A Proper Marriage

Yet, since Martha knew the ropes, there was nothing to say. Her eyes still fixed by the yellow patch of light, she let herself slide deeper into the comfortable chair, and Dr Stern inquired, ‘Sleepy?’

‘Haven’t had much sleep,’ she agreed, without moving.

Dr Stern looked at her again and noticed that she, in her turn, was unhappily regarding Alice, who was folding something white behind the white screen.

‘It’s all right, Mrs Burrell, just go next door for a moment. I’ll call you.’ Alice went out, with a kind, reassuring smile at Martha. ‘And leave the door open,’ said Dr Stern, for Martha’s benefit, which she did not appreciate: she would have preferred it shut.

And now Dr Stern, whose handling of the situation had been by no means as casual as it appeared, gave a swift downwards glance at his watch. Martha noticed it, and sat herself up.

‘Well, Mrs Knowell,’ he began smoothly, and, after a short silence, went on to deliver a lecture designed for the instruction of brides. He spoke slowly, as if afraid of forgetting some of it from sheer familiarity. When he had finished, Martha said obstinately that according to authority so and so another method was preferable. He gave her a quick look, which meant that this was a greater degree of sophistication than he was used to; almost he switched to the tone he used with married women of longer standing. But he hesitated. Martha’s words might be matter-of-fact, but her face was anxious, and she was gripping her hands together in her lap.

He went off at a tangent to describe a conference on birth control he had attended in London, and concluded with a slightly risky joke. Martha laughed. He added two or three more jokes, until she was laughing naturally, and returned to the subject by a side road of ‘A patient of mine who …’ Now he proceeded to recommend the method she had herself suggested, and with as much warmth as if he had never recommended another. His calm, rather tired, remote voice was extremely soothing; Martha was no longer anxious; but for good measure he concluded with a little speech which, if analysed, meant nothing but that everything was all right, one should not worry, one should take things easy. These phrases having repeated themselves often enough he went on to remark gently that some women seemed to imagine birth control was a sort of magic; if they bought what was necessary and left it lying in a corner of a drawer, nothing more was needed. To this attitude of mind, he said, was due a number of births every year which would astound the public. He laughed so that she might, and looked inquiringly at her. She did laugh, but a shadow of worry crossed her face. He saw it, and made a mental note. There was a silence. This time his glance at his watch was involuntary: the waiting room was full of women all of whom must be assured, for various reasons, that everything was all right, there was nothing to worry about, of course one did not sleep when one was worried, of course everyone was worried at times – of course, of course, of course.

Again Martha saw the glance and rose. He rose with her and took her to the door.

‘And how’s your husband keeping?’ he asked.

‘Fine, thanks,’ said Martha automatically; then it struck her as more than politeness and she looked inquiringly.

‘His stomach behaving itself?’

‘Oh, we’ve both got digestions like an ostrich,’ she said with a laugh, thinking of the amount they had drunk and eaten in the last few weeks. Then she said quickly, ‘There’s surely nothing wrong with his stomach?’ Her voice was full of the arrogance of perfect health. She heard it herself. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ she repeated. The solicitude in her voice rang false.

‘I believe I’ve been indiscreet,’ said Dr Stern. ‘But he is silly not to tell you. Ask him.’ And now he smiled, and held out his hand, saying that if she wanted help, if she just wanted to drop in for a chat, she must give him a ring. Martha wrung the hand, and left his room with the same look of soft, grateful pleasure that the previous patient had worn.

The other women watched her critically; they found that confused, self-confessing smile ridiculous. Then, as Stella rose to join her, they lost interest and turned their eyes back to the closed door.

‘Well, was he nice, did you like him?’ asked Stella urgently; and Martha said reticently that he was very nice.

Nothing more, it seemed, was forthcoming; and Stella urged, laughing, ‘Did you learn anything new?’ And it occurred to Martha for the first time that she had not. Her sense of being supported, being understood, was so strong that she stopped in the passage, motionless, with the shock of the discovery that in fact Dr Stern had said nothing at all, and in due course Douglas would be sent a bill for half a guinea – for what?

Stella tugged at her arm, so that she was set in motion again; and Martha remarked irritably that Dr Stern was something of an old woman, ‘sitting all wrapped up behind his desk like a parcel in white tissue paper, being tactful to a blushing bride.’

At once Stella laughed and said that she never took the slightest notice of what he said, either; as for herself and her husband, they had used such and such a method for three years, and she distinctly remembered Dr Stern telling them it was useless.

‘Well,’ asked Martha ungratefully, ‘what did you send me for, then?’

‘Oh!’ Stella was shocked and aggrieved. ‘But he’s so nice, and so up to date with everything, you know.’

‘He can’t be much older than you are,’ remarked Martha, in that same rather resentful voice. She was astounded that Stella was deeply shocked – at least, there could be no other explanation for her withdrawal into offended dignity. ‘If you don’t want a really scientific doctor then …’ Belatedly, Martha thanked her for the service; but they had reached the door marked ‘Private’, where they must wait for Alice; and Stella forgot her annoyance in the business of wriggling the door handle silently to show Alice they were there.

On the other side of the door, Alice was holding the handle so that it should not rattle, and watching Dr Stern to catch the right moment for announcing the next patient. Usually, having accompanied a patient to the door, he went straight back to his desk. This time, having shed his calm paternal manner over Martha’s farewells, he went to the window and looked down at the street through the slats in the shutter. He looked tired, even exasperated. Alice expected him to complain again about being a woman’s doctor. ‘I can’t understand why I get this reputation,’ he would grumble. ‘Nine-tenths of my practice are women. And women with nothing wrong with them.’

But he did not say it. Alice smiled as she saw him adjust the shutter so that the patch of sun, which was now on the extreme edge of the desk, should return to the empty space of polished wood nearer the middle. He turned and caught the smile, but preferred not to notice it. He frowned slightly and remarked that in three months’ time Mrs Knowell would be back in this room crying her eyes out and asking him to do an abortion – he knew the type.

Alice did not smile; she disliked him in this mood. Her eyes were cold. She noted that his tired body had straightened, his face was alert and purposeful.

He seated himself and said, ‘Make a card out for Mrs Knowell tomorrow.’ He almost added, laughing, ‘And book her a room in the nursing home.’ But he remembered in time that one did not make this sort of joke with Mrs Burrell, who was sentimental; his previous nurse had been better company. All the same, he automatically made certain calculations. January or February, he thought. He even made a note on his pad; there was a complacent look on his face.

‘That will do, Mrs Burrell. Thank you for staying over your time – you mustn’t let me overwork you.’ He smiled at her; the smile had a weary charm.

Alice did not respond. Her criticism of him formed itself in the thought, he has to have his own way over everything. And then the final blow: Heaven preserve me from being married to him, I wouldn’t have him as a gift.

‘Who’s next?’ he asked briskly.

‘Mrs Black,’ said Alice, going to the other door to call her in.

‘She ought to be starting her next baby soon,’ he remarked.

‘Have a heart,’ she said indignantly. ‘The other’s only six months old.’

‘Get them over young,’ he said. ‘That’s the best way.’ He added, ‘You ought to be starting a family yourself.’

Alice paused with her hand on the knob of the door, and said irritably, ‘The way you go on! If I catch you with less than five when you get married …’

He looked sharply at her; he had only just understood she was really annoyed; he wished again that he might have a nurse with whom he did not have to choose his words. But she was speaking:

‘You Jews have got such a strong feeling for family, it makes me sick!’

He seemed to stiffen and retreat a little; then he laughed and said, ‘There’s surely every reason why we should?’

She looked at him vaguely, then dismissed history with ‘I don’t see why everybody shouldn’t leave everybody else alone.’

‘Neither do I, Mrs Burrell, neither do I.’ This was savage.

‘You’re the sort of man who’d choose a wife because she had a good pelvis,’ she said.

‘There are worse ways of choosing one,’ he teased her.

‘Oh, Lord!’

‘Let’s have Mrs Black. Okay – shoot.’

Alice opened the door and called, ‘Mrs Black, please.’ She shut the door after the smiling Mrs Black, who was already seating herself; and, as she crossed the room on her way out, heard his voice, calmly professional: ‘Well, Mrs Black, and what can I do for you?’

She joined Martha and Stella, saying, ‘Wait, I must tell the other nurse …’

She came back almost at once, pulling out the frayed cigarette stub from her pocket and lighting it. Then she began tugging and pushing at the wisps of black hair that were supposed to make a jaunty frame for her face, but were falling in lank witch locks. ‘Oh, damn everything,’ she muttered crossly, pulling a comb through her hair with both hands, while the cigarette hung on her lip. Finally she gave a series of ineffective little pats at her dress, and said again, in a violent querulous voice, ‘Oh, damn everything. I’m going to give up this job. I’m sick to death of Dr Stern. I’m just fed up.’

Martha and Stella, momentarily united in understanding, exchanged a small humorous smile, and kept up a running flow of vaguely practical remarks until they had reached the hot pavement. They glanced cautiously towards Alice: she had apparently recovered. Stella immediately dropped the female chivalry with which women protect each other in such moments, and said jealously, ‘I wouldn’t have thought Dr Stern would be so hard to work for.’

‘Oh, no, he’s not,’ agreed Alice at once, and without the proprietary air that Stella would have resented. ‘Anyway, I’m really going to give it up. I didn’t train as a nurse to do this sort of thing. I might as well be a hotel receptionist.’

‘You’re mad to work when you’re married,’ said Stella. ‘I’ve given notice to my boss. Of course, we’re quite broke, but it’s too much, looking after a husband then slaving oneself to death in an office.’

Alice and Martha in their turn exchanged an amused smile, while Stella touched it up a little: ‘Men have no idea, they think housework and cooking get done by miracles.’

‘Why, haven’t you got a boy, dear?’ inquired Alice vaguely, and then broke into Stella’s reply with ‘Do you like Dr Stern, Matty? If not, I shan’t bother to make out a card for you.’

‘One doctor’s as good as another,’ said Martha ungraciously. ‘Anyway, I’m never ill.’

‘Oh, but he’s very good,’ exclaimed Alice, at once on the defensive. ‘He’s really wonderful with babies.’

‘But I’m not going to have a baby, not for years.’

‘Oh, I don’t blame you,’ agreed Alice at once. ‘I always tell Willie that life’s too much one damned thing after another to have babies as well.’

‘What do you do?’ inquired Martha, direct.

Alice laughed, on the comfortable note which Martha found so reassuring. ‘Oh, we don’t bother much, really. Luckily, all I have to do is to jump off the edge of a table.’

They were at a turning. ‘I think I’ll just go home, dear, if you don’t mind,’ said Alice. ‘Willie might come home early, and I won’t bother about a drink.’

‘Oh, no,’ protested Stella at once. ‘We’ll all run along to Matty’s place. You can ring Willie and tell him to come along.’

And now Martha once again found herself protesting that of course they must all come to her flat; an extraordinary desperation seized her at the idea of being alone; although even as she protested another anxious voice was demanding urgently that she should pull herself free from this compulsion.

‘Oh, well,’ agreed Alice good-naturedly, ‘I’ll come and drink to your getting married.’

Martha was silent. Now she had gained her point she had to brace herself to face another period of time with both Stella and Alice. She thought, Let’s get it over quickly, and then … And then would come a reckoning with herself; she had the feeling of someone caught in a whirlpool.

The three women drifted inertly down the hot street, shading their eyes with their hands. Alice yawned and remarked in her preoccupied voice, ‘But I get so tired, perhaps I’m pregnant? Surely I’m not? Oh, Lord, maybe that’s it!’

‘Well, jump off a table, then!’ said Stella with her jolly crude laugh.

‘It’s all very well, dear, but this worrying all the time just gets me down. Sometimes I think I’ll have a baby and be done with it. That’d be nine months’ peace and quiet at least.’

‘What’s the good of working for a doctor if he can’t do something?’ suggested Stella, with a look at Martha which said she should be collecting information that might turn out to be useful.

Alice looked annoyed; but Stella prodded, ‘I’ve heard he helps people sometimes.’

Alice drew professional discretion over her face and remarked, ‘They say that about all the doctors.’

‘Oh, come off it,’ said Stella, annoyed.

‘If Dr Stern did all the abortions he was asked to do, he’d never have time for anything else. There’s never a day passes without at least one or two crying their eyes out and asking him.’

‘What do they do?’ asked Martha, unwillingly fascinated.

‘Oh, if they’re strong-minded, they just go off to Beira or Johannesburg. But most of us just get used to it,’ said Alice, laughing nervously, and unconsciously pressing her hands around her pelvis.

Stella, with her high yell of laughter, began to tell a story about the last time she got pregnant. ‘There I was, after my second glass of neat gin, rolling on the sofa and groaning, everything just started nicely, and in came the woman from next door. She was simply furious. She said she’d report me to the police. Silly old cow. She can’t have kids herself, so she wants everyone else to have them for her. I told her to go and boil her head, and of course she didn’t do anything. She just wanted to upset me and make me unhappy.’ At the last 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 bright grey 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. Every Sunday 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 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.’ She laughed, and Martha joined her. But Alice, who had not opened her eyes, remarked soothingly that Douggie was a hell of a lad, but Matty needn’t worry, these wild lads made wonderful husbands, look at Willie, he’d been one of the worst, and now butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

The thought of her husband made her sit up, and say in a determined voice that she really must go; Willie was a pet lamb, he never worried about anything – but all the same, she wasn’t going to start setting a bad example. She struggled out of her chair, drained her glass, and nervously pressed Martha’s hand. ‘Sorry, dear, but I really must – I’ll see you soon, I expect, my Willie and your Douglas being such friends. And now I really …’ She smiled hastily at Stella, waved vaguely, and hurried out. They could hear her running down the stairs on her high heels.

‘Alice is just an old fusser,’ said Stella, settling herself comfortably. ‘If Willie isn’t tied to her apron string she can’t sit still.’ Martha said nothing. ‘That’s no way to keep a man. They don’t like it. You should manage them without them knowing it.’

Martha observed irritably that Stella and Alice talked about husbands as if they were a sort of wild animal to be tamed.

Stella looked at her, and then remarked in an admonishing way that Martha was very young, but she’d soon learn that the way to keep a lad like Douggie was to give him plenty of rope to hang himself.

Irritation was thick in the air, like the tobacco smoke that now made a heavy bluish film between them. Martha was praying, I wish she’d go.

Stella made a few more remarks, which were received in silence. Then she looked angrily across and said that if she were Matty she’d have a good sleep and then take life easy.

She rose, and stood for a moment looking at the mirror inside the flap of her handbag. Everything was in order. She shut the handbag, and gazed around the little room; she adjusted a cushion, then turned her gaze towards Martha, who was sprawling gracelessly in her chair.

Martha looked back, acknowledging the discouragement that filled her at the sight of this woman. Stella must have gained this perfect assurance with her maturity at the age of – what? There were photographs of her at fifteen, showing her no less complete than she was now.

It appeared that the moment for parting had at last arrived. Martha struggled up. And now Martha was filled with guilt. For Stella’s face showed a genuine concern for her; and Martha reminded herself that Stella was nothing if not kind and obliging – for what was kindness, if not this willingness to devote oneself utterly to another person’s life? Martha was too tired even to instil irony into it. She kissed Stella clumsily on one of her smooth tinted cheeks, and thanked her. Stella brightened, blushed a little, and said that any time Matty wanted anything she had only to … At last she left, smiling, blowing a kiss from the door, in precisely that pose of competent grace which most depressed Martha.

The moment she was alone, Martha rummaged for a pair of scissors and went with determination to the bathroom. There she knelt on the edge of the gleaming and slippery bath, and in an acutely precarious position leaned up to look into the shaving mirror. It was too high for her. There was a large mirror at a suitable height next door, but for some reason this was the one she must use. Nothing in her reflection pleased her. She was entirely clumsy, clodhopping, graceless. Worse than this, she was filled with uncomfortable memories of how she had looked at various stages of her nineteen years – for she might be determined to forget how she had felt in her previous incarnations, but she could not forget how she had looked. Her present image had more in common with her reflection at fifteen, a broad and sturdy schoolgirlishness, than it had with herself of only six months ago.

Her dissatisfaction culminated as she put the scissors to the heavy masses of light dryish hair that fell on her shoulders. She remembered briefly that Stella had laid stress on her hair being properly cut; but the mere idea of submitting herself to the intentions of anybody else must be repulsed. Steadily, her teeth set to contain a prickling feverish haste, she cut around her hair in a straight line. Then she fingered the heavy unresponsive mass, and began snipping at the ends. Finally she lifted individual pieces and cut off slabs of hair from underneath, so that it might not be so thick. From the way the ends curved up, she could see that Stella might be right – her hair would curl. At last she plunged her head into water and soaped it hard, rubbing it roughly dry afterwards, in a prayerful hope that these attentions might produce yet another transformation into a different person. Then she swept up the cushions of hair from the floor and went into the bedroom. It was after six, and night had fallen. She switched on the light, to illuminate the cheerful room whose commonplace efficiency depressed her; and stood in front of the other mirror trying to shape the sodden mass of hair into waves. She thought her appearance worse than before. Giving it up in despair, she switched off the light again and went to the window. She was thinking with rueful humour that now she was undeniably longing for Douglas to come so that he might reassure her; whereas for most of the last week she had been struggling with waves of powerful dislike of him that she was too well educated in matters psychological not to know were natural to a newly married woman. Or, to put this more precisely, she had gone through all the handbooks with which she was now plentifully equipped, seized on phrases and sentences which seemed to fit her case, and promptly extended them to cover the whole of womankind. There was nothing more paradoxical about her situation than that, while she insisted on being unique, individual, and altogether apart from any other person, she could be comforted in such matters only by remarks like ‘Everybody feels this’ or ‘It is natural to feel that’.

She leaned against the sill, and tried to feel that she was alone and able to think clearly, a condition she had been longing for, it seemed for weeks. But her limbs were seething with irritation; she could not stand still. She fetched a chair and sat down, trying to relax. Behind her, the two small and shallow rooms were dark, holding their scraps of furniture in a thinned shadow, which was crossed continually by shifting beams of light from the street. Under her, the thin floor crept and reverberated to footsteps behind the walls. Above her, feet tapped beyond the ceiling. She found herself listening intently to these sounds, trying to isolate them, to make them harmless. She shut her mind to them, and looked outwards.

The small, ramshackle colonial town had become absorbed in luminous dark. A looming pile of flats was like a cliff rising from the sea, and the turn of a roof like a large elbow half blocking the stars. Below this aerial scene of moon, sky, roofs and the tops of trees, the streets below ran low and indistinct, with lights of cars nosing slow along them among the isolated yellow spaces which were street lamps. Whiffs of petrol-laden dust and staled scent from flowers in the park a hundred yards away drifted down past her towards the back of the building, where it would mingle with the heavier, composted smell: the smell which comes rich and heavy out of the undertown, the life of African servants, cramped, teeming, noisy with laughter and music. Singing came now from the native quarters at the back; and this small lively music flowed across the dark to join the more concentrated bustle of noise that came from a waste lot opposite. The fun fair had come to town; and over the straggling dusty grass, showing yellow in the harsh composite glare from a hundred beating lights, rose swings and roundabouts and the great glittering wheel. Once a year this fair visited the city on its round of the little towns of southern Africa, and spilled its lights and churning music for a few hours nightly into the dark.