Mrs Van noted that Mrs Maynard was almost incoherent with spite.
‘This girl Maisie, didn’t she tell your son she was pregnant?’
‘Not a word,’ said Mrs Maynard dramatically. ‘And when my husband went to see her she was abominably rude.’
‘How did you get to know she was pregnant?’
Mrs Maynard said quickly: ‘We heard it. But the point is Binkie is heart-broken. He’s got compassionate leave. He will be here in a month. And of course it’s impossible to get the gal to see reason.’
‘You say she has married someone else?’
‘Oh some ridiculous person, a man from the camp.’
Mrs Van said nothing. She filled Mrs Maynard’s empty glass and sat waiting.
‘You have influence,’ said Mrs Maynard. ‘You know them. And there’s that Quest girl. She’s a friend of Maisie’s.’
‘I know Mrs Knowell of course.’
‘Mrs Hesse now. She married that German.’
Mrs Van said, surprised: ‘Really, when?’
‘My husband married them this morning – absurd. But that’s not the point. It’s Binkie’s child. And that gal Maisie will not answer my letters or even see my husband.’
Mrs Van thought: She got married this morning and was at the meeting this afternoon. She was touched for a thousand private reasons. Yet she disapproved of Martha. To leave a husband was pardonable although – as she had herself proved, hardly necessary. To leave a child was unforgivable. Yet she was moved, deeply, and where she did not want to be touched at all.
She came out of private reflections to hear Mrs Maynard say: ‘And so I would be very grateful if you’d undertake to talk to that Maisie creature, or get the Quest gal to talk to her.’
Mrs Van said: ‘But, Mrs Maynard, I really don’t understand you. The girl’s presumably of age. She married this man of her own free will. It’s her affair.’ She added, since Mrs Maynard showed complete incredulity: ‘It’s not my affair. And it’s not yours either. If she’s married she’s married. Are you suggesting she should divorce this man again to marry your son?’
‘But it’s all a mistake. It’s all a terrible terrible mistake,’ Mrs Maynard cried out, and her eyes were full of tears. She directed them hopefully at her antagonist, realized that completely divergent principles were in conflict and stood up saying: ‘These RAF – they should never have been allowed into the country.’
‘But my dear, they are here after all because of the war.’
Mrs Maynard, with a wistful glance at a small table on which stood framed photographs of half a dozen small children, said: ‘I’m sorry to have taken up your time,’ and departed in an energetic wave of black lace.
Mrs Van had not yet had a chance to ring for dinner when the servant announced yet another ‘missus’ and a woman she did not know came hurriedly into the room saying: ‘I’m sorry to disturb you but I simply must ask you …’ Mrs Van urged her to sit down – but she would not; offered her a drink, but she refused it. She was Mrs Quest, she said, and she simply had to know …
Mrs Quest, in a severe tailored dress and a severe dark hat, was almost as girlishly agitated as Mrs Maynard had been. Mrs Van, whose thoughts had already returned to housing estates and public meetings, again recognized personal crises, and again in a matron as old as herself – at an age, that is, to be past them.
Mrs Quest cried out that her daughter had married a German, had not even told her parents, and perhaps Mrs Van could … she burst into tears, dried them with a look of annoyance, and said briskly: ‘Perhaps if you could talk to her she would see reason.’
For the second time that evening Mrs Van said: ‘But she’s married, isn’t she?’ as if saying all there could possibly be said.
Mrs Van felt herself divided. One half she was a mother disapproving of a daughter who had behaved badly. But the other was occupied with brooding, almost wistful thoughts which hovered on the border of a region of her mind marked Danger. Mrs Van’s common-sensical self soothed Mrs Quest, made her take a drink, murmured that young people these days had no standards, but it was due to the war and the unsettled times we lived in. At the same time she was thinking: She got married this morning, but she came to the meeting this afternoon, she cares so much about that she put it before getting married … but there’s something wrong somewhere.
Mrs Quest left at last, as flurried as when she had come, saying that she had no intention of going anywhere near Martha until the girl had come to her parents and apologized for her behaviour. Mrs Van gave her husband his dinner, ate sensibly herself, although she was not hungry, talked about the prices of copper and the rise in copper shares, and saw to it that Mr Van was settled comfortably for the evening.
Afterwards she stood on her dark veranda, observing the moonlight that flooded her garden. The garden boy had left the sprinkler on. Fine gleams of light played over a sparkling dark lawn. The dark trees that edged the road stood massively still. An earthy, cold and secret perfume came again and again to her face: she turned herself towards it. It was from her rose garden which, catching a wide-flung spray of water from the sprinkler, glistened distantly under the trees. Mrs Van took a pair of secateurs from a shelf on the veranda, went swiftly into her garden and cut a great bunch of roses that, as she gathered them together, flung drops of water off into the grass where they lay glinting like small hard jewels. She carried the prickling bunch of roses in her arms to the car, laid them carefully on the seat, and drove herself off down-town towards the flat where Mrs Quest had said Martha had moved that day. She drove fast and even recklessly through the stream of cars that were pouring towards the cinemas. She was full of an uneasy emotion which she did not recognize, for she felt it so seldom – guilt. She was guilty because of what she felt about that girl, Mrs Quest’s daughter; and now the full soft perfume of the roses, loosening and warming in the car, irritated her so that she rolled down a window to let the cool air in.
When she knocked on the door of that flat there was a noise of laughter and voices and she thought: I’m glad there’s a wedding party, I’ll stay five minutes and leave the roses.
The room was full of faces she knew, but little furniture. There were two narrow beds, not yet made up, both loaded with people. On one perched her old friends Johnny Lindsay and Jack Dobie, as well as Jasmine, and Marie and Piet du Preez. On the floor sat a large pretty fair girl who held the hand of a man in uniform. Mrs Van gave this couple a swift second glance and as it were inwardly nodded: Yes, that’ll do, they respect each other. She did not say of young couples: They’re in love. When her daughters had brought their young men to the house she had diagnosed: She respects him. Or: She does not respect him, and took up an attitude accordingly. Now she saw the warm trustful look on the pregnant girl’s face, liked Andrew, and thought: I hope that Maynard woman’ll leave them alone. I’d like him for a son-in-law.
Beside Maisie sat Tommy. Mrs Van greeted this youth with an especial smile: he had come, inarticulate with emotion, into her office the day before to demand advice as to whether he should ‘throw everything up’ and ‘make his way somehow, I’ll find a way, you’ll see’ – to China, where he proposed to fight with the Chinese Red Army. Mrs Van had advised him against this, had suggested various books to read, notably a history of the British Labour Movement. He returned her smile with the abashed and earnest blush of a boy.
On the other bed were Anton Hesse and Martha and several men in uniform. On an up-ended suitcase on the floor was a young South African journalist from the News. Mrs Van allowed him to rise and offer her the suitcase on which she sat, spreading full skirts. He stood against the empty wall and said: ‘Mrs Van, we’ve been trying to reach you all evening. Your husband said you were out.’
‘I was out. And then I was busy,’ she returned, her hands still full of the roses, which no one had remarked on. She felt put out because she was back in her usual role: she noted that even her dear friends and allies Jack and Johnny were sitting back and ready t
o let her do battle for them. ‘And now,’ she said, smiling towards the Hesse couple, ‘I’m here for a wedding celebration. I’m off duty.’
‘But I say!’ said the journalist, ‘that’s not good enough, you know. And you’ll blame us if we get our facts wrong tomorrow.’
At this everyone burst into a loud and spontaneous laughter, while the journalist frowned, and remained frowning.
But the atmosphere was friendly enough. They all knew him. He was fresh on the job of attending their meetings. He took them aside afterwards to say that he sympathized with their ideas and they were not to blame him if the editor ordered him sometimes to alter the wording of his reports.
Mrs Van said smiling: ‘But Mr Roberts, I sent in a report of the meeting to the editor this afternoon. Didn’t he get it?’
‘He sent me out to see you,’ said Mr Roberts, who was both embarrassed and aggressive. ‘Mr Dankwertz’ – this was the Location Superintendent – ‘rang us up to say that it was a very important occasion.’
‘In that case Mr Dankwertz needs to be spoken to,’ said the Town Councillor. ‘It is not his job to give reports to the press.’
‘Come on, man, have a drink,’ said Jack Dobie, his small face crinkled up with a mixture of disgust and amusement: his expression whenever faced with any representative of what he always referred to as the capitalist press.
Two bottles of Cape wine stood on the bare boards of the floor. Anton Hesse unfolded himself from his place in the corner, poured red wine into a cheap tumbler, and handed it to the journalist. Mrs Van thought: He looks pleased with himself. She looked at Martha and thought: No, she does not respect him.
The door opened again with violence. Another young man came in, who nodded professionally at Mr Roberts and at once took out a notebook. People exchanged glances and put themselves on the alert. This was a senior sub-editor, a tough and ambitious young man, quite a different proposition from the still unhardened Roberts. Mrs Van said to him: ‘Mr du Plessis, if you’re looking for me I’m here on personal business, and I’m not ready to be interviewed.’
Mr du Plessis stiffened. He was thin and wiry, with a hard and pushing face and his eyes had the combative stare of an enemy never off guard.
‘Mrs Van der Bylt, I’d like to interview you about your Party’s activities in the Location this afternoon. I have half an hour before it must go to the printers.’
‘I sent the editor a report.’
‘I’d like to ask you some questions. I’ve been chasing you since five o’clock this afternoon,’ he added with open hostility.
‘These people are having a party,’ she said. ‘I really do think you might have asked before coming in.’
‘Were all the people in this room in the Location this afternoon?’
‘A full list of the names of the people present has been given to the editor.’
Mr du Plessis examined, one after another, the faces of the people around him, lingering on Piet du Preez.
‘I understand you were making speeches about trade unionism,’ he remarked. ‘Trade unionism and political organization.’
‘And women’s rights,’ remarked Martha, suddenly laughing. At the sound of the laugh Mrs Van turned her attention to her, noting that the laugh seemed to break the young woman’s face up: the lower half seemed to grimace while the dark eyes remained serious and watchful. Mrs Van involuntarily looked down at the still water-fresh roses. But scarlet petals had already scattered on to the bare boards beside her sturdy brown shoes.
Mr du Plessis, bursting into open combat before he had intended to, because of the general laugh which had followed Martha’s, said: ‘Mrs Van, if you will not answer any questions you can take the consequences.’
‘If there are any inaccuracies in the paper tomorrow the Party’s lawyers will see to it,’ she replied emphatically, and turned her back on him.
Mr du Plessis shut his notebook and nodded peremptorily at Roberts, who was embarrassed because of his colleague’s behaviour: he had been standing silent against the wall, with an ashamed smile, glancing in appeal at the young people sitting on the beds, as if to say: ‘Don’t blame me for it!’ Now he gave another appealing glance around, said: ‘So long!’ and followed du Plessis out.
Mrs Van said: ‘Poor boy,’ sounding maternally contemptuous.
Instantly Jack said: ‘Poor boy my foot. He’s half an inch from being as bad as du Plessis. Don’t you start wasting your sympathy on that bunch of vultures.’
Again everyone laughed; and Mrs Van smiled patiently until she was able to remark: ‘All the same, he’s not a bad boy. He’s ignorant, but he’s learning.’
‘Learning what?’ said Jack. ‘He doesn’t resign when the editor re-writes his pieces for him and that’s enough for me.’
At this Mrs Van and Johnny exchanged the loving glances of tolerant people for a hot-headed intransigent, although both of them in the past had played the role of intolerant while the others smiled.
Mrs Van’s eyes again came to rest on the roses while she wondered how best to present them. She observed that Martha was pale and withdrawn, sitting against the wall with her arms locked around her knees. Anton was watching her with a look of fond pride. Mrs Van saw how Martha, in response to a whisper from Anton, first tightened herself in an involuntary movement towards isolation, and then turned to him, smiling. She took Anton’s hand and held it.
All the same, thought Mrs Van, it’s not right at all. Suddenly very tired, and unaccountably sorrowful, she thought: I’ll take Johnny and Jack with me, we can have a drink somewhere.
Johnny said: ‘What do you think of these two? They got married this morning and told no one. Jack and I heard it by accident and dropped over to congratulate them.’
This was a signal for laughter and joking all around, and Mrs Van, nodding and agreeing that these young people took life altogether too seriously, saw that Martha flashed up into vivacity in response to the teasing, joked with old Johnny, told Jack (but with a certain dry self-punishing irony) that ‘we communists haven’t got time for all this middle-class self-indulgence,’ while the others of the group cried out that she should speak for herself; laughed, flirted and played the part of a spoiled bride for just so long as she was the centre of attention, after which she lapsed back into listless withdrawal. Meanwhile, as the older woman noted with a lightening of her heart, she clung to Anton’s hand as if it were a lifebuoy.
She tried to catch Johnny’s and Jack’s attention: she had understood that these two men, dropping in on an impulse as she had done, had interrupted a communist meeting and now these young people wanted them to leave. Jack and Johnny both met her glances with a slight dryness which said simultaneously that while they disliked communism utterly, they liked these communists personally, agreed that they had the right to hold meetings if they wished, but that they disagreed totally with an ethic which allowed a young woman to spend her wedding night at a political meeting.
The two men got up as Mrs Van rose from her suitcase, making jokes because of the stiffness of her back.
‘We’ll leave you to your deliberations and have some of our own,’ said Mrs Van, with a calculated stiffness in her manner which was designed to let the group know she was aware they were having a meeting. She was still holding the roses.
She said to Martha: ‘Is there a kitchen? Have you something I can put these in?’ Martha noticed the flowers – until that moment it had not occurred to her they were for her, and now she felt inadequate because she had not – scrambled down off the bed, and accompanied Mrs Van next door, where there was a small stove in a tiny room.
Mrs Van said: ‘Well, my dear, it’s not much of a wedding present, but it was the best I could do at a moment’s notice.’
Martha went pink, her eyes filled with tears and she frowned.
Mrs Van, seeing the tears, nodded, as if to say, Yes, that’s right, and at the sight of it Martha’s eyes widened in incredulity, as if at a cruelty.
Mrs Van thoug
ht hurriedly: She ought to cry, it’s right she should. She’s too – hard, almost. But at the same time she knew she was feeling something she ought not.
Martha stood grasping the prickly bunch of roses whose red petals fell slowly on to the pale wood of the table, and thought: She’s given me flowers, it was kind of her, so why am I disliking her so much? And why should she, when I scarcely know her? And Jack and old Johnny drop in to congratulate me, why? Just because it’s a marriage, I suppose. But what has it got to do with me?
It seemed to her that the smile on Mrs Van’s face was complacent, and she thought confusedly: There she is, with that dry old husband of hers, and all those children, every one of them a pillar of society, and grandchildren by the half-dozen, and everything tidy and safe and nothing painful anywhere. So then, why the roses? The pain of the thorny stems in Martha’s hands seemed like a warning. She concluded: But her life can’t have anything to do with mine, she could never understand all this in a million years. (By all this Martha meant something dark and unhappy and essentially driven, something essentially foreign to everything Mrs Van was and ever could be.) She can’t understand me, so she is not giving the roses to me, she’s giving them to somebody else.
Mrs Van said gently: ‘My dear, I was so touched when I heard you’d come to our meeting after you got married this morning.’ She stopped. Martha had turned pale. Mrs Van searched Martha’s face with a severe but tranquil gaze. She had understood that she wanted Martha to break down and cry; she was telling herself that if Martha wept, flinging herself on to her for comfort and support, then it would be good for her, good for the marriage.
At that moment there flashed into her mind a memory of the occasion which she always referred to as ‘that night’. She did not remember any of the emotions of that night, she saw it at a long distance, like a shot from a film: a young girl lying awake in a small dark bedroom beside her husband. This girl was crying, but without a sound; the cold tears had run down over her cheeks all night. Her cold bare arm lay at a skin’s distance from her husband’s muscular arm. But she did not move her arm; it lay still and trembled with the effort not to move it, while she thought: He wants me to let my arm touch his, but if I do, he will see it as a kind of an apology, a promise. He will forgive me.