A Ripple From the Storm
Jasmine said: ‘I feel the group would not be within its rights to refuse permission.’ She added that she had bought the train ticket.
Martha, feeling good temper return as the chemical results of the sausage rolls reached her bloodstream, said with a sigh that she envied Jasmine, but there wasn’t going to be much left of the group if this went on.
At the Trades Hall Jasmine announced she would fetch Piet from his meeting. Martha said it would embarrass him. Jasmine said that this was too bad, and departed inside the hall. Martha reflected that a week ago Jasmine would not have said it: like everyone else, as soon as she was due to leave the Colony she betrayed her real opinion of its importance. Jasmine emerged a moment later saying: ‘Piet’s getting it hot.’ She added: ‘Bloody silly little country, every little incident gets blown up into a major drama.’
They waited for nearly an hour. Then Piet came out saying: ‘Well, comrades, that’s a bright bit of behaviour – you two are known all over the dorp as a pair of flaming Reds, and Jasmine comes right into the room ordering me to come out, and you sit here in the car in full view, and I’m falling over backwards trying to be respectable. ‘
‘Keep your hair on,’ said Jasmine, but Piet went on: ‘I’ve got the whole pack at my throat for subverting the blacks. I’ve tried to keep them sweet and easy about me being a Red, and you have to push it down their bloody throats.’ He was too angry to allow himself to say more. They drove in silence back to the flat.
Anton, Marjorie and Marie were waiting in the Hesse living-room.
Marie was looking wearily humorous. Marjorie was wrapped in a blanket in spite of the heat, for she was shivering and sick. Anton was grimly silent.
‘Well?’ said Piet. ‘Let’s get a move on.’
‘There are other comrades to come,’ said Anton. ‘And it’s nearly eight. The meeting was convened for seven.’
Marjorie said: ‘Anton, I told you Colin can’t come.’
‘Colin must come.’
Marjorie appealed to the others past Anton: ‘There’s trouble over Jack Dobie’s meeting last night. One of the men from the printers’ union went to Jack and told him that there are a lot more anonymous pamphlets being printed – Jack is spreading seditious propaganda about the British Empire. And Colin is with Jack, working out what to do. What’s the use,’ she demanded plaintively, ‘of Colin’s making himself an expert on India if he can’t use it in a crisis?’
‘There’s no excuse,’ said Anton. To Martha, whom he had not seen since that morning, he said: ‘And where are Andrew and Athen?’
‘You know they can’t be reached easily at the camp.’
‘They should be here.’
‘Perhaps you should have given people longer notice?’
Marie backed Martha up with: ‘Yes, comrade, it’s not reasonable to expect full attendance with such short notice.’
Piet said impatiently: ‘For God’s sake, let’s get cracking.’
Ignoring him, Anton said to Martha: ‘And where’s Tommy?’
Piet said: ‘I told Tommy he needn’t come. There’s a bright lad on the building site, a black from Nyasaland, and Tommy’s made a friend of him …’ Anton began to speak, but Piet steadily spoke him down: ‘Yes, it’s not easy for a boy like Tommy, a fine member of the herrenvolk, to become friends with a black, and it’s more important he should keep his date with this lad than come to this meeting.’
Anton said: ‘Who made this decision?’
Piet said: ‘Who made the decision to have this meeting? You did. It was not a group decision.’
Anton said: ‘I’m chairman, and have a right to convene emergency meetings, And now since this is all we can expect tonight, we can begin.’
‘It’s not all,’ said Marjorie. ‘There’s Maisie.’
‘I do not think we will suffer from the absence of Comrade Maisie,’ said Anton, with such naked contempt that they all glanced at each other, taking sides against him. There was a mutter of critical exclamations. He sat stubbornly silent, waiting. Then, seeing how the others were looking at him, said impatiently to Martha: ‘Then run along downstairs and see what Maisie is doing.’
Martha was angry at his tone, but she nevertheless went downstairs. Maisie’s door was shut. She knocked on it, knocked again. At last it opened. Maisie was there, and beyond her stood a tall broad-shouldered young man – Binkie. The war had thinned him, apparently made him taller, straightened him, given him a look of responsibility. Martha would not have recognized him. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Martha, and retreated. It seemed she had interrupted some speech or declaration by Maisie, for before the door shut again Maisie, having nodded an impatient greeting at Martha, went on: ‘And so you see, Binkie, that’s how things are, and you’ve got to face up to it.’
Martha ran back upstairs, thinking delightedly: ‘So Andrew and Maisie are all right after all.’ She burst into the living-room with the exclamation: ‘It’s all right – Maisie’s standing up to Binkie.’
‘I’m glad to hear about Maisie’s matrimonial problems,’ said Anton, ‘but I suggest we now start work.’
‘First,’ said Piet. ‘I told the lads I’d be back by nine. They’re dealing with other business in the meantime. I’ve got twenty minutes.’
Anton said: ‘This is a communist party meeting and you’ll stay until it’s finished.’
Marie gave her husband a startled glance, and clicked her tongue: Tch, tch, tch. She laughed, saying to Anton: ‘Oh come off it. And I’ve got to go too. My kid’s sick and the cook’s looking after him. Tell us what’s important and then we’ll push off.’
Anton now began his planned speech: ‘Comrades, it is urgently necessary that we should recover our sense of discipline. We are communists. Last night and tonight have shown us to what a distance we have moved from communist behaviour …’
Piet broke in with: ‘Cut the cackle. What have you brought us here for?’
Anton said: ‘My concrete proposal is that we have a series of lectures on the history of the communist party.’
Marie again glanced with humorous concern towards her husband, whose mouth had literally fallen open. After a moment he said blankly: ‘Do you mean to say you’ve got us all together to say that?’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Anton.
Piet got up, Marie rose and stood beside him.
Piet said: ‘Comrade Anton, if you want us to agree formally to a series of lectures on party history, I’m in favour. But I want to say this: You’re just out of touch with reality. Or you’ve got a touch of the sun. What is the position? We’re all neck-deep in trouble. My trade union, unless things are handled carefully, is in danger of passing a racist resolution that might stand for years – and I’m fighting to stop it. I’m in danger of losing my position on the Trades Council. The Social Democratic Party is facing a crisis – it might split if things aren’t handled properly. We’ve all of us worked so hard that we’ve got positions of responsibility in the town and we have influence out of all proportion to our numbers. Yet we’re expected to drop everything and run along here to …’ He was so angry he could not finish.
Marie said in a conciliatory voice: ‘Have a heart, Comrade Anton. Sometimes I think you’re just a little nuts, if you want to know.’
Anton said steadily: ‘I’m not interested in your personal opinions as to my character, I now formally propose that we start our series of lectures tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow if you’re all so busy you can’t find time for the Party.’
‘The day after tomorrow is the Social Democratic Executive.’
‘It ends at six,’ said Anton.
‘But you know quite well that the most important part of these meetings is the discussion that goes on afterwards in the pubs.’
‘I’m sorry to hear you say so. Comrade Piet. Sorry, but I must say, not surprised,’ said Anton.
Piet said: ‘Oh muck it.’ And went out. Marie with a final humorously appealing glance at Anton followed him.
Marjorie got up and said: ‘I’m really sick, Anton. I must go. The doctor said I shouldn’t be out of bed at all.’
‘If the doctor said so, Comrade, then obviously you shouldn’t have come.’
Marjorie let out a small gasp of anger and hurt, and went out after the du Preez.
Jasmine, who had not opened her mouth, remarked: ‘I’ll take it upon myself to convene a meeting at a suitable time for everyone. And I hereby give notice that I intend to leave the Colony in ten days’ time. And now good night all.’ She departed, with a placid smile.
Martha, left alone with Anton, waited for him to say something. But he carefully collected his papers and without a glance at her went next door where he laid himself down on his bed and proceeded to read Lenin.
Martha understood she was sent to Coventry. She went next door and said: ‘Anton, you’re being absolutely childish.’ He did not reply. She waited a while, and then walked down the stairs to Maisie’s flat. She had heard the noise of a car moving off, and hoped it might be Binkie’s. Maisie was alone, and greeted Martha with: ‘Matty, I’m sorry I was rude just now, but I was so upset, but he’s gone and do have some tea or something.’
‘Is everything all right?’
‘He cried,’ said Maisie, her eyes full of wonder and distaste. ‘He cried, Matty. It made me feel so bad. But I don’t like it, a man crying. I mean, of course men cry, but he cried as if to influence me, and I didn’t like that at all. And it seems to me, it was rather late in the day – of course it’s not his fault his parents are such dirty old people, thinking of nothing but money, but …’ She burst into tears, crying as openly as a child, making no attempt to wipe away her tears, but sitting and swaying slightly from side to side while the water ran fast from her open eyes down her face.
Martha spent the evening with her. Maisie was now hard set against both men, Binkie and Andrew. She spoke of them with a shuddering dismay and dislike. ‘They all make me tired, Matty,’ she said again and again. ‘Sometimes I wonder why we bother with any of them.’
Martha told her she was in a bad mood and would feel better in the morning. She was unable to face the thought that Maisie’s and Andrew’s love was at an end.
When she went up to her own flat, Anton was asleep, or pretending to be asleep.
Chapter Three
The Executive Committee meeting had been scheduled to start at two. At one the rain came roaring across the veld from the north and enclosed the town in a hot downpour. At two o’clock only half the delegates had arrived; others came in hastily, exclaiming and shaking the wet from their clothes. It was a room whose only illumination was the door, the light had to be switched on because of the teeming dark-grey gloom outside. It was intolerably hot; the noise of the storm made it impossible to hear a word, and soon the delegates left the room to stand around the walls of the courtyard, waiting for the rain to stop, It was even noisier here under the low tin roof of the veranda. As other delegates came in from the street they moved towards their natural allegiances like two armies forming, surveying each other through the driving mists of rain that filled the courtyard between them with a skilled distrust which changed, as they turned to greet the members of their own side, into the hard gay excitement that precedes the decisive battles of the committee rooms. It was a sporting excitement which at moments drew even the opponents together. For instance, when Mr McFarline entered with his sour-faced second, his shrewd brown campaigning eyes summed up the forces on both sides in a single glance, and then greeted Mrs Van, his chief enemy, with a quick and almost amused nod. She nodded briskly and gaily back. Mr McFarline took up his position among the new recruits, the delegates from hastilyformed branches all over the country, and he as much as the ‘Red’ faction regarded them with interest since, although they were trade unionists and therefore by presumption against the African Branch, no one really knew where they stood.
On the ‘Red’ side of the courtyard, the ranks were thinner. Colin Black and Jack Dobie stood side by side, united by their common passion for the continent of India. Mrs Van had Johnny Lindsay beside her. His blue eyes were crackling, every line of his tall body expressing the enjoyments of pugnacity in a good cause. On her other side the Reverend Mr Playfair, melancholy with the nobilities of enforced impartiality, studied the agenda with attention. It was an extremely long agenda, the rain showed no sign of weakening, and the meeting was scheduled to end at six. All the delegates were attentive over the agenda, studying the battleground, looking for ambushes concealed in sub-clauses, the surprise attack lurking in an order of words. It was clear to everyone that again the conflict would be focused in two items: The African Branch and Any Other Business. Jasmine, who was as at home among agendas as Mrs Van, that other natural committee woman, was leaning over Mr Playfair’s arm pointing out how various dreary stretches of unimportant ground could be outflanked by a judicious manipulation of words. Martha and Marjorie were with the du Preez, supporting them in their efforts to explain the agenda to Tommy, who was positively anguished with incomprehension. He kept doggedly repeating: ‘Everybody here knows we are going to have a fight about the African Branch, so I don’t see why Mr Playfair shouldn’t say: “Let’s vote and be done with it.” I don’t see why we should have to mess about when it’s all so simple.’
‘Democracy, Tommy lad, democracy – that’s the point,’ Piet kept saying, jocularly aggressive. He was continuously laughing and making jokes, and all the efforts of Jasmine and Martha, who were consciously engaged in making a recalcitrant comrade see reason, were met by the same jocular hostility. They had discussed Piet, decided he was in a mood when he might very well leave the group, and he needed ‘working on’.
In a self-contained group further down the veranda Mr Matushi and two other Africans from the Location waited patiently.
They all had to wait until past three, when the courtyard, until then a square of dark-grey wet, lightened into a drizzle already weakly radiant from an emerging sun.
The office filled. There were thirty people in a room used to accommodate a dozen. Antagonists and friends were crammed together on hard chairs in a press of hot, damp flesh.
Mr Playfair’s opening speech was weighted with sincere feeling. The whole Colony watched their deliberations here today; the issues at stake were universal ones – and so on. Mrs Van was observed, after about fifteen minutes, to give him a stern glance. At which he pulled himself up, his goodhumour concealing a deep hurt because no one shared his belief that a sufficient number of nobly worded phrases should be enough to enforce noble behaviour on them all.
The work began, and went on fast; it was the clearing away of superfluous scrub from the battleground, both sides having assured themselves that no traps were hidden in items to do with subscription rates and similar matters.
Meanwhile, the new faces were being carefully studied. The ‘Red’ faction had believed that their perfectly open position was a disadvantage. Now they saw they might have been wrong. It was for the other side to manoeuvre: they were in the position of a small outnumbered army entrenched on high ground. For the half-dozen new men represented more than themselves. Mr McFarline and his aides had travelled through the outlying districts reviving dormant branches and creating new ones, but the branches after all consisted of people with, presumably, ideas of their own. There were two possibilities: that these ideas might turn out, by some fluke of public opinion, to support the African Branch or – more probably – that these men, used to the rough-and-ready methods of conducting meetings possible in small groups far from the embattled centres of opinion, might not understand the formalities of serious agenda-manipulation and therefore vote against their own intentions.
But it was not until five o’clock that the item ‘African Branch’ was reached. Piet opened for the ‘Red’ side with a brief and formal statement: The African Branch was an earnest of the good intentions of organized white labour towards the African worker; if the white man was to be taken seriously in his claim to be a tu
tor to the backward and uncivilized he must be prepared to accept an at least token advance towards democracy; and if the African members were to be disbarred because of the pressure of ignorant and backward opinion, the Social Democratic Party (otherwise, he reminded them, the Labour Party, the party of Labour) could never claim to be anything more than the party of white labour.
After which McFarline counter-attacked with: The African members naturally inspired the citizens of the Colony with distrust, since they, the white citizens, did not understand (here he gave a suave nod towards Mr Matushi and his two friends) the fundamentally reasonable character of the signed-up Africans, but suspected them of conspiring together behind the backs of the white members for reasons of their own. Here he laughed, and there was a good deal of embarrassed laughter, and the three Africans continued politely to say nothing. And in any case the whole idea of an African Branch was undemocratic. He formally proposed that there should be no African Branch, but that African members should, if they wished, attend ordinary branch meetings as ordinary members.
The two trumpets had been blown for either side, and now battle could be joined. Both sides turned their eyes towards the new members who sat by themselves along a bench. The natural leader of this group was already obvious. He was an Afrikaner, Danie du Toit, a railway worker from G—, a squat strong man with a powerfully shaped head, a broad tough face, calm hard eyes. He now remarked that as a newcomer he would like to have some points made clear. Speaking as a labour man who never believed a word he read in the capitalist press, he discounted everything he had read about the meeting in the Location: the capitalists were out to discredit the Labour Party and that was all there was to it. So unless people present could give him any relevant information about that meeting he proposed to skip it and get down to the business in hand. ‘It’s this question of the proposed African Branch. We all have a great respect for Mr McFarline and what he has done for the workers, but I don’t agree with him. If you’re going to have African members – and to be honest I must say I disagree with it, it seems to me they are not ripe for politics – present company excepted,’ he added quickly, ‘but it’s nothing but hypocrisy to say they should be ordinary members with the white members. I don’t know what’s accepted in the towns …’ He said this in the voice of one who knows perfectly well what’s accepted in the towns – ‘but in my district the meetings are held in my house, and I know I’d never recruit another member if they knew they had to sit down man to man with Kaffirs. No offence meant,’ he added with another glance at Mr Matushi, who was preserving his appearance of sorrowful and patient dignity. ‘So it’s as good as saying we’ll keep the blacks out of meetings. My wife wouldn’t have a Kaffir in her house and that’s that. I’m for the African Branch. It’s not democratic but it’s practical.’