All these ladies were adept at raising money for good causes, and they found it even easier to raise a large sum for what would be a paying proposition; and very soon there was a large committee of about thirty people, not one of whom was under forty-five. They all had determined ideas about the number of bridge rooms, sundowner lounges and bars the place should possess; and they were on the verge of buying a site which would have room for a club building and perhaps one tennis court, when a new factor entered the situation—which is a mild phrase for what happened when Binkie Maynard picked up the architect’s plans (marked ‘Sports Club’) and went off into loud laughter.
‘What’s this, a home for retired civil servants?’ he demanded.
His mother reproached him; his father regarded him with a certain practised apprehension; and Binkie looked at the plans with a growing interest, until at last he said, ‘What-ho, chaps, this has got something—got something, hey?’ He flapped the plans in the air, let out a whoop, and flew out of the house in search of a fellow spirit.
Binkie had first given signs of what he was destined to become when, at the age of four, plated into tight sky-blue satin, he climbed onto the bride’s table at his sister’s wedding among the flowers and ribbons, and piped, ‘And now it is my turn to give you a toast…’ He was lifted down, kicking and bawling. At school he was at the bottom of his class, and useless at games, but he organized clubs and societies of all kinds. When he left school, his father put him into the civil service, where at least he could come to no harm, and there he soon arranged clubs-for-having-sandwiches-at-lunchtime and associations-for-saving-money-for-buying-presents-on-retirement. He was the thorn in his father’s flesh, his mother’s pride, the despair of his chief. He was a large ungainly, red-faced, black-locked youth of twenty when those plans fell like manna from heaven into his hands and gave him the outlet he needed for his genius.
He said to his father next day, ‘I say, it isn’t fair, you need the young element, I mean to say?’ His father could hardly disagree.
At the next committee meeting, Binkie, Douglas Knowell, and half a dozen other young men took the floor. Binkie was chairman, not because he had been elected, but by virtue of his deadly single-mindedness. At the second meeting, there were several girls in shorts and sweaters, who were polite to the elderly ladies and coy with the old men, but treated them as if they hardly had the right to be there at all.
Mrs Lowe-Island got up (for she had not understood, as the rest had, their complete rout) and said that she was no snob, but the club must be restricted; and Binkie climbed to his feet before she had even finished, and with those large, black, indignant eyes fixed on her said he was upset, yes, really upset to hear that anyone, even Mrs Lowe-Island, who deserved three hearty cheers for what she had done, could make remarks that really—he didn’t think anyone would disagree with him—were not in the spirit of the country. This wasn’t England, he meant to say, this was a new country; he wasn’t used to making speeches, but really, he was going to suggest that the club should be free to anyone who could find twenty shillings a year, which was a lot of money to some people, though some people (he meant no offence) might not believe it, and that’s all he wanted to say, and that was enough. Here there was a murmur of passionate agreement from all the golden girls and boys; and there was never another suggestion about snobs or restrictions.
From that time, and for several months, the Maynard house swarmed day and night with young men and women. Committee meetings were held, but as a matter of form, and to satisfy and support and confirm arrangements already made by Binkie.
There was one afternoon when Binkie caught sight of his mother playing bridge in a corner of the veranda with three other ladies, all huddled forward to escape the pressure from a throng of shouting and arguing youth; and a pang of contrition must have assailed him, for he said to his father afterwards, ‘I say, I hope you don’t think we’ve been shoving our way in. I mean, it is a sports club, isn’t it?’
Mr Maynard, a suave and cultivated man, raised his eyebrows slightly and smiled; but, finding this gesture insufficient, he murmured, ‘My dear Binkie, I cannot tell you what a relief I find it that you are not, as I was beginning to suspect, without a natural bent. You have my blessing—if it turns out you cannot dispense with it, which I am afraid I find it hard to believe.’
Binkie, after a pause, gave an uncertain smile, and said heartily, ‘Oh. Well, that’s all right, then, isn’t it?’
‘So I gather you will have no objection if I resign from the committee and devote myself to reducing my handicap at golf—may I point out that you have made no provision for a golf course in your plans for the Sports Club?’
‘That’s not fair,’ said Binkie, in an aggrieved voice. ‘We’ve got first refusal on the land just behind the building site, and it’ll fall vacant in six months, so I reckon there’ll be a full-size golf course in a year’s time.’
‘My apologies,’ said Mr Maynard. ‘I withdraw completely. But, as to my first point, I suggest that I and your mother be allowed to resign. No ill feeling on either side, but now you’ve agreed that there may be a small side room where the ladies may play bridge, and I’m assured of my golf course, I feel our usefulness is at an end.’
‘I say!’ said Binkie reproachfully. ‘That’s not the spirit, Dad.’
‘But you’ve my blessing, as I’ve already said. After all, we’re more of a hindrance than a help.’
‘But who’s going to raise the money?’ asked Binkie. ‘We need another ten thousand at least if we’re going to have four squash courts and proper changing rooms, and the golf course won’t get built for nothing.’
‘Let’s get this clear,’ said Mr Maynard. ‘You want myself and your mother to remain on the committee to raise money for you?’
‘You can resign if you like,’ said Binkie kindly, ‘but we must have the finance committee, mother and Mrs Lowe-Island and the rest, to fix the money.’
Mr Maynard’s cheeks swelled, buttoned in by a tight and commenting mouth, while his eyebrows rose like black kites; it was an appearance he had evolved for use in the law courts, where he was magistrate, to impress native offenders into an awe-ful frame of mind; but Binkie merely looked impatient. He allowed his brows to fall and his cheeks to deflate. ‘Well, well, well,’ he murmured. He nodded slowly again. ‘Tell me, what makes you think ten thousand’ll be enough? Where did you get the figures?’
‘Oh, I can show you the figures, if you want. It’s ten thousand six hundred and fifty-four pounds ten shillings and fourpence.’
‘You worked that out? You worked it out yourself with estimates and a piece of paper and a pencil?’
‘I’ve no head for figures,’ said Binkie good-naturedly. ‘I got Douggie to do it. He’s the tops with figures.’
‘Well, well, well, the born organizer. Who’d have thought it? Well, it’s worth it. I should have put you into industry,’ said Mr Maynard.
‘I say,’ said Binkie, annoyed, ‘you’re not going to start changing jobs for me now? I haven’t got time. I’m busy with the Club. Besides, they’re going to put me up a grade at Christmas. After all, you’ve got to say that for the Service, they have to put you up, it’s only fair.’
In 1935 the Sports Club site marked the division between the old residential quarter of shady avenues and rambling veranda’d houses and the naked veld. Its boundary fence ran along North Avenue; and for many years people had used the phrase ‘North Avenue’ adjectively. ‘She’s ever so North Avenue,’ Donovan might say approvingly. Here lived senior civil servants, the Cabinet ministers, even the Prime Minister. But now they looked across the street, through the tall creamy trunks of a double line of gum trees, over the playing fields to the club house. It was a noble building, in the Cape Colonial style, of smooth dark-red brick, with a green roof all curves and gables, and a deep veranda supported on stately white pillars. The playing fields, several acres of them, were smooth emerald in the rains, but a scurfy brown in the dry sea
son, in spite of the perpetually working hoses, which were dragged all day like thick black coiling serpents into different positions by a team of half a dozen natives.
Inside there was a large, high-ceilinged room with a polished dark-wood floor, comfortable chairs, and a fireplace at each end; and this room was cleared two or three times a week for dances. Off this room, on one side, were a series of bars and sundowner lounges; and on the other, hidden among changing rooms, a small room which could be used for bridge—though any ladies reckless enough to settle themselves in it for a comfortable afternoon were likely to find Binkie’s shock head poked through the door at them, with the firm injunction, ‘The squash rackets committee will be wanting this in ten minutes, I’m just giving you fair warning.’ For at about four in the afternoon, the Club, comparatively deserted until then, suddenly surged with young men in white flannels and striped jerseys, and girls in gym tunics, shorts, or coloured dungarees; and waiters ran to and fro, staggering under trays loaded with the ubiquitous glass mugs of golden beer. The veranda was crowded; dozens of bare, red-brown, hairy legs, male and female, dangled over the edge; all eyes, devoted, expert, and earnest, followed the hockey and rugger, and from time to time the sound of clapping fell thinly across the wide field, or the cry: ‘That’s it, Jolly, old man’ or a moan, ‘Betty, Betty, you’ll kill me with that pass’ and an anxious youth might fall backwards, with an exaggerated loosening of his limbs, to lie on the veranda, murmuring, ‘That kid Betty’ll kill me, she’ll kill me, I say!’ He lay waiting until someone took the cue and hastened to him with beer, when he slowly sat up, his eyes roving anxiously around his audience to test the effect of his performance, saying apologetically, ‘These kids, these girls! I can’t stand it, no, they kill me.’ And he thoughtfully drank his beer, amid sympathetic laughter, perhaps even applause, with the modest air of a good actor who knows he has been on the top of his form.
And through these groups moved Binkie, the now kingly Binkie, a carelessly generous, untidy, beer-fat young man, his black eyes always on the watch for any sign of dissidence or discord. He would stop beside a young man, murmuring, ‘If you’ve a moment, there’s that business of the shower…’ And the youth would at once move away with him, and the two stood rather at a distance from the others, with a conscious though deprecatory importance, discussing the machinery of living. Or he would saunter down the length of the veranda, nodding here and there, the busy man for once at leisure, while the girls offered, tentatively, ‘Hello, Binks?’ ‘Hullo, kid,’ he returned, kindly, and at last might come to a standstill beside one, and put his arm about her, and his face would assume the agonized, frustrated look which was obligatory, while he said, ‘You’re killing me, baby, you’re killing me. Who’s your boy friend, let me kill him for you.’ She remained passive, with the equally obligatory look of maternal indulgence, while the other girls laughed; they were flattered, for this was a mark of attention to them all; she was their representative. But even as Binkie moaned and offered homage, his eyes were roving in a sharp lookout for the next thing that must claim his attention; and suddenly he straightened, patting the girl lightly, as if to say, ‘Well, so much for you,’ and on he strolled to tell the next group that they must drink up, they’d had the same round for half an hour, and the Club’d go bankrupt if everyone didn’t pull their weight. ‘You’re not co-operating,’ he would say earnestly. And automatically the hands reached out for the mugs. ‘Waiter!’ shouted Binkie, waving a lordly hand. ‘Waiter, fill up here!’
But the Club was flourishing. The subscription might be low, but there were few people under thirty in the city who were not members. For that matter, there were few under sixty, for, while a casual visitor might assume that this was devoted to youth, such was the prestige of the place that people felt impelled to join. ‘There’s the New Year’s Dance,’ they said. ‘It’s worth it, just for that. It’s such a nice atmosphere—not noisy, like McGrath’s.’
But it was nothing if not noisy; what they meant was that the section of the community which the bridge-playing ladies had at first hoped would exclusively use it did in fact come to the big dances, although in closed groups. The important civil servants, the big businessmen, with their wives and daughters, sat at large tables, smiled with a not too obvious benevolence, and tended to leave unobtrusively at midnight, before ‘things began to break up’.
‘Here, break it up there,’ Binkie yelled, or: ‘Come on, let’s—tear—it—to—pieces!’ And this meant that the groups, the couples, were expected to abandon any remnant of partiality and throw themselves into the dancing, yelling crowd, while Binkie stood, dripping with perspiration, his tie crooked, waving his beer mug and ordering the waiters to fetch free drinks for the band, who played and smiled, smiled and played, until their jaws and arms must have ached; and when, at two o’clock, they smiled and shook their heads and began to pack their instruments, they were at once surrounded by a crowd of remonstrating, reproachful young men, bribing them with drink for just one more, one more, always one more; while the girls stood smiling a little self-consciously, and, if the band were adamant, said soothingly, maternally, ‘Now, kids, it’s late, you know, we’ve got to get to work tomorrow.’
In 1935, ‘the gang’ were certainly all kids, between sixteen and twenty-one or two. And in 1938 they still called themselves kids, though in the daytime, between the hours of eight and four or four-thirty, these children were ambitious young businessmen, rising civil servants, and the girls were their secretaries; and if someone demanded, ‘Where’s Bobby, why haven’t we seen Bobby lately?’ the girl who felt herself responsible for him would say with a faraway, devoted look in her eyes, ‘He’s got an exam,’ and everyone nodded understandingly, with a sympathetic sigh.
The girls were, it was assumed, responsible for the men. Even the child of seventeen who had left school the week before, and was at her first dance, taking her first alcohol, would instantly assume an air of madonna-like, all-experienced compassion; she did not giggle when this wolf or that moaned and rolled his eyes and said, ‘Beautiful, why haven’t I seen you before, I can’t take it, I’m dying,’ as he clutched his forehead and reeled back from the vision of her unbearable attractions. She smiled a small, wise smile, and might, even before her first visit into the grown-up world was over, find herself exhorting him to ‘go on the tack’, with a flushed, earnest look of sisterly regard. For they were always going on the tack; a dozen pairs of sympathetic eyes would follow the consciously heroic youth as he wandered down the veranda with a glass of orange juice in his hand; and they asked anxiously, ‘How goes it, Frankie?’ ‘Keeping it up, Jolly?’ And he would shake his head, and groan and suffer, with one experienced eye on his public—since he was bound to have done this at least a dozen times before.
The public: it was all so public, anything was permissible, the romances, the flirtations, the quarrels, provided they were shared. These terms, however, were never used, for words are dangerous, and there was a kind of instinctive shrinking, and embarrassment, against words of emotion, or rather, words belonging to that older culture, to which this was an attempt at providing a successor.
If two young men were seen in angry argument, Binkie or one of the older members would hastily go to them, saying sentimentally, ‘Break it up, old man, break it up, kids,’ and the contestants would be led back to the flock, smiling apologetically, smiling if it killed them. When a couple remained too long together, dated each other too often, half a dozen self-appointed guardians of public safety would watch them, and at last surround them, with ‘Hey, hey, what’s this?’ A young man would say, ‘You can’t do this to me, Betty,’ and for the moment he represented all the young men; and a girl would say, in sour warning (and that sour personal note held a deeper note of danger), ‘And who were you with last night?’ smiling at the culpable youth with the assurance of a representative so that he accepted the rebuke as a public one, though with unacknowledged resentment because it was also personal.
This system of shared emotions might have been designed to prevent marriage; but if by chance a couple managed to evade Binkie’s vigilance and the group jealousy, and presented themselves engaged, they would be received with a groan of protest; it was felt, deeply, as a betrayal; and if they braved it out, shaking their heads smilingly at Binkie’s private warnings that ‘Man, your work’ll suffer,’ and ‘You don’t want to tie yourself down to kids at your age, baby,’ then the group, like one of those jellylike spores which live by absorption, swelled out and surrounded the couple, swallowing the marriage whole. They might marry provided they married from the Sports Club, with Binkie or one of the senior wolves as best man, and rejoined the Club at once after the briefest possible honeymoon, prepared to share their joys and sorrows with the rest. But these marriages tended to dissolve rather quickly. There were more than one couple, now returned to the fold as units, who danced with their ex-husbands, ex-wives, in the usual sentimental good-fellowship, even made love to them afterwards, though within the prescribed limits, and in the prescribed place, a parked car; and if these limits proved irresistibly piquant, after the freedom of marriage, so that the couple seemed inclined to link up again, Binkie was likely to take both aside, but separately, saying, ‘Now, you’ve tried it once, it didn’t work, now don’t fall for it again.’ And then, as a desperate second best: ‘At any rate, have a bang with someone else. There’s Tom’ (or Mabel, as the case might be). ‘Now, Tom’s a good sort, why don’t you have a bang with him?’