A Proper Marriage (31 page)

In short, they were different.

It never entered their heads to apologize for being different.

They made no effort to become like their hosts.

Worse than anything, the faces of these new guests - a colonial people instinctively feel themselves as hosts - expressed nothing but a patient and sardonic criticism. They were unwilling guests.

These groundlings, dumped arbitrarily into the middle of Africa, strayed about the town, noted the two cinemas, half a dozen hotels, a score of bars; noted that the amenities usual for ten thousand white inhabitants were to be stretched to provide for them in their hundreds of thousands; noted that women would be in short supply for the duration; and, with that calm common sense which distinguishes the British working man, decided to make themselves as comfortable as possible in circumstances fully as bad as they had expected. For a time the grey tide ebbed back from the city into the camps that were surrounded by the high, forbidding fences.

Not before a number of disturbing incidents had occurred. For instance, several innocent men had brought Coloured women into the bars of an evening, and had violently resented being asked to leave. Others were observed offering black men cigarettes on street corners, while talking to them, or even walking with them. It was rumoured that quite a number had actually gone into the homes of the servants of the city, in the native location. But this was not the worst; it was felt that such behaviour was merely the result of ignorance; a short acquaintance with local custom would put things right. No, it was something more indefinable, something inarticulate, an atmosphere like an ironic stare, which, since it was not put into words, could not be answered.

A group of airmen might be walking down the street, hoping that some diversion might offer itself, when their attention was drawn by the sound of a wild and urgent motorhorn. An expensive car stood by them, into which a couple, smiling with fervent goodwill, urged they should enter. They climbed, therefore, into the car, and were
whisked off to McGrath’s Hotel, where drinks were called for all round. The orchestra still played, war or no war, from its bower of ferns. The native waiters came round with trays of beer. All was gilt and imitation marble. And this couple, so eager to be kind, were kindness itself. But why this positively effusive hospitality? Why? They might almost have been guilty about something. They talked about England: Do you remember, do you know, have you ever been to … But, but! the colonial’s England is not the England that these men longed for, not the pubs and streets they were exiled from. They were kind enough not to point this out.

That
but
was felt like a piece of grit in the mouthful of honey which was this chance to be welcoming hosts. How seldom do colonials, starved in their deepest need to be hosts, get the chance to take to their bosoms not one or two but twenty thousand grateful guests at once? All over the city, in bars and hotel lounges and even in private drawing rooms, could be seen — in that first week or so - a couple, man and wife, entertaining anything up to twenty polite but determinedly inarticulate groundlings, who drank and ate all they could, since the pushed-around are entitled to take what crumbs fate offers them, but certainly did not return that loving approval which is what hosts most essentially ask in return. Yes, this was a fine country; yes, it was a grand town; yes, it was a wonderful achievement for half a century. But. But. But.

The tide receded. It would return. Thousands upon thousands more men were arriving every week from Home. From those first tentative contacts it was clear that there was a situation which should be faced by those whose task it was to administer and guide.

In every city there is a group of middle-aged and elderly women who in fact run it. The extent to which they are formally organized is no gauge of their real power. The way in which they respond to danger is that gauge; and from the frankness with which they express their intentions can be measured the extent of the danger. To students of ‘local politics’ let there be recommended the activities of the mothers of the city;

About a week after the first grey tide, there occurred a conversation between Mr Maynard and his wife, not on the pillow - they had not shared one for many years - but at the breakfast table.

Mrs Maynard was the leader of the council of matriarchs. She was fitted for it not merely by character. The wives of prime ministers, Cabinet ministers, governors, mayors, because of the necessity that they should be above struggle and party strife, are precluded from certain positions. Far from envying such women, Mrs Maynard rather pitied them. She could have been one had she chosen. As it was, she was the daughter of an English family who for centuries had occupied itself with ‘public work’; she was a cousin to the existing Governor, her husband was a third cousin to the Prime Minister of Britain; but he was only a magistrate; she was, so it was hoped it would be considered, not only reliable, but above all independent. Nothing she said would be taken as from the Government or a political party.

She remarked over the sheets of the
Zambesia News,
‘It is quite disgraceful that the authorities are not doing anything about it.’

Mr Maynard laid down his paper and asked, ‘About what?’

‘Millions of poor boys brought into the country and nothing whatsoever done for them.’ ‘You exaggerate slightly, I think?’

‘Well — fifty thousand, a hundred thousand. One thousand would be bad enough.’

‘There are cinemas and canteens in the camps, I believe.’ ‘You know quite well what I mean.’

Mr Maynard stirred his coffee, and remarked, ‘Even in peacetime men outnumber women.’ He added, ‘I assume you are not suggesting a brothel - the churches wouldn’t stand for it.’

She coloured and tightened her lips; this mask of annoyed rectitude vanished as she smiled with dry appreciation. ‘Personally I’d rather brothels than - but that isn’t what I meant.’ She frowned and said, ‘We should provide entertainment - something to keep them occupied.’

‘My dear Myra, save your trouble. Every woman in the town is already lost. Wait until the pilots arrive.’

‘I am thinking of the blacks,’ she said, irritated. A short pause. Then, as it were, thinking aloud, ‘I heard from Edgar that they have no idea at all how to treat natives. Not their fault, of course, poor things. I suggested to him a course of lectures on native policy, that sort of thing,
before
they arrive in the country.’

‘So you are not concerned with the morals of our wives and mothers?’ He smiled at her, the heavy urbane eyebrows raised.

She returned an equally bland smile. ‘I am concerned with both. The first thing should be a dance hall, with canteens, ping-pong - something like that.’

‘I have just understood that you intend me to sponsor it - is that it?’

‘You would do very well,’ she suggested, for the first time with a touch of appeal.

‘No,’ he said decidedly.

‘You’ve got to do something. Everybody’s doing something.’

He continued to stir his coffee, and to look at her. It was a challenge.

It was met. ‘We are at war, you know!’ she cried out at last, from her real emotions. She was now flushed, indignant, and with a hint of quivering softness about brows and mouth - a reminiscence of a certain striking dark beauty.

He smiled unpleasantly; apparently he felt this to be a victory.

But she did not attempt to quell her emotion. ‘Your attitude is extraordinary, extraordinary!’ she said, lips quivering. ‘Don’t you care that we are at war?’

‘I care very much. But not enough to run a refined club for the boys,’ he added. Then: ‘I shall confine myself to keeping the native population in its place. Nothing could be more useful than that, surely?’

They exchanged a long married look, which held dislike, and respect. The two faces, both heavy, black-browed, commanding, confronted each other from opposite ends of the long table. It was, as always, a deadlock.

‘Then I shall ask that old stick Anderson to run it.’

‘An admirable choice.’

She rose, and went towards the door. His raised voice followed her: ‘As regards the problem of the dear boys and the native women, it is my personal view that - regarded from a long-term point of view, of course — a few thousand more half-caste children would be a good thing. It might force the authorities to provide better amenities for them. As things are the Coloured community provides more petty criminals than any other section of the population.’

This was designed to annoy. But one of the minor pleasures of power is to exchange in private views which would ruin you if your followers ever had a suspicion you held them. Mrs Maynard let out a short dry chuckle and said, ‘There are surely simpler ways of getting better housing for the Coloureds than infecting all our boys with VD.’

Two days later a paragraph in the paper announced that three entertainment centres for the Air Force personnel were to be opened shortly under the experienced patronage of Mr Anderson, late of the Department of Statistics, a well-known public figure.

A second grey tide flowed abruptly over the town. Not quite so grey: the idea of the blue air fed a tinge of blue into those stiff uniforms, and now the hungry expectations of the people were assuaged, for these were the cousins, the welcomed relatives from Home - these, the aviators in person, recognizably the same species as themselves. They were perfectly at ease in drawing rooms, clubs, bars and dance rooms, where they at once appeared in their hundreds; and the city, long accustomed to indulging its young men in whatever follies they might choose to use, found nothing remarkable in their behaviour. They brought with them an atmosphere of dedication to danger, of reckless exuberance which - as every woman in the city soon had reason to know — was covered by a most charming modesty; and this in its turn was a mask for a cynical nihilism which was more dangerously attractive than even recklessness. If the note of the First World War was idealistic dedication, succeeded by its mirror image, sarcastic anger, then the
symbol for this period of the Second World War was a cynical young airman sprouting aggressive but flippant moustaches capable of the most appalling heroism, but prone to surprising lapses into self-pitying but stoic despair, during which moments he would say he hoped he would be killed, because there was no point in living, anyway. The truth of the morale of any army is most likely to be discovered between the sheets.

The danger of this mood, felt like a heightened pulse in the town, was expressed to Mr Maynard at the breakfast table thus:

‘It’s all very well, but we have to think of our boys up north.’

‘I expect they are taking care of themselves in their own way.’

‘Have you heard about …’ Here followed the names of about a dozen young women. ‘They are all losing their heads.’

‘Provided they don’t lose them too far, I daresay all will be well at the armistice.’

Mrs Maynard looked sharply at him, tightened her lips, held his eyes steadily with her own. When this couple had come together in 1919 after years of separation, there had been incidents to overlook on both sides. Not forgiven - no. Mrs Maynard could not forgive him that he had overlooked so easily. Yet what had happened? Nothing - she had never been unfaithful to him. There was simply a photograph of an officer, a cousin, among a bundle of old letters. As for him, he could not forgive that there was nothing to forgive. She had always fulfilled the letter of every agreement. But there burned in this handsome matron’s heart a steady flame of romance: he knew it. She had given her heart to the dead and was thus free to deal with life as she felt was right. She had never done anything to be ashamed of.

After a few moments, he smiled and inquired, ‘What do you propose to do about it, my dear?’

Mrs Maynard paid a number of visits, received others, was a good deal on the telephone. As a result, many young women got letters from various organizations suggesting that
they might spend their time on such and such a form of war work. Strings invisibly tightened. Mrs Talbot, wan and beautiful with her daughter’s grief (the fi
ancé
had been killed in the air over London during the Battle of Britain), dropped in to see Martha and suggested she should join the organization of women connected with the civil service.

Martha hardly listened. Such was her naïveté that she thought it odd, even interfering, of Mrs Talbot, who had nothing to do with the Service. She gave Mrs Talbot tea, told her what news there was of Douglas - very little, save that he had just finished leave with the boys in some town in Abyssinia. And that meant - Martha calmly stated it, apparently not noticing Mrs Talbot’s indrawn breath - that he was probably having dozens of love affairs. Happening to glance at Mrs Talbot, she frowned slightly, and added that he was perfectly entitled to do so; they did not believe in jealousy. Mrs Talbot was searching for the right words to express her disturbance of mind, when Martha, unaware that any were needed, began talking of something else. Martha’s advantage in any such encounter was always her assumption that Mrs Talbot (for instance) was bound to agree with her; any suggestion that her view might not be the right one was met with a critical, almost incredulous stare.