Landlocked

‘What have you got to eat?’ asked Solly.

‘Fried eggs, chips and sausages,’ said Johnny, wiping the glittering white of the cloth with another cloth.

‘I mean food.’

‘Ah, why didn’t you say so? A nice kebab? Saffron rice? Stuffed peppers?’

‘How about you, Matty?’

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Everything you’ve got that’s food – twice. My brother’ll be here in a minute.’

‘Right, Mr Cohen.’

He stood smiling, but Joss had turned to Martha, and the Greek switched on a couple more lights and drew a curtain across panes that showed a sudden dark where the stars already blazed.

He stood looking out, his hand on the sill, an ageing man glad of a moment’s chance to rest. Solly turned to see why he was still there and said: ‘Sit with us a minute, Johnny?’

‘Thanks for inviting me, but I’m a cook short tonight.’

‘Heard anything from home?’

Johnny shook his head. ‘Nothing good for your side or for mine and nothing will be.’

‘There’ll be a communist government in Greece after the war,’ said Solly. ‘But I’m as much against it as you are.’

Johnny looked to see if he were joking; then he shrugged. ‘My brother was always the one for politics. It’s not for me. My brother’s wounded.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Martha, politely.

‘My cousin in Nyasaland got a letter but it was from last year, it came down from Cairo. My brother was wounded, but only in his leg.’

As Solly said nothing Martha said: ‘I’m sorry,’ again, and took Solly’s critical look with a smile.

‘Yes, Mrs Hesse, I suppose the good God knows what he is doing. But there’s not much left of my family, there’s not much left of Greece by the time the war ends. Communist or not communist. If the war ever does end.’ He nodded at them, sombre, and went out.

‘All right then,’ said Martha, ‘but then why do we use this place practically as another office?’

‘Get as much out of the dirty little fascists as we can, that’s why.’

‘Oh, is that it? Well, what did you get me here for?’

‘Don’t be in such a hurry.’

‘I am in a hurry.’ She got up, to prove it.

‘All right, all right. I’m in contact with some contacts in the Coloured quarter. As of course you know. There’s a group of decent types. The point is, they’ve got a study group going with some Africans. Joss and I met them.’

‘Joss?’ said Martha, disbelieving.

Here Joss came in, with a brief smiling nod at both of them. He sat down opposite his brother. He was in civilian clothes. The only sign he had been in the army was a red scar down his right hand – a gun had exploded in Somaliland last year and for him the war was already over. Four years in the army had burned out his youth. He had been an earnest student: now one could already see what he would look like in middle age. Except when you looked him straight in the eyes, you were looking at a Jewish business man.

Solly on the other hand had not changed at all: he was still like a student.

‘I’ve ordered,’ said Solly to his brother.

‘Good.’

Joss waited, smiling. Martha waited. Solly said nothing.

‘I’m in an awful hurry,’ Martha said.

‘OK, OK, so you’re in a hurry,’ said Solly.

She understood suddenly that this meeting was some sort of joke, or private triumph of Solly’s and that Joss did not know she was here ‘for a serious discussion’.

‘Oh it really is too bad,’ she said, and her voice shook, although she tried to make it ‘humorous’.

‘What’s going on?’ said Joss. He spoke gently. He had understood, already, that she was on edge through one of the intuitive flashes of understanding by which human beings in fact understand and regulate their behaviour with each other. He, too, now lit a cigarette and handed it to her. ‘Keep your hair on and tell your Uncle Joss all about it.’

‘It’s so damned silly,’ said Martha. ‘For months and months, nothing happens. Suddenly it seems the Africans are really starting something at last. Then we hear that there is Solly, with his oar well in, having his say. Well, naturally I suppose.’

‘Naturally,’ said Solly.

‘Yes. But here you are, it seems you’re with Solly?’

‘God forbid,’ said Joss, humorous. But Martha kept her eyes on him and at last he said seriously: ‘If you’re asking my advice, I think the contradictions should be kept out of it.’ This word, contradictions, was shorthand in this time for everything the Soviet Union did which went against what might be expected of that nation in her socialist aspect. Which meant, of course, everything. Except winning the war.

‘Ah,’ said Martha thoughtfully, and looked at Joss with interest. He smiled, as if to say: Yes, I mean it.

‘Except that it’s not for you to keep the contradictions out of anything,’ said Solly. ‘You don’t even know who these Africans are.’

‘Then why did you ask Matty here at all?’ said Joss.

‘An interesting point,’ said Solly, grinning. She looked at him – at first incredulous, then reproachful, then, seeing nothing but triumph, angry. She was blushing.

‘Nonsense,’ she said energetically to Joss.

Joss had looked carefully at Solly, then at Martha, noting his brother’s air of triumph and Martha’s annoyance. He came to conclusions, and inwardly removed himself from the situation. ‘All that’s got nothing to do with me.’

‘Oh,’ said Martha, furious. ‘How absolutely – Solly said I was to come here because of some African group.’

‘Awfully touchy, isn’t she?’ said Solly to his brother, echoing, for Martha, a situation a decade old, and arousing in her a remembered confusion of bitterness that made her pick up her bag ready to go. She was white, and she trembled. Anybody would think something serious had happened.

‘Ah Matty, man,’ said Joss gently, ‘relax, take it easy. Don’t take any notice of my little brother. Everyone knows he’s just a troublemaker.’ With which he offered his brother an unsmiling smile: he stretched his mouth briefly across his face and let it fall into seriousness again. Solly sat and grinned, rocking his chair back and forth.

‘Look,’ said Martha direct to Joss, ‘I think your attitude is awfully … but I suppose you can’t help him being your brother. The point is this. Solly’s got this contact with an African group. But one of our people has a contact with it too, and he’s – Solly is – trying to blacken us. Well, I think he is,’ she added, fair at all costs, and even looking at Solly in a way which said: I hope I am not maligning you. Which look Joss noted, and so, Martha felt at once, misinterpreted.