Landlocked (30 page)

Her life was again full of runnings-about and around—it was not only a question of being divorced and going to England.

Marjorie, who had taken over Martha’s role as general dogsbody, was run down, the doctor said, and needed to take things easy. Marjorie came to Martha: ‘Of course, if you don’t believe in anything any more, then you must just say so!’

‘But I’m not going to be here for long.’

‘But Matty, you’ve said that for years!’

‘Look, Marjorie, I’ll help you, of course.’

‘I can see you don’t want to—nobody cares, nobody cares about anything. I suppose it’s because of that book. Well, I think the book should have the opposite effect, not making everybody destructive and lazy!’

It was ‘the book’ which was the reason for the new (though brief) period of activity. What was ‘the book’?—they all referred to it like this, not by the title or by the author’s name, as if it did not matter what it was. And in a way it did not, there were so many of them by now. This one had been written by a Russian peasant who had been caught up in the 1917 Revolution and become a minor official. He had come under the eyes of the authorities as early as the late ’twenties, and for some years had suffered imprisonment, persecution, etc. Having escaped, he was in America, writing books like this one, which was the first to reach the group—or what remained of it. Marjorie read it
first—in tears. She had given it to Colin, but he said he was too busy. Being pressed by Marjorie: ‘This is really important, dear,’ he had read a chapter and said it was badly written. Marjorie took it to Betty Krueger who said she was sure it had been written by the FBI and that Timofy Gangin did not exist. Boris said he did not have time for bad journalism. Besides, where had Marjorie got this book? It had been sent to her through the post, she suspected it had come from Solly—well, of course, then, what else did one expect? That dirty…

Martha read it. If this was true, then everything she had been saying for the last seven years was a lie. But perhaps it was exaggerated?—after all, a man imprisoned unjustly was bound to be bitter and to exaggerate? That word, exaggerate…it rang false, it belonged to a different scale of truth. Reading this book, these books, it was her first experience, though a clumsy, unsure one, of using a capacity she had not known existed. She thought: I
feel
the book is true—although it is badly written, crude, sensational. Well, what does that mean, to
feel
something is true, as if I’m not even reading the words of the book, but responding to something else. She thought, vaguely: if this book were not on this subject, but about something else, well, the yardsticks I use would say: yes, this is true. One has an instinct one trusts, yes…

Martha gave the book to Anton. At first he said: ‘I’m not going to read this trash.’ But he read it, dropping, as he did so, sarcastic remarks about the author’s character—an unpleasant one, he said. Then he became silent. Well, nothing new about that. Martha waited, while the book lay on the table, apparently discarded. Then Anton said: ‘After all, they aren’t saints, they were bound to make mistakes.’ And off he went to the Forsters, just as if he were not aware of the enormity of this remark. He did not mention the book again—and was not talking at all about Germany.

The book, in fact, most sharply raised the question of Anton. What role, then, did Anton, bitter and experienced old-guard communist from the heyday of the Communist Party in Germany, present himself to the Forsters, who
were, after all, rich capitalists—to describe them as Anton did himself.

Martha had met people who were visitors at the Forster home. Apparently Anton was a great success. ‘Treated just like a son,’ one woman had said, with the intention of annoying Martha. ‘Or like a son-in-law?’ Martha had replied.

Granted that Anton’s efficiency had transformed a whole department administered by a friend of Mr Forster—granted that it appeared no decisions could be made without him: but how did Mr Forster deal with the fact that Anton was a German, and a well-known Red? Well, the fact that he was a German was no problem at all. Anton in the Forster house was, or had been, ‘the good German’ for as long as being German had been a difficulty. It was no longer. After all, our gallant ally, Russia, had been transformed again into a nation of serfs groaning under the tyrant Stalin, just as if the war had not occurred; and Mr Forster had done business with Germany before the war and was making arrangements to do business again. He found the Germans reliable, efficient, and good company, and the German cities were clean—it was the only country in Europe whose water he had been prepared to drink straight from the tap. Many a pleasant evening he had had with German businessmen in their beer cellars before that unfortunate business, the war, had taken place. He thought the sooner Germany was again united as a bastion against communism the better; he was most interested to hear about Anton’s political experiences in the ’thirties…and the fact that he had been a communist? Well, what more natural, if he had had a hard time as a child? Mr Forster had been a socialist himself, at university. And the fact that Anton was working class by origin? It turned out this was a point in Anton’s favour too. Mr Forster’s father had been a poor boy in Scotland, and he was disposed to approve of people getting to the top by their own ability, which was why he, Richard Forster, was in Zambesia: he was impatient of the class system of his own country.

So what it amounted to was: Anton was almost a son of
the house, because, not in spite of the fact, of his past. Everything that had made him, everything that had been his deepest experience, had become salt to the Forsters’ pie.

And Bettina Forster, the daughter who (as Martha was naturally predisposed to see it) was likely to have something in common with Martha? How did she see Anton, this man who was, after all, a clerk in the railways, even if her father’s closest friend did say that he couldn’t run the department without him? In what way was this woman (described as pretty, intelligent, neurotic) the successor to Grete and to Martha? It seemed she was a liberal of some kind, she thought something ought to be done about the natives, and she might even go into Parliament or the Town Council. So Anton Hesse was going to be the son-in-law of a big businessman whose rebellion against society had been exhausted after he had said he would not submit himself to the class nonsense in the old country, whose wife said he was a poor, dear, brave boy, and whose daughter would find his political experience absolutely invaluable in getting a seat on the Council or in Parliament.

And he refused to attend a meeting summoned by, or at least caused by, Solly Cohen; on the grounds that ‘he didn’t want to have anything to do with Trotskyist traitors, thanks very much!’

Solly had sent verbal invitations through Marjorie to anyone who was still interested, to meet himself and an African contact. Which African? Oh no, they must wait and see!

But Marjorie had become for all of them the source, or at least the spreading-point, of the disquiet caused by ‘the book’.

She was demanding that ‘it was only fair’ that they all should get together and discuss Timofy Gangin’s book. ‘After all,’ she had said earnestly to Martha: ‘If we have been spreading lies all over the town, then it’s only right we should say so.’

Martha agreed to a discussion, so did Colin, ‘if he had time’. The Kruegers could see no useful purpose in it. Anton refused. Therefore there would be no meeting. Meanwhile
everyone had read the book, and discussions had taken place between pairs of people. It had been read, conclusions had been come to because of it, things would change—but there had been no formal meeting. But Marjorie rang people up and wrote letters: they all lacked responsibility, she said, she would never have believed that people could be so frivolous and casual.

So everyone was irritated by her. Yet it was she who was summoning them to a new meeting which, if what Solly promised came true, would inaugurate a new era of cooperation with the Africans. They might, at last, after all these years, actually achieve their goal of ‘working with the Africans’.

What it amounted to was: because of Marjorie’s quality of earnest readiness for anything, she was the focal point of both new possibilities—serious criticism of Russia and serious political work with the Africans.

Like all good organizers, Marjorie was not going to hold a meeting at all, unless she could be sure people would come. She was not well, so Martha ran around, trying to find out who might come.

An extraordinary collection of people: Marjorie, of course, and Colin—but probably only because he was, after all, Marjorie’s husband. Solly, and his mysterious contact. Mrs Van der Bylt. Johnny Lindsay—but this was a token interest only, for he was confined to his bed now. Jack Dobie, if he was in town, but he was too poor these days to make journeys without very good reason. Thomas, if he was in town. And Maisie, of all people, who said she often thought of the old days: it would be nice to see everyone again.

A meeting was convened in the office in Founders’ Street for a Thursday afternoon. It had to be changed for a Wednesday because of a last-minute message from Solly; was cancelled because it appeared Mr Zlentli (though what role he was playing Solly would not say) had vetoed the whole thing; was uncancelled because of a change of policy of some sort; was arranged for two weeks later in the evening, but at two days’ notice was changed for the afternoon of that day because of Mrs Van who, in the event,
did not come at all: Flora had sent a message that Johnny was very ill and asking for her.

That the thing was ill-starred was clear by now to everyone, but it all dragged on, on a momentum of muddle and inefficiency. For instance, on one of the cancelled occasions, a whole lot of people had turned up from the old, long-dead discussion groups, under the impression that this was a resurgence of communist activity: they had come to dissociate themselves not only from the present but from the past. But no one was in the office when they arrived. One man, a most active attainder at the old meetings, wrote a letter to the
News
warning ‘everyone concerned’ that communist spies were planning an uprising. As a result of this, Colin was warned by his superior in the Department that he must be careful; Anton made many deprecating and explanatory remarks to Mr Forster, and Mrs Van got a new batch of poison-pen letters.

On the afternoon of the meeting, Martha saw a stranger looking out of the window into Founders’ Street. When he turned, it was Thomas: a lean, burned man examined her with his bright, bright blue eyes. His hair, coloured by the fierce suns of the Zambesi Valley, was pale, greenish almost—like a wig over the dark, austere face.

He did not smile. She busied herself with the state of the literature cupboard. Then he said: ‘You’ve no idea how strange it is, coming into town again after being in the bush so long.’

‘Do we seem unreal?’

‘The town seems unreal.’ After a few moments he added: ‘Well, at any rate, come and stand by me.’

She was going to finish what she had started, but he said: ‘No, don’t do that. Please come.’

They stood side by side looking out into the street. On the waste lot opposite the Piccadilly a new block of offices rose like a rocket away from Founders’ Street.

‘Well, Martha?’

‘Well, Thomas?’

She was thinking: it’s the look on his face—I simply
cannot
understand it. Where have I seen it before? And
what is happening to Thomas? It was difficult to remember what he had been a couple of years ago. Once there was Thomas, a large, even stout, open-faced, blond man, whose immediately obvious quality was the energy that seemed to explode from him. All his movements, his gestures, had been restless, energetic; once everything about him had gone out, had included, had warmed. Now here he stood beside her, shut in himself. His face, burned to a dark, glistening bronze from the hot sun of the valley, was—not refined, but sharpened, made wary. Solitary. She kept glancing at him, at the dark, proud face whose expression she could not read.

‘Thomas?’

‘What is it, Martha?’

But she did not know what question it was she should ask.

Soon Jack Dobie came in. He had been on the point of coming to Martha. But seeing her with her former lover he gave them both a shrewd look, then a smile, then sat on a bench by himself. But Thomas, oblivious of this small episode, nodded at Jack almost absently.

‘Jack Dobie!’ said Jack, humorously.

Thomas looked at him, from a distance, then understood he was being criticized. He shrugged.

Maisie came in, followed by Tommy Brown. Not that Martha at once recognized Tommy. She saw the young man, thought how like Maisie it was to bring along just anybody she happened to be with, was prompted by his friendship-claiming smile (an aggressive, not a pleasant one) into a closer look…and stood silent, searching for the earnest, enquiring boy Tommy who had been in the commonplace you-can’t-catch-me-out Zambesian who sat with his raw, red thighs spread out on the bench.

‘Move up and give me space,’ said Maisie. Tommy moved up, having first grinned at the others as if to say:
I
don’t have to do what she says!

Then Maisie sat on a bench, lazily smiling at them. They all watched her, even Thomas. She kept, had perfected, if such a thing was possible, the physical assurance which
had always been her gift, so that to watch this large, rather blowzy woman sit down was to be made part of the experience of sitting. She sat, and her two large but beautiful legs in their very high-heeled shoes arranged themselves in a socially correct pose, side by side, as if they had been reminded by Maisie: we are in company. Obeying her, they glistened with their own satisfaction. Her fat thighs reposed under a glistening, mauve-flowered silk. Her great breasts presented the ugliness of the silk to everyone with indifference: look, what does it matter what we wear! Her face, which now had a look, painful to those who had known her earlier, of decorum, a simpering watchfulness, yet retained, in its fat, reddening surfaces, an innocence that was still her deepest quality. Her lazy, blue gaze offered itself, in spite of the defensiveness of her face, to them with complete openness: take me or leave me, I don’t care! And her hands—but it was her hands that they all watched. Those hands had a life which went on quite apart from her mind, her heart. These two white, capable hands, they stroked her thighs, lifted to touch the white organdie flower (slightly grubby) at her throat, placed themselves around the cheap white handbag on her lap, or folded themselves together in a gesture of absolutely open, calm knowledge, quiet assurance. The hands knew that they were in the right, that they were good, that there was no need for them to listen to criticism.