A Ripple From the Storm (7 page)

‘I haven’t sent any message to Mrs Talbot.’

‘You can’t expect her to approve of you.’

‘I don’t see why not. Now she can have what she’s always wanted – that Elaine can marry Douglas. God knows why she wants it, but I always thought she did.’

‘Yes, I think you’re right, About this you’re very probably right.’ Martha turned her eyes on him, startled: the way he had said it applied a degree of knowledge – at the moment ironic – of Mrs Talbot that she had never suspected. He raised his eyes from a contemplation of his fingers, saw her look and said hastily: ‘Mrs Talbot and I are old friends.’

She shrugged, impatient at the idea that he might imagine she was interested one way or the other.

‘Well,’ he said, annoyed at her shrug, ‘I shall never succeed in fathoming the complicated depths of your morality, but if you’re shocked, as you appear to be, then I can only say you are quite devoid of a sense of humour.’

Again Martha shrugged. He examined her, noted she was pale, much thinner than he had ever seen her, and her mouth was set over unhappiness.

‘You miss your daughter?’ he inquired.

‘No,’ said Martha decisively, wincing.

‘Ah,’ he said, on a softer note. ‘Well, well. And you are going to marry that young man of yours?’

‘What young man? Oh, you mean William?’

‘I didn’t know there was another I might mean.’

‘He’s been posted. For taking part in politics,’ she added.

‘Quite right too.’

‘If people can die for politics I don’t see why they shouldn’t be allowed to take an active part in them.’

‘How naïve. Is that the line of that rag there?’ He reached over for a limp copy of
The Watchdog
and regarded its exclamatory front page with raised black brows.

‘So crude,’ said Martha.

‘Quite. I prefer my left-wing propaganda put into decent English and appearing in unobtrusive paragraphs in the serious weeklies where only reactionaries like myself can see them. I like them to begin: “According to our correspondent it is believed that there might be a possibility …”’ He smiled at her, inviting her to smile back. She did not smile.

‘Why do you call it propaganda? And, anyway, it’s not meant for you.’ She took back the paper and folded it into the pile of others.

‘It’s not, I should have thought, for you either.’

‘What’s the time?’ she asked.

‘Come and have a drink at the Club?’

‘At the Club!’ she said derisively.

‘Then come and have a cup of tea at Greasy Dick’s.’

‘I’m late, I told you.’

‘Are you making many recruits among the working masses?’

She grinned at him, for the first time, saying nothing.

‘Well, are you?’

‘I must go.’

‘No, wait a moment.’

‘Why, is there anything else?’

‘Actually there is. It’s about Binkie. You do, perhaps, remember my son?’

‘Well, of course.’

‘He has informed us that he intends to marry someone called Maisie. Do you know her?’

‘Don’t you? She was going around with Binkie for months.’

‘We were not aware of it. But it appears she is already twice a widow?’

‘Oh, so that RAF type got killed after all?’

‘As you remark. The RAF type got killed. And so did her first husband.’

‘Well, that’s not her fault, is it?’

‘Binkie is on leave and he insists on marrying Maisie at once. I saw her and when I asked her if
she
insisted she replied that she didn’t mind. Is she always so enthusiastic about her fiancés?’

‘Well, yes. She’s – good-natured,’ said Martha.

‘Good Lord.’

‘What do you want to find out about her?’

‘My wife has been in tears for three days now, but she is clearly on the point of finding Maisie a sweet girl. What I want to know is, shall I find her so?’

‘She’s not of your class,’ said Martha, ‘if that’s what you mean?’ She was conscious, in using the word to him, of paying tribute to old habits of their friendship: she had learned to use it politically and not socially. Again she felt dragged back into something she had outgrown, and resented him for it.

‘No, I do not. She may not be my class, but she is certainly Binkie’s. I want to know if she’ll be a good influence – you know, settling, soothing, that sort of thing. Or will they get divorced again on his next leave?’

‘They’ve known each other for years. But why don’t you talk to Binkie about it?’

His face went dark and he said: ‘I find it impossible to
talk
to anyone whose language consists entirely of primitive cries of pleasure or pain. Not that I am able to distinguish between them, of course.’ He leaned forward and laid a large hand on her knee. ‘My dear, would you go and talk to her for me?’

‘You want
me
to go and ask her not to marry Binkie?’ said Martha, shocked.

‘Why not? If she doesn’t care whom she marries? And I gather that’s what you meant? As far as I can see they’re getting married because they got tight together last week and the idea occurred to them.’

‘But Mr Maynard, judging from what you’ve said to me in the past, you think marriage is so idiotic anyway … and what difference does it make? If Binkie doesn’t marry Maisie he’ll marry one of them.’

‘One of
who
?’

‘The gang – the crowd. The group.’

‘You mean there’s nothing to choose between them?’

Martha made an impatient movement with her whole body, and said: ‘Mr Maynard, I never see any of that lot these days. I don’t know why you ask
me
? I haven’t seen Maisie in months – except in the street. And I think it’s absolutely revolting that you should ask me to go and put pressure on her. It’s a disgusting thing to do, you know.’

‘I can’t see why,’ he said tiredly, ‘I really can’t. But if you feel it is, then there is nothing more I can say.’

She opened the door and slipped out on to the pavement.

He started the car, and turned to say: ‘I want to give you some advice, young woman. You’d better leave the Kaffirs alone. And you don’t suppose they understand one word of what you say to them, do you?’

Martha said politely: ‘The only language they understand is the sjambok!’

‘Good God,’ he exclaimed, really angry, speaking from his depths. ‘What do you suppose you are going to change? We happen to be in power, so we use power. What is history? A record of misery, brutality and stupidity. That’s all. That’s all it ever will be. What does it matter who runs a country? It’s always a bunch of knaves administering a pack of fools. Look, young woman. If, for reasons that escape me, the process of government interests you, if you really want to have a finger in the pie, then all you’ve got to do is to play your cards right, and put yourself in a position where you have power. For a woman it’s easy. You should marry a politician and run him – easier to marry, in this town, where everyone knows everyone else’s business, than to remain someone’s mistress. If you really want to do the dirty work yourself, then you drop all this socialist nonsense and become a town councillor and eventually get yourself elected …’ He stopped at the look of revulsion on Martha’s face. He was filled with a sense of injustice; he had spoken seriously, to an equal.

As for her, she regarded him steadily like a specimen of horror from a dead epoch; she was positively pale with disgust.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. But you might remember this: while you are running around shouting about socialism and all the rest, this isn’t Britain which makes allowances for social adolescents. This country’s a powder-keg and you know it. The whole thing can go up at any moment – and if you imagine that a horde of savages wouldn’t cut your throat as well as mine, then you’re a fool.’

Martha thought that he looked like a bloodhound as he leaned across the front seat of his car towards her, the deepset heavy-lidded eyes fixed on her in an irritated gloomy insistence that she must agree with him. She understood he was speaking as one white person to another; and that he knew so little of what she stood for that he could not imagine the appeal would seem contemptible, even irrelevant. She felt as she did when she was with Mrs Carson: she was listening to a voice already dead; as it were the record of a voice which had once made sense.

He even seemed to her rather pathetic. ‘I’m so awfully late,’ she said. He kept the pressure of his gaze on her for a while, his lips compressed; then he arranged the weight of his well-dressed limbs behind the driving-wheel, nodded a formal good-bye and drove off.

Her bicycle leaned against the brick wall of an Indian shop with several others. An Indian youth was leaning in the doorway of the shop framed by dangling beads and spices, watching a couple of black children who squatted on the pavement spinning the pedals of the bicycles; the pedals of half a dozen machines were being kept in flashing motion, dull reddish circles in the light from the sunset. The children hopped from one to another like frogs, spinning the pedals. The moment the Indian youth saw her there he came officiously forward, dragged the black children to their feet, and knocked their heads together. ‘Kaffirs,’ he said, ‘run away from here to the compound. Run away home, black Kaffir-dogs.’ He watched her obsequiously for a favouring smile from the white woman. Martha collected her bicycle, frowning, trying to show that she did not appreciate this gesture, and cycled away fast. Behind her she could hear the shrill voices of the children: ‘Jewboy Indian. Jewboy Indian.’ And the Indian shouted back: ‘Dirty little Kaffir-dogs.’

Martha was suddenly depressed. She thought of Mr Maynard, and of the incident with the bicycle, and felt the depression deepening. It was probably, she decided, because she was tired and had not eaten that day. And she was nearly three-quarters of an hour late for Anton.

Black Ally’s was full of grey-blue uniforms and she could not see Anton. At last she caught sight of him in a corner, eating with a book beside him. He set aside the book as she arrived at his table. He said: ‘I’ve nearly finished.’

‘I was kept by Mr Maynard.’

His eyes focused into suspicion and he said: ‘I hope you were careful.’

She said, laughing: ‘He was saying we mustn’t upset the Kaffirs.’

‘Who’s
we
?’

‘But Anton, they aren’t idiots. They must know there’s a group or something like it.’

‘We have taken a decision that the group should be secret.’

‘But Anton, what’s the use of taking decisions if …’ But she was unable to go on, because of the intensity of his eyes fixed on her: ‘Decisions are decisions and must be carried out.’

She was now conscious of falling below his level and her own when she used humour to soften his intensity: ‘He said that in Britain it would be all right to be socialists, but to be socialists here meant upsetting white supremacy.’

‘Yes, yes, yes.’ He continued to eat, unsmiling, watching her. ‘And now what was it you wanted to ask me?’

She had not imagined that the ‘personal talk’ with Anton would arise like an item on an agenda; she now felt frivolous because she had been looking forward to something different. She said hurriedly: ‘Well, it doesn’t matter. Personal problems are not important anyway.’

‘Yes, yes, we all have our personal problems,’ he remarked between one measured mouthful and another. Then, at the sight of her face, he laid down his knife and fork, and summoned words to his aid. ‘The personal life of a comrade should be arranged so that it interferes as little as possible with work,’ he said. A group of aircraftsmen got up from the next table, and reached out over the heads of Anton and Martha for their caps and jackets which were hanging on a stand in a corner. They grinned at Martha out of the camaraderie all the men from the camp offered ‘the Reds’ in the town, She grinned back and noted that Anton was disapproving. He continued however: ‘For a woman things are more difficult than for a man; and that is why a woman comrade is entitled to help from her male comrades. The problems of women, in my opinion, have not been given sufficient thought in the movement.’ The pronouncement gave Martha a feeling of being liberated into understanding and support, and she waited, hoping Anton would continue. But he was looking around for a waitress. ‘What do you want to eat?’ he inquired.

‘Oh – but you’ve finished, it doesn’t matter.’

‘You’ve eaten a lot of bread. And I suppose you’ll say it’s enough and go upstairs to the meeting. Did you eat at midday? No, probably not. In my opinion, you should make sure of three good meals a day and enough sleep. Yes, yes, you can run around like this for five years, not sleeping and not eating, and then you end in a sickness and are a burden to your comrades. To preserve health is one of the first duties of a comrade.’ This was said in the same way as he had spoken about women: but now she was irritated, thinking that her mother might have said the same sort of thing. She thought: At my age (she was now twenty-three) I should have got over this automatic resentment and desire to escape every time someone puts pressure on me. It’s a reflex from fighting my mother. She said: ‘I’ll try to do better and be more sensible.’

The waitress came over. She had been at school with Martha and they smiled at each other. She held the menu card for Anton in a way that Martha could see meant she was ironically impressed by this queer foreign bird. ‘The young lady will have a large portion of stew and vegetables,’ said Anton. ‘And some stewed fruit.’

The waitress transmitted the order to a black waiter who was passing, like a manageress; and went to flirt maternally with a table full of aircraftsmen. Her tone to the black waiter was automatically sharp and disdainful. Martha noted this familiar phenomenon for the thousandth time, and told Anton about the incident with the Indian store-hand and the black children. Discouragement returned as she talked about it; and Anton listened in silence, finally saying, because she obviously demanded some comment from him: ‘Capitalism creates divisions between human beings which will vanish on the advent of socialism.’

The black waiter deposited a plate in front of her. The waitress interrupted her sparring with the airmen to inquire: ‘Everything all right, Matty?’ and then, to the waiter, ‘Jim, I keep telling you not to …’ With a sharp gesture of impatience she followed the waiter, who had gone hastily to the screen that hid the kitchen door. From behind the screen their voices came: ‘Jim, I keep telling you, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a hundred times about the knives and forks.’