‘I understand. A friend of my son’s–a schoolfriend–is with us more often than he goes home.’
‘Does he say his parents are shits?’
‘They don’t understand him, he says. But I don’t either. Tell me, did you have to do a lot of research for your article?’
‘A good bit.’
‘But you didn’t provide any answers.’
‘I don’t know the answers. Can you tell me why a girl–I’m referring to the dark girl out there, Rose Trimble–who has just had all her difficulties sorted out, should choose just that moment to do something she knows might spoil everything?’
‘I call it brink-walking,’ said Mrs Kent. ‘They like to test limits. They walk out on a tightrope but hope someone’ll catch them. And you are catching them, aren’t you?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You’d be surprised how often I hear the same story.’
The two women stood close together at the window, linked by a sort of despair.
‘I wish I knew what was going on,’ said Mrs Kent.
‘Don’t we all.’
They went back into the office where the girls, who had been giggling and laughing at the older women’s expense, resumed their silence and their sulky looks.
Mrs Kent said, ‘I’m going to give you another chance. Mrs Lennox says she will help you. But in fact I am exceeding my brief; I hope you both understand that you have had a very narrow escape. You are both fortunate girls, to have a friend in Mrs Lennox.’ This last remark was a mistake, though Mrs Kent could not know that. Frances could positively hear the seethe of resentment in the girls, in Rose at least, that they could owe anyone anything.
Outside the building, on the pavement, they said they would go off shopping.
‘If I told you not to shoplift,’ said Frances, ‘would you take any notice?’
But they went off without looking at her.
That night they announced at supper that they had nicked the two Biba, or Biba-type dresses they were wearing, both so short they could only have been chosen with the intention of inviting shock or criticism.
And Sylvia did say she thought they were too short, in an effort that cost her a good deal to assert herself.
‘Too short for what?’ jeered Rose. She had not looked at Frances once, all evening, and this morning’s crisis might never have happened. Jill, though, did say in a hurried mutter that combined politeness with aggression, ‘Thanks, Frances, thanks a million.’
Andrew told the girls they were bloody lucky to have got off, and Geoffrey, the accomplished shoplifter, told them it was easy not to get caught if you were careful.
‘You can’t be careful on the Underground,’ said Daniel, who did not buy tickets, in emulation of his idol, Geoffrey. ‘It’s luck. You either get caught or you don’t.’
‘Then don’t travel on the Underground without a ticket,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Not more than twice. It’s stupid.’
Daniel, publicly criticised by Geoffrey, went red and said he had travelled ‘for years’ without a ticket and had only been caught twice.
‘And the third time?’ said Geoffrey, instructing him.
‘Third time unlucky,’ chorused the company.
That was the week that Jill allowed herself to get pregnant, no, invited it.
All these dramas had played themselves out in the four months since Christmas and, as if nothing had happened, here were the protagonists, here were the boys and girls, sitting around the table on that spring evening making plans for the summer.
Geoffrey said he would go to the States and join the fighters for racial equality ‘on the barricades’. A useful experience for Politics and Economics at the LSE.
Andrew said he would stay here and read.
‘Not The Ordeal of Richard Feverel,’ said Rose. ‘What crap.’
‘That too,’ said Andrew.
Sylvia, invited to go with Jill to her cousins in Exeter (‘It’s a groovy place, they’ve got horses’) said no, she would stay here and read too. ‘Julia says I should read more. I did read some of Johnny’s books. You’d never believe it, but until I got to this house I didn’t know there were books that weren’t about politics.’ This meant, as everyone knew, that Sylvia could not leave Julia: she felt too frail to stand on her own.
Colin said he might go and pick grapes in France, or perhaps try his hand at a novel: at this there was a general groan.
‘Why shouldn’t he write a novel?’ said Sophie, who always stuck up for Colin because he had hurt her so terribly.
‘Perhaps I shall write a novel about St Joseph’s,’ said Colin. ‘I shall put us all in.’
‘That isn’t fair,’ said Rose at once. ‘You can’t put me in because I’m not at St Joseph’s.’
‘How very true that is,’ said Andrew.
‘Or perhaps I could write a novel all about you,’ said Colin. “‘The Ordeals of a Rose.” How about that?’
Rose stared at him, then, suspiciously around. They all stared solemnly at her. Baiting Rose had become a far too frequent sport, and Frances tried to defuse the moment, which threatened tears, by asking, ‘And what are your plans, Rose?’
‘I’ll go and stay with Jill’s cousin. Or I might hitchhike in Devon. Or I might stay here,’ she added, facing Frances with a challenge. She knew Frances would be pleased to have her gone, but did not believe this was because of any unpleasant qualities in herself. She did not know she was unlikeable. She was usually disliked, and thought that this was because of the general unfairness of the world: not that she would have used the word dislike or even have thought it: people picked on her, they put their shit on her. People who are kind or good-looking or charming or all three; people who trust others, never have any idea of the little hells inhabited by someone like Rose.
James said he was going to a summer camp, recommended by Johnny, to study the senescence of capitalism and the inner contradictions of imperialism.
Daniel said forlornly that he supposed he would have to go home, and Geoffrey said kindly, ‘Never mind, the summer won’t be for ever.’
‘Yes, it will,’ said Daniel, his face flaming with misery.
Roland Shattock said he was going to take Sophie on a walking tour in Cornwall. Noting signs of misgiving on certain faces–Frances’s, Andrew’s–he said, ‘Oh, don’t panic, she’ll be safe with me, I think I’m gay.’
This announcement which now would be met by nothing much more than, ‘Really?’, or perhaps sighs from the women, was too casual then to be tactful, and there was general discomfort.
Sophie at once cried out that she didn’t care about that, she just liked being with Roland. Andrew looked gracefully rueful, and could almost be heard thinking that he wasn’t queer.
‘Oh, well, perhaps I’m not,’ amended Roland. ‘After all, Sophie, I’m crazy about you. But have no fear, Frances, I’m not one to abduct minors.’
‘I’m nearly sixteen,’ said Sophie indignantly.
‘I thought you were much older when I saw you dreaming so beautifully in the park.’
‘I am much older,’ said Sophie, truthfully: she meant her mother’s illness, her father’s death, and then Colin’s ill-treatment of her.
‘Beautiful dreamer,’ said Roland, kissing her hand, but in a parody of the continental hand kiss that salutes the air above a glove, or, as in this case, knuckles ever so slightly odorous from the chicken stew she had been stirring, to help Frances. ‘But if I do go to prison, it will have been worth it.’
As for Frances, she expected peaceful and productive weeks.
• • •
The incendiary letter came addressed to ‘J . . . indecipherable . . . Lennox’, and was opened by Julia, who, having seen it was for Johnny, Dear Comrade Johnny Lennox, and that the first sentence was, ‘I want you to help me open people’s eyes to the truth’, read it, then again, and, having let her thoughts settle, telephoned her son.
‘I have a letter here from Israel, a man called Reuben Sachs, f
or you.’
‘A good type,’ said Johnny. ‘He has maintained a consistently progressive position as a non-aligned Marxist, advocating peaceful relations with the Soviet Union.’
‘However that is, he wants you to call a gathering of your friends and comrades to hear him speak about his experiences in a Czech prison.’
‘There must have been a good reason for him to be there.’
‘He was arrested as a Zionist spy for American imperialism.’ Johnny was silent. ‘He was inside for four years, tortured and brutally treated and finally released . . . I would take it as a favour if you did not say, Unfortunately mistakes have sometimes been made.’
‘What do you want, Mutti?’
‘I think you should do as he asks. He says he would like to open people’s eyes to the truth about the methods used by the Soviet Union. Please do not say that he is some kind of provocateur.’
‘I am afraid I don’t see why it would be useful.’
‘In that case I shall call a meeting myself. After all, Johnny, I am in the happy position of knowing who your associates are.’
‘Why do you think they would come to a meeting called by you, Mutti?’
‘I shall send everyone a copy of his letter. Shall I read it to you?’
‘No, I know the kind of lies that are being spread.’
‘He will be here in two weeks’ time, and he is coming to London just for that–to address the comrades. He is also going to Paris. Shall I suggest a date?’
‘If you like.’
‘But it must be one convenient for you. I don’t think he would be pleased if you didn’t attend.’
‘I’ll telephone you with a date. But I must make it clear that I shall disassociate myself from any anti-Soviet propaganda.’
On the evening in question the big sitting-room received an unusual collection of guests. Johnny had invited colleagues and comrades, and Julia had asked people that she thought Johnny should have invited, but had not. There were people still in the Party, some who had left over various crisis points–the Hitler–Stalin Pact, the Berlin Rising, Prague, Hungary, even one or two who went back to the attack on Finland. About fifty people; and the room was crammed tight with chairs, and people standing around the walls. All described themselves as Marxists.
Andrew and Colin were present, having first complained that it was all so boring. ‘Why are you doing this?’ Colin asked his grandmother. ‘It’s not your kind of thing, is it?’
‘I am hoping, though I am probably just a foolish old woman, that Johnny might be made to see some sense.’
The St Joseph’s contingent were taking exams. James had left for America. The girls downstairs had made a point of going to a disco: politics were just shit.
Reuben Sachs had supper with Julia, alone: Frances could have agreed with the girls, and even their choice of language. He was a round little man, desperate, and earnest and could not stop talking about what had happened to him, and the meeting, when it began, was only a continuation of what he had been telling Julia, who having informed him that she had never been a communist and did not need his persuasions, kept quiet, since it was evident that what he needed was to talk while she–or anyone at all–listened.
He had maintained for years a difficult political position in Israel, as a socialist, but rejecting communism and asking that the non-aligned socialists of the world should support peaceful relations with the Soviet Union: this meant that they would necessarily be in an unhappy situation with their own governments. He had been reviled as a communist throughout the Cold War. His temperament was not suited by nature to being permanently out on a limb, being shot at from all sides. This could be seen by his agitated, fervent discourses, his pleading and angry eyes, while the words that repeated themselves like a refrain were, ‘I have never compromised with my beliefs.’
He had been on a fraternal visit to Prague, on a Peace and Goodwill Mission, when he had been arrested as a Cosmopolitan Zionist spy for American Imperialism. In the police car he addressed his captors thus, ‘How can you, representatives of a Workers’ State, sully your hands with such work as this?’ and when they hit him and went on hitting him, he continued to use these words. As he did in prison. The warders were brutes, and the interrogators too, but he continued to address them as civilised beings. He knew six languages, but they insisted on interrogating him in a language he did not know, Romanian, which meant that at first he did not know what he was being accused of, which was every sort of anti-Soviet and anti-Czech activity. But: ‘I am good at languages, I have to explain. . .’ He learned enough Romanian during the interrogation to follow, and then to argue his case. For days, months, years, he was beaten up, reviled, kept for long periods without food, kept without sleep–tortured in all the ways beloved by sadists. For four years. And he went on insisting on his innocence, and explained to his interrogators and his jailers that in doing this kind of work they were dirtying the honour of the people, of the Workers’ State. It took a long time for him to realise that his case was not unique, and that the prison was full of people like him, who tapped out messages on the walls to say they were as surprised to find themselves in prison as he was. They also explained that, ‘Idealism is not appropriate in these circumstances, comrade.’ The scales fell from his eyes, as he said. Just about the time he stopped appealing to the better natures and class situation of his tormentors, having lost faith in the long-term possibilities of the Soviet Revolution, he was released in one of the new dawns in the Soviet Empire. And found he was still a man with a mission, but now it was to open the eyes of the comrades who were still deluded about the nature of communism.
Frances had decided she did not want to listen to ‘revelations’ that she had absorbed decades ago, but crept into the back of the room when it was full, and found herself sitting next to a man she did seem to remember but who obviously remembered her well, from his greeting. Johnny was in a corner, listening without prejudice. His sons sat with Julia across the room, and did not look at their father. On their faces was the strained unhappy look she had been seeing there for years now. If they avoided their father’s eyes, they did send supportive smiles to her, which were too miserable to be convincing as irony, which is what they had intended. In that room were people who had been around through their early childhoods, some whose children they had played with.
When Reuben began his tale with, ‘I have come to tell you the truth of the situation, as it is my duty to do . . .’ the room was silent, and he could not have complained that his audience was not attentive. But those faces . . . they were not the expressions usually seen at a meeting, responding to what is said, with smiles, nods, agreement, dissent. They were polite, kept blank. Some were still communists, had been communists all their lives and would never change: there are people who cannot change once their minds are made up. Some had been communists, might criticise the Soviet Union, and even passionately, but all were socialists, and kept a belief in progress, the ever-upwards-reaching escalator to a happier world. And the Soviet Union had been so strongly a symbol of this faith, that–as it was put decades later by people who had been immersed in dreams–‘The Soviet Union is our mother, and we do not insult our mothers.’
They were sitting here listening to a man who had done four years’ hard labour in a communist prison, been brutally treated, a painfully emotional tale, so that at times Reuben Sachs wept, explaining that it was because of ‘the sullying and dirtying of the great dream of humankind’, but what was being appealed to was their reason.
And that was why the faces of the people who had come to this evening’s meeting, ‘to hear the truth’, were expressionless, or even stunned, listening as if the tale did not concern them. For an hour and a half the emissary from ‘the truth of the situation’ talked, and then ended with a passionate appeal for questions, but no one said anything. As if nothing at all had been said, the meeting ended because people were getting up and having thanked Frances, under the impression that she was the
hostess, and nodded to Johnny, drifted out. Nothing was said. And when they began talking to each other it was on other subjects.
Reuben Sachs sat on, waiting for what he had come to London for, but he might have been talking about conditions in medieval Europe or even Stone Age Man. He could not believe what he was seeing, what had happened.
Julia continued to sit in her place, watching, sardonic, a little bitter, and Andrew and Colin were openly derisive. Johnny went off, with some others, not looking at his sons or his mother.
The man next to Frances had not moved. She felt she had been right not to have wanted to come: she was being attacked by ancient unhappinesses, and needed to compose herself.
‘Frances,’ he said, trying to get her attention, ‘that was not pleasant hearing.’
She smiled more vaguely than he liked, but then saw his face and thought that there was one person there at least who had taken in what had been said.
‘I’m Harold Holman,’ he said. ‘But you don’t seem to remember me? I was around a lot with Johnny in the old days . . . I came to your place when all our kids were small–I was married to Jane then.’
‘I seem to have blocked it all off.’
Meanwhile Andrew and Colin were watching: the room was nearly empty now, and Julia was taking the miserably disappointed truth-bringer out and up to her rooms.
‘Can I ring you?’ Harold asked.
‘Why not? But better ring me at The Defender.’ And she lowered her voice, because of her sons. ‘I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Right,’ he said, and off he went. This had been so casual that she was only just taking it in that he was interested in her as a woman, for she had got out of the habit of expecting it. And now Colin came to ask, ‘Who’s that man?’
‘An old friend of Johnny’s–from the old days.’
‘What is he telephoning you about?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps we’ll go and have a cup of coffee, for old times’ sake,’ she said, lying casually, for already that aspect of her self was re-emerging.
‘I’ll get back to school,’ said Colin, abrupt, suspicious, and he did not say goodbye as he went off to catch his train.
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