A Ripple From the Storm (11 page)

‘But why shouldn’t you like her?’

‘She was the daughter of an aristocrat, wasn’t she? So why should I like her?’

‘But, Tommy, suppose someone wrote a novel about you. The Africans might say: Why should I like that reactionary white man, Tommy Brown? But it would help them to understand the way things are, do you see?’

No, I don’t see. That’s it,’ he said, ‘I just don’t see. And sometimes when I tell you and Jasmine and Piet what I’m feeling, you have a smile on your faces, and I know you’re thinking: Tommy’s just a stupid boy.’

‘But I haven’t got a smile on my face,’ said Martha. ‘I don’t know why you think everything’s easy for us either. The thing is, now we’re communists we’ve all got to go on learning for the rest of our lives.’

‘I can’t say what I mean,’ he said. He put up his burned fist and began banging at the top of his head where the tufts of hair stood up. ‘You say: “We’ve got to go on learning,” but I don’t even know half the words I see.’

‘But we’ll all help you, we’ll all help each other.’

‘Do you know what I think, Matty? Well, I know what you are going to say when I tell you. But it’s this, I don’t think any people brought up here, white people, can ever be good communists. It’s different for people like the RAF, because they weren’t living here all their lives, and so everything comes easy to them, but I don’t think we can change ourselves.’

‘But we are changing all the time.’

‘Well, all right. I’ll try.’ He pushed the book towards her. ‘If you tell me what the words mean then I won’t have to look them up in a dictionary.’

They bent together over the book, but almost at once a large sheet of cardboard slid over the print. It was bordered with black an inch thick, and it was headed ‘Homage to Heroes’. Solly Cohen, grinning heavily, stood beyond the piles of pamphlets on the table, hands in his pockets.

A short while before, at a Progressive Club lecture on the necessity for switching support from Michailovitch to Tito, for this was before Michailovitch’s collaboration with the Germans had been officially confirmed, Solly had come with a group of local Yugoslavs and stood at the back of the hall chanting steadily, every time Tito was mentioned: ‘Communist propaganda, communist propaganda.’ At the end of the meeting, when the chairman wound up, Solly had leaped up to shout over and over again: ‘Down with Stalin the Assassin.’

In the interval Allied policy had switched: Tito was now officially principal guerrilla leader in Yugoslavia, and Michailovitch a dubious collaborationist. Martha therefore faced Solly triumphantly.

But he seemed unconscious that she had any right to, He indicated the large black-bordered cardboard and said: ‘I’ve brought this for the exhibition.’

Martha examined it. There were on it the names of a couple of hundred Red Army officers, none of which she had heard of. ‘What are you up to now?’ she asked.

‘Short list of Red Army officers murdered by Stalin,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you hang them up too? They died in a good cause.’

She handed him back the cardboard and said: ‘You mean you’ve gone to all the trouble of printing these names just to come here and be irritating?’ She was genuinely astounded. Solly continued to grin: he was perfectly satisfied, it seemed, with the reaction he was getting. It was the look of satisfied malice, which he wore now whenever he encountered ‘the group’ in public, which made it easy for Martha to dismiss him entirely.

‘You’re so damned childish,’ she said.

He said: ‘You aren’t going to hang that list? You haven’t room?’ He took a rapid glance around the exhibition and said: ‘You could take down one of those six pictures of Father Stalin to make room for it.’

Tommy Brown shouted: ‘Capitalist propaganda,’ and Solly, delighted, roared with laughter. He sobered to say: ‘The truth is what I want. As a Marxist, I want truth.’

‘Such as, that Tito was an invention of the communist party?’

He waved this aside, and said: ‘This is an exhibition of the Red Army, and I want some of the hundreds of Red Army officers murdered by Stalin to get some recognition, that’s all.’

‘You’re mad,’ said Martha. ‘You’re corrupted by capitalist propaganda.’ And now Solly had got what he had come to get, apparently; for he again burst into peals of laughter and went laughing to the door. There he turned and made a low bow towards the picture of Stalin nearest to him: ‘Salaams, Lord, Salaams.’ He went out.

Tommy and Martha dismissed the existence of Solly with a contemptuous shrug. Martha tore up the piece of cardboard and, looking for a place to deposit the pieces, found a large packing-case under the table. It was covered in heavy oiled paper, and full of pamphlets called: ‘Fascist Vipers Crushed Under Stalin’s Heel’. She opened one and read: ‘As the Fascist Scum leave their deposits of filth over the sacred soil of our Russian Motherland, our Heroic Russian Soldiers march on, armed with the unerring faith of true patriots and the inspiration of the Glorious Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its leader Comrade Stalin!’ She grimaced humorously and looked at Tommy who, however, was not humorous.

‘There you are,’ he said, again in despair. ‘That’s what I mean. All that motherland stuff, it simply makes me want to laugh, that’s all.’

Some people had come in and were handing their money over. Martha unconsciously slid the pamphlet out of sight. Tommy assisted her in covering the packing-case over, and said: ‘Jasmine had them on sale. Everyone who came in saw them and laughed, so she hid them.’ He looked guilty. Martha realized she was feeling guilty too. ‘After all, it stands to reason the Russians feel more strongly about the war than we do,’ she said, weakly.

Tommy said: ‘But they say scum. I mean the Germans are human beings. They’re soldiers.’ He added, hastily: ‘Though of course the Russian communist party knows best, doesn’t it? Comrade Stalin must know what he’s doing.’

‘We’ve got four packing-cases of pamphlets from Russia,’ said Martha. ‘What are we going to do with them? Well, we’ll bring it up at the group meeting and take a formal decision on policy.’

At this point Bill Bluett came in, back in his uniform.

Tommy produced the doubtful pamphlet and showed it to him. He read it, dead-pan, until Martha said: ‘What do you think? I think it’s silly,’ when he reacted instantly with: ‘Naughty naughty Russians, so crude, aren’t they?’

‘It’s no use selling pamphlets that make people laugh.’

“They’d laugh out of the other side of their mouths if they had the Germans here.’

‘Yes, but we haven’t.’

‘Well, we’ll bring it up at the meeting and Daddy Anton will make a decision for us.’

Martha, confused, for Bill had always seemed to have respect for Anton, said: ‘Why, what’s wrong with Anton?’

Bill said, grinning: ‘But what on earth could be wrong with Daddy Anton?’ There was a personal implication in it, and she demanded: ‘What’s
that
in aid of?’ He shrugged and said airily: ‘Well, if you’ll move, I’ll take over now. You should be at the meeting, and you’d better be quick because it’s going to rain.’

‘You mean, I might get my feet wet?’

‘That’s right.’ But now, as he usually did, he gave in, and his aggression disappeared in a half-cajoling, half-comradely smile. ‘Run along, Comrade Matty.’

Tommy took up
War and Peace
and Bill pounced on it. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘why not T. S. Eliot?’

‘What’s the matter with
War and Peace
?’

‘You are a bourgeois, aren’t you? Why not T. S. Eliot while you’re about it.’ He began reciting: ‘April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land.’

Martha listened critically: he missed nothing of it. She interrupted to ask: ‘If you despise it so much, why do you take the trouble to learn it by heart?’

‘That belongs to my decadent period. Thought you’d appreciate it. Ta ta.’

The street was hot and stuffy. The evening sky was loaded with black sulphurous clouds. A few large sparkling drops fell. She ran down the street as the storm broke, feeling the warm sting of the rain on her shoulders with acute pleasure.

By the time she reached the Sympathizers of Russia committee meeting it had already started and she was soaked.

They were discussing how to restore the status of the society, for as Anton had predicted, the episode with Jackie Bolton had caused all the respectable patrons to resign, including the Reverend Mr Gates who had had second thoughts. The policy, exactly the same now as it had been before, was being overseen by Boris Krueger, chairman, Betty Krueger, secretary, and a committee of people co-opted by them. Martha end Marjorie were on it with instructions to keep ‘an eye on the Trotskyists’. While the hostility between the Krueger faction and the communist faction was extreme, so that before or after meetings they could scarcely bring themselves to exchange more than the minimum of politeness, their political views, at least so far as this society was concerned, caused the work to go on much faster than it had in the past when the susceptibilities of the respectable had to be pandered to in the wording of every resolution. The Kruegers and Martha and Marjorie were in one way and another raising large sums for Russian Aid, and in addition were selling propaganda leaflets all over town in numbers which took them by surprise. When the meeting was over, Betty Krueger, who had been eyeing Martha with elaborate hostility throughout, suggested she had better go and change her dress before she caught cold. Martha had forgotten she was soaked, and said: ‘But I haven’t got time.’

‘Such busy little bees you Reds are,’ said Betty, her fair and delicate face ugly with dislike.

‘I thought
you
were a Red,’ retorted Martha, and she and Marjorie left.

‘Those Trotskyists are really so awfully childish,’ said Martha explosively, thinking of Solly that afternoon.

Marjorie said: ‘But they are all right for that kind of work.’ She was looking embarrassed, and Martha knew why: she liked to slip off for a meal alone with Colin before or between meetings, and always felt as if this submission to ‘personal feelings’ was disloyal to the group.

‘Meeting Colin?’ Martha asked; and Marjorie, relieved, said: ‘You know we are getting married next week.’

‘But that’s wonderful.’

Marjorie was hesitating on the edge of the pavement, giving Martha lingering glances of appeal. The wet street swam blue and red and gold as the cars swished by. It was still raining a little, and though it was a warm rain, Martha had started to shiver.

‘Do you think I’m doing the right thing?’ demanded Marjorie.

‘To get married?’

Marjorie’s face, usually open with enthusiasm and response, seemed pinched. She was wearing a red shirt, open at the neck, but she was holding it close in front of her throat with her thin brown hand, clenched like a fist.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Martha.

‘I don’t know; I feel I haven’t known Colin very long. He’s so nice.’ She added humorously – and the moment the humorous note entered the conversation Martha knew that the impulse to confess had passed: ‘He’s so nice, and he’s just what I wanted – a solid man, you know.’ She grimaced, staring across the street at the cinema which was showing some war film. Spitfires and Focke-Wulfs dived, spitting fire, across a vast wall-high poster. The reflection from the reddish lights of the cinema shone on her face. ‘You know I always said I didn’t want that kind of marriage, I mean a dull marriage – I don’t mean dull, of course; no, I don’t mean that. But I’ve been playing around quite a bit now and you get fed up …’

‘You talk as if you were forty,’ said Martha, suddenly angry.

‘Well, I’m twenty-five, and if you want to have children, though of course if we’re in a revolutionary situation we won’t be able to have children … but I suppose everyone feels like this when they’ve committed themselves,’ she added, smiling, again reaching out firmly for the support of humour. She nodded, and went off, saying hastily: ‘I’ll see you in half an hour at the meeting.’

So she’s not in love, Martha thought, disapproving, feeling that Marjorie had betrayed something. Then she thought: Well, what does it matter, what matters is we should all work hard for the Party. And with this she walked off towards the group office. She had had no lunch and proposed not to have supper. She was still damp and shivering and thought she might warm herself in the office by doing some work, whatever needed to be done.

Anton was first into the office, and at once sat in his chairman’s place at the table, looking at his watch. ‘We cannot tolerate unpunctuality,’ he said. ‘The comrades are late.’

Marjorie and Colin came in. She was being gruffly humorous; he was eyeing her uneasily. Martha thought that the supper together must have been an uncomfortable one. They accepted Anton’s reproof for being five minutes late with nervous apologies.

Soon Andrew came in with two of the men from the camp: there should have been five more, but he said they had all promised to be here and did not know where they were, They all sat around on the hard benches, waiting, while Anton watched the door.

‘Why can’t we start?’ asked Marjorie.

‘This is a full organization meeting; we have one only once a week and everyone should be here.’

‘I’ve a mind that Murdoch will not be with us,’ said one of the airforce men.

‘And why not?’

‘He’s had a wee drop too much,’ said the lad apologetically.

Anton let his cold eyes settle on him, and Andrew protected him hastily with: ‘Murdoch’s a good lad. He’ll be here if he can.’

Martha remembered the scene of that afternoon, and thought: He couldn’t possibly have got drunk just because I said I wouldn’t marry him … Acutely depressed all of a sudden she thought: Are we all going to pair off? But it’s like cards being shuffled, something quite arbitrary. It’s frightening.

Fifteen minutes passed and Piet and Marie du Preez came in. They were late because they had been at the Hall with Jasmine, who sent a message to say she was not coming.

‘And why not?’ demanded Anton.

Marjorie said: ‘I don’t blame her for not wanting to leave, after last time,’ but Anton quelled her with his pale glance.