A Ripple from the Storm

‘But we’re half an hour late.’

‘Being a Red’s as bad as the army,’ he said ruefully.

‘But we have to have discipline.’

‘Not even one wee drappie of beer? Well, you’re right. You’re right enough.’ He sighed. ‘It’s a fine thing,’ he said, ‘to see a girl like you giving up everything for the working-class.’

‘I don’t see that I’m giving up anything,’

‘I suppose you can take it that way. I admire you for it, and that’s a fact.’

They were pushing their way along crowded pavements, separated at every moment by the press of people. Martha thought: I’ve delivered Watchdogs with him half a dozen times, and sat in the same room with him at meetings. We have nothing in common. Surely it isn’t possible …

He said: ‘What do you say if we get married?’ Martha said: ‘But, Murdoch, we hardly know each other.’

‘You’re a fine comrade,’ he said sentimentally. ‘And you’re an attractive lass too.’ As she said nothing, frowning, he added, on his familiar weakly humorous note: ‘There’s no harm asking, is there?’

‘But, Murdoch, how can you go around getting married just like that?’

‘There’s not much time for courting in the Party.’ He said resentfully: ‘I can see a working-man’s life is not much to tempt you. Specially for you white girls out here – never had to lift a finger for yourselves in your lives. Believe me, you’d make a fine wife for a working-man!’

‘Then why ask me?’

‘Forget it,’ he said, and began to whistle. They walked on, hostile to each other.

‘No beer?’ he asked, as they passed McGrath’s.

‘But I would if we weren’t so late.’

‘Aye, I’ll bet you would. Waste five minutes of Party time – not you!’ He went off towards the office at Black Ally’s, saying: ‘I’ll change back into my jail-clothes. See you later.’

They had rented a showroom on Main Street for the exhibition which was called: ‘Twenty-six years with the Red Army.’

The large room was filled with light movable screens that had posters and photographs pinned all over them. At the table near the door, Jasmine sat with Tommy Brown. He had a book open in front of him, and she was looking over his shoulder.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Martha.

‘You are late,’ said Jasmine, formally, speaking as group secretary. Changing her tone, she said: ‘Hey, Matty, what’ve you done with Murdoch? You haven’t let him go, have you – he’ll get tight again.’

‘I can’t help it,’ said Martha, furious.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Jasmine examined Martha calmly, nodded to Tommy to stay where he was, and followed Martha out to the pavement. ‘What’s eating you?’

Martha said laughing, but in genuine despair: ‘Murdoch has just proposed to me.’

‘Well, he proposed to me last week. And he proposed to Marjorie the day before yesterday and went and got drunk when she said she was going to marry Colin.’

‘They’re all mad,’ said Martha. ‘That means that all the RAF members have proposed to us all in the last month.’

‘Oh well,’ said Jasmine.

‘It obviously doesn’t matter to them who they marry.’ Martha was laughing but she was filled with dismay and discouragement. She was relieved when Jasmine rolled up her eyes and said sedately, ‘It’s the spirit of the times.’ Jasmine always made such remarks as if they were being made for the first time. Martha felt: Well, it is the spirit of the times, and laughed, and Jasmine departed to a hall down-town, where she was helping to organize a public meeting.

Tommy Brown was taking admittance money from a group of girls just out of their offices. They went to examine the posters and photographs of the Civil War that had the look of stills from an old film. Martha recognized the look on their faces, which was an idle, rather startled interest: it represented the feeling she had had herself, a year ago, when the ‘Russian Revolution’ was offered to her for the first time. She thought: But they’ll all be married inside a year, so what’s the point?

She sat beside Tommy, who was waiting for her with one finger marking the place in his book. She said: ‘It would have been better if this exhibition had been about this war, about the Red Army in this war, instead of the Revolution as well.’

His round eyes searched her face. His face had a look of strain. There was a pause while he thought over what she said. Five minutes with Tommy always made Martha feel frivolous, because of the depths of attention which he offered to all the older members of the group.

‘You mean, we shouldn’t push communism down their throats?’ he asked. He frowned. ‘But that’s what we are for.’

‘Oh I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.’

Outside the door a group of dark-skinned people hesitated, and Martha looked, wondering: Indians? Coloureds? She saw the assistant from the Indian store and smiled. They came in, with nervous glances at the group of white girls who were making their way around the exhibition.

‘OK?’ said the assistant.

‘OK,’ said Martha. The group of Indian youths started at the other end of the exhibition from the girls, with an air of wary self-respect, as if to say: We’d prefer not to come here at all if it means trouble.

‘Oh hell,’ said Martha, suddenly utterly depressed, and instantly felt that to let go into private moods was irresponsible with Tommy.

He said, blushing scarlet: ‘I don’t think that I can be a communist. I mean to say, I feel bad things all the time. I know it’s the way I’m brought up. But when I see Coloured people or Indians in a place like this, then I think of them as different from us, and that’s wrong, isn’t it?’

‘We can’t help the way we were brought up.’

‘And it’s not only that. I mean, sitting here selling tickets, I mean selling tickets to anyone, it makes me feel funny. I feel self-conscious. That’s snobbish, isn’t it?’

‘Well, I felt like that to start with.’

‘I mean, ever since I joined the group I feel funny. I don’t know what I feel, half the things I feel seem to be wrong but I feel them. I know they are wrong but I can’t help it.’ He ended, very defiant, his honest urchin’s face hot with confusion.

‘But, Tommy, it’s because we’re both brought up in this country. We’ve got bad attitudes to people with a different colour. We’ve just got to change our attitudes.’

‘But it’s so hard to change. Today on the job I did something very bad. I was fitting a pipe with my mate. And one of the Kaffirs brought the wrong pipe and I shouted at him. But if I did different, then the blokes on the job’d think I was mad. I’m just an apprentice, and it’s hard to be different from the grown-ups. And there’s Piet. I saw him today on the job with some Kaffirs unloading stuff and he was talking to them just the way he always does – and listen to me, I use the word Kaffir and I shouldn’t, it just slips out.’ He ended in despair, almost in tears.

The group of white girls, having finished their tour, went out. Slowly the group of Indians scattered out of their defensiveness and began wandering around the exhibition at their ease.

‘The point is,’ said Tommy, ‘it’s easy for you, because you’re better educated.’

She laughed in astonishment. ‘I don’t think that’s true.’

‘Well, it is, I’m telling you.’

His finger, insistent on a point in the page, drew Martha’s attention. The book was War and Peace.

‘Did Jasmine tell you to read this?’

‘She said it was the greatest novel ever written. Is that right?’