Читать книгу A Ripple from the Storm - Doris Lessing - Страница 5

From the dusty windows of a small room over Black Ally’s Café it could be seen that McGrath’s ballroom was filling fast. Groups of people clogged all the pillared gold-painted entrances of the hotel.

Jasmine said composedly: ‘Jackie’s very late,’ and, having neatly fastened the windows and turned herself around, she smiled at Martha. Martha smiled back with affectionate devotion. The devotion was no less because its quality had changed. Three months before, she had regarded this competent girl with awe: Jasmine was not afraid to stand on a platform before hundreds of people; she understood that mysterious process organization; and people always suggested her first if a secretary were needed. Martha had been used to watching her descend demurely from a platform with her files and papers or selling pamphlets at the door, feeling that she must be of an entirely superior order of person, not because she was competent, but because competence was the result of years of service in public causes of one kind or another.

Now Martha could do these things herself. She had learned without knowing she was learning by being with Jasmine so much of her time. She understood she had become for others what Jasmine had been for her when the pretty English schoolteacher, Marjorie Pratt, her fine blue eyes alive with admiration, had said: ‘I do admire you, Matty, for not being afraid of doing these things in public.’ At which Martha had felt an affectionate pity – not for Marjorie, who would herself soon acquire these so easily acquired qualities, but for herself of three months ago.

Martha said: ‘William’s late too. They’ve probably got some sort of meeting in the camp.’

Again the two girls exchanged a warm smile. In it was the affection every member of the group felt for the others: a communal tenderness. But there was more: Jasmine and Martha, both with lovers from the airforce, had a special tie. They did not speak of what they felt: their men would most likely be posted soon, and they would be left alone: their happiness was lit by the foreknowledge of loss. Or rather, this was what each felt on behalf of the other, a gentle protectiveness for the other’s situation, as if for someone weaker; and all these emotions were part of that greater elation on which they had all been floating now for months, ever since the formation of ‘the group’.

The small grimy room had in it a small deal table, a couple of hard benches and some unpainted chairs, This was the group’s headquarters and home. It was also the scene of Jasmine’s love, for there was a campbed folded against the wall beside the filing cabinet. To Martha, with her painful need to admire someone for qualities she could never possess herself, it seemed natural that Jasmine’s love should be at home here, camped among the files and papers of the world Revolution. On those rare nights when Jackie was free from the camp and Jasmine from her family, here it was that they lay in each other’s arms. To Martha, her own love seemed domestic and ordinary in comparison.

Jasmine was independent of her family because – or so it seemed, she was so bound to it. The Cohens had heard of their daughter’s affair with this disreputable character from the camp, and confronted her with their knowledge. She had said calmly, yes, she intended to live with Jackie Cooper when the war was over. Yes, she did know he was married and had children. ‘You can’t expect them to understand,’ she had remarked, telling Martha of the unpleasant scene. ‘I did explain it was a question of the revolution, but I saw it was no use.’

It seemed that the parents, both in tears, had officially disowned Jasmine, an entirely ritual act, for she still lived at home. But they would not speak to her. ‘I can’t leave home,’ she explained, ‘because it would be such a disgrace for them in the community.’ (She meant the Jewish community of this small town.) That kind of thing is very important to them; they simply can’t help it.’ To protect her parents from the results of their own attitudes, she was prepared to live at home like an outcast, treated as if she did not exist. Martha admired her for this chivalry she was convinced was far beyond herself.

Her own mother had also cast her off, in a letter of the same ritual quality. Martha, Mrs Quest had announced by registered letter, was no longer her daughter. Unable to discover the right answer to this, Martha had done nothing at all. Besides, she was so busy she had no time to think about it. As a result, Mrs Quest had come bustling one morning into the furnished room Martha now lived in, saying: ‘Dear me, how untidy you are!’ That final casting-off letter might never have been written and posted. And Mr Quest, meeting Martha, outside the chemist’s shop near the house, had announced vaguely: ‘Ah, there you are, old chap! How’s everything with you, all right?’ In this way he had been enabled not to make judgments or to take a stand. But this meant that Martha could no longer go to her father for his advice and support. She scarcely admitted to herself that she needed it. But on occasions like this, when Jasmine and she were alone, engaged on some ‘group work’ – they were at the moment stacking pamphlets and books on the Soviet Union into a suitcase for the meeting – they were likely to discuss their parents. They were talking about the difficulties of ‘re-educating the older generation to socialist ethics’, and what sort of work would be best suited to the capacities of Mr and Mrs Cohen, Mr and Mrs Quest – work which would release them into being much better and nobler people than they were now; while they simultaneously worried about the unpunctuality of their lovers.

At last they heard voices from the pavement below and they went to the window and peered out. Beside a taxi stood William and Jackie; the taxi driver was standing with them; and Jackie had his arm on the black man’s shoulder and was talking directly into his face, his own forceful face expressing an intimacy of persuasion. The black man was nodding, but seemed uneasy; and Martha and Jasmine also instinctively cast wary glances up and down the street in case anyone was watching the scene. Jasmine leaned over and said in a cautious voice: ‘Hey there, Jackie, be careful.’ Jackie glanced up and nodded, but continued his emotional pressure on the driver. Martha therefore called down to William: ‘We’re going to be late.’ She could see that the young man had been trying to hurry Jackie; for now he smiled quickly up at them both, as if glad of their moral support, and said something to Jackie, who was irritated at the interruption, but he gave a final squeeze to the black man’s elbow, smiled warmly into his face, and then turned and vanished into the doorway of Black Ally’s. He must have forgotten to pay the taxi-man, for William now did so. The taxi drove off and William again looked up at the two young women, who could hear Jackie’s steps on the wooden stairs, with a small smiling upwards grimace, which was a warning. Then he too disappeared into the doorway. Martha and Jasmine turned back into the room, looking severe. All kinds of loyalties prevented them from speaking; but Martha’s look said to Jasmine that it was her task to deal with the situation.

Jackie Bolton came in with his soft wolf-tread, unbuttoning the jacket of his uniform with one hand, while he laid the other on Jasmine’s cheek and smiled into her eyes. The publicity of this love gesture embarrassed Martha; she knew that it was partly designed to make her feel jealous of Jasmine. She looked away, for William was coming in. Immediately William said: ‘Don’t settle yourself down, Jackie. We’re all late.’

Jackie Bolton, smiling, finished removing his jacket, and settled himself on a bench by the wall. Martha saw he had been drinking. Now both she and William glanced at Jasmine, waiting for her to speak. Jasmine was flushed, her small round face distressed. Martha could feel her struggle in herself.

For months no one had said what they felt about Jackie Bolton. Without him, there would never have been ‘the group’. That quality in him which enabled him to inspire others seemed to put him in a category outside criticism; for to criticize Jackie – so he made them all feel – was to criticize the revolution itself. But two days before, Jasmine (flushed and unhappy then as now) had stood up at a meeting and said in her quiet way that she felt Comrade Jackie had a great defect, which was that he had anarchistic tendencies. If the other comrades agreed with her, then Jackie should accept the criticism and try to change himself. The other comrades did agree with her, with a spontaneity that embarrassed them all. Jackie Bolton had, as usual, heaved with silent laughter; but he had at last admitted, although with reluctance, that he had to accept a unanimous vote.

Since then, his manner had held an angry and deliberate sarcasm; he had missed three meetings, saying he was busy in the camp; and Jasmine, William and Martha all knew that he was late tonight and apparently determined to be later still because he had been criticized.

Now he was watching Jasmine with the look of one ready to be betrayed.

‘Jackie,’ said Jasmine firmly, although her voice was unsteady, ‘you know you shouldn’t go talking to Africans like that in public. We’re all trying to be so careful.’

Jackie looked for support to both William and Martha, failed to find it, and turned his eyes up, grinning, at the ceiling.

‘If you want to talk to African contacts, you should get them up here, where no one can see.’

‘That man is worth all the group put together,’ said Jackie. ‘He’s driven me into town several times now. He’s got an instinctive understanding of the fundamentals of politics.’

‘But Jackie, of course he would have. That’s not the point.’ Jasmine was nearly crying.

William came in to support her. ‘Now look, Jackie, it’s just plain bloody silly.’

‘That’s enough from you, Sarge,’ said Pilot Officer Bolton, laughing.

The familiar joke made them all laugh with relief.

Martha said: ‘You promised you’d be here last night to discuss the tactics for the meeting this evening. And now there’s not much time to explain, is there, Jackie?’

‘William’s given me the gist,’ said Jackie airily, and proceeded to put back his jacket and button it.

There was a pause, while Jackie surveyed them, grinning, challenging them to do their duty and criticize him further.

Jasmine said, in a disappointed voice: ‘It’s eight. We should be getting to the meeting.’

The suitcase with the literature lay open on the table. Jackie Bolton examined it, hands in his pockets. ‘Where’s the Marxist stuff?’ he demanded.

‘We took a decision about that,’ said Jasmine, very firmly. ‘No Marxist literature for the Help for our Allies Meetings. It’s the wrong tactics.’

‘Bloody social democrats,’ said Jackie. ‘You’re as bad as the Left Book Club crowd.’ He heaved out another laugh, challenged them with his eyes, but let it go: Jasmine was waiting by the door with her hand on the light switch. William fastened the suitcase, and they all went out, carefully locking the door.

In the street they became two couples. Jasmine put her hand in Jackie’s elbow, but he appeared not to feel it, and she let it fall again. Jasmine and Jackie walked with a yard of pavement between them, in front of Martha and William, who were arm in arm.

When they reached McGrath’s, Jackie said abruptly over his shoulder that he had something to discuss with Jasmine. William and Martha watched the other couple settle themselves in at a table under the noisy orchestra. They felt sorrowful disapproval because of the way Jasmine had succumbed to Jackie.

The ballroom was jammed with lines of chairs, all full. It was the Annual General Meeting of the Society. The gathering was essentially respectable. Or, as Martha put it, after a single confirming glance: The Help for Our Allies Audience. She had ceased to feel a secret disquiet because of the way people fell automatically into groups: a law expressed, in this instance, by the way audiences for Help for Our Allies, Sympathizers of Russia, or the Progressive Club could be recognized at a glance, all drawn together by some invisible bond, although they thought that an individual act of will had made them choose this or that allegiance. Martha was convinced she now understood this law.

On the platform this evening were Messrs Forester, Perr and Pyecroft, together with some prominent businessmen, a couple of members of Parliament, and two clergymen. Martha listened to three sentences from Mr Perr’s opening speech, knew what would follow and ceased to listen.

The hotel management had forgotten to provide tables for the sale of literature. She went in search of them with William. By the time the tables were set out at either side of the entrance, and arranged with pamphlets and collecting tins, and saucers full of change, and she and William had taken their places behind them as salesmen, Mr Perr had finished speaking and Mr Forester was giving the Secretary’s Report, which was an account of garden parties, fêtes and the like. The object of this society was to raise money for Russia (the word had been chosen because it had none of the disagreeable associations of the phrase The Soviet Union) and a very large sum of money had in fact been raised which would in due course reach Russia in the shape of medical supplies. The treasurer, Mr Pyecroft, now proceeded to analyse the figures.

These three men, the three officers of the society, sat prominently around a deal table at the front of the platform. Behind them sat the bank of respectable patrons.

The boring part of the meeting was now over. The next item on the agenda was ‘policy’; and everyone expected a fight. It was not, after all, enough simply to call the Soviet Union Russia.

Boris Krueger stood up from somewhere in the middle of the packed hall and proposed that the society should produce a book consisting of articles about Russia, financed by gift-advertisements, for mass sale. The committee had discussed this proposal one evening the week before from eight until three in the morning, with heat and ill-feeling. The faction represented by Messrs Perr, Forester and Pyecroft said that to sell a book of articles would be interpreted as making propaganda about Russia. The faction represented by Krueger, Anton Hesse and Andrew McGrew said it would be purely factual and nothing to do with propaganda. The real battle was over who was to control this society. That there was a battle was not understood by the respectable patrons, who did not attend the committee meetings. Since the committee could not agree, the battle was to be fought out now by the membership. Boris Krueger’s proposal was the flinging down of a gage in public.

Again Martha did not listen to what was being said: the shortest acquaintance with politics should be enough to teach anyone that listening to the words people use is the longest way around to an understanding of what is going on.

Mr Perr’s long lean body, now upright behind the table, was writhing with affronted rectitude of purpose; the light flashed continually from his agitated spectacles. Then Mr Forester’s equally angular shape jerked itself into various postures expressive of outrage. Mr Pyecroft rose beside them. For a few moments the three men were jerking up and down from their seats like three puppets manipulated by the strings of annoyance. Their faces, however, continued to appeal to the audience with intimate, deferential, but warning smiles.

Martha could see that the people packed on the chairs below the platform had responded to Boris Krueger who had spoken well and calmly, his pale, fattish, intellectual face making no concessions of appeal to them. Now they were feeling disquieted because of the excessive reaction of three officers.

Boris rose to his feet again, not to put forward any new arguments, for he repeated in different words what he had said before, but in order to reimpress his calm and objective image on the audience. The three men on the platform remained seated, in postures of warning anger, while half a dozen people got up one after another around the hall, to say that to produce such a booklet would cost nothing, since the printing would be a gift; and the distribution would of course be done by members of the society. An ironical voice shouted that the articles would cost nothing either, since obviously there were plenty of people prepared to write them for nothing! But everyone in the ballroom laughed at this: it was the laugh that occurs at a public meeting when something has been said which might have been dangerous: a laugh a little too ready, a little too loud, and accompanied by dozens of pairs of eyes seeking each other for confirmation. It was noticeable that at the laugh the three figures on the platform assumed more easy postures: in short, they would accommodate themselves to the mood of the meeting. They had been too ready to see danger.

Mr Perr stood up to say, in the easy amiable tone of his chairman’s address, that he would of course accept the majority opinion. Before he sat down, people were jumping up all over the hall to make suggestions about the practical side of the proposition: the thing had been accepted, in fact, without a vote.

At this moment Martha saw Jasmine and Jackie enter a side door. Jackie’s jacket buttons were undone again and his dark and satirical face was already expressing every sort of contempt. The man’s capacity to impress himself was such that although he had made no sound coming in, all the people on his side of the hall had turned to watch him, and the men on the platform were exchanging warning glances.

Jackie Bolton made his way to an empty chair, excusing himself smilingly, and every time he did so, he caught the eyes of the person he was disturbing and held them until he chose to nod and look into the next face. He seated himself in such a way that everyone expected him to rise to his feet for a speech.

Meanwhile, Jasmine had taken a chair beside Martha at the literature table. Her face expressed exactly what Jackie’s did: a conspiratorial contempt. It cut the current of sympathy between the two girls; and Martha whispered: ‘I hope he’s not going to speak. It’s not necessary now.’ Last night the group had decided that Comrade Jackie would get up to speak only as a last resort; and only to put forward facts, not to make revolutionary speeches! It was to be hoped that Jasmine had explained all this to Jackie while they were drinking in the other room?

‘Oh,’ said Jasmine composedly, rolling her eyes, ‘it won’t do them any harm to hear some home truths about themselves.’

Jackie’s voice could already be heard. He was standing, or rather lounging, at the back of the hall, and he was making that speech they had all decided it would be disastrous for him to make. Jackie had two voices. One was the most correct and colourless version of upper-class speech that could be imagined. He could use it blandly: in order to neutralize himself and his over-colourful personality. And he could use it with undertones of satirical comment, as if to say: This is what you sound like. (He also used it, as Martha had noted with resentment, when he was alone with a woman.) His other voice was the cockney of the streets he had come from and when he chose it he was a different person. The exaggerated contempt he carried with him in his other role became a shoulder-shrugging barrow-boy’s good-natured anarchy; his whole being became alive with darting critical comment. He sometimes dropped into his cockney voice from the pilot officer’s voice, becoming the working-man with admirable effect.

But tonight he was drunk and the two voices, the two personalities, slurred together. He was delivering an attack on the officers and committee of Aid for Our Allies. They were all cowardly, lily-livered social democrats; he, Jackie Bolton, in the name of the oppressed masses of the world, demanded a radical change of policy, the end of weak-minded shilly-shallying … He might have gone on for several minutes, but the chairman rapped on the table. Jackie Bolton heaved out his silent sarcastic laugh. Now Boris Krueger stood up, no longer calm and dignified, speaking directly to Jackie, saying that he would be the first to sympathize with anyone who wished to deliver the oppressed masses of the world from their chains, but this was neither the time nor the place … The chairman rapped again. Neither Boris nor Jackie sat down: they were facing each other over the heads of the silent and unhappy crowd.

‘If you don’t sit down I’ll …’ began the chairman; and stopped himself. He had lost his temper, and Jackie Bolton laughed out openly at the sight.

‘Sit down,’ shouted the chairman.

‘I understand,’ said Jackie pleasantly, ‘that you have agreed to publish the booklet. In that case I propose that a sub-committee to produce it be formed. I put forward the following names to be voted on.’ The names he proposed were: Jasmine Cohen, Anton Hesse, Andrew McGrew, Martha Knowell, Marjorie Pratt and – here his shoulders shook with sarcastic good-nature – ‘Myself.’

Mr Perr stood up and said that a vote had not yet been taken on whether this magazine should or should not be produced. The whole body of people stirred and shifted uneasily, as if they wanted to leave. At this William got up from behind his literature table to say that surely it had been understood before Pilot Officer Bolton’s remarks that there was no need for a vote? He could not understand why a vote had suddenly become necessary. He sat down again, offering Martha a conniving, cheeky smile. She understood that he had been coming to the rescue of a fellow-serviceman, and that he disapproved of Jackie as much as she did. But she did not like the schoolboy’s smile; she was ashamed of any association with Jackie Bolton – and ashamed of being ashamed, since, as a member of the group she was responsible for him.

The three men on the platform had their heads bent together. Mr Perr got up and said that he found it quite impossible to serve on a committee which was being made use of by communists for their own ends. Either they must be got rid of or he would offer his resignation. He remained standing while Mr Forester and Mr Pyecroft also offered their resignations. There was a long embarrassed silence, while they gazed authoritatively at Jackie, apparently expecting him to resign.

Meanwhile, Jasmine was making agitated signs at Jackie to the effect that he ought to resign, for the sake of keeping the society together. But he returned an openly defiant stare.

The silence continued. Then the three men expressed their apologies, and went out of the hall, leaving the officers’ table empty. It seemed no one knew what to do next.

Anton Hesse got to his feet; but Boris Krueger was before him. Boris said it was very unfortunate that this had occurred; and everyone must hope that Mr Forester, Mr Perr and Mr Pyecroft would reconsider their decision. In the meantime they must elect a temporary chairman so that the meeting could elect new officers. At this, a clergyman from the bank of respectable patrons got up to say that he was quite unable to understand the storm which had blown up out of a blue sky but it seemed to him essential that the society should continue, since it was performing a useful service for the war-effort, and he would like to second the last speaker’s suggestion that a temporary chairman be elected. He would like to suggest Mr Krueger.

He was speaking in an affable, apologetic public voice. The expressions on the faces of the respectable patrons were affable and apologetic. People were nodding and smiling in an attempt to make humour save the day. But it was no use: everything was false and unpleasant.

Boris Krueger, since there were no dissensions, climbed on to the platform and said that while he hoped everyone agreed with him that every effort should be made to get the officers to reconsider their decision, he called for nominations from the floor for alternative officers. He waited, standing.

No one spoke. There were perhaps six hundred people crammed together under the chocolate and gold ceiling in McGrath’s ballroom, and they were all silent.

Then Anton Hesse got up and said in his correct manner that perhaps some of the patrons would consent to act as officers? From this Martha understood that Anton was afraid they would lose all their respectable patrons. Boris turned to consult the body of twelve or fourteen people, sitting behind him. They shook their heads, one after another; but it was not possible to tell whether this was because they were too busy to do the actual work, or whether they were considering offering their resignations. On most of their faces strong distaste was mixed with the humour they still continued to offer to the members. Again Anton rose to urge the Reverend Mr Gates (the man who had just spoken) to be chairman. Mr Gates, after a pause, agreed to act as chairman temporarily, and Anton sat down, with a look of satisfaction which explained to Martha that she had under-estimated the danger of the entire body of respectable patrons resigning en bloc. She had learned to have the deepest respect for Anton’s political flair in spite of, perhaps because of, the cold formality of this tall, stiff German who frightened her a little even now, after seeing him every day for months.

Boris Krueger stood down and Mr Gates again called for nominations. A man nobody knew suggested that the last speaker should be secretary. Anton got up and said very smoothly that he was a German, technically an enemy alien, and it was clearly undesirable that this society should have such a person as a secretary. He sat down. The cold bitterness behind his words was such that everyone in the ballroom felt positively guilty. A young girl stood up and said impulsively that she could not see why one of Hitler’s victims should not be the secretary of a society whose aim was, after all, wasn’t it? – to defeat Hitler. But the silence which followed was uncomfortable. Rumours pursued all the foreigners in the town to the effect that they were enemy agents, and Anton Hesse was no exception. Boris Krueger, knowing this, knowing that he too was popularly supposed to be in the pay of Germany, stood up to give public support to Anton, in spite of the fact that political bitterness had prevented the two men from speaking to each other for some months. Boris said that Anton was right: he was a foreigner himself, and therefore able to make such remarks without being suspected of prejudice; and he would like to take this opportunity of saying how fortunate it was Mr Gates had agreed to be chairman, because it would be highly undesirable for a foreigner to be chairman, even temporarily, of a society such as this. He had intended to sound magnanimous, but he smiled uncomfortably around the audience, his spectacles gleaming. Mr Gates thanked Mr Krueger for his remarks ‘with which he did not necessarily agree’ – and again called for nominations. And again there was silence.

At this William proposed Jasmine as secretary. She had resigned from the position three months before because she was also secretary of Sympathizers of Russia, but when a dozen hands shot up from the hall to second the proposal she nodded a demure agreement.

There remained the position of treasurer. It was agreed that the committee should be empowered to co-opt one.

Mr Gates then announced the next item on the agenda which was an address by Mr Horace Packer, MP, on the course of the war on the Russian Front. There was a storm of relieved applause; the people who apparently had been on the point of slipping away from the hall now settled themselves again in their seats.

Jackie Bolton, who had been sitting and smiling as if the unpleasantness had had no connection with him at all, now rose with a conspicuously negligent ease and began squeezing his way out along the row of chairs. He came to where Martha and Jasmine were, laid his hand on Jasmine’s shoulder and said: ‘I have to be back in camp by twelve. We must have an urgent group meeting. Get them all together, will you?’

Jasmine, visibly torn by the conflict of her love for him and her complete disapproval, said uncomfortably: ‘But, Jackie, how can we possibly go now?’

‘Oh, find someone else to do the literature.’

‘We can go to the office when this is over.’

‘No. We’d better meet in the park.’

‘But why?’

‘It’s safer,’ said Jackie, with weary importance.

Jasmine’s eyes and Martha’s met involuntarily out of embarrassed disapproval of these histrionics, but Jasmine said: ‘Very well, but we had better all leave separately.’

Jackie Bolton went out, with the eyes of all the people in the hall on him. Jasmine proceeded to write a series of little notes: to Andrew McGrew, Anton Hesse and Marjorie Pratt; folded them up, and handed them to people at the ends of the rows of chairs the addressees sat in, as if she were releasing into the air three carrier pigeons. Then she approached a young aircraftsman who had been anxious to help in the past, asked him to guard the literature sales, and, haying made all arrangements, nodded at Martha and William. Martha, William and Jasmine quietly left the hall after Jackie. Already Anton and Andrew and Marjorie were reading their notes and looking towards the door. The group’ – conspicuous with discretion, were leaving the meeting in a body.

Jasmine found Jackie smoking moodily on the pavement outside McGrath’s. This time it was he who approached her elbow with his hand – not in apology, for one would never expect that from Jackie Bolton, but in a laughing declaration of intimacy. Jasmine said at once: ‘Jackie, you’ve behaved very badly.’ He laughed at her, and the two set off together towards the park. Martha and William followed. Inside the ballroom Mr Horace Packer’s statements were earning great applause. There were continuous storms of clapping. From outside it sounded like heavy rain on a tin roof: the small overall rattling of individual drops striking metal together in a swelling and subsiding din of sky-flung rain. Martha instinctively glanced up at the sky, which was clear and moonlit.

‘Why the park?’ she demanded, irritably humorous.

‘He’s got news. He really has.’

‘What news?’

‘Oh, perhaps it’ll come to nothing.’

All Martha’s dissatisfaction with Jackie, and with William for associating himself with Jackie, culminated in: ‘He’s got no sense of discipline at all. He’s just an anarchist really.’

But at this William said in the tone of a man humouring a woman: ‘Why are you so cross, Matty?’ And he did a couple of dance-steps along the pavement.

Feeling herself to be humoured, she remembered how often recently William had reminded her of Douglas. She therefore humoured him by telling him a chatty and gay story about something that had happened that morning in the office, because – although she had not yet admitted this to herself, it was not worth disliking William when he was bound to be leaving her so soon.

Exchanging amiable bits of news, they reached the big open gates of the park. Ahead, dark spires of conifers reached up into the moonlight. Under the trees, Jasmine’s pale dress spotted with shadow and with moonlight drifted beside the black lean shape of Jackie. A springy mat of pine-needles gave under Martha’s feet, and she watched her black shadow shift and break along the dark trunks of the trees.

The two couples met where a white path blazed in the bright light, bordered thick with clumps of canna lilies sculptured out of shadow.

‘The others won’t know where we are,’ said Martha.

‘Then they’ll just have to look for us,’ said Jackie, laughing.

There was a bench set in the grass beside the path. Jackie stepped high over the clumps of lilies to sit on the bench. On the back was written: For Europeans only. Instinctively he straightened himself, and turned away from it. His face in the moonlight showed a sharp and angry repugnance. When he noticed the others had watched him, had noticed what he felt about the segregated bench, he said histrionically: ‘Bloody white fascists.’ Then, for the first time that evening he looked uncomfortable, and walked away ahead of them to where a small Chinese-looking pavilion stood at the end of the path, surrounded by flower-beds. The night-air was thick with mingled scents. From this pavilion a band from the African regiment played on Sunday afternoons while the people of the town lay about on the grass, or sat in deck-chairs, eating ice-cream, smoking, gossiping.

Jackie sat on the chill dry grass beside the pavilion and the others joined him. Almost at once William leaped up and said he must go and see if he could find the others. He went off. There was an officiousness in his bearing which Martha disliked, and chose not to notice; but Jackie looked after him, smiling, and said: Sergeant Brown, Administration. His dark face was hallowed into dramatic lines and folds by the sharp moon. He smiled at the two girls, one after another, as if he owed allegiance to neither. Suddenly he was simple, natural and direct. He was a man who would always be at his best alone with women.

‘When I leave here,’ he said quietly, ‘what I’ll remember will be this park.’

He spent whatever free time he had in the park, lying on the grass with an anthology of poetry.

Jasmine’s breathing changed; he heard it, remembered that after all she was interested in the possibility of his having to leave, and laid his hands on hers.

He looked straight up into the starlit solemnity of the sky and began to quote:

How to keep – is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or

brace, lace, latch, or catch or key to keep Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, from

vanishing away?

His voice was drowned by the whine of aircraft engines: an aeroplane, landing lights flicking, went past overhead.

Jackie said in cockney: ‘Half of a wing of one of those mucking machines would rebuild a whole street in that mucking slum my mother’s in.’ He was coldly, deadly serious. He waited until the aircraft had dipped, a silver shape in the silver light, past the trees and continued with the poem in his other voice. The rest of the group, shepherded by William, were approaching through the shadows, but Jackie went steadily on, and not until Anton Hesse, Marjorie, Andrew and William stood over them did he acknowledge their presence by raising his voice at them:

Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks,

maiden gear gallantry gaiety and grace …

He stopped and added laughing: ‘But that is counterrevolutionary of course.’

Andrew, gruffly annoyed, said: ‘What’s this, a poetry-reading?’

Anton Hesse, his rough pale hair as white as sand in the moonlight, his eyes glinting with white disapproval, said: ‘Why have you convened a meeting here? What is the reason for fetching us all up here and leaving the other meeting?’

Jackie said: ‘Because I thought it would be more pleasant to sit in the park than in that dirty little office.’

Jasmine said with determination: ‘We should elect a chairman.’ Her tone said plainly that she did not intend to be moved, by the poetry or by anything else, away from her determination to criticize Jackie.

‘Andrew,’ said Marjorie. They all agreed. They were now sitting in a circle on the grass.

‘Now, Comrade Jackie,’ Andrew said in blunt annoyance, ‘you convened this meeting. I should like to say first that if you really fetched us here because you wanted to admire the moonlight then I, for one, wish to pass a vote of censure.’ The formal chairman’s voice sounded so absurd here, in the spaces of the big park, that he added, smiling: ‘But only as a matter of form.’

They all laughed and became, instantly, ‘the group’.

‘Anyway,’ said Jackie, ‘all those social democrats and Trotskyists are spying on us. I caught Boris sniffing around in Black Ally’s Café yesterday.’

The group tightened still further out of its units.

‘I brought you here,’ Jackie said, lowering his voice, ‘to say that I’ve found out that all of us service types are likely to be posted at any moment.’

‘What makes you think that?’ demanded Corporal McGrew. He was shaken; alone of the airforce men he liked his stay in the Colony and did not want to leave.

‘I got young Peters in the canteen and screwed it out of him,’ said Jackie. There was a chorus of contemptuous exclamations. A great many men from the camp attended the Progressive Club meetings. They were mostly aircraftsmen and of a type: this last was not clearly understood, however, until a certain Sergeant Peters began attending their meetings: he was so unlike the others that comparisons were forced on them. He was a clipped, almost mincing young man with a habit of leaning forward over a question, head on one side, a disagreeable smile on his small pink lips, saying: ‘Do I take it that you mean to imply … ?’ Jackie Bolton, whose particular genius it was to establish a swift persuasive intimacy with people, had gone home one night on the camp bus with this youth who was being querulous because Andrew McGrew had said across the floor at the meeting that he was a typical member of the corrupt petty bourgeoisie. Sergeant Peters was slightly drunk. He had told Jackie that he had been appointed by the camp commander to attend all the ‘Red’ meetings in town so as to take down the names of all the airmen present. He turned in a list of these names, with a short précis of what each had said, after every meeting. He was unaffected by Jackie’s jovial contempt for him; and a remarkable situation developed where, while informing on his fellows to the commander, this instinctive spy would then immediately go to Jackie Bolton and tell him everything he had said, for as he explained: ‘If the Labour Government gets in and you Reds take over, things might be quite different at Home and I don’t want to be on the wrong side.’

‘He told me that I and William are for the high jump. The CO’s got it into his head that we are extremely subversive.’

‘Judging from the way you went on tonight I’m not surprised,’ said Andrew.

‘Yes,’ said Jasmine firmly, bracing herself to criticize her man, although she was fighting down tears because he was leaving. ‘We’ve got to discuss your behaviour, Jackie.’

‘What it amounts to is this,’ said Martha. ‘That because you are leaving you don’t care what sort of difficulties you make for us.’

‘Oh, I can’t be bothered with all this small-town nonsense,’ said Jackie airily. And he got up from the grass and strolled off towards the pavilion, hands low in his pockets, whistling.

The six people who remained were silent: they were agreeing without words that since Comrade Bolton was leaving them, they would let it all drop.

Comrade Bolton was now strolling beside the clumps of moon-blotched lilies as if enjoying a pleasant evening walk.

Anton Hesse, who had not said a word until now, demanded: ‘Comrades, I must have permission to speak.’ He was coldly, contemptuously angry: his anger tautened their sense of responsibility.

‘Comrade Anton,’ said Andrew, with the small tinge of irony his manner always held when Anton was in question.

‘We have been behaving like a bunch of amateurs

‘I agree,’ interrupted Jasmine eagerly. Her eyes were following Jackie’s dark shape at the far end of a path; her face was contracted with pain, yet she was listening closely to the argument: ‘We’ve made every mistake we could make. We had decided, quite correctly, that the Aid for Our Allies should be kept respectable and unpolitical, that its task was to raise money for medical supplies for the Soviet Union and nothing else, and that it should be run by that bunch of social democrats – under our guidance, of course. Now, because of Comrade Bolton it will most likely lose all its sponsors; Trotskyist Krueger will have control of it because he’s in with Gates, unless Jasmine makes it a full-time job controlling it: Jasmine has allowed herself to be secretary again when she already has far too much to do.’

Here Jasmine said demurely: ‘Oh, I don’t mind. I can manage.’

‘No,’ said Anton sharply. ‘That is nonsense. The essence of good organization is never to do anything oneself that someone else can do as well.’ Here they all laughed, but Anton said, ‘Yes, yes, yes. You laugh. But you wouldn’t laugh if you had learned anything at all. The basic trouble is, we have neglected our theory. The sort of thing that happened tonight is a direct result of not seriously analysing the situation …’

Here they smiled: the phrase, analysing the situation, was peculiarly Anton’s.

‘Yes, comrades. Analysing the situation. And now. It will soon be eleven o’clock. The airforce comrades must get to their buses. But I propose that we convene a meeting to fundamentally reorganize the work of this group. Because things cannot continue like this.’

Here Jackie Bolton returned to the group, and seated himself beside William instead of beside Jasmine. The two men already had a look of being distant from the rest. They all realized that Jackie had been making his farewells to the park and, in a way, to them all: he was already thinking of the next place the fortunes of war would drop him into.

‘Very well,’ said Andrew. ‘I agree with Comrade Anton.’ Andrew and Anton always agreed with each other although they could not address two words to each other without the hostility sounding in their voices. ‘We must have a special meeting. I take it everyone agrees. Tomorrow night there is the committee meeting of the Progressive Club. The night after there is a five o’clock meeting of the Sympathizers of Russia. At eight o’clock at our office there will be a special business meeting of the group. Attendance obligatory. No excuses will be accepted.’ He stood up, saying to the other two men from the camp: ‘We’ll miss our bus.’

The three airforce men became a group separate from the civilians, led by Jackie, who said in cockney: ‘Cerm on, mates, cerm on, get moving naow.’ They went off into the shadows under the trees. Anton and the three women remained. Anton nodded at them, formally, as was his way, and he departed in another direction, without offering to see any of them home. Now the girls separated: Jasmine to her home where she would be met by silence; Marjorie to the boarding-house; and Martha to the room she was renting in the house of the widow Carson which was very close, being opposite one of the gates of the park.

Martha said to herself: I must walk slowly and enjoy the moonlight. She was conscious that the moment she left the group she felt as let down as if a physical support had been removed. ‘I’m not alone enough – I should enjoy it when I am.’ But she was almost running across the park. As usual a demon of impatience was snapping at her heels, pushing her into the future. Her dissatisfaction at the evening, at Jackie Bolton, at the months of her life in the group had crystallized in the form of words Anton Hesse had used. They had been behaving like a bunch of amateurs. Well, the day after tomorrow some serious analysis would set them on the right path; as these words slid through her brain it was as if they rolled up the past months and pushed them away. Two days ago, walking through the park with Jasmine, the girls had agreed, as if talking about some period a long way behind them, that they had been very romantic and irresponsible when they had joined the group. That conversation with Jasmine now seemed a long time ago. So much experience and active learning had been crammed into each day of the four months since she had walked out of her husband’s house that she thought of herself as an entirely different person.

The white gates of widow Carson’s house gleamed just ahead. Now Martha did walk slowly. She knew that as soon as she got inside she would fall over on to her bed and sleep, and she had to think: she was thinking that she had been informed William was leaving, and she ought to be unhappy about it. But she was not. She was relieved. Two days ago William had come to her room to say that ‘he had reason to believe’ that Douglas, her husband, had put pressure on to the camp authorities to get him posted. More, that ‘he had evidence’ that Douglas was thinking of citing him as corespondent in a divorce case. Martha had listened to this, conscious of dislike for William. Her own contempt for any forms of pressure society might put on her was so profound and instinctive that she as instinctively despised anyone who paid tribute to them.

When Douglas had threatened her with the machinery of the law, she had shrugged and laughed. When William spoke of ‘getting legal advice’ and she understood that he was enjoying the idea of a fight with Douglas over the possession of her – then, for a few moments, she had seen the two men as one, and identical with the pompous, hypocritical and essentially male fabric of society. That was why she now felt relief at the idea of William’s going. Yet, in the eyes of this small town, ‘Matty Knowell had left her husband and a child for an airforce sergeant.’ She succeeded in suppressing her amazed dismay at this view of herself by the device of never thinking of the people who, so short a time ago, had made up her life. She lived in ‘the group’ and did not care about the judgments of anyone else. She felt as if she were invisible to anyone but the group.

Outside the Carson gates she stopped. This was because what she referred to as ‘coping with Mrs Carson’ was becoming more of a strain daily. So much of a strain in fact that now she abruptly swerved off so as to walk around the block and collect her energies for what might follow.

When Martha rented this room she had informed the widow that she intended to live with William Brown: she had spoken defiantly: for the moment Mrs Carson represented the society she despised. But Mrs Carson had merely seemed puzzled. The irregularities of behaviour under the outward forms of conformity in this small Colonial town might be more easily tolerated than in, let us say, a small town in Britain, but they did not take the shape Martha insisted on for herself. The widow Carson did once inquire if Martha was going to marry Sergeant Brown when the war was over, but Martha said, obviously irritated, that she didn’t know. Mrs Carson sighed and remarked that her own daughter, now happily married to a Johannesburg businessman, had been unhappy in her first two marriages. Martha did not seem to see any parallel. It had crossed Mrs Carson’s mind that perhaps Martha believed in free love? But the phrase had associations which did not fit in with Martha’s manner, which was alarmingly unfrivolous. She therefore ceased to think about it; she returned to her private preoccupations and was interested in Martha only in so far as the young woman would enter them with her.

The first night Martha was in Mrs Carson’s house, she had woken at two in the morning at a noise in the passage outside her door. She found the widow, a gaunt figure in a cretonne dressing-gown, her grey hair in draggle-tails around her bony grey face, with her ear bent to the keyhole of the door that led to the veranda. Mrs Carson had taken her arm between two trembling hands and demanded: ‘Did you hear a noise?’ Martha had recognized a form of neurosis only too familiar to her. The widow Carson’s life was a long drama played against fantasies about her servants. She never kept one longer than a month: they left for the most part in a state of bewilderment.

Mrs Carson had been left well-off by her husband and only let a room because she was afraid to be alone at night. She always sat up until Martha came home, alone or with William, then dragged heavy iron bars across the doors and fitted specially-made steel screens across the windows. She went to sleep in a fortress. Yet more than once Martha had seen Mrs Carson, late at night, standing motionless under the big jacaranda tree at the gate, watching the house. She was engaged in some dream of a black marauder breaking into the house in spite of all its bars and barricades and finding it empty. As for Martha, she slept as usual with her windows and doors open, but promised Mrs Carson to keep the door between her own room and the rest of the house locked.

Collecting herself to face Mrs Carson was not an effort, for charity’s sake, to sink herself in the sick woman’s private world, but rather an effort to test her own vision of the world against the other. Mrs Carson, she told herself, was the product of a certain kind of society, and the Mrs Carsons would cease to exist when that society came to an end. Her patience with the terrible obsessed woman was because she saw her as a variety of psychological dinosaur. But more than once, after sitting with Mrs Carson behind barred windows and doors, assuring her that no black man with evil intentions lurked outside, she had returned to her own room invaded by despair. The wings of elation had folded under her. She even caught herself thinking: Supposing she’s stronger than we are?

Therefore, before entering the big empty house at night, when she was by herself and not supported by William, she always hardened herself and strengthened the buttresses and arches of her own dream: over there, she thought, meaning in the Soviet Union – over there it’s all finished, race prejudice and anti-Semitism.

She made the trip around the block fast, shivering a little, for the moonlight lay cold everywhere, and she had no coat. She intended to go as silently as possible to her own room, but the front door stood slightly ajar, and she knew Mrs Carson waited just inside it. She cautiously pushed the door in on the darkened passage, and the widow said: ‘Oh, is that you, dear?’ Martha felt her arm encircled in a bony trembling grasp and said cheerfully: ‘Yes, it’s me.’ She switched on the light with her free hand, so that the passage showed its polished bare boards, its fading pink-flowered wallpaper, and a great glaring brass bowl on a wooden stand, filled with marigolds and zinnias. Mrs Carson wore her cretonne dressing-gown, and her head was covered over with curlers. ‘You didn’t see anything as you came in?’ she demanded, her face white and gaunt, her eyes gleaming dark in deep sockets.

‘Nothing. There really isn’t anything. You should go to bed now.’

‘Today Saul looked at me in a very strange way.’

‘I expect you imagined it.’

‘I’ll give him the sack in the morning. He’s got ideas in his head. I can see he has thoughts in his head.’

‘I’ll bar the door for you and then you go to bed,’ said Martha.

Mrs Carson said: ‘Thank you, dear.’ She sounded, as always, disappointed: Martha had not said what she wanted to hear. Suddenly she remarked, in an ordinary voice: ‘You’ve got a visitor.’

‘Who?’

‘Yes, you’ve got a visitor.’ Then, her voice returning to the dragging insistent note of her obsession: ‘You won’t forget to lock your door tonight?’

‘No, I promise.’

Mrs Carson knew that Martha slept with the door open, but as long as she heard in words that it was locked, she was satisfied, apparently.

‘I’ll sack Saul in the morning. There was quite a nice-looking boy who came around this afternoon looking for work. I’ll give him a try.’

Martha’s visitor was her husband.

Douglas was sitting with his back to the window in such a way that he could watch both doors. From his attitude, which was tense and suspicious, Martha saw that he must have been there some time, and that while he was waiting he had, as she put it, ‘been working himself up into a state’. His face had the swollen reddened look which meant she could not take anything he said seriously.

He said: ‘I’m sorry if this is an inconvenient time to call.’

She said nothing, so he insisted: ‘It might have been inconvenient.’

‘Not at all,’ she said, falling automatically into meaningless politeness.

He brought out, self-consciously bitter: ‘William might have been here.’

‘Well, obviously,’ said Martha coldly. She sat down across the room from him. Her knees were trembling and this annoyed her. It had taken her a long time to admit that she was physically frightened of Douglas, but admitting it made things worse, not better.

She had seen him three times since leaving his house.

The first, about a fortnight after leaving him, he had come one Sunday morning to ask her to go for a drive with him. His manner had been simple and pleasant and she found herself liking him. She would have accepted if it were not that she had a group meeting that morning. After he had left her, she was thinking of returning to him. For some days she was very unhappy: the simple friendliness of his manner had made it possible for her to think of the child. Most of the time she was very careful not to allow herself to think of Caroline. Once, missing Caroline, she had borrowed Jasmine’s car and driven several times up and down past the house, to watch the little girl playing in the garden with the nurse-girl. The sight had confused her, for she had not felt as unhappy as she had expected. She had continued to drive up and down past the house until she saw a female figure through a window and believed she recognized Elaine Talbot. Afterwards, the thought of Caroline caused her acute pain. A cold shell she had been careful to build around her heart was gone. She longed for her daughter, and was on the point a dozen times of telephoning Douglas to say she would come back. During this time she was more in love with William than she had ever been. She was rocked by violent and conflicting emotions, vulnerable to a tone in William’s voice, or the sight of a small child playing on the grass verges of a street.

This period of misery had come to a sudden end when about three weeks later Douglas had rung up from the office to demand an interview. As soon as she heard his voice she felt herself harden. She went to his office where he had gone through a scene which she had recognized from the first word as something he was acting out for his own benefit. He questioned her with a fervid cunning about what he referred to as ‘her activities’, watching her all the time with widened glaring eyes, and finally informed her that he was only ‘checking up’ since he had a full report on her behaviour from a private detective. This was so much more dramatic than she had expected, that she was sorry for him, and said, almost humorously, that surely a detective was unnecessary since she would be only too pleased to tell him everything she was doing. ‘After all,’ she pointed out, ‘I have told you everything, haven’t I?’ He ground his teeth at her, but it was as a matter of form: the whole scene had the rehearsed quality she had expected as soon as she had heard the ‘official’ tone on the telephone.

The third time he descended abruptly at eight in the morning and she knew that this was the result of a sleepless night thinking about her. He informed her that in the year before she had left him, she had bought goods to the value of £20 at the shops, and as he was incurring a great deal of extra expense due to her having left him, he felt ‘it was the least she could do’ to pay it back. He produced an account like a shopkeeper’s on a sheet of stiff paper: Item one pair of shoes; Item one sweater, 25s; and so on, handing it to her with a sentimental and appealing smile. His lips trembled; he was nearly in tears.

She took the account and said she would let him have the money as soon as she could. She was earning at that time £15 a month. He continued to gaze at her appealingly, and she said, suddenly very angry: ‘I’ll pay it off at a pound a month,’ and looked to see if he would be ashamed. But he again gave her the sad trembling smile and said: ‘Yes, Matty, that-that-that would-would be a-a help.’ The stammer told her that all this was part of a pre-imagined scene.

When she had told Jasmine about it, the girl’s look of amused discomfort made her feel angry with herself: she knew she should have told Douglas to go to hell; and by acting in the way she had she had made herself part of his hysteria.

‘But Matty, you couldn’t have agreed to pay it? He earns so much money.’

‘Well, yes, I did.’

‘Then you’re mad too.’ Jasmine gave her the twenty pounds, told her to pay Douglas and be done with it. Martha sent Douglas the money, got a stiff but sentimental letter of thanks back, and because of Jasmine’s reaction to the incident, and her own shame, promised herself ‘when she had time’ to examine the emotion she called pride.

This, then, was the first meeting since she had sent him the twenty pounds.

‘What did you want to see me for?’

‘There’s this question of divorce.’

‘Yes?’

‘I intend to cite William as co-respondent.’

For a moment she was frightened: then she understood she was not frightened, her heart was beating out of anger. She had become skilled in listening to her instinctive responses to Douglas: If I’m not frightened, she told herself, then it means he is lying. I don’t believe him. Why don’t I? After a time she was able to see it: Of course he wouldn’t cite William – he would never admit publicly that his wife had left him for a sergeant in the airforce – that’s the way his mind works. So he’s trying to find out something else. What is it?

‘Of course you must cite William,’ she said. ‘It would be much quicker that way. ‘

He went red, and blurted out: ‘Of course if he were posted suddenly it would make divorce proceedings difficult.’

‘Yes, I suppose it would.’

‘Desertion is quick and civilized. But if you contested it, then it would be difficult.’

‘I deserted you,’ she remarked; reminded herself that there was something she ought to be understanding; considered, and finally said to herself: That’s it. He’s afraid I’d divorce him for that girl in Y— But how could I? I didn’t condone it – or did I? I couldn’t have condoned it, legally, or he wouldn’t be afraid.

Again she was dismayed by the depth of her contempt for him. She got up and said: ‘If you divorce me for desertion, I won’t contest it. Why should I? I don’t care about it one way or the other.’

He remained seated, staring, his fat lips trembling. She saw that he had imagined this scene differently. He had gained what he wanted, but not as he had wanted it.

‘I’d like to go to sleep,’ she said.

He remained seated. ‘I’ll see the lawyers tomorrow and if it’s easier to cite William, I’ll let you know,’ he said.

He’s trying to make me plead with him not to involve William, she thought. He was watching her with a self-consciously wistful smile. She said nothing. His face swelled into hatred and he said: ‘It would serve him right.’

What for?’

‘Breaking up our marriage.’

But not even he could believe this. He hastily looked away, and said: ‘The lawyers will write to you. We must have no communication of any kind until the divorce is over.’

‘Of course.’

He lingered by the door, again wistful. She thought: I’ve lived with this grown-up schoolboy for four years, and we’ve had a child together. I ought to feel something that I don’t: I ought to feel degraded or ashamed or regretful – something like that. Well, I don’t. It simply didn’t concern me. While this thought went through her mind she felt her knees shaking again, and she understood she was terrified. His sideways glances at her were full of an avid hate: it was ludicrous, the effect of the ugly eyes in the formally sentimental and appealing face. She thought: If I don’t say the right thing, he’ll embrace me or hit me – it will be horrible. There’ll be a horrible scene. She said, ‘I’ll ring you up in a day or two and ask what the lawyers said.’ Her voice was casual and friendly. His face changed and became stiff. He nodded, and went out, carefully closing the door after him as if locking her in. And when she tested it she found that he had turned the key in her lock.

Now she wanted to cry. But she would not allow herself tears. Just as tenderness, moments of real emotion with William left her exposed to her need for Caroline, so did tears, even brief tears, open her to a feeling of deep, impersonal pain that seemed to be lying in wait for her moments of weakness like an enemy whose name she did not know, but whose shape and attributes she was learning because of its shadow, deepening steadily outside the bright shell she lived within.

She went to sleep at once, without thinking of Douglas.

These days she always woke early, and with delight, no matter how late she had been in getting to bed. For the first time in her life waking was not a painful process of adjustment. The shrilling and twittering of the birds who filled Mrs Carson’s garden every morning, or the roar of aircraft overhead, sank into her sleep like a premonition of the day’s excitements, and before she had opened her eyes she was already poised forward in spirit, thinking of the moment when she would rejoin the group and her friends.

Before she could join them, of course, she had to put in an obligatory eight hours in the office. She had returned as junior typist to Robinson, Daniel and Cohen, now reduced because of the war to Mr Robinson. Mr Max Cohen was two years dead of a heart attack. Mr Jasper Cohen was helping to run the army in North Africa. Mr Daniel was fighting in it. Mr Robinson’s young, lean, tightly-sprung body must conceal some weakness, for it was known he had tried to reach the war and failed. When Martha had applied for a job in her old firm she had done so thinking of the gentle kindliness of Mr Max Cohen. There was such a shortage of women workers for the offices that Mr Robinson was pleased enough to see her. That Martha disliked him as much now as she had always done seemed irrelevant, when her working life was irrelevant to her real interests. There were two women in the office now, herself and Mrs Buss. That two women were enough was because of the efficiency of Mrs Buss, who never let Mr Robinson or Martha forget this truth, which led to her salary being increased almost monthly. Neither Mr Robinson nor Martha begrudged her this: in fact Martha imagined that when he signed the pay cheques and handed hers to Mrs Buss he must feel embarrassed because he was paying for her entire life: her devoted, jealous watchful interest was concentrated on Mr Robinson, not as a man, but as the unworthy representative of the absent senior partners. Sometimes he remarked, almost resentfully, that there was no need for her to work at nights, or arrive at the office so early in the mornings. Whereupon she faced herself at him like a quarrelling little bird, and said: ‘Mr Robinson, I know my job. I had my training in Britain, not like these Colonial girls.’ ‘Oh well,’ he would say, escaping hastily, ‘I suppose it’s all right, if you don’t mind.’

Mrs Buss tolerated Martha; it was because the Colonial spirit she despised was too strong for her. Martha had been married to one of the up and coming young men of the town, and would probably marry another. Society, it seemed, owed her this job as an interim support, and efficiency was scarcely demanded of her. Mrs Buss felt that Martha was one of the drones – ‘one of the marrying kind,’ as she put it, with kindly but critical titter, although not married at the moment. She, Mrs Buss, was not, although she had a husband. On this basis the two women enjoyed an amiable working relationship.

On that day Martha worked through the lunch-hour, not for Mr Robinson, but addressing envelopes for the Sympathizers of Russia. After lunch she was telephoned by Jasmine who said that Jackie Bolton had telephoned her; he and William were posted and leaving that night for some necessarily unnamed destination. They must all meet on the station for the farewell at six. The two girls consoled each other and agreed to meet at the group office after work. There they sat, smoking, for once idle, out of a feeling that their impending loss must be paid due to in some way. They were talking of how the four of them would meet after the war, and continue this friendship which was subordinate to the Revolution. They did not specify the country where they would meet: the world was open to them. As Jackie often remarked: When you’re a communist you can go to any country in the world and be with friends at once. When members of the group talked of the future, it was as if they were interchangeable with each other, one country the same as another: they were part of the great band of international brothers, and as they talked their eyes met, exchanging looks of infinite devotion and trust.

Now Jasmine and Martha leaned at the window looking down into the street, and both their minds were so occupied with visions of the future that the fact their lovers were leaving them in an hour seemed unimportant, even proof of their belief that the time was coming soon when pain would cease to exist

A small ragged, barefooted black child, pot-bellied with malnutrition, hesitated on the opposite corner outside McGrath’s holding a note in his hand. He had been sent by his white mistress on some errand and could not find the right address. Martha and Jasmine smiled at each other, saying in the smile that because of them, because of their vision, he was protected and saved: the future they dreamed of seemed just around the corner; they could almost touch it. Each saw an ideal town, clean, noble and beautiful, soaring up over the actual town they saw, which consisted in this area of sordid little shops and third-rate cafés. The ragged child was already a citizen of this ideal town, co-citizens with themselves; they watched him out of sight around the corner smiling: it was as if they had touched him with their hands in friendship.

Soon, the entrances of McGrath’s were again clogged with people, this time because it was sundown hour, and they knew that if they were to be in time to see William and Jackie off they should leave for the station. At the station the train for the South already stood waiting. Down the long platform stood groups of men in uniform, waiting.

When the two men arrived, it was in separate groups, one of officers and one of airmen. They stowed their belongings away in the train, and slipped away to join Martha and Jasmine in a compartment where it could not be seen that the natural divisions of wartime organization were being flouted. The four of them sat laughing together, while the two men, half-sardonic, debated where they wished to be sent, like tourists choosing a holiday place. William settled for India; Jackie for the Mediterranean. In the next compartment a group of aircraftsmen were chanting in a variety of British voices: Join the army and see the world.

The train whistle shrieked, but Martha and Jasmine, with a long experience of seeing trains off from platforms, did not move. They were both of them instinctively avoiding an emotional farewell. At last they leaped off the train when it was moving, and turned to see the faces of Jackie and William already absorbed into the mass of faces that crammed all the windows. The train trailed off, as they had seen it so often before, across the soiled and factory-littered veld, leaving a long smudge of wind-torn black smoke across the clear calm sunset sky.