A Ripple From the Storm (25 page)

The smell of dry dust filled her nostrils; an odour of dry sun-harshened leaves descended from the darkening gum-trees above. She thought: and it was a moment of illumination, a flash of light; I don’t know anything about anything yet. I must try and keep myself free and open, and try to think more, try not to drift into things.

The heavy bells from the Catholic Church down the road tumbled out a warning of the time: it was seven, and she began walking very fast towards Black Ally’s. Already the old feeling of impatience was snapping at her heels and the moment of knowledge had gone.

Why should I be so afraid to face Anton now? It’s absurd to feel caged. It might have been any one of these men, any one, it was simply luck, or some kind of choice I don’t understand. But not
my
choice. If Jasmine had been sick, Anton would have – kissed her on the forehead, and I would be thinking of Jasmine now as she is thinking of me –
Don’t be a fool.

She was in a fever of irritable bewilderment. At the door of Black Ally’s she remembered she had not agreed to meet Anton here but at the Grill down the street.

She liked the atmosphere of Black Ally’s although the food was so bad. The Grill was expensive and was used for special occasions. She thought that ever since Anton had ‘kissed her on the forehead’ he had been taking her formally to the Grill once or twice a week. On these occasions his manner towards her was different.

Why does he do it? I don’t like it, she thought, feeling she was unjust, but too full of irritation to care. It’s the way he does it – everything so careful and so planned, as if he were saying: Tonight I shall sleep with you and this is a preparation for it. Most of the week I’m a comrade, a friend, and then he turns me into something else. I simply don’t like any of it.

She reached the Grill, which was a small room, flashing with white linen and well-polished cutlery and highly uniformed waiters. Anton waited in a corner. He rose at the sight of her and stood, slightly bowed, until she sat down, reaffirming her decision to end the thing: this tall stiff pale man, watching me from his pale eyes – good Lord, he’s got nothing to do with me, and never could have. Well, I’ll say something when we reach the end of the meal.

Meanwhile, Anton was ordering. It pleased him to treat her as if she were still convalescent, and he said with a heavy, fatherly playfulness: ‘You must have a good underdone steak – yes.’ And he smiled at her as if he were surprised it could be so easy and so pleasant to smile.

She put her elbows on the table and chattered to him about the meeting that afternoon in a way she knew irritated him. She was giving him all the essential information, but making fun of it, including the six communists. ‘We imagined we went there to influence them, but it turns out we’re part of some plot of Mrs Van’s …’ She saw his forehead set into patience against her irresponsibility which he had no intention of condoning but which, since this was a special occasion, he would make allowances for.

Lately, with her, the set of his shoulders and the careful bend of his head had become more easy, more relaxed. Tonight he had regained his self-contained watchfulness something that caught at her heart because it was a protection against possible pain and she knew it.

‘What’s the matter?’ she inquired, seeing that there was something very much the matter and she ought to have noticed it before.

He said: ‘There is something, yes, but let us finish our food first.’

Now they ate in silence.

Martha was thinking: Perhaps he wants to break it off? Perversely, a feeling of loss and panic swept over her. She noted this with dismay: I’d be capable of talking him into going on simply because it was he who wanted to break it off! Well, if that’s what it is, I’ll resist a little, so as not to hurt his feelings, and then agree.

Having reached this decision she talked of Maisie and Andrew, although she knew he disapproved of the couple. She was even making some kind of a test of it: if he said something warm and generous about them, it would mean they could be happy together.

She saw he was not listening. He said: ‘Matty, something has happened and we must make a decision.’

He talked slowly, every word weighed. It appeared that his employer had taken him aside that morning and told him the CID had paid an informal visit to say that Anton Hesse, an enemy alien, was known to be having an affair with a British woman. Such relationships were frowned upon. It had been pointed out, but in such a way that it need not be taken as an actual threat, that in the past enemy aliens misconducting themselves had been returned to the internment camp. The employer had been ‘very upset’. He had not said in so many words that he insisted on Mr Hesse breaking off this affair, but – flurried, bad-tempered from guilt, apologetic for his bad temper, and very verbose – had talked for two hours, finally divesting himself of any responsibility, leaving it on the shoulders of the CID whose very existence he of course totally deplored. The matter had in fact been conducted in the great British tradition: no one had actually threatened anyone, or brought any direct pressure to bear; not only the employer but the CID man had been extremely uncomfortable; it was nobody’s fault; nevertheless, the effect was that Anton must toe the line or lose his job and possibly return to the internment camp.

Martha noted that the stiff resentment in Anton’s voice was due to only one thing, as usual: that he was anti-fascist and anti-Hitler and yet treated like an enemy.

He was not even trying to influence her. He was stating the position as simply as he could.

When she tried to interrupt he said: ‘Wait, Matty, wait. You must let me say everything first.’

He finished with: ‘And so if we analyse the position it is this: we must break this off, or we must get married and become respectable. And that is not the lightest decision to make.’

And so he ended, leaving it to her.

Martha was silent. She saw how he had, as she put it, gone into his shell. She noted how his mouth had set in patient resignation. He has taken it for granted, she thought, that she would decide to break it off.

‘You must think it over,’ he said. ‘You must say nothing now, but you think it over when you’re alone.’

He really cares for me, she thought; it was interesting that this was the first time she had told herself he cared for her.

‘Supposing we break off,’ she asked, ‘is it still a bad mark against you, having an affair with a British girl?

He said reluctantly: ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ He added: ‘And of course it is not sensible, taking part in all these communist activities – it is more than possible that this is these gentlemen’s way of warning me against all this running around at meetings.’

It was this remark that made up Martha’s mind for her. She thought: Andrew could marry Maisie to help her out that was a good thing to do, everyone feels it. (She did not remind herself now that everyone felt it except Anton.) And if I marry Anton, and it’s nothing but a formality after all, ft will make things easy for him.

She obeyed his insistence that she should not make up her mind now, but later, when that evening’s meeting was over, she took his hand hurriedly on the pavement as he was turning away from her with a quiet, patient: ‘Good night, Matty,’ and said: ‘Don’t worry about anything, Anton. We’ll get married.”

His face lit into gratitude and relief, and with a suddenness that took away her speech. She thought again: So he does really care for me.

They kissed hurriedly, separating for the night out of an instinct that not to separate would be dangerous. Martha, walking home by herself, examined the look that appeared on Anton’s face at the moment she had said she would marry him, and saw something else: dependence, something almost childlike. This filled her with unease.

But already she was feeling, under the pressure of the snapping jaws of impatience, the need to move forwards, as if the marriage with Anton and what she might become as a result of it were already done and accomplished. It was as if her whole being had concentrated itself into a movement of taking in and absorbing, as if she were swallowing something whole and hurrying on.

As she went to sleep that night she was thinking: Perhaps Andrew felt like this when he said he would marry Maisie: and only afterwards he discovered he was happy and was surprised he was happy. She went to sleep depressed, and dreamed she was with Maisie, who was due to have her baby, and they were hurrying from door to door trying to find a house which would take her in. But the doors remained closed against them both.

Chapter Three

On the Saturday morning Martha was due to be married for the second time she woke late; she had half an hour to dress and reach the Magistrates’ Court. None of them had got to bed the night before until nearly three. Andrew and Anton, appointed Policy Sub-Committee for the Communist Party of Zambesia, had finally produced a 150-page document setting out how the territory would be run if the communists were to take power. This admirable document began with a page-long clause on how racial prejudice was to be made illegal, laying down the penalties for any expression of it whatsoever, direct or indirect, continued through detailed analyses of the industrial, economic and cultural position of the Colony, made provisions for dealing with any sort of contingency, ranging from war launched by other whitesettled parts of Africa and backed by British and American capital to economic boycotts, and ended (the style of this part of the document was different from the rest, which was sober and precise) in an impassioned appeal to the masses to support the people’s government.

They had all undertaken to study this document in detail, but had been too busy to do more than read it through. It was voted on clause by clause, and accepted. All this took place in the du Preez’ living-room, a large and comfortable place whose sideboard was stacked with bottles of beer. Piet said he couldn’t face a whole evening’s argy-bargy without beer – he wouldn’t do it for his union and he was damned if he would do it for the Party. Anton disapproved, but nevertheless these days they sat around on the floor drinking beer in an atmosphere of friendly ease quite different from the early meetings in the office over Black Ally’s.

Towards the end, contented with themselves and with the document, they were preparing to leave for bed when Maisie, who had joined the group in order, as she explained, ‘to save argument with Andrew’. spoke for the first time. She said: ‘What I want to know is this. I mean to say, what’s the point? You – I mean, we, aren’t even standing for elections, so there’s no chance of putting any of it into practice. And Andrew explained to me yesterday about there’s no revolutionary situation now, so you aren’t thinking of being in power at all. So why go to all this trouble?’

Anton said: ‘But Comrade Maisie, it is our responsibility to put forward a policy so that the people will know where we stand.’

‘But you’re a secret group, so they can’t know, can they?’

Here Athen intervened, speaking direct to Maisie, as was his way – he never made general speeches to the group: ‘Maisie, you must try to understand it. We may be only a few here. But we are more than just a few people. We are the communist ideal. The leadership of ELAS in the mountains spoke like the government, with the authority of a government, to give self-respect to the people. And if two communists find themselves somewhere – let us say suddenly in a strange town, they know they are not just two people, but that they are communism. And they must behave with self-respect because they represent the idea. And if there is even one communist – suppose any one of us finds himself alone somewhere, or perhaps in prison or sentenced to death, then he must never feel himself alone – except as a man, because as a man he is alone and that is good. But he is a communist and therefore not alone.’ He smiled at Maisie, and she, after a thoughtful silence, smiled back, afterwards letting her eyes return, with a serious query in them, to her husband, who took his pipe out of his mouth and nodded at her, as if to say: Yes, that’s true.

Piet said jocularly: ‘Well, we can take over the Government any day now. All we need is to explain to our white fellow-citizens that we’re the men for the job. After all, we don’t seem to have any Africans with us, do we?’ Anton frowned, but said nothing. For some time Piet had been making remarks of this nature: he had became the privileged clown of the group, who could say things no one else could.

They went home feeling – in spite of the fact that Maisie’s as it were lay objections had struck home uncomfortably into each of them – cheered and supported by the existence of the long and workmanlike Policy which, could they put it into practice, could have the whole territory well on the way to socialism in five years.

Martha woke thinking of the document – thinking confusedly, something like this: Anton and Andrew drew up the programme, yet they are such different men, and they don’t like each other. (She wondered if they knew they disliked each other.) They had no difficulty in agreeing on it; in fact they drew up the first draft in two evenings. Anton once said: Two communists on either side of the world, ought, if presented with the same set of facts, to come to exactly the same conclusions – that is the strength of Marxism. She remembered the stern proud look on his face as he said it. Yet, if someone in the same intransigent mood as Bill Bluett or Jackie Bolton had been in the room last night, then they would have fought every clause, and the rest of the group would not have known what to think. (Now she felt uneasy because the group had agreed so readily, almost gaily to the programme.) What does that mean, then? That a group runs harmoniously when there are a couple of leaders agreed on something, putting it forward for ‘the rabbits’. Yes, that must be it. If there was only one leader, we’d be uneasy about it. But two strong personalities supporting each other, and everyone feels confident. Yet it is not as if they didn’t invite us to criticize and discuss: both of them keep saying, every time we quote Stalin: Kindly do Comrade Stalin the favour of thinking for yourselves instead of quoting him. All the same, we passed that programme clause after clause as if it were simply a formality to vote at all. There’s something wrong somewhere, something I ought to be understanding: the group can only work if the two strongest people in it are in agreement? I must think about it. But how can I? I don’t know enough, I simply don’t know anything about anything. Yet I’m quite ready to vote on a programme that might affect a whole country …

She told herself, dryly, in a change of mood: Luckily there’s no danger of any such responsibility. She examined the word
luckily,
told herself that the other comrades were quite correct to criticize her for flippancy, discovered she was acutely depressed, and examined herself for the reason: of course, she was going to get married that morning.

She hurried out of bed, taking dresses down from the cupboard, and discarded them. She should have ironed one last night, they were all crumpled and in fact there were only two fit to wear at all. Why should I bother, she thought: it’s nothing but a formality for both of us. Yet, having put on one dress, she removed it and tried the other, and looked at herself in the glass with the old feeling of cautious expectation. It seemed that she had not had time for months to examine her image – and her nail varnish was chipped too, and her hair needed attention. Her face, rather pale, with heavily shadowed dark eyes gazed back at her. She was in a fever of anxiety, the familiar strained irritation, as if she were juggling half a dozen objects in the air at the same time, and knowing she was bound to drop one of them. She examined the severe young face and thought: If I didn’t know myself, what would I think? Well, I certainly wouldn’t guess all the things that have happened to her in the last year, getting divorced, being a communist, getting married again, all the complications and never sleeping enough. No, it’s all nonsense, people talking about faces. Faces don’t give things away at all – that face says nothing.

Martha, even more discouraged, swung the mirror back, and passed her hand downwards over her body. I’m in one of my thin phases, she thought. Well, I suppose that’s something. But I really can’t go and get married without stockings – well, why not? No one would even notice. She hastily turned out her drawers, looking for stockings, but they all had ladders in them.

At this point Jasmine came in, and Martha said in despair: ‘All my stockings have ladders.’

‘Well, don’t panic,’ said Jasmine composedly, already sitting down on the bed to strip off her own. As her sunburned legs came into view she glanced at them with approval, and tossed the stockings over to Martha, who put them on. ‘You’d better have a cigarette,’ she said, lighting one and coming over to put it between Martha’s lips. At the same time she gave Martha a cool, diagnostic look and smiled faintly. Martha understood Jasmine’s ironic, compassionate expression very well. She even smiled back, with the same irony, but almost immediately she sighed and said: ‘We’d better go and get it over with.’

‘Take it easy,’ said Jasmine, nodding at a chair, and Martha sat in it obediently. ‘I saw Mrs Van in the street and she says we should both drop into her office before lunch. So as soon as you’ve signed on the dotted line, we’ll go across.’ She said this as if offering a prophylactic against despair, and Martha laughed. Jasmine came clumsily across, put her arms around Martha in a timid squeeze, and said hurriedly: ‘It’s all right, don’t worry.’ She nodded, with a shy smile, instantly became serious, and said: Then let’s go.’

They drove in silence down to the Magistrates’ Court. Anton was waiting on the pavement outside it. He was wearing a flower in his jacket, and Martha was upset when she saw it, because if she were wearing a flower it would be dishonest.

But she greeted him with a bright smile, noting that he was smiling with tenderness. But I didn’t bargain for it, I didn’t bargain for it at all, she thought: she was in danger of bursting into tears. The three of them went into the Court. Mr Maynard was waiting for them. Martha had not remembered that he had married her last time; she was worried that he might mention the coincidence, in case Anton might resent it, But how could he resent it – it would be so inconsistent! But she was relieved that Mr Maynard did not attempt to catch her eye, and was purely the magistrate as he asked the necessary questions. It was all over in two minutes, and Martha saw Mr Maynard turn away with a fourth person, a young man called in from the passage to act as witness, saying: ‘Any more for the high jump this morning?’ Prom the unpleasantness of the smile on the young official’s face Martha saw that this marriage had been the subject of malicious gossip that morning. Well, of course, she thought, swallowing the idea whole as it were – they are bound to talk, I suppose. They can’t approve of me marrying Anton: no money, and an enemy alien at that. Well, let them … this defiance made her feel better, although she knew it was childish that she should. Anton had his hand under her elbow. He said in the manner which had been born in the moment Martha had said she would marry him – half fatherly, yet subtly deferential: ‘We must go and have a drink to celebrate.’

Martha said quickly: ‘But we must go to Mrs Van’s office, she wants to see us.’ Jasmine, with a demure look, said: ‘That’s right, Matty’s back on duty, wedding or no wedding.’ Martha felt there was something possessive in Jasmine when she said this. She took Anton’s arm between her hands, and said: ‘We’ll meet you in the Grill as soon as we’ve finished,’ asserting her identity with him and not with Jasmine.

Relieved, Anton said: ‘Of course you must go to Mrs Van. I’ll be waiting.’ He gave Martha his unused grateful smile and went off by himself, while the two young women directed themselves towards Mrs Van, whose office when they reached it seemed so full of people there was scarcely room for them to squeeze in. The Parliamentary members were all there, together, with Mr Playfair, Johnny Lindsay, Jack Dobie, Marie and Piet du Preez and the African Mr Matushi.

It seemed there was a crisis, which had come about in the following way:

The office of Mrs Van – many years a town councillor, and chairman of half a dozen welfare organizations, was always full of people asking for advice and help. Recently there had been far more Africans and Coloured people than usual. Several African organizations had sprung up, in form and spirit similar to the mutual aid associations characteristic of early British trade unionism but with a flavour peculiar to African development of this period: something sorrowful, bewildered and tentative. The leaders of these new societies found themselves very often in Mrs Van’s office. Very often indeed this leader was Mr Matushi, who shared with Mrs Van, and indeed with Jasmine and the group members, the quality of being able to speak at any given moment in half a dozen different capacities. That week, Mr Matushi, asking for Mrs Van’s guidance in his capacity as Chairman of the African Advancement League, had slipped into his role as leader of the African Branch of the Labour, or Social Democratic Party – if this Branch were to be allowed to come into being. Mrs Van exclaimed that it would be useful to have a member of Parliament or two to go down to the Township to explain to the Africans certain points of law. Mr Matushi had enthusiastically agreed. Mrs Van had asked the Location Superintendent – a gentleman deferential to her in her role as Town Councillor, to let her have the Location Hall for that Saturday afternoon. Mr Matushi, confirming this, had done so in the name of the African members of the Social Democratic Party.

When Jasmine and Martha had understood how this very delicate situation had arisen, they could not help exchanging glances of amused comprehension – and at once Mrs Van gave them a stern look, as if to say that this was no occasion for private jokes. Perfectly obvious now why Mr McFarline, the green-visaged Mr Thompson and even Mr Playfair were looking so agitated, and why Jack Dobie, Johnny Lindsay and the du Preez were ironically appreciative. In short, the reactionaries believed that Mrs Van had again presented them with a
fait accompli,
while the truth was that the hunger of the Africans for advice and support was so strong it had forced its way through this crack in the white crust – the crack being Mrs Van’s maternally concerned heart, and had created a situation before even Mrs Van wanted it.

Mr McFarline, having heard Mrs Van out, said firmly that no African Branch existed, since the Party had not yet taken a vote on whether there should be one. Therefore this meeting could not be described as a meeting of the African Branch. Therefore, since it seemed the meeting could not now be stopped, he suggested it be described as an informal gathering of Africans addressed by a few Europeans.