A Ripple from the Storm

Anton Hesse got to his feet; but Boris Krueger was before him. Boris said it was very unfortunate that this had occurred; and everyone must hope that Mr Forester, Mr Perr and Mr Pyecroft would reconsider their decision. In the meantime they must elect a temporary chairman so that the meeting could elect new officers. At this, a clergyman from the bank of respectable patrons got up to say that he was quite unable to understand the storm which had blown up out of a blue sky but it seemed to him essential that the society should continue, since it was performing a useful service for the war-effort, and he would like to second the last speaker’s suggestion that a temporary chairman be elected. He would like to suggest Mr Krueger.

He was speaking in an affable, apologetic public voice. The expressions on the faces of the respectable patrons were affable and apologetic. People were nodding and smiling in an attempt to make humour save the day. But it was no use: everything was false and unpleasant.

Boris Krueger, since there were no dissensions, climbed on to the platform and said that while he hoped everyone agreed with him that every effort should be made to get the officers to reconsider their decision, he called for nominations from the floor for alternative officers. He waited, standing.

No one spoke. There were perhaps six hundred people crammed together under the chocolate and gold ceiling in McGrath’s ballroom, and they were all silent.

Then Anton Hesse got up and said in his correct manner that perhaps some of the patrons would consent to act as officers? From this Martha understood that Anton was afraid they would lose all their respectable patrons. Boris turned to consult the body of twelve or fourteen people, sitting behind him. They shook their heads, one after another; but it was not possible to tell whether this was because they were too busy to do the actual work, or whether they were considering offering their resignations. On most of their faces strong distaste was mixed with the humour they still continued to offer to the members. Again Anton rose to urge the Reverend Mr Gates (the man who had just spoken) to be chairman. Mr Gates, after a pause, agreed to act as chairman temporarily, and Anton sat down, with a look of satisfaction which explained to Martha that she had under-estimated the danger of the entire body of respectable patrons resigning en bloc. She had learned to have the deepest respect for Anton’s political flair in spite of, perhaps because of, the cold formality of this tall, stiff German who frightened her a little even now, after seeing him every day for months.

Boris Krueger stood down and Mr Gates again called for nominations. A man nobody knew suggested that the last speaker should be secretary. Anton got up and said very smoothly that he was a German, technically an enemy alien, and it was clearly undesirable that this society should have such a person as a secretary. He sat down. The cold bitterness behind his words was such that everyone in the ballroom felt positively guilty. A young girl stood up and said impulsively that she could not see why one of Hitler’s victims should not be the secretary of a society whose aim was, after all, wasn’t it? – to defeat Hitler. But the silence which followed was uncomfortable. Rumours pursued all the foreigners in the town to the effect that they were enemy agents, and Anton Hesse was no exception. Boris Krueger, knowing this, knowing that he too was popularly supposed to be in the pay of Germany, stood up to give public support to Anton, in spite of the fact that political bitterness had prevented the two men from speaking to each other for some months. Boris said that Anton was right: he was a foreigner himself, and therefore able to make such remarks without being suspected of prejudice; and he would like to take this opportunity of saying how fortunate it was Mr Gates had agreed to be chairman, because it would be highly undesirable for a foreigner to be chairman, even temporarily, of a society such as this. He had intended to sound magnanimous, but he smiled uncomfortably around the audience, his spectacles gleaming. Mr Gates thanked Mr Krueger for his remarks ‘with which he did not necessarily agree’ – and again called for nominations. And again there was silence.

At this William proposed Jasmine as secretary. She had resigned from the position three months before because she was also secretary of Sympathizers of Russia, but when a dozen hands shot up from the hall to second the proposal she nodded a demure agreement.

There remained the position of treasurer. It was agreed that the committee should be empowered to co-opt one.

Mr Gates then announced the next item on the agenda which was an address by Mr Horace Packer, MP, on the course of the war on the Russian Front. There was a storm of relieved applause; the people who apparently had been on the point of slipping away from the hall now settled themselves again in their seats.

Jackie Bolton, who had been sitting and smiling as if the unpleasantness had had no connection with him at all, now rose with a conspicuously negligent ease and began squeezing his way out along the row of chairs. He came to where Martha and Jasmine were, laid his hand on Jasmine’s shoulder and said: ‘I have to be back in camp by twelve. We must have an urgent group meeting. Get them all together, will you?’

Jasmine, visibly torn by the conflict of her love for him and her complete disapproval, said uncomfortably: ‘But, Jackie, how can we possibly go now?’

‘Oh, find someone else to do the literature.’

‘We can go to the office when this is over.’

‘No. We’d better meet in the park.’

‘But why?’

‘It’s safer,’ said Jackie, with weary importance.

Jasmine’s eyes and Martha’s met involuntarily out of embarrassed disapproval of these histrionics, but Jasmine said: ‘Very well, but we had better all leave separately.’

Jackie Bolton went out, with the eyes of all the people in the hall on him. Jasmine proceeded to write a series of little notes: to Andrew McGrew, Anton Hesse and Marjorie Pratt; folded them up, and handed them to people at the ends of the rows of chairs the addressees sat in, as if she were releasing into the air three carrier pigeons. Then she approached a young aircraftsman who had been anxious to help in the past, asked him to guard the literature sales, and, haying made all arrangements, nodded at Martha and William. Martha, William and Jasmine quietly left the hall after Jackie. Already Anton and Andrew and Marjorie were reading their notes and looking towards the door. The group’ – conspicuous with discretion, were leaving the meeting in a body.

Jasmine found Jackie smoking moodily on the pavement outside McGrath’s. This time it was he who approached her elbow with his hand – not in apology, for one would never expect that from Jackie Bolton, but in a laughing declaration of intimacy. Jasmine said at once: ‘Jackie, you’ve behaved very badly.’ He laughed at her, and the two set off together towards the park. Martha and William followed. Inside the ballroom Mr Horace Packer’s statements were earning great applause. There were continuous storms of clapping. From outside it sounded like heavy rain on a tin roof: the small overall rattling of individual drops striking metal together in a swelling and subsiding din of sky-flung rain. Martha instinctively glanced up at the sky, which was clear and moonlit.

‘Why the park?’ she demanded, irritably humorous.

‘He’s got news. He really has.’

‘What news?’

‘Oh, perhaps it’ll come to nothing.’

All Martha’s dissatisfaction with Jackie, and with William for associating himself with Jackie, culminated in: ‘He’s got no sense of discipline at all. He’s just an anarchist really.’

But at this William said in the tone of a man humouring a woman: ‘Why are you so cross, Matty?’ And he did a couple of dance-steps along the pavement.

Feeling herself to be humoured, she remembered how often recently William had reminded her of Douglas. She therefore humoured him by telling him a chatty and gay story about something that had happened that morning in the office, because – although she had not yet admitted this to herself, it was not worth disliking William when he was bound to be leaving her so soon.

Exchanging amiable bits of news, they reached the big open gates of the park. Ahead, dark spires of conifers reached up into the moonlight. Under the trees, Jasmine’s pale dress spotted with shadow and with moonlight drifted beside the black lean shape of Jackie. A springy mat of pine-needles gave under Martha’s feet, and she watched her black shadow shift and break along the dark trunks of the trees.

The two couples met where a white path blazed in the bright light, bordered thick with clumps of canna lilies sculptured out of shadow.

‘The others won’t know where we are,’ said Martha.

‘Then they’ll just have to look for us,’ said Jackie, laughing.

There was a bench set in the grass beside the path. Jackie stepped high over the clumps of lilies to sit on the bench. On the back was written: For Europeans only. Instinctively he straightened himself, and turned away from it. His face in the moonlight showed a sharp and angry repugnance. When he noticed the others had watched him, had noticed what he felt about the segregated bench, he said histrionically: ‘Bloody white fascists.’ Then, for the first time that evening he looked uncomfortable, and walked away ahead of them to where a small Chinese-looking pavilion stood at the end of the path, surrounded by flower-beds. The night-air was thick with mingled scents. From this pavilion a band from the African regiment played on Sunday afternoons while the people of the town lay about on the grass, or sat in deck-chairs, eating ice-cream, smoking, gossiping.

Jackie sat on the chill dry grass beside the pavilion and the others joined him. Almost at once William leaped up and said he must go and see if he could find the others. He went off. There was an officiousness in his bearing which Martha disliked, and chose not to notice; but Jackie looked after him, smiling, and said: Sergeant Brown, Administration. His dark face was hallowed into dramatic lines and folds by the sharp moon. He smiled at the two girls, one after another, as if he owed allegiance to neither. Suddenly he was simple, natural and direct. He was a man who would always be at his best alone with women.

‘When I leave here,’ he said quietly, ‘what I’ll remember will be this park.’

He spent whatever free time he had in the park, lying on the grass with an anthology of poetry.

Jasmine’s breathing changed; he heard it, remembered that after all she was interested in the possibility of his having to leave, and laid his hands on hers.

He looked straight up into the starlit solemnity of the sky and began to quote:

How to keep – is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or

brace, lace, latch, or catch or key to keep Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, from

vanishing away?

His voice was drowned by the whine of aircraft engines: an aeroplane, landing lights flicking, went past overhead.

Jackie said in cockney: ‘Half of a wing of one of those mucking machines would rebuild a whole street in that mucking slum my mother’s in.’ He was coldly, deadly serious. He waited until the aircraft had dipped, a silver shape in the silver light, past the trees and continued with the poem in his other voice. The rest of the group, shepherded by William, were approaching through the shadows, but Jackie went steadily on, and not until Anton Hesse, Marjorie, Andrew and William stood over them did he acknowledge their presence by raising his voice at them:

Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks,

maiden gear gallantry gaiety and grace …

He stopped and added laughing: ‘But that is counterrevolutionary of course.’

Andrew, gruffly annoyed, said: ‘What’s this, a poetry-reading?’

Anton Hesse, his rough pale hair as white as sand in the moonlight, his eyes glinting with white disapproval, said: ‘Why have you convened a meeting here? What is the reason for fetching us all up here and leaving the other meeting?’

Jackie said: ‘Because I thought it would be more pleasant to sit in the park than in that dirty little office.’

Jasmine said with determination: ‘We should elect a chairman.’ Her tone said plainly that she did not intend to be moved, by the poetry or by anything else, away from her determination to criticize Jackie.

‘Andrew,’ said Marjorie. They all agreed. They were now sitting in a circle on the grass.

‘Now, Comrade Jackie,’ Andrew said in blunt annoyance, ‘you convened this meeting. I should like to say first that if you really fetched us here because you wanted to admire the moonlight then I, for one, wish to pass a vote of censure.’ The formal chairman’s voice sounded so absurd here, in the spaces of the big park, that he added, smiling: ‘But only as a matter of form.’