A Ripple From the Storm

  His face lit into gratitude and relief, and with a suddenness that took away her speech. She thought again: So he does really care for me.

  They kissed hurriedly, separating for the night out of an instinct that not to separate would be dangerous. Martha, walking home by herself, examined the look that appeared on Anton’s face at the moment she had said she would marry him, and saw something else: dependence, something almost childlike. This filled her with unease.

  But already she was feeling, under the pressure of the snapping jaws of impatience, the need to move forwards, as if the marriage with Anton and what she might become as a result of it were already done and accomplished. It was as if her whole being had concentrated itself into a movement of taking in and absorbing, as if she were swallowing something whole and hurrying on.

  As she went to sleep that night she was thinking: Perhaps Andrew felt like this when he said he would marry Maisie: and only afterwards he discovered he was happy and was surprised he was happy. She went to sleep depressed, and dreamed she was with Maisie, who was due to have her baby, and they were hurrying from door to door trying to find a house which would take her in. But the doors remained closed against them both.

  Chapter Three

  On the Saturday morning Martha was due to be married for the second time she woke late; she had half an hour to dress and reach the Magistrates’ Court. None of them had got to bed the night before until nearly three. Andrew and Anton, appointed Policy Sub-Committee for the Communist Party of Zambesia, had finally produced a 150-page document setting out how the territory would be run if the communists were to take power. This admirable document began with a page-long clause on how racial prejudice was to be made illegal, laying down the penalties for any expression of it whatsoever, direct or indirect, continued through detailed analyses of the industrial, economic and cultural position of the Colony, made provisions for dealing with any sort of contingency, ranging from war launched by other whitesettled parts of Africa and backed by British and American capital to economic boycotts, and ended (the style of this part of the document was different from the rest, which was sober and precise) in an impassioned appeal to the masses to support the people’s government.

  They had all undertaken to study this document in detail, but had been too busy to do more than read it through. It was voted on clause by clause, and accepted. All this took place in the du Preez’ living-room, a large and comfortable place whose sideboard was stacked with bottles of beer. Piet said he couldn’t face a whole evening’s argy-bargy without beer – he wouldn’t do it for his union and he was damned if he would do it for the Party. Anton disapproved, but nevertheless these days they sat around on the floor drinking beer in an atmosphere of friendly ease quite different from the early meetings in the office over Black Ally’s.

  Towards the end, contented with themselves and with the document, they were preparing to leave for bed when Maisie, who had joined the group in order, as she explained, ‘to save argument with Andrew’. spoke for the first time. She said: ‘What I want to know is this. I mean to say, what’s the point? You – I mean, we, aren’t even standing for elections, so there’s no chance of putting any of it into practice. And Andrew explained to me yesterday about there’s no revolutionary situation now, so you aren’t thinking of being in power at all. So why go to all this trouble?’

  Anton said: ‘But Comrade Maisie, it is our responsibility to put forward a policy so that the people will know where we stand.’

  ‘But you’re a secret group, so they can’t know, can they?’

  Here Athen intervened, speaking direct to Maisie, as was his way – he never made general speeches to the group: ‘Maisie, you must try to understand it. We may be only a few here. But we are more than just a few people. We are the communist ideal. The leadership of ELAS in the mountains spoke like the government, with the authority of a government, to give self-respect to the people. And if two communists find themselves somewhere – let us say suddenly in a strange town, they know they are not just two people, but that they are communism. And they must behave with self-respect because they represent the idea. And if there is even one communist – suppose any one of us finds himself alone somewhere, or perhaps in prison or sentenced to death, then he must never feel himself alone – except as a man, because as a man he is alone and that is good. But he is a communist and therefore not alone.’ He smiled at Maisie, and she, after a thoughtful silence, smiled back, afterwards letting her eyes return, with a serious query in them, to her husband, who took his pipe out of his mouth and nodded at her, as if to say: Yes, that’s true.

  Piet said jocularly: ‘Well, we can take over the Government any day now. All we need is to explain to our white fellow-citizens that we’re the men for the job. After all, we don’t seem to have any Africans with us, do we?’ Anton frowned, but said nothing. For some time Piet had been making remarks of this nature: he had became the privileged clown of the group, who could say things no one else could.

  They went home feeling – in spite of the fact that Maisie’s as it were lay objections had struck home uncomfortably into each of them – cheered and supported by the existence of the long and workmanlike Policy which, could they put it into practice, could have the whole territory well on the way to socialism in five years.

  Martha woke thinking of the document – thinking confusedly, something like this: Anton and Andrew drew up the programme, yet they are such different men, and they don’t like each other. (She wondered if they knew they disliked each other.) They had no difficulty in agreeing on it; in fact they drew up the first draft in two evenings. Anton once said: Two communists on either side of the world, ought, if presented with the same set of facts, to come to exactly the same conclusions – that is the strength of Marxism. She remembered the stern proud look on his face as he said it. Yet, if someone in the same intransigent mood as Bill Bluett or Jackie Bolton had been in the room last night, then they would have fought every clause, and the rest of the group would not have known what to think. (Now she felt uneasy because the group had agreed so readily, almost gaily to the programme.) What does that mean, then? That a group runs harmoniously when there are a couple of leaders agreed on something, putting it forward for ‘the rabbits’. Yes, that must be it. If there was only one leader, we’d be uneasy about it. But two strong personalities supporting each other, and everyone feels confident. Yet it is not as if they didn’t invite us to criticize and discuss: both of them keep saying, every time we quote Stalin: Kindly do Comrade Stalin the favour of thinking for yourselves instead of quoting him. All the same, we passed that programme clause after clause as if it were simply a formality to vote at all. There’s something wrong somewhere, something I ought to be understanding: the group can only work if the two strongest people in it are in agreement? I must think about it. But how can I? I don’t know enough, I simply don’t know anything about anything. Yet I’m quite ready to vote on a programme that might affect a whole country …

  She told herself, dryly, in a change of mood: Luckily there’s no danger of any such responsibility. She examined the word luckily, told herself that the other comrades were quite correct to criticize her for flippancy, discovered she was acutely depressed, and examined herself for the reason: of course, she was going to get married that morning.

  She hurried out of bed, taking dresses down from the cupboard, and discarded them. She should have ironed one last night, they were all crumpled and in fact there were only two fit to wear at all. Why should I bother, she thought: it’s nothing but a formality for both of us. Yet, having put on one dress, she removed it and tried the other, and looked at herself in the glass with the old feeling of cautious expectation. It seemed that she had not had time for months to examine her image – and her nail varnish was chipped too, and her hair needed attention. Her face, rather pale, with heavily shadowed dark eyes gazed back at her. She was in a fever of anxiety, the familiar strained irritation, as if she were juggling half a dozen objects
in the air at the same time, and knowing she was bound to drop one of them. She examined the severe young face and thought: If I didn’t know myself, what would I think? Well, I certainly wouldn’t guess all the things that have happened to her in the last year, getting divorced, being a communist, getting married again, all the complications and never sleeping enough. No, it’s all nonsense, people talking about faces. Faces don’t give things away at all – that face says nothing.

  Martha, even more discouraged, swung the mirror back, and passed her hand downwards over her body. I’m in one of my thin phases, she thought. Well, I suppose that’s something. But I really can’t go and get married without stockings – well, why not? No one would even notice. She hastily turned out her drawers, looking for stockings, but they all had ladders in them.

  At this point Jasmine came in, and Martha said in despair: ‘All my stockings have ladders.’

  ‘Well, don’t panic,’ said Jasmine composedly, already sitting down on the bed to strip off her own. As her sunburned legs came into view she glanced at them with approval, and tossed the stockings over to Martha, who put them on. ‘You’d better have a cigarette,’ she said, lighting one and coming over to put it between Martha’s lips. At the same time she gave Martha a cool, diagnostic look and smiled faintly. Martha understood Jasmine’s ironic, compassionate expression very well. She even smiled back, with the same irony, but almost immediately she sighed and said: ‘We’d better go and get it over with.’

  ‘Take it easy,’ said Jasmine, nodding at a chair, and Martha sat in it obediently. ‘I saw Mrs Van in the street and she says we should both drop into her office before lunch. So as soon as you’ve signed on the dotted line, we’ll go across.’ She said this as if offering a prophylactic against despair, and Martha laughed. Jasmine came clumsily across, put her arms around Martha in a timid squeeze, and said hurriedly: ‘It’s all right, don’t worry.’ She nodded, with a shy smile, instantly became serious, and said: Then let’s go.’

  They drove in silence down to the Magistrates’ Court. Anton was waiting on the pavement outside it. He was wearing a flower in his jacket, and Martha was upset when she saw it, because if she were wearing a flower it would be dishonest.

  But she greeted him with a bright smile, noting that he was smiling with tenderness. But I didn’t bargain for it, I didn’t bargain for it at all, she thought: she was in danger of bursting into tears. The three of them went into the Court. Mr Maynard was waiting for them. Martha had not remembered that he had married her last time; she was worried that he might mention the coincidence, in case Anton might resent it, But how could he resent it – it would be so inconsistent! But she was relieved that Mr Maynard did not attempt to catch her eye, and was purely the magistrate as he asked the necessary questions. It was all over in two minutes, and Martha saw Mr Maynard turn away with a fourth person, a young man called in from the passage to act as witness, saying: ‘Any more for the high jump this morning?’ Prom the unpleasantness of the smile on the young official’s face Martha saw that this marriage had been the subject of malicious gossip that morning. Well, of course, she thought, swallowing the idea whole as it were – they are bound to talk, I suppose. They can’t approve of me marrying Anton: no money, and an enemy alien at that. Well, let them … this defiance made her feel better, although she knew it was childish that she should. Anton had his hand under her elbow. He said in the manner which had been born in the moment Martha had said she would marry him – half fatherly, yet subtly deferential: ‘We must go and have a drink to celebrate.’

  Martha said quickly: ‘But we must go to Mrs Van’s office, she wants to see us.’ Jasmine, with a demure look, said: ‘That’s right, Matty’s back on duty, wedding or no wedding.’ Martha felt there was something possessive in Jasmine when she said this. She took Anton’s arm between her hands, and said: ‘We’ll meet you in the Grill as soon as we’ve finished,’ asserting her identity with him and not with Jasmine.

  Relieved, Anton said: ‘Of course you must go to Mrs Van. I’ll be waiting.’ He gave Martha his unused grateful smile and went off by himself, while the two young women directed themselves towards Mrs Van, whose office when they reached it seemed so full of people there was scarcely room for them to squeeze in. The Parliamentary members were all there, together, with Mr Playfair, Johnny Lindsay, Jack Dobie, Marie and Piet du Preez and the African Mr Matushi.

  It seemed there was a crisis, which had come about in the following way:

  The office of Mrs Van – many years a town councillor, and chairman of half a dozen welfare organizations, was always full of people asking for advice and help. Recently there had been far more Africans and Coloured people than usual. Several African organizations had sprung up, in form and spirit similar to the mutual aid associations characteristic of early British trade unionism but with a flavour peculiar to African development of this period: something sorrowful, bewildered and tentative. The leaders of these new societies found themselves very often in Mrs Van’s office. Very often indeed this leader was Mr Matushi, who shared with Mrs Van, and indeed with Jasmine and the group members, the quality of being able to speak at any given moment in half a dozen different capacities. That week, Mr Matushi, asking for Mrs Van’s guidance in his capacity as Chairman of the African Advancement League, had slipped into his role as leader of the African Branch of the Labour, or Social Democratic Party – if this Branch were to be allowed to come into being. Mrs Van exclaimed that it would be useful to have a member of Parliament or two to go down to the Township to explain to the Africans certain points of law. Mr Matushi had enthusiastically agreed. Mrs Van had asked the Location Superintendent – a gentleman deferential to her in her role as Town Councillor, to let her have the Location Hall for that Saturday afternoon. Mr Matushi, confirming this, had done so in the name of the African members of the Social Democratic Party.

  When Jasmine and Martha had understood how this very delicate situation had arisen, they could not help exchanging glances of amused comprehension – and at once Mrs Van gave them a stern look, as if to say that this was no occasion for private jokes. Perfectly obvious now why Mr McFarline, the green-visaged Mr Thompson and even Mr Playfair were looking so agitated, and why Jack Dobie, Johnny Lindsay and the du Preez were ironically appreciative. In short, the reactionaries believed that Mrs Van had again presented them with a fait accompli, while the truth was that the hunger of the Africans for advice and support was so strong it had forced its way through this crack in the white crust – the crack being Mrs Van’s maternally concerned heart, and had created a situation before even Mrs Van wanted it.

  Mr McFarline, having heard Mrs Van out, said firmly that no African Branch existed, since the Party had not yet taken a vote on whether there should be one. Therefore this meeting could not be described as a meeting of the African Branch. Therefore, since it seemed the meeting could not now be stopped, he suggested it be described as an informal gathering of Africans addressed by a few Europeans.

  Mr Thompson said: ‘I’m responsible to the people who elected me, and I know that not one of them would agree to white people agitating in the Locations.’

  Mrs Van said smoothly that obviously it would be better to have very responsible people addressing this meeting, and she urged Mr McFarline to be one of them.

  Mr McFarline said hastily that there was a Select Committee that afternoon. Mr Thompson was booked for the same committee. Five other Parliamentary members were returning to their constituencies that afternoon. There would therefore be only one member of Parliament at the meeting, Jack Dobie. Who, with a small smile, inquired of his fellows whether they would be happy to have their views represented to the Africans by himself.

  Mr McFarline said grimly that if Jack Dobie committed the Party to anything at all, he’d be in trouble with his colleagues.

  To which Jack retorted that he would speak in his personal capacity with pleasure, because he had no intention of putting forward his dear colleagues’ views on the Native
Question – they would stick in his throat.

  At which Mr Thompson said that obviously the important thing was to make sure the press did not hear a word about what was going forward, because if it got into the newspapers they would all lose their seats.

  Mrs Van agreeing to this, the Parliamentary members left in a body, leaving Jack, Johnny, Jasmine, Martha and the du ?reez.

  Mrs Van then instructed these people as to how they were to conduct themselves that afternoon. Mr Playfair and Jack should be on the platform with herself and Mr Matushi – Mr Matushi had been sitting quietly all this time, watching Mr McFarline and his group with a suspicious and watchful smile – while Marie and Piet and Martha and Jasmine should be responsible for a table for the sale of literature.

  The literature was stacked ready. Mrs Van, welfare worker for so many years, had had printed at her own expense several useful pamphlets: How to Keep Your Baby Clean. How to Feed Your Family. Kill those Flies! Three others expressed Mrs Van’s other and perhaps deeper self: African Woman, you are not a Slave! How to Conduct a Meeting Properly. The Principles of Trade Unionism.

  Mrs Van, still seated behind her table, offered the four communists a smile which was both sprightly and firm, and said: ‘Yes, I know you’d rather be selling something about the Red Army, but please restrain yourselves for just one afternoon.’

  Jasmine and Martha returned towards the Grill, talking about the meeting. For one thing, neither of them had been inside the Location before; for another, they were confused about whether they ought, as revolutionaries, to be selling pamphlets of such a domestic character. But Jasmine settled this problem by saying: ‘In the early days of the Russian Revolution the comrades were out in the backward areas liquidating illiteracy and teaching hygiene, so it must be all right, mustn’t it?’