The Pillow Fight

by Nicholas Monsarrat

  The Demon Barber was taking time out on the ropes, simulating a profound coma; Honest John was protesting his innocence, and pretending to dispose of a knuckleduster at the same time. Bruno was talking to the sports writer sitting next to him. I tapped Eumor on the arm.

  ‘Where’s Steele, Eumor?’

  He turned, surprised. ‘Who?’

  ‘Jonathan Steele.’

  ‘I don’t know, dar-r-r-ling. Why?’

  ‘I’d like to see him again.’

  Eumor’s olive face creased into a grin. ‘You have some plans?’

  ‘No. I’d just like to see him.’

  ‘No, you have plans,’ declared Eumor determinedly. ‘You wish me to procure for you … It disgusts me … I will do it gladly.’

  ‘Hush,’ I said.

  ‘Trust me, Kate,’ he hissed, wonderfully conspiratorial. ‘I find him and bring him to your bed.’

  ‘Just bring him here,’ I said.

  ‘You want his body. I arrange.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve done this sort of thing before,’ I said, resigning myself to the trend.

  ‘Not for some years.’

  ‘What are you two children whispering about?’ asked Bruno.

  ‘Nothing,’ answered Eumor. ‘I go to the gentlemens.’

  When he came back he stood at the end of the Press table, and called to me rather loudly: ‘It’s all fixed!’ earning himself a malevolent glare both from the Demon Barber and the referee. Honest John was momentarily senseless on the other side of the ring.

  Beside me again, Eumor whispered: ‘He was home. Comes straight away.’

  ‘But what did you tell him?’

  ‘Everything!’ exclaimed Eumor, with a gleaming eye. ‘He feels same way about you.’

  When a man whom you want comes into a room – even so wide a ‘room’ as a wrestling arena – and moves towards you, some telltale chemistry goes to work, quickening your heart, stabbing your womb. I knew, seconds before Bruno said distastefully: ‘Darling, there’s your bloody communist!’ that Jonathan Steele had travelled swiftly, and was here.

  Across the noisy, crowded, smoke-wreathed arena, I met his eyes, and smiled, and looked away again. He made his way through the rows, pulled out a chair, and sat down just behind me. In the ring, Honest John (the ordained winner) was getting in a few last licks at the Demon Barber, drawing his thumbnail briskly across his opponent’s eyelids. I called out, as loud as I could: ‘Come on, Johnny! Come on!’

  Behind me, Jonathan Steele said: ‘The black sheep of our family,’ and I laughed with exquisite relief and pleasure.

  I had already stopped thinking, or trying to work any of it out. When Honest John’s hand had been raised aloft in victory, and he had delivered the customary kicks at the prostrate form of the Demon Barber, we walked across from the arena to the nightclub on Commissioner Street where I wanted to spend my last evening.

  Jonathan Steele and I were companionably silent; Bruno, who seemed to have guessed what had happened and how it had been engineered, was deep in sulks. Eumor was beaming like Mephistopheles himself. We must have looked a very odd quartet.

  As we turned into the door of the Springbok, and the bright lights of Commissioner Street gave place to the warm, indulgent twilight which is standard atmosphere for all good nightclubs, Bruno muttered to me: ‘Darling, you are letting the side down!’

  ‘Am I, Bruno?’

  ‘The boys will refuse to believe it.’

  ‘I refuse to believe it myself.’

  But I did believe it. Already I thought the whole thing was wonderful.

  Jonathan Steele was listening, saying nothing, quite unconcerned. Bruno glared at him.

  ‘I hope you’re not going to give us the same performance as the other night.’

  ‘I’m not going to give any performance,’ answered Steele reasonably.

  ‘Of any sort,’ said Bruno, looking from him to me. ‘Frankly, these flowers are not for you to pick.’

  I giggled at the ridiculous phrase, but I was cut short by Jonathan Steele saying to Bruno, with easygoing, confident disdain: ‘Why don’t you just go home?’

  ‘One of my oldest friends,’ I said, when Bruno had turned on his heel and swept out again.

  ‘He’ll be back,’ said Jonathan Steele. ‘But not tonight.’

  Eumor, who had gone a few paces ahead, turned round to us, anxiously.

  ‘I stay?’ he asked.

  ‘You stay,’ I answered.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Jonathan Steele.

  Neither of us specially wanted to be alone yet. That was in the entrancing future.

  Eumor beamed at us. ‘So you like my promotion, Kate?’

  ‘Yes, Eumor, I like it very much.’

  ‘You guess its title?’

  ‘Title?’

  He was nearly overcome with sudden laughter. ‘Call Me Madam.’

  ‘Why, Eumor!’ I said. ‘I’m quite shocked.’

  ‘Or Kiss Me Kate,’ gasped Eumor, who seemed momentarily to have lost his head.

  ‘Now I am shocked,’ said Jonathan Steele.

  His hand rested lightly on my arm, for the first time.

  ‘Let’s get a table,’ I said, ‘before we knock ourselves out completely.’

  The Springbok was bouncing, as it usually was, seven nights a week, from dusk till dawn. The man who made it bounce, Skip Shannon, now came forward to greet us.

  ‘Kate, my darling one! I’ve been looking for you these five days.’

  ‘I’ve been terribly busy, Skip. But you knew I’d drop in some time, didn’t you?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have been spring without you.’

  Skip Shannon, whose guiding hand guaranteed the Springbok as my favourite night-joint, was a rubbery, durable Irishman who had spent his life doing all the things that Irishmen are traditionally meant to do.

  He had boxed, he had played the music-halls, he had fought in odd wars, usually on the wrong side; he had acted in bad documentary films, followed the horses with even less success than Eumor, and served his time as a nightclub chucker-out (broke his leg), model-agency proprietor (married the nicest one), and sacramental wine salesman (confessed all). I had absolutely no doubt that somewhere or other there was an ancient white-haired mother, down on her gnarled old knees among the pigs and the potatoes, praying the blessed saints above for her son’s safe return to dear old Bally-go-phut.

  But in spite of this checkered background, Skip was an infinitely honest – and capable man, who gave everyone their money’s worth, worked like a beaver and knew (from hard experience) the exact height of the bounce of every phoney cheque in South Africa. Now he had graduated as owner (on someone else’s money, no doubt) and operator (his own particular talent) of the Springbok, which was the nightclub you went to when you felt in a mood of high exhilaration – or hoped to feel that way.

  If I had known about Jonathan Steele, and the unladylike somersault which was to bring me thus suddenly to his side, I probably wouldn’t have chosen the Springbok, which was for public rather than private accommodations. It wasn’t bold or brassy, but it was popular – and popular among so large a cross-section of the city that whatever kind of person you were, some of your friends were certain to be watching you.

  It was beginning to be crowded now, with the usual Johannesburg mixture, the late-night flotsam of which people like Bruno and myself had a good working knowledge, and Skip Shannon had the definite blueprint.

  There were upper-crust sightseers, soft-goods merchants, brokers, bookmakers and bankrupts. There were some of those foolish fellows who thought they could beat the Illegal Diamond Buying laws; there were whores, and models (whatever that meant nowadays), and wayward financiers out on bail. There was a sprinkling of old women who should have
known better, and girls shortly to learn worse. There were visiting newspaper men, as wide-eyed as children on their third birthday; and professional escorts to middle-aged ladies – escorts who were liable to transform themselves, between sunset and sunrise, into jewel thieves, blackmailers, or conventional, free-swinging thugs.

  There were people like Eumor, talking about money; like Bruno, talking about people; like Mrs Arkell, talking about parties; like Joel Sachs, talking business; like Salome Strauss, talking about past loves; and even like Lord Muddley, talking about the colonies and their eternal challenge to the wide-awake investor.

  But there was no one, thank God, either there or in all the turning world, exactly like Kate Marais and Jonathan Steele.

  I felt that, and he felt it, and perhaps dear Eumor, our personal procurer, felt it also, as we crossed the dance floor and settled down at our wall table, midway between the orchestra and a delightful notice which read: ‘fire escape! no exit!’

  Skip Shannon, introduced to Jonathan, said: ‘Mr Steele, you’ve got a look of the Irish about you.’

  Jonathan, bridging the important chasm between private joy and public elevation, said: ‘That’s very interesting. Actually, my mother’s name was Cromwell.’

  Eumor asked me, for the last time on that evening: ‘Kate dar-r-r-ling, are you sure I am not de trop?’

  Jonathan Steele surveyed Skip Shannon, Eumor Eumorphopulos, and all the fritto misto of gamblers, models and musicians preparing to play flamenco guitar, and said: ‘Your friends are really quite odd, aren’t they?’

  I said: ‘I’m writing a book about South Africa,’ and we both laughed, not caring any more about the details of surrender.

  I don’t know what happened to us on that night, but it did happen, and it happened to both of us.

  We didn’t do anything special; just talked and drank from eleven o’clock until six next morning; danced three or four times, and enjoyed or forgot the dreamy music. I had a Durban plane to catch at eight, and I caught it – fresh as a daisy, unharmed, yet borne now on a tide of gentle desire which was, we knew, to flood when next we met.

  We didn’t ‘make love’, even with our eyes, certainly not with our bodies; when we danced, it was unsensual, even sedate; there was no clutching, no intrusive thigh, no hand wandering upon my breast nor hardening pressure at the groin. That was going to happen, but not on this night.

  Maybe that was why we kept Eumor as our chaperone … Truly I couldn’t have borne it if Jonathan had made any sort of sensual approach to me; whatever form it took, it would have been too early. Perhaps he knew that, and felt the same way. Or perhaps, though ambitious, he wanted to earn my regard by his forbearance. It did not matter, either way. On that tender night, I was in the mood to forgive a hundred double-bluffs.

  But he did say, towards the end, when we were still circling the floor sedately: ‘Of course, dancing is for people who can’t go to bed together.’

  That was all he needed to say, for that occasion and for the precious future.

  On that strange night, Eumor was there, and he was not there. He faded in and faded out of our consciousness, like a character in a trick production of Blithe Spirit. Of course he knew what was going on, and normally (if it had ever happened under his eyes) he would have bent a satirical gaze in my direction, and never stopped smiling. But tonight we were all out of character. I was a woman; Eumor was our small Greek godfather, Jonathan Steele an uncomplicated male. We had no worries, no fear of the net. We were playing every card face up.

  Meanwhile, we enjoyed ourselves, at the traditional level also. Skip Shannon, generous soul, was giving employment that week to a forlorn old nightclub comedian who should really, forty years earlier, have made up his mind to be something quite different – a book-keeper, or a jockey.

  As a comedian, he was terrible, and he knew it, and we knew it, and everyone else knew it; only on that evening could we have found him uproariously funny, and communicated that feeling to a lot of other people in the room, so that his jokes presently began to get real laughs, and, on the creased old greasepaint mask, nervous tension gave way to pathetic surprise, and surprise in its turn to a perky self-confidence. Midway through his act, he must suddenly have decided that his ancient ‘material’ was pure gold after all, for he never looked back.

  He did a rickety tap-dance, wildly off the beat, while we stamped out the time – any time. He did imitations of Greta Garbo, Bing Crosby and Al Jolson; it did not matter that they were virtually indistinguishable. He did an Englishman in a Paris restaurant, with all the terrible jokes, including such hallowed plums as: ‘Garçon!’

  ‘It is on, you fool!’

  And: ‘Je t’adore!’

  ‘Shut it yourself!’

  He finished with some really bad juggling, dropped the balls, and murmured, in ambiguous reproof: ‘Oh, balls!’

  Roaring with laughter at this unique rubbish, we couldn’t have been happier.

  When it was all over, and we were comparatively quiet again, Eumor looked at us and suddenly said, out of the blue: ‘Love is a jewel above rubbies.’

  This was one of his better mispronouncements, and it made us both start laughing afresh.

  ‘Are you fond of rubies?’ Jonathan asked me.

  ‘Nothing I like better.’

  We both laughed again. Later, it became our word for lovemaking.

  At 2 a.m., my dear silly friend Mrs Marchant waylaid me in the Ladies Cloaks.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘do my eyes deceive me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What, then? All that merry laughter? And that awful man?’

  ‘I just changed my mind, that’s all.’

  ‘Heavens! I know I do that. But I thought it was only me.’

  ‘It’s not only you.’

  It was not only her … Back at our table, in the warm twilight, with the band playing a gentle, sensual version of Younger Than Springtime, I asked Jonathan Steele what he had been doing during the last forty-eight hours.

  ‘Nothing much.’ He was leaning back against the cushioned wall, idly watching the dancers in the gloom; he did not need to look at me, he knew what he would find there. ‘I was thinking of you quite a lot. And I went down a gold mine.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Free State Deep.’ He grinned, almost shame-faced. ‘Gerald Thyssen fixed it up.’

  ‘In the circumstances, very handsome of him.’

  ‘Undeniably … But it was wonderful, Kate!’ (Why was it such foolish bliss to hear my name thus pronounced?) ‘It was one of his brand new mines; in fact, they were still hacking away at the shaft. There must have been about twenty natives there, five thousand feet down, at the bottom of a crazy little pit about ten feet square. There was one bucket to take us down, one glaring floodlight, and the water sweating and cascading off the walls as the mine-boys tore away at the floor. It was as hot as hell, but they were grinning all the time, hopping about like maniacs in that tiny oven of a shaft, a mile below the surface … We had the whole weight of the earth pressing down on us … Their helmets were shining, their naked bodies glistening …’

  I looked sideways at his intent, remembering face, and said: ‘I’ve been down a gold mine, too.’

  He grinned, content to forget all that had moved him, and answered: ‘Yes, I’ve read your column.’

  We had no malice any more. Not even when he added: ‘You know they’re only paid twenty-two shillings a week?’ and I answered: ‘You can go quite a long way on twenty-two shillings a week, living in a compound with no rent to pay and no food or medical bills,’ – not even then did we fear to strike any kind of abrasive spark. Indeed, it was Eumor who, surprisingly, picked that particular question up, as if with an unsuspected left hand.

  ‘That is why we live in Africa,’ he said suddenly, from his listeni
ng-post across the dark table.

  ‘Why, Eumor?’

  ‘Slaves. Twenty-two shillings a week.’

  ‘They’re not slaves.’

  He spread his hands. ‘They are comparatively slaves. We live on their backs. I make thirty thousand pounds a year, mostly because they are paid twenty-two shillings.’

  Impressed, I said: ‘Do you really, Eumor?’

  Jonathan said: ‘If you feel guilty about it, why do you stay?’

  ‘I don’t feel guilty. That is the terrible part. I feel I deserve it.’ His olive face was somehow sombre and triumphant at the same time. ‘We were very poor in Greece. My father was petit fonctionnaire, and I would have been the same. If I had stayed in Greece, I would be poor still. No slaves in Greece, only greedy canaille … So I come here, use the slaves, use my brain, make money. More money than I could make anywhere else in world, except South America perhaps. Brains and slaves – that is all you need to be rich. Of course I stay in South Africa!’

  Jonathan started to say something, and then stopped. It was part of our evening, part of the curious magic, that he didn’t want to argue or criticise, though on any other occasion I was sure the flames of contempt would have roared and spouted.

  ‘But you’ve contributed plenty to South Africa, Eumor,’ I told him.

  ‘I’ve contributed most to myself. I am very glad, and I do not mind to sound selfish.’

  ‘I’ve never heard you say anything like that before.’

  His face relaxed to a smile. ‘Feeling funny tonight.’

  We were all feeling funny tonight, and it didn’t matter, and it didn’t count against us.

  ‘You think the same way, too, don’t you?’ Jonathan asked me presently.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The slaves.’

  ‘Not quite. In fact, not nearly. Of course, cheap labour is the mainspring of South Africa. But I don’t think of them as slaves, I don’t treat them as slaves. Naturally, I expect them to work hard, the same as I do, but I feel all the time that we owe them – oh, consideration, care, guardianship, whatever you like to call it. It’s different down at the Cape, anyway. There’s a different atmosphere there. You can feel it all the time at places like Maraisgezicht, especially.’