A Ripple From the Storm
‘But, Murdoch, how can you go around getting married just like that?’
‘There’s not much time for courting in the Party.’ He said resentfully: ‘I can see a working-man’s life is not much to tempt you. Specially for you white girls out here – never had to lift a finger for yourselves in your lives. Believe me, you’d make a fine wife for a working-man!’
‘Then why ask me?’
‘Forget it,’ he said, and began to whistle. They walked on, hostile to each other.
‘No beer?’ he asked, as they passed McGrath’s.
‘But I would if we weren’t so late.’
‘Aye, I’ll bet you would. Waste five minutes of Party time–not you!’ He went off towards the office at Black Ally’s, saying: ‘I’ll change back into my jail-clothes. See you later.’
They had rented a showroom on Main Street for the exhibition which was called: ‘Twenty-six years with the Red Army.’
The large room was filled with light movable screens that had posters and photographs pinned all over them. At the table near the door, Jasmine sat with Tommy Brown. He had a book open in front of him, and she was looking over his shoulder.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Martha.
‘You are late,’ said Jasmine, formally, speaking as group secretary. Changing her tone, she said: ‘Hey, Matty, what’ve you done with Murdoch? You haven’t let him go, have you–he’ll get tight again.’
‘I can’t help it,’ said Martha, furious.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Jasmine examined Martha calmly, nodded to Tommy to stay where he was, and followed Martha out to the pavement. ‘What’s eating you?’
Martha said laughing, but in genuine despair: ‘Murdoch has just proposed to me.’
‘Well, he proposed to me last week. And he proposed to Marjorie the day before yesterday and went and got drunk when she said she was going to marry Colin.’
‘They’re all mad,’ said Martha. ‘That means that all the RAF members have proposed to us all in the last month.’
‘Oh well,’ said Jasmine.
‘It obviously doesn’t matter to them who they marry.’ Martha was laughing but she was filled with dismay and discouragement. She was relieved when Jasmine rolled up her eyes and said sedately, ‘It’s the spirit of the times.’ Jasmine always made such remarks as if they were being made for the first time. Martha felt: Well, it is the spirit of the times, and laughed, and Jasmine departed to a hall down-town, where she was helping to organize a public meeting.
Tommy Brown was taking admittance money from a group of girls just out of their offices. They went to examine the posters and photographs of the Civil War that had the look of stills from an old film. Martha recognized the look on their faces, which was an idle, rather startled interest: it represented the feeling she had had herself, a year ago, when the ‘Russian Revolution’ was offered to her for the first time. She thought: But they’ll all be married inside a year, so what’s the point?
She sat beside Tommy, who was waiting for her with one finger marking the place in his book. She said: ‘It would have been better if this exhibition had been about this war, about the Red Army in this war, instead of the Revolution as well.’
His round eyes searched her face. His face had a look of strain. There was a pause while he thought over what she said. Five minutes with Tommy always made Martha feel frivolous, because of the depths of attention which he offered to all the older members of the group.
‘You mean, we shouldn’t push communism down their throats?’ he asked. He frowned. ‘But that’s what we are for.’
‘Oh I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.’
Outside the door a group of dark-skinned people hesitated, and Martha looked, wondering: Indians? Coloureds? She saw the assistant from the Indian store and smiled. They came in, with nervous glances at the group of white girls who were making their way around the exhibition.
‘OK?’ said the assistant.
‘OK,’ said Martha. The group of Indian youths started at the other end of the exhibition from the girls, with an air of wary self-respect, as if to say: We’d prefer not to come here at all if it means trouble.
‘Oh hell,’ said Martha, suddenly utterly depressed, and instantly felt that to let go into private moods was irresponsible with Tommy.
He said, blushing scarlet: ‘I don’t think that I can be a communist. I mean to say, I feel bad things all the time. I know it’s the way I’m brought up. But when I see Coloured people or Indians in a place like this, then I think of them as different from us, and that’s wrong, isn’t it?’
‘We can’t help the way we were brought up.’
‘And it’s not only that. I mean, sitting here selling tickets, I mean selling tickets to anyone, it makes me feel funny. I feel self-conscious. That’s snobbish, isn’t it?’
‘Well, I felt like that to start with.’
‘I mean, ever since I joined the group I feel funny. I don’t know what I feel, half the things I feel seem to be wrong but I feel them. I know they are wrong but I can’t help it.’ He ended, very defiant, his honest urchin’s face hot with confusion.
‘But, Tommy, it’s because we’re both brought up in this country. We’ve got bad attitudes to people with a different colour. We’ve just got to change our attitudes.’
‘But it’s so hard to change. Today on the job I did something very bad. I was fitting a pipe with my mate. And one of the Kaffirs brought the wrong pipe and I shouted at him. But if I did different, then the blokes on the job’d think I was mad. I’m just an apprentice, and it’s hard to be different from the grown-ups. And there’s Piet. I saw him today on the job with some Kaffirs unloading stuff and he was talking to them just the way he always does – and listen to me, I use the word Kaffir and I shouldn’t, it just slips out.’ He ended in despair, almost in tears.
The group of white girls, having finished their tour, went out. Slowly the group of Indians scattered out of their defensiveness and began wandering around the exhibition at their ease.
‘The point is,’ said Tommy, ‘it’s easy for you, because you’re better educated.’
She laughed in astonishment. ‘I don’t think that’s true.’
‘Well, it is, I’m telling you.’
His finger, insistent on a point in the page, drew Martha’s attention. The book was War and Peace.
‘Did Jasmine tell you to read this?’
‘She said it was the greatest novel ever written. Is that right?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘But man, it takes such a long time to read. I thought this was the whole book but there are two others when I’ve finished this.’
On the open page half a dozen phrases had been underlined in pencil, with definitions scribbled opposite.
‘Your eloquence would have taken the king of Prussia’s consent by storm,’ she read. And in pencil: ‘eloquence: the power of speaking with grace.’
‘I don’t even understand half the words,’ he said.
‘But Tommy, you shouldn’t read books unless you really want to.’
‘I’ve never read books before, except just adventure stories. Jasmine said this book explained why there was a Russian Revolution; she said if I read this I would understand about Russia before the Revolution. But perhaps there’s a shorter book somewhere?’
‘Don’t you enjoy it?’
His eyes lit into enthusiasm. ‘Oh yes, I do. But you don’t see what I’m saying, Matty. I watched Jasmine the other day, reading. I thought about the way she reads books. It was just another book to her. Because she’s read so many books, don’t you see? I asked her about the book she was reading and she said: It’s a useful description of reactionary circles in Paris. Then she said: But it’s a bad book. Don’t you see, I wouldn’t know if it was bad or not. It’s just a book. When I read this stuff here, I mean about all these generals and maids-in-waiting and the courtiers, it makes me feel …’ He hesitated, looking angry and stubborn. ??
?What I mean is, I couldn’t say: This is a useful description.’ He was suddenly scarlet with anger. ‘Don’t you see, it’s just snobbish when you and Jasmine say things like that, Well, anyway, that’s what I think. All the time I’m reading this, I feel – mixed up in it. I mean to say, if I were there, I’d be thinking just what all these generals and old ladies think. I’d be the same as them. And that makes me confused. Because they were all a bunch of reactionaries, weren’t they? And this girl, Natasha, I like her.’
‘But why shouldn’t you like her?’
‘She was the daughter of an aristocrat, wasn’t she? So why should I like her?’
‘But, Tommy, suppose someone wrote a novel about you. The Africans might say: Why should I like that reactionary white man, Tommy Brown? But it would help them to understand the way things are, do you see?’
No, I don’t see. That’s it,’ he said, ‘I just don’t see. And sometimes when I tell you and Jasmine and Piet what I’m feeling, you have a smile on your faces, and I know you’re thinking: Tommy’s just a stupid boy.’
‘But I haven’t got a smile on my face,’ said Martha. ‘I don’t know why you think everything’s easy for us either. The thing is, now we’re communists we’ve all got to go on learning for the rest of our lives.’
‘I can’t say what I mean,’ he said. He put up his burned fist and began banging at the top of his head where the tufts of hair stood up. ‘You say: “We’ve got to go on learning,” but I don’t even know half the words I see.’
‘But we’ll all help you, we’ll all help each other.’
‘Do you know what I think, Matty? Well, I know what you are going to say when I tell you. But it’s this, I don’t think any people brought up here, white people, can ever be good communists. It’s different for people like the RAF, because they weren’t living here all their lives, and so everything comes easy to them, but I don’t think we can change ourselves.’
‘But we are changing all the time.’
‘Well, all right. I’ll try.’ He pushed the book towards her. ‘If you tell me what the words mean then I won’t have to look them up in a dictionary.’
They bent together over the book, but almost at once a large sheet of cardboard slid over the print. It was bordered with black an inch thick, and it was headed ‘Homage to Heroes’. Solly Cohen, grinning heavily, stood beyond the piles of pamphlets on the table, hands in his pockets.
A short while before, at a Progressive Club lecture on the necessity for switching support from Michailovitch to Tito, for this was before Michailovitch’s collaboration with the Germans had been officially confirmed, Solly had come with a group of local Yugoslavs and stood at the back of the hall chanting steadily, every time Tito was mentioned: ‘Communist propaganda, communist propaganda.’ At the end of the meeting, when the chairman wound up, Solly had leaped up to shout over and over again: ‘Down with Stalin the Assassin.’
In the interval Allied policy had switched: Tito was now officially principal guerrilla leader in Yugoslavia, and Michailovitch a dubious collaborationist. Martha therefore faced Solly triumphantly.
But he seemed unconscious that she had any right to, He indicated the large black-bordered cardboard and said: ‘I’ve brought this for the exhibition.’
Martha examined it. There were on it the names of a couple of hundred Red Army officers, none of which she had heard of. ‘What are you up to now?’ she asked.
‘Short list of Red Army officers murdered by Stalin,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you hang them up too? They died in a good cause.’
She handed him back the cardboard and said: ‘You mean you’ve gone to all the trouble of printing these names just to come here and be irritating?’ She was genuinely astounded. Solly continued to grin: he was perfectly satisfied, it seemed, with the reaction he was getting. It was the look of satisfied malice, which he wore now whenever he encountered ‘the group’ in public, which made it easy for Martha to dismiss him entirely.
‘You’re so damned childish,’ she said.
He said: ‘You aren’t going to hang that list? You haven’t room?’ He took a rapid glance around the exhibition and said: ‘You could take down one of those six pictures of Father Stalin to make room for it.’
Tommy Brown shouted: ‘Capitalist propaganda,’ and Solly, delighted, roared with laughter. He sobered to say: ‘The truth is what I want. As a Marxist, I want truth.’
‘Such as, that Tito was an invention of the communist party?’
He waved this aside, and said: ‘This is an exhibition of the Red Army, and I want some of the hundreds of Red Army officers murdered by Stalin to get some recognition, that’s all.’
‘You’re mad,’ said Martha. ‘You’re corrupted by capitalist propaganda.’ And now Solly had got what he had come to get, apparently; for he again burst into peals of laughter and went laughing to the door. There he turned and made a low bow towards the picture of Stalin nearest to him: ‘Salaams, Lord, Salaams.’ He went out.
Tommy and Martha dismissed the existence of Solly with a contemptuous shrug. Martha tore up the piece of cardboard and, looking for a place to deposit the pieces, found a large packing-case under the table. It was covered in heavy oiled paper, and full of pamphlets called: ‘Fascist Vipers Crushed Under Stalin’s Heel’. She opened one and read: ‘As the Fascist Scum leave their deposits of filth over the sacred soil of our Russian Motherland, our Heroic Russian Soldiers march on, armed with the unerring faith of true patriots and the inspiration of the Glorious Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its leader Comrade Stalin!’ She grimaced humorously and looked at Tommy who, however, was not humorous.
‘There you are,’ he said, again in despair. ‘That’s what I mean. All that motherland stuff, it simply makes me want to laugh, that’s all.’
Some people had come in and were handing their money over. Martha unconsciously slid the pamphlet out of sight. Tommy assisted her in covering the packing-case over, and said: ‘Jasmine had them on sale. Everyone who came in saw them and laughed, so she hid them.’ He looked guilty. Martha realized she was feeling guilty too. ‘After all, it stands to reason the Russians feel more strongly about the war than we do,’ she said, weakly.
Tommy said: ‘But they say scum. I mean the Germans are human beings. They’re soldiers.’ He added, hastily: ‘Though of course the Russian communist party knows best, doesn’t it? Comrade Stalin must know what he’s doing.’
‘We’ve got four packing-cases of pamphlets from Russia,’ said Martha. ‘What are we going to do with them? Well, we’ll bring it up at the group meeting and take a formal decision on policy.’
At this point Bill Bluett came in, back in his uniform.
Tommy produced the doubtful pamphlet and showed it to him. He read it, dead-pan, until Martha said: ‘What do you think? I think it’s silly,’ when he reacted instantly with: ‘Naughty naughty Russians, so crude, aren’t they?’
‘It’s no use selling pamphlets that make people laugh.’
“They’d laugh out of the other side of their mouths if they had the Germans here.’
‘Yes, but we haven’t.’
‘Well, we’ll bring it up at the meeting and Daddy Anton will make a decision for us.’
Martha, confused, for Bill had always seemed to have respect for Anton, said: ‘Why, what’s wrong with Anton?’
Bill said, grinning: ‘But what on earth could be wrong with Daddy Anton?’ There was a personal implication in it, and she demanded: ‘What’s that in aid of?’ He shrugged and said airily: ‘Well, if you’ll move, I’ll take over now. You should be at the meeting, and you’d better be quick because it’s going to rain.’
‘You mean, I might get my feet wet?’
‘That’s right.’ But now, as he usually did, he gave in, and his aggression disappeared in a half-cajoling, half-comradely smile. ‘Run along, Comrade Matty.’
Tommy took up War and Peace and Bill pounced on it. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘why not T. S. Eliot?’
> ‘What’s the matter with War and Peace?’
‘You are a bourgeois, aren’t you? Why not T. S. Eliot while you’re about it.’ He began reciting: ‘April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land.’
Martha listened critically: he missed nothing of it. She interrupted to ask: ‘If you despise it so much, why do you take the trouble to learn it by heart?’
‘That belongs to my decadent period. Thought you’d appreciate it. Ta ta.’
The street was hot and stuffy. The evening sky was loaded with black sulphurous clouds. A few large sparkling drops fell. She ran down the street as the storm broke, feeling the warm sting of the rain on her shoulders with acute pleasure.
By the time she reached the Sympathizers of Russia committee meeting it had already started and she was soaked.
They were discussing how to restore the status of the society, for as Anton had predicted, the episode with Jackie Bolton had caused all the respectable patrons to resign, including the Reverend Mr Gates who had had second thoughts. The policy, exactly the same now as it had been before, was being overseen by Boris Krueger, chairman, Betty Krueger, secretary, and a committee of people co-opted by them. Martha end Marjorie were on it with instructions to keep ‘an eye on the Trotskyists’. While the hostility between the Krueger faction and the communist faction was extreme, so that before or after meetings they could scarcely bring themselves to exchange more than the minimum of politeness, their political views, at least so far as this society was concerned, caused the work to go on much faster than it had in the past when the susceptibilities of the respectable had to be pandered to in the wording of every resolution. The Kruegers and Martha and Marjorie were in one way and another raising large sums for Russian Aid, and in addition were selling propaganda leaflets all over town in numbers which took them by surprise. When the meeting was over, Betty Krueger, who had been eyeing Martha with elaborate hostility throughout, suggested she had better go and change her dress before she caught cold. Martha had forgotten she was soaked, and said: ‘But I haven’t got time.’