go back to England, Matty, the first thing you must do is go to Colchester and see if George’s kids are half the man their father was – if so, you’ll see a piece of thatching you’ll find nowhere else in the world. Matty!’ he shouted at her bent and absorbed head.

‘What?’ she asked, exasperated, lifting her eyes from the book.

‘You’re not listening.’

‘I am listening.’

‘It’s all very well for you,’ came the grumbling voice.

When he had fiddled with the car for an hour or so, he came back to the house, followed by Martha, and demanded tea. He would not go down the farm that day. And then, about twelve o’clock, he began worrying that the lunch was late and they would never get off that afternoon.

‘But Alfred,’ said poor Mrs Quest, ‘first you won’t go at all, and then you start fussing hours before –’

‘It’s all very well, you haven’t got to nurse a twenty-year-old car over these roads.’

Martha gritted her teeth in anger. Standing on the hill, one could see the other farmers’ cars racing through the trees, like tiny black beetles, the red dust spurting up behind them. Other people made the journey to the station in a few minutes.

After lunch, the anxious Mr Quest went to the car and again tested the radiator. It was likely to be empty; and then he would call for half a dozen eggs, and break them one after another into the cavity. The eggs would form a sticky sediment over the leaky bottom of the radiator. Once someone had suggested mealie meal, which he had tried immediately, with all the cautious enthusiasm of the scientific experimenter. ‘There must be something in it,’ he murmured as he poured handfuls of the white floury stuff into the car. But halfway along the track, the cap shot off with an explosion, and lumps of porridge flew all over the windscreen, so that the car came to a blind and sliding stop against a large tree. ‘Well,’ said Mr Quest thoughtfully, ‘that’s interesting. Perhaps if one used a finer grain it might …’