A Ripple From the Storm (22 page)
He said in a different, responsible voice: ‘Sorry, Mrs Spikes. I’ll go. And don’t worry about Ron. Those doctors don’t know nothing.’
‘He’ll die,’ she said, her voice hard and angry. ‘You got somewhere to sleep? There’s the hostel in town.’
‘Yes. I’ll go to the hostel.’ He hesitated. He was on the point of saying: ‘Mrs Spikes, I like you. Please marry me.’ Realizing this, he told himself: You silly sod, you’re crackers.
‘I’ll be seeing you soon,’ he said. At the tone of his voice, she put up a thin hand and began twisting at her loosened coil of hair, regarding him with thoughtful troubled eyes. It struck him that the first thought she had, in a moment when she knew a man liked her was
trouble.
This made him angry: only then did it strike him that the
trouble
she expected was more simple; he had again forgotten he was a white man in forbidden territory. Meanwhile the whole set of her body had changed; she looked wary and stubborn. She was waiting for him to go.
‘Good night,’ he said.
‘Good night,’ she said, with a quick smile. Because she was now free to go inside, away from the neighbours’ eyes, away from him, her smile showed a touch of consciousness, acknowledged him as a man. As the door closed softly in his face, he hated her for the smile, and remembered that across the yard, men from the camps came to lie with the women of the court. She’s probably had offers enough, he thought bitterly, offers enough and to spare, it was only with a great effort that he conquered this bitterness, thinking: She’s a decent woman, she’s not that sort …
He stood silent on the veranda, wondering where to go. As he did so, a door opposite opened and he saw a man’s shape emerge. It was one of the men from the camp. Jimmy thought: I’ll stop him and ask him where he puts up at this time of night – too late to get to the hostel now, it’s nearly morning. He changed his mind, remembering the girl from the room, whom he had seen often enough when visiting Ronald. She was pretty, sinuous and male-antagonistic.
He waited until his fellow from the camp disappeared. The he crossed the court and knocked on the door. He was thinking: I’ll explain to her, I’ll tell her … for he was again filled with a passionate pity for women, and loathing for the man who had left. Phrases passed through his mind: this life you are leading; victims of economic system; men, women …
He knocked again and the door opened an inch. ‘What do you want?’
Before he could answer, the door opened fully. The girl stood there half-naked, her arms thrust roughly into a wrapper. A rich full smell of sex and sweat came from her and made his head turn.
‘How much?’ she said, standing in front of him, twisting up the long masses of her black hair.
‘I don’t want it,’ he said. Then, as she laughed, he said, ‘Don’t you remember me? You’ve seen me.’
‘Yes, I remember,’ she said. She looked him up and down and said something in Afrikaans over her shoulder. An old woman came out, ducking under her daughter’s naked arm where it was propped against the door-frame. She held in her hand a candlebox and was jamming an old hat on her head, skewering it into place with broken knitting needles. She passed, muttering obscenities at him, but impersonally, for her bright old eyes searched his face curiously, until she had set the candlebox down full in the moonlight by the veranda, and had sat herself on it, swaying to and fro, while the knitting needles in her squashed hat flashed out light.
‘Come in,’ said the girl.
Jimmy, his throat thick, half with lust and half with a longing to cry, said: ‘But listen, I just want to …’ ‘You coming in or not?’
Behind her a candle-flame appeared in the dark, floating at first on deeper dark, like a flame on dark water. Then the shape of a bottle appeared beneath the flame and the candle, and then a naked arm. Jimmy saw the inside of the room dimly lit. A bed, already slept in, from which the girl and the man who had left the court had emerged. A rough mess of blankets on the floor, where the old woman had been settling herself down before being disturbed by this new customer. And another narrow bed by the wall, where another girl lay, her sharp chin dug into a cushion, watching him with interest. Behind her a man lay sleeping.
Jimmy said: ‘Sony, mistake.’ He turned and fled out of the court. He heard sharp angry voices and a door slammed.
He stood quiet in the street, waiting for his blood to run more tranquilly. The sky was greying, the stars going out.
In the few minutes he had been in the court, the night had ended. There were sounds of movement in the street. A couple of bicycles went past, men bent over the handlebars. A group of men came, sleep-wearily, carrying hoes, then a couple of young women, pedalling slowly, not noticing anything, the machines swaying clumsily because of the sleepiness of the riders. Then all at once the street was crowded with people, on their way to work on foot or on bicycles.
Jimmy loitered along the pavements, watching them, and thinking: At home I’d join in, I’d be one of them, but just because I’ve got a white skin … He remembered his uniform – he was doubly separated from them.
He would have to lie low for a couple of hours. It was only just after four now. Or perhaps he could walk slowly back to camp and present himself at the gates in plenty of time for breakfast, Jimmy set himself to walk the five miles back, thinking: I’ll get hold of that silly clot Elias this afternoon and talk some sense into him.
Meanwhile, Elias was on his way to Mr Maynard, after an agitated frightened quarrel with his wife. About the time that Jimmy reached the centre of the town, which lay silent in the grey dawn, Elias was banging on Mr Maynard’s front door.
Mr Maynard had gone to bed very late the night before, and heard the banging with annoyance. Swearing steadily under his breath, while looking over his shoulder at his wife’s shut bedroom door, he went to the veranda in his pyjamas. Ellas stood there, grey with fright.
He babbled about insurrection, about communism, about RAF inciting the Africans to an uprising.
Mr Maynard told him to stay where he was, and went back into the house to find himself a dressing-gown and a finger of whisky. Then, standing like a magistrate in front of Elias, he cross-examined him until he got the story.
He perceived that what troubled Elias was that he was afraid that other people, most probably old Mathew, the other Court Messenger, who lived in the house opposite to his in the Location, would come with tales about him, say that white men had been visiting his house at night. Were it not for this fear, Elias would not be standing here.
Mr Maynard continued to cross-examine Elias until he was convinced that his lies and stumbling were from fear and not from policy, and out of contempt for the man and for his whole race, began to laugh at Elias, making jokes.
‘So the RAF men are making a revolution, is that it?’
‘But sir, he was in my house this morning at three and a half minutes past three o’clock. You can ask my wife, she wrote down the time.’
‘And we can expect the Red Flag to fly over the Location any day now, is that it?’
‘But sir, it is the truth. I swear it is the truth,’
‘Oh, go back home,’ said Mr Maynard, and went indoors with a slam of the door. Elias walked down to the Magistrates’ Court, where he laid himself down on a bench and slept.
Mr Maynard also slept. At the breakfast-table he told his wife that it would be advisable if she communicated certain names to her cousin in the Administration of the Airforce, in order that they should be posted at once. The names were Aircraftsmen James Jones, William Bolton, and Murdoch Mathews. Andrew McGrew was not mentioned, because in his fright, Elias had forgotten him.
Mr Maynard made his way to the Court, regretting that he had been so sharp with Elias. After all, he did not want this source to dry up. He would tip him well – ten shillings, or something like that.
My friendship for him began by my being struck by the stand he took on certain political questions.
OLIVE SCHREINER’S LETTERS
For several weeks of group meetings the little office above Black Ally’s was filled with civilians; the grey-blue uniforms had withdrawn themselves. Then, unheralded, Bill Bluett walked into a meeting and, begging their permission to insert his item thus arbitrarily on to the agenda, stood in the middle of the room and read them a resolution on behalf of the communists in the camp. This was a document of two foolscap pages, beginning: Comrades!
It stated that the group in town were petty-bourgeois social democrats infected with Trotskyism, right-wing deviationism and white-settler ideology and that because of these facts the RAF members intended to sever all connection with them.
Having finished reading this statement, Bill crumpled it up into his pocket, and stood waiting for their comments. As there were none, he began again, in a different tone: ‘Comrades, it’s really much simpler this way. We’ll run our group in the camp and maintain a liaison with yours.’ Wry smiles appeared on various faces, but it seemed Bill could see no reason for them. ‘We’ll need you, anyway, to get supplies of pamphlets and
The Watchdog.
I’ll drop in one of these days and make arrangements with Matty – that is, if she’s still Lit Sec and not too absorbed in welfare work.’ Here he offered Martha a lopsided grin that said he approved of the welfare work, looked at his watch, nodded with perfect friendliness all around and left them. They saw him no more: he, Jimmy and Murdoch were posted from the Colony that same week.
Andrew returned to his place on the bench beside the literature cupboard as if nothing had happened. This man, whose respect for discipline was as great as Anton’s, seemed unaware that his behaviour had been at all incorrect. And Anton said nothing. More: from that time on, men from the camp announcing themselves as communists from this part of the world or that, would drop in to group meetings, coming in late, leaving early, as if the group were no more than a club. And still Anton said nothing. It seemed that for them, for these individuals from the armed camp, discipline need not exist. Meanwhile, for the people in the town, discipline had reached a point where, if someone arrived two minutes late, the group felt a collective grief on his or her behalf, coupled with a collective determination to assist and support this comrade to better self-organization.
This two-way process, a simultaneous loosening and tightening, was showing itself in other ways.
For instance, there was the question of criticism. Every week these people stood up before their comrades and criticized themselves: with sincerity, and after considerable heart-searching. Yet they did not again launch criticisms at each other, nor was it even suggested. Mutual criticism was dropped from their programme, without any formal decision being taken: at the most they nodded, as it were impartially, when one of them made a point against himself.
Again, there was the question of allies: even more time than before was spent on analysing the exact degree of apostasy on the part of people like the Kruegers, yet Jasmine, for one, had revived her friendship with them. As for the du Preez couple, all their social life was devoted to people whom they agreed, at least on one night of the week, were in one way or the other enemies of socialism.
And finally, whereas once all the multifarious responsibilities of the group were organized from the dusty little room over the restaurant, now the headquarters seemed to have become the du Preez’ house. For one thing, it was central not practically, for it was on the outskirts of the town, but spiritually, situated in a suburb whose fringes spread on the verges of a vlei whose grass flanks would soon vanish under new houses, but which now stood a mile from the Location and was not far from the Coloured Quarter. It was felt that when the group spread links among the African proletariat, it would be easier from a house within walking distance of the African ghetto. For these people continued to feel, deeper than anything else, a continual hurt and embarrassment on behalf of the Africans.
This hurt had been crystallized by the defection of Elias Phiri who vanished from group life after the meeting which was also the last for the RAF group. Jasmine had gone down to the Magistrates’ Court to inquire from him, urging his attendance on behalf of his nation. When he arrived at the next meeting he was drunk, sat through two items of the agenda with a look of sullen withdrawal, and then interrupted with a long speech, delivered on his feet as if he were at a public meeting, against his people who, he said, were all backward savages and fit for nothing but servitude. He left them at the conclusion of his speech, which was: ‘I tell you, they’re all pigs and Kaffir-dogs!’
Jasmine had gone down to the Court again, and had explained to him, with many historical illustrations, the incorrectness of his attitude. She had made little impression, however.
Soon they were saying that his character was unstable. In short, Elias, like the Kruegers and the RAF group, was spoken of thus: ‘He was never a communist at all. If he had been he couldn’t have left.’
Meanwhile, the remaining members of the group worked together in a honey of amity, but perhaps with less efficiency, because of the way minutes, papers and pamphlets were distributed between the du Preez’ house and the group office.
Various changes had occurred in the personal lives of the members.
Marjorie was pregnant after four months of marriage. Martha noted the girl’s efficiency, recognized a certain emotional competency; noted, too, a characteristic set to Colin’s fat shoulders, something both complacent and wary, and thought: Well? It’s no good expecting me to believe in it …
One afternoon the two young women were addressing envelopes for the Progressive Club on the du Preez’ veranda, and talking about Europe after the war. Italy was certain to be communist, and so was France. In five years there would be a communist Europe. They imagined it as a release into freedom, a sudden flowering into goodness and justice. They already felt themselves to be part of it.
‘I’d prefer Italy, I think,’ Marjorie said. ‘Yes, I was there on a holiday once. I like the Italians because their temperament is so different from mine – I have such a tendency to worry and fuss. When the war is over I’ll go to Italy and the comrades there will give me a job for a year or so.’
She had forgotten about Colin and about the baby. Almost at once her expression changed into the dry humour that had already absorbed the eager earnest charm that had been hers a few weeks before, and she said; ‘It’s hard to remember one isn’t free. It’s funny, isn’t it, Matty? Just because of … the baby, I’ll never be free again.’ She had been going to say: Because of Colin. ‘But I won’t stay in this country, I won’t!’ she concluded fiercely, looking with hate at the rows of identical little gardened villas of which the du Preez’ house was one. ‘You’re free, though,’ she added, smiling encouragingly at Martha.
‘Having a baby ought to make everything fuller, not narrow everything,’ said Martha. And by a natural transition which Marjorie easily followed, she went on to: ‘In the Soviet Union, with the crèches and nursery schools, everything must be different, relations between men and women must be quite different, there must be real equality.’ For some time, they spoke of the lives of the women in the Soviet Union. They lapsed into silence, smiling, pursuing the same fantasy: They were in the Soviet Union. They walked into some factory or industry, which was run by a woman, who was their age, or perhaps a little older, someone competent, matter-of-fact, sympathetic. There would be little need for talk even: a smile and a squeeze of the hand would be enough, for this woman would understand at once why they needed to be given work which would absorb the best of themselves, why they needed time for study. ‘Under capitalism,’ she might have said, though it was hardly necessary to do so, ‘women have to diminish themselves. Women like you, already part of the future, because you can imagine how diferent human beings will be, are entitled to spend a year or so in the socialist world, so as to strengthen your vision and carry it back home with you, and hand it on to others.’
From this fantasy, Martha fell to thinking about Marjorie’s words: You’re free, though …
For something had occurred which had left her feeling less than free.
For some weeks Anton and she, although regarded by themselves and by the others as a couple, had not made love. Martha had decided that some delicacy was causing him to wait until their relationship had reached a natural moment of fruition. She rested in this belief of his fine feeling with something not far off love.
A week ago he had suggested they go to the pictures together. They had never done anything together that was not associated with the group activities. He had said: ‘Even the best comrades need relaxation sometimes.’ There had been a consciousness in his smile that had made Martha think: Surely he can’t be doing anything so vulgar as to take me to the pictures in order to set the mood for going to bed?
After the film she went back with him to his hotel room. She had not been there before. She was thinking of the Austrian woman who still lived in the hotel, when Anton got determinedly off the bed where he had been sitting, took her by the hand and raised her from her chair and towards the bed in one movement that had in it a mixture of gallantry, which she was able to tolerate, although it was hard to associate with him ordinarily, an uncertain appeal, which warmed her to him, and a complacency which she hated.
The act of sex was short and violent, so short she was uninvolved. She thought that perhaps he might have been nervous. He did not, however, seem nervous. She gave no hint of her feelings, and listened to him talk of his experiences in the revolutionary movement in Germany.
She worried over this for some days and came to some contradictory conclusions. There was something essentially contradictory between the image of the revolutionary, essentially masculine, powerful and brave, and how Anton had behaved with her in bed. Yet the need in her to admire and be instructed was so great that she was on the point of telling herself: It must be my fault and not his. And yet no sooner had she reached this point of self-abnegation than her experience told her there was something wrong with Anton. And yet – here was another indisputable fact: with each man she had been with, she had been something different. Although various totally despicable because dishonest psychological pressures made her wish to say she had never enjoyed Douglas, never had pleasure with William – for both these men, from the moment she became Anton’s, seemed faintly distasteful and very distant – yet she knew this to be untrue. What it amounted to, then, was that she must wait for Anton to create her into something new? But after half a dozen times the honest voice of her femininity remarked that ‘Anton was hopeless’. Or, to salvage her image of the man: ‘We are sexually incompatible.’
At the time of her conversation with Marjorie on the du Preez’ veranda, she had decided to tell Anton that she was not for him: more diplomatically, so as to save his pride, that he was not for her. She played with fantasies of how the Austrian woman would burst into the room, making scenes, claiming him back. She, Martha, would say: But Anton, it’s only fair, she’s known you so much longer than I have.
But the Austrian woman was nowhere to be seen. When Martha asked about her, Anton said: ‘But my little one, she’s a sensible girl, believe me.’ This with a fond and protective smile.
My little one
moved Martha, filled her with repose, even though she despised the emotion.
She’s a sensible girl
repelled her because of its complacency. Anton had chosen to be sensible and left Toni Mandel no alternative but to choose sense? Presumably. After all, she was a middle-aged woman and a very tired one. But would
he
be sensible if she, Martha, decided to be? Her instinct said not. She imagined herself saying: Anton, I’m sorry, we’ve made a mistake. How, then, would he react? The man who made a special journey at lunch-hour to buy cinema tickets and order a table for two in a mood of dogged determination to do what he thought was the right thing, who fetched her gallantly from her room, and settled her into the front seat of the car he had borrowed for the occasion, and all this with the creaking kindliness he never used towards her when they were both being, simply, members of the group that man she imagined as capable of ugly vanity. She was afraid.
But not as afraid as of the man she imagined stiffening into hurt, saying in the cold voice he used when preserving a shell of pride: ‘Well, of course, if you feel like that …’
Yet all this was unimportant; after the war they would be scattered into the revolutionary battle-fronts of Europe. Personal unhappiness was irrelevant. All the same, she would speak to Anton about their unsuitedness to each other not later than tonight … well, if not tonight, then at some suitable moment when neither was tired, and both could be reasonable.
In the meantime there were a hundred things to be seen to. She saw to them: the organizing of meetings, the study groups, the addressing of envelopes. There was also the question of Maisie.
She did not speak to Anton of Maisie because he continued to refer, with disapproval, to ‘charitable activities’.
Martha had been present at the first interview between Andrew and Maisie. It had been brief. Andrew, brisk and kindly, had said he was prepared to marry Maisie, and would allow her to divorce him when the child was born. He thought he could get permission from the CO to marry. If it came to the worst he would say he had got a girl into trouble. He said this with a smile, his eyes warm on Maisie’s calm but unhappy face. She asked for time to think it over. He insisted that he would do whatever she wanted, and that she should send a message to him through Martha. Then he left the two girls together. They were sitting in Black Ally’s on either side of a tomato-sauce-stained tablecloth. Maisie drank strong tea in silence, thinking, until she asked at last: ‘But, Matty, I don’t get it. Why should he? I mean, he doesn’t get anything out of it but the bother of a divorce. Is it because he’s a communist?’