A Proper Marriage by Doris Lessing

who did not have to answer to this same ninety per cent, but only to investors overseas. One felt that no slighterprovocation than this could have provoked them even to think of these investors, particularly as such thoughts were likely to be followed by others - such as, that the Company indirectly owned a large part of the News and most of the businesses who used its advertising space.
A telephone rang inside the long room which could be glimpsed through the open French windows. A native servant emerged, anonymous in his white ducks and red fez, to say Mr Player was wanted on the telephone. The secretary of the secretary made a movement towards rising; and subsided as Mr Player rose with a sharp look at him. He sat stiffly beside Ruth, discomfited. There was a long silence, while they listened to the voice inside. Then Mrs Brodeshaw remarked with a smile that Mr Player had a horse running in a race in England. There was a burst of relieved, admiring laughter.
Martha was looking at Mr Maynard, who did not laugh, but appeared bored and indulgent. Her persistent, speculative stare had its effect, for he got heavily to his feet and came down towards her. He sat down, saying, ‘If you young women will change your hair styles every day, what can you expect?’
‘I cut it,’ said Martha awkwardly - everyone had watched him coming to join her. Then Mrs Brodeshaw mentioned her roses, and conversation began again.
‘Did Binkie come back?’
‘He returned last night,’ said Mr Maynard. A glance at him showed his face momentarily clenched; a second, blandly indifferent. ‘His mother is a different woman as a result,’ he remarked; but at this point Mr Player returned. Everyone looked expectantly prepared to triumph or commiserate over the horse in England, but Mr Player sat down, and leaned over to murmur something to the young secretary. He was pink with importance.
Mr Maynard watched the scene, holding his glass between two loosely cupped hands, and said, ‘That is a very pretty young man.’
‘Oh, very!’ she agreed scornfully.
‘Have you noticed that the type of immigrant is changing?The era of the younger sons is passing. A pity - I am a firm believer in younger sons. Now we have what the younger sons, such as myself, for instance, left England to escape from.’ The idea of Mr Maynard as a younger son made Martha laugh; and he gave her a quizzical look. ‘Now, in the old days – but you wouldn’t remember that.’ He glanced at her and sighed. Martha felt she was being dismissed. He did not continue. Instead he asked, in a casual but intimate voice that referred to yesterday’s encounter, ‘Well, what do you make of it all?’ He glanced around the long veranda and then at her.
Martha blurted out at once, ‘Awful. It’s all awful!’
He gave her another glance and remarked, ‘So I thought. I have been looking at you and thinking that if you must feel so strongly you’d better learn to hide it. If I may give you advice from the height of my - what? fifty-six years.’
‘Why should I hide it?’ she demanded.
‘Well, well,’ he commented. ‘But it won’t do, you know!’
‘You didn’t even know it was me, you didn’t recognize me,’ she accused him.
‘I have noticed,’ he swerved off again, ‘that at your age women are really most extraordinarily unstable in looks. It’s not till you’re thirty or so that you stay the same six months together. I remember my wife …’ He stopped frowning.
There was a conversation developing at the bottom of the veranda. Martha heard the words ‘the war’, and sat up.
‘Mr Player must naturally be concerned with the international situation,’ remarked Mr Maynard. ‘A man who controls half the minerals in the central plateau can hardly be expected to remain unmoved at the prospect of peace being maintained.’
Martha digested this; what he was saying had, to her, the power to blast everyone in this house off into a limbo of contempt. It was more difficult for