The Golden Notebook (55 page)

promise, Molly'-as if Molly were the person to whom she was responsible. Molly had telephoned Richard, demanding that he should do something. But he refused. He had hired a house-keeper for form's sake; and his secretary Jean was practically installed already. He was delighted Marion had gone. Then something else happened. Tommy, who had not left the shelter of his home since leaving the hospital, went with Marion to a political meeting to do with African independence. Afterwards there was a spontaneous demonstration in the street outside the London headquarters of the country in question. Marion and Tommy had followed the crowd, mostly students. There was skirmishing with the police. Tommy did not carry a white stick, there was no outward sign that he was blind. He did not 'move along' when told to do so, and was arrested. Marion, who had been separated from him for a few moments by the crowd, threw herself on the policeman, shrieking hysterically. They were taken to the police station with a dozen others. Next morning they were fined. The newspapers prominently displayed a story about the 'wife of a well-known city financier.' And now Richard telephoned Molly, who, in her turn, refused to help him. 'You wouldn't lift a finger about Marion, you only care now because the newspapers are on the trail and might find out about Jean.' So Richard telephoned Anna. During this conversation Anna watched herself standing holding the telephone receiver, a small brittle smile on her face, while Richard and she exchanged the phrases of their hostility. She felt as if she were being willed to do this; as if no word that either she or Richard used could have been any different; and as if what they were saying was the exchange of maniacs. He was incoherently angry: 'It's an absolute farce. Plotted it, that's what you've done, to get your own back. African independence, what a farce! Spontaneous demonstration. You've sicked the communists on to Marion and she's so innocent she doesn't recognise one when she sees one. It's all because you and Molly want to make a fool out of me.' 'But of course that's all it is, dear Richard.' 'It's your idea of a joke, company director's wife turned red.' 'Of course.' 'And I'm going to see that you're exposed.' Anna was thinking: the reason why this is so frightening is that if this weren't England, Richard's anger would mean people losing their jobs, or going to prison, or being shot. Here he's just a man in a bad temper, but he's a reflection of something so terrible... and I stand here making feeble sarcasms. She said, sarcastically: 'My dear Richard, neither Marion nor Tommy planned this. They just drifted along with the crowd.' 'Drifted along! Who do you think you are fooling?' 'As it happens I was there. Didn't you know that demonstrations at this particular moment are in fact spontaneous? The C. P.'s lost whatever grip it had on young people, and the Labour Party's too respectable to organise this sort of thing. So what happens is, groups of young people go and express themselves about Africa or war and so on.' 'I might have known you were there.' 'No, you needn't have known. Because it was an accident. I was coming home from the theatre, and I saw a crowd of students rushing along the street. I got off the bus and went along to have a look. I didn't know Marion and Tommy were there until I saw it in the newspapers.' 'So what do you intend to do about it?' 'I don't intend to do anything about it. You can deal with the red menace yourself.' And Anna put down the receiver, knowing that this was not the end, and that in fact she would do something about it, because some kind of logic was working that would force her to. Molly telephoned, in a state of collapse, soon after: 'Anna, you've got to see Tommy and try and make him see sense.' 'Have you tried?' 'That's what's so odd. I can't even try. I keep telling myself-I can't go on living like a guest in my own house with Marion and Tommy taking it over. Why should I? But then something odd happens, I work myself up to go and face them-but you can't face Marion, she isn't there. And I find myself thinking: Well why not? What does it matter? Who cares? I find myself shrugging my shoulders. I come in from the theatre and I sneak upstairs in my own home so as not to disturb Marion and Tommy, feeling rather guilty to be there at all. Do you understand that?' 'Yes, unfortunately I do.' 'Yes. But what frightens me is this-if you actually describe the situation in words-you know, my husband's second wife moving into my house because she can't live without my son, etc.-it's not merely odd, it's-but of course, that's got nothing to do with anything. Do you know what I was thinking yesterday, Anna? I was sitting upstairs, quiet as a mouse, so as not to disturb Marion and Tommy and thinking I'd simply pack a bag and wander off somewhere and leave them to it, and I thought that the generation after us are going to take one look at us, and get married at eighteen, forbid divorces, and go in for strict moral codes and all that, because the chaos otherwise is just too terrifying...' Here Molly's voice wavered, and she ended quickly: 'Please see them Anna, you've got to, because I simply can't cope with anything.' Anna put on her coat, picked up her bag, was ready to 'cope.' She had no idea at all of what to say, or even what she thought. She was standing in the middle of her room, empty as a paper bag, ready to walk over to Marion, to Tommy, and say-what? She thought of Richard, of his conventional thwarted anger; of Molly, all her courage drained into listless weeping; of Marion gone beyond pain into a cool hysteria; of Tommy-but she could only see him, see the blinded stubborn face, she could feel a kind of force coming from him, but she could not put a name to it. Suddenly she giggled. Anna heard the giggle: yes, that was how Tommy giggled that night he came to see me before he tried to kill himself. How odd, I've never heard myself laugh like that before. What has happened to that person inside Tommy who giggled like that? He's gone completely-I suppose Tommy killed him when the bullet went through his head. How strange I should let out that bright meaningless giggle! What am I going to say to Tommy? I don't even know what's happening. What's it all about? I have to walk up to Marion and Tommy and say: You must stop this pretence of caring about African nationalism, you both know quite well it's nonsense? Anna giggled again, at the meaninglessness of it. Well, what would Tom Mathlong say? She imagined herself sitting across the table in a cafe with Tom Mathlong telling him about Marion and Tommy. He would listen and say: 'Anna, you tell me these two people have chosen to work for African liberation? And why should I care about their motives?' But then he would laugh. Yes. Anna could hear his laugh, deep, full, shaken out of his stomach. Yes. He would put his hands on his knees and laugh, then shake his head and say: 'My dear Anna, I wish we had your problems.' Anna, hearing the laugh, felt better. She hastily picked up various bits of paper suggested to her by thinking of Tom Mathlong; she stuffed them into her bag and ran down into the street and along to Molly's house. She thought as she went of the demonstration Marion and Tommy had been arrested at. The demonstration was not at all like the orderly political demonstrations of the communist party in the old days; or like a Labour Party meeting. No, it was fluid, experimental-people were doing things without knowing why. The stream of young people had flowed down the street to the headquarters like water. No one directed or controlled them. Then the flood of people around the building, shouting slogans almost tentatively, as if listening to hear how they would sound. Then the arrival of the police. And the police were hesitant and tentative too. They didn't know what to expect. Anna, standing to one side, had watched: under the restless, fluid movement of people and police was an inner pattern or motif. About a dozen or twenty young men, all with the same look on their faces-a set, stern, dedicated look, were moving in such a way as to deliberately taunt and provoke the police. They would rush past a policeman, or up to him, so close that a helmet was tipped forward or an arm jogged, apparently accidentally. They would dodge off, then come back. The policemen were watching this group of young men. One by one, they were arrested; because they were behaving in such a way that they would have to be arrested. And at the moment of arrest each face wore a look of satisfaction, of achievement. There was a moment of private struggle-the policeman using as much brutality as he dared; and on his face a sudden look of cruelty. Meanwhile the masses of students who had not come to pursue their private need to challenge and be punished by authority continued to chant slogans, to test out their political voices, and their relationship with the police was a different one altogether, there was no bond between them and the police. And what look had Tommy's face worn when he had been arrested? Anna knew without having seen it. When she opened the door of Tommy's room he was alone and he asked at once: 'Is that Anna?' Anna stopped herself from saying: How did you know? and asked: 'Where's Marion?' He said, stiff and suspicious: 'She's upstairs.' He might have said aloud: 'I don't want you to see her.' His dark blank eyes were fixed on Anna, almost centred on her, so that she felt exposed, so heavy was that dark stare. Yet it was not quite centered; the Anna whom he was forbidding or warning was very slightly to her left. Anna felt, with a touch of hysteria, that she was being forced to move left, into his direct line of vision, or no-vision. Anna said: 'I'll go up, no please don't bother.' For he had half-raised himself, in a movement to stop her. She shut the door and went straight up the stairs to the flat she had lived in with Janet. She was thinking that she had left Tommy because she had no connection with him, had nothing to say; that she was going to see Marion, to whom she had nothing to say. The stairs were narrow and dark. Anna's head lifted out of the well of dark into the white painted cleanliness of a tiny landing. Through the door she saw Marion, bent over a newspaper. She greeted Anna with a gay social smile. 'Look!' she cried, thrusting the paper triumphantly at Anna. There was a photograph of Marion, and the words: 'It's absolutely sickening the way the poor Africans are being treated.' And so on. The comment was malicious, but apparently Marion couldn't see that it was. She read over Anna's shoulder, smiling, giving naughty little hunches to her shoulders, almost wriggling with guilty delight. 'My mother and my sisters are absolutely furious, they are absolutely beside themselves.' 'I can imagine,' said Anna, drily. She heard her dry critical little voice, saw Marion wince away from it. Anna sat in the white-covered armchair. Marion sat on the bed. She looked like a great girl, this untidy handsome matron. She looked winsome and coquettish. Anna thought: I'm here, presumably, to make Marion face reality. What is her reality? An awful honesty lit by liquor. Why shouldn't she be like this, why shouldn't she spend the rest of her life giggling and tipping policemen's helmets and conspiring with Tommy? 'It's lovely to see you, Anna,' said Marion, after waiting for Anna to say something. 'Would you like some tea?' 'No,' said Anna, rousing herself. But it was too late. Marion was already out of the room and in the little kitchen next door. Anna followed her. 'Such a lovely little flat, how I love it, how lucky you were to live here, I wouldn't have been able to tear myself away.' Anna looked at it, the charming little flat, with its low ceilings, its neat gleaming windows. Everything was white, bright, fresh. Every object in it caused her pain, because these small smiling rooms had held hers and Michael's love, four years of Janet's childhood, her growing friendship with Molly. Anna leaned against a wall and looked at Marion, whose eyes were glazed with hysteria while she acted the role of a tripping hostess, and behind the hysteria was a mortal terror that Anna was going to send her home and away from this white refuge from responsibility. Anna switched off; something inside her went dead, or moved apart from what was happening. She became a shell. She stood there, looking at words like love, friendship, duty, responsibility, and knew them to be all lies. She felt herself shrug. And as Marion saw the shrug real terror claimed her face and she said: 'Anna!' It was an appeal. Anna faced Marion with a smile, which she knew to be empty, and thought well, it doesn't matter in the slightest. She went back into the other room and sat down, empty. Soon Marion came in with the tea-tray. She looked guilty and defiant, because of the Anna she had expected to face her. She began with a great fussing of teaspoons and teacups, to put off the Anna that was not there; then she sighed, she pushed away the tea-tray, and her face went soft. She said: 'I know Richard and Molly told you to come and talk to me.' Anna sat silent. She felt she would sit silent forever. And then she knew she was going to begin talking. She thought: I wonder what I'm going to say? And I wonder who the person is who will say it? How odd, to sit here, waiting to hear what one will say. She said, almost dreamily: 'Marion, do you remember Mr. Mathlong?' (She thought: I'm going to talk about Tom Mathlong, am I, how odd!) 'Who's Mr. Mathlong?' 'The African leader. You remember, you came to see me about him.' 'Oh yes, the name slipped away from me for the moment.' 'I was thinking about him this morning.' 'Oh were you?' 'Yes. I was.' (Anna's voice continued calm and detached. She listened to it.) Marion had begun to look conscious and distressed. She was tugging at a strand of loose hair, winding it around her forefinger. 'When he was here two years ago, he was very depressed. He had spent weeks trying to see the Colonial Secretary, and being snubbed. He had a pretty good idea he'd be in prison very soon. He's a very intelligent man, Marion.' 'Yes, I'm sure he is.' Marion's smile at Anna was quick and involuntary, as if to say: Yes, you're being clever, I know what you're getting at. 'On Sunday he rang me up and said he was tired and he needed a rest. So I took him down to Greenwich on the river boat. On the way back he was very silent. He sat in the boat smiling. He was looking at the banks. You know, Marion, it's very impressive, coming back from Greenwich, the solid mass of London? The County Council Building? And the enormous commercial buildings. And the wharves and the ships and the docks. And then Westminster...' (Anna was talking, softly, still interested to find out what she was going to say next.) 'Everything's been there for centuries. I asked him