Outside was a steady, spattering sound of falling water: the sprinkler was on, and water flung out in great arching sprays. Martha shut her eyes and listened—water, water falling, water. Somewhere was water, was rescue, was the sea. In this nightmare she was caught in, in which they all were caught, they must remember that outside, somewhere else, was light, was the sound of water breaking on rocks. Somewhere lay shores where waves ran in all day with a jostling rush like horses racing. Somewhere long, fresh, blue horizons absorbed ships whose decks smelled of hot salt. Martha opened her eyes. Under a deep blue sky, a flowering white bush glittered with fresh water. There were blue gulfs where white foam fell and dissolved in a hissing toss of water. Somewhere, outside this tall plateau where sudden hot rains, skies of brass, dry scents, dry wastes of grass imprisoned its creatures in a watchful tension like sleeplessness, somewhere hundreds of miles away, the ground fell, it slid to the sea. And one day (only a few months away, incredibly) Martha would quite simply, just as if this were a natural act, natural to her, that is, who had never done it, stand on a shore and watch a line of waves gather strength and run inwards, piling and gathering high before falling over into a burst of white foam. Soon. White flowers tossing against a blue sky. White foam dying in a hissing gulf of blue. White birds spreading their wings against blue, blue depths.
Meanwhile, Martha could not sleep. Meanwhile, Mrs Quest’s face had increasingly the reddened, sullen look of a creature driven so far beyond its strength she had forgotten what strength was. Meanwhile, the old man lay, whimpering in his cage of decaying, smelling flesh. Meanwhile, the little girl came into the room where Martha sat and said: ‘Is grandad your father?’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘Then how can you be my auntie?’
Caroline did not sit down, but skipped about the room, and stood on one foot while she swung the other foot, and clapped her hands back and forth, first behind her, then in front of her—did everything but actually look at Martha, who sat still and said nothing. Of course, ‘the situation’ demanded she should tell some suitable lie. If Mrs Quest had been here, the lie would have been forthcoming. As it was, Martha said nothing, watched Caroline hopping on one foot carefully along the edge of the rug, and thought how extraordinary it was that five years before, when she had left this child, she had actually said, and believed it, meant it, felt it to be true: one day she’ll thank me for setting her free. What on earth had she meant by it? How could she have said it, thought it, felt it? Yet, leaving the child, it had been her strongest emotion: I’m setting Caroline free.
Here was Caroline, her face sharp with tension, not looking at Martha, having as good as asked: ‘Are you my mother?’
As Martha said nothing, Caroline dropped into a chair, drew her two brown knees up under her chin, and looked long and steadily at Martha. Who looked back, steadily. Then Caroline put out her tongue at Martha, and ran out of the room shouting: ‘Kaiser, Kaiser, Kaiser, where is my pooh-dog?’
Martha left the keys on the table, and went to find her mother, who was sorting great piles of linen in the bathroom. Mr Quest’s sheets had to be changed several times a day.
‘I don’t think Caroline ought to be allowed in father’s room.’
Mrs Quest did not hear, or so it seemed, so Martha repeated it.
‘Well anyway, it can’t be long now, the doctor said it was a matter of days.’
‘But mother, it’s been like this for years.’
‘No, not really—anyway, that’s what he says.’ And at Martha’s look: ‘What do you know about it! You aren’t nursing him all the time.’
‘Well, I must run along.’
‘Can’t you stay for supper?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you never can, can you?’
‘I’ve been here all afternoon.’
‘It’s quite natural young people haven’t got time for their parents, these days,’ said Mrs Quest, almost automatically, as she folded a sheet together by holding its middle down to her upper chest with her chin, and bringing its two sides in from outstretched hands to meet at arm’s length in front.
‘Can I help you do that?’
‘I’ve done it by myself long enough, haven’t I?’
Martha went off. She had to visit Solly. The situation there was, if possible, even more ridiculous than before.
On the afternoon three months before when he had asked Marjorie to get everyone together, he had turned up with an African no one had ever seen. But it was after everyone had gone—there was only Marjorie, locking up.
Who was this new African, where was Mr Zlentli?—Marjorie had demanded—fierce, much too aggressive, because she was annoyed at Solly’s being late. Solly had been evasive, then abusive, about Mr Zlentli. Mr Zlentli was nothing but a power-loving politician, said Solly; and the silent African with him had nodded his head.
Marjorie had gone running around to Jack Dobie, Martha, Mrs Van, Johnny Lindsay. They felt something was very wrong—‘even more wrong than usual,’ as Mrs Van said. They had temporised and made excuses when the new African, Mr James, had said he was the head of a new and powerful political party and that Mr Zlentli was a back number.
Wisely, as it turned out. For since then, things had been pieced together as follows: Solly had quarrelled with Mr Zlentli, long before Martha’s meeting with him. Solly had begun another ‘study group’ of his own. But the shifts of power and politics among the rival African groups had brought Solly and Mr Zlentli together again, about a year ago. A great strike or demonstration had been planned, not once, but several times, and each time something had happened to prevent it—once the message from ‘down South’, through Jasmine Cohen.
Mr Zlentli had been, for a time, acknowledged leader of all the sub-movements and groupings among the Africans.
But a new leader had recently appeared (not Mr James) in another city. Solly had written to this man, and offered to work with him. Mr Zlentli, regarding this as betrayal, had quarrelled with Solly. Then Mr Zlentli became allied with the new man, and Solly found himself suddenly out in the cold, because Mr Zlentli said he was unreliable.
The man who came with Solly to the office, Mr James, was a small merchant of some kind, and as far as they were able to make out, had no following. He was Solly’s man, Solly’s creation.
What it amounted to was this: Solly had mishandled things so that he had lost all credit he had ever had with the real African movements, and now he was falling back on what remained of the white left group to help him. Meanwhile, Martha had written to Joss, who was still ‘up North’, to find out what he knew of his brother, and Joss had written a mysterious letter back to the effect that great things were being planned for a few months ahead, but he was not in a position to tell them more. This letter had been brought by a silent, smiling African who had handed it to Marjorie and gone away.
Solly had been pestering Marjorie and Martha with letters and telephone calls: why wouldn’t they and Jack Dobie and Mrs Van—above all, Mrs Van—support Mr James (this was just a pseudonym, of course, they must realize that, his real name was Noah Kitinga) who was at that moment organizing a strike. This letter had come by ordinary mail, and Martha was going to see Solly and tell him not to be so foolish.
Martha cycled towards him reluctantly. She could imagine every word of the interview that would take place—imagine his anger, her placatory remarks, her warnings about the mail, his accusations of her, of them all. She would almost certainly lose her temper—she looked forward to losing it. They would quarrel.
But she had to do it, because Marjorie was in bed with flu—if it was indeed flu, and not, as Marjorie herself said it was, a neurotic protest against her way of life. Whatever it was, running around of any sort had been forbidden by the doctor. She was worn out, he said, and she had quite enough to do with the four children and her husband. Martha had promised Marjorie to do any running around for her. There was no escape for Martha until she could go to England, that’s what it amounted t
o.
Chapter Three
One evening the radio remarked in the unemphatic, almost affable voice which unfolds history in our bloody times, that there was going to be a national strike for a period not yet determined, but probably for some weeks; organized by a strike committee in (the authorities thought) not this city but another one; and that the identities of the strike leaders were not known. This news was received in a silence reverberating with what had not been said. After all, for how many years had these people talked of the kaffirs rising and throwing the whites into the sea; of murders, blood-baths, throat-slittings, rape and arson. The discrepancy between fantasy and the tone of the announcer was an insult in itself. The hostility towards their own authorities which characterized the white people during that strike started from the moment they heard the bland voice of the announcer. He was white, yes; but he was part of the Government, because everyone near authority was; and Government ‘as usual’ was not handling things right.
The note of farce, of grotesque improbability—the characteristic of every event in that unfortunate country—was struck from the very first moment.
On this evening Martha was talking to Mrs Van, who had telephoned immediately after the news, when sounds of anger came from the next veranda, where Mrs Huxtable berated her servant.
‘Well, Jack,’ Martha heard, as Mrs Van said: ‘Matty, have you heard the news?’—‘and what have you got to say for yourself, that’s what I want to know!’
Martha had not seen any of her friends for some time because of her father’s death, and her grief over Thomas’s death. She was out of touch and prepared to accept the admonishing note in Mrs Van’s voice: ‘I hope you’re not busy with anything important, I’m going to need help.’
‘Of course, Mrs Van.’
‘What’s your dear friend Solly up to?’
‘But why Solly? He’s just an idiot.’
From the veranda: ‘Missus? What are you saying, missus?’
‘Yes, but that brother of his, Joss, is up to all sorts of things. I had a man from Northern Province in last week, and he was telling me about a white man called Cohen. A good, clever baas, he said. Well, that couldn’t possibly be Solly, so it must be Joss.’
‘After all we’ve done for you,’ came Mrs Huxtable’s aggrieved voice from the veranda.
‘I think the citizens are all likely to be very hysterical,’ observed Martha. ‘They’ve started already.’
‘Quite so. And that’s why we must find out what’s going on soon. Get hold of Solly, find out from him what his brother’s doing, and let me know.’
Before telephoning Solly, Martha went to her veranda. Mrs Huxtable, a plump female in a cocktail dress of black crêpe that showed a fat, creased neck and the backs of fat, red arms, was standing on her veranda, and in front of her stood her cook, arms down by his sides, looking puzzled.
‘I would never have believed it,’ went on Mrs Huxtable. As one time-honoured phrase followed another, each as predictable as those used in the parent-child confrontation scene which this so much resembled, her voice rose, sharpened, was weighted with the consciousness of her betrayal.
As for him, he was beginning to understand this was not a question of dust on the furniture.
‘But missus, what have I done?’
‘You stand there, butter wouldn’t melt, but all the time you are planning to cut our throats, yes, I can see it in your eyes, don’t think I don’t know what you’re thinking.’
‘Hau!’ protested the man, suddenly angry, his anger carrying the scene into dignity at a stroke: ‘What is this? Have I not done your work? Why do you say such things to me?’
Small hedges separated the garden of this house from the gardens on either side. People came out on to verandas, or went down on their lawns to get a better view. The angry housewife and the angry servant were like people on a stage.
‘I have always known that one day this is how you would repay us. Always!’ said Mrs Huxtable, her eyes raised to the sky.
‘Here I stand,’ said the man. ‘You say these things to me and my heart feels sorrow because of your words. But not once have you told me what it is you hold in your heart against me.’
‘It’s not only you, you cheeky thing,’ said Mrs Huxtable, sinking back to the ridiculous, ‘it’s the whole lot of you. Well, I’ll promise you something, the Government’ll have the troops out any minute, then watch out, that’ll teach you.’
‘That’s right,’ came a violent voice from across the street. ‘They all need a good hiding to make them come to their senses.’
The man glanced quickly around: across the street, women with their arms akimbo, glaring at him—people glaring through hedges. He understood, because of the word troops, that something was happening he knew nothing about. He turned and walked away, fast. He was frightened.
‘Ever hear such a thing, strike,’ said one of the women. ‘Who do they think they are?’
‘They can’t keep a house clean, and they think they know how to run a strike.’
‘Enough to make a cat laugh, I don’t think.’
‘I’m going to get out my old man’s revolver—they’ll get what’s coming to them.’
And so on. As usual.
Meanwhile, Martha rang Solly. He was, as he pointed out, roaring with laughter.
‘Well, enjoy yourself. But what’s happening?’
‘Search me. Why don’t you ask Joss?’
‘How can we? Has he got anything to do with this?’
‘Why should I tell you, comrade Matty?’
‘For past services. What’s happened to that man—your protégé?’
‘He’s in jail. Pass offences.’
‘And Mr Zlentli—working away, I suppose?’
‘No, they deported him last week. He was from Nyasaland.’
‘Ah.’ Martha waited. Nothing. ‘You really don’t know?’
‘All I know is, about a dozen men were taken to various borders by lorry and dumped over, a couple of weeks ago: including all my contacts.’
‘Luckily, they haven’t dumped the right ones, from the look of it.’
‘That is a matter of opinion.’
‘Well, thanks for all your help.’
‘Any time.’
Martha telephoned Mrs Van, and went to stand on her veranda. In a few moments, the target drew arrows. Mrs Huxtable, then another woman, then several, came to accuse Martha, the ‘Red’, of personally and collectively fomenting the strike. ‘This is what comes of putting ideas into their heads,’ etc., etc.
‘If it’s not the Reds, it’s the communists,’ said one woman.
‘And why aren’t the troops here yet?’ asked another.
‘But what do you want troops for?’ said Martha.
‘My boy has run away,’ said Mrs Huxtable.
‘So has mine. His blankets are gone from his room.’
The women agitatedly went off to see after their servants. Shrill voices up and down the street. Groups of white youths were observed gathering on the street corners. A white man came striding down the street shouting: ‘Vigilantes. Vigilantes. Anyone interested, come to the Sports Club, five o’clock.’ The white youths drifted after him, some of them shouting: ‘Vigilantes! Vigilantes!’
The women came back and stood about on their verandas and lawns complaining that their servants had mostly run away. Later it was discovered that in the first few hours, many Africans had simply run off into the veld and prepared themselves to sit out any trouble there. Very sensibly as it turned out.
Soon Anton came in. His news was that the Africans on the railways were not coming to work next day. An announcement had been made to this effect. Everything was being done correctly, except that it was illegal to strike, illegal to belong to trade unions or to form them. The strike leaders remained invisible. It was rumoured among the white railway workers that the strike was well prepared, that the black workers had been warned against agents-provocateurs; that the air of the Africans going
off work this evening had been reassuringly calm. The white workers, in their roles as whites, had been alarmed and indignant. In their roles as workers, they had been impressed, and had even wished their black colleagues good luck as they went off.
Nothing like this had been seen in the Colony’s seventy years of ‘history’—that is, of white occupation.
Before Anton had even sat down for a drink, the telephone rang. It was the Forsters, who were perturbed about the news, and needing Anton’s presence. They suggested that Martha should come too, which could only mean they felt everyone was in the grip of a frightful emergency. ‘Getting all the women and children together under one roof,’ said Martha, bad-tempered. Anton said: ‘They mean to be kind, Matty,’ and departed to the Forsters.
The telephone rang again: the exchange at Dilingwe, in the Yani Valley. Mrs Quest had booked a call to Mrs Hesse, but the lines were jammed with calls, would Mrs Hesse hold on? Martha held on, and waited for her mother’s voice.
Mrs Quest was now an old lady living in her son’s house on a remote farm among mountains a hundred miles or so south of the Zambesi escarpment. Living on the Quest farm she had thought this must be the furthest possible point of the journey away from her beginnings in the tall Victorian house in South London. But she had been wrong. The mountains she now lived among were those glimpsed sometimes from the Quests’ old house after rain had washed the skies clean. Far mountains moved nearer in a pure air; they opened, and between them appeared distant hilly valleys usually invisible; and beyond them again, rose faint blue sunlit peaks. No one lived up there, it wasn’t settled yet. But it was settled now, by, among others, young Jonathan Quest and his family.
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