The Golden Notebook. Doris Lessing

my lunch today.’

      ‘But it’s nine o’clock,’ said Paul, ‘and the dining-room is closing, and mine host didn’t offer to feed us. So I’ve failed. We shall starve. Forgive my failure.’

      ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Willi. He went over to Mr Boothby, ordered whisky, and within five minutes had succeeded in getting the dining-room opened, especially for us. I don’t know how he did it. To begin with, he was such a bizarre note in this bar full of sun-burned khaki-clad farmers and their dowdy wives that the eyes of everyone had been returning to him, again and again, ever since he came in. He was wearing an elegant cream shantung suit, and his hair shone black under the strident lights, and his face was pale and urbane. He said, in his over-correct English, so unmistakably German, that he and his good friends had travelled all the way from town to taste the Mashopi food they had heard so much about, and he was sure that Mr Boothby would not disappoint him. He spoke with exactly the same arrogant hidden cruelty that Paul had used in telling the story about the parachute descent, and Mr Boothby stood silent, staring coldly at Willi, his great hands unmoving on the bar counter. Willi then calmly took out his wallet and produced a pound note. I don’t suppose anyone had dared to tip Mr Boothby for years. Mr Boothby did not at once reply. He slowly and deliberately turned his head and his eyes became more prominent still as he narrowed them on the monetary possibilities of Paul, Ted and Jimmy, all standing with large tankards in their hands. He then remarked: ‘I’ll see what my wife can do,’ and left the bar, leaving Willi’s pound note on the counter. Willi was meant to take it back; but he left it there, and came over to us. ‘There is no difficulty,’ he announced.

      Paul had already engaged the attention of the daughter of a farmer. She was about sixteen, pretty, pudgy, wearing a flounced flowered muslin dress. Paul was standing in front of her, his tankard poised high in one hand, and he was remarking in his light pleasant voice: ‘I’ve been wanting to tell you ever since I came into this bar, that I haven’t seen a dress like yours since I was at Ascot three years ago.’ The girl was hypnotized by him. She was blushing. But I think that in a moment she would have understood he was being insolent. But now Willi laid his hand on Paul’s arm and said: ‘Come on. All that will do later.’

      We went out on to the verandah. Across the road stood gum-trees, their leaves glistening with moonlight. A train stood hissing out steam and water on to the rails. Ted said in a low passionate voice: ‘Paul, you’re the best argument I’ve ever known for shooting the entire upper-class to be rid of the lot of you.’ I instantly agreed. This was by no means the first time this had happened. About a week before Paul’s arrogance had made Ted so angry he had gone off, white and sick-looking, saying he would never speak to Paul again. ‘Or Willi—you are two of a kind.’ It had taken hours of persuasion on my part and Maryrose’s to bring back Ted into the fold. Yet now Paul said, lightly: ‘She’s never heard of Ascot and when she finds out she’ll be flattered,’ and all Ted said was, after a long pause: ‘No, she won’t. She won’t.’ And then a silence, while we watched the rippling silver leaves, and then: ‘What the hell. You’ll never understand it as long as you live, either of you. And I don’t care.’ The I don’t care was in a tone I had never heard from Ted, almost frivolous. And he laughed. I had never heard him laugh like that. I felt bad, at sea—because Ted and I had always been allies in this battle, and now I was deserted.

      The main block of the hotel stood directly by the main road, and consisted of the bar and the dining-room with the kitchens behind it. There was a verandah along the front supported by wooden pillars, up which plants grew. We sat on benches in silence, yawning, suddenly exhausted and very hungry. Soon Mrs Boothby, summoned from her own house by her husband, let us into the dining-room and shut the doors again so that travellers might not come in and demand food. This was one of the Colony’s main roads, and always full of cars. Mrs Boothby was a large, full-bodied woman, very plain, with a highly-coloured face and tightly-crimped colourless hair. She wore tight corsets, and her buttocks shelved out abruptly, and her bosom was high like a shelf in front. She was pleasant, kindly, anxious to oblige, but dignified. She apologized, that as we were so late, she could not serve a full dinner, but she would do her best. Then, with a nod and a good night, she left us to the waiter, who was sulky at being kept in so long after his proper hours. We ate plates of good thick roast beef, roast potatoes, carrots. And afterwards, apple pie and cream and the local cheese. It was English pub food, cooked with care. The big dining-room was silent. All the tables gleamed with readiness for tomorrow’s breakfast. The windows and doors were hung with heavy floral linen. Headlights from the passing cars continually lightened the linen, obliterating the pattern, so that the reds and blues of the flowers glowed out very bright when the dazzle of light had swept on and up the road towards the city. We were all sleepy and not very talkative. But I felt better after a while, because Paul and Willi, as usual, were treating the waiter as a servant, ordering him about and making demands, and suddenly Ted came to himself, and began talking to the man as a human being—and with even more warmth than usual, so I could see he was ashamed of his moment on the verandah. While Ted made enquiries about the man’s family, his work, his life, offering information about himself, Paul and Willi simply ate, as always on these occasions. They had made their position clear long ago. ‘Do you imagine, Ted, that if you are kind to servants you are going to advance the cause of socialism?’ ‘Yes,’ Ted had said. ‘Then I can’t help you,’ Willi had said, with a shrug, meaning there was no hope for him. Jimmy was demanding more to drink. He was already drunk; he got drunk more quickly than anyone I’ve known. Soon Mr Boothby came in and said that as travellers we were entitled to drink—making it plain why we had been allowed to eat so late in the first place. But instead of the hard drinks he wanted us to order, we asked for wine, and he brought us chilled white Cape wine. It was very good wine; and we did not want to drink the raw Cape brandy Mr Boothby brought us but we did drink it, and then some more wine. And then Willi announced that we were all coming down next week-end, and could Mr Boothby arrange rooms for us. Mr Boothby said it was no trouble at all—offering us a bill that we had difficulty in raising the money to settle.

      Willi had not asked any of us if we were free to spend the week-end in Mashopi, but it seemed a good idea. We drove back through the now chilly moonlight, the mist lying cold and white along the valleys, and it was very late and we were all rather tight. Jimmy was unconscious. When we got into town it was too late for the three men to get back to camp; so they took my room at the Gainsborough, and I went into Willi’s. On such occasions they used to get up very early, about four, and walk to the edge of the little town, and wait for a lift that would take them out to the camp where they all had to start flying about six, when the sun rose.

      And so the next week-end we all went down to Mashopi. Willi and myself. Maryrose. Ted, Paul and Jimmy. It was late on Friday night, because we had a Party discussion on the ‘line’. As usual it was how to draw the African masses into militant action. The discussion was acrimonious in any case because of the official split—which did not prevent us from considering ourselves a unit for this particular evening. There were about twenty people, and the end of it was that while we all agreed the existing ‘line’ was ‘correct’—we also agreed we weren’t getting anywhere.

      When we got into the car with our suitcases or kitbags, we were all silent. We were silent all the way out of the suburbs. Then the argument about the ‘line’ began again—between Paul and Willi. They said nothing that hadn’t been said at length, in the meeting, but we all listened, hoping I suppose, for some fresh idea that would lead us out of the tangle we were in. The ‘line’ was simple and admirable. In a colour-dominated society like this, it was clearly the duty of socialists to combat racialism. Therefore, ‘the way forward’ must be through a combination of progressive white and black vanguards. Who were destined to be the white vanguard? Obviously, the trade unions. And who the black vanguard? Clearly, the black trade unions. At the moment there were no black trade unions, for they were illegal and the black masses were not developed yet for illegal action. And the white trade unions, jealous of their privileges, were more hostile to the Africans than any other section of the white population. So our picture of what ought to happen, must happen in fact, because it was a first principle that the proletariat was to lead the way to freedom, was not reflected anywhere in reality. Yet the first principle was too sacred to question. Black nationalism