This two-way process, a simultaneous loosening and tightening, was showing itself in other ways.
For instance, there was the question of criticism. Every week these people stood up before their comrades and criticized themselves: with sincerity, and after considerable heart-searching. Yet they did not again launch criticisms at each other, nor was it even suggested. Mutual criticism was dropped from their programme, without any formal decision being taken: at the most they nodded, as it were impartially, when one of them made a point against himself.
Again, there was the question of allies: even more time than before was spent on analysing the exact degree of apostasy on the part of people like the Kruegers, yet Jasmine, for one, had revived her friendship with them. As for the du Preez couple, all their social life was devoted to people whom they agreed, at least on one night of the week, were in one way or the other enemies of socialism.
And finally, whereas once all the multifarious responsibilities of the group were organized from the dusty little room over the restaurant, now the headquarters seemed to have become the du Preez’ house. For one thing, it was central not practically, for it was on the outskirts of the town, but spiritually, situated in a suburb whose fringes spread on the verges of a vlei whose grass flanks would soon vanish under new houses, but which now stood a mile from the Location and was not far from the Coloured Quarter. It was felt that when the group spread links among the African proletariat, it would be easier from a house within walking distance of the African ghetto. For these people continued to feel, deeper than anything else, a continual hurt and embarrassment on behalf of the Africans.
This hurt had been crystallized by the defection of Elias Phiri who vanished from group life after the meeting which was also the last for the RAF group. Jasmine had gone down to the Magistrates’ Court to inquire from him, urging his attendance on behalf of his nation. When he arrived at the next meeting he was drunk, sat through two items of the agenda with a look of sullen withdrawal, and then interrupted with a long speech, delivered on his feet as if he were at a public meeting, against his people who, he said, were all backward savages and fit for nothing but servitude. He left them at the conclusion of his speech, which was: ‘I tell you, they’re all pigs and Kaffir-dogs!’
Jasmine had gone down to the Court again, and had explained to him, with many historical illustrations, the incorrectness of his attitude. She had made little impression, however.
Soon they were saying that his character was unstable. In short, Elias, like the Kruegers and the RAF group, was spoken of thus: ‘He was never a communist at all. If he had been he couldn’t have left.’
Meanwhile, the remaining members of the group worked together in a honey of amity, but perhaps with less efficiency, because of the way minutes, papers and pamphlets were distributed between the du Preez’ house and the group office.
Various changes had occurred in the personal lives of the members.
Marjorie was pregnant after four months of marriage. Martha noted the girl’s efficiency, recognized a certain emotional competency; noted, too, a characteristic set to Colin’s fat shoulders, something both complacent and wary, and thought: Well? It’s no good expecting me to believe in it …
One afternoon the two young women were addressing envelopes for the Progressive Club on the du Preez’ veranda, and talking about Europe after the war. Italy was certain to be communist, and so was France. In five years there would be a communist Europe. They imagined it as a release into freedom, a sudden flowering into goodness and justice. They already felt themselves to be part of it.
‘I’d prefer Italy, I think,’ Marjorie said. ‘Yes, I was there on a holiday once. I like the Italians because their temperament is so different from mine – I have such a tendency to worry and fuss. When the war is over I’ll go to Italy and the comrades there will give me a job for a year or so.’
She had forgotten about Colin and about the baby. Almost at once her expression changed into the dry humour that had already absorbed the eager earnest charm that had been hers a few weeks before, and she said; ‘It’s hard to remember one isn’t free. It’s funny, isn’t it, Matty? Just because of … the baby, I’ll never be free again.’ She had been going to say: Because of Colin. ‘But I won’t stay in this country, I won’t!’ she concluded fiercely, looking with hate at the rows of identical little gardened villas of which the du Preez’ house was one. ‘You’re free, though,’ she added, smiling encouragingly at Martha.
‘Having a baby ought to make everything fuller, not narrow everything,’ said Martha. And by a natural transition which Marjorie easily followed, she went on to: ‘In the Soviet Union, with the crèches and nursery schools, everything must be different, relations between men and women must be quite different, there must be real equality.’ For some time, they spoke of the lives of the women in the Soviet Union. They lapsed into silence, smiling, pursuing the same fantasy: They were in the Soviet Union. They walked into some factory or industry, which was run by a woman, who was their age, or perhaps a little older, someone competent, matter-of-fact, sympathetic. There would be little need for talk even: a smile and a squeeze of the hand would be enough, for this woman would understand at once why they needed to be given work which would absorb the best of themselves, why they needed time for study. ‘Under capitalism,’ she might have said, though it was hardly necessary to do so, ‘women have to diminish themselves. Women like you, already part of the future, because you can imagine how diferent human beings will be, are entitled to spend a year or so in the socialist world, so as to strengthen your vision and carry it back home with you, and hand it on to others.’
From this fantasy, Martha fell to thinking about Marjorie’s words: You’re free, though …
For something had occurred which had left her feeling less than free.
For some weeks Anton and she, although regarded by themselves and by the others as a couple, had not made love. Martha had decided that some delicacy was causing him to wait until their relationship had reached a natural moment of fruition. She rested in this belief of his fine feeling with something not far off love.
A week ago he had suggested they go to the pictures together. They had never done anything together that was not associated with the group activities. He had said: ‘Even the best comrades need relaxation sometimes.’ There had been a consciousness in his smile that had made Martha think: Surely he can’t be doing anything so vulgar as to take me to the pictures in order to set the mood for going to bed?
After the film she went back with him to his hotel room. She had not been there before. She was thinking of the Austrian woman who still lived in the hotel, when Anton got determinedly off the bed where he had been sitting, took her by the hand and raised her from her chair and towards the bed in one movement that had in it a mixture of gallantry, which she was able to tolerate, although it was hard to associate with him ordinarily, an uncertain appeal, which warmed her to him, and a complacency which she hated.
The act of sex was short and violent, so short she was uninvolved. She thought that perhaps he might have been nervous. He did not, however, seem nervous. She gave no hint of her feelings, and listened to him talk of his experiences in the revolutionary movement in Germany.
She worried over this for some days and came to some contradictory conclusions. There was something essentially contradictory between the image of the revolutionary, essentially masculine, powerful and brave, and how Anton had behaved with her in bed. Yet the need in her to admire and be instructed was so great that she was on the point of telling herself: It must be my fault and not his. And yet no sooner had she reached this point of self-abnegation than her experience told her there was something wrong with Anton. And yet – here was another indisputable fact: with each man she had been with, she had been something different. Although various totally despicable because dishonest psychological pressures made her wish to say she had never enjoyed Douglas, never had pleasure with William – for both these men
, from the moment she became Anton’s, seemed faintly distasteful and very distant – yet she knew this to be untrue. What it amounted to, then, was that she must wait for Anton to create her into something new? But after half a dozen times the honest voice of her femininity remarked that ‘Anton was hopeless’. Or, to salvage her image of the man: ‘We are sexually incompatible.’
At the time of her conversation with Marjorie on the du Preez’ veranda, she had decided to tell Anton that she was not for him: more diplomatically, so as to save his pride, that he was not for her. She played with fantasies of how the Austrian woman would burst into the room, making scenes, claiming him back. She, Martha, would say: But Anton, it’s only fair, she’s known you so much longer than I have.
But the Austrian woman was nowhere to be seen. When Martha asked about her, Anton said: ‘But my little one, she’s a sensible girl, believe me.’ This with a fond and protective smile.
My little one moved Martha, filled her with repose, even though she despised the emotion. She’s a sensible girl repelled her because of its complacency. Anton had chosen to be sensible and left Toni Mandel no alternative but to choose sense? Presumably. After all, she was a middle-aged woman and a very tired one. But would he be sensible if she, Martha, decided to be? Her instinct said not. She imagined herself saying: Anton, I’m sorry, we’ve made a mistake. How, then, would he react? The man who made a special journey at lunch-hour to buy cinema tickets and order a table for two in a mood of dogged determination to do what he thought was the right thing, who fetched her gallantly from her room, and settled her into the front seat of the car he had borrowed for the occasion, and all this with the creaking kindliness he never used towards her when they were both being, simply, members of the group that man she imagined as capable of ugly vanity. She was afraid.
But not as afraid as of the man she imagined stiffening into hurt, saying in the cold voice he used when preserving a shell of pride: ‘Well, of course, if you feel like that …’
Yet all this was unimportant; after the war they would be scattered into the revolutionary battle-fronts of Europe. Personal unhappiness was irrelevant. All the same, she would speak to Anton about their unsuitedness to each other not later than tonight … well, if not tonight, then at some suitable moment when neither was tired, and both could be reasonable.
In the meantime there were a hundred things to be seen to. She saw to them: the organizing of meetings, the study groups, the addressing of envelopes. There was also the question of Maisie.
She did not speak to Anton of Maisie because he continued to refer, with disapproval, to ‘charitable activities’.
Martha had been present at the first interview between Andrew and Maisie. It had been brief. Andrew, brisk and kindly, had said he was prepared to marry Maisie, and would allow her to divorce him when the child was born. He thought he could get permission from the CO to marry. If it came to the worst he would say he had got a girl into trouble. He said this with a smile, his eyes warm on Maisie’s calm but unhappy face. She asked for time to think it over. He insisted that he would do whatever she wanted, and that she should send a message to him through Martha. Then he left the two girls together. They were sitting in Black Ally’s on either side of a tomato-sauce-stained tablecloth. Maisie drank strong tea in silence, thinking, until she asked at last: ‘But, Matty, I don’t get it. Why should he? I mean, he doesn’t get anything out of it but the bother of a divorce. Is it because he’s a communist?’
‘We don’t think babies should be killed simply because of nonsense about illegitimacy,’ said Martha. She added, feeling she had been partly dishonest: ‘I don’t know why it should be Andrew – but he’s a kind man.’
‘Yes, he is,’ Maisie agreed at once.
Martha heard nothing of her for a week. Then she came into the office and invited Martha for lunch.
Her mood had manifestly changed. For the first time since she had known her, Martha saw Maisie anxious.
‘It’s like this,’ she said. ‘I’m worried. Suppose I get fond of Andrew and I don’t want him to divorce me, then he won’t like it and I’ll be unhappy. Well, I don’t want to be unhappy. I’ve got enough troubles.’
This statement caused Martha to feel a pang which she recognized with disapproval as jealousy. For the kindliness of Andrew over Maisie’s baby had caused her to feel warm towards him, and she had even been thinking: I was a fool to let myself get involved with Anton instead of Andrew. She saw that Maisie had already become fond of Andrew.
Martha said: ‘He’ll be going back to England after the war.’
‘I know. And I’m sure I’d hate England. But don’t you see, Matty, there’s something not right about this, it’s too coldhearted.’
Martha sent a message to Andrew. He came into town that afternoon, and she set herself to convey to him, without actually saying so, that Maisie’s objection to this practical arrangement was the fact that it was practical. She watched Andrew’s face change from complacency into gratitude. He said: ‘Well, I’m quite partial to the lass myself. Where does she live?’
The group maintained a discreet silence about Maisie and Andrew for several days. This was hard to do, the signs of joy were so strong on Andrew’s face that it seemed positively dishonest not to notice them. Then he announced that he was marrying Maisie, and with the pride of a man in love. He was looking for a flat for Maisie. He even said he did not approve of women working while they were pregnant, adding with a calm nod towards Anton that he didn’t give a damn what they thought in the Soviet Union on this subject – he was old-fashioned. No one said a word of criticism.
They were delighted. The group was filled with a spirit of warm, though wry pleasure; as if something wilfully beautiful had been offered to them. That is, they were all delighted save Anton, who invited them to consider the consequences.
Marjorie remarked, smiling dryly: ‘The group is going to have a baby – but it’s not my baby! ‘
Meanwhile, new decisions had been taken about the work of the group. A ‘fundamentally new policy’ had come into being, and, oddly enough, not as a result of the fundamental analysis demanded by Anton, but because of a remark of Jasmine’s.
They were all assembled in the du Preez’ living-room, engaged in the routine management of the half-dozen societies they were now responsible for, when jasmine said: ‘I met Mrs Van der Bylt in the street today, and she wanted to know why I had dropped my work in the Labour Party. Well, of course I couldn’t say I couldn’t stand that bunch of social democrats any longer.’
‘But Jasmine,’ said Marie du Preez, ‘I’m still a member. Surely you’re wrong? I didn’t know we were expected to stop being members. Why should we?’
The questions of principle raised here were immense, but not gone into: Anton said calmly that of course Jasmine had been wrong.
Jasmine went to a Labour Party Committee meeting, to which she was invited to go as an observer, and returned saying that it would be quite easy to co-opt four or five of the group members on to the committee. Mrs Van, who was a really progressive person, not at all like the others on the committee, had said she would be pleased to have them there. She proposed to co-opt them.
Martha, Marjorie, Colin, Marie and Piet were instructed to attend the next committee meeting. Carrie Jones, invited to do so, refused. She took this opportunity of saying that she wished them luck, but she felt she would never make a communist. Next day it was announced in the News that she was engaged to the manager of the firm to which she was secretary.
The group, feeling that this had been inevitable, congratulated her and afterwards did no more than describe her as fundamentally petty bourgeois. In fact, Carrie Iones, who had always been less of a communist than any of them, incurred less censure from them than any of the other renegades. They continued to greet her when they saw her, and spoke of her with amiable contempt.
Within a month, the balance of the group activities had entirely changed. The societies such as the Progressive Cl
ub and Sympathizers of Russia ran almost by themselves. The committees of these organizations were practically interchangeable, with one or two outside people on each for respectability’s sake. The Watchdog, farmed out to dozens of sub-agents, sold phenomenally, and with so little trouble that Martha could never rid herself of a feeling that there must be something wrong with a political activity that needed so little effort.
After the five had been co-opted on to the Labour Party Committee, there was a meeting at the du Preez’ house at which Anton, after lengthy analysis, decided that it was their task to influence the Labour Party.
It was a meeting at which there were two new faces.
Maisie was present, listening lazily, watching Andrew, who was now her husband, with affection.
Also there was a new man from the camp, a Greek fresh from fighting in the mountains with the communist forces. He was now training to be a pilot. He was a small, dark, lean man, with burning serious eyes and an impressive gift of silence.
He said nothing about the political decisions taken that evening, on the grounds that he did not understand the conditions in the Colony.
Andrew and Maisie left early. Anton remarked that he did not think Andrew should have brought Maisie without asking them first. The Greek asked who she was, and they told him the history of the couple.
He listened gravely. At last he nodded, saying: ‘That is good. That I like to hear very much.’ He leaned forward, his thin brown hands pressed between his two knees, looking into their faces. ‘Comrades, we live in a terrible and ugly time, we live when capitalism is a beast who murders us, starves us, keeps from us the joy of life. As communists we must try to live a life as if the ugliness was already dead. We must try and live like socialists who care for each other and for people, even while we are hurt all the time by capitalism which is cruel. And so I am happy to hear about these two comrades. That shows we in this room are real communists. I am proud and happy to be with you in this room.’ With which he rose, nodding at them all gravely, in turn, saying he would attend the group meetings when he could.