The Sun Between Their Feet: Collected African Stories Volume Two - Doris Lessing

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of the entire educational system’; a woman of middle age, a widow, badly dressed and smoking incessantly, who looked as if she had long since gone beyond what she was strong enough to bear from life; an old man with an angelic pink face fringed with white tufts who said he was named after Keir Hardie; three schoolboys, the son of the widow and his two friends; the woman attendant from the ladies’ cloakroom who had unlocked this room to set out the chairs and then had stayed out of interest, since it was her afternoon off; two aircraftsmen from the RAF; Dick the convener; and a beautiful young woman no one had ever seen before who, as soon as Dick had finished his manifesto, stood up to make a plea for vegetarianism. She was ruled out of order. ‘We have to get power first, and then we’ll simply do what the majority wants.’ As for me, I was set apart from them by my lack of fervour, and by Dick’s hostility.

      This was in the middle of the Second World War, whose aim it was to defeat the hordes of National Socialism. The Union of Socialist Soviet Republics was thirty years old. It was more than a hundred and fifty years after the French Revolution, and rather more than that after the American Revolution which overthrew the tyrannies of Britain. The Independence of India would shortly be celebrated. It was twenty years after the death of Lenin. Trotsky still lived.

      One of the schoolboys, a friend of the widow’s son, put up his hand to say timidly, instantly to be shut up, that ‘he believed there might be books which we could read about socialism and that sort of thing’.

      ‘Indeed there are,’ said the namesake of Keir Hardie, nodding his white locks, ‘but we needn’t follow the writ that runs in other old countries, when we have got a brand new one here.’

      (It must be explained that the whites of Rhodesia, then as now, are always referring to ‘this new country’.)

      ‘As for books,’ said Dick, eyeing me with all the scornful self-command he had acquired since leaving his cushion weeks before on the floor of our living-room, ‘books don’t seem to do some people any good, so why do we need them? It is all perfectly simple. It isn’t right for a few people to own all the wealth of a country. It isn’t fair. It should be shared out among everybody, equally, and then that would be a democracy.’

      ‘Well, obviously,’ said the beautiful girl.

      ‘Ah yes,’ sighed the poor tired woman, emphatically crushing out her cigarette and lighting a new one.

      ‘Perhaps it would be better if I moved that palm a little,’ said the cloakroom attendant, ‘it does seem to be a little in your way perhaps.’ But Dick did not let her show her agreement in this way.

      ‘Never mind about the palm,’ he said. ‘It’s not important.’

      And this was the point when someone asked; ‘Excuse me, but where do the Natives come in?’ (In those days, the black inhabitants of Rhodesia were referred to as the Natives.)

      This was felt to be in extremely bad taste.

      ‘I don’t really think that is applicable,’ said Dick hotly. ‘I simply don’t see the point of bringing it up at all unless it is to make trouble.’

      ‘They do live here,’ said one of the RAF.

      ‘Well, I must withdraw altogether if there’s any likelihood of us getting mixed up with kaffir trouble,’ said the widow.

      ‘You can be assured that there will be nothing of that,’ said Dick, firmly in control, in the saddle, leader of all, after only half an hour of standing up in front of his mass meeting.

      ‘I don’t see that,’ said the beautiful girl. ‘I simply don’t see that at all! We must have a policy for the Natives.’

      Even twelve people in one small room, whether starting a mass Party or not, meant twelve different, defined, passionately held viewpoints. The meeting at last had to be postponed for a week to allow those who had not had a chance to air their views to have their say. I attended this second meeting. There were fifteen people present. The two RAF were not there, but there were six white trade unionists from the railways who, hearing of the new party, had come to get a resolution passed. ‘In the opinion of this meeting, the Native is being advanced too fast towards civilization and in his own interests the pace should be slowed.’

      This resolution was always being passed in those days, on every possible occasion. It probably still is.

      But the nine from the week before were already able to form a solid block against this influx of alien thought – not as champions of the Natives, of course not, but because it was necessary to attend to first things first. ‘We have to take over the country first, by democratic methods. That won’t take long, because it is obvious our programme is only fair, and after that we can decide what to do about the Natives.’ The six railway workers then left, leaving the nine from last week, who proceeded to form their Party for Democracy, Liberty and Freedom. A steering committee of three was appointed to draft a constitution.

      And that was the last anyone ever heard of it, except for one cyclostyled pamphlet which was called ‘Capitalism is Unfair! Let’s Join Together to Abolish it! This Means You!’

      The war was over. Intellectual ferments of this sort occurred no more. Employees of the Post Office, all once again good citizens properly employed in sport and similar endeavours, no longer told the citizens in what ways they were censored and when.

      Dick did not stay in the Post Office. That virus, politics, was in his veins for good. From being a spokesman for socialism for the whites, he became, as a result of gibes that he couldn’t have socialism that excluded most of the population, an exponent of the view that Natives must not be advanced too fast in their own interests, and from there he developed into a Town Councillor, and from there into a Member of Parliament. And that is what he still is, a gentleman of distinguished middle age, an indefatigable server on Parliamentary Committees and Commissions, particularly those to do with the Natives, on whom he is considered an authority.

      An elderly bulldog of the bulldog breed he is, every inch of him.

      I met Johnny Blakeworthy at the end of his life. I was at the beginning of mine, about ten or twelve years old. This was in the early Thirties, when the Slump had spread from America even to us, in the middle of Africa. The very first sign of the Slump was the increase in the number of people who lived by their wits, or as vagrants.

      Our house was on a hill, the highest point of our farm. Through the farm went the only road, a dirt track, from the railway station seven miles away, our shopping and mail centre, to the farms farther on. Our nearest neighbours were three, four, and seven miles away. We could see their roofs flash in the sunlight, or gleam in the moonlight across all those trees, ridges, and valleys.

      From the hill we could see the clouds of dust that marked the passage of cars or wagons along the track. We would say: ‘That must be so-and-so going in to fetch his mail.’ Or: ‘Cyril said he had to get a spare for the plough, his broke down, that must be him now.’

      If the cloud of dust turned off the main road and moved up through the trees towards us, we had time to build up the fire and put on the kettle. At busy times for the farmers, this happened seldom. Even at slack times, there might be no more than three or four cars a week, and as many wagons. It was mostly a white man’s road, for the Africans moving on foot used their own quicker, short-cutting paths. White men coming to the house on foot were rare, though less rare as the Slump set in. More and more often, coming through the trees up the hill, we saw walking towards us a man with a bundle of blankets over his shoulder, a rifle swinging in his hand. In the blanket-roll were always a frying pan and a can of water, sometimes a couple of tins of bully beef, or a Bible, matches, a twist of dried meat. Sometimes this man had an African servant walking with him. These men always called themselves Prospectors, for that was a respectable occupation. Many did prospect, and nearly always for gold.

      One evening, as the sun was going down, up the track to our house came a tall stooped man in shabby khaki with

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