A Ripple From the Storm (15 page)

‘Well, comrade, and are you sick?’

‘The doctor says so.’

‘And he’s going to fill you up with medicines?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘I’ll get them for you. I can go on my bycicle.’

‘Anton’s gone already.’

‘I saw him here, I saw him,’ he said, accusingly. As she did not reply: ‘Tell me, have you and Anton got an agreement?’

‘An agreement?’ She was angry because he assumed he had the right to ask. It was clear he felt he did have the right. He even looked as if he had been betrayed. ‘I mean, are you and Anton getting together?’

‘Not as far as I know.’ She kept her eyes shut and when she opened them again he had gone.

She was deeply anxious: her stomach was twisting with anxiety. She thought: I’ve been irritated because of the way these men just fall for us, from one minute to the next, but what’s the difference between that and me and Anton getting involved? Because it seems to me we are involved. If I’d responded to Jimmy or Murdoch over a glass of beer or selling pamphlets, then it would have seemed to me quite right, inevitable, even romantic. Her anxiety rose to a climax, and she felt caged by Anton. But it happens to be Anton … why? Is it because he’s the leader of the group? But that’s despicable. And actually what do we have in common?

These muddled, dismaying thoughts were too much for her, and she went off into a semi-delirium. Her body had taken over from her mind. She lay feeling every pulse of pain, every sensation of heat and cold. Her body, precisely defined in areas of heat and cold, lay stretched out among sheets that felt gritty and sharp, as if she were lying on sand, or on moving ants. But her hands were not hers. They seemed to have swelled. Her hands were enormous, and she could not control their size. At the end of her arms she could feel them, giant’s hands, as if she compressed the world inside them, Everything she was had gone into her hands. She moved them, to see if she could shrink them back to size. For a moment they were her own hands again, then out they swelled, and, lying with eyes shut, she felt the tips of her fingers touch the vast balls of her thumbs as if girders had been laid across a ravine. The world lay safe inside her hands. Tenderness filled her. She thought: Because of us, everyone will be saved. She thought: I am holding the world safe, and no one will be hurt and unhappy ever again.

Anton came in later, and lifted her up to take her medicines. She kept her hands away from him: she had to keep them away because of their immense power: he might get hurt if he touched them.

She woke in the dark once to see him sitting by her in the chair, asleep. When she drifted off again, holding humanity safe in her powerful tender hands, she held him too, close and safe: the protector protected: the power-dealer made harmless.

In the morning the fever had gone down because of the drugs and Anton still sat there, smiling at her.

‘Aren’t you going to work?’ He did some kind of clerk’s work in an export and import firm. As an enemy alien it was not easy for him to find a job, and she worried that he might lose it because of her. ‘Aren’t you going?’ she insisted.

He shook his head. ‘I’ve telephoned and now you must not worry at all, you must sleep.’

For three days Anton sat by her, scarcely leaving her, taking instructions from the doctor and dealing with Mrs Carson with a gentle ironical patience that she would never have expected from him. Slowly her hands lost size. There was a moment she looked at them, small and thin, and began to cry. Anton took her in his arms and kissed her.

She murmured: ‘What about Toni Mandel?’ He said: ‘Yes, yes, everything has its end. You must not worry about Mrs Mandel.’

Anton was not there when Jimmy came in again, bristling with hostility. He made some remarks about the sale of
The Watchdog,
told her that Ronald was completely cured, and then said: ‘I have to tell you, comrade, that I must criticize you for your attitude.’

‘What attitude?’

‘I don’t like lies. I don’t mind the truth but I don’t like lies.’

‘What lies?’

‘You and Anton.’

‘What the hell’s it got to do with you?’

He was again red and angry, very hostile.

She thought: Well, it’s true that it might just as well have been Jimmy. Yet the feeling between her and Anton had now grown so that their being together seemed right and inevitable; she could not imagine that any accident (she thought of her sickness and Anton’s looking after her as an accident) would bring her and Jimmy together.

‘And in any case, comrade, I’d like to tell you straight, I’ve found a better woman.’

‘Well, I’m glad,’ she said flatly.

‘Yes. I have. A fine working-class woman, like my own kind. You and I wouldn’t have done at all.’

‘I’m very pleased.’ She wondered who he meant. There were no working-class girls in the group. She thought: The receptionist from McGrath’s? Then he’ll have to stop her using lipstick and dyeing her hair.

He said: ‘She’s a woman who can take hardship, who knows how to suffer. Yes, those girls down in the Coloured Quarter know how to take life.’

Martha’s brain informed her that any reaction she would have to this would be ‘white settler’ and therefore suspect. All the same, she had to say something. And he was waiting for her to speak, waiting with his whole body expressing challenge and readiness to fight.

‘Jimmy, you’ll get yourself posted.’

‘I’m not taking orders from any bloody colour-minded fascists.’

‘You won’t be allowed to marry her.’

‘The war won’t last for ever.’

‘And besides, we took a decision that the RAF must not have personal relations with the Coloured women, because it would give the reactionaries a stick to beat us with.’

That was what he had been waiting to hear. He turned the full force of his resentment on her and said: ‘Who took decisions? I’m not bound by any colour-minded decisions. If Comrade Anton wants to have colour prejudice, then he should be ashamed, but I’m not bound by it.’

‘You know it’s not a question of colour prejudice.’

‘Is it not then? For me it is. And if you ask me. Comrade Anton should examine his attitudes. I don’t like them at all.’

‘Then why didn’t you say so in the group meeting?’

‘There’s a lot wrong with the group,’ he said.

‘Then why don’t you say so in the group? It’s no use saying so outside.’

‘I’ll say my mind any place I want to say it. I’m not going to be told what I’m to say or where. I’m telling you, comrade, there’s altogether too many middle-class ideas in this group for my taste. And for the taste of the lads from the camp.’

He left the roam suddenly, letting the door crash behind him. Martha lay still, arranging in her mind the words she would use to describe the scene to Anton. Instinctively she softened it. She had an impulse not to say anything: ‘Jimmy’s personal feelings are his own affair.’ But they were not his own affair. It was her duty to tell Anton.

She said to Anton that Jimmy seemed to be in an emotional state, and should be ‘handled’. Then she reported what he had said.

At this, Anton’s personality changed: the gentleman who had sat by her as a nurse vanished. He became the chairman: stern and cold, with compressed lips and judging eyes.

‘There can’t be one set of rules for one person and another set for another. A decision was taken, and until the decision is changed by a majority vote of the group, then Comrade Jimmy will have to abide by it.’

‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you,’ she asked herself, and Anton. To which he replied: ‘It is the duty of a comrade to report infringements of discipline. It is our duty to aid and support each other.’

She felt him to be logically right; she felt him to be inhuman and wrong. There was no way for her to make these two feelings fit together. She was still weak and sick, and she let the problem slide away from her.

Soon she was convalescent; and the members of the group came in to see her, at lunch-hour, or in the intervals of meetings. The RAF, however, did not come: Jasmine reported that they were in a bad mood about something.

It was now accepted that Martha and Anton were a couple.

Chapter Two

Mr Maynard and his wife took breakfast at the opposite ends of the big table which was fully furnished with white damask, silver and cut-glass dishes displaying the yellows, browns, and golds of five different types of marmalade. Mrs Maynard took a cup of coffee and half a piece of toast; Mr Maynard a cup of tea. The problem which occupied the two minds behind the large, dark jowled faces did not reach words: the native servant stood at attention throughout the meal by the sideboard.

Mr Maynard said: ‘I have to be at the Magistrates’ Court in forty minutes.’ Mrs Maynard said: ‘I believe the living-room is empty.’ Mr Maynard waited by the door of the living-room, watching the morning sun quiver on the glossy leaves of the veranda plants. Mrs Maynard, tucking a white handkerchief into the bosom of her stiff navy-blue dress, where it stood up like a small stiff fan, came to a stop beside him, remarking: ‘I think you had better let me see the girl.’ She said ‘gal’.

He said: ‘I saw her last time, and she was quite amenable to persuasion.’

‘It’s a woman’s thing,’ she said, but without force.

‘How much are we prepared to go to?’

‘I shouldn’t think we’d get out of it under a hundred.’

‘Doesn’t do to give that sort of person a handle, I should be careful,’ she said. Her eyes were already marshalling her rose bushes, which offered white and pink cups of petal to the wind; they shook gently under a cloud of greenish-white butterflies. She frowned, saying: ‘I must get the garden boy to spray those roses this morning.’

He nodded, saying: ‘I might not be back for lunch,’ and walked off, hands behind his back, towards the gate.

Mrs Maynard, a solid dark blue shape, moved frowning over the crisp lawn, narrowing her eyes at the roses.

Maisie Gale had a room in one of the avenues, and it was not more than five minutes out of Mr Maynard’s morning walk to the Magistrates’ Court. He was counting on catching her before she left for work. In fact she was just wheeling her bicycle towards the gate when he appeared.

She said amiably: ‘Thank you for coming, Mr Maynard,’ and leaned the bicycle against the trunk of a Jacaranda tree.

Some weeks before, Mr Maynard had visited her, in order to persuade her not to marry his son, or at least to wait until Binkie returned on his next leave. He had expected opposition, but met none. Yesterday she had written him a letter saying she was pregnant. ‘I would like to talk this over with you at your convenience, Yours truly, Maisie Gale.’

She seemed to be agreeably surprised that his convenience was so readily at her service.

‘I suppose you are quite sure about this?’ he inquired.

Maisie leaned against the brown stem of a young Jacaranda tree, one bare arm wrapped about it, the other propped on her lazy hip. Her pretty plump face showed blue stains under the eyes. She said: ‘Oh, yes, I’m two weeks over.’

‘And I suppose you are quite sure Binkie is the father?’

She turned wide blue eyes on him, studying him as dispassionately as he was studying her. ‘Oh, yes. You see, we were engaged.’ This, offered with the conviction that it must make the ethics of the situation perfectly plain, caused Mr Maynard to frown, and to raise his black brows at her.

‘What I thought was this,’ she said. ‘Binkie told me Mrs Maynard has friends high up in the RAF. I thought Binkie could get compassionate leave. Yes, I know it’s a long way off, and they say the lads’ll be in Italy by now perhaps, but I thought perhaps it could be worked.’

Mr Maynard’s eyes focused on her face with a suddenness he must have felt himself, for he lowered them, allowing himself a small knowing smile.

‘I know a girl who had a friend in the office. She got pregnant, but her boy got compassionate leave and came home to marry her.’

‘My dear girl,’ he said, his voice weighted with ironical meaning. ‘I assure you it is quite out of the question.’

She looked puzzled. She had begun to blush. ‘Well, if it is, it is,’ she said, and grasped the handlebars of her bicycle.

His face was hard. ‘The CO must be pretty well used to the cries of complaint from the girls left behind, you know – whether justified or not.’

She looked even more upset. Her face was a clear scarlet. ‘I don’t know what you’re saying,’ she queried.

He did not reply save for the ironical stare. She shrugged and got on to her bicycle.

‘Wait,’ he said. She waited, moving the bicycle along the earth under her, back and forth, back and forth. He grimaced with irritation. ‘There’s no need to fly off. What are you going to do?’

Her eyes filled with tears, and she turned her face away.

‘The sad thing is this, with my other two husbands I wished I could have a baby, and we didn’t do anything but I didn’t get pregnant. This time, Binkie and I took precautions because we were only engaged and not married, and I’m pregnant. Well, that’s life.’ She ended humorously, but the tears were running down her face.

‘But my dear girl, you can’t have an illegitimate baby,’ he said, making his voice scandalized.

She replied coldly, because of the falseness of his tone: ‘I never said I should. What I said was, couldn’t Binkie come on leave so we could get married and I could have the baby.’

His stare at her was prolonged. She met it with wet eyes. There was a look of distaste on her face.

‘You’ll need money,’ he said on a tentative note.

‘I’ll go to joburg,’ she said. ‘I know a girl who went. It cost her seventy pounds. Fifty for the operation and twenty for the travelling. If you could lend the money, I’m sure Binkie would give it back to you when he comes home.’

‘Tell me, what do you get as widow of your two husbands?’

The dislike on her face was now so strong that he began to feel apologetic and to be angry because he saw no necessity for apology.

‘I refused the allowance when my second husband was killed because he had a widow for a mother and she got it. And I didn’t get money from my first husband because I didn’t like the way his mum and dad behaved after I married him.’

Mr Maynard thought: It’s easy to check on the first marriage. I know the parents. This idea expressed itself in a furtive set of his facial muscles, and she saw it, saying hotly: ‘There’s no need to make inquiries because what I say is true. And it’s nothing to do with you either,’ she added.

Now they stood opposite each other, antagonists, the bicycle standing between them under the thick green layers of shade.

He said: ‘If I make it £150, will that do?’

‘But I said an abortion would cost £70.’

‘Look here, let’s call it £150 and make it quits. But I must have any letters Binkie wrote you, and you must undertake not to make trouble.’

The scarlet flamed up again, over her fair exposed neck, her angry face which was bright against the pale glistening tendrils of hair. Even her arms were red. ‘I don’t understand you,’ she said. ‘What’s the £150 in aid of? I said £70. That’s what it costs. And I don’t see why you are making such a thing about it. If I wrote to Binkie he’d send it to me. He’s fair. He sees things fair, the way I do. But the posts take so long with the war, and I don’t want to wire to get him into trouble.’

His eyes moved fast over her, resting for a full glance on her stomach. Now she smiled sarcastically. ‘What are you thinking? You think I’m trying to put something over on you? Well, I’m not. And I’ll tell you something else. You needn’t think that I don’t know why you asked me not to marry Binkie on his leave. You think I’m not good enough. Well, what I think is, if I married Binkie I’d be stuck with you for in-laws, and I wouldn’t like it. I don’t like the way you think. You’ve got dirty minds. I like Binkie well enough, he’s a fine kid, but you’re too much for me. As far as I’m concerned, it’s off for always. You can choose him a wife with your ideas, haggling over money when a girl’s in trouble. And you can keep your bloody seventy pounds. I’ll borrow it somewhere else.’ She got on to her bicycle and went off down the avenue, cycling erratically beside a stream of early-morning office-bound cars.

Mr Maynard was left under the Jacaranda tree, all his susceptibilities in flux. He thought: Well, she’s not much of a hand at blackmail. Then a nerve of justice twitched in him, and he thought: At least the marriage is off, I suppose that’s something.

But he was depressed, and frowned and grunted as he walked under the thick trees towards the Courts. All the same, it seems she is pregnant after all. I was wrong. She’s got my grandchild inside of her. This hit him hard. He had not put it like that to himself before. Perhaps if I saw her again … But he knew it would be useless approaching her again. No good now to offer to bring Binkie down for a wedding, which of course it would be perfectly easy to arrange. No good at all. He’d muffed it. Perhaps his wife would have done better? The conviction that she would not comforted him. Now his mind was filled with the idea that he might have had a grand-daughter and there would be no grand-daughter.

Maisie was several blocks in front of him, knowing that he followed, watching her. She saw trees, buildings, people through blobs of tears. She turned past a statue of Cecil Rhodes side by side with another bicycle. On the bicycle was Martha Knowell, who smiled at her, but in such a way it was easy to do no more than smile back. Maisie suddenly remembered that Martha was a Red, and that the Reds believed in free love.

‘Hey, Matty,’ she said, ‘can you spare a moment?’

Martha came to a stop, resting her foot on the kerb, and Maisie arrived beside her.

‘Matty, I hope you don’t mind my asking you some advice, but I’ve got some trouble.’ Martha smiled; Maisie, comparing the smile with others in her memory, said: ‘What’s up with you? You sick?’

‘I’ve been sick. My first day up.’

Too bad. We all have our troubles.’

‘What’s yours?’

‘Well, Matty, it’s like this. I’m preggy.’ She anxiously examined Martha’s face for signs of disapproval. There were none, so she continued: ‘Hell, man, I wish I could die, I do really, because I didn’t marry Binkie, his parents asked us not to until the next leave. So now I want to have the kid and I can’t, because it would seem Binkie couldn’t get compassionate leave.’

Martha frowned and remarked that it was disgraceful that women couldn’t have babies if they wanted to, even if they didn’t have husbands.

Maisie said reproachfully: ‘Hell, man, Matty, but I know a girl who had a baby without a husband and everyone treated her like dirt.’

‘I know,’ said Martha, ‘that’s what I mean.’ At this point Maisie’s distressed face brought her out of the region of principle, and she said: ‘Well, you can’t have an illegitimate baby in this dump, but don’t you go to those wise women, they mess you up.’

‘But that means Joburg.’

‘Haven’t you any money?’

‘I can get some from my mum.’

‘Will she mind?’

‘My mum’ll always stand by me,’ said Maisie warmly. ‘The reason I don’t like to tell her is it’s because she’s not too rich herself. No, I’ll get it from somewhere. But the thing is, I’ve not got the address of that place in Joburg, and my friend that knows, she’s away. So do you know?’

‘I don’t, but surely we can find out?’

‘I do so hate this business, Matty. It makes me feel sick. I say to myself: Well, you’re a woman and you’re going to have a baby, that’s all. But already I feel dirty, if you know what I mean. And where’s the sense? I mean, there’s something funny about it – I have had two husbands, and Binkie, and here I stand, not knowing where to turn.’ Tears splashed from Maisie’s cheeks into the dust.

Martha said: ‘Oh hell, Maisie, don’t cry. Why don’t you send a wire to Binkie? He’ll fix something. These men always fix things up somehow.’

‘But I can’t send him a telegram saying what is the truth, because someone might read it and he’d be in trouble. And I asked Mr Maynard but he’s very strange, isn’t he?’

‘He’s a damned old reactionary.’

Maisie frowned, waited for Martha to use a word that she could feel with, and when Martha did not, went on: ‘I don’t understand anything he was getting at except he thought I was trying to put something over on him, and I don’t want to have anything to do with people like that. It makes me feel badly about Binkie too. I don’t want to marry Binkie if I’ve got to have types like that in my life. So what shall I do?’

‘I’ll see if I can get the address of that place in Joburg.’

‘I’d like to have the baby, Matty. I’ve had the three boys my two husbands, and Binkie, and I wish I could have a baby to myself.’

Martha, seeing that this was a crisis not to be solved by addresses in Johannesburg, said: ‘Look, Maisie, you’d better come to see me, and we’ll talk it all over.’

‘Thanks, Matty, when can I come?’

This was a real problem. Martha, out of bed that morning, had no evenings free as far ahead as she could see. She said: ‘Tomorrow evening there’s a Progressive Club meeting. I’ll meet you and we’ll talk. By then I’ll have asked my friends about it.’

But, Matty, I don’t want people talking about me.’

‘But how can I find out?’

Heavy footsteps sounded beside them. Mr Maynard passed with a stiff nod and a measured smile and a sharp, penetrating prolonged stare at Maisie.

Maisie said, again crying: ‘Hell, Matty, these people get me down. My first man’s parents were the same, they think in a bad way, they think about life as if it’s all money.’

‘Come tomorrow and we’ll fix something.’

‘Well, thanks, Matty, and you’re a real pal.’

They cycled off side by side, once again passing Mr Maynard, but without looking at him.

Mr Maynard, now that the image of a grand-daughter possessed him, ached with elderly loss, and he gazed fixedly at the fair plump body moving lazily past on the machine, a body which he saw simply as the casket which housed the heir of his flesh. He thought: She shouldn’t be cycling if she’s pregnant. He thought: Martha told me she didn’t see Maisie these days. Why did she tell me a lie? He was possessed by an irritable anger. I suppose she’s behind it … this thought switched into: Some communist trick, I suppose. Normally such an idea would not lodge in his critical mind for longer than a second, but now he did not resist it. His mind fumed with all kinds of suspicions: Maisie was one of the Reds, and in some way the appeal for money had a link with communism.