Ted Brown was the most original. A boy from a large working-class family, he had won scholarships all his life and finally to Oxford. He was the only genuine socialist of the three—I mean socialist in his instincts, in his nature. Willi used to complain that Ted behaved “as if he lived in a full-blown communist society or as if he’d been brought up in some damned kibbutz.” Ted would look at him, genuinely puzzled: he could not understand why that should be a criticism. Then he’d shrug and choose to forget Willi in some new enthusiasm. He was a lively, slight, lank, black-shock-haired, hazel-eyed, energetic young man, always without money—he gave it away; with his clothes in a mess—he had no time for them, or gave them away; without time for himself, for he gave that away to everyone. He had a passion for music, about which he had taught himself a good deal, for literature, and for his fellow human beings whom he saw as victims with himself of a gigantic and almost cosmic conspiracy to deprive them of their true natures. Which of course were beautiful, generous, and good. He sometimes said he preferred being homosexual. This meant that he had a succession of protégés. The truth was he couldn’t stand that other young men of his class hadn’t had his advantages. He would seek out some bright mechanic in the camp; or, at the public meetings in town some youth who seemed to be there out of real interest and not because he had nothing better to do; seize hold of him, make him read, instruct him in music, explain to him that life was a glorious adventure, and come to us exclaiming that “when one finds a butterfly under a stone one has to rescue it.” He was always rushing into the hotel with some raw, bemused young man, demanding that we should jointly “take him on.” We always did. During the two years he was in the Colony, Ted rescued a dozen butterflies, all of whom had an amused and affectionate respect for him. He was collectively in love with them. He changed their lives. After the war, in England, he kept in touch, made them study, directed them into the Labour Party—by then he was no longer a communist; and saw to it that they did not, as he put it, hibernate. He married, very romantically and against every kind of opposition, a German girl, has three children, and teaches English at a school for backward children. He was a competent pilot, but it was typical of him that he deliberately made himself fail the final tests, because he was at the time wrestling with the soul of a young ox from Manchester who refused to be musical and insisted on preferring football to literature. Ted explained to us that it was more important to rescue a human being from darkness than to add another pilot to the war effort, fascism or no fascism. So he stayed on the ground, was sent back to England, and served in the coal-mines, which experience permanently affected his lungs. Ironically enough the young man for whom he did this was the only one he failed with.
When ejected from the coal-mine as unfit, he somehow got himself to Germany in the role of an educator. His German wife is very good for him, being practical and competent and a good nurse. Ted now needs looking after. He complains bitterly that the state of his lungs forces him to “hibernate.”
Even Ted was affected by the prevailing mood. He could not endure the wranglings and bitterness inside the party group, and the split when it came was the last straw. “I’m obviously not a communist,” he said to Willi, sombrely, with bitterness, “because all this hairsplitting seems to me nonsense.” “No, you obviously are not,” replied Willi, “I was wondering how long it’d take you to see it.” Above all Ted was disquieted because the logic of the previous polemics had led him into the sub-group led by Willi. He thought the leader of the other group, a corporal from an aircamp and an old Marxist, “a dried-up bureaucrat,” but he preferred him as a human being to Willi. Yet he was committed to Willi…which leads me to something I’ve not before thought about. I keep writing the word group. Which is a collection of people. Which one associates with a collective relationship—and it is true we met day after day for months, for hours every day. But looking back, looking back to really remember what happened, it is not at all like that. For instance I don’t think Ted and Willi ever really talked together—they jibed at each other occasionally. No, there was one time they made contact and that was in a flaming quarrel. It was on the verandah of the hotel at Mashopi, and while I can’t remember what the quarrel was about I remember Ted shouting: “You’re the sort of man who’d shoot fifty people before breakfast and then eat six courses. No, you’d order someone else to shoot them, that’s what you’d do.” And Willi in reply: “Yes, if it were necessary I would…” And so on, for an hour or more, and all this while the ox-wagons rolled by in the white dust of the sandveld, the trains rocked by on the way from the Indian Ocean to the capital, while the farmers drank in their khaki in the bar, and groups of Africans, in search of work, hung about under the jacaranda tree, hour after hour, waiting patiently for the moment when Mr Boothby, the big boss, would have time to come and interview them.
And the others? Paul and Willi together, talking about history—interminably. Jimmy in argument with Paul—usually about history; but in fact what Jimmy was saying, over and over again, was that Paul was frivolous, cold, heartless. But Paul and Ted had no connection with each other, they did not even quarrel. As for me, I played the role of “the leader’s girl friend”—a sort of cement, an ancient role indeed. And of course if any of my relationships with these people had had any depth, I would have been disruptive and not conciliatory. And there was Maryrose, who was the unattainable beauty. And so what was this group? What held it together? I think it was the implacable dislike and fascination for each other of Paul and Willi, who were so much alike, and bound to such different futures.
Yes. Willi, with his guttural, so-correct English, and Paul, with his exquisite, cool enunciation—the two voices, hour after hour, at night, in the Gainsborough hotel. That is what I remember most clearly of the group during the period before we went to Mashopi and everything changed.
The Gainsborough hotel was really a boarding-house; a place people lived in for long stretches. The boarding-houses of the town were mostly converted private houses, more comfortable certainly, but uncomfortably genteel. I stayed in one for a week and left: the contrast between the raw Colonialism of the city, and the primness of the boarding-house full of English middle-class who might never have left England, was more than I could stand. The Gainsborough hotel was newly-built, a large, rattling, ugly place full of refugees, clerks, secretaries, and married people who couldn’t find a house or a flat; the town was jostling full because of the war, and rents were soaring.
It was typical of Willi that he had not been in the hotel a week before he had special privileges, and this in spite of being a German, and technically an enemy alien. Other German refugees pretended to be Austrians, or kept out of the way, but Willi’s name in the hotel register was Dr Wilhelm Karl Gottlieb Rodde, ex-Berlin, 1939. Just like that. Mrs James who ran the hotel was in awe of him. He had taken care to let her know his mother was a countess. In fact she was. She believed him to be a medical doctor, and he had not troubled to let her know what the word Doctor meant in Europe. “It’s not my fault she’s stupid,” he said, when we criticised him for it. He gave her free advice about the law, patronised her, was rude when he did not get what he wanted and in short had her running around after him, as he said himself, “like a frightened little dog.” She was the widow of a miner who had died in a fall of rock on the Rand; a woman of fifty, obese, harried, sweating and incompetent. She fed us stews, pumpkin and potatoes. Her African servants cheated her. Until Willi told her how to run the place, which he did without being asked, at the end of the first week he was there, she lost money. After his instructions she made a great deal—she was a rich woman by the time Willi left the hotel: with investments chosen by him in property all over the city.
I had the room next to Willi. We ate at the same table. Our friends dropped in day and night. For us, the enormous ugly dining-room which closed finally at eight (dinner from seven to eight) was opened even after midnight. Or we made ourselves tea in the kitchens, and at the most Mrs James might co
me down in her dressing-gown, smiling placatorily, to ask us to lower our voices. It was against the rules to have people in our rooms after nine o’clock at night; but we ran study classes in our rooms till four or five in the morning several nights a week. We did as we liked, while Mrs James got rich, and Willi told her she was a silly goose without any business sense.
She would say: “Yes, Mr Rodde,” and giggle and sit coyly on his bed to smoke a cigarette. Like a schoolgirl. I remember Paul saying: “Do you really think it’s right for a socialist to get what he wants by making a fool of an old woman?” “I’m earning her a lot of money.” “I was talking about sex,” said Paul, and Willi said: “I don’t know what you mean.” He didn’t. Men are far more unconscious than women about using their sex in this way; far less honest.
So the Gainsborough hotel was for us an extension of Left Club and the Party group; and associated, for us, with hard work.
We went to the Mashopi hotel for the first time on an impulse. It was Paul who directed us to it. He was flying somewhere in the area; the aircraft was grounded because of a sudden storm; and he returned with his instructor by car, stopping off in the Mashopi hotel for lunch. He came into the Gainsborough that night in high spirits, to share his good humour with us. “You’d never believe it—slammed right down in the middle of the bush, all surrounded by kopjes and savages and general exotica, the Mashopi hotel, and a bar with darts and a shove-halfpenny board, and steak and kidney pie served with the thermometer at ninety, and in addition to everything, Mr and Mrs Boothby—and they’re the spitting bloody image of the Gatsbys—remember? The couple who ran the pub at Aylesbury? The Boothbys might never have set a foot outside England. And I swear he’s an ex-sergeant-major. Couldn’t be anything else.”
“Then she’s an ex-barmaid,” said Jimmy, “and they’ve got a comely daughter they want to marry off. Remember Paul, how that poor bloody girl couldn’t keep her eyes off you in Aylesbury?”
“Of course you Colonials wouldn’t appreciate the exquisite incongruity of it,” said Ted. For the purposes of such jokes, Willi and I were Colonials.
“Ex-sergeant-majors who might never have left England run half the hotels and bars in the country,” I said. “As you might have discovered if you were ever able to tear yourselves away from the Gainsborough.”
For the purposes of jokes like these, Ted, Jimmy and Paul despised the Colony so much they knew nothing about it. But of course, they were extremely well-informed.
It was about seven in the evening, and dinner at the Gainsborough was imminent. Fried pumpkin, stewed beef, stewed fruit.
“Let’s go down and have a look at the place,” said Ted. “Now. We can have a pint and be back to catch the bus to camp.” He made the suggestion with his usual enthusiasm; as if the Mashopi hotel was certain to turn out the most beautiful experience life had yet offered us.
We looked at Willi. There was a meeting that night, run by the Left Club, then at its zenith. We were all expected to be there. We had never, not once, defected from duty. But Willi agreed, casually, as if there were nothing remarkable in it: “That’s something we could very well do. Mrs James’ pumpkin can be eaten by someone else for this one night.”
Willi ran a cheap fifth-hand car. We all five of us got into it and drove down to Mashopi, about sixty miles away. I remember it was a clear but oppressive night—the stars thick and low, with the heavy glitter of approaching thunder. We drove between kopjes that were piles of granite boulders, characteristic of that part of the country. The boulders were charged with heat and electricity, so that blasts of hot air, like soft fists, came on to our faces as we passed the kopjes.
We reached the Mashopi hotel about eight-thirty, and found the bar blazing with light and packed with the local farmers. It was a small bright place, shining from polished wood, and the polished black cement floor. As Paul had said, there was a well-used darts board and a shove-halfpenny. And behind the bar stood Mr Boothby, six feet tall, portly, his stomach protruding, his back straight as a wall, his heavy face with its network of liquor-swollen veins dominated by a pair of cool, shrewd prominent eyes. He remembered Paul from midday and enquired how the repairs to the aircraft were progressing. It had not been damaged; but Paul began on a long story how a wing had been struck by lightning and he had descended to the tree-tops by parachute, his instructor clutched under his arm—so manifestly untrue, that Mr Boothby looked uneasy from the first word. And yet Paul told it with such earnest, deferential grace that until he concluded, “Mine is not to reason why; mine is but to fly and die”—wiping away a mock-gallant tear, that Mr Boothby let out a small reluctant grunt of laughter and suggested a drink. Paul had expected the drink to be on the house—a reward for a hero, so to speak; but Mr Boothby held out his hand for the money with a long narrowed stare, as if to say: “Yes, I know it’s not a joke, and you’d have made a fool of me if you could.” Paul paid with good grace and continued the conversation. He came over to us, beaming, a few minutes later to say that Mr Boothby had been a sergeant in the B.S.A. Police; that he had married his wife on leave in England, and she had worked behind the bar in a pub; that they had a daughter aged eighteen, and they had been running this hotel for eleven years. “And very admirably too, if I may say so,” we had heard Paul say. “I very much enjoyed my lunch today.”
“But it’s nine o’clock,” said Paul, “and the dining-room is closing, and mine host didn’t offer to feed us. So I’ve failed. We shall starve. Forgive me my failure.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Willi. He went over to Mr Boothby, ordered whisky, and within five minutes had succeeded in getting the dining-room opened, especially for us. I don’t know how he did it. To begin with, he was such a bizarre note in this bar full of sunburned khaki-clad farmers and their dowdy wives that the eyes of everyone had been returning to him, again and again, ever since he came in. He was wearing an elegant cream shantung suit, and his hair shone black under the strident lights, and his face was pale and urbane. He said, in his over-correct English, so unmistakably German, that he and his good friends had travelled all the way from town to taste the Mashopi food they had heard so much about, and he was sure that Mr Boothby would not disappoint him. He spoke with exactly the same arrogant hidden cruelty that Paul had used in telling the story about the parachute descent, and Mr Boothby stood silent, staring coldly at Willi, his great red hands unmoving on the bar-counter. Willi then calmly took out his wallet and produced a pound note. I don’t suppose anyone had dared to tip Mr Boothby for years. Mr Boothby did not at once reply. He slowly and deliberately turned his head and his eyes became more prominent still as he narrowed them on the monetary possibilities of Paul, Ted and Jimmy, all standing with large tankards in their hands. He then remarked: “I’ll see what my wife can do,” and left the bar, leaving Willi’s pound note on the counter. Willi was meant to take it back; but he left it there, and came over to us. “There is no difficulty,” he announced.
Paul had already engaged the attention of the daughter of a farmer. She was about sixteen, pretty, pudgy, wearing a flounced flowered muslin dress. Paul was standing in front of her, his tankard poised high in one hand, and he was remarking in his light pleasant voice: “I’ve been wanting to tell you ever since I came into this bar, that I haven’t seen a dress like yours since I was at Ascot three years ago.” The girl was hypnotised by him. She was blushing. But I think that in a moment she would have understood he was being insolent. But now Willi laid his hand on Paul’s arm and said: “Come on. All that will do later.”
We went out onto the verandah. Across the road stood gum-trees, their leaves glistening with moonlight. A train stood hissing out steam and water onto the rails. Ted said in a low passionate voice: “Paul you’re the best argument I’ve ever known for shooting the entire upper-class to be rid of the lot of you.” I instantly agreed. This was by no means the first time this had happened. About a week before Paul’s arrogance had made Ted so angry he had gone off, white and sick-lookin
g, saying he would never speak to Paul again. “Or Willi—you are two of a kind.” It had taken hours of persuasion on my part and Maryrose’s to bring back Ted into the fold. Yet now Paul said, lightly: “She’s never heard of Ascot and when she finds out she’ll be flattered,” and all Ted said was, after a long pause: “No, she won’t. She won’t.” And then a silence, while we watched the rippling silver leaves, and then: “What the hell. You’ll never understand it as long as you live, either of you and I don’t care.” The I don’t care was in a tone I had never heard from Ted, almost frivolous. And he laughed. I had never heard him laugh like that. I felt bad, at sea—because Ted and I had always been allies in this battle, and now I was deserted.
The main block of the hotel stood directly by the main road, and consisted of the bar and the dining-room with the kitchens behind it. There was a verandah along the front supported by wooden pillars, up which plants grew. We sat on benches in silence, yawning, suddenly exhausted and very hungry. Soon Mrs Boothby, summoned from her own house by her husband, let us into the dining-room and shut the doors again so that travellers might not come in and demand food. This was one of the Colony’s main roads, and always full of cars. Mrs Boothby was a large, full-bodied woman, very plain, with a highly-coloured face and tightly-crimped colourless hair. She wore tight corsets, and her buttocks shelved out abruptly, and her bosom was high like a shelf in front. She was pleasant, kindly, anxious to oblige, but dignified. She apologised, that as we were so late, she could not serve a full dinner, but she would do her best. Then, with a nod and a good night, she left us to the waiter, who was sulky at being kept in so long after his proper hours. We ate plates of good thick roast beef, roast potatoes, carrots. And afterwards, apple pie and cream and the local cheese. It was English pub food, cooked with care. The big dining-room was silent. All the tables gleamed with readiness for tomorrow’s breakfast. The windows and doors were hung with heavy floral linen. Headlights from the passing cars continually lightened the linen, obliterating the pattern, so that the reds and blues of the flowers glowed out very bright when the dazzle of light had swept on and up the road towards the city. We were all sleepy and not very talkative. But I felt better after a while, because Paul and Willi, as usual, were treating the waiter as a servant, ordering him about and making demands, and suddenly Ted came to himself, and began talking to the man as a human being—and with even more warmth than usual, so I could see he was ashamed of his moment on the verandah. While Ted made enquiries about the man’s family, his work, his life, offering information about himself, Paul and Willi simply ate, as always on these occasions. They had made their position clear long ago. “Do you imagine, Ted, that if you are kind to servants you are going to advance the cause of socialism?” “Yes,” Ted had said. “Then I can’t help you,” Willi had said, with a shrug, meaning there was no hope for him. Jimmy was demanding more to drink. He was already drunk; he got drunk more quickly than anyone I’ve known. Soon Mr Boothby came in and said that as travellers we were entitled to drink—making it plain why we had been allowed to eat so late in the first place. But instead of the hard drinks he wanted us to order, we asked for wine, and he brought us chilled white Cape wine. It was very good wine; and we did not want to drink the raw Cape brandy Mr Boothby brought us but we did drink it, and then some more wine. And then Willi announced that we were all coming down next week-end, and could Mr Boothby arrange rooms for us. Mr Boothby said it was no trouble at all—offering us a bill that we had difficulty in raising the money to settle.
The Golden Notebook Page 12
