“Who’s Mr Mathlong?”
“The African leader. You remember, you came to see me about him.”
“Oh yes, the name slipped away from me for the moment.”
“I was thinking about him this morning.”
“Oh were you?”
“Yes. I was.” (Anna’s voice continued calm and detached. She listened to it.)
Marion had begun to look conscious and distressed. She was tugging at a strand of loose hair, winding it around her forefinger.
“When he was here two years ago, he was very depressed. He had spent weeks trying to see the Colonial Secretary, and being snubbed. He had a pretty good idea he’d be in prison very soon. He’s a very intelligent man, Marion.”
“Yes, I’m sure he is.” Marion’s smile at Anna was quick and involuntary, as if to say: Yes, you’re being clever, I know what you’re getting at.
“On Sunday he rang me up and said he was tired and he needed a rest. So I took him down to Greenwich on the river boat. On the way back he was very silent. He sat in the boat smiling. He was looking at the banks. You know, Marion, it’s very impressive, coming back from Greenwich, the solid mass of London? The County Council Building? And the enormous commercial buildings. And the wharves and the ships and the docks. And then Westminster…” (Anna was talking, softly, still interested to find out what she was going to say next.) “Everything’s been there for centuries. I asked him what he was thinking. He said: I don’t get discouraged by the white settlers. I wasn’t discouraged when I was in prison last time—history’s on the side of our people. But this afternoon I feel the weight of the British empire on me like a gravestone. He said: Do you realise how many generations it takes to make a society where buses run on time? Where business letters get answered efficiently? Where you can trust your ministers not to take bribes? We were passing Westminster and I remember thinking that very few of those politicians could have half his qualities—because he’s a sort of saint, Marion…”
Anna’s voice cracked. She heard it and thought: Now I know what’s happening. I’m hysterical. I’ve gone right over into Marion’s and Tommy’s hysteria. I’ve got no control at all over what I’m doing. She was thinking: I use a word like saint—I never use it when I’m myself. I don’t know what it means. Her voice continued, higher, rather shrill: “Yes, he is a saint. An ascetic, but not a neurotic one. I said to him it was very sad to think of African independence being turned into a question of punctual buses and neatly typed business letters. He said it might be sad, but that was how his country would be judged.”
Anna had begun to cry. She sat crying, watching herself cry. Marion watched her, leaning forward, bright-eyed, curious, full of disbelief. Anna controlled her tears and went on: “We got off at Westminster. We walked past Parliament. He said—I suppose he was thinking of those little politicians inside it—‘I shouldn’t have been a politician at all. In a national liberation movement all kinds of men get involved almost by accident, like leaves being sucked into a dust-devil.’ Then he thought that over for a moment, and he said: ‘I think it’s quite likely that after we get our independence I’ll find myself in prison again. I’m the wrong type for the first few years of a revolution. I’m uncomfortable making popular speeches. I’m happier writing analytical articles.’ Then we went into a place to have some tea and he said: ‘One way and another I expect to spend a good deal of my life in prison.’ That’s what he said!”
Anna’s voice cracked again. She was thinking: Good Lord, if I were sitting here watching myself I’d feel quite sick at all this sentimentality. Well, I am making myself sick. She said aloud, her voice shaking: “We shouldn’t make what he stands for look cheap.” She was thinking: I’m making what he stands for look cheap in every word I say.
Marion said: “He sounds marvellous. But they can’t all be like that.”
“Of course not. There’s his friend—he’s bombastic and rabble-rousing and he drinks and whores around. He’ll probably be the first Prime Minister—he has all the qualities—the common touch, you know.”
Marion laughed. Anna laughed. The laughter was over-loud and uncontrolled.
“There’s another,” went on Anna. (Who? she thought. Surely I’m not going to talk about Charlie Themba?) “He’s a trade union leader, called Charlie Themba. He’s violent and passionate and quarrelsome and loyal and—well recently he cracked up.”
“Cracked up?” said Marion, suddenly. “What do you mean?”
Anna thought: Yes, I had been meaning to talk about Charlie all the time. In fact that’s probably who I’ve been leading up to all this time.
“Broke down, then. But do you know Marion, what’s really odd is, no one recognised the beginning of his breakdown? Because the politics out there—they’re violent and full of intrigue and jealousies and spite—rather like Elizabethan England…” Anna stopped. Marion was frowning with annoyance. “Marion did you know you look angry?”
“Do I?”
“Yes, it’s because it’s one thing to think poor things and another to allow that African politics could have any resemblance at all to English politics—even such a long time ago.”
Marion blushed, then she laughed. “Go on about him,” she said.
“Well Charlie started to quarrel with Tom Mathlong who was his closest friend, and then all his other friends, accusing them of intriguing against him. Then he began writing bitter letters to people like me, here. We didn’t see what we should have seen. Then suddenly I got a letter—I brought it with me. Would you like to see it?”
Marion held out her hand. Anna put the letter into it. Anna was thinking: When I put this letter into my bag I wasn’t conscious why…The letter was a carbon copy. It had been sent to several people. Dear Anna was written in rough pencil at the top.
“Dear Anna, in my last letter I told you of the intrigues against me and the enemies who are plotting my life. My former friends have turned against me and they tell the people in speeches in my territory that I am the enemy of Congress and their enemy. Meanwhile I am ill and I am writing to ask you to send me clean food for I fear the poisoner’s hand. I am ill, for my wife I have found to be in the pay of the police and the Governor himself. She is a very bad woman who I must divorce. Two unlawful arrests have been made on me, and I must suffer them since I am without help. I am alone in my house. Eyes watch me through the roof and the walls. I am being fed on many types of dangerous foods from human flesh (dead human flesh) to reptiles, including crocodiles. The crocodile will have its revenge. At night I see its eyes shining at me, and its snout comes at me through the walls. Hasten to help me. With fraternal greetings, Charlie Themba.”
Marion let the hand that held the letter fall by her side. She sat silent. Then she sighed. She got up, sleep-walker-wise, handed Anna the letter, and sat down again, smoothing the skirt under her, and folding her hands. She remarked, almost dreamily: “Anna, I was awake all last night. I can’t go back to Richard. I can’t.”
“What about the children?”
“Yes, I know. But what’s awful is, I don’t care. We have children because we love a man. Well, I think so. You say it isn’t true for you, but it’s true for me. I hate Richard. I really do. I think I must have hated him for years without knowing it.” Marion slowly got up, with the same sleep-walker’s motion. Her eyes were searching the room for liquor. A small bottle of whisky stood on top of a pile of books. She half-filled a glass, and sat down holding the glass, sipping. “So why shouldn’t I stay here with Tommy? Why shouldn’t I?”
“But Marion, this is Molly’s house…”
At this moment, a sound from the foot of the stairs. Tommy was coming up. Anna saw how Marion’s body jerked into self-possession. She put down the whisky glass and wiped her mouth quickly with a handkerchief. She had forgotten herself in the thought: Those slippery stairs, but I mustn’t go to help him.
Slowly the firm, blind feet came up the stairs. They halted on the landing while Tommy turned himself, feeling
at the walls. Then he came in. This room being unfamiliar to him, he halted with his hand on the edge of the door, then he turned his dark blind muzzle to the centre of the room, let go the door and walked forward.
“More to the left,” said Marion.
He steered himself to the left, took one step too many, bumped his knee on the edge of the bed, turned himself around fast to stop himself falling, and sat, with another bump. Now he looked enquiringly around the room.
“I’m here,” said Anna.
“I’m here,” said Marion.
He said to Marion: “I think it’s time you started cooking supper. Otherwise there won’t be time before the meeting.”
“We’re going to the big meeting tonight,” said Marion to Anna, gay and guilty. She met Anna’s eyes, grimaced, and looked away. And at that moment Anna saw, or rather felt, that whatever she had been expected to “say” to Marion and Tommy, she had said. Now Marion remarked to Tommy: “Anna thinks we are going about things the wrong way.”
Tommy turned his face towards Anna. His full stubborn lips worked together. It was a new movement—his lips fumbled over each other, as if all the uncertainty he refused to show in his blindness emerged here. His mouth, formerly the visible signature of his dark, set will, always controlled, now seemed the only uncontrolled thing about him, for he was unconscious that he sat and worked his mouth. In the clear shallow light of the little room, he sat alert on the bed, very young, very pale, a defenceless boy, with a vulnerable and pathetic mouth.
“Why?” he asked. “Why?”
“The thing is,” said Anna, hearing her voice again come humorous and dry, all the hysteria gone out of it, “the thing is, London’s full of students rushing about bashing policemen. But you two are in a fine position to study everything and become experts.”
“I thought you’d come here to take Marion away from me,” Tommy said, quick and querulous, on a note no one had heard from him since his blindness. “Why should she go back to my father? Are you going to make her go back?”
Anna said: “Look, why don’t you two go away for a holiday for a bit? It’d give Marion time to think out what to do. And it would give you a chance to try your wings outside this house, Tommy.”
Marion said: “I don’t have to think. I’m not going back. What’s the use? I don’t know what I ought to do with my life, but I know I’m finished if I go back to Richard.” Her eyes welled tears, and she got up and escaped to the kitchen. Tommy listened with a turn of his head to her departure, listened, apparently with the straining muscles of his neck, to her movements in the kitchen.
“You’ve been very good for Marion,” Anna said, in a low voice.
“Have I?” he said, pathetically eager to hear it.
“The thing is—you’ve got to stand by her. It’s not so easy when a twenty-year-old marriage breaks up—it’s nearly as old as you are.” She got up. “And I don’t think you ought to be so hard on us all,” she said, in a quick low voice, which to her surprise sounded like a plea. She was thinking: I don’t feel that, why do I say it? He was smiling, conscious, rueful, blushing. His smile was directed somewhere just past her left shoulder. She moved into the line of his gaze. She thought: Anything I say now will be heard by the old Tommy, but she could not think of what to say.
Tommy said: “I know what you’re thinking, Anna.”
“What?”
“Somewhere at the back of your mind you’re thinking: I’m nothing but a bloody welfare worker, what a waste of time!”
Anna laughed with relief; he was teasing her.
“Something like that,” she said.
“Yes, I knew you were,” he said, with triumph. “Well Anna, I’ve been thinking a lot about that sort of thing, since I tried to shoot myself, and I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re wrong. I think people need other people to be kind to them.”
“You may very well be right.”
“Yes. No one really believes all the big things are any use.”
“No one?” said Anna drily, thinking of the demonstration at which Tommy had assisted.
“Isn’t Marion reading you the newspapers any more?” she enquired.
He smiled, as dry as she, and said: “Yes, I know what you mean, but all the same it’s true. Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who’d be kind to me. That’s what people really want, if they’re telling the truth.”
“Well, Tommy…”
“Oh yes, I know you’re thinking my brain was damaged by the accident, and perhaps it was, sometimes I think so myself, but that’s what I believe is true.”
“That isn’t why I’ve been wondering if—you’ve changed. It’s because of the way you treat your mother.”
Anna saw the blood come up into his face—then he lowered it, and sat silent. He made a gesture with his hand which said: All right, but leave me alone. Anna said good-bye and went out, passing Marion, who had her back turned.
Anna went home, slowly. She did not know what happened between the three of them, or why it had happened, or, indeed, what they could expect next. But she knew some barrier had gone down and that now everything would be changed.
She lay down for a while; attended to Janet when she returned from school; caught the glimpse of Ronnie which told her she could expect a battle of wills later, and then sat waiting for Molly and Richard.
When she heard the two coming up the stairs, she steeled herself for the inevitable bickering, but in the event it was unnecessary. They entered almost like friends. Molly had clearly set herself not to be aggravating. Also, she hadn’t had time to make herself up after the theatre, so the vivid quality in her that always irritated Richard was absent.
They sat down. Anna poured drinks. “I’ve seen them,” she reported. “And I think everything is going to be all right.”
“And how did you achieve this miraculous change?” enquired Richard, the words, but not the tone, sarcastic.
“I don’t know.”
Silence, and Molly and Richard looked at each other.
“I really don’t know. But Marion says she won’t come back to you. I think she means it. And I’ve suggested they go off somewhere for a holiday.”
“But I’ve been saying that for months,” said Richard.
“I think if you offered Tommy and Marion a trip to one of your things somewhere, and suggest they investigate conditions, they’d go.”
“It really astounds me,” said Richard, “the way you two come out with ideas I suggested long ago as if they were brilliant new suggestions.”
“Things have changed,” said Anna.
“You don’t explain why,” said Richard.
Anna hesitated, then said to Molly, not to Richard: “It was very odd. I went up there, with not an idea in my head of what to say. Then I got all hysterical just like they are, and I even cried. It worked. Do you understand it?”
Molly thought, then nodded.
“Well I don’t understand it,” said Richard, “but I don’t care. What happens next?”
“You should go and see Marion and fix things up—and don’t nag at her, Richard.”
“I don’t nag at her, she nags at me,” said Richard, aggrieved.
“And I think you should talk to Tommy tonight Molly. I’ve got a feeling he might be ready to talk.”
“In that case I’ll go now, before he goes to bed.”
Molly got up and Richard with her.
“I owe you my thanks, Anna,” said Richard.
Molly laughed. “Back to normal hostilities next time, I’m sure, but it’s a pleasure, all this politeness, just for once.”
Richard laughed—unwillingly, but it was a laugh; he took Molly’s arm, and the two went off down the stairs.
Anna went upstairs to Janet, and sat by the sleeping child in the darkness. She felt the usual surge of protective love for Janet, but tonight she ex
amined this emotion critically: I know no one who isn’t incomplete and tormented and fighting, the best one can say of anyone is that they fight—but I touch Janet and immediately I feel: Well, it will be different for her. Why should it be? It won’t be. I’m sending her out into such a battle, but that isn’t what I feel when I watch her sleeping.
Anna, rested and restored, left Janet’s room, shut the door, and stood on the landing in the dark. Now was the moment to face Ivor. She knocked on the door, opened it a few inches and said into the dark: “Ivor, you’ve got to go. You’ve got to leave here tomorrow.” A silence, then a slow and almost good-humoured voice: “I must say that I see your point, Anna.”
“Thank you, I hoped that you would.”
She shut the door and went downstairs. How easy! she thought. Why did I imagine it would be difficult? Then she had a clear mental picture of Ivor coming up the stairs with a bunch of flowers. Of course, she thought, tomorrow he would try to get around her, he would come up the stairs with a bunch of flowers in his hand, humouring her.
She was so certain this would happen that at lunch-time she was waiting, when he climbed the stairs holding a big bunch of flowers, and the weary smile of a man determined to humour a woman.
“To the nicest landlady in the world,” he murmured.
Anna took the flowers, hesitated, then hit him across the face with them. She was trembling with anger.
He stood smiling, his face averted in the parody of a man suffering unjust punishment.
“Well well,” he murmured. “Well well well.”
“Get out,” said Anna. She had never in her life been angry like this.
He went upstairs and in a few moments she heard the noises of his packing. Soon he came down, a suitcase in each hand. His possessions. All he had in the world. Oh how sad, this poor young man, all his possessions locked in a couple of suitcases.
He laid the rent he owed—five back weeks, for he was bad about money, on the table. Anna noted, with interest, that she had to suppress an impulse to give it back to him.