A Proper Marriage Read Free Page B

floor was a passage full of doors, all marked ‘Private’. Stella knocked on one of these. It opened almost at once to show a woman in a white dress, who held its edge firmly, as if against possible assault. She looked annoyed; then, seeing Stella, she said with nervous amiability, ‘It’s lovely to see you, dear, but really I’m busy.’
‘This is Matty,’ said Stella. ‘You know, the naughty girl who married Douggie behind everyone’s back.’
The young woman smiled at Martha in a friendly but harassed way and came out into the passage, shutting the door behind her. She pulled a half-smoked cigarette from her deep white pocket, lit it, and puffed as if she were starved for smoke. ‘I really shouldn’t, but the doctor’llmanage,’ she said, drawing deep breaths of smoke. She was a thin girl, with lank wisps of thin black hair, and pale worried blue eyes. Her body was flat and bony in the white glazed dress, which was a uniform, but no more than a distant cousin of the stiff garments designed by elderly women to disguise the charms of young ones. ‘My Willie knows your Douggie – they’ve been boys together for years,’ she said with tired indulgence.
Martha was by now not to be surprised at either the information or the tone, although she had never heard of Willie.
‘My God, but I’m dead,’ went on Alice. ‘Dr Stern is my pet lamb, but he works himself to death, and he never notices when anyone else does. I was supposed to leave an hour ago.’
‘Listen,’ said Stella quickly, ‘that’s easy, then. Just slip Matty quickly in for her appointment, then we’ll all go and have a drink.’
‘Oh, but I can’t dear,’ said Alice feebly; but Stella gave her a firm little push towards the door; so that she nodded and said, ‘All right, then, there’s lots waiting from before you, but I’ll manage it.’ She slipped the crushed end of cigarette back into her pocket, and went into the room marked ‘Private’.
Martha followed Stella into the waiting room. It was full. About fifteen or twenty women, with a sprinkling of children, were jealously eyeing the door into the consulting room. Martha edged herself into a seat, feeling guilty that she was about to take priority. Stella, however, stood openly waiting, with the look of one for whom the ordinary rules did not apply.
Almost at once the consulting-room door opened, and a bland voice bade a lady goodbye; she came out blushing with pleasure and giving challenging looks to those who still waited.
‘Come on,’ said Stella loudly, ‘now it’s us.’
She pushed Martha forward, as Alice looked around into the waiting room, and said in the kindly nervous voicewhich was her characteristic, ‘Yes, dear - it’s you, Mrs Knowell.’
Stella went beside Martha to the door; but there Alice held out one barring hand, with a professional look, and pulled Martha forward with the other. The door shut behind Martha, excluding Stella.
This was a large, quiet room, with a white screen in one corner which was bathed in greenish light from the shutters over the window. An enormous desk filled half the outer wall, and behind it sat Dr Stern, his back to the light. Over an efficient white coat a smooth pale heavy-lidded face lifted for a moment, the pale cool eyes flicked assessingly over Martha, and dropped again as he said, ‘Please sit down.’
Martha sat, and wondered how she should start: she did not really want any advice. She looked at the top of Dr Stern’s head, which was bent towards her as he flicked quickly through some papers. He had a mat of thick black crinkling hair; his neck was white, thin - very young. She saw him suddenly as a young man, and was upset. Then he said, ‘If you’ll excuse me for one moment …’ and glanced up again, before continuing to leaf through the papers. The upwards look was so impersonal that her anxiety vanished. She yawned. A weight of tiredness settled on her, with the cool silence of the room. A patch of yellow sunlight