She was demanding that ‘it was only fair’ that they all should get together and discuss Timofy Gangin’s book. ‘After all,’ she had said earnestly to Martha: ‘If we have been spreading lies all over the town, then it’s only right we should say so.’
Martha agreed to a discussion, so did Colin, ‘if he had time’. The Kruegers could see no useful purpose in it. Anton refused. Therefore there would be no meeting. Meanwhile everyone had read the book, and discussions had taken place between pairs of people. It had been read, conclusions had been come to because of it, things would change—but there had been no formal meeting. But Marjorie rang people up and wrote letters: they all lacked responsibility, she said, she would never have believed that people could be so frivolous and casual.
So everyone was irritated by her. Yet it was she who was summoning them to a new meeting which, if what Solly promised came true, would inaugurate a new era of cooperation with the Africans. They might, at last, after all these years, actually achieve their goal of ‘working with the Africans’.
What it amounted to was: because of Marjorie’s quality of earnest readiness for anything, she was the focal point of both new possibilities—serious criticism of Russia and serious political work with the Africans.
Like all good organizers, Marjorie was not going to hold a meeting at all, unless she could be sure people would come. She was not well, so Martha ran around, trying to find out who might come.
An extraordinary collection of people: Marjorie, of course, and Colin—but probably only because he was, after all, Marjorie’s husband. Solly, and his mysterious contact. Mrs Van der Bylt. Johnny Lindsay—but this was a token interest only, for he was confined to his bed now. Jack Dobie, if he was in town, but he was too poor these days to make journeys without very good reason. Thomas, if he was in town. And Maisie, of all people, who said she often thought of the old days: it would be nice to see everyone again.
A meeting was convened in the office in Founders’ Street for a Thursday afternoon. It had to be changed for a Wednesday because of a last-minute message from Solly; was cancelled because it appeared Mr Zlentli (though what role he was playing Solly would not say) had vetoed the whole thing; was uncancelled because of a change of policy of some sort; was arranged for two weeks later in the evening, but at two days’ notice was changed for the afternoon of that day because of Mrs Van who, in the event, did not come at all: Flora had sent a message that Johnny was very ill and asking for her.
That the thing was ill-starred was clear by now to everyone, but it all dragged on, on a momentum of muddle and inefficiency. For instance, on one of the cancelled occasions, a whole lot of people had turned up from the old, long-dead discussion groups, under the impression that this was a resurgence of communist activity: they had come to dissociate themselves not only from the present but from the past. But no one was in the office when they arrived. One man, a most active attainder at the old meetings, wrote a letter to the News warning ‘everyone concerned’ that communist spies were planning an uprising. As a result of this, Colin was warned by his superior in the Department that he must be careful; Anton made many deprecating and explanatory remarks to Mr Forster, and Mrs Van got a new batch of poison-pen letters.
On the afternoon of the meeting, Martha saw a stranger looking out of the window into Founders’ Street. When he turned, it was Thomas: a lean, burned man examined her with his bright, bright blue eyes. His hair, coloured by the fierce suns of the Zambesi Valley, was pale, greenish almost—like a wig over the dark, austere face.
He did not smile. She busied herself with the state of the literature cupboard. Then he said: ‘You’ve no idea how strange it is, coming into town again after being in the bush so long.’
‘Do we seem unreal?’
‘The town seems unreal.’ After a few moments he added: ‘Well, at any rate, come and stand by me.’
She was going to finish what she had started, but he said: ‘No, don’t do that. Please come.’
They stood side by side looking out into the street. On the waste lot opposite the Piccadilly a new block of offices rose like a rocket away from Founders’ Street.
‘Well, Martha?’
‘Well, Thomas?’
She was thinking: it’s the look on his face—I simply cannot understand it. Where have I seen it before? And what is happening to Thomas? It was difficult to remember what he had been a couple of years ago. Once there was Thomas, a large, even stout, open-faced, blond man, whose immediately obvious quality was the energy that seemed to explode from him. All his movements, his gestures, had been restless, energetic; once everything about him had gone out, had included, had warmed. Now here he stood beside her, shut in himself. His face, burned to a dark, glistening bronze from the hot sun of the valley, was—not refined, but sharpened, made wary. Solitary. She kept glancing at him, at the dark, proud face whose expression she could not read.
‘Thomas?’
‘What is it, Martha?’
But she did not know what question it was she should ask.
Soon Jack Dobie came in. He had been on the point of coming to Martha. But seeing her with her former lover he gave them both a shrewd look, then a smile, then sat on a bench by himself. But Thomas, oblivious of this small episode, nodded at Jack almost absently.
‘Jack Dobie!’ said Jack, humorously.
Thomas looked at him, from a distance, then understood he was being criticized. He shrugged.
Maisie came in, followed by Tommy Brown. Not that Martha at once recognized Tommy. She saw the young man, thought how like Maisie it was to bring along just anybody she happened to be with, was prompted by his friendship-claiming smile (an aggressive, not a pleasant one) into a closer look…and stood silent, searching for the earnest, enquiring boy Tommy who had been in the commonplace you-can’t-catch-me-out Zambesian who sat with his raw, red thighs spread out on the bench.
‘Move up and give me space,’ said Maisie. Tommy moved up, having first grinned at the others as if to say: I don’t have to do what she says!
Then Maisie sat on a bench, lazily smiling at them. They all watched her, even Thomas. She kept, had perfected, if such a thing was possible, the physical assurance which had always been her gift, so that to watch this large, rather blowzy woman sit down was to be made part of the experience of sitting. She sat, and her two large but beautiful legs in their very high-heeled shoes arranged themselves in a socially correct pose, side by side, as if they had been reminded by Maisie: we are in company. Obeying her, they glistened with their own satisfaction. Her fat thighs reposed under a glistening, mauve-flowered silk. Her great breasts presented the ugliness of the silk to everyone with indifference: look, what does it matter what we wear! Her face, which now had a look, painful to those who had known her earlier, of decorum, a simpering watchfulness, yet retained, in its fat, reddening surfaces, an innocence that was still her deepest quality. Her lazy, blue gaze offered itself, in spite of the defensiveness of her face, to them with complete openness: take me or leave me, I don’t care! And her hands—but it was her hands that they all watched. Those hands had a life which went on quite apart from her mind, her heart. These two white, capable hands, they stroked her thighs, lifted to touch the white organdie flower (slightly grubby) at her throat, placed themselves around the cheap white handbag on her lap, or folded themselves together in a gesture of absolutely open, calm knowledge, quiet assurance. The hands knew that they were in the right, that they were good, that there was no need for them to listen to criticism.
Maisie looked at them over her hands and her face said: This is young Tommy Brown, well, what of it! And his foolish, embarrassed grin said: I know what you’re thinking, but Maisie’s an old comrade from the old days isn’t she (not that anyone is a comrade these days of course) and am I the sort of man to sleep with prostitutes? Meanwhile, they almost expected to see the tuft on the crown of his head stand up and signal to them his desire to improve himself, his awe at being here at all.
&
nbsp; ‘Maisie said it was a sort of get-together from the old days,’ said Tommy.
‘Well, it’s not exactly a get-together,’ said Martha.
‘I understood you to mean that, Matty,’ said Maisie.
‘No, it’s a meeting about whether we can do anything to help the Africans.’
But before she had even finished, Tommy let out a loud, young man’s knowledgeable guffaw which said: I’m not likely to be taken in by that kind of thing any longer. ‘I thought it was just a get-together.’ He had already stood up, saying with all of himself: I’m here under false pretences.
‘I must have got it wrong,’ said Maisie, ‘but it’s nice to see old friends.’
‘Well, it won’t hurt to talk about the Africans, will it?’ said Jack.
‘Oh no, you don’t catch me again,’ said Tommy, roaring with laughter, ‘I mean, things have changed, haven’t they?’ He was already at the door.
‘What’s got into you? Afraid of losing your job? You’re working for Piet du Preez, aren’t you? Well, he’s not going to give you the sack for talking.’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure,’ said Marjorie, bitterly. She had just come in. She was flushed up with the heat, and with guilt because she was late. She had her youngest child in her arms, and there were fingermarks on her white linen dress.
‘Anyway, I’ll see you,’ said Tommy, and went, saying with a special half-proprietary, half-embarrassed smile at Maisie: ‘I’ll see you, Maisie.’
‘Don’t mind Tommy,’ said Maisie. ‘He’s not a bad boy really.’
‘Yes, he is,’ said Marjorie, fierce. ‘He’s changed out of recognition.’
‘Well,’ said Maisie, summing up, as it were, ‘time’s not stood still, well, has it?’
The telephone rang. It was Mrs Quest, asking Martha to come. She was apologetic—anxious. Martha knew she must go, her mother really wanted her.
‘I must go,’ she said.
‘But Matty, if you’re going,’ said Marjorie, ‘there’s hardly anyone here as it is.’
‘But Solly’s not here anyway.’
Thomas said: ‘What is all this about Solly? I don’t like meeting in aid of Solly anyway.’ It was quite extraordinary how an old Thomas came to life, briefly, as he said this—a blunt, aggressive, obstinate man, very different from the solitary, silent person he almost at once became again.
‘Well, all that does seem irrelevant now,’ said Marjorie, belligerent, because she had found herself unable to say: ‘the book’.
‘Why?’ said Thomas. But after a small interval, as if he had reminded himself he should show interest.
‘Well,’ said Marjorie again, this time apologetically, because she could hear, before she said them, how flat her words would be: ‘we’ve just read a book, you see—yes, I know we’ve always said…but it does look as if—we’ve been wrong about Russia.’
She blushed as he stared at her. Then he looked at Jack who, out of this argument, sat grinning, watching; at Martha, who nodded; at Maisie, who was looking out of the window.
‘Then I don’t know,’ said Thomas, abruptly. ‘I haven’t anything to say.’ He stood, for that moment every inch the old Thomas, bristling with energy, his blue eyes close and hard on their faces. Then he lost interest, and turned away.
‘That’s not good enough, you must have something to say,’ said Marjorie.
Thomas said, almost absently: ‘The Soviet Union’s always been the same—it’s we who change.’
This remark, preposterous compared with what they expected of him, caused Jack to laugh and Martha to say: ‘Thomas has been in the bush so long, no wonder everything here looks a bit ridiculous!’
‘I don’t agree,’ said Marjorie fiercely, ‘that’s no attitude at all!’
‘What do you want me to do? Read a book that says the Soviet Union’s no good?’
‘I really don’t understand your attitude,’ said Marjorie, bitter, as if it were she who were being betrayed.
‘It’s a question of which side you are on, that’s all.’
‘Oh-ho,’ said Jack, ‘that’s frank at least!’
‘Yes,’ said Thomas. ‘If the Soviet Union is rotten, then that’s what she’s been from the start. If she’s a paradise, then ditto. What difference does a book make to that? But as far as we are concerned—we’re just like America then? The cold war starts, and the Soviet Union’s not fit to associate with. That’s not what her enemies said when she was doing most of the fighting in the war.’
‘You sound like an editorial in Pravda,’ said Marjorie.
‘I don’t see why people shouldn’t have their own opinions,’ said Maisie, in an effort to preserve peace.
‘I would never have expected it of you, Thomas,’ said Marjorie. ‘I mean, you were never just one of the dogmatic, hundred per cent communists. It almost sounds as if you think we shouldn’t have read this book.’
‘Of course you shouldn’t,’ said Thomas. He stood gazing out into Founders’ Street, hands in his pockets. It was perfectly clear to Martha that it was not so much that he was bored by this exchange, or that he was not really taking part in it. One part, a small part, of his mind exchanged words with Marjorie—but as the price he had to pay for being left in peace. He was preoccupied with something different: again his eyes had the dark, brooding look of his introspection.
‘It’s absolutely ridiculous,’ said Marjorie. ‘Just as if one can’t read books dispassionately, like sensible people.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Thomas after a pause. That phrase was automatic, mechanical. Then he turned from the window, and Martha saw that he was ‘coming back’ as she put it. It was extraordinary to see the attention coming back into his eyes, his face: ‘How can you talk such nonsense?’ he said irritably. ‘That’s real intellectual nonsense. Of course if you read a book you’re influenced by it.’
‘I don’t agree,’ said Marjorie.
‘You haven’t any right to agree or not agree,’ said Thomas.
‘Well!’ said Marjorie, affronted, smiling brightly, looking at them all in turn, for support.
‘What do you know about books?’ said Thomas. ‘You’re brought up to take them for granted. To understand books you have to talk to someone who had to fight for them. I had to fight to learn to read and to write. Every book I read until I left Poland I had to fight for. I had not time to read books that were no use to me. I knew very well that if you read a book for relaxation, as they say, it fills one’s mind with rubbish. And if you don’t have reference books and libraries, you remember what you read. You people never remember anything you read because you know you can always look up anything in a dictionary or go to a library. You know nothing about books. And the Communist Party and the Roman Catholic Church are right—if you want to stop people being contaminated, you have to lock up books.’
‘Well!’ said Marjorie, when he had finished. ‘I think that’s absolutely terrible!’
‘You want it both ways,’ said Thomas. ‘You want to be nice liberals, everything free and laissez-faire, and at the same time you want to run a state on strict, organized lines. In a time of war.’
‘In what?’ said Marjorie, surprised.
‘In a time of war. In wartime.’
‘But the war’s over.’
‘Oh, but I don’t think it is, I don’t agree.’ This was let out, dropped out, in the tone of his self-absorbed indifference. His back to them, he gazed sombrely away over the roofs of the lower town. His profile showed against the sunlit sky. Of course, thought Martha, of course: it was my dream, that’s what I keep remembering. Lord, yes—that’s just how he walked out, alone, solitary, into the crowd of people who fell away on either side, to give him room, and because they did not want to touch him. And that is how we all treat Thomas, almost without knowing it: we treat him in a special way, as if…as if what?
‘I’ve never been more surprised in my life,’ announced Marjorie. The child on her lap strove to reach over for a toy that had falle
n on the floor. Marjorie automatically bent down to get the toy for the child: ‘Really, Thomas, you could knock me down with a feather.’
He did not answer.
‘I’ve got to go,’ said Martha, looking towards Thomas, hoping he would turn and say goodbye, or walk down the stairs with her.
Maisie said: ‘I’ll come with you, Matty.’
‘Now Thomas nodded briefly at both of them: ‘So long then!’
Martha and Maisie went downstairs together.
‘It’s living in the bush so long,’ said Maisie. ‘You were right when you said that. I’ve got a brother. He’s a surveyor. When he comes out of the bush sometimes he’s funny for more than a day.’
‘How’s things with you?’ asked Martha.
‘Oh,’ said Maisie, ‘it’s just the same. Binkie’s marriage isn’t too good, that’s what’s driving me mad. He keeps coming down and coming down to get away from his home. But I say to him: Look, Binkie, you’ve made your bed, why keep driving me crazy?’
‘I’ll come and see you soon. Have you heard from Athen?’
‘No. The trouble with Binkie is, his new wife doesn’t want any more kids, she said when she married him, she had two kids from the war, you know her husband was killed, and she wanted to stop at that. But Binkie didn’t believe her, he hoped love would change her feelings. But now he’s hankering after Rita. Oh dear, Matty, but I suppose we all have our troubles.’
They lifted their bicycles out of the bicycle rack, and pointed them in opposite directions.
‘I’m going to get married one of these days,’ said Maisie bitterly. ‘Yes, I will, I’m being driven to it, it’s the only way I’ll ever get any peace and quiet.’
She cycled off, her great, lazy body shifting from side to side on the saddle, the mauve silk glittering hotly in the sunlight.
Chapter Two
Martha sat in her mother’s living-room, her attention being demanded from at least three directions. In front of her, on a low, round table, was a great pile of keys, just deposited there by her mother with a small laugh saying: ‘There, bad girl, only of course you’ll lose everything anyway, being what you are.’ She had gone out to the kitchen, blushing.
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