Mrs Quest came back from the funeral to the big house which now had in it herself, a cook, a house servant, a gardener, and a small boy for the odd jobs. And the little white dog. For years Mrs Quest had run things, managed things, arranged and planned and organized. She had kept her husband alive long after anyone else could—so the doctor had told her, over and over again. Now here she sat, an old lady on a veranda with a little dog on her lap. It had happened from one day to the next.
It seemed she had not foreseen it. She had not really understood, when she talked year after year of ‘in my old age’ just what that would mean.
For years and years now, Mrs Quest had not been allowed to be more than a physical being. And now, suddenly, there was nothing for her to do. No matter how one put it, looked at it, glossed it over, that was the truth. There she sat, a vigorous old woman in the middle of a great garden which she must leave; and Martha watched how her limbs strove and wrestled with enforced inactivity. Mrs Quest would suddenly find herself on her feet—her physical memory had told her legs that it was time for her husband’s wash or his medicine—and she would be half-way to the kitchen or the bathroom before she had understood it was years of habit which she must fight, subdue, change. She would return to her chair by Martha, her hands slowly twisting together, her eyes staring sullenly in front of her. Then she said: ‘This won’t do, will it!’ Martha and she lit cigarettes. A minute later she would be off down the veranda towards the kitchen on some errand for the dead man. Catching herself out she would stop, and pretend to be attending to a plant on the veranda. Or she called to the servant: ‘Make tea for two, Jonah!’ She came back saying: ‘He can’t really hear me from this end of the veranda.’ She sat, slowly, trying to smile, while her eyes lowered themselves to hide their fear, their distress. What was she going to do with herself? How to use all her knowledge, her energy, her flair, and above all, the sudden explosion of old needs which was bound to make itself felt now when at last the braces were taken off Mrs Quest’s real nature—which was gay, and kind and sociable?
Day after day, and still day after day, the two women sat on the veranda, smoking, while Mrs Quest looked (not too clear-sightedly yet, the truth was too painful to face) into her future as a guest in other people’s houses. And Martha sat, fearful, because she knew her mother would now want to share her life. But Martha was going to England. ‘Perhaps I’ll come to England and live with you,’ Mrs Quest kept saying, with a painful laugh, her eyes not meeting Martha’s. And Martha would say, as uncomfortably and falsely: ‘But I’m not there yet!’
Meanwhile, the practical things were being done by Jonathan, who arranged for the sale of the big, useless house and the garden, that fruit of Mrs Quest’s frustration, which would add, so the agent said, hundreds on to the sale price. It was suggested that Mrs Quest should go and stay a while with the family in the mountains. The daughter-in-law needed help with her babies. Mrs Quest listened to this invitation smiling dryly: she knew just how much the young wife would welcome the arrival of a masterful old woman. But she packed her things and went. Standing on the veranda of the house from where, only a few weeks ago, they had taken the body of Mr Quest for what she had insisted was his last sleep, looking around the magnificent scented garden with the little white dog clutched to her chest by one arm, the other holding a parcel full of toys for her son’s children, she had seemed to Martha like a defiantly brave small girl.
At last Jonathan’s voice sounded, not Mrs Quest’s. He said, irritably, that if the townspeople wanted to take all this sort of nonsense seriously, then it was their affair, but all his kaffirs were working, and if they weren’t still at work tomorrow, then they’d know what to expect. Anyway, ignorant savages, they had not heard there was a strike on, and how could they, since there was no radio for miles, except in the Quest’s house, and he, Jonathan, would personally see to it that the newspapers never got into the hands of servants who might spread the news to the compound. But he knew better than to expect Martha and her ilk to behave as sensibly. Mrs Quest then came on to speak. She was worried about the house, not yet sold, and standing empty. She felt it was in danger of being looted or burned down. ‘Not that it’s likely,’ said Mrs Quest. ‘They aren’t capable of doing a good day’s work, let alone running a revolution.’
‘But mother,’ said Martha, hearing the flat, almost jolly sound of her voice with disquiet at the ineffectiveness of common sense in time of public emotion: ‘this isn’t a revolution, it’s just a strike.’
‘What? Oh, I see. You know what I mean dear, and I do want you to go up and see if everything’s all right.’
Martha promised she would look at the house, decided she would do nothing so absurd—but of course, went.
At the gate she looked into a garden which was already an overgrown solitude claimed by birds. Willing herself to walk up the path, and into the house, she found herself, instead, creeping like a trespasser through the garden and around the outside of the house. On tiptoe in the overgrown flowerbed, she looked in at the room where Mrs Quest had nursed her husband. Now it was an empty room with a forgotten wooden chair lying on the floor. It was a small room. There was a brown stain on the discoloured wall. Well, so it was just an empty room now, and people would soon buy the house and the room be used as a bedroom again, perhaps even as a nursery—and no one would know the horrors that had gone on here. But supposing, she asked herself, against the surge of angry protest that must accompany any thought of her father—suppose that had been no worse than what went on in any room, long enough built? No, no, no, please God, that was not true, it couldn’t be…Martha went nearer, actually clambered on to the windowsill, sat on it. She hoped that a mouse might appear from the floor and run over the boards, or a spider let itself down from the ceiling—something alive. But nothing. All around the silent house the garden rang, shrilled, clamoured with birds. Outside the garden moved hot, noisy traffic. Martha had not been with her father when he died. (Well, of course not! said Martha’s bitter inner commentator.) Mrs Quest, telephoning to say that Mr Quest could not possibly last till morning, had caught Martha undressing for bed. She had dressed again, actually thinking: If I don’t of course it will be tonight that he decides to die, it’s exactly the sort of thing…then Marjorie arrived, with a letter from Thomas’s wife, saying that Thomas had died of blackwater in the Zambesi Valley. The Africans of the tribe had done their best for the white man who had so inexplicably chosen to live with them—which is what it amounted to: Thomas had been staying in the same village for six months. They had been good to him, but anyway, he was dead. (Well, of course! said the uselessly savage commentator—what else had he been wanting but to die, futilely, away from his own people, and among strangers.) Martha had not gone to her mother that night. Instead she sat with Thomas’s wife’s letter in her hand, not thinking about Thomas—for what was there to think? and not crying over him either. And she certainly was not able to hear what he said.
When Martha went up to her mother, Mr Quest had become a grey, brushed, elderly gentleman lying with closed eyes in a shaded room. His face was very white, and so were his thin, thin hands. At first the room was horribly silent, but then a fly buzzed about, and kept settling on the pillow beside Mr Quest’s head. Mrs Quest and Martha chased the fly out, after a good deal of trouble, then it was really quiet, and they stood on either side of the dead man, looking at him. They felt something should be said, for the other’s sake; but they could not think of anything. They embraced awkwardly, and a futile irritation entered them both. Soon they went to sit on the veranda.
Mr Quest had lain after his death only twenty-four hours in this room, before the undertaker had borne him away in a neat coffin with a silver cross on it. They had stood flowering branches about the room and thrown scented water into the air to cool it. At one point a small girl in a pink dress had stood in neat white shoes and white socks beside the dead man and said: ‘Is that my grandfather?’ Her face had a look of polite, disapproving curiosity on it and sh
e had turned and gone willingly away on Mrs Quest’s hand.
Now the room was empty, the house was empty, and the garden was particularly and unbelievably empty, and Martha kept looking for a pink-frocked small girl who might be playing there with a white dog.
She walked back home through the deep avenues where every window and door let shafts of light fall across gardens, where women stood on the verandas, waiting for something to happen, where the youths hung about on the street corners, their faces sharpened by willing suspicion.
At home Marjorie and Mrs Van were waiting for her. But first Martha telephoned her mother to say the house had been visited, and everything was all right. Then she added her person to the forces of common sense and reason—Mrs Van with a look of calm purpose on her face, her hands folded, thinking aloud; Marjorie with a pencil and some paper, ready to take down the results of such thoughts. It was a question, said Mrs Van, of deciding what was the right thing to do, and doing it quickly. The white people were all quite crazy already; and if Government did not do something soon, there would be bloodshed…at which point Anton telephoned from the West suburb where, he said, there was panic. An African delivering a parcel to an unfamiliar house had been observed standing on the back veranda with ‘a very funny look on his face’. The daughter of the house, friend of the Forsters’ youngest daughter, had lost her head and set her dogs on the man. They had torn open an arm, and the parcel, revealing a newly altered dress. But the man’s explanation that he had been looking for the servants to give the parcel to, did nothing to mollify. The houseboys had run away, said the girl, she was alone in the house, how did she know he was not part of the plot? She had telephoned the Forsters in tears; they had gone by car to fetch her. They also brought the African. He had his bitten arm bound up in the kitchen, while he was told it was ‘all his fault anyway, for going on strike’. At which he asked, what was a strike? The Forsters’ kitchen was full of neighbours who wanted to start Citizens’ Protection Committees. ‘But it’s quite all right, there’s no need to lose our heads,’ Anton kept saying loudly, in the avuncular voice which went with his role in the West suburb.
‘But perhaps it isn’t all right,’ Martha said. ‘Mrs Van says she saw a group of white schoolboys beating up a black man outside her house. Next, someone’s going to be killed.’
‘If the good woman had any sense…’ (In the Forster household, dislike of the socialist Mrs Van was expressed thus, and Anton had adopted the phrase.) ‘If the good woman has any sense, she’ll see that the Town Council takes steps.’
‘Which steps?’ said Martha. ‘The good woman is here. Perhaps you’d like to give her instructions.’ She was angry because she knew his tone and the words were for the benefit of people listening to Anton.
‘Now, now, now,’ said Mrs Van, while Marjorie smiled. ‘There’s a time and a place for matrimonial tiffs,’ said Mrs Van, with her emphatic nod.
‘If you analyse the situation,’ said Anton, ‘you’ll see the danger is the whites.’ His voice had lost the false geniality of the last remark, and Martha said: ‘Oh, you’re alone again, good.’
‘Precisely so, so listen…but not now.’
‘Damn,’ said Martha.
‘The authorities should see that they are all locked up in the locations for a few days,’ he went on, but with a tone that told Martha he meant what he said, even if the words were being chosen for other ears.
‘Well,’ said Martha, ‘all the same, it’s hard to know whether this is brilliant strategy or merely the future son-in-law speaking.’
‘Matty!’ said Mrs Van, crossly.
‘But if the authorities want to take reprisals, how convenient to have them all locked up,’ said Martha.
He said: ‘Yes, yes, but there are other factors.’
‘Or are you saying it is the lesser of the two evils?’
‘Taking all the factors into consideration, the sooner they are locked up the better.’
‘Is there any chance of you being alone in the next few minutes, if so, I’ll just go on talking.’
‘No, it doesn’t look like it.’
‘Well, it’s very annoying.’
‘There is information to the effect that there are strike committees in each township. The strike leaders have instructed all the Africans to stay in their houses tomorrow.’
‘Oh.’
‘The townships are full of speechmakers and agitators of all sorts.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘Yes, that is the position.’
‘Well, I’ll tell Mrs Van all this.’
‘And are you going to spend the night with Mrs Van der Bylt?’ enquired Anton, the sentimental note returning to his voice. ‘I hope you are looking after yourself.’
‘Oh, damn it,’ said Martha. ‘Do stop. Oh, very well, tell them that I am, if it’s going to make a good impression, why should I care!’
Martha transmitted the information to Mrs Van, who received it with the comment that it was a pity personal emotions could not be kept out of politics.
The telephone again: Mr Van der Bylt, in search of his wife: Mrs Maynard was ‘in full cry’, he said, and waiting for her in the drawing-room. Mrs Van said to the two young women: ‘You two had better come with me—if there are any errands to be run, you’ll be useful.’
They fell in behind Mrs Van.
Mrs Maynard was waiting on the veranda. The two formidable matrons did not bother to exchange politenesses. They stood facing each other, Mrs Maynard, from force of habit, picking dead leaves from a creeper that grew on a veranda similar to her own, Mrs Van der Bylt twirling the car keys around her forefinger.
‘In my opinion,’ said Mrs Maynard, ‘they ought all to be locked up in the townships at once.’
‘I think I agree with you,’ said Mrs Van.
‘You do?’ said Mrs Maynard, surprised.
The Van der Bylts’ houseboy now arrived on the veranda, agitated out of his usual manners. ‘Madam,’ he said to Mrs Van, ‘there’s a man in the kitchen. He says I’ve got to go to the location, madam.’
‘Oh, poor things, isn’t it dreadful!’ said Mrs Maynard.
‘Then you must go, he is a picket,’ said the socialist Mrs Van.
‘A picket?’ said the servant. ‘But I do not think he is a good man.’
Mrs Van turned towards him, and opened her mouth—probably about to launch into a history of trade unionism. But she relinquished this pleasure, and instructed Martha and Marjorie to ‘go into the kitchen and explain why he has the duty to go on strike.’
Marjorie and Martha accompanied the bewildered man to the kitchen, and heard Mrs Van say: ‘I suggest you and I sit down and have a quiet drink to celebrate the first time in our careers that we have agreed on a course of action without quarrelling about it.’ She sounded amused, but Mrs Maynard certainly was not: ‘Oh, my dear!’ the young women heard her exclaim, ‘I’m glad you can joke. It is at moments like these I remember what a powder-keg we live in. And of course, everything could be handled so easily if only people would keep their heads. All one needs is to deport a dozen or so of the ringleaders and throw trouble-makers into prison. But no, people have to run around shouting about guns and Citizens’ Committees. So annoying.’
‘However that might be, I suggest…’
The drawing-room door shut on the two generals.
The young women now confronted Mrs Van’s houseboy and her cook who had been with her, as she claimed proudly like any conventional white mistress, for forty years. There were also two little black boys and an old man who was a gardener. Marjorie began: ‘Now, it’s like this, do you know what a strike is?’
‘No, madam.’
‘Then I’ll explain. That man who has just been here is called a picket. I’ll tell you what that means.’
‘Wait a minute, missus.’ One of the little boys was sent running to the hedge: in a minute the servants from next door had arrived. Soon, twenty or so Africans, with two nurse girls, were in the Van der
Bylt kitchen, a sort of informal meeting was in progress. The man from the strike committees had reappeared, and stood morosely vigilant at the back of the room, neither nodding nor disagreeing with what Marjorie, then Martha, said. Finally, the servants said: ‘Thank you,’ or shook their heads doubtfully, and began drifting off towards the locations. ‘You had better take some food with you, just in case,’ said Marjorie, out of some kind of inspired insight. Mr Van’s cook, a dignified old man, said: ‘I go only because my madam tells me to go. I think this is a wicked, wicked thing, and I do not understand it. God will forgive me.’
Eventually a group of about thirty men, and five women who were children’s nannies, set off down the street with the picket walking behind like a jailer. The dignified cook went first, leading a small boy by the hand, and carrying some bread and fruit tied into a large, checked cloth.
Marjorie and Martha found Mrs Maynard energetically telephoning; while Mrs Van sat sipping orangeade. Mrs Van allowed herself a small wink at her two aides. Mrs Maynard was saying: ‘Yes, I’m sure of it! There’s not a moment to lose!’
It was now getting on towards midnight, and certain orders must be got out: it was a question of getting other people to give certain orders. And tomorrow’s newspaper was being held up from the printer’s on the suggestion of a friend of Mrs Van who knew the editor.
Calls had been made by Mrs Maynard to Government House, to the Prime Minister’s wife, to the houses of various Ministers—these calls were, of course, quite informal, and could never appear in any log-book, minute-book, or record. And Mrs Van had telephoned, on a lower social level, but perhaps more immediately effectively, to all kinds of officials and organizations.
It appeared that: ‘They are all bone-stupid, but they’ll get the point in time,’ as Mrs Maynard said.
She sat down again, sweeping out a large hand, palm upwards, in a grateful gesture towards her old rival: ‘My dear, what a relief it is to have a sensible person like you beside one, at a moment like this.’
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