A Proper Marriage Read Online Free PDF Page B

own approval of Dr Stern. ‘He only charges them sixpence, or something like that.’ She continued to drag herself up the staircase, ahead of the others.
Stella was silent. Her face expressed a variety of emotions, doubt being the strongest. Then Dr Stern effected in her that small revolution in thinking which crosses a gulf to philanthropy. She remarked, still dubiously, ‘Well, of course, we should be kind to them.’
Martha, three steps below her, laughed outright. Alice looked at her in surprise, Stella with anger.
‘Well, if everyone was like you, they’d get out of hand,’ Stella said sourly. ‘It’s all very well, but everyone knows they are nothing but animals, and it doesn’t hurt them to have babies, and …’ She added doubtfully, ‘Dr Stern is always modern.’
‘He’s making a study about it,’ said Alice. She was waiting for them on the landing. ‘It’s not true they are different from us. They’re just the same, Dr Stern says.’
Stella was deeply shocked and disturbed; she burst into her loud vulgar laughter. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’
‘But it’s scientific,’ said Alice vaguely.
‘Oh, doctors!’ suggested Stella, in precisely the same indulgent tone Alice had previously used for ‘the Government’.
Martha, arrived beside them on the landing, said bitterly, ‘It seems even Dr Stern is only interested in writing papers about them.’
Alice was offended. ‘Well, so long as they get help, I don’t suppose they mind, do you? And he’s very kind. How many doctors can you think of would work as hard as he does all the week and every night and then spend all Sunday morning helping kaffir women with their babies? And for as good as nothing, too.’
‘Well, sixpence is the same for them as ten shillings would be for us,’ protested Martha.
Alice was really angry now. ‘It’s not the same for Dr Stern.’
‘Whose fault is that?’ demanded Martha hotly.
Stella cut the knot by opening the door. ‘Oh, let’s have a drink,’ she said impatiently. ‘Don’t take any notice of Matty. Douggie’ll put some sense into her head. You can’t be a Red if you’re married to a civil servant.’
They went inside. Martha was acutely depressed at the finality of what Stella had said. She began to take out glasses and syphons, until Stella took them impatiently out of her hands. She sat down, and let Stella arrange things as she wished; with the feeling she had done this many times before.
Alice was unobservant and relaxed in a deep chair, puffing out clouds of smoke until she was surrounded by blue haze. ‘For crying out loud, but I’m tired,’ she murmured; and, without moving the rest of her body, she held out her hand to take the glass Stella put into it.
The room was rather small, but neat; it was dressed with striped modern curtains, light rugs, cheerful strident cushions. Stella’s taste, as Martha observed to herself bitterly, although telling herself again that it was her own fault. Well, she’d be gone soon, and then …
She took the glass Stella handed her, and let herself go loose, as Alice was doing.
Stella, accompanied apparently by two corpses, remained upright and energetic in her chair, and proceeded to entertain Alice with an amusing account of ‘their’ honeymoon.
‘… And you should have seen Matty, coping with the lads as if she were an old hand at the game. No wedding night for poor Matty, we were driving all night, and we had two breakdowns at that - the funniest thing you ever saw. We got to the hotel at two in the morning, and then all the boys arrived, and it wasn’t until that night we all decided it was really time that Matty had a wedding night, so we escorted them to their room, playing the Wedding March on the mouth-organs, and the last we saw of Matty was her taking off Douggie’s shoes and putting him into bed.’ Shelaughed, and Martha joined her. But Alice, who had not opened her eyes, remarked soothingly that Douggie was a hell of a lad, but Matty