A Proper Marriage by Doris Lessing Page A

her to understand that for him it was enough to say it. She could find nothing polite enough to express what she felt. He looked at her again, and it disconcerted her because he saw so clearly what she would have liked to say.
‘My dear Mrs Knowell, if I may advise you–’ But againhe checked himself, and said, ‘Why should I? You’ll do as you like, anyway.’
‘What advice?’ she asked, genuinely.
But now he fidgeted his large and powerful dark-clad limbs in his chair, and said with the gruffness which was his retreat, ‘Let’s leave it at this: that I’m profoundly grateful I’m nearly sixty.’ He paused and added scathingly, ‘I can leave it all safely in the hands of Binkie.’
‘There are other people,’ she remarked awkwardly; she was thinking of Joss and Solly. Suddenly it occurred to her that there was an extraordinary resemblance between this dignified man and the rebel in the settlement in the Coloured quarters. Of course! It was their savage and destructive ways of speaking.
But now he remarked, ‘I daresay one attaches too much importance to one’s own children.’ He sounded tired and grim. She was immediately sorry for him. She was trying to find words to express it, when he nodded down towards the end of the veranda to direct her attention there.
Colonel Brodeshaw was speaking. ‘… a difficult problem,’ she heard. ‘If we conscript the blacks, the question of arming them arises. It’ll come up before the House in due course …’ Once again, this gathering was being used as a sounding board. This time there was no doubt, no cleavage of opinion, no need even for discussion. From one end of the veranda to the other, there was a murmur of ‘Obviously not. Out of the question.’ It was so quickly disposed of that Colonel Brodeshaw had the look of an orator on a platform who has been shouted at to sit down in the middle of a speech. He murmured, ‘Well, it’ll not be settled as easily as all that.’ People looked towards Mr Player; it appeared he had no views on the matter. Mrs Maynard announced finally, ‘If they learn to use arms, they can use them on us. In any case, this business of sending black troops overseas is extremely shortsighted. They are treated as equals in Britain, even by the women.’ There was no need to say more.
Mr Maynard remarked, ‘One of the advantages of living in a society like this, though I don’t expect you’ll appreciate it yet, is that things can be said. Now, in Britain it would takea very stupid person to talk in such a tone. In the colonies there is an admirable frankness which makes politics child’s play in comparison.’
‘It’s revolting,’ she said angrily.
‘Well,’ he said, flipping his forefinger against his glass again, ‘well, when this colony has reached the stage where a gathering like this talks about uplifting the masses of the people, you’ll find that politics will be much more complicated than they are now.’
‘Mr Player has just been talking about it.’
‘But with what engaging truth, with what disarming frankness. Enlightened self-interest - it has taken us long enough to reach it. Why, only a year ago, I remember, the suggestion by dieticians that Africans were not conveniently equipped by nature to subsist healthily on mealie meal and nothing else was treated as the voice of revolution itself. We advance, we advance! Now, in my youth, my “class” – as you so refreshingly have no inhibitions in putting it - were for the most part outspokenly engaged in putting the working classes in their place. But when I paid a visit to England last year, how different things were! The working classes were undoubtedly just where they used to be, but everyone of my “class” seemed concerned only to prove not only that they were entitled to a good life, but that they had already achieved it. Further, it was almost impossible to hold a conversation with my friends and relations, because their speech was full of gaps, pauses,