A Ripple From the Storm (24 page)

And yet he was himself a white trade unionist, elected by white railway workers.

Piet, white trade unionist, challenged him, saying that they weren’t all anti-African.

‘Is that so?’ demanded Jack. ‘You say that to me?’

‘You’re sitting here, aren’t you?’ said Jasmine.

‘Not because of my views on the Native Question.’

It was clear to them all that his particular quality, the one which got him elected, no matter how much his views contradicted those of the men who elected him, was one that the other members of the Parliamentary group did not have. Jack had the quality of honesty; a simple, unselfregarding honesty. The others were politicians. One could not sit in the same room with him for five minutes and not feel the difference between him and them.

They played the white trade unionist line. He would stand on a platform before a couple of hundred railway workers, all of them Kaffir-hating, wage-jealous white men, talling them they should be ashamed not to consider the Africans as brothers and fellow-workers!

‘They elect you,’ said Mrs Van, ‘because they have consciences after all.’

‘Is that it? I’d like to think so.’ He added, grimly: ‘They elect me because they have it both ways: they have the satisfaction of knowing they’re electing someone with the principles they ought to have – and they know that since there’s only one of me it won’t make any difference to the policy of the Parliamentary group – and that’s why you aren’t out on your ear, Brother Piet, don’t you make any mistake about it!’ With which he gave them all an efficient nod, thumped Piet on the shoulder, and left them for his duties in the House.

Mr Playfair departed also: he had a church service to manage. Mrs Van and Johnny Lindsay sat together, talking.

The six communists watched them a while and then exchanged smiles. Mrs Van and Johnny were discussing how to use the rules of procedure in order to get their way over the African Branch. They were talking like old friends, which they were, but it was more than that: the white-haired man with his sunburned boyish face and startlingly young blue eyes, and the fat matronly woman, calm with selfcommand, their heads bent together over four sheets of printed Rules and Constitution, gave such an impression of warmth and of trust that more than one member of the group involuntarily sighed and envied them.

Martha was again feeling her old pain, that she was excluded from some good, some warmth, that she had never known. She thought: They are like lovers – though of course they aren’t.

Mrs Van, a fat forefinger half-way down a page, raised her grey head, looked triumphant and said: ‘There, see that? That’ll cook their goose for them.’ And Johnny, alive with the delights of intrigue, nodded vigorously, with ‘That’s the stuff, That’ll dish them!’ They were like a pair of conspiring children, and the group, seeing they were no longer wanted, said good-bye and left. The du Preez went home saying they must put the children to bed, but later, it went without saying, their house was available for group activity.

Marjorie and Colin walked away together. Martha saw that Marjorie now had her hand inside Colin’s broad elbow. It was a contrite and affectionate hand, and Martha thought: She’s feeling guilty, because she resents him so much … I really must talk to Anton tonight.

Jasmine and Martha lingered on the pavement. Both of them had watched Colin and Marjorie go off, and their smile at each other afterwards was accompanied by a dry lift of the brows.

‘I’m not going to get married,’ said Jasmine suddenly, startling Martha, for this self-contained girl never spoke about ‘personal matters’.

It was dusk: cars were streaking past in showers of light; the stars were coming out.

Jasmine said: ‘There was that business with Jackie – I must have been mad. I mean, not to have an affair, but thinking of marrying.’ She spoke without heat, good-natured and rueful, ‘I loved that other man – you never knew him, he was killed in the Spanish Civil War.’ She paused, frowning, and sighed. ‘There’s something about marriage, whenever I see it, I feel … but of course you’ve been married and I haven’t.’ In the dusk she was a small figure: always Jasmine gave this impression, against all the facts of what she was and the life she led, of smallness, forlornness, and isolated courage. ‘I’m not going to get married,’ she announced. She shyly squeezed Martha’s arm and said: ‘And don’t you go and get married either, Matty. There’s no sense in your breaking up one marriage and then getting married again, is there?’ She nodded, and trotted off to where her car was parked, leaving Martha thinking: She knows I’m in a dilemma about Anton, and she’s warning me. Yet she admires Anton.

It’s like someone outside a danger-zone warning someone in it. And if the position were reversed, I’d certainly warn her – if she gave me the chance, which she wouldn’t, because she’s far too reserved – not to get married to anyone yet.

Martha was meeting Anton in an hour for supper. She knew she ought to use that hour for thinking, but she walked off up the street towards Maisie’s flat, which was five minutes away. All the members of the group had assured themselves and each other that it was only right to leave Maisie and Andrew alone together as much as possible because of the delicate situation they were in.

Martha excused herself by thinking: Well, it’s only for an hour. The door was opened, however, by Tommy, and behind him she could see Athen from Greece, sitting at his ease and smiling with pleasure at, presumably, Maisie. Martha went in. It was a two-roomed flat, furnished hastily and cheaply. This front room had a couple of chairs bought at a sale, and a divan in one corner covered with an army blanket. Maisie sat upright on one of the hard chairs, her hands folded loose in her plump lap. She wore a blue maternity smock and the mound of her pregnancy showed firm and placid behind the folds of blue. Her fair glistening hair had evidently just been brushed, for it was not untidy, as it ordinarily was, but she was not made up. She looked young and appealing, and she was smiling with calm attention at Athen. Tommy, his urchin hair standing up all over his head, was pouring out tea which he had just made for them. He was handing Maisie a cup of tea as if it were a present. Altogether, the pretty, lazy girl had the look of someone worshipped and adored.

She greeted Martha with a Hi there!, smiled, but did not move. Martha felt at peace. She sat on the divan beside Athen the Greek, and thought: There’s Maisie, in such a complicated mess, and she’s quite calm and happy – I never was. I never do anything right. I should have been happy when I was pregnant, but I was fighting everything.

Athen was talking to Maisie about the guerrillas in the mountains. The thin dark keen face was frowning with attention for the words he was using, because his English was uncertain, but his eyes smiled gently and steadily at Maisie. And she, Martha knew, was not listening: the words, guerrilla, war, fighting, communist, fascist, went by her, she was forming no picture at all of what they meant. She merely liked Athen and his feeling for her.

Athen, realizing this, stopped talking and said: ‘But you must ask your husband to explain all this to you.’

She said: ‘Andrew tells me all this stuff.’ She shrugged. Martha noted how her shoulders moved in a tranquil acceptance of the shrug while the heavy hips remained planted on the chair; the lower part of her body was absorbed in a life of its own.

Envy shook Martha. She thought, Lord help me, I’m going to start wanting another baby just because Maisie’s having one. Stop it, stop it at once – in less than an hour I’ll be meeting Anton.

Andrew came in, unbuttoning his jacket and flinging off his cap. Maisie turned her head towards him, the blue of her eyes deepening in a smile.

The group of course wondered secretly about the relations of these two. While they wondered, they felt ashamed – or rather, felt they should be ashamed.

Andrew said: ‘How’s it, Maisie?’ and poured himself tea while Maisie watched him. She had the appearance of a very young girl who has just been introduced to a man her parents think will make a suitable husband and to whom, half against her will, she is attracted.

The outward form of their life was that of two people on trial with each other.

The two rooms were arranged as separate rooms. The inner room, where Maisie slept, was a girl’s room. It had a single bed covered with a fat shining blue eiderdown, and all kinds of trinkets and bits of nonsense stood on her dressing-table — small dolls, china ladies and so on. There were two photographs on a shelf of her two dead husbands, but none of Binkie, her baby’s father.

As for Andrew, it was understood that the bed covered with an army blanket was his: he camped in this front room when he had a pass for the night or for the week-end.

He turned with a cup of tea in his hand, and examined Maisie frankly: he had not seen her for three days. Since his marriage he had changed a good deal. Before, gruffly goodhumoured, practical, responsible, he was a man with whom one associated no sentiment. A little sentimentality perhaps: the conventional sentimental jokes and tributes to emotion of a man who has no time for it. But now the broad face had softened and his eyes had acquired a new expression, as if they were saying: ‘Hullo! I didn’t expect
this …’

It became clear to the three visitors at the same moment that Andrew wanted them to go. He had taken two steps towards Maisie, but propriety stopped him, and he remained standing by Athen. He even exchanged half a dozen camp jokes with the Greek, but it was pure form, for his eyes kept returning to Maisie.

Tommy jumped up, in confusion, exclaiming that he had to go off and get some supper.

Athen, who had been watching the couple with grave approval, rose also, saying: ‘I’ll come with you, Tommy.’ Martha followed them to the door.

Maisie and Andrew nodded a good-bye to their visitors, and their eyes instantly returned to each other, in the prolonged, serious, respectful gaze that the group knew so well, and which always made them envious.

As they left the room they heard Andrew’s voice: ‘Well, lass? And how’s that little bastard been since I left you?’

Maisie’s voice, queenly, and kind: ‘You shouldn’t use that word bastard, Andrew, because it’s not right, don’t you see?’

Then their laughter, warmed by the wonder of joy.

Tommy said in a shocked whisper: ‘That’s a funny joke, I
don’t
think.’

Athen laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder and said: ‘No, it’s good — all of it is very good, comrade.’

On the pavement they stood, the three of them, looking up at the uncurtained windows a few feet above them, whose light seemed shed from the happiness of Maisie and Andrew. Athen’s and Martha’s eyes meeting, they unconsciously exchanged a regretful smile. Tommy, still crimson, fierce with incomprehension, said angrily: ‘Well, I don’t get it. That’s not even his kid. It’s someone else’s kid.’ He stubbed his foot again and again against the pavement edge, glaring away from the lighted windows to a group of scrubby gum-trees that stood in a waste lot a few yards off.

Athen said gently: ‘But, Comrade Tommy, don’t you see what selfishness it all is –
my
child,
my
son,
my
daughter don’t you see, that’s all finished now? Well, it will soon be finished in the world. What it is is just: a baby is being born. A new human being. That’s all, comrade.’

Tommy’s face twisted into an unwilling grin.

Athen smiled: his smile on the lean stern Southern face was extraordinarily tender. He said: ‘When a baby is born it is born to everyone – don’t you see that? It is my child and your child and Martha’s child.’

Tommy said: ‘I don’t think that’s why Andrew is so pleased with himself. I mean, he’s pleased because he likes Maisie. I don’t think the baby’s got anything to do with it.’

Athen said: ‘He likes Maisie and so he likes the baby too. But it is because Maisie is a good girl. She is a good good girl.’

Martha sighed, and Athen heard it. She saw the stern little man look at her in comprehension. She imagined it was disapproval. He said: ‘Maisie is a lucky one, she has a gift.’

‘What gift, why lucky?’ insisted Tommy, almost in despair, still angrily banging his toe at the pavement.

Athen said, not looking at Martha: ‘It has seemed to me like this for a long time – that this is a time which is difficult for women. Some women know it and fight. Some women, like Maisie, they don’t know it.’

‘All the same,’ said Tommy. ‘All the same – it’s not Andrew’s kid at all.’

‘Andrew is a good man,’ Athen pronounced. ‘He is a good comrade. Yes, there are very good people in the world in spite of everything. ‘

And you are a good man too, Martha thought, adding involuntarily: I would be perfectly safe with this man. Instantly the word safe confused her. What do I want with safety? What do I mean, safe? Well, then, is Anton a good man? But now she felt even more confused.

Athen said to Tommy: ‘And now we will go and eat before the meeting, comrade.’ He gave the obstinately unhappy boy his stern, gentle smile, and said: ‘And you are a good boy too, Tommy. You should not make things so hard for yourself. Life is simple, comrade. All the real things are very simple. Why do you make it so difficult? What is this now? A baby is being born and a woman needs a man to look after her. That’s all, that’s all, Comrade Tommy. It is a good man and a good woman and they help each other. That’s all, and nothing else.’

Martha said: ‘I’ll see you both at the meeting,’ and walked off. She wanted to cry, and was frightened because of the tears threatening her. At the corner, under the bunch of dusty gum-trees, she turned to watch the two men out of sight: the small fine-made Greek, who had his hand on the shoulder of the big clumsy youth, his face leaned towards him in persuasion. She thought: I wish I had had somebody like Athen to explain things to me when I was eighteen. She thought: Here it is again, this feeling that I am being shut out of something beautiful and simple. Well, it’s nothing but sentimentality.

Yet she did not really believe it was sentimental: there was something very good about Athen being with Tommy, and in the relation between Mrs Van and Johnny Lindsay, the old miner.