A Ripple From the Storm (34 page)
‘If the doctor said so, Comrade, then obviously you shouldn’t have come.’
Marjorie let out a small gasp of anger and hurt, and went out after the du Preez.
Jasmine, who had not opened her mouth, remarked: ‘I’ll take it upon myself to convene a meeting at a suitable time for everyone. And I hereby give notice that I intend to leave the Colony in ten days’ time. And now good night all.’ She departed, with a placid smile.
Martha, left alone with Anton, waited for him to say something. But he carefully collected his papers and without a glance at her went next door where he laid himself down on his bed and proceeded to read Lenin.
Martha understood she was sent to Coventry. She went next door and said: ‘Anton, you’re being absolutely childish.’ He did not reply. She waited a while, and then walked down the stairs to Maisie’s flat. She had heard the noise of a car moving off, and hoped it might be Binkie’s. Maisie was alone, and greeted Martha with: ‘Matty, I’m sorry I was rude just now, but I was so upset, but he’s gone and do have some tea or something.’
‘Is everything all right?’
‘He cried,’ said Maisie, her eyes full of wonder and distaste. ‘He cried, Matty. It made me feel so bad. But I don’t like it, a man crying. I mean, of course men cry, but he cried as if to influence me, and I didn’t like that at all. And it seems to me, it was rather late in the day – of course it’s not his fault his parents are such dirty old people, thinking of nothing but money, but …’ She burst into tears, crying as openly as a child, making no attempt to wipe away her tears, but sitting and swaying slightly from side to side while the water ran fast from her open eyes down her face.
Martha spent the evening with her. Maisie was now hard set against both men, Binkie and Andrew. She spoke of them with a shuddering dismay and dislike. ‘They all make me tired, Matty,’ she said again and again. ‘Sometimes I wonder why we bother with any of them.’
Martha told her she was in a bad mood and would feel better in the morning. She was unable to face the thought that Maisie’s and Andrew’s love was at an end.
When she went up to her own flat, Anton was asleep, or pretending to be asleep.
The Executive Committee meeting had been scheduled to start at two. At one the rain came roaring across the veld from the north and enclosed the town in a hot downpour. At two o’clock only half the delegates had arrived; others came in hastily, exclaiming and shaking the wet from their clothes. It was a room whose only illumination was the door, the light had to be switched on because of the teeming dark-grey gloom outside. It was intolerably hot; the noise of the storm made it impossible to hear a word, and soon the delegates left the room to stand around the walls of the courtyard, waiting for the rain to stop, It was even noisier here under the low tin roof of the veranda. As other delegates came in from the street they moved towards their natural allegiances like two armies forming, surveying each other through the driving mists of rain that filled the courtyard between them with a skilled distrust which changed, as they turned to greet the members of their own side, into the hard gay excitement that precedes the decisive battles of the committee rooms. It was a sporting excitement which at moments drew even the opponents together. For instance, when Mr McFarline entered with his sour-faced second, his shrewd brown campaigning eyes summed up the forces on both sides in a single glance, and then greeted Mrs Van, his chief enemy, with a quick and almost amused nod. She nodded briskly and gaily back. Mr McFarline took up his position among the new recruits, the delegates from hastilyformed branches all over the country, and he as much as the ‘Red’ faction regarded them with interest since, although they were trade unionists and therefore by presumption against the African Branch, no one really knew where they stood.
On the ‘Red’ side of the courtyard, the ranks were thinner. Colin Black and Jack Dobie stood side by side, united by their common passion for the continent of India. Mrs Van had Johnny Lindsay beside her. His blue eyes were crackling, every line of his tall body expressing the enjoyments of pugnacity in a good cause. On her other side the Reverend Mr Playfair, melancholy with the nobilities of enforced impartiality, studied the agenda with attention. It was an extremely long agenda, the rain showed no sign of weakening, and the meeting was scheduled to end at six. All the delegates were attentive over the agenda, studying the battleground, looking for ambushes concealed in sub-clauses, the surprise attack lurking in an order of words. It was clear to everyone that again the conflict would be focused in two items: The African Branch and Any Other Business. Jasmine, who was as at home among agendas as Mrs Van, that other natural committee woman, was leaning over Mr Playfair’s arm pointing out how various dreary stretches of unimportant ground could be outflanked by a judicious manipulation of words. Martha and Marjorie were with the du Preez, supporting them in their efforts to explain the agenda to Tommy, who was positively anguished with incomprehension. He kept doggedly repeating: ‘Everybody here knows we are going to have a fight about the African Branch, so I don’t see why Mr Playfair shouldn’t say: “Let’s vote and be done with it.” I don’t see why we should have to mess about when it’s all so simple.’
‘Democracy, Tommy lad, democracy – that’s the point,’ Piet kept saying, jocularly aggressive. He was continuously laughing and making jokes, and all the efforts of Jasmine and Martha, who were consciously engaged in making a recalcitrant comrade see reason, were met by the same jocular hostility. They had discussed Piet, decided he was in a mood when he might very well leave the group, and he needed ‘working on’.
In a self-contained group further down the veranda Mr Matushi and two other Africans from the Location waited patiently.
They all had to wait until past three, when the courtyard, until then a square of dark-grey wet, lightened into a drizzle already weakly radiant from an emerging sun.
The office filled. There were thirty people in a room used to accommodate a dozen. Antagonists and friends were crammed together on hard chairs in a press of hot, damp flesh.
Mr Playfair’s opening speech was weighted with sincere feeling. The whole Colony watched their deliberations here today; the issues at stake were universal ones – and so on. Mrs Van was observed, after about fifteen minutes, to give him a stern glance. At which he pulled himself up, his goodhumour concealing a deep hurt because no one shared his belief that a sufficient number of nobly worded phrases should be enough to enforce noble behaviour on them all.
The work began, and went on fast; it was the clearing away of superfluous scrub from the battleground, both sides having assured themselves that no traps were hidden in items to do with subscription rates and similar matters.
Meanwhile, the new faces were being carefully studied. The ‘Red’ faction had believed that their perfectly open position was a disadvantage. Now they saw they might have been wrong. It was for the other side to manoeuvre: they were in the position of a small outnumbered army entrenched on high ground. For the half-dozen new men represented more than themselves. Mr McFarline and his aides had travelled through the outlying districts reviving dormant branches and creating new ones, but the branches after all consisted of people with, presumably, ideas of their own. There were two possibilities: that these ideas might turn out, by some fluke of public opinion, to support the African Branch or – more probably – that these men, used to the rough-and-ready methods of conducting meetings possible in small groups far from the embattled centres of opinion, might not understand the formalities of serious agenda-manipulation and therefore vote against their own intentions.
But it was not until five o’clock that the item ‘African Branch’ was reached. Piet opened for the ‘Red’ side with a brief and formal statement: The African Branch was an earnest of the good intentions of organized white labour towards the African worker; if the white man was to be taken seriously in his claim to be a tutor to the backward and uncivilized he must be prepared to accept an at least token advance towards democracy; and if the African members were to be disbarred because of the pressure of ignorant and backward opinion, the Social Democratic Party (otherwise, he reminded them, the Labour Party, the party of Labour) could never claim to be anything more than the party of white labour.
After which McFarline counter-attacked with: The African members naturally inspired the citizens of the Colony with distrust, since they, the white citizens, did not understand (here he gave a suave nod towards Mr Matushi and his two friends) the fundamentally reasonable character of the signed-up Africans, but suspected them of conspiring together behind the backs of the white members for reasons of their own. Here he laughed, and there was a good deal of embarrassed laughter, and the three Africans continued politely to say nothing. And in any case the whole idea of an African Branch was undemocratic. He formally proposed that there should be no African Branch, but that African members should, if they wished, attend ordinary branch meetings as ordinary members.
The two trumpets had been blown for either side, and now battle could be joined. Both sides turned their eyes towards the new members who sat by themselves along a bench. The natural leader of this group was already obvious. He was an Afrikaner, Danie du Toit, a railway worker from G—, a squat strong man with a powerfully shaped head, a broad tough face, calm hard eyes. He now remarked that as a newcomer he would like to have some points made clear. Speaking as a labour man who never believed a word he read in the capitalist press, he discounted everything he had read about the meeting in the Location: the capitalists were out to discredit the Labour Party and that was all there was to it. So unless people present could give him any relevant information about that meeting he proposed to skip it and get down to the business in hand. ‘It’s this question of the proposed African Branch. We all have a great respect for Mr McFarline and what he has done for the workers, but I don’t agree with him. If you’re going to have African members – and to be honest I must say I disagree with it, it seems to me they are not ripe for politics – present company excepted,’ he added quickly, ‘but it’s nothing but hypocrisy to say they should be ordinary members with the white members. I don’t know what’s accepted in the towns …’ He said this in the voice of one who knows perfectly well what’s accepted in the towns – ‘but in my district the meetings are held in my house, and I know I’d never recruit another member if they knew they had to sit down man to man with Kaffirs. No offence meant,’ he added with another glance at Mr Matushi, who was preserving his appearance of sorrowful and patient dignity. ‘So it’s as good as saying we’ll keep the blacks out of meetings. My wife wouldn’t have a Kaffir in her house and that’s that. I’m for the African Branch. It’s not democratic but it’s practical.’
Mr Matushi and his friends nodded. Mr McFarline’s battalions seemed unhappy. The ‘Red’ faction could scarcely preserve their impartial expressions.
Mrs Van whispered to Mr Playfair who asked if she should put the vote. Mr McFarline instantly rose to say that he refused to be steam-rollered. His faction nodded impressively. Mr McFarline made a speech direct to his supposed supporters, Danie du Toit and his group, delegates of branches that he, Mr McFarline, had caused to come into existence. He repeated his warnings that the members of the Party, let alone the Colony’s citizens, would never stand for the African Branch. To which Danie du Toit replied that the situation should never have been allowed to arise, African members were asking for trouble, but since it had arisen, they had to find a compromise, and the African Branch seemed to him such a compromise.
The argument then broke out all over the room. For an hour the two sides hammered home their points, repeating themselves and shouting at each other. At six o’clock the meeting was extended. The principles of trade unionism and the history of the British Labour Party were explained and offered by both sides as support for their attitudes. The equality of man and brotherhood of races were pressed into service. A debate raged about whether or not races were fundamentally different: scientific evidence for one point of view was offered by the ‘Red’ faction, much passionate emotion by the other. (The Africans did not contribute at all to this part of the debate.) At seven o’clock they were no nearer agreement; the four men with Danie du Toit had not opened their mouths; and it was impossible to tell how they would vote.
Finally it was agreed that the vote should be put.
The voting was even, sixteen to sixteen, two of the du Toit contingent voting with the ‘Red’ faction, and two with Mr McFarline. It fell to Mr Playfair to settle the thing with his casting vote. But he rose and said that while everyone knew his sympathies lay with the African Branch, in issues like this he was not prepared to accept such a responsibility. At which Mr McFarline demanded a Congress to settle the matter.
Everyone suddenly collapsed into renewed frustration and irritability. Nothing was settled, everything would have to be fought out again. The Congress was fixed for a month ahead.
The meeting then gave an impressive demonstration of how fast an agenda can be worked through if everyone wishes it. They were all yawning and impatient, voting with scarcely any discussion. Mr Playfair finally announced the item Any Other Business, and was already saying: ‘And so I conclude the meeting …’ when Danie du Toit rose to say he had points to make, his branch had insisted on his making them. They all settled down again.
He demanded to know three things. First, Jack Dobie. They had been informed that Brother Dobie, who was of course respected by every worker in the Colony, had been addressing meetings of the Progressive Club, a communistorganized club, on India. As a result of this, the town had been flooded with anonymous pamphlets against Brother Dobie. Secondly, Mrs Van der Bylt: she had been similarly attacked by anonymous pamphleteers for inciting the Africans. Thirdly, Piet du Preez, who had, they heard, been giving lectures to the Africans on trade unionism. These people were all members of the Party and had no right to compromise it in this way. He demanded an explanation.
At this point it became clear to everyone that far from being over, the meeting was just beginning.
Mr Playfair demanded to know if the meeting should be adjourned for half an hour so that the delegates could get something to eat. The ‘Red’ faction instantly opposed this: they did not want Mr McFarline to take Danie du Toit aside and explain how he was not fulfilling his, Mr McFarline’s, hopes of him. For the same reason, Mr McFarline’s faction wanted an adjournment. A vote was taken, it went on the side of everyone’s ‘staying here till morning if necessary’ to get the matter thrashed out.
And now Mrs Van, Piet, Jack and Johnny all made speeches in defence of their right to say anything they wished, in their private capacity, to any sort of organization they wished.
To which the entire McFarline faction openly and violently hostile at last said they had no right. Four of their potential candidates, Mrs Van, Piet, Jack and Johnny, had now been branded as communists and Kaffir-lovers – no offence meant, of course, to Mr Matushi and his friends – and would be lucky not to lose their deposits. An election was likely at any moment. The Party could not afford to throw away four good candidates. It was urgently essential that these four people should publicly disown, in the form of letters to the
News,
any association with communism or any ideas of jumping up the blacks to equality with the whites.
Mrs Van, in a dignified speech, refused.
Piet and Johnny followed suit.
Jack Dobie said that far from apologizing he intended to sue the authors of the anonymous pamphlets for libel.
And how could he sue anonymous people at all?
He couldn’t, said Jack, sticking out his sharp and pugnacious chin. But he could and would sue the printer. In fact legal proceedings had already been put in train.
Had Brother Jack in fact said the things he was supposed to have said?
Every word, said Jack. In his view the British were rapacious imperialist exploiters of India and he insisted on his right to say so any time or any place he wanted.