A Ripple from the Storm

The woman, with her eyes on Murdoch’s extraordinary assortment of clothes, said with delicacy: ‘I think he was from the camp too.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘He was selling your newspaper.’

‘We’ll see if we can find out who it was,’ said Martha,

She and Murdoch left the court together, while the patient tired woman and the lively child looked after them, and the woman on the candlebox shouted: ‘You promised me faithfully my room. You promised it.’

‘I don’t see who it can be,’ said Martha, ‘unless Bill’s been doing our street. And by the way, you should have done this court – you forgot it.’

‘I was getting around to it, I was getting around to it,’ said Murdoch instantly, in an aggrieved voice. He had a way of suggesting he was unfairly accused at the slightest suggestion of criticism, but he was, above all, humorous. Now he grinned clowningly at Martha and said: ‘Give me a chance, comrade. I was having a talk to a nice girl in the street behind this one.’

Martha asked: ‘What girl,’ realized that she was thinking ‘white’ – because her first thought had been, there are no girls in this area, meaning white girls, was shocked at herself, and out of her guilty anger said: ‘You know quite well the group has taken a decision you’re not to have affairs with Coloured girls, it’s against the group decision.’

‘Have a heart,’ he said, ‘I was only talking to her.’

He looked as guilty as a schoolboy, and Martha, disliking herself, said: ‘But in any case, why shouldn’t you? It’s a bad decision, it’s undemocratic.’

‘Och, we should listen to Anton now, he knows his stuff, he’s the real mackay,’ said Murdoch with sentimental earnestness, and Martha, irritated by the sentimentality, said: ‘But Anton doesn’t have to be right all the time, does he?’

A tall lanky figure approached along the dusty broken pavements, wearing clothes several sizes too small. It was Bill Bluett.

‘Wotcher,’ he said, lingering at a short distance. His face was stiffly serious, but he winked at Martha with a pantomimic sideways twist to his mouth. ‘Finished?’

Martha said: ‘There’s a man in there who’s ill and he won’t go to hospital.’ Bill Bluett responded to her agitated voice instantly, by saying with a soft jeer: ‘Dear me, naughty naughty. These people don’t trust hospitals. They should be taught for their own good.’

‘She’s right,’ said Murdoch, one airman to another. ‘He should be in hospital.’

‘Of course he should.’ The voice was still a soft jeer. Bill Bluett had cast Martha in the role of ‘middle-class comrade’ and never let her forget it.

She said to Bill: ‘Was it you who made friends with him? His mother said there was someone.’

‘Perhaps I have.’

‘But why be mysterious about it?’

Bill Bluett, patiently explaining to an imbecile, said: ‘These people don’t like going to the native hospital, being treated like that.’

‘Obviously not – on the other hand I don’t see it’s sensible to die before you need for a political principle on this level. He’s not going to hospital because the Coloured people don’t want to be treated as “Kaffirs”. They want their own hospital.’

Bill Bluett and Martha, natural antagonists since they first set eyes on each other, faced each other now, frowning.

‘OK, OK,’ he said. ‘Nothing like an intellectual for reducing everything to its principles. But he won’t go. And that’s all. He’s one of the few around here with any political understanding at all. He influences quite a few of their lads. I’ve dropped in on their sessions once or twice. What would he do in hospital?’

‘Perhaps he wouldn’t die so quickly?’

All at once Bill decided he had sufficiently made his position clear, for he gave her a warm grin, and said:

‘OK, Matty, I’ll go and smooth his brow for you. But first there’s another little problem. There’s a bloke in the next street who’s going to have his furniture taken away if he can’t raise two pounds by six o’clock this evening. That’s half an hour from now. We’re quite a bunch of charity workers, aren’t we? Fork out.’ He pulled his trouser pockets out and picked out a sixpence from the lining of one. Murdoch found three shillings. Martha opened her handbag and found five.

That’s not going to keep the baby off the cold floor,’ said Bill Bluett. He nodded at the satchel over Martha’s shoulder and said: ‘Hand over.’

‘But that’s The Watchdog money.’

‘We’ll have to borrow from it, that’s all. We can make it up in collections from the group.’ He appropriated the satchel, and counted out two pounds in pennies and threepenny bits, tied the greasy mass of coin in a handkerchief, and said, ‘Ta. I’ll take this back to the poor bastard and go sick-visiting to please you afterwards. He’s four kids and another one coming.’

‘Perhaps you should start a birth-control clinic while you’re about it,’ said Martha, for he had spoken about the four children with dislike, as if they were a form of self-indulgence on the part of the ‘poor bastard’.

‘Now, now,’ said Bill, ‘I’m a clean-mouthed working lad, I don’t like sex talk like that.’

‘Oh go to hell,’ said Martha, finally losing her temper, and he laughed, gave her another solemn pantomimic wink and departed along the street.

‘You shouldn’t get upsides with Bill,’ said Murdoch, seriously. ‘He only tried to get a rise out of you.’

Martha shrugged irritably; every contact with Bill left her feeling bludgeoned and sore. She capitulated at last by saying: ‘Well, I suppose for a worker from Britain we must seem pretty awful.’

Murdoch said: ‘Worker, is it? He’s no more worker than you. He’s proper bourgeois, his father was a painter, a real painter, not what I’d call a painter, mind you.’

‘Then I’m getting tired of middle-class wolves in workers’ clothing.’

To which Murdoch responded with indignation: ‘He’s a fine lad.’ He added, sentimental again already: ‘The lads in the camp think the world of him.’

‘Oh let’s get back to the exhibition,’ she said, too confused and angry to want to think about it. ‘Why does he take it out on me if he doesn’t like being middleclass?’

‘Keep your hair on, Matty,’ he said earnestly, following her. ‘Keep your hair on.’

They were walking past the Indian store, where the assistant was locking the door for the night. He nodded at them and said shyly: ‘How’s the Red Army?’

‘Fine,’ said Martha, her irritation gone because of the reminder of what they all stood for.

‘I’ve collected seventeen shillings for your newspaper.’

‘Coming to the exhibition?’

‘You let us in?’

‘Of course,’ said Martha.

‘Of course,’ he said, ironical but friendly. ‘The first time in our fine city Indians can enter an exhibition like that, and you say, “Of course, of course.” ‘

‘We don’t believe in race prejudice.’

He kept his ironical smile, nodded, and said: ‘So the Reds don’t believe in race prejudice, and so race prejudice is at an end in our city?’ He dropped his irony, and said simply, smiling: ‘You are good people, we know who are our friends.’ He got on to his bicycle and went off towards the railway lines.

Martha and Murdoch walked along the bicycle-crammed street towards the centre of the town. Murdoch’s expression had changed and he was looking steadily sideways at Martha. Martha, responding, thought: If he does it too, then …

‘Let’s drop in for a beer at McGrath’s,’ he said sentimentally.