The rains had come and would soon be over. Thomas was back, but Martha had ceased to hear what he said some time ago, and her argument with him was a monologue: she talked in his voice as if believing what he believed.

When he came she heard of it from Jack Dobie.

‘Thomas is back.’

‘Oh, I didn’t know.’

These days, Martha worked mostly for Jack. And Thomas, so Jack said, was thinking of working with him too. ‘We’ve got schemes afoot—I’ll show those bastards yet, even if they have chucked me out of Parliament!’

Eventually, Martha and Thomas met by chance in the Piccadilly. Martha was with Jack who, sensing the situation, went off to talk to the new owner, Johnny’s successor.

‘Well, Martha?’

‘Well, Thomas?’

He was considerably thinner, and much browner. Martha realized that meeting him in the street she wouldn’t have known him. She thought, if I had just met him I’d think: what a tense, suspicious man—what’s wrong with him? He was eating fried eggs and chips, not looking at what was on his plate. His eyes, now sharply, startlingly blue against his burnt skin, examined her from a distance.

And herself—she was in a phase least likely to appeal to him, though she hadn’t thought about it until feeling his inspection of her—she had not, so to speak, looked into the mirror recently. She was heavy again, almost lumpish. She was a heavy, pale young woman with a mass of thick hair. That night she was wearing an orange linen dress she did not much like, but she had not known she was going to meet Thomas.

She thought: He probably wouldn’t have known me either, and it’s only a few months.

‘We’ve both changed,’ she said.

He nodded, after a bit: he was abstracted. Then, feeling she wanted more from him, he attempted to joke: ‘You look like one of the kibbutz girls.’

‘What, I’m not to your taste!’

Already he had gone away, but he made an effort to come back: ‘You looked prettier when I had you.’

She was not going to say that now she had no one. She sat smiling, feeling the change in him: but she did not know how to define it.

‘Yes, girls like you need a lot of serious love-making to keep you in shape.’

This, the sort of jest lovers make, offered to her out of—well, courtesy, politeness, made her understand that she must let the personal lapse, and immediately.

It had jarred—badly. They both looked uncomfortable.

She said: ‘Are you a Zionist now?’ meaning it as a serious query. She understood that had jarred too, it rang false: perhaps anything either of them said now would sound false.

His eyes fastened hard on her face, abrupt, surprised—she said: ‘I’m sorry, I was just making conversation, I suppose.’

After a moment, he shifted his legs under the table, let his eyes move away from her face, and began playing with the magnificent cruet in the table’s centre.

‘Seeing this art-work, it makes me feel I’m at home,’ he remarked, apologetically.

That was better, it was suddenly easier to be together.

He took out a glass stopper and sniffed, amused, at the raw vinegar. ‘Somewhere in the world there must be a factory to make this horrible vinegar especially for Dirty Dick’s,’ he said.

‘And for Black Ally’s.’

‘Before my time.’

He sat holding the glass stopper in his hand. Across the room Jack was talking to the new owner, a handsome, fat Greek who was a cousin of Johnny’s from Johannesburg. He looked across at Martha and Thomas to see if they were ready for him to join them. He went on talking to the Greek, keeping an eye on them.

‘You see, Martha,’ said Thomas conversationally, suddenly coming back to be with her—as she felt it—‘we were wrong all the time, things aren’t how we thought.’

‘Why?’ she asked, after waiting for him to explain.

A moment’s immobility. Then a rough, dismissing movement, an irritated movement. ‘That’s all!’ Then he looked up, saw her face, and said, shrugging: ‘If you don’t feel it, then I can’t tell you.’

‘All right,’ she said carefully, after a pause.

He sat frowning, playing with the little glass bottles. Then Jack came back, seeing that the two sat there, not speaking. Having first tried to sense whether it was safe to say it, he joked: ‘Well, I’m glad you’re back home, Thomas, now there’s a chance for me.’

Thomas laughed, in relief, so did Martha, Jack joined in. Then they began talking about Jack’s plans for work with Thomas, and how Martha could help; they were all relieved to get away from the personal.

A night or so later, Martha had this dream: it was a small town somewhere, but she did not know where; and there was an atmosphere of impending events: a great stir and a bustle in the town, something was going to happen.

Then Martha knew: someone was going to be hanged.

She thought: I must try and save this person, but first, who is it? Me, perhaps? But she was talking to a group of people she recognized to be officials of some kind, and presumably she would not be doing that if she were a criminal, or at fault with them.

Then she was inside a big barn or shed where the execution would take place. There was a wooden scaffold already erected there. It was rough, there was something informal, or at least, makeshift, about it all because it was war-time. And there was a feeling about the dream older than the present—or rather, the recent—war, World War II. Was it a war in the past? Or the last war, but a village or a town that had an older feel to it, an atmosphere almost, of the Middle Ages?

Suddenly Martha knew it was Thomas who would be hanged—she had known it all the time. She knew, too, that she must not save him, because he had extracted a promise from her not to come near him, she must not interfere. ‘I must work out my own destiny,’ he had said, at some point.

She stood a few paces behind Thomas, and thought: If he turns and sees me here he will be furious, I’m breaking my promise. But it’s all right: he will not turn and see me, it’s not part of the play, the order of events, that he should turn and see me. Her hands kept stretching out towards him, palms up, to help him, but they fell again, empty.

Then, through the door of the big barn, she saw, coming up a hill on a country road with a backdrop of solemn blue mountains, a small procession of people in black; first came a large, black-robed man with a silver cross swinging on his breast—he was the Mayor of this town, and he was followed by various officials, one of them holding up a silver cross and another swinging a censer and another reading aloud from a small, black book.

Thomas went out of the door towards them. He was not driven out, he went. He walked through the great open doors of the barn and the people outside fell away on either side as he appeared. He was not bound in any way, and his hands were free.

He stood, while the party headed by the Mayor came forward, but he was not looking at them. Martha was just behind him, she was wringing her hands, and her heart was aching with a dry, useless anguish.

Thomas looked different. He looked more Semitic, or Eastern. He was darker, thinner, and his blond hair had darkened and was curly. Chips of wood and straw were tangled in his hair. His eyes searched this way, that way, moving all the time up at the sky, down at the earth. But not for escape, no, they were movements of eyes in deep thought. Thomas was dishevelled, his clothes were torn, there was dust on his head as well as straw, and wood chips. He was isolated from this crowd of people, but he was not aware of them or of Martha or of anything: his red-eyed stare was introspective. He stood, waiting, with the heavy sunlight on him, in a sombre, savage…but what? What was this mood, or way of thinking, or mode of being, she could not name? The look on his face—that was the point of this dream, that was why she was dreaming it: she had to discover the meaning of this sombre, dark look. Why did Thomas stand there, looking at the sky, looking—almost abstractedly—at the group of officials who were coming to hang him, as if he did not care about them? Surely he ought to be running away, or protesting, or struggling?

She was weeping, she was protesting, she was anguished. But Thomas turned red-rimmed, sombre eyes around him, as if he—as if…as if what? What was the look on his face?

The necessity to understand that look woke Martha up. Awake, she stared at Thomas’s face, needing as badly to understand it as she had asleep.

Then the dream faded…and came back, sharply, at odd moments. The look on Thomas’s face would return before her eyes, as she worked, or talked to people, or when she woke up in the morning. She got no closer to understanding it. The dream went further away, she forgot it, finally she forgot it altogether, except that when she thought of Thomas, or saw him, the question the dream had left with her stood in her mind, unanswered.

Thomas worked now with Jack Dobie.

Thomas knew a certain amount about medicine, or at least, public hygiene, because of his war experience. Returning from Israel, he told his wife that she must not expect his help on the farm, that she must rely on Michel Pevsner. He told his brother that someone else must grow plants and shrubs for the shop in town. It appeared that Rachel Stern accepted it, or at least, made no protest. The brother was angry, but made no impression on Thomas who was intent on his own path, whatever that was.

Jack Dobie was no longer in Parliament because of the cold war. Or rather, the cold war had given Jack’s unpopularity a final turn of the screw.

His white trade unionist constituents had put up with him during the war, when his brand of socialism was fashionable; they had been pleased to have him, to give their own reaction a gloss of socialism, as long as socialism did not cost them anything. They had tolerated, too, but only just, his campaigns over India.

A few months ago, India got independence, and Jack tried to organize a meeting to celebrate. None of the big official halls was available to him, even though at that time he had still been in Parliament. Finally, the independence of the continent of India had been celebrated in a dingy little hall near the Coloured area, by Jack Dobie, Mrs Van, Johnny Lindsay in his wheelchair, and a few Indian tradesmen, some schoolteachers and the children from the Indian school. Then the whispering campaigns and the poison letters began again. There were two criticisms of him. One: Jack Dobie was not interested in his own constituents, only in a lot of blacks thousands of miles away in India—why didn’t Jack do something for his own blacks, weren’t there enough blacks in Zambesia, if he wanted to nurse blacks? The other: Jack was only interested in blacks, he hated his own kind, the white people, why should white people elect a kaffir-lover anyway? So Jack was out of Parliament. He was very hurt, but he pretended not to be.

Now he was a fitter on the railways again. He used his position as ex-Member of Parliament (after all, he might be elected again, next time, he said, though he knew it was unlikely) to raise money, rouse public opinion. He and Thomas went around the Reserves, often behind the authorities’ backs, reported on conditions, agitated, wrote letters to officials and to newspapers, and generally made nuisances of themselves. Jack did all this briskly, almost gaily. But Thomas worked with a grim concentration, seven days a week, nothing seemed to exist for him now, except this work. He drove to distant Reserves where few white people ever went, he spent time there, advised on wells, polluted rivers, food supplies, hygiene. Then he came out with files full of facts and figures that it was Martha’s task to put into shape. The Native Affairs Departments, the Native Commissioners, knew about Thomas, and hated him. But he was quick and wily, he made friends with the Africans who trusted him and who did not give him away. He was always a step ahead of furious officials, who, in any case, were in a bad position, because of the amount of information he was able to make public.

Martha did not see Thomas. He sent material to her by post. ‘Dear Martha. This is the Ndosi Reserve. This stuff speaks for itself. Sort it out. As ever, Thomas.’

At first she thought he was avoiding her. Then she understood he was avoiding people.

Martha was being paid by some Foundation located by Mrs Van, and worked at home again. There was no longer the protection of the shed in the garden, so she tried to work in the afternoon, when most of the unoccupied women slept.

Betty Krueger, Marie du Preez, Marjorie Black.

Marie was now the wife of a very successful builder, and she enjoyed her new wealth. But Piet had new friends, all rich ex-artisans, and Marie was bored. ‘Say what you like, Matty, but those were good days, weren’t they, when we actually did things?’—as if those days were decades, instead of three, four years before.

Betty Krueger’s delicate charms had all vanished into an obsessed maternity. She had two small boys, and she might just as well have had a dozen. No one could go near that house with pleasure, certainly not Boris Krueger, who had escaped into money-making: he now made a great deal of money and worked hard for it—out of the house from eight in the morning until eleven at night.

Marjorie Black, whose humorous grumblings had sounded almost tentative, as if about a temporary condition; her lively earnestness licensed by herself to express a smiling defiance, an amused self-criticism—Marjorie was silent, almost grim. She snapped out at her husband, her children, and then smiled, sighed, apologized. She said to Martha she was ashamed—she slept badly, and was ashamed of that; she slept in the afternoons and she despised women who did; she found her husband intolerably conservative and dull—but she hated women who married men for their solidity and then complained.

In short, they were all, already, in their late twenties or early thirties, middle-aged women neurotic with dissatisfaction, just as if they had never made resolutions not to succumb to the colonial small-town atmosphere.

And the terrible thing was, they could never forget it: they watched their own deterioration like merciless onlookers. These days, all over the world, there are people like these, mostly women: the states of mind that once only afflicted people on death-beds or at moments of acute crisis are their permanent condition. Lives that appear to them meaningless, wasted, hang around their necks like decaying carcasses. They are hypnotized into futility by self-observation. It is as if self-consciousness itself has speeded up the process, a curve of destruction. At thirty-five they drink too much, or are in nervous breakdown, or are many times divorced. And it is these people who are at twenty the liveliest, the most intelligent, the most promising.

All these women envied Martha: you’re all right, you’re going to England! You’re going to get out of here.

Even Mrs Van had said to Martha: ‘I envy you, going to England.’

But people Martha’s age don’t like to be told that the old envy them, it is too frightening.

Martha saw a good deal of Mrs Van, whose career had also been brought to a stop by the cold war. She was out of Parliament and had not easily retained her seat on the Council. She was getting old, and she was tired. The young women ran errands for her.

This often meant that she wanted someone to talk to. Her house was full all the time, but mostly of children. Her husband was busy with one big court case after another. Her old crony Johnny Lindsay was out of bed, though the doctor said he should not be, but his energies were spent on keeping upright and, as he said himself, on not being a nuisance. He sat in a grass easy chair by the doorway on to the street, and the children of the street came in and out. When his breath allowed it, he talked to the children about the high old days of industrial battle on the Rand, while Flora sat knitting.

Mrs Van talked a great deal about Johnny.

A few weeks ago, Flora had come in late from the pictures, having left him in the care of one of his African friends.

Flora had taken the old man a cup of hot milk.

He sat up in bed, holding the hot milk, looking at her—a thin old man with the battling blue eyes of his youth. Flora had faced this look steadily.

‘Johnny, is there something you want to say to me?’ she had asked at last.

Johnny, smiling, patted Flora’s hand, then, without a word, had shut his eyes and sat quietly in the dark, ready for sleep.

Flora had gone next day to tell Mrs Van this incident. Mrs Van had told Martha. Or rather, Mrs Van had asked Martha to come up and keep her company while she watched an assortment of her grandchildren at play.

‘I felt terrible, Mrs Van,’ Flora had said to Mrs Van. ‘I felt as if he should kill me right away and be done with it, Mrs Van.’

‘But Flora, my dear, surely you can’t talk of someone like Johnny killing?’

‘Oh, Mrs Van, that’s how I felt when he looked at me—I’d rather he killed me.’

Martha and Mrs Van sat on the veranda. On the lawn outside a small black boy pushed a lawn-mower up and down, shouting some song of his own over the clatter of the machine. The cut grass fell aside behind him in fringes of bright green.

Under trees at the far end of the garden a group of small children sat on the grass having a tea party, while three black nannies watched them.

‘Yes, Matty, Flora’s an honest woman, but I can’t help feeling: surely she could have waited for his death to start love-making? There’s that man from the store at McGrath’s, you know.’

‘Perhaps she feels he’ll never die,’ said Martha, insisting on her right to say it, looking Mrs Van straight in the face.

‘I daresay she sometimes feels that, Matty, but we all feel discreditable things sometimes, and it doesn’t mean we have a right to feel them, does it?’

‘Mrs Van, Mrs Van, oh, then he said: “Come over to the bed, Flora.” So I went over. I was trembling so I could hardly stand, I promise you. Then he opened his eyes and took my hand and he looked at me and he said: “Flora, my dear, you are a young woman still.” “Oh, no,” I said, “don’t say that, Johnny, I’m getting on you know, I’m over forty!” But he smiled and he said: “You’re a pretty woman, my dearest—” oh, Mrs Van, then I started to cry, I can’t stand him, he’s so good, do you know what I mean? And he said: “When you did me the honour to share my life with me”, oh, yes, that’s what he said, did me the honour, Mrs Van…’

‘Because of course, Matty, he couldn’t marry her, he had a wife living and children—the children won’t speak to him, or at least, they didn’t for a long time. But he adores Flora. Isn’t it strange, Matty, that grand old man, he adores her, and when you come down to it, she’s a girl he picked up in some dance hall. I see you’re smiling, Matty?’

‘That’s so like you, Mrs Van.’

‘Is it? You mean, I’m a snob?’

‘No, you’re not a snob. It would have been all right if she’d sold books in a book store!’

Mrs Van sat pleating her blue silk skirt with one fat, ringed hand—the other now rose in an irritable gesture to her ear. She shouted across the noise of the lawn-mower: ‘Please, Silas, can you mow at the back of the house, I can’t hear myself think.’

The child Silas grinned, and pushed the machine away around the house, across lawns, paths, gravel, in a fearful din. Silence. The small children, in their pink, white, yellow dresses, sat scattered on bright green.

Martha was secretly playing a game. She shut her eyes: the noises of the afternoon, children’s voices, insects in the grass, wind in leaves, made waves, made sea: against her dark lids rose and crashed thundering salt waves. She opened them: a calm, hot afternoon in Mrs Van’s garden.

Mrs Van said: ‘Well, that’s how I do feel I suppose. I can’t help it. Recently I’ve been feeling there is something limited about my judgements, I have been feeling that, but I can’t help it, it’s too late to teach an old dog new tricks.’

From the back of the house came the now distant sound of the lawn-mower. Martha shut her eyes and heard seas running on distant beaches.

‘About Flora, Mrs Van? What else did she say?’

‘And we’re gossiping, I suppose. I don’t like gossip!’

Outside Mrs Van’s gate rose a large tree whose leaves fell in regular bright fronds. As the wind shook them, the whole tree surged in an untidy mass of shiny gold spangles. A deep, dark, glossy green, glistening light, a ripple of white…

‘Jack said he knew she had a lover, he could tell from how she walked, and her eyes, and he was happy for her. He hoped that when he was dead, she would be happy with this man. He said she needed a man her age and not an old man like him.’

In the wrinkles under Mrs Van’s little blue eyes lay webs of wet.

‘It’s no good, Matty. I think about it and I think—Johnny’s a great man. Yes, he is.’ She nodded emphatically, in her old way. ‘How many people like him have I met? Well, Matty, I tell you this, once or twice in a lifetime you meet someone like Johnny—he’s naturally good.’

‘Yes, he is.’

‘He literally does not understand—evil, if I can use such a word.’

‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t.’

‘It’s not one of my words. I’m surprised that—but I’m surprised about less and less these days. But Johnny, we were talking about him.’

A small boy, as fat and brown as toffee, in bright yellow, came staggering towards the veranda. ‘Gran, Gran, Gran…’ he called. A large black girl rose off the grass, took two long steps, picked him up, tossed him in the air in a great curve and caught him as he descended where he had started from. He laughed. She laughed. Laughter and cries of ‘See me, Gran, see me?’ Over them the tree’s branches shook and pranced.

‘Are you stupid, my old friend, I was thinking—recently I’ve been sitting there thinking, are you stupid, Johnny?—no, I mean it, there’s something stupid about someone who never expects people to behave badly. Well, do you know what I mean?’

‘The thing is, people don’t behave badly with Johnny.’

‘Don’t they?’

Martha shifted her chair a couple of feet. Now she could see Mrs Van’s flower garden which seemed to be growing, this hot afternoon, swarms of greenish-white butterflies. The air was full of variegated scents.

That morning, Martha had sat by Johnny Lindsay while he cut out small paper figures for a little black child who stood by the old man’s knee, one hand on the knee, watching the flashing scissors shape birds and cats, which fell into his other hand in long, unfolding white patterns.

Flora had been in the back room cooking something. She was now as much Johnny’s nurse as Mrs Quest was her husband’s. She cooked, and sometimes sent Martha a troubled, anxious smile, and said: ‘Are you warm enough, Johnny? Are you sure you’re warm?’

‘He held my hand, Mrs Van, and said: “Flora, my love, you’re the love of my life, you’re the loveliest thing in my life, my love, I fell in love with you when I saw you that night when you were dancing, remember? But now be happy.” Well, I didn’t know what to say, Mrs Van. Did he want me to go away? I was crying so hard I didn’t know what to say—did he want me to go away? I wouldn’t know what to do without Johnny, that’s the truth! Then I got cross. What did he mean by saying, Now be happy! He’s dying, isn’t he? What does he think I am? How can he say, Be happy? I was so angry, Mrs Van, God forgive me, but I wanted to shake him. I said: “But Johnny, have a heart, what do you mean? Do you want me to go away and leave you? Because you’re making up something too much of me and Dennis”—his name is Dennis, Mrs Van. He’s got a job at McGrath’s, he looks after the stores and the labour. But he’s married—well, sort of. I don’t know how Johnny wants to see it, but it’s not as he thinks. I said to him: “But man, Johnny, have a heart”, if I said to Dennis, Johnny’s thrown me out, I don’t know what he’d say. That’s Johnny’s trouble, Mrs Van—he always thinks things are better than they are.’

Martha looked at Mrs Van’s severe face, and waited. Mrs Van glanced up. Slowly she smiled.

‘Yes, all right, Matty, I was thinking, if he didn’t see things better than they are, how could he love a woman like you.’

‘I know you were, Mrs Van!’

‘But haven’t I admitted it? I’m censorious! But now be honest, Martha, what is Flora?’

‘A red-headed floozie from a dance hall?’

‘She’s a blonde this week, she’s dyed her hair. She looks horrible.’

Martha laughed.

‘No, it’s no good, it’s no good, Matty, when I think of him and I think of her…’

‘But Mrs Van, he loves her.’

‘Yes, yes, he does. And imagine, to be loved like that—Matty? Well, I can understand why she was so angry.’ Mrs Van’s eyes were sparkling in a change of mood—she was flushed, and she smiled. ‘Flora was so angry, she was angry for hours afterwards, she said. He kept saying to her: “Be happy, my darling Flora. I shall die happy if I can think of you happy”—almost as if he wanted her to go off, she said, and—“Well, I don’t know what really, because all that happens is that Dennis and I meet in the cocktail bar at McGrath’s twice a week when his wife visits her mother. Then he drives me home in the car—well, it’s not much more than that, Mrs Van. Of course, I’m not pretending I wouldn’t like there to be more…” she’s honest, at least, Martha.’

The flock of brightly coloured children had run to the central lawn and stood throwing up the newly cut fronds of jade-green grass all around them. The nurse-girls joined the babies. They all stood throwing up handfuls of strongly smelling grass, the tall, strong, black girls, the tiny, white children.

‘She said to me: “I swear if I told him that was all there was to it, he’d be disappointed. Because after all, a man like Johnny, it’s not every day you meet a man like Johnny, although I don’t mind telling you, I think some of his ideas are crazy, I can tell you, it’s gone against my grain often enough, all these black Africans all the time, I mean, I’d never dare tell my mother or my friends what I’ve done with Johnny, like sitting down day after day to eat with black people in my own house.”’

‘So what’s going to happen, Mrs Van?’ said Martha.

‘That I don’t know. Because Flora’s really upset, she really is. Because if you think about it, Matty, it is strange of him—everyone knows, particularly Johnny, he might die at any moment, and Flora says she cooks him his supper and is all ready to sit by him for the evening, then he says: “Now run along and enjoy yourself, my darling.”’

In spite of herself, Martha laughed.

Mrs Van raised a severe head, then smiled. For a moment she was a mischievous girl.

‘Yes, yes, Matty, the thing is, it’s quite natural for him to behave like that, but he can’t see it isn’t for others. And he’s been like that all his life. It’s not only since I’ve known him. I know people who knew him when he was a young man.’ Mrs Van sat smiling, pleating her blue skirt.

‘He was handsome, I should imagine?’

‘Oh, yes, Matty, he must have been handsome, mustn’t he? He’s handsome now, isn’t he? He’s as straight as a die even now? But people I’ve met say that even then, when he was young, he was…well, he’s never been like ordinary unregenerate mortals like you and I, Matty, he’s spent all his life like this, and it’s never even occurred to him there was another way to live.’

When Martha went to visit Johnny, she would look for Flora in the kitchen at the back. Flora would come out, taking off her apron, and look enquiringly, half-ashamed, behind her old husband’s back. Martha nodded. Then Flora, making beseeching, guilty signs not to be betrayed, would creep out the back way to go to the pictures. Martha had to say Flora had gone shopping. Flora could not have endured the smiles, the blessings, the good will that Johnny would have certainly sent after her if she had actually said: ‘I want to go to the pictures, I want to meet a friend in McGrath’s cocktail bar.’