A Ripple From the Storm

  ‘No, I do not. She may not be my class, but she is certainly Binkie’s. I want to know if she’ll be a good influence – you know, settling, soothing, that sort of thing. Or will they get divorced again on his next leave?’

  ‘They’ve known each other for years. But why don’t you talk to Binkie about it?’

  His face went dark and he said: ‘I find it impossible to talk to anyone whose language consists entirely of primitive cries of pleasure or pain. Not that I am able to distinguish between them, of course.’ He leaned forward and laid a large hand on her knee. ‘My dear, would you go and talk to her for me?’

  ‘You want me to go and ask her not to marry Binkie?’ said Martha, shocked.

  ‘Why not? If she doesn’t care whom she marries? And I gather that’s what you meant? As far as I can see they’re getting married because they got tight together last week and the idea occurred to them.’

  ‘But Mr Maynard, judging from what you’ve said to me in the past, you think marriage is so idiotic anyway … and what difference does it make? If Binkie doesn’t marry Maisie he’ll marry one of them.’

  ‘One of who?’

  ‘The gang – the crowd. The group.’

  ‘You mean there’s nothing to choose between them?’

  Martha made an impatient movement with her whole body, and said: ‘Mr Maynard, I never see any of that lot these days. I don’t know why you ask me? I haven’t seen Maisie in months – except in the street. And I think it’s absolutely revolting that you should ask me to go and put pressure on her. It’s a disgusting thing to do, you know.’

  ‘I can’t see why,’ he said tiredly, ‘I really can’t. But if you feel it is, then there is nothing more I can say.’

  She opened the door and slipped out on to the pavement.

  He started the car, and turned to say: ‘I want to give you some advice, young woman. You’d better leave the Kaffirs alone. And you don’t suppose they understand one word of what you say to them, do you?’

  Martha said politely: ‘The only language they understand is the sjambok!’

  ‘Good God,’ he exclaimed, really angry, speaking from his depths. ‘What do you suppose you are going to change? We happen to be in power, so we use power. What is history? A record of misery, brutality and stupidity. That’s all. That’s all it ever will be. What does it matter who runs a country? It’s always a bunch of knaves administering a pack of fools. Look, young woman. If, for reasons that escape me, the process of government interests you, if you really want to have a finger in the pie, then all you’ve got to do is to play your cards right, and put yourself in a position where you have power. For a woman it’s easy. You should marry a politician and run him – easier to marry, in this town, where everyone knows everyone else’s business, than to remain someone’s mistress. If you really want to do the dirty work yourself, then you drop all this socialist nonsense and become a town councillor and eventually get yourself elected …’ He stopped at the look of revulsion on Martha’s face. He was filled with a sense of injustice; he had spoken seriously, to an equal.

  As for her, she regarded him steadily like a specimen of horror from a dead epoch; she was positively pale with disgust.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. But you might remember this: while you are running around shouting about socialism and all the rest, this isn’t Britain which makes allowances for social adolescents. This country’s a powder-keg and you know it. The whole thing can go up at any moment – and if you imagine that a horde of savages wouldn’t cut your throat as well as mine, then you’re a fool.’

  Martha thought that he looked like a bloodhound as he leaned across the front seat of his car towards her, the deepset heavy-lidded eyes fixed on her in an irritated gloomy insistence that she must agree with him. She understood he was speaking as one white person to another; and that he knew so little of what she stood for that he could not imagine the appeal would seem contemptible, even irrelevant. She felt as she did when she was with Mrs Carson: she was listening to a voice already dead; as it were the record of a voice which had once made sense.

  He even seemed to her rather pathetic. ‘I’m so awfully late,’ she said. He kept the pressure of his gaze on her for a while, his lips compressed; then he arranged the weight of his well-dressed limbs behind the driving-wheel, nodded a formal good-bye and drove off.

  Her bicycle leaned against the brick wall of an Indian shop with several others. An Indian youth was leaning in the doorway of the shop framed by dangling beads and spices, watching a couple of black children who squatted on the pavement spinning the pedals of the bicycles; the pedals of half a dozen machines were being kept in flashing motion, dull reddish circles in the light from the sunset. The children hopped from one to another like frogs, spinning the pedals. The moment the Indian youth saw her there he came officiously forward, dragged the black children to their feet, and knocked their heads together. ‘Kaffirs,’ he said, ‘run away from here to the compound. Run away home, black Kaffir-dogs.’ He watched her obsequiously for a favouring smile from the white woman. Martha collected her bicycle, frowning, trying to show that she did not appreciate this gesture, and cycled away fast. Behind her she could hear the shrill voices of the children: ‘Jewboy Indian. Jewboy Indian.’ And the Indian shouted back: ‘Dirty little Kaffir-dogs.’

  Martha was suddenly depressed. She thought of Mr Maynard, and of the incident with the bicycle, and felt the depression deepening. It was probably, she decided, because she was tired and had not eaten that day. And she was nearly three-quarters of an hour late for Anton.

  Black Ally’s was full of grey-blue uniforms and she could not see Anton. At last she caught sight of him in a corner, eating with a book beside him. He set aside the book as she arrived at his table. He said: ‘I’ve nearly finished.’

  ‘I was kept by Mr Maynard.’

  His eyes focused into suspicion and he said: ‘I hope you were careful.’

  She said, laughing: ‘He was saying we mustn’t upset the Kaffirs.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘But Anton, they aren’t idiots. They must know there’s a group or something like it.’

  ‘We have taken a decision that the group should be secret.’

  ‘But Anton, what’s the use of taking decisions if …’ But she was unable to go on, because of the intensity of his eyes fixed on her: ‘Decisions are decisions and must be carried out.’

  She was now conscious of falling below his level and her own when she used humour to soften his intensity: ‘He said that in Britain it would be all right to be socialists, but to be socialists here meant upsetting white supremacy.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ He continued to eat, unsmiling, watching her. ‘And now what was it you wanted to ask me?’

  She had not imagined that the ‘personal talk’ with Anton would arise like an item on an agenda; she now felt frivolous because she had been looking forward to something different. She said hurriedly: ‘Well, it doesn’t matter. Personal problems are not important anyway.’

  ‘Yes, yes, we all have our personal problems,’ he remarked between one measured mouthful and another. Then, at the sight of her face, he laid down his knife and fork, and summoned words to his aid. ‘The personal life of a comrade should be arranged so that it interferes as little as possible with work,’ he said. A group of aircraftsmen got up from the next table, and reached out over the heads of Anton and Martha for their caps and jackets which were hanging on a stand in a corner. They grinned at Martha out of the camaraderie all the men from the camp offered ‘the Reds’ in the town, She grinned back and noted that Anton was disapproving. He continued however: ‘For a woman things are more difficult than for a man; and that is why a woman comrade is entitled to help from her male comrades. The problems of women, in my opinion, have not been given sufficient thought in the movement.’ The pronouncement gave Martha a feeling of being liberated into understanding and support, and she waited, hoping Anton would continue. But he was looki
ng around for a waitress. ‘What do you want to eat?’ he inquired.

  ‘Oh – but you’ve finished, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You’ve eaten a lot of bread. And I suppose you’ll say it’s enough and go upstairs to the meeting. Did you eat at midday? No, probably not. In my opinion, you should make sure of three good meals a day and enough sleep. Yes, yes, you can run around like this for five years, not sleeping and not eating, and then you end in a sickness and are a burden to your comrades. To preserve health is one of the first duties of a comrade.’ This was said in the same way as he had spoken about women: but now she was irritated, thinking that her mother might have said the same sort of thing. She thought: At my age (she was now twenty-three) I should have got over this automatic resentment and desire to escape every time someone puts pressure on me. It’s a reflex from fighting my mother. She said: ‘I’ll try to do better and be more sensible.’

  The waitress came over. She had been at school with Martha and they smiled at each other. She held the menu card for Anton in a way that Martha could see meant she was ironically impressed by this queer foreign bird. ‘The young lady will have a large portion of stew and vegetables,’ said Anton. ‘And some stewed fruit.’

  The waitress transmitted the order to a black waiter who was passing, like a manageress; and went to flirt maternally with a table full of aircraftsmen. Her tone to the black waiter was automatically sharp and disdainful. Martha noted this familiar phenomenon for the thousandth time, and told Anton about the incident with the Indian store-hand and the black children. Discouragement returned as she talked about it; and Anton listened in silence, finally saying, because she obviously demanded some comment from him: ‘Capitalism creates divisions between human beings which will vanish on the advent of socialism.’

  The black waiter deposited a plate in front of her. The waitress interrupted her sparring with the airmen to inquire: ‘Everything all right, Matty?’ and then, to the waiter, ‘Jim, I keep telling you not to …’ With a sharp gesture of impatience she followed the waiter, who had gone hastily to the screen that hid the kitchen door. From behind the screen their voices came: ‘Jim, I keep telling you, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a hundred times about the knives and forks.’

  ‘Yes, missus, but the boss said.’

  ‘I don’t care what the boss said. I’m telling you.’

  ‘Yes, missus.’

  Martha said obstinately: ‘I sometimes think a good deal more than socialism is needed to cure this place.’

  ‘Socialism,’ said Anton, ‘will cure everything.’

  ‘You haven’t lived here, you don’t know.’

  ‘I have the advantage of having been one-fourth a Jew in Nazi Germany.’

  This impressed her again with the richness of his experience as compared with hers, and she abdicated, saying nothing further, concentrating on her food.

  ‘You will ruin your digestion,’ said Anton. The tense mouth creaked into a small fatherly smile.

  She thought: I wonder if he tells that silly Austrian woman about her health and her digestion? Her look at him must have been too openly speculative, for his face changed. ‘And who are you bringing to the meeting tonight?’ he asked. It sounded almost accusing; but not, as Martha’s instinct told her, on political grounds: she said flirtatiously: ‘No one. It seems I was too occupied with William to do my work properly.’

  He held his eyes on her, so that she felt the heat creep up her neck, and said: ‘As I said before, women have special problems.’ But this time she did not like it: the heat in her face was for distaste of him. She said: ‘I don’t think I want any stewed fruit,’ and got up. He collected his papers, paid for his meal and hers, and followed her to the pavement where she stood, back to the café door, looking at the street. She was thinking: After all, he’s been with that Austrian woman for a long time … If he’s interested in me (and her instinct told her he was) then perhaps I have something in common with her. The thought made her despise herself; for while she pitied Toni Mandel she did not respect her. She reflected: It would be so much more convenient for Anton if he had me instead of her: his life wouldn’t be in two parts. The cynicism of this surprised her, and she said aggressively: ‘Why don’t you bring Mrs Mandel to the group?’

  He said: ‘There are people unfitted for politics. She is not a political person.’

  ‘I thought you said that everyone must be political, that everyone is. You once said that if you were put alone with any person in the world on to a desert island for a week you could convince them of the rightness and logic of communism.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes. But meanwhile we must make allowances for circumstances.’ Now they were climbing the dark stairs. ‘So you are not bringing anyone? Do you know who the others are bringing?’

  ‘I saw Marjorie today. She’s bringing Colin Black.’

  Even in the dark of the stairway she could feel that he had stiffened. ‘And who is Colin Black?’

  ‘You’ve seen him at club meetings. He’s her boy-friend.’

  She remembered the special quality of Anton’s regard for Marjorie, and she thought: Perhaps he’s been thinking of taking her on? But he must have noticed that she and Colin were always together? Now the light from the open door of the office shone on to Anton’s face and it was set hard. The office was full of people, Marjorie among them, who was sitting next to Colin. Usually Anton greeted her first, Martha remembered: this time he did not greet anyone but went stiffly to the table, seated himself, and arranged his papers without looking around at the others who, because of his unmistakable command of them, fell silent as they waited where they had arranged themselves on the benches around the walls. On each face was a look of joyful expectancy; and Martha’s spirits rose out of the conflict of doubt and despondency she had felt below, in Black Ally’s and on the pavement. She sat down, examining the new faces.

  She knew them all, save for the airmen who were with Andrew, five men in the thick grey uniform, and sitting together with the look of a group within a group. Colin, Marjorie’s young man, was a fat, dark, solid, spectacled civil servant who surveyed them all in turn, solemnly, between affectionate glances at Marjorie. On her other side was an extremely pretty slim dark girl who was a secretary in one of the commercial offices. Her name was Carrie Jones. Jasmine had brought an African whom none of them had seen before, a large man who sat benevolently watching them. Jasmine was also responsible for a married couple, Marie and Piet du Preez. He was a great beefy good-natured fellow, one of the prominent officials in the white trade union movement. His wife was a serious, pleasant-faced woman who looked as if she were dressed for an afternoon tea, wearing a tight floral dress and white high-heeled shoes. On the other side of Piet sat a small lad, an urchin of seventeen or so, a protégé of his, presumably, from the trade union. He had a red and uncomfortable face, peeling from sunburn; aspiring earnest grey eyes; and his hair, rough-gold-surfaced from sunlight, was plastered down with cream, but plastered in vain, for it was already rising in thick lively tufts from his crown.

  These fifteen people regarded each other with respectful interest, in such deep silence that the chatter and clatter from Black Ally’s below filled the room together with the smell of food which competed with the chalky office smell.

  Andrew McGrew, who had taken off his jacket and made himself comfortable by rolling it into a ball and stuffing it into the small of his back, took the pipe out of his mouth long enough to nod at Anton and say: ‘Let’s shoot.’

  Anton had been showing by the set of his shoulders and his lowered hostile head that it had been agreed there should be no more than ten people here tonight. He said without looking up: ‘First it should be made clear on what basis we are assembled.’

  Andrew said impatiently: ‘Everyone is here because they believe in communism.’

  There was movement around the room, and small exclamations of agreement and interest. Anton’s pale eyes now raised themselves and moved from one face to another
: ‘Yes, yes, but we must make our basis for being here clear.’

  Andrew seemed about to speak, frowned irritably, and decided against it. Jasmine hastily said, obviously trying to ward off any friction between the two men: ‘It was decided to bring people to this meeting who wanted to be recruited as members. And it was decided that you should give a short lecture on Marxism.’

  Anton said stubbornly. ‘It is essential to know whether the people in this room consider themselves recruits as members or not.’

  ‘I think Mr Hesse is quite right,’ said Piet du Preez. ‘Speaking for myself, I’m not sure where I stand. I don’t mean about communism. I got mixed up in the Party down South last year, and it seems OK to me. But we ought to know about this group. There’s a lot of talk in the town. But is it a formally organized communist group or a discussion group?’

  Anton said nothing. Jasmine therefore looked towards Andrew who said: ‘This is a communist group. A secret communist group. But the lads here from the camp came along simply to listen and see if they wanted to join. Comrade Anton seems to think that he shouldn’t speak at all until he knows whether people want to join.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Anton, ‘it should be defined as follows: the people here have come to listen to a discussion on Marxism, after which they will decide whether or not they will join the group.’

  ‘But that’s what we said all the time,’ said Marjorie, amused and impatient. Martha had observed that the girl had been trying to catch Anton’s eye to gain from him his usual fatherly approval of her, and was now hurt because his eyes met hers without any sort of acknowledgment. He said coldly: ‘Precisely so. But we have to know exactly how we stand. And now I shall speak for three-quarters of an hour on Marxism, with particular reference to the dialectical materialist conception of history, after which there will be discussion. Then the people present will decide whether or not, on the basis of what they have heard, they wish to join.’