A Ripple from the Storm

He finished with a quiet: ‘And now, comrades, I have laid before you the barest bones of that structure of thought, Marxism. You must not imagine that I have done more than sketch in an outline. If we are to be serious, we must study. We must study hard.’

He let his shoulders loosen and his head drop to his papers, which he shuffled together, as if anxious to be off.

‘I should like to congratulate Comrade Anton on the best brief outline of Marxism I have heard,’ said Andrew. ‘I suggest we appoint him forthwith as Education Officer.’

‘Agreed,’ said Jasmine promptly.

Anton said patiently and ironically: ‘Comrades, may I point out that in the Party one does not appoint an Education Officer, or any other kind of officer on a wave of enthusiasm.’

‘Quite right,’ said Andrew. ‘I apologize.’

‘Is there anyone here who does not want to join the group?’ asked Jasmine.

No one spoke. After a moment it was seen that they were all looking at the African Elias. He smiled and nodded. Andrew said: ‘I think I can speak for the lads from the camp.’ The four airmen with him all nodded.

‘So there’s no one who wants to stay out. Well, of course not,’ said Marjorie excitedly.

One of the airmen, a young Scotsman with flaming hair, turned red and said with a consciously rueful despair: ‘But man, I’m no scholar. If it is going back to school, then I’m willing enough. I left my schooling at fourteen, but I’m an ordinary working lad, that’s all.’

At which the urchin Tommy Brown said: ‘I think the same. I’m not up to all this. I mean, I liked what you said, but I left my schooling at fifteen.’

Anton sat up, fixing his eyes first on the young Scotsman, then on the young Colonial. He said: ‘Comrades, do I understand you to say that the workers are not capable of studying? Of education?’

‘Ah, heck now,’ said the Scotsman. ‘No one says a word against the workers while I’m by. But all this is too high-falutin’ for me, it’s the truth.’

‘No, it is not the truth,’ said Anton Hesse. He leaned forward, holding Murdoch Mathews from the slums of Glasgow with his eyes, while the young man writhed under the cold stare. ‘Comrade, when you speak like that, it means that the propaganda of the capitalist class that the workers are not fit for the best, has affected you. You are a victim of their propaganda. As a worker, you are fit only for the best.’

Murdoch, having tried to exchange humorously desperate glances with Tommy the urchin, who was too serious to be humorous, said: ‘For all that, I don’t understand half of what you say, comrade.’ His tone was still weakly rueful. Under the peremptory urging of Anton’s eyes he sat up, however, and said differently, in a manly responsible tone: ‘But I’m willing. I’m willing to learn if you are willing to teach.’

Comrade Anton turned to Tommy. ‘Comrade Tommy, did you really not understand what I said?’

‘I understood the general thing,’ said Tommy apologetically. ‘But a lot of the words you used were too long.’

‘Then I’m sorry. You must correct me in future. It was always my worst fault. But in a foreign language it is not always the easiest, to find the right words.’

‘You speak English better than me,’ said Tommy, with a mixture of admiration and hostility.

‘Foreigners always speak English better than the English,’ said Marjorie, with such a warmth of admiration for Anton that he glanced up, giving her the small paternal indulgent smile she was used to receive. But Colin Black was admiring her with his eyes; Anton’s face darkened, and he said, looking around the room: ‘And so now, are we all going to work at our theory?’

At this, one of the airmen, who had not spoken at all, a very tall untidy youth with a pale bony face under a lank mass of black hair, said: ‘I would remind you, comrades, that theory should be linked with practice.’

Anton said: ‘You’ve been in the Party?’ He did not say of course, but it was in his manner: the young man’s tone had been as authoritative as his own.

‘Three years,’ said the airman.

‘You are quite right. We do not forget the unity of theory and practice. But before we put our ideas into practice, we need to know what our ideas are. In short, we need to analyse the situation …’ He acknowledged the indulgent glances of the old gang – Jasmine, Martha, Marjorie and Andrew – with an impatient movement of his shoulders. ‘We need, I say, to analyse the situation. Before we can analyse it, we need to discuss it. Before we can discuss it, we need to organize ourselves in such a way that the group has the benefit of the experience and knowledge of every comrade in it. Therefore, we need now to discuss organization.’

‘For the want of a nail the battle was lost,’ said Marie du Preez, smiling humorously. But the humour faded from her face as Anton turned to her and said: ‘Precisely so. We are Marxists – or so called. We therefore apply our minds to an existing situation and act accordingly.’

Marie gave the smallest swallow of resigned amusement, while her husband grinned broadly sideways at her lowered cheek.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Anton, and waited.

‘I formally propose,’ said Andrew, ‘that Comrade Hesse should put forward his plan for the organization of the group.’

‘Agreed,’ said Jasmine. No one disagreed.

Anton proposed that there should be a formal group meeting every week, attendance obligatory, for group business, reports on work done, criticism and self-criticism. Also, that there should be a meeting every week, attendance obligatory, for Marxist education. Also, that there should be a meeting every week, attendance obligatory, for education in political organization.

‘That’s three evenings,’ said the stern dark young man. ‘Some of us don’t get that off in a week.’

‘And what about my girl-friend?’ said Murdoch, waggishly; but Anton said: ‘Never mind your girl-friend,’ and he subsided, with a loud sigh.

Three evenings being out of the question, and it being pointed out that this small group of people were committed to running half a dozen of the town’s most lively and demanding organizations, it was agreed that there should be one obligatory group meeting, which would combine education with organization. That the airforce men should get lectures on Marxism from Andrew in the camp. That the group should be secret. That there should be no membership cards. That they would be bound only by their agreement to obey discipline and the will of the majority.

‘Why should it be secret?’ inquired young Tommy Brown at this point. ‘I mean to say, this is a democracy, isn’t it?’ There was a shout of laughter at these words, and they glanced at the African Elias, who said good-naturedly, ‘Yes, this is a democracy all right.’

‘I see what you mean,’ said Tommy uncomfortably. Then he leaned forward across the others, and said earnestly to Elias: ‘I’m sorry, Comrade Elias. I’ve got a lot to learn yet.’

Elias waved his large hand at him benevolently.

‘Having agreed that this is a democracy, and that a Party would not be allowed to exist, we shall keep it secret,’ said Anton.

Bill Bluett, the stern airman, said: ‘There’s nothing much secret about it – I heard there was a group months ago in the camp.’

‘Since we seemed unable to decide ourselves whether there was a group or not, we are not surprised you are confused,’ said Anton. ‘But in future we must behave like revolutionaries and not like a lot of chickens.’

The group rose from the hard benches, stretching and rubbing themselves. Elias said he must go at once. They all felt bad; he was going first, they knew, because it would be so awkward for them when they descended the stairs in a body and probably decided to go together to a café where he would not be allowed to enter. They all warmly said good night to him, shaking his hand. It occurred to them as they did so that they would not shake each other’s hands: the effort to avoid some forms of racial discrimination leads often enough to others,

Elias went; the airforce men departed to their bus. The civilians remained, and, finding it painful to part, went downstairs to Black Ally’s for coffee, where they talked, as always, with a painful yearning nostalgia about the Soviet Union.

The du Preez left first – the married couple. Then Marjorie departed with Colin. The small grimaces and raised eyebrows that followed their departure said that the group acknowledged these two as a good couple; the excitable charm of Marjorie seemed a satisfactory match with the phlegmatic common sense of Colin.

Anton, Jasmine, Martha, Tommy and Carrie remained.

Tommy, red with earnestness, his hair in tufts all over his head, was talking to Jasmine about the deficiencies of his education. She promised to meet him tomorrow at four, after work, to discuss a reading list. Carrie was keeping the pressure of her very pretty dark eyes on Anton. Martha thought she must be attracted to him, and was surprised to feel a small pang of jealousy. This made her abrupt and awkward in her manner to Anton. But neither of the two young women had the benefit of their emotions, for Anton rose, saying calmly: ‘I must get my sleep,’ and left them with a formal nod.

And now it was midnight, and there was no excuse to stay longer. Assuring each other of their reunion at the earliest possible opportunity next day, they parted.

Martha found Mrs Carson standing in her darkened kitchen in nothing but a thin nightdress, her ear pressed to the crack of the door which led into the garden, shivering with cold and with enjoyable fear. This evening it was easy for Martha to soothe the poor woman, and to persuade her into her bed.

Chapter Four (#ulink_6e5ff69c-0fcf-5311-a540-f0b3eed74ee5)

Cecil John Rhodes Vista spreadeagled at its upper end into a moneyed suburb known by the citizens as Robber’s Roost. In the lower town it expired in a sprawl of hot railway lines and a remnant of oily evil-smelling grass-laden soil, beyond which, side by side, lay the white cemetery and the Native Location.

Before it came to the railway lines, the Vista ran for several hundred yards bordered by hovels, shops and laundries, and it was one of the four parallel streets known collectively as the Coloured Quarter. Along these four streets Martha sold The Watchdog from house to house. In theory this activity was to take two hours once a week. But in practice it took three or four afternoons, and three of the RAF men had been allotted to help her. Since the Coloured Quarter was out of bounds to the RAF for the purposes of discouraging immorality and miscegenation, the three joined a large number of RAF men who kept civilian clothes hidden in various nooks and corners of the town and changed into them so that they could visit their Coloured friends or women.

The rendezvous for The Watchdog sellers was an Indian shop near the end of the Vista. At six o’clock one afternoon, Martha had deposited the four dozen copies of the paper the shop sold for her, and was idling outside it, looking for her colleagues, when a small girl came running across the street, her thin hips pistoning through a large rent in her dress. ‘Missus, missus,’ she said: ‘Mam wants you.’ A hundred yards away Murdoch Mathews came into sight surrounded by a swarm of small boys who were shouting joyously: ‘The Watchdog!’ ‘Uncle Joe,’ ‘Stalingrad.’ His lean jerky body was swathed in clothes three sizes too large, borrowed from Anton, and with his flaming hair and sun-hot face he was so spectacular a figure that groups of people had stopped to stare all down the street. These streets were wide, three times as wide as those in the upper town, for they had been built in the days when ox-wagons were expected to turn in them: ox-wagons often still did. A strip of tarmac, car-wheels width, held the dust down in the centre, but on either side the rutted gritty earth was thick with a haze of dust, reddened by the glare of the setting sun, which must have been shining into Murdoch’s eyes, for she had to gesticulate several times before he saw her. She indicated that he should wait for her; he replied in a hushed shout that he would wait around the corner where he could not be seen, and went around the corner, followed by the stares of several dozen interested people.