‘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.
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.’