The Pillow Fight

by Nicholas Monsarrat

  I kissed him. It was a very great pleasure. Much of my body was woefully exhausted, but my lips and my heart were not.

  ‘All right, you told me. But you weren’t very convincing about it.’

  ‘Have faith … Just because I don’t sit around looking like Tolstoy or lecturing my friends on creative imagery, doesn’t mean I’m not a writer.’

  ‘You’re a writer, all right. But Johnny, it did seem as though you were wasting your time. There were lots of other things, weren’t there?’

  ‘What other things?’ He had got up, and was replenishing our glasses, while I lay still on the bed; but he had a way of communicating alertness, even with his back towards me, even with words of no tension whatsoever.

  ‘Oh – drinking.’

  ‘I was sad. Very sad. More sad than you’ll ever know.’

  ‘And that awful thing with the police.’

  ‘I didn’t waste it, did I?’

  ‘No. But then, all those women.’

  ‘What women?’ He had turned, glasses in hand; except for the slip of white skin round his loins, he was very sunburnt, and well-muscled, and male – all the things I wanted to keep for myself, and hated to share. ‘I haven’t had any women.’

  ‘But darling, the rumours …’ I reeled off a few of the atrocious names that Bruno had given me. ‘It couldn’t all be just talk.’

  ‘Of course I met most of them. A fragrant nosegay indeed. They’re part of Johannesburg, aren’t they? – a fairly sordid part, but a part nonetheless. I wanted to see what they were like at close quarters. Now I know.’ He gave me my drink, kissed me in four or five important places, and lay down beside me. ‘Except for one woman – I’ll tell you about her later – I haven’t gone to bed with anyone. Ididn’t want to. It wouldn’t have cured anything. I discovered years ago that the answer to losing one girl isn’t another. It’s no girl.’

  ‘Who was this one woman?’ I asked, cut to the silly heart.

  ‘Later, Kate.’ He had grown up; he was in command; he laid down the terms; I did not mind. ‘But I’ll confess some other things to you,’ he said – and it sounded a strong phrase, not a weak one. ‘When you walked out on me, I drank like a maniac, to try to forget how utterly miserable I was. And I went around with lots of women too, creating the maximum uproar in the process – basically, so as to make you jealous, because I knew you’d hear about it, sooner or later. But my particular torment, all the time, was the idea of you in bed with someone else. Have you?’

  ‘No, Johnny. Not once.’

  I was so glad that this was true.

  ‘Thank God for that. I couldn’t have borne it … Kate, what are we going to do?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘I’ve got to go back to Johannesburg. The book has been sold to America – I only heard about it this morning – and there’s the possibility of a film …’ He was not boasting, he was not even parading his riches for me; but he was quietly excited, deeply pleased. ‘I must stay in one place for a bit, so that I can keep in touch. But when the rush is over–’

  ‘It’s never going to be over,’ I told him. ‘With a book like that, and all the indications of success, you’re never going to stop.’

  ‘I mean, when the immediate negotiations and contracts and translation rights and things–’ he waved his hand vaguely; he was still a bit lost, he had not yet learned even the words.

  ‘Have you got an agent?’ I asked him, pursuing this last thought.

  ‘Yes. In England. And in America too, now. They’re busy working on all those things … But, Kate. You and me. I’ve got something at last. The Book Society. The Pacific Monthly. The American contract. Do you know, the book is already certain to make more than four thousand pounds?’ He pronounced the modest figure as if it were at least half of the National Debt. What are we going to do?’

  ‘We’re going to be in love, and stay in love.’

  ‘But everything’s different now. I adore you. Not just like this–’ he smoothed his hand over my waist, familiar, faintly exciting again. ‘I mean, I’ve got something to offer you now.’

  ‘You’ve written a wonderful book, and it’s going to make lots of money.’ There was a proposal coming, I knew, and I had no idea what to do about it. I recalled my mother’s words, reproving, authoritarian, when I had made fun of some hard-breathing, carpet-creeping suitor: Never forget, Katherine, it is the greatest compliment that a man can pay to a woman. I wanted the compliment, and I wanted him; but marriage, marriage, marriage … As well as a proposal, there was also a shift of balance already peeping over the horizon: a transformation of us into Jonathan Steele the pipe-smoking good provider, dictating the budget and the full life together, and Kate Marais the little woman, waiting at home in the flowered housecoat, basting with joy the modest shoulder of pork.

  Lying beside him, trembling once more under his hand, I was ready to abdicate all things; but I would not tremble forever – even sensations-by-Steele must have a stop, and when my heartbeat slowed to normal, I might just be me again.

  And which was me, anyway? The ridiculous indecision that had marked almost every moment of our affair, changing me first from an individual to a dependent, then back again, and now forward once more to classic female subservience, came flooding in afresh, making me almost morbidly dissatisfied with myself, even in the midst of the very joys of being a woman. I had been overthrown by a man, in the first place; now, apparently, it took only a book … It was high time for me to mark out a path, and stick to it. Chop-and-change must really come to an end.

  I cheated that evening, and for some evenings afterwards. I said: ‘I don’t exactly want to talk now,’ and presently his body pressed and warmed and merged with mine, and when next we uttered, it was only cries and moans and mouth-to-ear endearments. We both knew that I had not answered him; but since I was crowned with exhausted happiness, he, in his humility, was content to be content.

  He was humble. The smash hit was coming; I knew it, and he guessed it; from now on, he could hardly fail to be the kind of writer that all other writers envied, whether honestly, secretly, or bitchily – a writer successful at a level of achievement which no one could deny. But it had not touched him yet, and he was still, in this area, the child of innocence. I had a striking, disarming instance of this when we first talked about publicity for the book.

  We were in Johannesburg, where I had followed him after a few days; we were camping together in a borrowed flat, a compromise between my taste for comfort and his insistence that, in a world where people were dying every day like tortured flies, the man of goodwill should die a little with them. Talking of the future – his future still, not ours – I said at one point: ‘Of course, you really ought to have a publicity agent.’

  ‘Publicity agent!’ He repeated the words as if mimicking, monkey-fashion, some totally unknown language. ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘Work it out, darling. You’ve written this terrific book. It’s going to be a success anyway, and it might be an absolute earthquake. Things like that need organisation. They need handling. You don’t want to make any mistakes, at this stage.’

  ‘Handling?’ Jonathan jumped on the word that had, for him, the most sordid connotation of all. ‘What do you think I am – a boxer? One of those starlets with all the brains crammed into their bosoms? I’ve written a book, Kate! It’s going to be serialised, and published, and perhaps filmed. But it’s still a book, not a hunk of merchandise, and I’m a writer, not a touring whore from Italy. What has handling got to do with it?’

  ‘But darling, it’s such a story! Don’t you see? You’ve had this terrific success–’

  ‘It hasn’t even been published yet.’

  ‘After starving for years and years–’

  ‘I’ve lived quite comfortably, and I’ve only been writing for three years.’


  ‘It doesn’t happen every day,’ I insisted. ‘It doesn’t even happen every year. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. You need someone to make the most of it, so that not a single aspect of it goes to waste. And not just here, but all over the world. Johnny, I tell you there are people, experts, who understand these things.’

  ‘Well, I’m not one of them. Of course, I’m glad that a lot of people are going to read Ex Afrika, and even more glad to earn some money from writing at last – enough not to have to worry for a year or two. But not to make a production out of it–’

  We compromised. I gave him a big send-off in my column, the following Sunday, and all the local papers picked it up, crowded round for interviews, and produced quite a splash. The line was ‘Sympathetic South African Novel due for World Success’, and my stepped-up estimate of £10,000 in earnings made a good sub-headline.

  Johnny, to my surprise, was momentarily like a little boy over the whole thing; he carried the cuttings around with him for weeks, fantastically pleased, ready to show them whenever the conversation flagged, like a sentimental sailor far from home, bulging with faded snapshots of the missis and the kids. So oddly affected was he that once I was impelled, though amusedly, to protest: ‘Darling, don’t get drunk on the thing. It’s just something in the newspapers, after all.’

  Fingering the tattered cuttings, beaming with a novel expansiveness, he answered: ‘But I never realised my name looked like that.’

  He was not often so childish; indeed, it was a rare descent. If he was like a small boy with his newspaper cuttings and his zest for seeing his name in large print, he was certainly a man in bed, and a poet with new authority when he spoke. There came a time, as the good news came flooding in, and I had spent three weeks of blissful happiness with him in Johannesburg, and my office was falling into ruins, and I did not care, when he suddenly said, in bed but wakeful: ‘You haven’t answered my question, Kate. The question. But before you do, let me tell you two stories of Africa. They haven’t any connection, really. Not with each other, and not even with us. But they are part of your country. I just want to tell you. Then I’ll ask you again.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  One of the most horrible aspects (he told me) of life in the locations is that even there, in all that squalor and misery and hopelessness, the people who should be brothers actually prey on each other, to all the limits that evil can devise. You would think that people permanently condemned to dirt and near-starvation would help one another; but they don’t. There isn’t a location in Johannesburg that hasn’t been poisoned by racketeering.

  Rent rackets, protection rackets, drink rackets, threats of murder and rape and beating-up – that’s the inescapable background, all the time. It’s fairly quiet during the day, when most of the men are away and the gang-agents go round in relays, leaving messages that the boss wants this and that, or else … But at night the pressure is put on, the executioners move in.

  There was a man called Ambuko, a Zulu, who came to live in the location of Teroka with his new wife. He was a strong man, of the middle years, but his wife was young. He built a new house, of iron sheeting and sacks and old planks and barrel-staves, but well-built, a house to be proud of in Teroka. Then one Sunday evening a thin man with a face like a meanly-made spear came to his door, and said: ‘I am from the Lions.’

  Ambuko had heard of the Lion-men, a gang of thieves and robbers who made a hard life harder still for those in Teroka, and he said nothing, but went on smoking his pipe. Only, not liking the eyes of the Lion-man, he motioned to his wife Amara to go to the back of his house.

  ‘I am from the Lions,’ repeated the Lion-man. ‘There is a new thing called roof-protection, and you must pay it.’

  ‘My roof is new and strong,’ said Ambuko. ‘I need no roof-protection.’

  ‘Nonetheless,’ said the Lion-man, ‘strong roofs can be taken away by the wind in the night, or perhaps they may catch fire. It is better to pay.’

  ‘How much is this roof-protection?’ asked Ambuko.

  ‘Ten shillings a week.’ The Lion-man looked at Ambuko. ‘It is agreed, then?’

  ‘No, it is not agreed,’ answered Ambuko. He stood up and came towards the Lion-man; and though Ambuko was a man past fifty years, he was strong and well-made, and the Lion-man fell back a pace. ‘Be gone, hyena,’ said Ambuko. ‘I pay no roof-protection.’

  ‘Your roof may catch fire,’ warned the Lion-man.

  ‘I will put the fire out.’

  ‘But you are away by day, working in the city.’

  ‘Then my friends or my wife will put it out.’

  ‘You will have no friends on that day,’ declared the Lion-man. ‘As to your wife, I do not know. But remember one thing – you are away all day working in the city, and your wife is young and beautiful.’

  At that, Ambuko came towards him, and the Lion-man ran away, shouting: ‘We will come again, you will see.’

  Ambuko and his young wife Amara talked long together that night – talking, indeed, when they would rather have lain in each other’s arms, being full of the joy of new love. Ambuko was a strong man, blood-relative to the chiefs of his tribe, not the man to pay roof-protection to a gang ofthieves and murderers; but in fact, he could not pay even if he had wished. His wage was three pounds a week, and with the rent of his small piece of land, and the long bus ride into the city, and the cost of food and clothing, there was no ten shillings a week left for roof-protection, nor one shilling a week either.

  ‘Do not fear,’ he said at last to Amara. ‘I will not pay, and I will look after you.’

  On the next day, a Monday, Ambuko came back from the city, to find his wife in tears, and no food to eat at the end of the day’s weary work.

  ‘They upset the cooking-pot,’ she told him, sobbing and fearful, ‘and they called me names, and said terrible things. They said’ – her face grew pitiful – ‘that ten shillings a week was no sum at all, that I could earn it on my back while you were away at work.’

  ‘Who said these things?’ asked Ambuko, his face full of pain and anger. ‘What men were they?’

  ‘Lion-men,’ answered Amara. Then she said: ‘You must pay them.’

  ‘I will pay nothing.’

  ‘I am afraid,’ said Amara.

  That night another Lion-man came, when it was darker, and said, as if speaking something new: ‘There is a thing called roof-protection. Ten shillings a week. A kind of insurance, like the Europeans pay. Will you pay, Ambuko?’

  ‘No,’ said Ambuko. ‘And I am astonished that you dare to come here, woman-fighters, when I am at home.’

  ‘We will come here anytime. Tonight, perhaps.’

  That night there were strange noises, and singing, and shouting, outside the house of Ambuko, and a small fire was started at the corner of the roof. Ambuko beat it out before it could gain hold, and stood on guard all night, wakeful, though he had to leave his house at five o’clock to go to the city. When he left, Amara said: ‘I am afraid, Ambuko.’

  When he returned that night, which was Tuesday, Amara was weeping and trembling. ‘We must pay,’ she told him. ‘We must pay, or we must go.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They came, three men. Two held me, while one touched me here and here. Then the other two took their turn to touch me, while I was held fast. They said–’ her voice faltered, ‘–they said that this was a tasting for them, like a first sip from a cup. They said, next time they would enjoy my cup to the full. They said also, it might be that I would myself have pleasure from it, much more than from lying with an old man whose strength was gone.’

  ‘What did you do?’ asked Ambuko, distraught with rage and shame because of the love he bore her. ‘Did you not call out for help?’

  ‘I called out, but none came, though there were many near. They were afraid. Perhaps they were glad t
hat the Lion-men chose me, and left them alone.’

  ‘This is a bad place,’ said Ambuko. ‘Some are hyenas, some are cowardly dogs. None are men.’

  ‘I beseech you to pay,’ said Amara.

  ‘I cannot and I will not.’

  That night, when they lay together, giving comfort to each other, a voice at the foot of their couch suddenly shouted: ‘Enjoy her, Ambuko! Tomorrow will be our turn!’ But when he sprang up, the man was gone.

  The next evening, which was a Wednesday, a third Lion-man came to the house of Ambuko. All he said was: ‘Roof-protection. Ten shillings a week.’

  ‘I will not pay,’ said Ambuko. ‘Woman-fighter.’

  ‘Tonight we will fight both of you,’ said the Lion-man, and walked away.

  ‘I must go to the police,’ said Ambuko.

  ‘Do not leave me,’ said Amara.

  ‘The police will help me.’

  ‘They will say: “Go away. Fight your own battles. Do not bother us.” Perhaps they will put you in prison for making a complaint.’

  ‘Nonetheless,’ said Ambuko, ‘a man with no friends must go to the police.’

  He left his house, having embraced Amara and told her to stay hidden and to take care. It was an hour’s walk to the police post, and when he got there, the fair-haired policeman with the great shoulders kept him waiting for half an hour, though doing nothing, and then said: ‘What is it, eh?’

  Ambuko told his story, and said at the end: ‘They held my wife, and touched her.’

  ‘Where?’ asked the policeman.

  ‘Here and here,’ answered Ambuko, ashamed.

  ‘Which of you is complaining?’ asked the policeman, smirking. ‘Is it both of you, or just you?’

  Ambuko said nothing.

  ‘We’ll look into it,’ said the policeman finally. ‘Where’s that house again?’

  Ambuko described it to him.

  ‘Those damned shacks are all alike,’ grumbled the policeman. ‘Ought to be pulled down, the whole stinking lot … All right, we’ll keep an eye on it.’