The Life of Margaret Laurence

by James King

  Their “architect-designed” house, which “had no screens in a land of bugs,” was in a complex of modernistic bungalows originally built for the Volta River Project on the fringes of Accra. Peggy felt utility had been sacrificed to beauty: “The living room and dining room had louvers, as did the bedrooms. You took your choice. Either you opened the windows and took the chance of thieves, or you closed the windows and opened the lower-level louvers, inviting in scorpions or snakes.… When we went to bed, we chose to close the louvers in the bedrooms and open the windows, preferring the chance of marauders to the chance of snakes and scorpions.” Peggy’s greatest fear, however, was of bats, creatures which occasionally got into the living room. Such invasions reduced her to paralysis, infuriating Jack who needed assistance in order to rid the place of the intruders: “How the hell do you expect me to get this damn bat out unless you help me?”

  Despite drawbacks, Peggy’s first impressions were extremely positive, although she found the dry heat of Somaliland preferable to the humidity of the Gold Coast.

  The country is … midway between being under the Colonial Office and ruling itself. Nationalism is very strong, and in particular among the young educated men one sees a real enthusiasm for the future of the country as an independent nation. We have not as yet met any of the educated Africans, but hope to do so soon through the university here at Achimota, not far from Accra. But the newspapers are always printing articles dealing with various aspects of the country’s future and its problems. There seems to be an admirable tendency among many educated people here now to emphasize the importance of keeping many features of the old African culture … literature, music, dancing, the arts in general, as well as certain features of the tribal system, and adapting these to the modern world rather than imitating slavishly the European modes of culture. It is a fascinating place to be, really, as one feels it is typical of both the old and the new Africa. In the interior, the tribal system still holds good; the chief religions are still the old idol ones; witch-doctors and magic are still prevalent. And yet here in Accra you find people at the other extreme … African doctors, lawyers, writers, judges, etc. From the little we have seen of the country, I think we are going to enjoy being here.

  Later, her optimism would be considerably modified. For the previous two years, she had found a way of relating to the Somali; the inhabitants of the Gold Coast, on the verge of becoming citizens of Ghana, were hostile to any overtures, however well intentioned, from the whites, who, nominally, still ruled over them.

  Ghana, lushly greenly beautiful in contrast to the harsh yellows and browns of Somaliland, takes its name from a medieval African empire, which was disintegrated by the thirteenth century. In precolonial times, the region known as the Gold Coast had been divided into a number of independent kingdoms, including the Ashanti confederation in the interior and the Fanti states on the coast. The British, allying themselves with the Fanti, defeated the Ashanti in 1874. The Gold Coast went through many changes during the next eighty years, but in 1951, in the face of nationalist activity, Britain allowed the colony to proclaim a new constitution and to hold general elections. At that time, Kwame Nkrumah became premier and the way was paved for Ghana to become an independent republic within the Commonwealth of Nations in 1957.

  In Somaliland, Peggy and Jack had led a semi-nomadic existence. On the Gold Coast, the Laurences—and the other foreigners employed by the engineering firm of Sir William Halcrow & Partners—lived together in the same complexes, whether in Accra or Tema. The change was a difficult one. The Laurences also had to be concerned with the practical realities of living with a young baby:

  We have been lucky with neighbours [she told Adele]. The people on one side of us are extremely nice … she was in the Army for a long time, and is a highly intelligent and practical girl … just my age, which is nice. On the other side, the people have a three-year-old girl, so we are working a mutual baby-sitting arrangement, which is nice for all of us. However, I’m afraid Lois (the mother of the little girl), while pleasant and friendly, will never be much of a bosom pal. She was brought up in a wealthy family in England; never worked; didn’t want her child when it came along and therefore left it to the care of her mother largely; and can’t seem to cope out here at all. She said to me the other day that she hated roughing it. I stared at her in amazement as I thought of these luxurious bungalows, complete with electricity, running water, and servants! Jack and I couldn’t help wondering what she would have thought of our home in the back of a Bedford three ton truck in S’land. However, I know the tropics don’t suit all people, so I suppose I ought to be more sympathetic. I hope to god she doesn’t go home … there will be our baby-sitting arrangement finished. I sound like a selfish brute, don’t I? Well, I am. So there.

  Even with the help of a cook and manservant, Peggy found the good-natured baby took up a great deal of each day, leaving her only a few free hours. There were pleasant diversions in Accra, however. She particularly liked the nightclubs filled with the exuberant sounds of West African high-life music with its counterpoint rhythms of drums. And she was still a good dancer: “When young African men asked me to dance, I was honoured—they didn’t ask just anyone.”

  Peggy was pleased to drop the title of “memsahib,” but the corresponding Ghanaian title of “madam” made her sound, she observed, like the “proprietress of a low-class brothel.” She was glad to be able to get to the beach, but driving lessons made her feel exceedingly old and awkward: “I lose all semblance of poise and become like Stephen Leacock in a bank.” She never learned to drive, so Jack drove their small second-hand standard when they went on outings. The Laurences first lived near Accra and then, in the autumn of 1954, moved to Tema to a set of bungalows and apartment buildings.

  The Laurence bungalow at Tema. 1955. (illustration credit 8.1)

  At the end of 1952, she congratulated Adele on placing a piece of writing and, as she informed her friend, Jack had recently had a similar success in having several poems published in English magazines: “You and Jack now rank in the class who have sold something, and I am going to start collecting autographs!” As it turned out, Peggy had to wait only a month for similar good news.

  Well before she left Somaliland, Peggy had sent the typescript of “Uncertain Flowering” to Whit Burnett at Story magazine on November 5, 1951. Nine months later, on July 19, 1952, he accepted the story. His letter, arriving after the Laurences had left for Europe, did not reach her until January 1953.

  Story had been started in Vienna in 1931 but was moved to New York in 1933. The contribution of Whit Burnett and his wife, Hallie, to American writing would be hard to overestimate. The first accepted short fiction of Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, J.D. Salinger and Truman Capote appeared in Story. The black writer Richard Wright was also discovered by the Burnetts. Peggy, obviously knowing of the magazine’s penchant for selecting the work of young unknowns, was setting her sights high and must have been particularly gratified by Burnett’s remark: “You have a fine fictional and character sense, and we wonder if you have a novel we could consider for book publication under the Story Press imprint.”

  On January 29, the somewhat startled young writer responded to Burnett:

  You asked if I had a novel which you might consider. Up to this point, I have not thought of writing a novel, but I have a number of other short stories set in Somaliland. Some of these are in finished form and others I am working on at the present time. Is it a policy of The Story Press to publish books of short stories by a single writer, and if so, would you by any chance be interested in seeing these stories when they are all completed? This would be in about a year’s time. If not, might I send you now the scripts of a few of them for consideration, with a view to possible future publication in Story magazine?

  Eight days later, Burnett advised her: “Books of short stories are very hard selling in this country as they certainly are also in England and we would much rather see you work on a novel. However, let us
see, from time to time, your best short stories and scripts and believe us that we do not want to lose touch with you for we think you are a very good writer and should have a valuable writing future.”

  More than willing to take the advice of an experienced professional, she told him in February: “I had not realized that books of short stories were so difficult to sell. Since this is the case, I might be well advised to attempt a novel with an East African setting instead of working entirely on short stories.” Spurred on by Burnett’s request, she abandoned a novel (begun in 1951), which she felt was top-heavy and filled with far too many sub-plots and major characters. That April, she informed Burnett she had begun work on a novel set in Somaliland, although she was careful not to mention it was her second attempt at a full-length narrative set in that country. Six months later, she had scrapped that book in favour of a third, with the same locale. She was discouraged but remained persistent: “I keep telling myself that one learns with experience, but sometimes I wonder.”

  The experience of Ghana could be frightening. In January 1953, six-month-old Jocelyn almost drowned when she and her mother were swimming at the beach near Tema. Peggy turned her back on the waves and the baby “naked and slippery as a little eel” almost slipped away when a giant breaker swept her mother off her feet. “I clutched my daughter desperately; if I had loosened my grip on her for a second, she would have been gone forever. Breakers came in and swept out. Jack ran down and instantly hauled both of us onto the beach.” Six months later, the Laurences’ house was broken into by way of the windows in Jocelyn’s room. “Fortunately,” she told Adele, “we woke up when they had just gone into the living room, and they fled.” The most harrowing event of that year was the sudden death of the little boy next door following an attack of cerebral malaria. “It happened so suddenly,” she recalled. “He got sick in the morning and was dead by noon.… The hearse was a government Land Rover, and the tiny coffin jolted around in it. The flowers, picked that morning, were all dead.” Peggy, who doted on Jocelyn—writing often with great enthusiasm and with considerable detail about her daughter’s milestones to Adele—was badly shaken by this death.

  The death of John Simpson on April 29 that year, one month before his ninety-seventh birthday, does not seem to have touched Peggy deeply. In Dance on the Earth, she laconically states: “When Mum went back to Canada, she had to look after the old man for another eight months, until his death.” Of much more concern to her was the delight she and her husband took in their daughter. Jack’s role in Peggy’s writing career was also crucial at this time. Her third attempt at an African novel, centred on the relationship between a District Commissioner and a Somali woman, caused her great distress, which could only be relieved by her husband’s approval since he proved to be a demanding critic.

  Peggy and Jocelyn, Ghana. c. 1955. (illustration credit 8.2)

  Peggy and Jocelyn, Ghana. c. 1955. (illustration credit 8.3)

  You are the only person [she told Adele] I feel like writing to since Jack is at the moment going through Episode #4 of my story, and I am sitting here trying not to chew my nails. If he says it stinks, then it does in fact stink. The first two times he read this episode, he tore it to bits (it had then been re-written about five times already) so I hope he thinks it stands up better this time. I am fed up with it. I wish I could disagree with J’s criticisms—but they are so damned logical & sound—I always wonder why I didn’t see it myself. If I ever write anything with any merit, it will be largely due to him—he’s always getting me to rework things until they’re at least the best I can do—I sometimes think that I myself would never operate at full strength otherwise.

  Peggy’s trust in her husband’s literary judgment—harsh though it could be—indicates the strength of their marriage in the early 1950s.

  She was still working on her Somali stories, some of which were sent to the CBC—and may have been broadcast by them. She submitted “Amiina” to the Queen’s Quarterly, but the editor, Malcolm Ross, her old teacher, rejected it. She had begun short narratives set in the Gold Coast, of which the first was “The Drummer of All the World.” The novel she was working on was written from two perspectives, as can be discerned in a letter to Adele Wiseman:

  I am doing the story mainly from the European woman’s point of view. In the (necessary) places where the Somali world is the setting it is mainly seen through the Somali girl’s eyes—this combination is risky, obviously, but better I think than my original idea of writing it from the man’s (D.C.’s) point of view. I have not got the necessary scope of talent to write from a man’s point of view. I feel more relaxed about it now that I am not struggling against my own nature.

  Later that year, Malcolm Ross accepted a Somali story, but “The Drummer” was later substituted for it.

  The big event of 1954 was a visit to Canada. Jack, Jocelyn and Peggy flew to Montreal and then crossed by train to Vancouver, from where they took the ferry to Victoria, where they visited Marg, and Jack’s parents who had also settled there. Jocelyn was talking “non-stop,” to the delight of her grandparents. The weather on Vancouver Island was a welcome relief from the moist heat of Ghana. Marg was keen to hear about Peggy’s writing, and Peggy was happy to be able to show her the typescript of “The Drummer”: “Yet there was a weariness in her. I sensed that she missed having her own home [she lived with Ruby]. All those harrowing years with Grandfather had also taken their toll. She was tired. No longer did she hate the thought of growing old. She felt old.” Of course, as Peggy somewhat guiltily realized, Marg missed her.

  At the end of the year, Peggy was pregnant again. The information about this in a letter of December 11 to Adele contains conflicting pieces of information:

  Now for the big news item—we’re expecting another child—around the end of July, I think. To save you counting up—that makes me not quite 3 months pregnant now. We’d been hoping to start one this tour but had just given up hope—we don’t want another one born while we are on leave so were going to stop trying soon. However, it seems we’ve been lucky after all—although if we’d managed it a few months sooner it would really have been more convenient—but I suppose one cannot be too fussy about these things. We only want 2 kids, so if all goes well, this will be our last, barring unforeseen accidents.…

  Jack, if not as thrilled as Jocelyn and myself, is at least philosophical about the whole thing and admits he will probably be crazy about this one, too, when it is actually here—it is difficult for a man to feel very enthusiastic before the event, I think, especially as 9 months is a long time.

  In the first paragraph, the pregnancy seems to be the result of a shared decision whereas the second hints at a difference between husband and wife. Jack Laurence did not want a second child, a wish he communicated clearly to his wife. When she became pregnant, he was furious. For him, this was the first serious disruption in his marriage. On her side, Peggy seems to have attempted to paste over the resulting discord by resorting to clichéd expressions—“not as thrilled” and “it is difficult for a man to feel very enthusiastic before the event.”

  Peggy may have had the capacity to blind herself to reality, but she also had a corresponding ability to know what was right for her. For her, the birth of books and the birth of babies were the central events in her life, even though she was well aware of the binds to which she might be subjected. In March 1954, she reflected on this very conjunction: “I suppose having a novel is similar to having a baby—when you’re carrying it you think everything is going to be wonderful as soon as it’s born, only to find that you enter then a new phase of existence that carries with it its own special problems.”

  This time round, the Laurences decided to have the baby in the Accra hospital—a first-class facility where the patients were a mix of Europeans, African civil servants and professionals, and members of the East Indian merchant class—and then to travel to England for their leave. Meanwhile, Peggy stayed at home to work on her novel: “Sometimes,” sh
e reflected, “I feel quite sure it is all a stupendous waste of time, but even if it is, I must finish it now.” Jocelyn’s bossy behaviour provided amusing distractions, such as the time she told her parents they could each have a sweet if they ate a good lunch. She also instructed her mother: “Don’t bother me, I’m a busy woman.” The parents laughed about the child’s tough-minded bossiness: “By the time she is 18, we won’t dare go out without her permission.”

  Peggy’s second pregnancy provided some amusing moments. She was relieved when her doctor, an alcoholic, was away and, she saw a young African doctor to determine if she was pregnant. In those days, the urine of the woman was injected into a female frog. If it laid an egg, the woman was expecting a baby. Peggy’s frog did not lay an egg. The doctor informed her she was not pregnant and asked if she was upset at the bad news. No, she assured him, but she felt very pregnant, whereupon the doctor responded: “Well, sometimes European women in the tropics do—um—they can develop neurotic symptoms.” Nine months later, she would have liked the opportunity to show him her “little neurosis.” The pregnancy was uneventful, although she was worried about the enormous weight gain. “I thought,” she told Adele, “if I did my own housework, I wouldn’t get so enormous, but I guess I just have a tendency that way.”

  Twice she went into false labour. The second occasion was complicated by the fact there was a spitting cobra in their garage that evening. In the midst of contractions, Peggy had to worry about Jack being bitten and thus blinded for life. When she finally was ready to give birth on August 9, she was admitted to hospital. During labour, she was assisted by “an African midwife, a vast woman named Salome.”