So many jokes had been made about the ‘little bit of paper’, it was as if the bit of paper, when it arrived, was the product of the jokes. There it lay, a thrice-folded sheet of foolscap in which was stated, in five and a half lines of print, that Anton Hesse and his wife Martha were both British citizens.

The two stood examining the paper, each holding it by a corner, each waiting for the other to speak: so many decisions had been postponed until this bit of paper arrived. At last Anton spoke: ‘So, here it is. And now you have decisions to make.’ With which he went off to the bathroom.

The fact that Anton had chosen not to announce decisions—this was in itself a decision or an announcement.

Martha began to tremble with anger: not only because of Anton’s walking off, literally washing his hands of the thing, but (to her surprise—she thought she was long over that childishness) because she, born of so-British parents had been deemed not-British and then as arbitrarily allowed to be British. Though the emotion itself was infuriating, since ‘what did it matter what nationality one was’? And what could be more ridiculous than being angry, just as if a button had been pushed, about something one had been living with and making jokes about for four, five years?

And what sort of a monster was she to be angry about Anton’s saying: ‘And now you have decisions to make,’ when this was his way of covering deep hurt? For Anton had not yet discovered any relations alive in Germany. When he got information, it was of death. The Hesse family ranged from a pure Jewishness that merited (Anton’s grim joke—it was for some months a joke he made continuously in various forms) a pure death in the gas chambers to branches apparently not Jewish at all whose members (like all the other good Germans) were killed by bombing, or as soldiers on the Russian front, or by starvation. Anton Hesse was linked with the fate of his country so deeply and by so many fibres that the cataclysm which had engulfed Germany had also engulfed him who had fled from it and had been living so many thousands of miles away. And now the Communist Party in East Germany did not reply to his letters, to his demands to come home. They simply did not answer. Nothing. Silence. The old Germany which would have killed him, was dead; and the new Germany would not answer his letters.

A traveller from Europe who had visited Berlin which stood divided and in ruins said: ‘What do you expect? As far as they are concerned, you are a spy, anyone from the West is.’

At which Anton had, after a pause, nodded, and said, very dry, very cold: ‘Of course. They are entirely in the right. I would take the same attitude myself.’

If he wished to live in East Germany, they told him, he must travel there and take his chances. From all over the world, refugees travelled back to East and West Germany and he must do the same.

‘They are in the right,’ he said.

Now he stood in the bathroom, bent over the washbasin, a man absorbed in the business of washing his hands. Martha stood in the front room watching him. She watched him shake the drops of water off his hands into the basin. A few drops scattered on the wall. He carefully took a cloth to wipe the wall dry, then he bent close to peer at the wall—yes, it was dry. He took a small towel and dried his hands. Then he examined his fingernails, then he looked into the shaving-glass and ran a long, white hand over his right cheek. Finally he returned to the front room, smiling. He sat down, flinging one leg across the other, and began examining his hands, back and front, with a calm smile.

‘The divorce is nothing but a formality,’ said Martha. ‘I asked Mr Robinson.’

It cost Martha a good deal to say this—though of course the decisions had been made a long time ago.

Now Anton nodded; smiled, and said: ‘Yes, my researches into this subject confirm Mr Robinson’s view.’

The drawling tone he used for this, a kind of formal superciliousness, was not aimed at Martha, or at Mr Robinson, but at the processes of bureaucracy. Thus he had joked, drawling, about the little bits of paper.

‘If we start proceedings now, it will take about six months. Because there’s a long waiting list for divorces.’

‘Naturally. The war has held up civilized life long enough. Serious matters like divorce have had to wait.’

Martha laughed, quickly. This judicious humour of Anton’s, a creaking into irony, was new in him, a result, apparently, of his social life at the Forsters’: and she was grateful because of this Anton who could smile, laugh, even if with difficulty. There was a look of pride on his face at such moments, and he would glance at her as if to say: And you call me pompous!

‘One of us has to divorce the other,’ said Martha, continuing this conversation which they had had before. But not for some months—the arrival of the piece of paper, after years of waiting, had been a shock.

‘That’s logical enough.’

‘We can go on living in this flat because of the housing shortage, but one of us has to deny our bed to the other. I mean, we have to swear it in Court.’

And now Anton scrutinized his long hand, back and front, and a smile almost arranged itself on his face. And Martha thought: No, please don’t make a joke now, because I couldn’t laugh at it.

The point was, to use the language of the courts—conjugal relations had been resumed. A phrase which, as far as Martha was concerned, would do to sum it up. But for Anton it was not so simple—which was why this conversation was taking place. When Anton had gone into the bathroom, leaving her alone, she had known perfectly well that even now if she had put her arms around him, and murmured Anton, suppose we—then there would be no divorce.

As far as Martha was concerned, when they occasionally lay side by side in the narrow single bed, it was from good nature, from courtesy. But not long ago Anton had said: ‘We don’t do so badly, do we, Matty?’

And Martha could see that he really thought so.

She did not understand any of this, but it was because of Thomas. As far as she was able to sum it up, or even to think about it—which she tried not to do, because of the grief which accompanied thoughts of Thomas—her experience with Thomas had been so deep, in every way, that she was changed to the point that—but here it was that she was unable to go further.

Was she saying that because of the relationship she had had with Thomas, she was spoiled for anyone else? Surely not, it should be the other way around! But she did not know what had taken place between her and Thomas. Some force, some power, had taken hold of them both, and had made such changes in her—what, soul? (but she did not even know what words she must use) psyche? being?—that now she was changed and did not understand herself.

Surely she ought to have some inkling, be able to answer some of the questions? Here she was, Martha Quest—well, if you like, Martha Knowell, Martha Hesse (but she did not feel herself to be connected with any of these names) but here she was, a woman living now, many thousands of years after the human race had begun to think, to make statements about its condition, and surely she ought to be able to say: Such and such a thing has happened to me because I and Thomas loved each other.

But she could not use the word Love, for she did not know what it meant.

What did it mean that she had been married to Anton, when she knew quite well that when they parted, which would be soon, they would not even be able to hear what the other said, even for a short time.

So how could she say she had been married to Anton, and ‘in love’ with Thomas? Though of course she had never been ‘in love’ with Thomas; that particular fever, in its aspect either of sickness or of magic had had nothing to do with it. But what had been the essential quality of being with Thomas?

Well, she did not know. Something rather ordinary, perhaps? As if she had been eating superlatively good bread for some months, taking it for granted that of course one had good bread, and then, this marvellously simple good thing vanishing, she had looked around and found that after all there wasn’t much around. Yes, the best thing about being with Thomas (and this had been the essence of her self-deception and precisely what had prevented her from understanding the rarity of the combination Thomas, Martha) was that to be with Thomas was as natural as breathing. And even the long process of breaking-down—as they both learned to put it—for the other; of learning to expose oneself, was something they did together, acknowledging they had to do it. And to admit that it had been easy, because they were only putting into words each other’s thoughts. There had never been anything they could not say aloud, as soon as they thought it.

Last week she had walked into the office in Founders’ Street and there was Thomas. He was on the point of leaving for some village miles away. He had said to her: ‘Martha, do you ever think about when we loved each other?’

‘Well, what do you suppose?’

‘Yes, I know.’ He looked at her, frowning. Not at her—the frown was because he was having difficulty with finding thoughts. ‘You and I together—that wasn’t really what either of us expected, Martha.’

‘No. And all the time I was actually thinking—well, after all, I’m waiting to go to England, so this doesn’t really count.’

‘Yes. I know. And I used to think: this woman, she suits me better than any of the others—no, you’re smiling, you’re offended, you didn’t understand what I said!’

‘Yes, I did. Yes, that just about sums it up.’

‘I’ve been trying to think about it—something happened between us—I mean, not just loving each other.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘No one knows anything about that sort of thing, that’s what I’ve been thinking. We haven’t any idea about it really.’

‘Or about anything else, if it comes to that.’

‘Ah, well, now—but I can’t afford to admit that, Martha, no, I can’t. I spend all my time shouting at poor, bloody half-savages: plant this, plant that, dig boreholes, clean your teeth, wash your children. I wouldn’t be able to do that if I was thinking: I don’t know anything.’

 

A few days ago Martha had visited Maisie. ‘Isn’t it funny, Matty? Now I go to bed with people and you know, I don’t really care? I mean, I like it, don’t get me wrong. I like enjoying myself for them, but it’s quite different. I feel quite different, as if I’m in another room. Do you know what I mean, Matty? I mean, perhaps it’s because of my husbands being killed and then Andrew turning against me like that?’

Well, Martha knew what she meant, or thought she did—for how could one be sure if one knew what other people meant? It was the phrase, in another room. Yes, that was it. A couple of weeks ago, being alone in a small town with Jack Dobie, she had spent the night with him. Now, as far as he was concerned, they were having an affair and he was madly in love. His phrase. But Martha, ‘enjoying herself’ well enough, and even thinking—Good Lord, what sort of a fool is it who does without sex, even for a day, had been, was, in another room.

‘Do you know, Matty, I’ve discovered something. The reason why they like me, they like sleeping with me—’ Maisie, offering these intimate facts to Martha, would not use the words that went with them; she could say, they like me, but not, like sleeping with me, without a quick, frowning look at Martha to see how she was taking it. ‘The reason they like sleeping with me, if you know what I mean, it’s because I can do it so well because I feel as if I was somewhere else. I mean, when I think of Andrew, before he turned against me, I mean to say!’

It is likely, Martha said to herself, drawling it, as Anton drawled out the words he found so hard: ‘there is evidence to suggest’ that Thomas, when he went off to Israel, took a good part of me with him. A cliché. How many other clichés are there that I’ve been using all my life and never thought they meant something, after all? Because it is as if some part of me has died. What part? Or it is in another room, looking on. Yes. And the joke is, I’m going off to England (I am going to the sea, oh, soon, soon, because I shall go crazy soon if I can’t reach the sea), I’m going off to ‘begin life’ all over again, but how can one begin life, begin anything, when a part of oneself is Thomas’s prisoner saying, with him, that no one knows anything about anything?

‘The point is,’ said Martha, ‘Mr Robinson says the judges are all quite sensible and human these days. Because where could we desert each other to, if we decided to move out? One of us has to swear on oath that we have dramatically moved our bed into another room. We’re lucky to have another room, the way things are…We don’t actually have to move our bed, we just have to swear to it.’

A long silence. Martha and Anton sat on either side of the tiny room—so small their legs almost met in the middle. They looked at each other. They were both of them embarrassed at this sudden intrusion of the law (long-expected though it was) into their precarious balances. They had not expected this embarrassment, this pain for the other’s situation.

After all, they had been married for four years. According to their lights they had nothing to reproach themselves with. It had almost been an arranged marriage, could almost be described as a marriage of convenience. Here they sat after four years of it, and at least they had given each other space to find consolation, they had not quarrelled—not destructively, at least; had not done each other damage. Martha had behaved well, by waiting until Anton was naturalized; Anton had behaved well, by taking it for granted that she would behave well. They had both of them behaved in what both would describe as a civilized way. So while they were not married, nor ever had been, there was nothing to be ashamed of. And they felt for each other a kind of dry, patient compassion—well, that was something.

‘Let’s toss for it,’ said Martha.

She expected Anton to say she was frivolous. Instead, he smiled, took out a coin and said: ‘Heads or tails?’

‘Tails.’

He won. And would therefore next day instruct his lawyer to sue Martha for divorce unless she immediately restored conjugal rights.

Meanwhile, they separated to attend to other business; Martha to find out how soon she could get a passage to England, and he to visit the Forsters, who expected him to lunch. He had not said anything at all about going to Germany.

Her life was again full of runnings-about and around—it was not only a question of being divorced and going to England.

Marjorie, who had taken over Martha’s role as general dogsbody, was run down, the doctor said, and needed to take things easy. Marjorie came to Martha: ‘Of course, if you don’t believe in anything any more, then you must just say so!’

‘But I’m not going to be here for long.’

‘But Matty, you’ve said that for years!’

‘Look, Marjorie, I’ll help you, of course.’

‘I can see you don’t want to—nobody cares, nobody cares about anything. I suppose it’s because of that book. Well, I think the book should have the opposite effect, not making everybody destructive and lazy!’

It was ‘the book’ which was the reason for the new (though brief) period of activity. What was ‘the book’?—they all referred to it like this, not by the title or by the author’s name, as if it did not matter what it was. And in a way it did not, there were so many of them by now. This one had been written by a Russian peasant who had been caught up in the 1917 Revolution and become a minor official. He had come under the eyes of the authorities as early as the late ’twenties, and for some years had suffered imprisonment, persecution, etc. Having escaped, he was in America, writing books like this one, which was the first to reach the group—or what remained of it. Marjorie read it first—in tears. She had given it to Colin, but he said he was too busy. Being pressed by Marjorie: ‘This is really important, dear,’ he had read a chapter and said it was badly written. Marjorie took it to Betty Krueger who said she was sure it had been written by the FBI and that Timofy Gangin did not exist. Boris said he did not have time for bad journalism. Besides, where had Marjorie got this book? It had been sent to her through the post, she suspected it had come from Solly—well, of course, then, what else did one expect? That dirty…

Martha read it. If this was true, then everything she had been saying for the last seven years was a lie. But perhaps it was exaggerated?—after all, a man imprisoned unjustly was bound to be bitter and to exaggerate? That word, exaggerate…it rang false, it belonged to a different scale of truth. Reading this book, these books, it was her first experience, though a clumsy, unsure one, of using a capacity she had not known existed. She thought: I feel the book is true—although it is badly written, crude, sensational. Well, what does that mean, to feel something is true, as if I’m not even reading the words of the book, but responding to something else. She thought, vaguely: if this book were not on this subject, but about something else, well, the yardsticks I use would say: yes, this is true. One has an instinct one trusts, yes…

Martha gave the book to Anton. At first he said: ‘I’m not going to read this trash.’ But he read it, dropping, as he did so, sarcastic remarks about the author’s character—an unpleasant one, he said. Then he became silent. Well, nothing new about that. Martha waited, while the book lay on the table, apparently discarded. Then Anton said: ‘After all, they aren’t saints, they were bound to make mistakes.’ And off he went to the Forsters, just as if he were not aware of the enormity of this remark. He did not mention the book again—and was not talking at all about Germany.

The book, in fact, most sharply raised the question of Anton. What role, then, did Anton, bitter and experienced old-guard communist from the heyday of the Communist Party in Germany, present himself to the Forsters, who were, after all, rich capitalists—to describe them as Anton did himself.

Martha had met people who were visitors at the Forster home. Apparently Anton was a great success. ‘Treated just like a son,’ one woman had said, with the intention of annoying Martha. ‘Or like a son-in-law?’ Martha had replied.

Granted that Anton’s efficiency had transformed a whole department administered by a friend of Mr Forster—granted that it appeared no decisions could be made without him: but how did Mr Forster deal with the fact that Anton was a German, and a well-known Red? Well, the fact that he was a German was no problem at all. Anton in the Forster house was, or had been, ‘the good German’ for as long as being German had been a difficulty. It was no longer. After all, our gallant ally, Russia, had been transformed again into a nation of serfs groaning under the tyrant Stalin, just as if the war had not occurred; and Mr Forster had done business with Germany before the war and was making arrangements to do business again. He found the Germans reliable, efficient, and good company, and the German cities were clean—it was the only country in Europe whose water he had been prepared to drink straight from the tap. Many a pleasant evening he had had with German businessmen in their beer cellars before that unfortunate business, the war, had taken place. He thought the sooner Germany was again united as a bastion against communism the better; he was most interested to hear about Anton’s political experiences in the ’thirties…and the fact that he had been a communist? Well, what more natural, if he had had a hard time as a child? Mr Forster had been a socialist himself, at university. And the fact that Anton was working class by origin? It turned out this was a point in Anton’s favour too. Mr Forster’s father had been a poor boy in Scotland, and he was disposed to approve of people getting to the top by their own ability, which was why he, Richard Forster, was in Zambesia: he was impatient of the class system of his own country.

So what it amounted to was: Anton was almost a son of the house, because, not in spite of the fact, of his past. Everything that had made him, everything that had been his deepest experience, had become salt to the Forsters’ pie.

And Bettina Forster, the daughter who (as Martha was naturally predisposed to see it) was likely to have something in common with Martha? How did she see Anton, this man who was, after all, a clerk in the railways, even if her father’s closest friend did say that he couldn’t run the department without him? In what way was this woman (described as pretty, intelligent, neurotic) the successor to Grete and to Martha? It seemed she was a liberal of some kind, she thought something ought to be done about the natives, and she might even go into Parliament or the Town Council. So Anton Hesse was going to be the son-in-law of a big businessman whose rebellion against society had been exhausted after he had said he would not submit himself to the class nonsense in the old country, whose wife said he was a poor, dear, brave boy, and whose daughter would find his political experience absolutely invaluable in getting a seat on the Council or in Parliament.

And he refused to attend a meeting summoned by, or at least caused by, Solly Cohen; on the grounds that ‘he didn’t want to have anything to do with Trotskyist traitors, thanks very much!’

Solly had sent verbal invitations through Marjorie to anyone who was still interested, to meet himself and an African contact. Which African? Oh no, they must wait and see!

But Marjorie had become for all of them the source, or at least the spreading-point, of the disquiet caused by ‘the book’.

She was demanding that ‘it was only fair’ that they all should get together and discuss Timofy Gangin’s book. ‘After all,’ she had said earnestly to Martha: ‘If we have been spreading lies all over the town, then it’s only right we should say so.’

Martha agreed to a discussion, so did Colin, ‘if he had time’. The Kruegers could see no useful purpose in it. Anton refused. Therefore there would be no meeting. Meanwhile everyone had read the book, and discussions had taken place between pairs of people. It had been read, conclusions had been come to because of it, things would change—but there had been no formal meeting. But Marjorie rang people up and wrote letters: they all lacked responsibility, she said, she would never have believed that people could be so frivolous and casual.

So everyone was irritated by her. Yet it was she who was summoning them to a new meeting which, if what Solly promised came true, would inaugurate a new era of cooperation with the Africans. They might, at last, after all these years, actually achieve their goal of ‘working with the Africans’.

What it amounted to was: because of Marjorie’s quality of earnest readiness for anything, she was the focal point of both new possibilities—serious criticism of Russia and serious political work with the Africans.

Like all good organizers, Marjorie was not going to hold a meeting at all, unless she could be sure people would come. She was not well, so Martha ran around, trying to find out who might come.

An extraordinary collection of people: Marjorie, of course, and Colin—but probably only because he was, after all, Marjorie’s husband. Solly, and his mysterious contact. Mrs Van der Bylt. Johnny Lindsay—but this was a token interest only, for he was confined to his bed now. Jack Dobie, if he was in town, but he was too poor these days to make journeys without very good reason. Thomas, if he was in town. And Maisie, of all people, who said she often thought of the old days: it would be nice to see everyone again.

A meeting was convened in the office in Founders’ Street for a Thursday afternoon. It had to be changed for a Wednesday because of a last-minute message from Solly; was cancelled because it appeared Mr Zlentli (though what role he was playing Solly would not say) had vetoed the whole thing; was uncancelled because of a change of policy of some sort; was arranged for two weeks later in the evening, but at two days’ notice was changed for the afternoon of that day because of Mrs Van who, in the event, did not come at all: Flora had sent a message that Johnny was very ill and asking for her.

That the thing was ill-starred was clear by now to everyone, but it all dragged on, on a momentum of muddle and inefficiency. For instance, on one of the cancelled occasions, a whole lot of people had turned up from the old, long-dead discussion groups, under the impression that this was a resurgence of communist activity: they had come to dissociate themselves not only from the present but from the past. But no one was in the office when they arrived. One man, a most active attainder at the old meetings, wrote a letter to the News warning ‘everyone concerned’ that communist spies were planning an uprising. As a result of this, Colin was warned by his superior in the Department that he must be careful; Anton made many deprecating and explanatory remarks to Mr Forster, and Mrs Van got a new batch of poison-pen letters.

On the afternoon of the meeting, Martha saw a stranger looking out of the window into Founders’ Street. When he turned, it was Thomas: a lean, burned man examined her with his bright, bright blue eyes. His hair, coloured by the fierce suns of the Zambesi Valley, was pale, greenish almost—like a wig over the dark, austere face.

He did not smile. She busied herself with the state of the literature cupboard. Then he said: ‘You’ve no idea how strange it is, coming into town again after being in the bush so long.’

‘Do we seem unreal?’

‘The town seems unreal.’ After a few moments he added: ‘Well, at any rate, come and stand by me.’

She was going to finish what she had started, but he said: ‘No, don’t do that. Please come.’

They stood side by side looking out into the street. On the waste lot opposite the Piccadilly a new block of offices rose like a rocket away from Founders’ Street.

‘Well, Martha?’

‘Well, Thomas?’

She was thinking: it’s the look on his face—I simply cannot understand it. Where have I seen it before? And what is happening to Thomas? It was difficult to remember what he had been a couple of years ago. Once there was Thomas, a large, even stout, open-faced, blond man, whose immediately obvious quality was the energy that seemed to explode from him. All his movements, his gestures, had been restless, energetic; once everything about him had gone out, had included, had warmed. Now here he stood beside her, shut in himself. His face, burned to a dark, glistening bronze from the hot sun of the valley, was—not refined, but sharpened, made wary. Solitary. She kept glancing at him, at the dark, proud face whose expression she could not read.

‘Thomas?’

‘What is it, Martha?’

But she did not know what question it was she should ask.

Soon Jack Dobie came in. He had been on the point of coming to Martha. But seeing her with her former lover he gave them both a shrewd look, then a smile, then sat on a bench by himself. But Thomas, oblivious of this small episode, nodded at Jack almost absently.

‘Jack Dobie!’ said Jack, humorously.

Thomas looked at him, from a distance, then understood he was being criticized. He shrugged.

Maisie came in, followed by Tommy Brown. Not that Martha at once recognized Tommy. She saw the young man, thought how like Maisie it was to bring along just anybody she happened to be with, was prompted by his friendship-claiming smile (an aggressive, not a pleasant one) into a closer look…and stood silent, searching for the earnest, enquiring boy Tommy who had been in the commonplace you-can’t-catch-me-out Zambesian who sat with his raw, red thighs spread out on the bench.

‘Move up and give me space,’ said Maisie. Tommy moved up, having first grinned at the others as if to say: I don’t have to do what she says!

Then Maisie sat on a bench, lazily smiling at them. They all watched her, even Thomas. She kept, had perfected, if such a thing was possible, the physical assurance which had always been her gift, so that to watch this large, rather blowzy woman sit down was to be made part of the experience of sitting. She sat, and her two large but beautiful legs in their very high-heeled shoes arranged themselves in a socially correct pose, side by side, as if they had been reminded by Maisie: we are in company. Obeying her, they glistened with their own satisfaction. Her fat thighs reposed under a glistening, mauve-flowered silk. Her great breasts presented the ugliness of the silk to everyone with indifference: look, what does it matter what we wear! Her face, which now had a look, painful to those who had known her earlier, of decorum, a simpering watchfulness, yet retained, in its fat, reddening surfaces, an innocence that was still her deepest quality. Her lazy, blue gaze offered itself, in spite of the defensiveness of her face, to them with complete openness: take me or leave me, I don’t care! And her hands—but it was her hands that they all watched. Those hands had a life which went on quite apart from her mind, her heart. These two white, capable hands, they stroked her thighs, lifted to touch the white organdie flower (slightly grubby) at her throat, placed themselves around the cheap white handbag on her lap, or folded themselves together in a gesture of absolutely open, calm knowledge, quiet assurance. The hands knew that they were in the right, that they were good, that there was no need for them to listen to criticism.

Maisie looked at them over her hands and her face said: This is young Tommy Brown, well, what of it! And his foolish, embarrassed grin said: I know what you’re thinking, but Maisie’s an old comrade from the old days isn’t she (not that anyone is a comrade these days of course) and am I the sort of man to sleep with prostitutes? Meanwhile, they almost expected to see the tuft on the crown of his head stand up and signal to them his desire to improve himself, his awe at being here at all.

‘Maisie said it was a sort of get-together from the old days,’ said Tommy.

‘Well, it’s not exactly a get-together,’ said Martha.

‘I understood you to mean that, Matty,’ said Maisie.

‘No, it’s a meeting about whether we can do anything to help the Africans.’

But before she had even finished, Tommy let out a loud, young man’s knowledgeable guffaw which said: I’m not likely to be taken in by that kind of thing any longer. ‘I thought it was just a get-together.’ He had already stood up, saying with all of himself: I’m here under false pretences.

‘I must have got it wrong,’ said Maisie, ‘but it’s nice to see old friends.’

‘Well, it won’t hurt to talk about the Africans, will it?’ said Jack.

‘Oh no, you don’t catch me again,’ said Tommy, roaring with laughter, ‘I mean, things have changed, haven’t they?’ He was already at the door.

‘What’s got into you? Afraid of losing your job? You’re working for Piet du Preez, aren’t you? Well, he’s not going to give you the sack for talking.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure,’ said Marjorie, bitterly. She had just come in. She was flushed up with the heat, and with guilt because she was late. She had her youngest child in her arms, and there were fingermarks on her white linen dress.

‘Anyway, I’ll see you,’ said Tommy, and went, saying with a special half-proprietary, half-embarrassed smile at Maisie: ‘I’ll see you, Maisie.’

‘Don’t mind Tommy,’ said Maisie. ‘He’s not a bad boy really.’

‘Yes, he is,’ said Marjorie, fierce. ‘He’s changed out of recognition.’

‘Well,’ said Maisie, summing up, as it were, ‘time’s not stood still, well, has it?’

The telephone rang. It was Mrs Quest, asking Martha to come. She was apologetic—anxious. Martha knew she must go, her mother really wanted her.

‘I must go,’ she said.

‘But Matty, if you’re going,’ said Marjorie, ‘there’s hardly anyone here as it is.’

‘But Solly’s not here anyway.’

Thomas said: ‘What is all this about Solly? I don’t like meeting in aid of Solly anyway.’ It was quite extraordinary how an old Thomas came to life, briefly, as he said this—a blunt, aggressive, obstinate man, very different from the solitary, silent person he almost at once became again.

‘Well, all that does seem irrelevant now,’ said Marjorie, belligerent, because she had found herself unable to say: ‘the book’.

‘Why?’ said Thomas. But after a small interval, as if he had reminded himself he should show interest.

‘Well,’ said Marjorie again, this time apologetically, because she could hear, before she said them, how flat her words would be: ‘we’ve just read a book, you see—yes, I know we’ve always said…but it does look as if—we’ve been wrong about Russia.’

She blushed as he stared at her. Then he looked at Jack who, out of this argument, sat grinning, watching; at Martha, who nodded; at Maisie, who was looking out of the window.

‘Then I don’t know,’ said Thomas, abruptly. ‘I haven’t anything to say.’ He stood, for that moment every inch the old Thomas, bristling with energy, his blue eyes close and hard on their faces. Then he lost interest, and turned away.

‘That’s not good enough, you must have something to say,’ said Marjorie.

Thomas said, almost absently: ‘The Soviet Union’s always been the same—it’s we who change.’

This remark, preposterous compared with what they expected of him, caused Jack to laugh and Martha to say: ‘Thomas has been in the bush so long, no wonder everything here looks a bit ridiculous!’

‘I don’t agree,’ said Marjorie fiercely, ‘that’s no attitude at all!’

‘What do you want me to do? Read a book that says the Soviet Union’s no good?’

‘I really don’t understand your attitude,’ said Marjorie, bitter, as if it were she who were being betrayed.

‘It’s a question of which side you are on, that’s all.’

‘Oh-ho,’ said Jack, ‘that’s frank at least!’

‘Yes,’ said Thomas. ‘If the Soviet Union is rotten, then that’s what she’s been from the start. If she’s a paradise, then ditto. What difference does a book make to that? But as far as we are concerned—we’re just like America then? The cold war starts, and the Soviet Union’s not fit to associate with. That’s not what her enemies said when she was doing most of the fighting in the war.’

‘You sound like an editorial in Pravda,’ said Marjorie.

‘I don’t see why people shouldn’t have their own opinions,’ said Maisie, in an effort to preserve peace.

‘I would never have expected it of you, Thomas,’ said Marjorie. ‘I mean, you were never just one of the dogmatic, hundred per cent communists. It almost sounds as if you think we shouldn’t have read this book.’

‘Of course you shouldn’t,’ said Thomas. He stood gazing out into Founders’ Street, hands in his pockets. It was perfectly clear to Martha that it was not so much that he was bored by this exchange, or that he was not really taking part in it. One part, a small part, of his mind exchanged words with Marjorie—but as the price he had to pay for being left in peace. He was preoccupied with something different: again his eyes had the dark, brooding look of his introspection.

‘It’s absolutely ridiculous,’ said Marjorie. ‘Just as if one can’t read books dispassionately, like sensible people.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Thomas after a pause. That phrase was automatic, mechanical. Then he turned from the window, and Martha saw that he was ‘coming back’ as she put it. It was extraordinary to see the attention coming back into his eyes, his face: ‘How can you talk such nonsense?’ he said irritably. ‘That’s real intellectual nonsense. Of course if you read a book you’re influenced by it.’

‘I don’t agree,’ said Marjorie.

‘You haven’t any right to agree or not agree,’ said Thomas.

‘Well!’ said Marjorie, affronted, smiling brightly, looking at them all in turn, for support.

‘What do you know about books?’ said Thomas. ‘You’re brought up to take them for granted. To understand books you have to talk to someone who had to fight for them. I had to fight to learn to read and to write. Every book I read until I left Poland I had to fight for. I had not time to read books that were no use to me. I knew very well that if you read a book for relaxation, as they say, it fills one’s mind with rubbish. And if you don’t have reference books and libraries, you remember what you read. You people never remember anything you read because you know you can always look up anything in a dictionary or go to a library. You know nothing about books. And the Communist Party and the Roman Catholic Church are right—if you want to stop people being contaminated, you have to lock up books.’

‘Well!’ said Marjorie, when he had finished. ‘I think that’s absolutely terrible!’

‘You want it both ways,’ said Thomas. ‘You want to be nice liberals, everything free and laissez-faire, and at the same time you want to run a state on strict, organized lines. In a time of war.’

‘In what?’ said Marjorie, surprised.

‘In a time of war. In wartime.’

‘But the war’s over.’

‘Oh, but I don’t think it is, I don’t agree.’ This was let out, dropped out, in the tone of his self-absorbed indifference. His back to them, he gazed sombrely away over the roofs of the lower town. His profile showed against the sunlit sky. Of course, thought Martha, of course: it was my dream, that’s what I keep remembering. Lord, yes—that’s just how he walked out, alone, solitary, into the crowd of people who fell away on either side, to give him room, and because they did not want to touch him. And that is how we all treat Thomas, almost without knowing it: we treat him in a special way, as if…as if what?

‘I’ve never been more surprised in my life,’ announced Marjorie. The child on her lap strove to reach over for a toy that had fallen on the floor. Marjorie automatically bent down to get the toy for the child: ‘Really, Thomas, you could knock me down with a feather.’

He did not answer.

‘I’ve got to go,’ said Martha, looking towards Thomas, hoping he would turn and say goodbye, or walk down the stairs with her.

Maisie said: ‘I’ll come with you, Matty.’

‘Now Thomas nodded briefly at both of them: ‘So long then!’

Martha and Maisie went downstairs together.

‘It’s living in the bush so long,’ said Maisie. ‘You were right when you said that. I’ve got a brother. He’s a surveyor. When he comes out of the bush sometimes he’s funny for more than a day.’

‘How’s things with you?’ asked Martha.

‘Oh,’ said Maisie, ‘it’s just the same. Binkie’s marriage isn’t too good, that’s what’s driving me mad. He keeps coming down and coming down to get away from his home. But I say to him: Look, Binkie, you’ve made your bed, why keep driving me crazy?’

‘I’ll come and see you soon. Have you heard from Athen?’

‘No. The trouble with Binkie is, his new wife doesn’t want any more kids, she said when she married him, she had two kids from the war, you know her husband was killed, and she wanted to stop at that. But Binkie didn’t believe her, he hoped love would change her feelings. But now he’s hankering after Rita. Oh dear, Matty, but I suppose we all have our troubles.’

They lifted their bicycles out of the bicycle rack, and pointed them in opposite directions.

‘I’m going to get married one of these days,’ said Maisie bitterly. ‘Yes, I will, I’m being driven to it, it’s the only way I’ll ever get any peace and quiet.’

She cycled off, her great, lazy body shifting from side to side on the saddle, the mauve silk glittering hotly in the sunlight.