A Proper Marriage Read Online Free PDF

words Stella allowed her face and voice to go limp with self-pity.
The police?’ inquired Martha blankly.
‘It’s illegal,’ explained Alice tolerantly. ‘If you start a baby, then it’s illegal not to have it. Didn’t you know?’
‘Do you mean to say that a woman’s not entitled to decide whether she’s going to have a baby or not?’ demanded Martha, flaring at once into animated indignation.
This violence amused both Stella and Alice, who now, in their turn, exchanged that small tolerant smile.
‘Oh, well,’ said Alice indulgently, ‘don’t waste any breath on that. Everyone knows that more kids get frustrated than ever get born, and half the women who have them didn’t want to have them, but if the Government wants to make silly laws, let them get on with it, that’s what I say, I suppose they’ve got nothing better to do. Don’t worry, dear, If you get yourself in a fix just give me a ring and I’ll help you out, you don’t want to lose sleep over the Government, there are better things to think about.’
Stella said with quick jealousy, ‘I’ve already told Matty, I’m just around the corner, and God knows I’ve got enough experience, even though I’m not a nurse.’
Surprised, Alice relinquished the struggle for the soul of Martha — she had not understood there was one.
‘Well, that’s all right, then, isn’t it?’ she agreed easily.
They had now reached the flats. They were a large block, starkly white in the sunlight. The pavement was so heated that its substance gave stickily under their feet; and its brightgrey shone up a myriad tiny oily rainbows. A single tree stood at the entrance; and on this soft green patch their eyes rested, in relief from the staring white, the glistening grey, the hard, brilliant blue of the sky. Under the tree stood a native woman. She held a small child by one hand and a slightly larger one by the other, and there was a new baby folded in a loop of cloth on her back. The older children held the stuff of her skirt from behind. Martha stopped and looked at her. This woman summed up her uncomfortable thoughts and presented the problem in its crudest form. This easy, comfortable black woman seemed extraordinarily attractive, compared with the hard gay anxiety of Stella and Alice. Martha felt her as something simple, accepting - whole. Then she understood that she was in the process of romanticizing poverty; and repeated firmly to herself that the child mortality for the colony was one of the highest in the world. All the same …
Alice and Stella, finding themselves alone in the hall, came back and saw Martha staring at the tree. There was nothing else to look at.
‘It’s all very well for us,’ remarked Martha with a half-defiant laugh, seeing that she was being observed. ‘We’re all right, but how about her?’
Alice looked blank; but Stella, after a spasm of annoyance had contracted her face, broke into a loud laugh, To Alice she said boisterously, ‘Matty is a proper little Bolshie, did you know? Why, we had to drag her away from the Reds before she was married, she gets all hot and bothered about our black brothers.’ She laughed again, insistently, but Alice apparently found no need to do the same.
‘Come along, dear,’ she said kindly to Martha. ‘Let’s have a drink and get it over with, if you don’t mind.’
Martha obediently joined them. But Stella could not leave it. She said brightly, ‘It’s different for them. They’re not civilized, having babies is easy for them, everyone knows that.’
They were climbing the wide staircase. Alice remarked indifferently, ‘Dr Stern has a clinic for native women. EverySunday morning. I tell him he’s so keen on everybody having babies that he can’t even give Sunday a rest.’
Stella involuntarily stopped. ‘Dr Stern treats kaffirs?’ she asked, horrified. It appeared that he was in imminent danger of losing a patient.
‘He’s very goodhearted,’ said Alice vaguely. The words restored her